baseball, prehistoric mammals, doujinshi

Clearing out more links that've been lurking in my Pinboard for a while (in 2021 I WILL get back to sharing links regularly!):

The Pressure to be a Professional Witch:

When a person writes books, travels to speak at festivals, blogs on a major platform, or has a substantial social media following, we often assume that that’s what they do for a living, especially in magical communities. Lots of people do make their living that way, of course! And it certainly seems like something people should be able to do if they choose–we shouldn’t expect presenters, musicians, authors, and artists to contribute for free just because these are spiritual communities–but underlying all of this is a sentiment that exists in American work culture as a whole, and seems to hit creatives the hardest. And that’s the idea that we should all be doing what we love in order to make money, and that a passion isn’t really a passion unless we’re striving to make it a career. In witchcraft and Pagan communities, this manifests as the idea that once we reach a certain level of proficiency or knowledge as a practitioner, it’s time to turn it into a business.

---> I see this pressure manifesting in almost every area of life-- like if you have any sort of hobby or interest, you should be aiming to make money from that hobby or why bother doing it. There's also the increasing pressure to make yourself into a "brand," which I find abhorrant on almost every level...

A little sports and GLBTQ+ history: The Hidden Queer History Behind “A League of Their Own”.

Sometimes I just look up weird prehistoric animals and am glad we don't live with them nowadays (giant sloths, giant sharks, those weird tiny horses). Check out the Chalicotheres, a thankfully herbivorous mammal from 780k+ years ago.

This article is basically an ad for a documentary (which I watched; it was just okay) but it's an interesting tidbit from technology's recent past: General Magic tried to invent a smartphone in the 1990s. This is why it failed..

Here is a doujinshi (Japanese fan comic) database, currently with over a million "objects" listed.

About That Wave of Anti-Racist Bestsellers Over the Summer…:

Now that the election is over, it’s hard to know what to feel. While I do appreciate the white people who marched beside me, yelling that Black lives did indeed matter, I worry that some of them went home, placed their handwritten signs down, and will never pick them up again, except to place them in the trash. I worry that white customers ordered these books and simply thought “I did a good deed today,” and rolled over to sleep. I worry that when the next Black person is killed by police, I will have to scroll through my timeline, only to stop and hesitate while reading comments such as “What was he doing?” or “They wouldn’t have been killed if they had simply obeyed the police!” What do I do then? There are simply no words in any book that will prepare me for that.

The US Government Says Facebook Needs To Sell Instagram And WhatsApp which would be amazing if it actually happens.

And finally:

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

corvidology

I see this pressure manifesting in almost every area of life-- like if you have any sort of hobby or interest, you should be aiming to make money from that hobby or why bother doing it.

I run across this all the time being said to anyone who put a lot of time into an interest or hobby. I have a lovely mate who knits jumpers for shelter kids and she gets asked all the time why she doesn't sell her work professionally as it's beautiful.

tozka

It's definitely more common today than even ten years ago, particularly with so many people working freelance jobs or "gig" jobs on the side. And I can see why! It's very easy to start a side business doing something you enjoy. I just wish it wasn't being pushed as the expected next step in a hobby.

lassarina

Oof, yeah, the "so you're going to make that a job then?" is so devastating, especially like--okay, I know the "gifted kid" thing is basically a meme at this point, but I was one of those kids who was quite good at most things I tried, and as a result, I have no idea how to interact with things I am not good at, and it's really crimping me learning new things and the pressure to turn every hobby into a side hustle makes it exponentially worse. Sometimes things just are. And I hate having to fight for them to be that way.

I'm running into that problem, too! I have several would-be crafts that I keep putting off because I can feel myself slipping into that "must be good enough to sell this" mindset, which isn't why I wanted to start making them in the first place. But once you've thought the money thing, it's hard to STOP thinking the money thing.