ad astra per aspera

nature, climate

A Flowered Planet — Olivia Laing

Gardening as Resistance: Notes on Building Paradise — Maria Popova

The Trouble with Wilderness — William Cronon

Natural Philosophy redux — Nicholas Maxwell

Ideas of Nature — Raymond Williams (in Culture and Materialism)

The Antarctica Paradox — Alejandro Mancilla

writing, literature

Contemporary Fiction vs. the Challenge of Imagining the Timescale of Climate Change — Mahlu Mertens, Stef Craps

Conrad's Darkness — V. S. Naipaul

Women and Impossible Decisions in Crime Fiction — Emila Naymark

Last Words — Joan Didion

Drive, He Wrote — Louis Menand

Mrs Dalloway: Secularism and Its Enchantments — Jared Marcel Pollen

The Art of Fiction No. 154: Naipaul

The Art of Fiction No. 207: Jonathan Franzen

history

The Climate of History: Four Theses — Dipesh Chakrabarty

What is global history now? — Jeremy Adelman

Are there laws of history? — Amanda Rees

The Lie of Silence — Blake Smith

The Women of the Raj — Maya Jasanoff

Catherine was Great. But was she a Girl Boss? — Alexis Soloski

A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative — William Cronon

and a few miscellaneous ones

Feeling Overwhelmed — Olivia Laing

Group think: Why Art Loves a Crowd — Olivia Laing

Reclaiming Friendship — Maria Popova

Taylor Swift's 'All Too Well' and the Weaponisation of Memory — Lindsay Zoladz

Women in Philosophy — Elly Vintiadis

The Secret Syndicate Behind Nancy Drew — Cara Strickland

Truck Literature — Dinesh Kafle

Tagging:

HOW I TAG ON AO3 - A BEGINNER’S GUIDE

AO3 tags 101

What’s the #1 thing you wish everyone knew about tagging?

a reference guide all about tags and warnings on AO3

How to: Tag and Summarise your Fic

Formatting:

ao3 posting script google doc

formatting fic for text-to-speech compatibility and accessibility 

A helpful How to guide for embedding images on AO3

General and misc:

The ao3 faq for posting to the site

Fanfiction resources

things I wish I’d known when I started writing fic on ao3

tips for posting fic on tumblr

people's standards have dropped so fucking low n some of u have never had that experience of listening to the pilot for the first time and hear cecil wax poetic about how handsome and mysterious carlos is and have it be completely normal and expected! do you know how unprecedented that was? do you know how healing it was to hear gay love being talked about with such candor and without shame, without restraint?

but you cannot look at wtnv which was literally genre-defining in its ingenious storytelling and everything else and say its legacy is that ppl think trees with eyes are the epitome of horror.

i wont allow it.

Molly Fisk, “Winter Sun” (We can make do with so little / just the hint of warmth, the slanted light.)

Pat Schneider, “The Patience of Ordinary Things” (It is a kind of love, is it not? / how the cup holds the tea.)

Barbara Ras, “Bite Every Sorrow” (You can speak a foreign language, sometimes / and it can mean something.)

Jack Gilbert, “Failing and Flying” (Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.)

Lisel Mueller, “Things” (Even what was beyond us / was recast in our image; / we gave the country a heart, / the storm an eye)

Rabindranath Tagore, “On the Seashore” (The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach / On the seashore of endless worlds children meet)

John O’Donohue, “Matins” (May I live this day / Compassionate of heart / Gentle in word / Courageous in thought)

Wallace Stevens, “The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm” (The summer night is like a perfection of thought. / The house was quiet because it had to be)

Brian Patten, “Inessential Things” (Cats remember what is essential of days)

Emily Dickinson, “Simplicity” (How happy is the little stone / that rambles in the road, alone)

Yi Lu, “Valley’s Green” (flowers like tiny saucers — little bowls — little cups / filled to the brim with their own colors)

Jacques Prévert, “How to Paint a Bird’s Portrait” (When the bird comes / if it comes / observe the most profound silence)

Archibald MacLeish, “Eleven” (Happy as though he had no name, as though
 / He had been no one: like a leaf, a stem,
 / Like a root growing…)

Denise Levertov, “A Woman Alone” (Then / self-pity dries up, a joy / untainted by guilt lifts her. / She has fears, but not about loneliness)

Richard Brautigan, “Your Catfish Friend” (I’d love you and be your catfish / friend and drive such lonely / thoughts from your mind)

Linda Gregg, “The Letter” (I’m not feeling strong yet, but I am taking
 / good care of myself)

Andrew Lang, “Ballade of True Wisdom” (And I’d leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray, / For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers)

Ada Limón, “The Raincoat” (my whole life I’ve been under her / raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel / that I never got wet.)

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Just” (These people, unaware, are saving the world)

Authorship: Barthes, Death of the Author; Foucault, What is an Author?

Formalism: Eichenbaum, The Theory of the “Formal Method”;  Brooks, from The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry

Structuralism: Saussure, Course in General Linguistics ; Barthes, from Mythologies

Psychoanalysis: Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams; Lacan, The Mirror Stage & The Significance of the Phallus

Ideology: Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses; Foucault, Truth and Power

Feminism & Queer: Sedgwick, from Between Men; Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa; Wittig, One Is Not Born a Woman; Butler, Gender Trouble

Deconstruction: Derrida, from Of Grammatology;

Postcolonial: Fanon, from The Wretched of the Earth; Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?

Cultural Materialism: Adorno & Horkheimer, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception; Williams, Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory