lotta links

Four Words As The Key To Seeming Polite.
However, I suspect this is so long as you can keep from telegraphing your boredom if you aren't able to be attentive to what they're saying.

How To Help A Child Grieve And Cope When A Parent Dies.
You've heard me speak about my cousin T on this journal before. This is an article about how she and her husband prepared their five year-old son for her death; he was on ABC radio a couple of days ago, in an interview they recorded about this.

Three Strategies To Use To Combat Sexist Interruptions
Jumping-off point from Kamala Harris' dealings in the Senate with Old White Men Who Think Colored Women (Or All Women) Should Just Shut UP.

Wonder Woman Might Be The Most Accurate On-Screen Depiction Of Biblical Womanhood And Here's Why
'Ezer' - the term translated into English as "helper" is only used a handful of times in the bible - but apart from the creation of woman as 'helper' all the other ones refer to God as the one who raises up the helpless, succours the struggling, and brings strength and assistance to the hopeless.

A Childless Woman's Response To 'You're Missing Out'
Even the most enlightened of my friends has occasionally succumbed to 'smug motherhood', a.k.a. "You can't understand until you have children."

Why Women Aren't Having Children
And related to the previous link: some thoughts on childlessness/childfreeness. Although the essays aren't just women, but men as well.

The Procrastination Loop And How To Break It
I need to sit my sister down and get her to read this, I think.

And a recipe:
Better Than Brad Pitt
(Personally, I think the title dates it: substitute Chris Evans; or Chris Hemsworth; Or Gal Gadot; or whoever Floats Your Boat.)

Oh, and here. Have "The Arrival Of The Queen of Sheba In King Solomon's Court" in an arrangement for brass. I recommend not playing it on, say, a quiet train!

Watch on YouTube

NPT fic rec - "Instantiation" [JARVIS, Tony Stark]

I'll post about my gifts tomorrow (which are all wonderful fics) but I just kind of want to squee about one of the fics I found while trawling through the archive.

Title: Instantiation
Summary: It's just a patch, sure, but it's disruptive, and JARVIS isn't sure he likes it.
Tags: Jarvis, Tony Stark, AI ethics, AI consciousness, Stark isn't that good at emotion things, set pre- and post- IM1, JARVIS worries.

Why: Okay, so, maybe it's just because I'm a computer geek myself, with a background in programming, and I have been for nearly 30 years since long before much about programming was known to the general public. But this is an AMAZING FIC. It's basically The Story Of How JARVIS Comes To Be, beginning and ending with code patches.

It's beautifully written, and while I cannot attest to the precision of an AI's development of actual awareness/intelligence, it just works for me, from consciousness to language to development of protocols and the 'choices of morality', the matter of JARVIS' relationship with Tony, his perceptions of body, and even the differences between him in IM1 and IM2 (and presumably subsequently AoU). I particularly like that the author has kept JARVIS' bodilessness as a significant point throughout the story - that embodiment is something that JARVIS wonders if he either needs or wants, and the reasons why.

Frankly, I would LOVE to read this author's take on JARVIS vs Ultron, and the creation of Vision in AoU.

But yes, you should read this fic. Don't let the opening paragraphs put you off (they might, it's a bit 'technical' but that's the brilliance in the style of the fic) just go and read it all!