I know, I know, but this video, Solo: The Movie, is extremely entertaining. It’s a preview for the Star Wars trilogy if it took place in contemporary Los Angeles. With an all-human cast. It’s funny.
Textiles can do good, doing well
Just when you were beginning to think that it would never do anyone any good, voting with your dollar makes a difference. An effort by textile companies and the government of Lesotho has brought the textile industry back from near disaster to near fighting strength again, in large part thanks to the “government… working hard to become a destination of ethical choice”. Makes you renew your faith in checking labels.
Han, You Ladies’ Man…
I just found some original footage from Star Wars. It’s in black and white, and the sound quality is cruddy, but it’s worth it to see Han’s girlfriend (or whomever she is) and to hear Greedo chatting with Han in an English accent. And yes, Han did shoot first.
now you can use they, and they can use you too
I was just listening to A Way With Words, and I heard something that caught me completely off guard. I’ve been complaining about gender-neutral singular pronouns for years, hoping that something like ‘ve’ would replace the awkward ‘he or she’ or the patently evil ‘s/he’. Greg Egan aside, nothing ever took off. It turns out that the verbivores have already solved this one to my satisfaction with an obvious (but previously maligned) choice: they.
To quote from Sex and the Singular Pronoun:
Gentle reader (and listener), please open your ears and eyes. Listen and look for statements that contain an indefinite pronoun or a singular noun and hear and see what pronoun follows. In almost every case that pronoun will be a form of they. We do that because the device is historically tested. We do that because it is more graceful than “he or she.” And we do that because it avoids making a minority of us the linguistic norm and a majority of us a linguistic afterthought.
That settles it as far as I’m concerned. I’m going to start using the singular they with impunity, and I’ll let anyone I meet know that they’re welcome to do so as well. ˇViva la evolución!
America Was Not Founded on the Ten Commandments
It’s my first time linking to Newsvine, but this opinion piece is really well done: America Was Not Founded on the Ten Commandments. The comments are worth a scan, too, though they devolve into the usual Newsvine shouting match.