Whatever Best of 2014
Posted on December 24, 2014 Posted by John Scalzi 8 Comments
2014: Not exactly a vintage year in my opinion. Nevertheless, a year in which I wrote several things here worth remembering here at the end of this year’s days. This year the memorable pieces were primarily about writing, and sexism and/or discrimination, with the latter being viewed particularly through the odious nonsense of GamerGate. About US politics I wrote almost nothing because to be blunt, in general the best I could manage out this nation’s politics this last year was an exasperated eyeroll.
For this list I also trimmed out a lot of my amusing Twitter escapades; those will show up in their own compiled list. But a few of them are here, for reasons.
These posts are arranged chronologically.
- A Portrait of the Artist as an Asshole
- A Season in the Show
- How I Knew I’d Made It
- The Orthodox Church of Heinlein
- Enjoying Problematic Things
- The Four Levels of Discrimination (And You) (And Me, Too)
- 45
- Jay Lake, Remembered
- Amazon, Hachette, Publishing, Etc — It’s Not a Football Game, People
- The Ways the Scalzi Women Are Better Than Me: An Incomplete List
- But Doctor, I am Pagliacci
- Suddenly, Nostalgia
- An Anti-Feminist Walks Into a Bar: A Play in Five Acts
- People Are the Problem and They Pretty Much Always Will Be
- #PineapplePizzaGate
- The Scalzi Gender
- It’s All Beautiful and Nothing Lasts
- How to Boycott Me, I Mean, REALLY Boycott Me
- Jian Ghomeshi and the Women He Knew
- Script Notes on the Birth of Jesus
We’ve got a week left, 2014. Let’s try to keep it together, shall we.
That is the scariest photo of you I’ve ever seen, John. With that stache you almost look like my dad….(shudder)
2014 was kind of a sucky year. Racism has always been part of America but Ferguson put a spotlight on it so no one could ignore it and protests about racism forced a lot of otherwise quiet racists out of the woodwork. Kind of like round 2 of Obama’s election driving racists out of their gorram minds. Its good in the long run, but it is certainly ugly.
Republicans taking both houses was dissappointing, but not totally unexpected given most of the elections were in red or purple states. Obama’s playbook seems to have one play in it, preemptive capitulation. I think it only took him 6 years to figure out but he seems to finally understand that republicans have no interest in working with him ever. Course as a lame duck, he wont be able to do much…
The toture report being partially released was ugly, but a step in the right direction. But it also brought torture apologists out of the woodwork, which is part of the ugly.
And then there is ISIS. and that has brought out of the woodwork the folks who would argue for an eternity of war.
Not a great year for the world.
Thanks for the reminder of some excellent writing/reading :). I’ve already revisited two.
I am personally ready for 2015 to be a whole lot better for my own personally in person reasons, but Whatever was about the same in quality, though lighter on quantity.
Now that I look closer at that pic: I think he just morphed Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy into one terrifying amalgamated being.
#PineapplePizzaGate for the win.
That photo….reminds me of Tim Conway’s character called Mr. Tweedle. 2014 was not really a banner year for me. On the political side, I was more concerned with the stupidity on the state level where I live as opposed to ongoing stupidity on the national level. National don’t affect me as much as the state.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/26/opinion/paul-krugman-tidings-of-comfort.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region
You need to read this.