WWWednesday: October 9, 2019

Yom Kippur is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. It started a few minutes before sunset yesterday.

Octopus Dreaming:

PBS’s Nature ran a show on the octopus. A scientist studies Heidi, the octopus who lives in an aquarium in his living room. He captured this eerie, beautiful footage of Heidi changing color while she was apparently asleep. These colors manifest in the octopus while it is hunting or eating, so the scientist “narrates” Heidi’s dream.

Nobel Prizes:

The Nobel prize in physics was awarded to a Canadian scientist and two Swiss scientists for their work on exoplanets and the evolution of the universe.

Awards:

Triptree.org has issued a statement about the renaming of the Tiptree Award. As I read it, the organization’s Motherboard has not agreed, yet, that it needs to be renamed.

For No Reason:

Happy birthday, Aaron and Shawn Ashmore, twin actors. Shawn played Bobby in the original X-Men movies, and Aaron stared as Johnny Jaquobi in Killjoys.

Image by Aydin Tanal for Nat Geo

Books and Writing:

Last week celebrated National Poetry Day. In honor of the day, here’s a Mary Oliver poem.

Over at the Atlantic, three-time Hugo winner and fanfic writer N.K. Jemisin speaks thoughtfully about the importance of fan fiction in her development as a writer.

Who could resist The 18 Best Sherlock Holmes Graphic Novels to Read Now? I didn’t know there were 18 Sherlock Holmes graphic novels.

Kat shared an article on the drive to create maps of imaginary lands, written by Lev Grossman.

This article on how to avoid rape as a trope in your storytelling covers a couple of situations I wouldn’t have thought about.

This Kickstarter runs through October 11, and this deck looks like fun.

FIYAH Magazine is doing its annual State of Black Speculative Fiction Survey. The survey is open through November 30,2019.

Internet:

Or, books and writing? Anyway, J.K Rowling’s Pottermore site is making the transition to Wizarding World, which allegedly can sustain more magical bells and whistles. It also seems like the franchise is trying to shift away from “Harry Potter” to a larger universe incorporating the “Fantastic Beasts” film storyline.

The Los Angeles Natural History Museum offers an exhibition on horror and horror movies. We should take up a collection to send Sandy to see it, shouldn’t we? (Thanks to File 770.)

Octopus Image from BBC

TV and Movies:

Batwoman premieres on the CW this week. The Mary Sue reviewer enjoyed it. I watched it, but the statement that it’s got “everything about the Arrowverse that we love,” worries me because I’ve never liked Arrow or the Arrowverse. Oh, well.

Entertainment Weekly was not crazy about Will Smith’s Gemini Man.

Images:

The BBC and National Geographic provided the other octopus images.