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She takes a pretty great photo, if you ask me. I acknowledge I am biased.
Also, here she is in her natural environment, which is to say, with a big damn sword:
Where does one get a big damn sword? Friend, you’re asking too many questions.
— JS
daily_otter_feed
Photo by Teagan Dumont, via Mark Dumont
scalziwhatever_feed
Every year as the holiday season begins we’ve run a gift guide for the holidays, and over the years it’s been quite successful: Lots of people have found out about excellent books and crafts and charities and what have you, making for excellent gift-giving opportunities during the holiday season. We’ve decided to do it again this year.
So: Starting Monday, December 1, the Whatever Holiday Gift Guide returns! If you’re a writer or other creator, this will be an excellent time to promote your work on a site which gets tens of thousands of viewers daily, almost all of whom will be interested in stuff for the holidays. If you’re someone looking to give gifts, you’ll see lots of excellent ideas. And you’ll also have a day to suggest stuff from other folks too. Everybody wins!
To give you all time to prepare, here’s the schedule of what will be promoted on which days:
Monday, December 1: Traditionally Published Authors — If your work is being published by a publisher a) who is not you and b) gets your books into actual, physical bookstores on a returnable basis, this is your day to tell people about your books. This includes comics/graphic novels and audiobooks.
Tuesday, December 2: Non-Traditionally Published Authors — Self-published? Electronically published? Or other? This is your day. This also includes comics/graphic novels and audiobooks.
Wednesday, December 3: Other Creators — Artists, knitters, jewelers, musicians, and anyone who has cool stuff to sell this holiday season, this will be the day to show off your creations.
Thursday, December 4: Fan Favorite Day — Not an author/artist/musician/other creator but know about some really cool stuff you think people will want to know about for the holidays? Share! Share with the crowd!
Friday, December 5: Charities — If you are involved in a charity, or have a favorite charity you’d like to let people know about, this is the day to do it.
If you have questions about how all of this will work, go ahead and ask them in the comment thread (Don’t start promoting your stuff today — it’s not time yet), although I will note that specific instructions for each day will appear on that day. Don’t worry, it’ll be pretty easy. Thanks and feel free to share this post with creative folks who will have things to sell this holiday season.
— JS
scalziwhatever_feedThe YouTube video above fascinates me, because it details how people making $500,000 a year — economically fortunate by any sane measure — are still frequently living paycheck to paycheck. One signal reason for this is the issue of lifestyle comparison, and the fact that income disparity in the 1% is vastly wider than the income disparity within other segments of American life.
Huh? Well, as an example, let’s look at the third quintile of income in the US. In 2023 that third quintile had incomes roughly between $61,000 and $98,000, according to the US Census. Everyone within that quintile was within $37,000 dollars of each other in yearly income, more or less. That disparity is not nothing, obviously, but it’s all within economic hailing distance. In the one percent, the income range was between about $560,000 and, well, more than a billion dollars (this is reported income, not unrealized, illiquid wealth in things like stocks and real estate). Someone on the lowest rung of the 1% is vastly economically closer to someone in abject poverty than they are to that billionaire.
Thing is, if you are in the 1%, you’re not comparing your lifestyle to someone living in a tarpaper shack, you’re comparing your lifestyle to other people in the 1%. This often means comparing yourself to people who have ten or a hundred times more income than you do, with similar inequalities in overall wealth. Your lifestyle costs more, and because it costs more, the temptation of the “lower rung rich” to financially overextend themselves to keep up appearances is real — and also, in the world of the upper classes, things just cost more, because companies catering to rich people know their customers don’t want to be seen counting their coins. The person in the market for a BMW 7 series is a fundamentally different economic entity than the person in the market for a Honda Accord. This person is shopping at Erewhon, not Aldi. In the 1%, apparently, you are who you appear to be, or at least, who you appear to be to your neighbors and co-workers.
(Mind you, shit’s getting more expensive for everyone everywhere, it’s not just the 1% feeling the inflationary pinch. But as the video points out, businesses and economists are aware that most people in lower four quintiles are as squeezed as they’re going to get; any new growth in sales/revenues are going to come from the top end, which makes them ripe for price increases on goods and services directed to them specifically.)
“Well, Scalzi, you’re bougie as fuck and yet you don’t seem to be living paycheck to paycheck,” I hear you say. And it’s true! There are reasons for that. One, I’m a writer, and my “paychecks” — advances, royalties, the occasional film/TV option — arrive so sporadically that if we tried to budget around their arrival we would be screwed. Early on, when I was still a freelancer (and, to be clear, with the help of Krissy having a more regular income) we built up a “buffer account” to make sure our paying of bills was not dependent on waiting for any one particular check of mine to arrive. That buffer account still exists, just a little more padded out.
Two, we’ve largely avoided the comparison trap. We live in rural Ohio, a location not exactly swimming with people whose income we directly index our own against, and not a place where shops cater to the higher end of incomes. I’m a writer, which means the professional community I am part of does not generally have the same incomes as, say, neurosurgeons or finance dudes. The highly sporadic nature of writer income also means I am aware the income is not reliable, and watching the careers of other writers through the years means I know one can’t just assume everything will be golden forever. Also, you know. Krissy and I both grew up with periods of our lives where we experienced, shall we say, a deficit of money. This has made each of us relatively conservative with what we do with our money, both individually and together. We’re not going to spend money to impress other people. We’re sure as hell not going to pile up debt to do it.
Three, we have other advantages and strategies. Where we live means we are able to acquire property at a discount to other areas (this means we’re unlikely to sell it later at ridiculously inflated prices, as we might if we lived in a city stuffed with high-income earners, but that’s fine). We don’t have any debt, which means we don’t have to pay out of our income to service it. I am financially literate and numerate (my very first book was on finance) and I don’t like to gamble, so our overall investment strategy is very much predicated on the idea that compound interest is our friend. Whenever I feel like trying to get rich quick, I buy a lottery ticket. It has roughly the same odds as me or any other non-professional without access to advanced financial market tools successfully day trading or timing the market.
Finally, for both Krissy and me, there’s a point where the use of money has diminishing returns, and we don’t tend to spend after that bend of the curve. Last year Krissy bought a Honda CR-V hybrid. Could we have afforded something more upscale? Sure. But inasmuch as the CR-V had everything Krissy wanted and needed in a car, and going upscale from there would have meant a lot more money for only marginal improvement in utility, was it worth it to her? No. Likewise, my 2011 MINI Countryman lacks some modern technological amenities that I would like in a car, but not so many or so much that I’m going to spend for a whole new car when my own car still runs perfectly well and, frankly, sticking my phone into an eye-level holder and using an adapter to plug the thing into my car speakers will handle 90% of what I want.
(This doesn’t mean I have never done silly things with money, as my frankly over-endowed guitar collection will indicate. But I don’t get out over my skis on stuff like that. I always check in with Krissy, who is our day-day-money manager, before I make any such purchases. If she tells me “no” then it doesn’t happen.)
Krissy and I have been smart, and also we have been lucky, which should not be discounted either. There are lots of points in our lives where we could have been one bad break away from real financial problems. Beyond this, I don’t pretend I haven’t been incredibly fortunate in my own career, sometimes for reasons that have very little to do with me directly. It also doesn’t hurt that my own skills were portable, which allowed us to live somewhere housing and living costs were not ridiculously high.
At the end of the day, however, we’ve avoided so many problems by simply not worrying about how we stacked up against other people financially, and by being able to be content when things are good enough. We didn’t need to keep up with the Joneses, or the Bezoses. We’re doing well enough to be happy. And that’s the thing.
— JS
daily_otter_feed
Via IUCN SSC Otter Specialist Group, which writes:
The Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) is making a careful comeback in parts of Germany including at Zoo Görlitz, set in the Lausitztal region of eastern Saxony.
Beyond caring for its resident otters, Zoo Görlitz plays an active role in conservation. Its wildlife rescue station rehabilitates injured and orphaned otters from the surrounding region, while the zoo supports national efforts to restore wetland habitats and reconnect river systems along the River Havel. These projects are vital for improving coexistence between people and otters across Germany.
scalziwhatever_feed
Unlike other members of my family, it has been literally years since I’ve baked anything, and even longer since I baked anything more complicated than a frozen pizza. But for this Thanksgiving, I will feeling a little ambitious, and I saw a recipe on the Dessert Person YouTube channel that looked good, so I thought I would give it a shot.
And what do you know, I pulled it off! Please see above my 7-layer holiday bars (pre-bar form), most prominently featuring cranberries and coconut. It turned out pretty well, and my family did not have to pretend to like it just to humor me. We have learned that I can follow directions, at least in the form of a recipe. This is good news. I’ll include the video I got the recipe off of so you can try it for yourself.
If you’re a person in the US, I hope your Thanksgiving was a good one if you chose to celebrate it, and for everyone else, I hope you had a pretty good Thursday.
— JS
scalziwhatever_feedNormally when I do a cover I sing on it, but it turns out it’s hard for me to sing Adele songs! At least without some considerable reconfiguration. So, I’ll keep working on that, but in the meantime the instrumental track I made for “Someone Like You” is nice and calm and soothing, and I thought y’all might like it. Enjoy.
— JS
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she's a smart* cookie
*not actually smart
scalziwhatever_feed
Well, this is lovely: When the Moon Hits Your Eye made it into the final round of this year’s Goodreads Choice Awards, in the category of science fiction, along with the other works you see here. This is a very nice peer group to have, I have to say.
If you feel like voting for Moon, or, indeed any other book in this finalist group, here is the link for you to do so. If you vote for Moon, hey, thanks! If you choose something else, that’s cool too.
I’m actually very happy with Moon making the final cut here. It’s an unusual sort of book, both structurally and in subject matter, and it wasn’t 100% clear to me that readers would take to it. Getting to this round is encouraging. Let’s see where it goes from here.
In any event: Go vote!
— JS
daily_otter_feed
Photos by keeper Molly via Oregon Zoo - they write:
Happy furthday Uni Sushi! She sea-lebrated with an ice cake full of her favorite treats (and some help from Lincoln)!
Uni Sushi joined our sea otter family in 2019, after being found as an orphan and rescued by Monterey Bay Aquarium. Her cake is full of frozen seafood like oysters, clams and shrimp. Otterly delicious!
scalziwhatever_feedMan, the things you see at local parks.
— JS
daily_otter_feed
Via Seattle Aquarium, which writes:
Ruby’s first weekend in the Emerald City was wickedly fun. ✨💚
Simply click your heels together three times to come see her (or plan your visit using our website—that might work a bit better.) 👠
ICYMI: Ruby joined us on Thursday from the Monterey Bay Aquarium after our teams decided the Seattle Aquarium would be a great fit for her care needs and preferences. We’re so happy she’s now calling Seattle her home! 🦦🤎
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