. . . Or you know, X, but no one calls it that. I hate Elon Musk and have big ethical concerns over the changes to X’s privacy policy today, which might train machine learning systems on user content. More importantly, I’m horrified by the ableism, animal abuse, and the risks of human Neuralink trials. Years ago, I compared Neuralink to the chips in the Guardians’ brains in N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. Musk, Bezos, and Trump have an undue influence on world politics.
Anyway, I deactivated my Twitter account, @glapointewriter. I might reactivate rarely to ensure my username isn’t reassigned. I have the same username at my Instagram, which is usually private to throw off bots and scammers. My other accounts are listed here. I frequently publish at Book Riot and occasionally blog on Medium. I’ll continue to update WordPress with news, publications, and ideas.
I’ll miss a lot of people from Twitter, but I’ve found many of you on IG. Thank you to everyone who was welcoming and read my work! I learned a lot from all of you!
I’m currently watching Reservation Dogs. I really like it. Our Flag Means Death comes back next week! And Doctor Who in November!
2 Recent BR Articles
CN: examples of grooming, racism, sexual assault, anti-trans bigotry, and antisemitism
Other examples I decided not to include in my final draft:
Colleen McCullough, author of The Thorn Birds, often described the popular miniseries of the book as “instant vomit!” I didn’t mention her, partly because she used racist slurs against Aboriginal Australian people. I didn’t want to link to any interviews in which she made racist comments.
In 2009, Audrey Niffenegger said she hadn’t watched the movie of her bestselling novel The Time Traveler’s Wife; nor did she want to. In 2022, a TV series adaptation of the novel aired on HBO. Steven Moffat wrote and developed the series. He’d previously cited the novel as an influence on his episodes when he was a writer and showrunner on Doctor Who, especially the Tenth Doctor episode “The Girl in the Fireplace” and the Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond, and River Song’s story arcs.
In 2021 on BR, I called both The Thorn Birds and The Time Traveler’s Wife examples of so-called “romances” that depicted adults grooming children. I expanded on The Thorn Birds on my Medium blog.
Some of my research surprised me. I’ve always incorrectly assumed that Robert C. O’Brien disliked The Secret of NIMH, the movie based on his novel Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. However, I couldn’t find any indication O’Brien was unhappy with the movie. The film changed the title and the protagonist’s name, from Frisby to Brisby, but this was to prevent possible copyright disputes with the maker of Frisbee over licensing toys or games.
Both of my September BR articles mention The Color Purple by Alice Walker. In my latest article, I also mentioned that Walker repeatedly endorsed antisemitic and anti-trans conspiracy theories.
I didn’t expect to find so much triggering material when researching this topic. When explaining that Gore Vidal hated the movie adaptation of Myra Breckinridge, some articles include a still from the rape scene in the movie. I wouldn’t have been comfortable linking to those articles, either here or on BR.
In an earlier blog post, I said Fagin from Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist is an example of an antisemitic caricature. I wrote the following details in my private journals but wanted to add them here too. There’s the description of his physical features in the novel and his greedy, secretive, and dishonest personality. The musical makes this even worse. Specifically, the song “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two,” where Fagin teaches the boys how to steal, has a klezmer beat.
Grace Lapointe 