#5SmartReads - June 2, 2022

Hitha on asexuality & romance, air travel hell, and toxic fandom

Memorial Day airline hell was a painful preview of summer (Axios)

If you have summer vacation plans that involve air travel…prepare accordingly.

If you can, splurge for CLEAR on top of TSA PreCheck. A credit card with lounge access is well worth it for us (we have the American Express Platinum and fly Delta). And wear comfortable shoes and pack a portable charger because you will be spending a lot of time in lines.

And keep calm and ALWAYS carry on - my book and the Superhuman meditation app will help with that.

Between staffing shortages and inclement weather, airports are understaffed and flights are being cancelled. Better to be prepared and expect it than find yourself blindsided by it.

Safe travels, my friend.

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Asexual Romance Readers Are Finally Getting Their Happily Ever Afters (Bustle)

“Even today, asexuality remains misunderstood. Ace people constantly have to fight the myth that they aren’t capable of any form of love or don’t believe in love; they’re infantilized or belittled, as if being asexual means not understanding how sex works, or always abstaining altogether. Add to that the equal misunderstanding around aromanticism, which describes people who feel little to no romantic attraction, and, in the words of teen breakup specialist Olivia Rodrigo, it’s brutal out here.”

My friend Lily never fails to inspire and teach me about things I never previously thought about (she’s the one to blame for my new F1 obsession), and I truly didn’t know much about asexuality nor its representation in publishing - and in romance, specifically.

And in true Lily form, I devoured every single word of this article and my perspective has been expanded. And I have a bunch of new books on my TBR stack.

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‘This is our time’: How women are taking over the labor movement (The 19th*)

Women have always been the leaders in the labor movement, albeit rarely credited or recognized for their incredible leadership. And that remains the same today, as essential workers gather to advocate for a safe workplace where they are treated with dignity.

And because our history lessons in school are Whitewashed and centered on the White men’s stories and perspectives, here’s the history lesson on the labor movement you never learned but should be aware of.

This is a long read, so grab your favorite beverage and curl into a comfy chair before you dig into this one. And if you want to learn more about women leading the labor movement, I LOVED The Great Stewardess Rebellion, which details women leading the labor movement in aviation back in the 60s and 70s.

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Our Fascination With Canon Is Killing the Way We Value Stories (Gizmodo)

I’m a very proud geek. I love Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and my uncle is the reason I’m a Babylon 5 fan (anyone else out there?).

I personally am thrilled with the new Trek series - Disco, Picard, and now Strange New Worlds. I’m among the few who really enjoyed Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi as much as I loved JJ Abrams’ The Force Awakens. And I’m OBSESSED with what I’ve seen from Obi-Wan so far, both with Moses Ingram as Reva (she’s brilliant) and the early episodes’ focus on Leia.

But go on Twitter, and you’ll see a lot of people decrying these works that I love so much with the cry “but it’s not canon!”

Guess who these people are, and what canon means to them.

“But this craving for it [canon] above all else is a toxic attitude, not just to the way we talk about pieces of media from a critical perspective, but in fan circles as well. The hunger for facts above all else leads to things like “filler episode” becoming a derogatory term for stories that don’t advance the larger ongoing plot of a narrative or don’t include some shocking new revelation that someone can add to a list. It predicates the gatekeeping act of being a fan that is built on how much you know about a thing over whether you actually enjoy that thing or not.”

Here’s to enjoying things instead of being canon police - and if something isn’t your cup of tea, stop watching or reading it and consume something you enjoy.

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Bottling the sun (CNN)

Come for what sounds like the beginning of a Dan Brown novel. Stay for the crash course in fusion energy, the history and geopolitics of fusion energy development, and the recent advancements in fusion research - and what it could mean for humanity and this planet.

This is such a fascinating - and hopeful - article about the future of energy, though it shows just how much work we have let to do before living in a fusion energy reality. But I’m hopeful this will be a transition we see in our lifetime, and I hope it’s a tipping point for a better world overall.