What you should be reading

So I'm told I should be writing an entry about the weekend I just had in Staffordshire in an Elizabethan gatehouse where Mary Queen of Scots was briefly prisoner, and this is true; but that needs to wait for the photographs (does anyone out there actually remember having to wait for photographs?), and in the meantime, this: Aliette de Bodard posts about the dominance of US tropes and culture and you really ought to read this. Because it's fabulous, and true. And read the comments, too.