Pixel Scroll 12/8/16 Let It Scroll, Let It Scroll, Let It Scroll

(1) X-WING. Hollywood decorating the neighborhood for the premiere of Rogue One. Robert Kerr’s photo shows a prop now on display curbside near the theater.

photo-by-robert-kerr-resized_20161208_170203-01

Yahoo! Movies ran a series of photos taken while the fighter was being hauled into position.

Star Wars has definitely landed in Hollywood.

Preparations for Saturday’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story premiere have already seen some big road closures on Hollywood Blvd. — and on Tuesday, an X-Wing was spotted in the area where the stars of the film will gather in a few days.

Pictures quickly spread on social media, as apparently keeping an X-Wing secret is even trickier than keeping plans for the Death Star under wraps.

The red-carpet premiere itself also prompted major road closures in Hollywood, with the X-Wing now clogging streets up further. Road closures will last until 6 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 13.

(2) JAM ON MARS. Will Curiosity need Tommy John surgery? Seeker says “Curiosity’s Mars Drill Is Jammed”.

The Mars rover’s robotic arm-mounted drill appears to have malfunctioned and NASA has instructed the rover to hang tight while they find a solution.

Having your drill break down while you’re millions of miles from the nearest hardware store would be a bummer, but that is exactly what’s happened to NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity.

The rover, which is currently located at the lower slopes of the 3.4-mile-high Mount Sharp (officially known as Aeolis Mons), was supposed to carry out a drilling operation on a geologically interesting location on Dec. 1 when mission controllers got word that Curiosity was unable to complete its commands. Early indications show that the rover detected a fault with the “drill feed” mechanism that lowers the drill piece to the rocky sample and aborted the operation.

(3) AT HOME. The Chicago Reader visited a  popular sf author in her new (since 2012) neighborhood — “Mary Robinette Kowal makes puppets and writes in a 1913 building in the Ukranian Village”.

A fire is roaring in the fireplace and sprays of bright red winterberry adorn a vase on the deco mantel. The scent of hot cider wafts through the air. What Victorian-era storybook scene have I stepped into on this chilly, gray day in late November? It’s the home of Hugo Award–winning author, audiobook narrator, and professional puppeteer Mary Robinette Kowal, a spacious and stately 1913 apartment in Ukrainian Village that she shares with her winemaker husband, Robert, and their two cats.

 

(4) RETURN OF RUTLAND WEEKEND TV. The Guardian ran this feature in August — “Ex-Python Eric Idle and Brian Cox to take on The Entire Universe for the BBC”. But now the BBC broadcast date is nearing.

Written by Idle, the one-hour show will feature the return of Rutland Weekend Television, the haphazard station depicted in Idle’s sketch show of the same name during the 1970s.

Filmed in front of a live studio audience, The Entire Universe will feature an “explosion of comedy, music and dance” and will air on BBC2.

Davis plays The Big Bang and comedian Fielding is Einstein, while Game of Thrones actor Hannah Waddingham tackles time, and Robin Ince attempts to keep order.

Idle has written songs for the Christmas special, which will be choreographed by Arlene Phillips and combine “fascinating facts about the birth of the universe with larger-than-life comedy characters”.

Cox finds himself in a major musical at Rutland Weekend Television, after thinking he is booked to give a lecture.

The program will be broadcast in Britain on BBC2 on December 26.

(5) DO JAMES DAVIS NICOLL’S HOMEWORK. He’s lining up books to review in 2017, and feels there’s one writer demographic that requires more of his attention:

Don’t often tick the Other/Genderqueer/Non-Binary box in my site’s review gender fields. Can change that. What authors should I consider?

He emailed me the link asking, “Do the F770 people have suggestions?”

(6) HINES BENEFIT AUCTION #12. The twelfth of Jim C. Hines’ 24 Transgender Michigan Fundraiser auctions is for the four-book Twixt series from Dawn Metcalf.

Today’s auction is for a signed set of all four TWIXT books. But wait – there’s more! Metcalf also has a pile of “own voices” and books she’s offered to donate to a local shelter and/or children’s hospital in your name. The higher the bidding, the more books she’ll donate!

  • $25: Two books
  • $35: Three books
  • $45: Four books
  • $60: Five books
  • $75: Six books

About Book One: INDELIBLE:

Some things are permanent. Indelible. And they cannot be changed back.

Joy Malone learns this the night she sees a stranger with all-black eyes across a crowded room-right before the mystery boy tries to cut out her eye. Instead, the wound accidentally marks her as property of Indelible Ink, and this dangerous mistake thrusts Joy into an incomprehensible world-a world of monsters at the window, glowing girls on the doorstep and a life that will never be the same. Now Joy must pretend to be Ink’s chosen one-his helper, his love, his something for the foreseeable future … and failure to be convincing means a painful death for them both. Swept into a world of monsters, illusion, immortal honor and revenge, Joy discovers that sometimes, there are no mistakes.

Somewhere between reality and myth lies … THE TWIXT!

(7) TINGLE’S SATIRICAL NEWS SITE. Chuck Tingle harpoons the “alt-right” with his most feared weapon – laughter — at a new website, Buttbart. At the bottom of the home page are links for donating to the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood and the Billings Public Library Foundation

READER POLL: What is real?

We asked our readers if reality was a constantly shifting web of cosmic planes, blinking in and out of exhistence depending on our location in spacetime.

YES: %87

NO: %2

K’GULH-TUB KA: %11

(8) GLENN OBIT. Mercury astronaut and former U.S. Senator John Glenn (1921-2016) died December 8 reports SF News Site.

Glenn was the last surviving member of the Mercury 7 astronauts and the first American to orbit the Earth, flying on the third Mercury mission on February 20, 1962 aboard Friendship 7. Following his flight and status as a national hero, Glenn was grounded by President Kennedy and eventually became a Senator from Ohio and ran unsuccessfully for President. The oldest of the Mercury astronauts, he flew a second time in 1998 about the space shuttle Discovery, becoming the oldest man to fly in space.

CNN’s obituary recounted the highlights of his 1962 mission:

….Glenn recalled in a Life magazine article a strange phenomenon that occurred during the mission: “There, spread out as far as I could see were literally thousands of tiny luminous objects that glowed in the black sky like fireflies. I was riding slowly through them, and the sensation was like walking backwards through a pasture where someone had waved a wand and made all the fireflies stop right where they were and glow steadily.”

The flight also featured a glitch that contributed to Glenn’s reputation for being cool under fire.

Because of an indicator light showing that the Mercury capsule’s heat shield was partly detached, mission controllers decided to bring Glenn home early and told him not to jettison his aft retro rockets, which allowed him to maneuver the craft in space. Because the retropack was strapped to the heat shield, it was thought it would provide an extra measure of security.

It would later be learned that the heat shield wasn’t damaged, but the fiery re-entry was made more spectacular by the scorching retropack in Earth’s upper atmosphere. Glenn’s first words when he stepped aboard the deck of the USS Noa were, “Boy, that was a real fireball of a ride!”

…More than 20 years after their historic missions, the team was immortalized in the 1983 movie “The Right Stuff.” Glenn — portrayed by Ed Harris — didn’t care much for the film, saying, “I thought it was dramatic enough without Hollywood doing its number on it.”

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRLS

  • Born December 8, 1953 – Kim Basinger, Batman’s Vicki Vale.
  • Born December 8, 1964 – Teri Hatcher, Lois and Clark’s Lois Lane.

(10) TA-POCKETA-POCKETA

  • Born December 8, 1894 – James Thurber

(11) A GRAIL OF A TALE. A dinosaur tail was discovered trapped in amber in Myanmar.

The tail of a 99-million-year-old dinosaur has been found entombed in amber, an unprecedented discovery that has blown away scientists.

Xing Lida, a Chinese paleontologist found the specimen, the size of a dried apricot, at an amber market in northern Myanmar near the Chinese border.

The remarkable piece was destined to end up as a curiosity or piece of jewelry, with Burmese traders believing a plant fragment was trapped inside.

“I realized that the content was a vertebrate, probably theropod, rather than any plant,” Xing told CNN.

“I was not sure that (the trader) really understood how important this specimen was, but he did not raise the price.”

(12) POP CULTURE COINCIDENCE. Reuters reports a “Space oddity as Dr David Bowie treats ‘starman’ Buzz Aldrin in New Zealand hospital”.

In what can only be described as a space oddity, former astronaut Buzz Aldrin is being cared for in a New Zealand hospital by Dr David Bowie after being evacuated from the South Pole.

In a truly remarkable coincidence, Aldrin’s doctor shares the name of the late British singer whose greatest hits included songs such as “Starman” and others about space travel that could easily have been penned for the great American astronaut.

(13) FANTASTIC FICTION AT KGB. Reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Livia Llewellyn and Sarah Pinsker on December 21 on Wednesday, December 21 at the KGB Bar in New York. Event starts at 7 p.m. Details at the linked post.

Livia Llewellyn is a writer of dark fantasy, horror, and erotica, whose short fiction has appeared in over forty anthologies and magazines and has been reprinted in multiple best-of anthologies, including The Best Horror of the Year series, Years Best Weird Fiction, and The Mammoth Book of Best Erotica. Her first collection, Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors received two Shirley Jackson Award nominations, for Best Collection, and for Best Novelette (for “Omphalos”). Her story “Furnace” received a 2013 Shirley Jackson Award nomination for Best Short Story. Her second collection, Furnace was published this year.

Sarah Pinsker is the author of the Nebula Award winning novelette “Our Lady of the Open Road” and the Sturgeon Award winning “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind.” Her fiction has appeared in magazines including Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Uncanny, among others, and numerous anthologies and year’s bests. She is also a singer/songwriter with three albums on various independent labels and a fourth forthcoming. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland with her wife, dog, and a yard full of sentient vines.

(14) THE WORK THAT STORIES DO. Foz Meadows’ well-written piece “Unempathic Bipeds of Failure: The Relationship Between Stories and Politics” found a home at Black Gate:

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need stories to act as emotional dry-runs for caring about different types of people, because our empathy would already natively extend to everyone. But we don’t live in that world; because if we did, somewhat paradoxically, we’d have less urgent need of its empathy, as its unequivocal presence would make it much harder for us to discriminate in the first place.

Which is precisely why stories matter; why they’ve always mattered, and will continue to matter for as long as our species exists. Stories can teach us the empathy we otherwise lack, or whose development is railroaded by context, and yeah, it’s frustrating to think that another person can’t just look at you, accept what you are, and think, human, different to me in some respects but fundamentally as whole and as worthy of love, protection and basic rights as I am, but you’ve got to understand: we’re a bunch of bipedal mammals with delusions of morality, a concept we invented and which we perpetuate through culture and manners, faith and history and memory – which is to say, through stories, which change as we change (though we don’t always like to admit that part), and in that context, the value of the impossible – of SFF as a genre – is that it gives us those things in imaginary settings, takes us far enough out of the present that we can view them at a more objective remove than real life ever allows, and so get a better handle on them than our immediate biases might otherwise permit…

And so I think about the UKIP supporter who empathized with a fictional refugee [in Dragon Age 2] but voted to dehumanize real ones; about the millions of people who grew up on stories about the evils of Nazism, but now turn a blind eye to swastikas being graffitied in the wake of Trump’s election; of Puppies both Sad and Rabid who contend that the presence of politics in genre is a leftist conspiracy while blatantly pushing what even they call a political agenda; about fake news creators and the Ministry of Truth; about every f***ing dystopian novel whose evocation by name feels simultaneously on the nose and frighteningly apropos right now, because we shouldn’t have to cite The Handmaid’s Tale to explain why Mike Pence and Steve Bannon (to say nothing of Trump’s infamous comments) are collectively terrifying, and yet see above re: unempathic bipeds of failure, forever and always; and yet

(15) ORANGE CONE BY THE ROADSIDE. The discussion of Meadows’ main points, however, was drowned out by the reaction to several lines in her closing:

For the past few years, the Sad and Rabid Puppies – guided by an actual neo-Nazi – have campaigned against what they perceive as the recent politicization of SFF as a genre, as though it’s humanly possible to write a story involving people that doesn’t have a political dimension; as though “political narrative” means “I disagreed with the premise or content, which makes it Wrong” and not “a narrative which contains and was written by people.”

Vox Day reacted in a post titled “Please to remove the libel”:

I have written to John O’Neill, my former editor at Black Gate, asking him to remove this false, malicious, and materially damaging libel directed at me, and by extension, the Sad and Rabid Puppies. As I was a long-time contributor to Black Gate, Mr. O’Neill knows perfectly well that I am neither a neo-Nazi nor a National Socialist, I have never been a neo-Nazi or a National Socialist, I do not belong to, or subscribe to the tenets of, the German National Socialist Workers Party or any subsequent facsimile, and I do not appreciate the libelous attempts of Ms Meadows, to publicly and falsely assert that I am “an actual neo-Nazi”.

Vox Popoli commenters spent the day conspicuously scavenging the web for Meadows’ personal and financial details and lodging their finds as comments on Day’s post. Meadows Twitter stream also has been haunted by people unsuccessfuly trying to intimidate the author by sounding as if there could be ominous consequences.

Day made several updates to his post, one saying a resolution was in process.

UPDATE: As I expected, John was very reasonable about it and the matter is being resolved. Thanks for your support, everyone.

But in the hours since, Meadows’ text has remained unchanged nor has O’Neill added any comment.

(16) INVASION. In a New York Times article “California Today: Booksellers See a Threat in New Law”, the A.C.L.U. has an opinion.

A new law going into effect next month mandates that anyone selling a signed book for more than $5 must vouch for the autograph’s authenticity. That includes, among other things, identifying the previous owner.

“If you visit my bookstore to trade in that copy of ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ you picked up at a book signing, I’ll need to take down your name and address and then provide it to whoever happens to buy the book from me,” said Scott Brown, who runs Eureka Books in Eureka.

The law was designed to protect consumers from the booming trade in fake collectibles. But it is written so loosely that some worry it might drag booksellers down.

“I can understand why booksellers are concerned,” said Michael Risher, a lawyer with the A.C.L.U. of Northern California. “The law is an invasion into privacy and should be amended.”

The legislation began with an effort by State Representative Ling Ling Chang to broaden a 1992 law about sports memorabilia. She joined forces with Mark Hamill, the “Star Wars” actor who kept seeing signed posters that were fake. Booksellers say they didn’t realize they were vulnerable until after Gov. Jerry Brown signed the measure in September.

Ms. Chang, who was unavailable for comment, has published on her Facebook page a statement that both “the letter and spirit of the law” do not apply to booksellers. Her reasoning is that the law is aimed at “dealers,” who are mostly in the business of selling signed collectibles. Since booksellers sell all kinds of books, many of them unsigned, Ms. Chang argues that leaves them off the hook.

But some booksellers worry that is not true….

(17) RATS! New Zealand’s 2017 national sf convention has opened a writing competition.

In our short story competition, you have the opportunity to channel your inner rodent, or world build a mischief of rats… Write us a short story which, in honour of our Ghost of Honour, Orville, includes a reference to a rat.

The competition is held in association with SpecFicNZ, who are generously contributing prizes, and judged by Guest of Honour Seanan McGuire. Get scratching!

We’re also running a drabble competition – 100 words of fiction based around a word you invented. If you’re new to writing, this could be a great place to start.

Find out more at www.lexicon.cons.nz/comps.php. Other competitions will be announced shortly; artists, filkers, and cosplayers, stay tuned.

(18) DEAL US IN. Tor.com’s Natalie Zutter has good news for Cards Against Humanity fans: “Patrick Rothfuss and Cards Against Humanity Release Special Sci-Fi Pack”.

For $5, this pack of 30 cards “poking fun at the Sci-Fi genre” (in Rothfuss’ words) will let you throw down the geekiest cards in your next game of CAH. All proceeds from the first two weeks of sales will go to Worldbuilders, Rothfuss’ nonprofit. What’s more, Rothfuss says, they’ll double that donation before passing it along to Heifer International, the organization that Worldbuilders supports.

Here’s everyone who contributed to the cards!

  • Delilah S. Dawson
  • Elizabeth Bear
  • Jim C. Hines
  • Myke Cole
  • Martha Wells
  • Catherynne M. Valente
  • Patrick Rothfuss

[Thanks to JJ, Xtifr, Bonnie McDaniel, Cat Eldridge, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Redheadedfemme. (Yes, Bonnie, I held over a few you suggested last year.)]

115 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/8/16 Let It Scroll, Let It Scroll, Let It Scroll

  1. @JJ

    Kevin Hearne’s author’s bookstore is here. Use SHENANIGANS coupon code to get 20% off your order.

  2. airboy on December 8, 2016 at 9:31 pm said:
    @14 – The left’s reaction to a free and fair election has been unbelievable.

    Suggestion: Write down the 5 doomsday things that you think will happen in the USA or the UK over between now and December 31, 2017. Put the paper in a safe place. Write a note on your new calendar to look at your predictions at the end of next year.

    Then shake your head next year about how unshackled from reality you became.

    It won’t take a year, just weeks and months to see the impact of the following:

    1) The dismantling of the EPA under a Cabinet Secretary who is currently suing the EPA to roll back regulations to keep our water safe from extraction industry runoff. I predict that air and water quality will be measurably worse one year from now and Beijing-like by the end of the Trump term.
    2) Another financial crash will occur since the Treasury post will be filled by a Goldman-Sachs alum, as will much of the Economic Policy team. The keys to the Treasury are literally being handed to the billionaire scum who caused the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and skipped out on any accountability.
    3) And while we’re at it, Paul Ryan and the rest of the Ayn Rand acolytes will dismantle Social Security and Medicare, turning those over to the greedy hands of Wall Street (Social Security) and the Health Insurance Industry (Health Care). Except because of (2), no one will have any money and there will be death and starvation.
    4) The Christianists will force an extremist Judge onto the SCOTUS, which will put many protections for ordinary people at risk. Starting with the reproductive health of women. Ohio passed a law outlawing abortion after six weeks this past week, with NO EXCEPTIONS for rape and incest. They are hoping the SCOTUS will accept it. Note that it is often hard to tell you are pregnant at six weeks, and many many miscarriages occur before then. Is it a miscarriage or an illegal abortion? See Mike Pence.
    5) And the cherry on the shit sundae is the fact that the Russians meddled in our election to get their preferred candidate elected, that the GOP leadership ignored a briefing on this topic in September and threatened Obama with accusations of partisanship if he made it public, and Trump’s candidate this week for Secretary of State received an award from the hands of Vladimir Putin himself. So I am looking for the Russians to have way more influence in our domestic and foreign policy than I am really comfortable with.

  3. @Kurt Busiek: I’m not saying that if you’re a white male, there’s no cause to oppose the Trump regime- just that the direct campaign of social policies and laws won’t be aimed directly at oppressing you. It’s perfectly possible to be a white male opposed to the repeal of Roe vs Wade or a nationwide stop and frisk policy- but that policy isn’t going to be aimed at white males.

    But, point taken on the economic war against the poor, which will affect white men as well- though even there the effects will fall disproportionately on vulnerable populations, such as PoC, women, and LGBTQ people.

  4. rea on December 9, 2016 at 6:03 am said:

    “Dealer” means a person who is principally in the business of selling or offering for sale collectibles in or from this state, exclusively or nonexclusively, or a person who by his or her occupation holds himself or herself out as having knowledge or skill peculiar to collectibles, or to whom that knowledge or skill may be attributed by his or her employment of an agent or other intermediary that by his or her occupation holds himself or herself out as having that knowledge or skill. “Dealer” includes an auctioneer who sells collectibles at a public auction, and also includes persons who are consignors or representatives or agents of auctioneers. “Dealer” includes a person engaged in a mail order, telephone order, online, or cable television business for the sale of collectibles.

    I think it’s reasonable for bookdealers to think they may be accused of being expected to have professional knowledge of collectibles (books in particular). Therefore, I think it’s reasonable for bookdealers to be scared of the new law, as it’s actually worded.

    Having the author of the law come out and say, “well, gosh of course we didn’t mean that” helps, but only once you get a judge to hear those words. Which means going into court. Which can be incredibly expensive, even if your case is a slam dunk! That’s why big companies bring lawsuits they know they can’t win–the potential expense often causes the other side to fold before it gets that far. For a small bookdealer, spending many thousands of dollars to prove in court what should be obvious, may be a quick trip to bankruptcyville.

  5. Another financial crash will occur since the Treasury post will be filled by a Goldman-Sachs alum, as will much of the Economic Policy team. The keys to the Treasury are literally being handed to the billionaire scum who caused the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and skipped out on any accountability.

    You know, don’t you, that the current Secretary of the Treasury is Jack Lew, a former COO of Citigroup division “that profited off the housing collapse and financial crisis” and invested “in a hedge fund that bet on the housing market to collapse”?

  6. Bill: Considering that Trump’s opponent was that famous guest speaker at Goldman Sachs, the public was never going to escape this particular trap.

    I have no doubt it would have avoided some others, though.

  7. It’s perfectly possible to be a white male opposed to the repeal of Roe vs Wade or a nationwide stop and frisk policy- but that policy isn’t going to be aimed at white males.

    I hope that none of us have definitions of “fine” that are limited to what’s aimed directly at us.

  8. @Xtifr: I think it’s reasonable for bookdealers to think they may be accused of being expected to have professional knowledge of collectibles (books in particular). I think that depends a lot on how much the dealer has to do with old/rare (not just used) books. The last I saw, Marty Massoglia was pricing his books as old rather than used; since he’s based in CA, he may be stuck. But used books and new books are completely different markets from old/rare; some dealers overlap, many don’t. Do you really think the average Annie’s Books (which at least used to have a 2:1 in-genre trade policy) can be claimed as knowing collectibles? ISTM that dealers need to know more about who will attempt to apply this law; in the original discussion I was told it wasn’t DA’s option (which has bogusly ruined some comic dealers in red states); if it’s a civil case, what is the mechanism? Does it lend itself to (e.g.) class-action trolls (which are not as common as some Republicans would have you believe, but aren’t nonexistent)?

  9. Any used book dealer who sells an autographed book at a premium price to a non-autographed copy would be vulnerable. The law is a bad law, and the fact that the author of the bill has said “I didn’t mean it to be a bad law” doesn’t change that fact.
    if it’s a civil case, what is the mechanism??
    The mechanism is a customer who wants to sue, and comes up with the filing fee for a lawsuit.

  10. The left’s reaction to a free and fair election has been unbelievable.

    Given the revelations concerning Russian efforts to subvert the process, calling the elections “free and fair” seems to be quite a stretch.

    But let’s see, five things that are likely to be disastrous as a result of a Trump administration:

    1. Sessions, the prospective Attorney General, is openly hostile to the Voting Rights Act, not to mention having been too racist for a Republican controlled Senate in the 1980s to confirm him to the federal judiciary. I expect that voting rights protections to be rolled back considerably over the next few years.

    2. Congress has already proposed cutting Social Security benefits by a considerable amount. Unless Trump vetoes this, expect to see many senior citizens scrimping to get by in the near future.

    3. The proposed head of HHS is not only hostile to the ACA, he is hostile to Medicare. He technically doesn’t want to “destroy” it, just privatize it by tossing seniors out of the system and giving them vouchers to buy private insurance. Never mind that Medicare was created because many private insurers wouldn’t insure seniors to begin with. I expect this will be a substantial problem if implemented.

    4. Trump has proposed an EPA head who is openly hostile to the very idea of environmental regulation. I expect that the air and water quality standards will be ignored in the near future. I hope you like contaminated drinking water.

    5. Trump has proposed a Secretary of Labor who has presided over a restaurant chain that has been repeatedly investigated for, and found guilty of, stealing from its own employees. He opposes the very existence of the minimum wage and the notion of overtime pay. Expect worker rights to get a short shrift in the next few years.

    Overall, Trump has been surrounding himself with economic advisors who espouse the same ideology that has been implemented in Kansas over the last couple of years. Compared to the rest of the U.S., the Kansas economy has been a disaster – so much so that Governor Brownback stopped the state from issuing economic reports in an effort to hide this fact. Expect a severe downturn in the U.S. economy if similar proposals are passed under the Trump administration. Expect an even greater downturn resulting from Trump’s desire to “renegotiate” various trade deals, most of which he has shown almost no understanding of.

    These are disastrous consequences that are shaping into focus right now. I don’t even have to get into issues related to the fact that his putative secretary of Education hates public education and has done her best to wreck it in Michigan, or that every person he has tabbed as a potential nominee has been virulently homophobic, or that he still thinks registering Muslims is a good idea and cites the Japanese internment camps as a good precedent for what he has in mind.

  11. @Bonnie McDaniel: Groovy!

    @JJ: Oh, carp, sorry I forgot to link it. ::BLUSH:: You found what you needed, but anyone else, FYI Sullivan’s post is here and it helpfully lists all the books/prices/etc. in one convenient place. Sorry again for being a flake. I blame my excitement at File 770 being back up!

  12. @Msb: I’ve given up being embarrassed that the most eye-opening* work for me was the original Marvel 2099 series. I read it when I was a teenager (or maybe younger). Some books are better than others. I particularly like Spider-Man 2099 and Doom 2099 and those are what I mostly read.

    Any case, I think they’re hard to get, the ending is very unsatisfactory, but the idea of a future where corporations have taken the place of governments, a delight in diversity, the importance of the environment, and much more has stuck with me.

    *or maybe work that coalesced a lot of my vague beliefs and concerns

  13. 1. Sessions, the prospective Attorney General, is openly hostile to the Voting Rights Act

    Also openly extremely hostile to marijuana legalization, along with other recent legal changes. I’d describe him as stuck in the 50s.

    So many of these are people who shouldn’t even be running businesses, let alone a country.

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