Pixel Scroll 10/30/18 Steamy Pixels – Coming From The Scrolling Heat

(1) HERE’S ONE ROLE YOU CAN’T PLAY AT RPG.NET. The RPG.net Forum Administrator has declared a “New Ban: Do Not Post In Support of Trump or his Administration”.

The following policy announcement is the result of over a year of serious debate by the moderation team. The decision is as close to unanimous as we ever get. It will not be the subject of further debate. We have fully considered the downsides and ultimately decided we have to stay true to our values. We will not pretend that evil isn’t evil, or that it becomes a legitimate difference of political opinion if you put a suit and tie on it.

We are banning support of Donald Trump or his administration on the RPGnet forums. This is because his public comments, policies, and the makeup of his administration are so wholly incompatible with our values that formal political neutrality is not tenable. We can be welcoming to (for example) persons of every ethnicity who want to talk about games, or we can allow support for open white supremacy. Not both. Below will be an outline of the policy and a very incomplete set of citations.

We have a community here that we’ve built carefully over time, and support for elected hate groups aren’t welcome here. We can’t save the world, but we can protect and care for the small patch that is this board.

Policy outline:

1. We are banning support of the administration of President Trump. You can still post on RPG.net even if you do in fact support the administration — you just can’t talk about it here.
2. We are absolutely not endorsing the Democrats nor are we banning all Republicans.
3. We are certainly not banning conservative politics, or anything on the spectrum of reasonable political viewpoints. We assert that hate groups and intolerance are categorically different from other types of political positions, and that confusing the two legitimizes bigotry and hatred.
4. We are not going to have a purge — we will not be banning people for past support. Though if your profile picture is yourself in a MAGA hat, this might be a good time to change it.
5. We will not permit witch-hunts, progressive loyalty-testing, or attempting to bait another into admitting support for President Trump in order to get them banned. The mod staff will deal harshly with attempts to weaponize this policy.
6. It is not open season on conservatives, and revenge fantasies against Trump and Trump supporters are still against the rules.

There is a lot of reaction on Twitter. My favorite is:

Bounding Into Comics’ John F. Trent says it’s hypocrisy: “Popular Forum RPG.Net Bans Posts Supporting President Trump”.

…They also try to state they won’t be targeting Republicans and conservatives, but have openly banned support for the duly elected Republican administration. That sure sounds like targeting of conservatives and Republicans. They actively banned support for them!

Mashable’s Adam Rosenberg favors the decision.

I don’t personally frequent many online forums like this. But in the almost two years since Trump’s inauguration, I can’t recall seeing any other website introduce a policy that takes such a specific, strong stance Trump-related discussion.

It’s a welcome breath of fresh air, frankly. As the current administration finds new lows to sink to virtually every day — just a few days ago, Trump blamed the horrific synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh on that congregation’s lack of a security presence — people and interests should be taking a stand like this.

(2) SPACE FORCE DRESS REHEARSAL. Harrison Smith tells Washington Post readers how “We crashed a science-fiction writers convention to ask about Trump’s ‘Space Force’”.

So on a Saturday in late September, I dropped in on some 400 mostly gray-haired sci-fi enthusiasts gathered inside the Hilton hotel in Rockville for Capclave, the annual convention of the Washington Science Fiction Association, to ask them what they thought of the president’s plans. The convention, one of the oldest of its kind in the country, is a staid contrast to Comic-Con, where attendees are more likely to dress in costume. Capclave tends to draw more bookish, serious-minded writers and fans. The convention’s motto: “Where reading is not extinct.”

“Science fiction is a rehearsal literature, not a predictive literature. We take ideas and rehearse what they might be like in the future,” said Nancy Kress of Seattle, who has won a Hugo Award, one of science fiction’s top honors. Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey” with director Stanley Kubrick, dreamed up communications satellites in a 1945 magazine article. “Star Trek” envisioned the flip phone. “We don’t know what the future holds any more than anybody else,” Kress told me. “We can, however, see that certain things are coming.”

… John G. Hemry, a retired lieutenant commander in the Navy who was wearing a Hawaiian-style “Incredibles” shirt, envisions the Space Force evolving into an interstellar armada that functions not unlike a 19th-century navy: long days of cramped, lonely travel in a hostile medium (space, the new water) followed by sudden close-quarters engagements.

In Hemry’s “Lost Fleet” series (he writes under the name Jack Campbell), the fighting “ships” are trailed by “fast fleet auxiliaries,” mobile factories making weapons and fuel cells that enable them to travel one- or two-tenths the speed of light….


(3) HOW MANY BITS IN A BITE? From The Irish Times: “Central Bank commemorates ‘Dracula’ with €15 collector coin”.

Just in time for Halloween, the Central Bank has launched a commemorative €15 Bram Stoker Dracula collector coin.

The silver proof coin commemorates the life of the Dublin-born author and his famous novel Dracula, which was published in 1897 and became world-renowned after an American film adaptation starring Bela Lugosi opened in 1931.

(4) NEITHER DEAD OR ALIVE. Olga Polomoshnova explores “Wraiths the writhen” at Middle-Earth Reflections.

…Two of these meanings can be applied to the Nazgûl. To begin with, Sauron’s most terrible servants can be identified with ghosts. We know that they were formerly great kings and lords of Men, but ensnared by Sauron and the Nine Rings of Power, they fell under the dominion of their own Rings and Sauron’s One Ring. Thus, through using their Nine and becoming thralls to the One, once mighty Men faded into ghostlike figures invisible in the Seen world, but visible in the realm of the Unseen….

(5) BABY BOOMER. On Facebook, Joe Haldeman remembers why a little chemistry knowledge is a dangerous thing.

An odd footnote to the home chemistry riff . . . I was a school patrol boy in grade school, I guess sixth grade, and got along pretty well with the old lady — maybe thirty — who supervised us. Her own kid got in trouble with his (HUGE — forty-dollar!) chemistry set, making pyrotechnics, and to punish him, she gave the set away to me. She had removed the chemicals that she knew were dangerous, but MWAH HA HA she didn’t know as much chemistry as little old me!

Of course if you know what you’re doing, you can make pretty good explosives out of chemicals available at the hardware store….

(6) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • October 30, 1959The Wasp Woman hit theatres.
  • October 30, 1938 — The broadcast of Orson Welles’ Mercury Theare radio drama, “War of the Worlds,” caused a national panic.

(7) MARS ATTACKS…NEW JERSEY. ABC News celebrates the anniversary of the legendary broadcast: “It’s been 80 years since Orson Welles’ ‘War of the Worlds’ radio broadcast terrified the nation”.

The year is 1938. The cost of a gallon of gas is 10 cents. Franklin D. Roosevelt is president. The primary medium of entertainment is the radio, and it caused panic in the eastern United States after listeners mistook a fictional broadcast called “War of the Worlds” as an actual news report.

On Oct. 30, 1938, future actor and filmmaker Orson Welles narrated the show’s prologue for an audience believed to be in the millions. “War of the Worlds” was the Halloween episode for the radio drama series “The Mercury Theatre on the Air.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin,” the broadcast began. “Martians have landed in New Jersey!”

 

(8) NOTH BY NORTHWEST. CinemaBlend applauds “The Wild Way Doctor Who Used Law And Order Vet Chris Noth”.

Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Doctor Who episode “Arachnids In The UK.” Read at your own risk!

Doctor Who has had plenty of notable guest stars names guest star in the past, and its writers are often aces at creating the perfect roles for the temporary talent. “Arachnids In The UK” carried on that tradition by utilizing former Law & Order and Sex And The City star Chris Noth in some wild ways.

(9) TOP BOOKS OF THE FIFTIES. Bradbury, Tolkien, and Ayn Rand make Emily Temple’s list — “A Century of Reading: The 10 Books That Defined the 1950s” at Literary Hub.

(10) GREATEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILMS. A few genre items on BBC’s list of “The 100 greatest foreign-language films”. Chip Hitchcock says, “I count 5-7 depending on where the lines are drawn (is Crouching Tiger standard? is Pan’s Labyrinth all hallucination?), but there could be more as I don’t recognize all of the titles.”

…And as the poll exists to salute the extraordinary diversity and richness of films from all around the world, we wanted to ensure that its voters were from all around the world, too. The 209 critics who took part are from 43 different countries and speak a total of 41 languages – a range that sets our poll apart from any other.

The result: 100 films from 67 different directors, from 24 countries, and in 19 languages. French can claim to be the international language of acclaimed cinema: 27 of the highest-rated films were in French, followed by 12 in Mandarin, and 11 each in Italian and Japanese. At the other end of the scale, several languages were represented by just one film, such as Belarusian (Come and See), Romanian (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), and Wolof (Touki Bouki)….

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and JJ. With an assist on the first by OGH.]

  • October 30, 1919 – Walt Willis, Fanwriter. He was the center of Irish Fandom. With Bob Shaw he wrote The Enchanted Duplicator (1954). He won a 1958 Hugo Award as Outstanding Actifan. Willis was MagiCon’s Fan Guest of Honor in 1992. His fanzine Slant was published on letterpress; its successor Hyphen on mimeograph. He wrote a column, “The Harp That Once or Twice,” for Lee Hoffman’s Quandry. The “WAW with the Crew in ’52” fund brought him from Belfast for the TASFiC (Tenth Anniversary Science Fiction Convention, “Chicon II”), which showed the way for the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund. He published two trip reports, “Willis Discovers America” before he left, and “The Harp Stateside” after he returned. His fanwriting was collected in The Willis Papers (Ted Johnstone & George Fields eds. 1961), the climactic 600-page 28th issue of Richard Bergeron’s Warhoon (1980), and Fanorama (Robert Lichtman ed. 1998). In 1969 he published a mundane book, The Improbable Irish, under the name Walter Bryan.
  • Born October 30, 1923 – William Campbell, Actor who appeared in two Star Trek episodes, as the god-child in “The Squire of Gothos” and as Koloth in “The Trouble With Tribbles”, a role which he reprised in an episode of Deep Space Nine. He appeared in several horror films including Blood Bath, Night of Evil, and Dementia 13. He started a fan convention which ran for several years, Fantasticon, which celebrated the achievements of production staffers in genre films and TV shows and raised funds for the Motion Picture & Television Fund, a charitable organization which provides assistance and care to those in the motion picture industry with limited or no resources, when struck with infirmity and/or in retirement age.
  • Born October 30, 1947 – Tim Kirk, 71, Artist, Illustrator, and Fan. As a student, he was a prolific contributor of artwork to fanzines, and he won the Best Fan Artist Hugo Award five times, and was a finalist three times, between 1969 and 1977. He provided art for dozens of fanzines, magazines, and books, and hundreds of interior illustrations. In 1975, he was a finalist for the Best Professional Artist, and he was finalist for the World Fantasy Award for Best Artist every year between 1975 and 1978. Professionally, he worked as a designer and Imagineer for Walt Disney, and as an illustrator for Hallmark Cards. His thesis project consisted of a series of paintings for The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien; 13 of these were published by Ballantine Books as the 1975 Tolkien Calendar. He runs a design firm in the Los Angeles area, and sits on the advisory board of Seattle’s Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame.
  • October 30, 1951 – P. Craig Russell, 67. Comic illustrator whose work has won multiple Harvey and Eisner Awards. His work on Killraven, a future version of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, collaborating with writer Don McGregor, was lauded by readers and critics alike. Next up was mainstream work at DC. I think his work on Batman, particularly with Jim Starlin, was amazing. He also inked Mike Mignola’s pencils on the Phantom Stranger series. He then segued into working on several of Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné projects. Worth noting is his work on a number of Gaiman projects, including a Coraline graphic novel. Wayne Alan Harold Productions published the P. Craig Russell Sketchbook Archives, a 250-page hardcover art book featuring the best of his personal sketchbooks.
  • Born October 30, 1963 – Michael Beach, 55, Actor and Producer who has been in numerous genre films, including Aquaman, the Red Dawn remake, The Abyss, Deep Blue Sea 2, Insidious Chapter 2, and the upcoming movies Superintelligence and Rim of the World. He had recurring roles in Stargate: Atlantis and The 100, and has had guest parts in episodes of Scorpion and Knight Rider 2010.
  • Born October 30, 1972 – Tammy Coxen, 46, Fan from Michigan who has been chair of numerous conventions, including Mystery God ConFusion, Astronomical ConFusion, ConFusion and Her Friends, Midwest Construction 2, and Detcon1, the 2014 NASFiC, as well as serving on the concoms for a large number of Worldcons. For more than 12 years, she has run Tammy’s Tastings, a business which provides cocktail and mixology classes, personal cheffing, private bartending, food workshops and tasting events for individuals, groups, and corporate clients, and she is a regular commentator on Michigan Radio’s Stateside program, discussing drinks with a Michigan twist.
  • Born October 30, 1989 – Sarah Carter, 29, Actor from Canada who starred in the series Falling Skies, for which she received two Saturn nominations. Other genre appearances include the films Killing Zelda Sparks, Mindstorm, Final Destination 2, Skinwalkers, DOA: Dead or Alive, and Red Mist, and guest roles in episodes of Smallville, The Twilight Zone, Dark Angel, Wolf Lake, Wishmaster 3, and The Immortal.

(12) CAPTAIN TVIDEO. Via Buzz Dixon I learned that Heritage Auctions is offering the entire “Captain TVideo” MAD magazine parody drawn by the legendary Jack Davis. Click on the images for incredible hi-res scans.

(13) SAILING THROUGH SPACE. At National Geographic, “‘The Science Guy’ explains a solar-powered space sail”.

In contrast, the momentum of light is a concept outside our ordinary experience: When you’re out in the sun, you don’t feel that sunlight can push you around. The force of light, a single photon in particular, is tiny—so on Earth the sunlight pressure, as it’s called, is overwhelmed by the other forces and pressures you encounter, such as friction and gravity.

What if we could harness the energy of a tremendous number of photons and we had nothing holding us back? There’s only one place we know of to get away from all the friction and gravity: outer space.

(14) BIGGER IDEA. “Civil engineer proposes statue of mythical giant to prop up Wales bridge”The Guardian has the story.

The Welsh government says it will consider a proposal to prop up a new £130m bridge across the Menai Strait with a mythical Welsh giant.

Civil engineer Benji Poulton, from Bangor in north-west Wales, came up with the idea after dismissing the existing designs for a new bridge between Gwynedd and Anglesey as “underwhelming”.

His design replaces the central support with a giant statue of Bendigeidfran (Brân the Blessed), who went over to Ireland to wage war against the king, Matholwch.

According to the legend, the Irish soldiers retreated over the River Shannon and burnt all the bridges. Bendigeidfran lay over the river, uttering “A fo ben, bid bont.” (“He who would be a leader, let him be a bridge” – now a popular Welsh proverb.)

(15) FLEET OF FOOT. At Smithsonian.com, Steven Tammariello reports on DNA tests carried out on Seabiscuit, and how they may give clues to his late-blooming races success (“Scientists Extract DNA From Seabiscuit’s Hooves To Figure Out How He Was So Fast”).

Eighty years ago, the horse famously trounced Triple Crown winner War Admiral. Did genetics make him an unlikely success?

Seabiscuit was not an impressive-looking horse. He was considered quite lazy, preferring to eat and sleep in his stall rather than exercise. He’d been written off by most of the racing industry after losing his first 17 races. But Seabiscuit eventually became one of the most beloved thoroughbred champions of all time – voted 1938 Horse of the Year after winning his legendary match race as an underdog against Triple Crown winner War Admiral in 1938.

…A few years back, Jacqueline Cooper from the Seabiscuit Heritage Foundation got in touch. She wanted to genetically test a fifth-generation descendant of Seabiscuit [and] asked if any genetic information about Seabiscuit could be obtained […]. But since Seabiscuit was so far back in the pedigree, our lab really couldn’t be sure which of [the descendent’s] genes came from his famous great-great-great grandsire. It would only work if comparison tissue from Seabiscuit still existed – an unlikely proposition since he died in 1947 and is buried in an undisclosed grave at Ridgewood Ranch in Northern California.

…It turned out that Seabiscuit’s silvered hooves – think of a baby’s booties coated in metal – were on display at the California Thoroughbred Foundation

(16) TRASH SPOTTING. BBC says another experiment is in progress — “RemoveDebris: UK satellite tracks ‘space junk'”.

British-led mission to test techniques to clear up space junk has initiated its second experiment.

The RemoveDebris satellite ejected a small object on Sunday and then tracked it using a camera and laser system.

This vision-based navigation (VBN) technology essentially tells a pursuing spacecraft how its target is behaving – how it’s moving and even tumbling.

It would provide the information to safely approach the object ready for capture.

(17) J IS FOR JACK O’LANTERN. LAist insists “JPL Carves Better Pumpkins Than You Ever Will”. Photos and GIFs (I’ll spare you the latter – they drive Filers crazy.)

NASA’s engineers may spend their days designing parts for spacecrafts, but once a year, they get a chance to break out of geek and unleash their creativity. Think Pimp My Pumpkin — by some of the best scientific brains in the business.

The competition is fierce. After weeks of planning, designing and dreaming, they’re given one hour to create their pumpkin extravaganzas. Then the struggle for creative supremacy begins. Loud music. Flashing lights. Battling spaceships, animated moon discoveries, ET on his flying bike, Cookie Monster and Manuel of Disney’s Coco playing guitar.

(18) TIMELESS TREAT. Pottery analysis shows cocoa has been cultivated for millennia: “Chocolate: Origins of delicacy pushed back in time”.

Chocolate has been a delicacy for much longer than previously thought.

Botanical evidence shows the plant from which chocolate is made was first grown for food more than 5,000 years ago in the Amazon rainforest.

Chemical residues found on ancient pottery suggest cocoa was used as a food, drink or medicine by indigenous people living in what is now Ecuador.

Until now it was thought that chocolate originated much later and in Central rather than South America.

“The plant was first used at least 1,500 years earlier than we had previous evidence for,” said Prof Michael Blake of the department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, a co-researcher on the study.

(19) LIVING AT HIGH ALTITUDE. BBC finds “Climate change is ‘escalator to extinction’ for mountain birds”.

Scientists have produced new evidence that climate change is driving tropical bird species who live near a mountain top to extinction.

Researchers have long predicted many creatures will seek to escape a warmer world by moving towards higher ground.

However, those living at the highest levels cannot go any higher, and have been forecast to decline.

This study found that eight bird species that once lived near a Peruvian mountain peak have now disappeared.

(20) IHOP GOES GREEN. A signal boost from Food & Wine: “IHOP Adds Official ‘Grinch’ Menu Items for the Holidays”.

IHOP is adding several Grinch-related menu items in a promotion themed on the upcoming animated movie The Grinch (with the title role voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch). The movie opens 9 November. The Grinch menu at IHOP will be available through the end of the year.

[Thanks to JJ, Carl Slaughter, BravoLimaPoppa3, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day microtherion.]

60 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 10/30/18 Steamy Pixels – Coming From The Scrolling Heat

  1. (7) The widespread panic after Welles’s War of the Worlds seems to be an urban legend, or a FoaF story. “No, nobody here panicked, but I hear the yokels in New Brunswick were totally out of control!”

    (12) Sigh.

    Hey, did I mention my birthday is next month? It totally is! God, look at that Duotone work!

    Sigh.

  2. Kip Williams says The widespread panic after Welles’s War of the Worlds seems to be an urban legend, or a FoaF story. “No, nobody here panicked, but I hear the yokels in New Brunswick were totally out of control!”

    This Slate article which you can read here explains the myth of the panic was used by newspaper to discredit radio broadcasters who had been successfully getting more and more of their advertising by showing they, the radio broadcasters, couldn’t be trusted.

  3. @1 – that is a dumb way of handling flame wars. USA and European politics have become so nasty that multiple game sites have banned all political discussions of anything after the fall of the USSR. That has worked quite well. A one-sided ban will cause the site participants to split with some proportion leaving and starting their own web presence. The game sites I’ve been active on have had more issues with anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe than Trump – by a narrow margin.

    You have to keep historical political discussions if there are any wargamers active because many war games and diplomacy games require the inclusion of politics and foreign relations from the past.

  4. With respect to item #2, it’s too bad that reporter Harrison Smith wasn’t at Capclave on Friday. He could have attended the “Ask a Space Lawyer” presentation by Laura Montgomery.

  5. @kip re 7)

    Yeah I heard that first in a reaction to a Radiolab episode they did (live here in Minnesota) on the War of the Worlds, where they got a correction, and then edited the episode to discuss the fact that, no, it was not such a big deal.

    The recording I have of WOTW, sadly, has a few minutes of early chatter before the actual broadcast which still takes the myth as gospel. Annoys me every time I listen to it…which I am due to, since it is Halloween soon. Traditionally for years, MPR broadcast it on Halloween Night, but has been inconsistent with that in recent years.

  6. @Avery Abernathy — RPG.net is well moderated, they handle flame wars just fine. If you want to see a flame war, just try telling everyone that your favourite RPG is objectively the best. Then see the mods move in and ban your ass.

    This is a move to cut down on specifically Trumpist trolling, which pisses people off and makes them seek out other venues to discuss elf-games which might be friendlier to LGBTQ or other minority players; and also makes the mods tired.

    The thread linked to includes posts from old members who were driven off by the site’s previous attempts to maintain balance between left and the ever-more extreme right, and are now coming back again. So that’s a positive effect already.

  7. Paul Weimer, it’s possible to find a copy of WotW that doesn’t have the bothersome chit chat. I suggest archive.org, which has several flavors and editions of it (including what it says is a 2008 version). I like this one because it features on the little-known “Game of Thrones” -like machinations within the family of Allen Wold.

    (Because the entries on the screen in this one all say “War of the Wolds.” Joke is over. Laugh now.) You can either search for more, or start with the “more like this” links at the bottom of the page.

    https://archive.org/details/WarOfTheWorlds1938RadioBroadcast256kbps

    ***

    Another neat thing that turned up today was this, over at The Daily Cartoonist. Collier’s asked popular comic strip artists for one-page graphic autobios, and they got these, from Ernie Bushmiller, Milt Caniff, Chester Gould, Ernst & Saunders, Ham Fisher, Vince Hamlin, Frank Willard, and Harry Haenigsen (whose strip “Penny” was the one thing I would read in the issues of American Girl that one of my sisters used to subscribe to). And Alley Oop is genre, what with the time machine and all!

    http://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2018/10/30/cartoonists-comic-strip-autobiographies/#comment-484936

  8. 10. I count 11, including Pan’s Labyrinth and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, though there are some titles I don’t know. I also suspect the Bunuel titles might be genre of sorts.

    All in all, it’s a largely dull and predictable list.

  9. Capclave is mostly “grey-haired sci-fi fans”? *Sigh*

    I always liked Jack Davis’s work so was happy to see the CaptainTVideo strips.

  10. Let’s see:
    – Le Jetée
    – Celine and Julie Go Boating
    – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
    – Solaris
    – Stalker
    – Spirited Away
    – Wings of Desire a.k.a. Der Himmel über Berlin (sorry, but I hate the English title)
    – The Seventh Seal
    – Pan’s Labyrinth
    – Metropolis

    I also noticed that I got a French film named L’Atalante mixed up with another French film L’Atlantide. The second is SFF, the first one isn’t.

  11. @2: Capclave “one of the oldest”? Well, at least he seems to have quoted people clearly and not mockingly.

    @17: they do that, by hand, in an hour? Wow.

    @Cat Eldridge: the WotW myth a salvo in a war between old and new? How very stfictional.

  12. (14) With the Brexit deadline looming ever closer, is this really the right time for Wales to be celebrating bridges they’ve burnt in the past? 😀

    (Also, if I were them, before I started earmarking money for giant statues, I might want to double-check my supplies of some more basic things, like medicines and food…just in case Brexit doesn’t turn out to be quite the Utopia its supporters have predicted.)

  13. (11) Russell was also the first big-name openly gay mainstream comics artist, or so I’m told.
    Consider mentally adding:
    (1935) Don Thompson, an important early comic book fan (along with his wife, Maggie Thompson). Was involved in comics fandom and fanzines from the early 1960s until his 1995 death. And, as Maggie’s husband, he was thus the son-in-law of 1969 Hugo nominee Betsy Curtis.
    (1945) Henry Winkler. TV and film actor of some note, who struggled with dyslexia and wrote a serious of juvenile books about a character who also has dyslexia (Hank Zipzer series); another series of juvenile ghost stories (Ghost Buddy series) is his entry into a list of genre writers. Genre acting roles include Little Nicky, Click, and Mork and Mindy.
    (1950) Douglas E. Winter, noted horror writer, critic and essayist. I first ran across his writings 35 or so years ago, in one of his early surveys/appreciations of the work of Stephen King.

    (12) The same auction is offering an even more classic EC Comics story, “Master Race” by Bernie Krigstein. Not especially genre (unless you read it as a ghost story), but it is considered by many as having been laid out (the part of drawing a story that establishes pacing, equivalent to storyboarding a movie) better than any other in the history of the medium. (see the second half of this for a discussion why)

    (13) Coincidentally, I read this earlier today, about a mysterious extra-solar-system object whose anomalous acceleration/deceleration through the solar system may be consistent with a light sail.

  14. (1) Sad, but I can understand them.

    (10) @Cora Buhlert: There are a couple that are borderline or magical realism, like Persona or The Seventh Seal, using some fantastical elements more for aesthetic effect than as something that is to be explored in its own right.

    I’m not surprised by the content of the list, given that it was curated by a group of experts. Little room for personal taste there, and you get more films that are noted for technical or storytelling innovations.

  15. (1) HERE’S ONE ROLE YOU CAN’T PLAY AT RPG.NET.

    I mostly lurk at rpg.net, but this looks like an excellent decision and very much in line with their moderating tactics, which are to make sure that the primary focus of the site isn’t swamped by internet arguments about stuff other than rpgs.

  16. 14) That sounds like a great proverb if it’s origins aren’t explained.. I wonder how it’s used in Wales nowadays, in a pro-war sense, or the way it sounds?

  17. 14: Didn’t realise the new bridge was being planned quite so close to Stephenson’s Britannia Bridge. It needs to be reasonably spectacular with that on one side and Telford’s Menai Bridge to the east, though I do wonder if there’s an element of getting his name attached to the bridge as with the other two.

    Ireland may even land up paying for part of the construction, albeit indirectly. The route over the existing bridges forms part of the main land route between the continent and Ireland and a lot of improvements have been funded in part by EU grants, and the proposed bridge may still qualify for EU money after Lemming Day.

  18. @Bookworm1398

    It was my highschool motto, and its origins in the and not in a pro-war sense per se, but in the idea of service, that in order to become a leader you have to be prepared to serve others before yourself.

    The legend is clearly one of GRRM’s sources for Bran the Builder, the first builder of creator of The Wall, and for Bran the Three Eyed Raven (“Bran” is usually translated as “crow” or”raven”).

  19. 1) From Wikipedia:

    “The paradox of tolerance was described by Karl Popper in 1945. The paradox states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant.

    Popper came to the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that states ‘in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.'”

    In gaming terms: if someone else isn’t following the rules, you are under no obligation to let them keep playing the game.

  20. Acquisitions this week as therapy for my now fourteen month old headache which was acting worse than usual:

    One Funko Pop Thirteenth Doctor figure to stand in front of the TARDIS I have
    Two Doctor Who T-shirt’s
    One pineapple bromeliad
    Dark chocolate to give away
    Paul Winter’s Solstice Live CD
    Batwoman graphic novel
    Second season of the animated Guardians of the Galaxy

    And I renewed ownership of petersoyerbeagle.com on advice of Legal Counsel even its not being being used for anything right now.

  21. 10) So the BBC defines foreign-language as any language other than English? Just as well there aren’t any famous Welsh-language art films.

    7) I remember there were festivities at Grover’s Mill for the 50th anniversary, although I don’t remember much about them. I may still have the t-shirt somewhere.

  22. 1) The paradox of tolerance is a paradox, or maybe a contradiction. It’s one of those soft places in society where sometimes you must push to keep bad things from happening. Push too far on that soft place and you can make bad things happen. It’s not a trump to play on every trick; it’s a finesse you take when winning takes risk.

  23. I wonder what will become of the 112 illustrations Tim Kirk provided for LAST DANGHEROUS VISIONS. We can be assured it will not appear as promised, and parts of the mass have been published.. Would love to see the artwork.

  24. John A Arkansawyer says The paradox of tolerance is a paradox, or maybe a contradiction. It’s one of those soft places in society where sometimes you must push to keep bad things from happening. Push too far on that soft place and you can make bad things happen. It’s not a trump to play on every trick; it’s a finesse you take when winning takes risk.

    Following the Bounding into Comics link in the post provides ample proof that they made the right decision. The reaction there makes me wonder if the Right even understand the use of the English language, let alone what what the words they’re using really mean.

  25. I find another paradox: people who hate bigots with red hot intensity to the point of irrationality. And what they target they begin to resemble.

  26. Part of the paradox of intolerance are people who confront bigotry with red hot emotions and start to resemble what they despise so much.

  27. bill
    Whenever I see Don Thompson’s name (even when it’s the Denver fan of the same name), I wonder what ever happened to the drawing I did of Mayor McCheese feeling around for his head. It’s been forty years now. I should probably do it over. (Does anyone happen to remember if it was ever printed in TBG? Nobody can tell me. Would have been like ’77–’79.)

    Cat Eldridge
    When you say The Right in this case, it helps to distinguish between the leaders and the shills. The leaders understand it, and the shills don’t.

  28. @Robert Whitaker Sirignano people who confront bigotry with red hot emotions and start to resemble what they despise so much.

    Targets of bigotry often find it difficult to remain calm in the face of people who want to hurt or kill them, so an important thing we can all do as allies is to stand with them and help take the pressure off.

  29. @Chip Hitchcock:

    @2: Capclave “one of the oldest”? Well, at least he seems to have quoted people clearly and not mockingly.

    I guess the author considered Capclave a continuation of Disclave, which would make a pretty long running con.

    P.S. I was at Capclave and am not yet grey-haired.

  30. I’ve faced down being a target, so I know what it feels like. I’ve had two death threats I took seriously. However, on some on-line forums, people carry the rhetoric too far.

  31. 1) The ban is basically an extension of current behavior rules. If one comes into rpg.net and independently says that certain peoples should be denied basic civil rights, that Jewish conspiracies are behind the protests, or that women actually like being sexually harassed and assaulted, then that will also garner a ban.

    To argue that rpg discussions should just avoid politics is as disingenuous as it is to argue SF&F literature should be apolitical. The latter bans NK Jemisin and Ursula K LeGuin; the former Apocalypse World, The Watch and Star Trek.

    Is not an easy decision, but honestly it’s necessary given the current online environment.

  32. Not SF, but there may well be interest in this: Handel’s Messiah, performed by a four-person combo. Samples so far show minimalist accompaniment and solo singing, unsurprisingly. The first thing I thought of was the Kuijken Quartet playing an anonymous contemporary transcription of Mozart’s Requiem, but the approaches are somewhat different. For starters, there are no vocals in the Kuijken.

    Some of this might be goofy. I’ve heard some talking.

    https://www.ensembleoddsize.se/messiah-for-4/

  33. @kip
    Whenever I see Don Thompson’s name (even when it’s the Denver fan of the same name), I wonder what ever happened to the drawing I did of Mayor McCheese feeling around for his head. It’s been forty years now. I should probably do it over. (Does anyone happen to remember if it was ever printed in TBG? Nobody can tell me. Would have been like ’77–’79.)

    I was a subscriber to TBG back then, but don’t recall anything like that. I was recently cleaning out my Mom’s attic and came across a box of clippings from it, mostly of Fred Hembeck’s old “Dateline: @!!?#” comic strip.

  34. @Robert Whitaker Sirignano: Your point is well taken, but I think it is another argument in favour of the policy: if Trump-boosters are posting material that leads other people to respond “with red hot emotions” (the original definition of trolling, in my memory) then it’s bad for the community, whatever the specific political content.

  35. If I might be permitted a small amount of semi-self promotion, Nerds of a Feather just launched Feminist Futures, a month long feature on feminist science fiction. We posted the Introduction on Monday and a review of Pamela Sargent’s landmark anthology Women of Wonder today.

    To add in some connections to the Filers here, Paul Weimer will have a fantastic review of The Word for World is Forest scheduled for Friday and Arifel has a review of the Amazons! anthology plus several kick ass essays pending for later in November.

  36. @Matthew Johnson Your point is well taken, but I think it is another argument in favour of the policy…

    Some people want to bring back slavery(*), but I think we can all agree the real problem is that other people sometimes get angry when they talk about it.

    (*) Or for my trans friends in the States to be permanently closeted or dead, which is why I’m reluctant to let go of this. Please do let me know how angry I can get before you’ll decide it’s too much and let the bigots have their way, though.

  37. @Sophie Jane–I don’t see Matthew Johnson saying we should let the bigots have their way. On the contrary, he’s saying the fact that they predictably and intentionally cause strong emotion and what we’d generally cause undesirable behavior in others is an additional reason for banning them.

    Not letting them off the hook. Instead, not letting them get away with denying responsibility for the entirely predictable and intended effects of their behavior, even when in a purely formal and superficial sense, the provacteurs were “not rude.” Recognizing that there is no “polite way” to say “we should bring back slavery.”

  38. A correction re: item #1:
    “Forum Administrator” is a generic account, shared by the volunteer staff.
    cite: https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?835843-Questions-and-Reactions-to-the-updated-Forum-Rules-10-28-2018-read-post-1-first!&p=22197354#post22197354

    In addition to what BethDragon states there, staff have in the past announced group decisions like this from their own accounts, only to face harsh criticism or abuse. This seems to me like a way to diffuse the worst of the misdirected anger, since the staff are also regular posters.

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