Pixel Scroll 11/1 Rank Election

(1) If you are fan who drinks, the newly reopened Clifton’s Cafeteria would like to tempt you with these two science fictional libations –

drinks at Cliftons

(2) “Another Word: Chinese Science Fiction and Chinese Reality” by Liu Cixin, translated by Ken Liu, in Clarkesworld, talks about the themes of other Chinese writers after these introductory comments about the domestic reception for his own work.

China is a society undergoing rapid development and transformation, where crises are present along with hopes, and opportunities coexist with challenges. This is a reality reflected in the science fiction produced there.

Chinese readers often interpret science fiction in unexpected ways. Take my Three Body series as an example. The alien-invasion story takes as its premise a “worst-case” scenario for relationships among members of the cosmic society of civilizations, which is called the “Dark Forest” state. In this state, different starfaring civilizations have no choice but to attempt to annihilate each other at the first opportunity.

After publication, the novels became surprisingly popular among those working in China’s Internet industry. They saw the “Dark Forest” state portrayed in the novels as an accurate reflection of the state of brutal competition among China’s Internet companies….

Authors (myself included) are often befuddled by such interpretations.

(3) From “’Star Wars’: Their First Time” in the New York Times.

Ridley Scott: I had done a film called “The Duellists” and was in Los Angeles to shoot at Paramount, and I honestly think Paramount had forgotten. I remember saying, I’m Ridley Scott, and they said who? So David Puttnam, one of the greatest producers I’ve ever worked with and the most fun, said, “Screw them, let’s go see [“Star Wars”] at the Chinese [theater].” It was the first week. I’ve never known audience participation like it, absolutely rocking. I felt my “Duellist” was this big [holds thumb and forefinger an inch apart], and George had done that [stretches arms out wide]. I was so inspired I wanted to shoot myself. My biggest compliment can be [to get] green with envy and really bad-tempered. That damn George, son of a bitch. I’m very competitive.

(4) Andrew Porter was interviewed, complete with photo, for “Longtime Brooklynites Reflect on a Changing Brooklyn” on Brownstoner.com:

Now you can put a face to me and my non SFnal opinions about recent changes in Brooklyn Heights, where I’ve lived for 47 years.

I’m sure you’ll also appreciate the comments, one of which accuses me of hating Brits!

(Daveinbedstuy accuses – “Andrew Porter sounds cranky; as he usually does on BHB. I wonder what he has against ‘Brits.’ And bringing up ‘granite countertops’ Really????????”)

(5) Jim C. Hines on Facebook:

I HAVE WRITTEN THE FIRST 22 WORDS OF MY NANOWRIMO NOVEL!

The NaNo word counter says at this rate, I’ll finish by January 20, 2022.

I suppose I should probably keep writing, eh?

(6) “Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction, 1780-1910” is on exhibit through February 26, 2017 in the newly renovated Smithsonian Libraries Exhibition Gallery of the National Museum of American History.

Travel with us to the surface of the moon, the center of the earth, and the depths of the ocean – to the fantastic worlds of fiction inspired by 19th century discovery and invention.

New frontiers of science were emerging. We took to the air, charted remote corners of the earth, and harnessed the power of steam and electricity. We began unlocking the secrets of the natural world. The growing literate middle class gave science a new and avid public audience. Writers explored the farther reaches of the new scientific landscape to craft hoaxes, satires and fictional tales.

Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction, 1780-1910 is accompanied by an online exhibit.

(7) Francis Hamit, a novelist and film producer who is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, has published A Perfect Spy, a memoir about his first two years at the University of Iowa when he was a dual major in Drama and Business. While he narrates the ongoing dramatic social changes that were transforming society and the university in 1965 and 1966, he also covers the impact of the sexual revolution, the sudden rise of a drug culture, and the beginnings of the anti-war movement at the University of Iowa, from a first-person perspective.

“I saw the first draft card burnt,” Hamit says; “And I would see the last anti-war riot there several years later. I was also very disturbed by the rise of all kinds of drug use in and around Iowa City. Unlike almost everyone else I knew, I did not think this ‘cool’. I saw people ruining thier lives by refusing to tell the police who’d sold them the drugs: facing years in prison. I offered to help them find the dealers if they would leave my friends alone. How I did this is narrated in A Perfect Spy, which is a 118-page excerpt from my forthcoming book Out of Step: A Memoir of the Vietnam War Years.

“I was already in place,” Hamit added; “A perfect spy who made no pretenses of approving of recreational drugs. I didn’t do anything with them, but simply watched and listened so I could collect some useful intelligence for the police. At the same time, I became involved with some very interesting women who were part of the Sexual Revolution. That was part of a larger social revolt. None of what happened then can be viewed in isolation, so I’ve just tried to be as truthful as possible while changing a lot of the names of the people to prevent embarrassment.”

A Perfect Spy will be available exclusively at first from November 12, 2015 on Amazon Kindle for $5.00 and can be pre-ordered now. A print edition will be available in March, 2016 with a suggested retail price of $12.00 from most bookstores.

(8) “The artist who visited ‘Dune’ and ‘the most important science fiction art ever created’” – a gallery of Schoenherr at Dangerous Minds.

Frank Herbert said John Schoenherr was “the only man who has ever visited Dune.” Schoenherr (1935-2010) was the artist responsible for visualising and illustrating Herbert’s Dune—firstly in the pages of Analog magazine, then in the fully illustrated edition of the classic science fiction tale. But Herbert didn’t stop there, he later added:

I can envision no more perfect visual representation of my Dune world than John Schoenherr’s careful and accurate illustrations.

High praise indeed, but truly deserved, for as Jeff Love pointed out in Omni Reboot, Schoenherr’s illustrations are “the most important science fiction art ever created.”

(9) Jason Sanford posted a collection of tweets under the heading “The fossilization of science fiction and fantasy literature”. Here are some excerpts.

https://twitter.com/jasonsanford/status/660782118356783104

https://twitter.com/jasonsanford/status/660783781654233088

https://twitter.com/jasonsanford/status/660789856075948034

Although I have friends that do exactly what Sanford complains about, he doesn’t hang with them, read their fanzines, or (I’d wager) even know their names, so I’m kind of curious whose comments sparked off this rant.

Personally, I’m prone to recommend Connie Willis or Lois McMaster Bujold if I’m trying to interest someone in sf – though both have been around over 25 years and aren’t spring chickens anymore either.

People recommend what they know and esteem. It’s perfectly fine to argue whether recommendations will win fans to the genre, but it seems petty to act as if pushing “classic” choices is a war crime.

(10) John Scalzi was more or less content with Sanford’s line of thought, and responded with “No, the Kids Aren’t Reading the Classics and Why Would They”.

Writer Jason Sanford kicked a small hornet’s nest earlier today when he discussed “the fossilization of science fiction,” as he called it, and noted that today’s kids who are getting into science fiction are doing it without “Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and Tolkien.” This is apparently causing a moderate bit of angina in some quarters.

I think Sanford is almost entirely correct (the small quibble being that I suspect Tolkien is still common currency, thanks to recent films and video games), nor does this personally come as any particular shock. I wrote last year about the fact my daughter was notably resistant to Heinlein’s charms, not to mention the charms of other writers who I enjoyed when I was her age… thirty years ago. She has her own set of writers she loves and follows, as she should. As do all the kids her age who read.

The surprise to me is not that today’s kids have their own set of favorite authors, in genre and out of it; the surprise to me is honestly that anyone else is surprised by this.

(11) “The kids” who don’t read the classics are one case, would-be sf writers are another, explains Fynbospress in “Slogging forward, looking back” at Mad Genius Club.

Kris Rusch has also noted how many young writers she’s run into who are completely ignorant of the many, many female authors who’ve been in science fiction and fantasy since the start. Among other reasons, many of their works have gone out of print, and the new writers coming in may not have read the old magazines, or picked up the older, dated-artwork books at the used bookstores. So they really, truly, may not know that their groundbreaking new take has been done to death thirty years before they came on the scene, or that they’re trying to reinvent a wheel that has not only been invented, it’s evolved to all-wheel drive with traction control.

(12) I can’t say that Vivienne Raper is going where no one has gone before in responding to the latest Wired article about the Hugos — “Five reasons why the ‘Battle for Pop Culture’s Soul’ isn’t about ‘white men’”.

[First three of five points.]

There are many reasons why I might be “angered” by previous Hugo winners.  And none of them are anything to do with ‘the increasingly multicultural makeup’ of the awards:

ONE

Science fiction’s most prestigious award‘ for Best Novel was decided in 2014 by fewer than 4,000 voters.

TWO

The Best Short Story for 2014 got onto the ballot with fewer than 43 nominations.

THREE

Popular blogger John Scalzi has won more Hugo Awards (inc. best fan writer) than Isaac Asimov – author of I, Robot – or Arthur C. Clarke. He also has 90K+ Twitter followers.

(13) Jeb Kinnison at Substrate Wars is more analytical and lands more punches in “The Death of ‘Wired’: Hugo Awards Edition”. Here are his closing paragraphs.

The various flavors of Puppies differ, but one thing they’re not is anti-diverse — there are women, people of various colors, gays (like me), religious, atheists, and on and on. The one thing they have in common is that they oppose elevating political correctness above quality of writing, originality, and story in science fiction. Many of the award winners in recent years have been lesser works elevated only because they satisfied a group of progressives who want their science fiction to reflect their desired future of group identity and victim-based politics. For them, it is part of their battle to tear down bad old patriarchy, to bury the old and bring themselves to the forefront of culture (and incidentally make a living being activists in fiction.) These people are often called “Social Justice Warriors” – they shore up their own fragile identities by thinking of themselves as noble warriors for social justice. Amy Wallace places herself with them by portraying the issues as a battle between racist, sexist white men and everyone else.

She then goes on to give some space to Larry Correia, Brad Torgerson, and Vox Day (Ted Beale). While her reporting about them is reasonably truthful, they report that she promised to interview Sarah Hoyt (who ruins the narrative as a female Puppy) but did not do so, and left out material from other interviews that did not support her slant. Tsk!

The piece is very long, but written from a position of assumed moral superiority and elite groupthink, a long fall from classic Wired‘s iconoclastic reporting. It’s sad when a quality brand goes downhill — as a longtime subscriber, I’ve noticed the magazine has grown thinner in the last year as ad revenues declined and competition from upstarts like Fast Company ate into their market. Now they are me-tooing major controversies for clicks. Once you see this dishonesty in reporting, you should never view such sources as reliable again.

(14) Sometimes I suspect AI stands for “artificial ignorance.”

If the programmer of this tweet-generating robot was literate, they could easily discover that the words Portugal and Portuguese are not even mentioned in this U.S. Census definition of “Hispanic or Latino.”

(15) “The Original Star Wars Trilogy Gets An Awesome Force Awakens-Style Trailer” via Geek Tyrant.

I’d warn that there are too many spoilers, except you’ve already seen the original trilogy how many times?

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Mark-kitteh, Will R., JJ, Trey Palmer, Francis Hamit, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

594 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 11/1 Rank Election

  1. OMG hilarious to read VR complaining re. hard SF’s treatment here. This is the woman who redefined SF in an unclear way, simply to exclude a book that IIRC she didn’t finish. (eyeroll) Tough to really take even her legit comments and commentary seriously. . . .

  2. Hampus Eckerman: You are sitting peacefully at your neighbourhood bar…

    Wow, that allegory describes the situation so aptly, and was so beautifully and eloquently written.

  3. Rev. Bob: I thought the discussion I saw elsewhere agonizing about how the new Supergirl has pierced ears was funny.

    As I’m not a fan of comic books or movies based on them, this was the first I’d heard of it. So I Googled       Supergirl “pierced ears” .

    8,800 results. I just don’t even.

  4. The File770 regulars are – from what I can tell – like-minded people gossiping among themselves. It’s something like a loud group in a bar; you can hear what they’re saying, but it would be bad etiquette to sit at their table, uninvited, and join in the conversation

    Crap. There were invites. And gossip. Nobody told me. I’ll go sulk in a corner now.

    @Hampus: that was beautiful.

  5. OMG, I just showed up a couple months ago without an invite. Are you guys gonna throw me out now?

  6. Gosh, you’re still letting me talk, and I’ve never even had a Siamese cat.

    Rev. Bob: hey, I read that other other series too. Not as dull, and I like the characters better.

  7. Whoops, I butt into conversations here, and no one’s gotten mad at me . . . so far. Almost as if it’s an open comment thread and anyone is welcome. Crazy!

  8. Meredith:

    Oh yeah, the invites had gold leaf on and everything. 😉

    Y’know, I’m going to have to check the list. Susana changed her handle not long ago — maybe the invite ended up in the Dead Handle Office (ohno!)

  9. Susana on November 7, 2015 at 5:15 pm said:

    Crap. There were invites. And gossip. Nobody told me. I’ll go sulk in a corner now.

    I found my invite in the wrapper of a Wonka Bar that I bought with a penny I found half buried in the snow.

  10. It’s something like a loud group in a bar; you can hear what they’re saying, but it would be bad etiquette to sit at their table, uninvited, and join in the conversation

    Okay, yes, kathodus and I were sitting next to each other at a bar earlier this afternoon, having a congenial conversation about a science fiction book, but anybody would have been welcome to join us. No entrance test required. If the dude standing behind me waiting to order a beer had chimed in “Linesman? By S.K. Dunstall? I loved that!” (or even “ugh, I hated that!”) he would have been welcome.

    (If you’re in Oakland, come by the Trappist, y’all. If you see somebody reading at the bar, say hi and maybe ask “File 770?” Odds are not bad that they’ll say “…what? Yes!”)

  11. Now I’m idly wondering where the line between “discussion about a subject, that also incorporates a loosely affiliated social group, in which all parties hold a mutual interest” and “gossip” lies.

    Also whether I have the appropriate apps to mock up a fake File770 invite.

  12. I once struck up a great conversation about “Snow Crash” in a huge line at the pharmacy once as the woman in front of me was halfway through the book.

    We didn’t gossip, though.

  13. So it’s no Callahan’s, but at least, watching what happens in this joint when people step up to the chalk line, we do get a deeper insight into human nature.

  14. @lurkertype: (other other series)

    I haven’t started the new book, but I’m halfway through Tenacious. Gunny’s new recruits are still getting used to the eggs, the fleet’s just caught up with the thief, and the detection of alien reactors on the other side of the system has just made things even more interesting…

    @Brian Z:

    Please feel free to help yourself to a Mickey Finn whenever you please. Fast Eddie’s got the first one covered, and Long-Drink and I are flipping for the privilege of buying the second, should it be required.

  15. Oh, my. I had to keep reading…

    “Now, about our feline aliens,” Kris said, “who appear to be armed to the teeth?”

    “They are divided up into a hundred and fifty-seven different competing districts. Some much larger than the others. Some much more powerful than the others. Three appear to be dominant. Two share a similar language and call their planet Sasquan,” Nelly said.

    Published almost exactly a year ago, and thus written well before The Recent Unpleasantness. I wonder if the natives are Siamese…

  16. Rev. Bob: But not before the name of the con was known, nor before the Unpleasantness Before the Recent One.

    I think I’m a book behind you, my series-buying is behind in everything that’s got more than 3 out.

  17. “I am accustomed to take pride in my work,” the troll said. “Fans need not be ridiculed and shunned by armchair warriors. I go before, and reject the groupthink. It was a good profession, I thought. But here, I wondered if I might be wrong.”

    “What made you change your mind?” asked Rev. Bob.

    “This… ‘File’ we are in—is just like the rest of the blogosphere I have seen. Outside are hatred, competition, morals elevated to the status of ethics, prejudices elevated to the status of morals, whims elevated to the status of prejudices, all things with which I am wearily familiar, the classic symptoms of disease.

    “I hoped here it might be different. Here in this place I saw the potential for qualities, attributes I did not know your species possessed, attributes which everywhere else in the known universe are mutually exclusive of the things I have perceived here tonight. Those would be good things… and cause me to regret my trolling.

    “Oh, that I might lay down my geas,” he cried. “If only you had love!”

  18. For Brian Z

    Making your way with fans today takes everything you’ve got.
    Taking a break from all your trollin’, sure would help a lot.

    Wouldn’t you like to get away?

    Sometimes you want to go

    Where every filer knows your name,
    and they’re sort of glad you came.
    You wanna be where you can see,
    our tribbles are all the same
    You wanna be where everybody knows
    Your name.
    and/or Gravatar…

  19. @lurkertype:

    The previous volume’s Defender, and the new one’s Unrelenting. I’ve quite liked the Vicky Peterwald spinoff series, too, and I need to get around to the fourth Jump Universe (prequel series) novel.

    I remember SP2 making a bit of a splash, but I really didn’t expect SP3 to amount to much after that. I don’t think I was alone in that assessment, either.

  20. Brian Z.: Outside are hatred, competition, morals elevated to the status of ethics, prejudices elevated to the status of morals, whims elevated to the status of prejudices, all things with which I am wearily familiar, the classic symptoms of disease.

    Of course you’re familiar with them. They’re your modus operandi.

    What baffles me is why you felt compelled to drag that shit here into File770.

  21. JJ, that line is from the immortal Spider Robinson – an alien scout is sent to determine whether the Earth should be saved or destroyed, and after a quick look around decides it is obviously the latter, but the regulars at Callahan’s bar prove him wrong.

    And I wish you would prove me wrong.

    Perhaps I have curmudgeonly, annoying ideas that are out of step with the times as you see it. Perhaps I occasionally rant about it. What’s the skin off your nose, exactly? Ignore me, or make a brief and civil comment as you see fit, and let it go. We disagree about the best direction for the Hugos, whether “puppies” should be welcomed or shunned, or what have you, but how does the vitriol help anybody?

  22. Brian Z: Perhaps I have curmudgeonly, annoying ideas that are out of step with the times as you see it. Perhaps I occasionally rant about it. What’s the skin off your nose, exactly?

    But that’s not the issue, is it?

    The issue is your Trolling Behavior.

    You’ve repeatedly defended the incredibly bad behavior of the Puppies. You’ve made snide remarks about the people who participate here genuinely. You’ve bitched incessantly about how the Hugos have clearly lost their way because they don’t reflect your personal choices — despite the fact that they seem to do a great job of, for the most part, reflecting the personal choices of a great many other people here.

    And here’s your most egregious behavior: You continuously claim that people have said things which aren’t even remotely close to what those people have actually said. You continually attack the people here for things they haven’t said — then demand that they defend themselves from, or justify saying, the things they haven’t said. You’ve repeatedly accused people of acting under motivations that are completely different from their real motivations — but insist that you know better than they do what they really think and what they really mean.

    You do not participate here in good faith.

    And when called out on your bad behavior, you never apologize (though you have on several occasions made insulting non-apologies). You deflect, you change the subject, you claim you said something completely different from what you actually said.

    You do not participate here in good faith.

  23. @Brian Z

    Your ideas are not the problem. Your twisting of words, lack of integrity, and inability to give a straight answer to anything are the problem.

    Note how Silly But True, who is openly a Puppy, usually gets a better reception than you do. Because he doesn’t twist words, he doesn’t change argument on a dime, and he doesn’t evade the point. You’ve been told all of these things multiple times now, so the only reason you’d be trying to sell the concept that we just can’t handle your ideas is if you were, you know, twisting and evading.

    But thanks for proving my point, I guess. I wish you hadn’t. I know that if you actually wanted to you could become a valuable commenter to have around. It disappoints me that you’d rather keep doing this instead, but after months of it I have little hope that you could change or that you’d want to.

  24. I’m allowed to defend anyone I wish to, JJ. I’ve made criticisms, but I wouldn’t call them attacks, and my criticisms of fandom are certainly not reserved for this blog. Upthread I suggested that people might try to articulate the criteria by which they decide what is “best” before simply nominating stuff that makes them feel good, for example. You might to interpret this as a criticism of your Filer buddies, but Lock In was at least a snappy, well-crafted piece of commercial fiction, whereas the ones who’d really do well to take my words to heart are those who nominated The Dark Between the Stars for anything other than Best Soporific. Possibly I’m not your enemy, I just think a little differently than you?

    By the way, I find it hard to imagine you accusing others of attacking people’s motivations with a straight face.

  25. Meredith, you accused me of twisting someone’s words a while back. As I recall someone told me I mischaracterized what they said, so I explained what I meant and apologized if I had expressed it poorly. You kept coming back to grandstand about it, as you are doing now. Does that help anyone?

  26. Brian Z: the ones who’d really do well to take my words to heart are those who nominated The Dark Between the Stars for anything other than Best Soporific.

    That would be the Puppies, wouldn’t it? But since you spend your time over here trolling Filers with your sick and twisted behavior, instead of over on Puppy blogs telling them things like that, there’s very little chance of them taking it to heart, is there?

    Oh, and that’s the other really egregious thing you do: accusing people of engaging in behavior of which they are not in fact guilty, but which you, in fact, do yourself — such as grandstanding.

  27. Meredith on November 8, 2015 at 3:54 am said:

    @Brian Z

    Your ideas are not the problem. Your twisting of words, lack of integrity, and inability to give a straight answer to anything are the problem.

    Note how Silly But True, who is openly a Puppy, usually gets a better reception than you do. Because he doesn’t twist words, he doesn’t change argument on a dime, and he doesn’t evade the point.

    Thanks, Meredith, that’s a good point.

    I’ve been looking at Silly But True’s posts with some amount of distance, but whatever else zie is, zie is having an honest discussion with the other posters here.

  28. @Brian Z

    It isn’t something you’ve done just once. You do it every time. You did it in this thread. It was even pointed out to you. You would need to stop doing it in almost every conversation for me to stop “grandstanding” about it, because until then, well, you’re still just repeating the same old predictable and boring Brian Z bad behaviour.

    I don’t really hold out much hope that you’ll stop doing those things at this point, but maybe eventually I’ll get through. Your. Bad. Behaviour. Is. The. Problem. Your ideas are just self-centered, and who among us doesn’t indulge in that occasionally? It isn’t anything worth getting particularly annoyed about. Exasperated at most. Behaving like a complete rotter to everyone, on the other hand, is definitely worth getting annoyed about, and I wish you’d quit it and use your time – and ours – more wisely.

    I think you could have been a valued contributor here. Perhaps you still could be. But you have an awful lot of goodwill to earn back first, and I don’t see any signs of that turning around so far.

  29. No, Meredith, you did it in this thread. I was making a point – which may in your view be valid or otherwise – that Hugo voters ought to think carefully about their criteria for “best.”

    You responded by grandstanding – gratuitously insulting me to score points:

    Meredith on November 6, 2015 at 10:29 am said:
    I think we just went from “you shouldn’t vote for entertaining works” to “of course the Puppies have the right to vote for entertaining works” in record time! (All paraphrased.)

    So, everyone, Brian Z just started arguing against himself: DRINK!

    I responded to your insult politely, and asked an honest and sincere question that was totally germane to the point I was arguing:

    Brian Z on November 6, 2015 at 10:34 am said:
    Meredith: have you read The Hugo Winners? It meant something. Don’t you want it to? I do.

    You evaded and deflected my question by attacking me for something I didn’t say:

    Meredith on November 6, 2015 at 10:53 am said:
    Did my comment say anything about my own opinions on nomination approaches? No! But recognising that would have meant Brian Z would have had to address his own trollish behaviour instead of a poor attempt at deflection.

    I really miss the days Brian Z was more subtle about this.

    And rather than let that silliness drag on, I dropped it.

    At one point, Meredith, you used to enter into these discussions presenting yourself as the voice of reason and moderation – for example by asking people to refrain from hurling insults at me. I respected that.

  30. @Brian Z–

    You twist and misrepresent everyone’s words constantly, and assign twisteed, insulting motives and then cry innocent victim when you get the response you deserve, rather than the one you want. It got tiresome a long time ago.

  31. Lis Carey, in conversation with you, I gave my opinion that many people wished to no-award Vox Day without first evaluating all the other editors, and you accused me of lying about what you had just said. I stated twice that I believed you meant exactly what you said and clarified that I was explaining my general takeaway, not interpreting your words or casting aspersions on your motivations. I was attributing that motivation to other voters, yes, but not to any specific individual, and several had already stated that they had done just that.

  32. @Brian Z

    If you stop behaving badly, I’ll stop having to point out your bad behaviour.

    Look, if nearly everyone – including people who tried really hard with you – has given up and decided you’re a troll, maybe its something you did. Which means you could fix it, if you wanted to make the effort. If you wanted to listen when people tell you that what you just did was a problem. If you wanted to make worthwhile contributions.

    The thing is, I haven’t seen you make that effort and I haven’t seen any signs you want to. I haven’t seen any signs you can accept criticism. If you wanted to change, if you wanted to accept that you’ve made misteps, that you needed to earn back goodwill, that your reception here is due to your approach and not your ideas – I’m happy to help with that. I would love that to happen. But I don’t think you want to. I’d be thrilled if you proved me wrong, but you just made another string of excuses tinged with wounded innocence and either you really don’t get it and neither kindness nor bluntness is going to get through to you – because I’ve tried both and a whole spectrum inbetween – or you’re just trolling on purpose and there’s nothing to get through to.

    I’m honestly not sure which would be worse.

  33. Meredith, I don’t always express myself perfectly. I have no problems copping to that if it is pointed out in a civil manner. If you think I’ve misstated something, do that. A small piece of advice, though, and offered sincerely: skip the part where you act as arbiter of bad behavior.

  34. @Brian Z

    At this point I think the consensus on your bad behaviour has been reached. I’m not alone in this thread, as you may have noticed.

    Civilly pointing stuff out to you never worked, so don’t try that. Remember, I tried. I tried really hard with you. It never worked. For it to be worth trying again, you would have to admit that you haven’t listened in the past, you’ve screwed up a great deal, and commit to changing in the future. I don’t really see that happening any time soon since you’re still just making excuses.

  35. @Meredith, it’s probably not my place to say, but while I really do appreciate your patience and attempts at extending goodwill and the benefit of the doubt, perhaps it’s time to move on.

    Life is short, and there are surely people more worth your compassion and time.

  36. Meredith, I’ve listened to you and thought about what you have to say. I offer this in the spirit of sincere communication, not as a criticism or attack. Whatever consensus you perceive regarding behavior or requirements, whether admission of whatever guilt or proof of commitment for whatever change, my honest advice is still to put those aside.

  37. @Brian Z:

    Since you saw fit to cast me in the role of Mike Callahan in your little poor-me story, perhaps I should be the one to, in Lady Sally’s words, offer you an invitation to the world.

    Here’s your concoction, Finn. By all means, please drink up.

  38. @Camestros Felapton: I join in Soon Lee’s applause – that was a great filkish take on the Cheers theme! 😀

    Oh how I wish I could filter all the replies to BZ, along with BZ. I never could quite get the CSS working to do that.

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