Pixel Scroll 2/22/18 Scroll Up For The Pixelly Tour!

(1) IT COULD BE A REAL PLACE. Nadia Maddy hopes people will look beyond their headspace for the answer to “Where Is Your Wakanda?”

Where is your Wakanda? Wakanda is real but have you found it? Is it really in East Africa or is it in Central Africa? Perhaps its in Nigeria? What do you think?

 

(2) LE GUIN WINS A PEN AWARD. PEN America held its 2018 Literary Awards ceremony on February 20 at New York University reports Publishers Weekly “Long Soldier, Zhang, Le Guin Win At 2018 PEN Literary Awards”.

[Ursula K.] Le Guin won the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for No Time to Spare. The author’s son, Theo [accepted the] award on behalf of the late Ursula K. Le Guin.

(3) A SINGAPORE FIRST – AND SECOND. The Straits Times interviews “Two Singaporeans on Nebula awards shortlist”, J.Y. Yang and Vina Jie-Min Prasad.

Yang, a science communications officer, recalls: “When I was growing up, I would print out a list of the works that had won the Hugo and Nebula and try to make my way through them. I would never have imagined that one day I would be a finalist. I’m so proud to be one of the Singaporeans on the list, it’s just fantastic.”

Prasad, 27, a full-time writer, started submitting to science-fiction magazines only last year, but has already been shortlisted twice. “I’m overwhelmed and really honoured,” she says.

She is up for Best Novelette for A Series Of Steaks, about two women in Nanjing who forge quality beef – inspired by the real-life counterfeit food industry – and Best Short Story for Fandom For Robots, in which a sentient robot discovers Japanese anime and starts writing fan fiction.

(4) AT YOUR SERVICE. For anyone who wants paper Hugo and Retro-Hugo ballots, there’s now a way to print them.

Worldcon 76 has published PDFs of the paper nominating ballots for the 2018 Hugo Awards/Award for Best Young Adult Book/John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and for the 1943 Retrospective Hugo Awards.

(5) NOMMO NOMINATIONS OPEN. Members of the African Speculative Fiction Society (ASFS) have until March 31 to nominate works for the 2018 Nommo Awards. The awards will be presented at the Ake Arts and Book Festival in November 2018.

(6) BUZZWORDKILL. In The Atlantic, Bruce Sterling commands people to “Stop Saying ‘Smart Cities'” – “Digital stardust won’t magically make future cities more affordable or resilient.”

The term “smart city” is interesting yet not important, because nobody defines it. “Smart” is a snazzy political label used by a modern alliance of leftist urbanites and tech industrialists. To deem yourself “smart” is to make the NIMBYites and market-force people look stupid.

Smart-city devotees all over this world will agree that London is particularly smart. Why? London is a huge, ungainly beast whose cartwheeling urban life is in cranky, irrational disarray. London is a god-awful urban mess, but London does have some of the best international smart-city conferences.

London also has a large urban-management bureaucracy who emit the proper smart-city buzzwords and have even invented some themselves.  The language of Smart City is always Global Business English, no matter what town you’re in.

(7) IN TRAINING. Lightspeed Magazine interviews Carmen Maria Machado about her learning experiences.

I know that you also went to the Clarion science fiction writers workshop. I wonder if you could contrast Iowa and Clarion a little bit?

Clarion is not an MFA program. Clarion is a six-week, insane, exhausting boot camp. It’s a totally different process. The MFA program is more moderate, in the sense that it’s happening over the course of several years. I don’t know really how to compare them. The workshop style is really different. Genre places tend to use the system where everybody goes around in a circle and says their piece and then is silent.

The Milford system?

Oh yeah, the Milford. Which, actually, I do not like that workshop system, but that is the way it’s done at Clarion. It was done that way when I went to Sycamore Hill. That’s just the sort of tradition. Whereas, in my MFA program, it was more of a style of people talking and responding to each other in real time, which I prefer. It’s hard to compare Clarion and Iowa. They’re just inherently really different in terms of what you’re getting out of them. What I got out of Iowa was two years of funded time to work on my own shit, which was amazing and really wonderful. What I got out of Clarion was this really bombastic, high-intensity, octane-fueled, genre extravaganza where I barely slept. I was writing a lot of stuff, some of which was really terrible, and some of which was pretty good, and workshopping non-stop and barely sleeping. They’re really different programs.

(8) IF YOU CAN SAY SOMETHING NICE. Marshall Ryan Maresca helps sff readers pay attention to some people who are doing it the right way in “On My Mind: Building Community”.

So, this past weekend I was at Boskone, and it was a wonderful time, as I was reminded what an amazing community we have in SF/Fantasy Literature.  There are some amazing people in this business, who are filled with wisdom and warmth and kindness.   I had the great fortune of sharing the signing table with Mary Robinette Kowal, who all of these attributes in abundance.  We, as a community, are blessed to have her in it.

Sadly, this past week, I’ve also been reminded that we have a way to go, and there are some people who thrive in being terrible, and making things unpleasant for those around them.  And that behavior, sadly, gets them notoriety.  They get talked about, which serves their ends.  I won’t give them the time of day.

Because the people who are wonderful, who do great work and are good people– they’re the ones who deserve notoriety.  They’re the ones who should get notice and have their names mentioned over and over.  So here is a large list of great people who deserve your attention…..

Names follow.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • John King Tarpinian says Brevity found a way to make a joke at the expense of two actors who’ve played Captain Kirk.

(10) STORY AMPLIFIED. Yesterday’s Scroll linked to the latest release in Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination’s Future Tense Fiction series, “Mother of Invention” by Nnedi Okorafor. Joey Eschrich notes that it was published along with a response essay by Internet of Things expert Stacey Higginbotham, focusing on the smart home technology in the story.

(11) SHORT FICTION DISCOVERIES. The prolific Charles Payseur has launched a column at Book Smugglers X Marks The Story. The first installment leads readers to such treasures as —

“A Snow, A Flood, A Fire” by Jamie Berrout (published in Strange Horizons, 01/2018 )

What It Is: Coming in a special issue of Strange Horizons featuring transgender and nonbinary authors, “A Snow, A Flood, A Fire” stars Lupita, a trans woman stuck in an awful job as a security guard at a museum, hoping that she can work her way out of mistakes she made when she was younger and her world was imploding. The changing nature of employment, learning algorithms, employer greed and entitlement, and the dream of economic mobility all collide in a plot that kept the reading experience for me fast and tight and devastating. (And for fans of this story, I also recommend checking out “Dream Job” in January’s Terraform SF, which also explores themes of employment and the traps of late capitalism).

Why I Love It: Perhaps it’s a sign of the times, but stories exploring the future of employment and capitalism seem to be on the rise. For me, it’s a constant reminder of the realities of growing up and entering the workforce in a time where so many things that previous generations take for granted are in shambles or completely gone. Retirement contributions, healthcare, vacation, sick leave, debt forgiveness—the present isn’t exactly a cheery place for many hoping to live and maybe reach for that dream of comfort, security, and autonomy. …

[Via Earl Grey Editing Services.]

(12) BIGGER, BETTER, FASTER, MORE! At Featured Futures, Jason has posted an “Expanded Collated Contents of the Year’s Bests (2017 Stories, Links)” which begins its additional coverage with Ellen Datlow’s freshly announced The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Ten.

By request, this is an expanded edition of Collated Contents of the Big Year’s Bests (2017 Stories, with Links!). That post collates and links to the stories selected by Clarke, Dozois, Horton, and Strahan. This will add Afsharirad, Best American SF&F, Datlow, and Guran.

(13) SIGNAGE. Culver City, CA’s Ripped Bodice Bookstore gives fair warning:

(14) PASSING THE BUCKING BRONCO. Something else we know that ain’t so: “Why The Last ‘Wild’ Horses Really Aren’t”.

A Mongolian horse that has long been hailed as the last truly wild horse species in existence isn’t really all that wild.

It turns out that Przewalski’s horses are actually feral descendants of the first horses that humans are known to have domesticated, around 5,500 years ago.

What’s more, the modern horses that people ride today cannot be traced to those early steeds. That means humans must have tamed wild horses once again later on, somewhere else, but no one knows where or when.

(15) CAVE DWELLERS. If the pics remind you of a kindergarten project, remember your kids didn’t have to be the first people to ever have the idea: “Neanderthals were capable of making art”.

Contrary to the traditional view of them as brutes, it turns out that Neanderthals were artists.

A study in Science journal suggests they made cave drawings in Spain that pre-date the arrival of modern humans in Europe by 20,000 years.

They also appear to have used painted sea shells as jewellery.

Art was previously thought to be a behaviour unique to our species (Homo sapiens) and far beyond our evolutionary cousins.

The cave paintings include stencilled impressions of Neanderthal hands, geometric patterns and red circles.

(16) YOU CAN SEE WHERE THIS STORY IS LEADING. The people who built Stonehenge didn’t get to enjoy it for long: “Ancient Britons ‘replaced’ by newcomers”.

Prof Reich told BBC News: “Archaeologists ever since the Second World War have been very sceptical about proposals of large-scale movements of people in prehistory. But what the genetics are showing – with the clearest example now in Britain at Beaker times – is that these large-scale migrations occurred, even after the spread of agriculture.”

The genetic data, from hundreds of ancient British genomes, reveals that the Beakers were a distinct population from the Neolithic British. After their arrival on the island, Beaker genes appear to swamp those of the native farmers.

Prof Reich added: “The previous inhabitants had just put up the big stones at Stonehenge, which became a national place of pilgrimage as reflected by goods brought from the far corners of Britain.”

He added: “The sophisticated ancient peoples who built that monument and ones like it could not have known that within a short period of time their descendants would be gone and their lands overrun.”

(17) DON’T MISS THIS NON-GENRE LINK. The Hollywood Reporter interviewed the surviving cast and writers for “‘MAS*H’ Oral History: Untold Stories From One of TV’s Most Important Shows”.

(18) NO ARMY CAN STOP AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME. Adam-Troy Castro offered this subtle suggestion on Facebook:

Let’s run an International Science Fiction Asshole Convention.

People who want to go to conventions or to award ceremonies in order to be disruptive assholes — all while filling thousands of pages of blog posts with their fiendish snickering about the trouble they intend and how much it will bother everyone else — will finally have their annual event, where they can hand out awards to honor The Year’s Biggest Asshole, The Year’s Biggest Dickweed, the Year’s Most Appalling Runner-Up, as well as the Award for Best Newcomer (which at the Hugos are named after a luminary with J, W, and C as initials, and can be done here as well, albeit in different order).

Steve Davidson has volunteered to do the con’s Souvenir Book. In fact, he’s not even going to wait for the convention to be founded —

I’m soliciting articles for this, lol. Someone want to write a history of the (what was it, the ISFC?) from its founding to the present?

Anyone want to do short profiles of award winners from the past?

(19) JUST WAITING TO BE FOUND.  Annalee Newitz tells about the “8,000-year-old heads on spikes found in a remote Swedish lake” at Ars Technica. Warning – the article is full of grisly medical commentary.

In east-central Sweden, workers demolishing a railway that crossed the Motala Ström River discovered something bizarre. For roughly 7,500 years, a shallow, swampy lake in the area had hidden a pile of stones that contained the skeletal remains of at least 10 people and weapons made of stone and antler. They also found the bones of bears, deer, boar, and a badger. Two of the human skulls were mounted on pointed stakes.

Thousands of years ago, this semi-submerged burial ground must have been an imposing sight for the small settlements located nearby. A pile of rocks rose above the water, covered in weapons, wooden structures, and the grisly remains of fearsome animals—as well as the skulls of some carefully chosen people. Now dubbed “Kanaljorden,” the archaeological site has finally begun to yield some secrets about the people who created it. In a recent article for Antiquity, Stockholm University archaeologist Sara Gummesson and her colleagues explain what the evidence reveals about how this ritual site was used.

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

66 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/22/18 Scroll Up For The Pixelly Tour!

  1. 8) I was rather embarassed to be on Marshall’s list. I’m…well, I’m not at the level of the other awesome people on his list.

  2. @18: I like the idea, but the problem of getting anybody to come reminds me of a line from last weekend: “What’s the first rule of Dunning-Kruger Club? Nobody knows they’re in Dunning-Kruger Club.” Maybe we could just call it something neutral, like “Golgafrincham B Con”? The average desired attendee seems just about as clueless, and sufficiently ignorant of the field that they wouldn’t get the point….

  3. When we would go to the Brookfield Zoo, my sisters and I were always keen to see Przewalski’s Horse. Last time I went, I think I was in different company, but still managed to get to the enclosure and look at that quadruped as it pined for the open spaces (or maybe from its next meal—I don’t really ‘read’ horses that well).

    Well. Wild or feral, I’m still a fan. Go PH, Go! You The Horse!

  4. Why are there two SF-conventions in Oceania the same weekend!? One in Auckland and one in Perth. MEH! >.<

  5. @Kip W When we would go to the Brookfield Zoo I’d be drawn to the Mold-A-Rama machines like a moth to a flame same for the Museum of science and Industry, still have the white injection-molded space shuttle.

  6. Lis, I’m so glad to hear that Dora is doing better. Sending her my best wishes for a full recovery. <3

  7. Why are there two SF-conventions in Oceania the same weekend!?

    @Hampus Eckerman The NZ NatCon is usually within a week of an Australian convention… though it’s usually Continuum in Melbourne, in June. The conventions have often shared a GoH to help cut down on costs. Not sure why NZ decided to switch to Easter, but that’s been the date of SwanCon in Perth for years.

  8. Iphinome: Big fan of the Museum of Science & Industry. I used to dream of the place! We only got to Chicago every few years, and I don’t think we got there every single time. I used to watch people get their injection-molded Abe Lincoln busts, but they cost a quarter or a dollar or some other amount of money I didn’t have. I found an Abe Lincoln that had been left behind and had that for a few years. (No shuttle. I don’t think we’d been on the Moon the most recent time I went there.)

    Dang, I should go again. Maybe Sarah would even be interested. She’ll usually go to a museum one time. After that, she’s “seen it.” Unless it’s seriously deteriorated, it should be an order of magnitude better than any of the hands-on science museums she’s been to.

  9. @Kip W

    The place is still cool. My only disappointment is that you can no longer touch the Mercury Capsule, it’s encased on a plastic shell. If you do go, step in the main hall and look up. Admire the spitfires then go up a couple levels which most people don’t bother to do and get a good face to face look at them. (The flight sim nearby, alas, costs an extra eight bucks.)

    The Field Museum has an injection-molded T-rex. Mold_a_Rama are a local company and they keep those 5 year old machines running to this day. I have a bit of a fantasy that the next Chicago worldcon will rent a couple and put them in the dealer’s room. I know some customization can be done with the molds because different Zoos and stuff have their names stamped on the bases. A Chicon 8 Mercury Capsule would be awesome.

  10. @Mike Glyer: Thanks for including #8, Maresca’s post! I was thinking tonight, “Darn, I should’ve suggested it as a Pixel Scroll item.” From my thoughts to Glyer’s ears, eh? 🙂

    (10) STORY AMPLIFIED. Look out: Bruce Sterling at #6 may go after “smart home” next. 😛

    (13) SIGNAGE. LOL, that’s a great sign!

    (17) DON’T MISS THIS NON-GENRE LINK. I skimmed and jumped around some, but this was really groovy. Thanks for including it, non-genre or not. 🙂

    – – – – –

    ObSFReading: In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan. Best 2017 book I’ve read, or best 2017 book, period?! This was wonderful and I highly recommend it. Now I’m trying to pester my better half to read it, since he reads Riordan’s stuff. 🙂 Next up to read – not sure, but something else 2017.

    ObSFListening: I just started Artemis by Andy Weir (my fingers keep wanting to type “Weird”; one gets used to typing certain sequences of characters, sorry) and it’s pretty good so far; things are just about to get very interesting, methinks (I’m only a few chapters in). I’m enjoying the chapter-ending (or inter-chapter) bits, too. And Rosario Dawson’s doing a great job narrating it!

  11. Mike, thanks for the M*A*S*H link. I loved reading it; brought back a lot of memories. TV shows get better and better these days, but still, that has to be the best of them.

    I remember my brother and I watching syndicated episodes in the afternoon, when they were edited to get more commercials in, and whenever there was a cut we’d fill in the missing dialog. Our grandmother asked us why we were watching it if we knew it by heart anyway. I don’t remember how we replied. And this was before home video, we’d only seen the full episodes once or twice. But they imprinted themselves on us.

    I haven’t seen this scene in many years (I didn’t watch the video embedded in the article), but I can still remember every inflection in William Christopher/Father Mulcahy’s voice when he says, “When a doctor cuts into a patient, and it’s cold out, the way it is now today…steam will rise from the body…and the doctor will warm his hands over the open wound. How could anybody look upon that and not feel changed?”

    How could anyone watch that scene and not feel changed?

  12. London is a god-awful urban mess, but London does have some of the best international smart-city conferences.

    I do love Bruce Sterling, I do.

  13. 1. You know where Wakanda isn’t? It isn’t on the NYC Subway when I’m just trying to get to work and some dude is ranting and raving because he just saw the movie and white people are the devil. STFU. My head hurts. You have an issue then keep it away from me because, frankly, I don’t give a shit.

  14. @Kip W: has Sarah been to the Exploratorium in San Francisco? I expect that “hands-on” museums can vary widely, but I remember this one quite well (e.g., the vision/muscle-rewiring experiment).

    @S. Klein: Bill Cosby’s first album (from 1963) opens with “A Nut in Every Car”. Urban pressures haven’t changed; why should today be different?

  15. Iphinome: Glad to hear the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry is still cool. I think I have eyeballed the planes on a higher plane, but it’s been a while. One of my favorite details about the place is that they put a clear panel on the side of one of the escalators so I (and I suppose others) could see how the steps travel up the underside. What wonderful thinking!

    I’ve enjoyed the Field Museum, too, though I used to see it as a weak adjunct to its twin. We saw the Treasures of Tutankhamen there, and one time I OD’d on fish. There was a whole hallway of silver-grey mounted fish on battleship-grey painted boards, and for some reason, it all got to me. I had to get out of that hallway. There used to be a livecam in the main lobby, which I peered in on from time to time, but it seemed to go away.

    Jeff Smith: Yes, a favorite and very affecting scene from the show.

    Paul Weimer: I, too, am glad to hear good news from Lis about Dora. Go, dog! And way to go, Lis!

    Joe H: I’ve never done the coal mine, but I was on the sub once. The Colleen Moore dollhouse is a family favorite, though I don’t know if we were able to spring for the admission more than once. My sister got a souvenir book from it, and I found a hardback with all the contents of the book and more (though the pages are tightly bound, causing me to lose some of the music room when I scanned it). A side effect of the Fairy Castle is that when I saw Moore’s name in a listing, I watched the movie, and greatly enjoyed ELLA CINDERS.

    Chip Hitchcock: We’ve never been to California with her, unless the plane paused in San Francisco on the way back from getting her to China as it did on the way over. Our wretched experience at O’Hare wiped other details from my mind. I’ve heard of the museum—it’s legendary. I’d like to see it myself, and I hope she’d be into it too.

  16. (13) I think the biggest weakness of this sign, unlike the “given an espresso and a free puppy” variant, is that some people won’t see a down side to leaving their children unattended…

  17. I enjoyed the link to the Fairy Castle. Looked at all the pictures, read all the captions, watched the video. I’m about to send that on to my sisters.

    One thing I couldn’t make out, though, was the Mickey and Minnie character portrait Disney gave them. Here it is. It came from this interesting article on a Disney Treasures exhibit at the Museum of Science & Industry. Scroll down a little: You can’t miss it.

    Also, here’s my scan of the “Music Room” from the hardback book that’s like an expansion of the souvenir book they sold in the 60s. I think they’re calling it the Princess’s Bedroom now. As I say, the binding was tight, and I had to use Photoshop magic to bridge the seam. One chair looks a little odd, and there’s a detectable region (not exactly a line) in the tiles of the floor, but it doesn’t look bad to me, and it’s bigger than the ones at the link, even when you upsize their pages.

    https://flic.kr/p/gnaVZd

  18. Meredith Moment: Steven Brust’s Hawk (Jhereg #14) is currently $2.99.

    Why do I get the distinct impression that this “sale” means I’m about to drop a whole lot of money on full-priced Jhereg eBooks?

  19. Leonora,

    (13) I think the biggest weakness of this sign, unlike the “given an espresso and a free puppy” variant, is that some people won’t see a down side to leaving their children unattended…

    I’d be tempted to show up with the kiddo and ask that I be given the explanation too. Hey – aren’t I someone’s child too? And my parents are in Alabama so I think I’m unattended.

  20. @ Chip Hitchcock

    No, no, you don’t get it. Before Black Panther, the subway was a rolling paradise! It was a clean, quiet respite from the harsh surface world; a place where manspreading was unknown, where women would never dream of filing their nails or spritzing hairspray on their fellow travelers, where the only fights were amongst teenagers to decide who would have the honor of yielding their seat to the elderly or pregnant, where the temperature was always a dry 68 degrees, where civility, respect, and quiet discussion reigned like a triumvirate of benevolent dictators. And then there was a movie and it all went to Hell.

  21. The Spouse and I traveled to Chicago a few years ago, and since he’d grown up there he reminisced about all the things he remembered from the Museum of Science and Industry. One of them was a wall-sized machine that took a quarter and turned it into a flat ashtray stamped with the logo of the museum. When we got there we found out that the machine had gone, but we started talking to some very enthusiastic employees and they thought they could find us some samples. And they did! These guys were amazing, so much so that we ended up writing to the museum to tell them how much they helped us.

    One of the things they told us was that they’d stopped calling it an ashtray because, of course, you wouldn’t want to encourage kids to smoke. So for some decades before they’d discontinued the machine they called it a “candy dish.” (Though it’s obviously an ashtray.)

  22. @von Dimpleheimer: have this trowel so you can spread the snark a little thicker.
    I couldn’t swear that Cos was literally correct, because riding the NYC subway as an early-1960’s child was such a thrill by itself (especially trying to balance without holding anything) to someone from a sleepy DC suburb that I might not have noticed a brass band parading through the cars….

    @Lisa Goldstein: [snort].

  23. Saw a version of that sign at a Ren Faire that said “Unattended Children Will Be Given To The Goblin King” with a picture of David Bowie as Jareth. The booth owner said the problem was all the adult women volunteering to be unattended children.

  24. Lisa–did the, uh, candy dish have those little semi-cylindrical indentations along the edge where one could rest, say, a gumdrop or bonbon?

  25. How big is this ashtray/dish? I have’t been able to google anything up, and I’m wondering what they look like–to be of a usable diameter, they must be extremely thin and fragile.

  26. (13) Some years ago, I happened to spend an afternoon at a rock-climbing gym in Slidell, Louisiana. (Yes! There was one! Whether it’s still there, I don’t know; it’s been closer to 10 years than 5.) I had a great time, except for one thing, and the discovery of that thing rather spoiled the rest of the afternoon and inclined me toward leaving early:

    Their version of the “unattended children” sign ended WILL BE SOLD INTO SLAVERY.

    I can’t think of any place in the US where such a sign would be a good idea, but I can think of places where it is an especially bad idea, beginning with “south of the Mason Dixon line, and especially southern Louisiana.”

    Further, I had the displeasure of overhearing the manager telling a like-minded soul (shudder) that it was a very useful sign, as it helped him determine “who had a sense of humor, and who did not”.

    Perhaps it helped him weed out those unwanted patrons whose grandparents actually had been sold into slavery.

    As much as it felt a real pleasure to find a rock-climbing gym so near to my home town, I decided then I probably wouldn’t be going back.

  27. I liked Artemis also with a couple of minor caveats:
    Minor, technical nit: gur ebhgvar iragvat bs rkprff bkltra fubhyq or ohvyqvat hc n abgvprnoyr (gubhtu guva) ngzbfcurer ba gur zbba – abjurer arne guvpx rabhtu gb oerngur, ohg rabhtu gb unir fbzr purzvpny rssrpgf ba gur fhesnpr qhfg.
    More serious plot problem: V ernyyl qba’g yvxr gur “rirelbar jvyy qvr vs jr tb 1 ubhe be zber jvgubhg gerngzrag, ohg rirelbar jvyy or svar vs vg’f bayl 59 zvahgrf” gebcr; vg qrgenpgrq sebz gur bgurejvfr cerggl uneq fpvrapr va gur obbx qragvat zl JFBQ ol tvivat n unccl raqvat (abobql qvrq be jnf frevbhfyl vawherq) rdhvinyrag gb gur byq “N-Grnz” gevpx bs gryyvat gur nhqvrapr gung ab bar jnf uheg jura gur N-Grnz oyrj hc jungrire gurl oyrj hc guvf jrrx.

    But overall, a fun book. I hope Weir writes a lot more.

  28. Post-edit-window edit:

    Perhaps it helped him weed out those unwanted patrons whose grandparents actually had been sold into slavery.

    Which is to say, a joke guaranteed to make black people feel unwelcome is so much more plausibly deniable than a NO COLOREDS ALLOWED sign, yet has much the same effect. Plus it’s legal, where the other isn’t. So.

  29. Their version of the “unattended children” sign ended WILL BE SOLD INTO SLAVERY.

    I can’t think of any place in the US where such a sign would be a good idea, but I can think of places where it is an especially bad idea, beginning with “south of the Mason Dixon line, and especially southern Louisiana.”

    Seem to be many versions of the sign. (I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it before, but as a “funny sign” on-line, not IRL.)

  30. 13) I suspect anything subtle is likely not to be intentionally racist in that context, as I’ve seen outrageously racist shit behind the bar while drinking in that part of Louisiana.

  31. @ Iphinome: 5 years old? I think that should read 50 years old. Because I got a plastic T-Rex from, I SWEAR, the same machine, at the Sinclair Pavillion at the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, NYC. God, it was fun to watch it work!

  32. Just wanted to say that I actually love the NYC subway and am tremendously thankful for it, even on a day like today, when I was stuck on a train between stations for 30 minutes because of a track fire.

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