EDITOR’S NOTE: This will be a very short scroll, as I am on a slow motel wi-fi and have already spent a chunk of the evening waiting for screen reloads. Filers, please add some good things in the comments to compensate!
(1) INDIGENOUS SFF. The Herald of Harare, Zimbabwe reports on a rare sff book in the local language: “Science fiction Shona novel print version”
Science fiction is a sub-genre of speculative fiction which in Zimbabwean literature is an uncommon type of writing because of the assumed limitations of the indigenous languages. With the rapid technological exploits happening in the world today, local language experts have met the vexing challenge of adopting new technological terms into the local languages.We are yet to have a wide range of complete dictionaries of technological or scientific terms translated into local languages to help writers explore their different worlds of the imagination.
Motivating indeed it is to note that a first step towards such an ‘expansion’ of our local language has been taken by UK-based Zimbabwean writer Masimba Musodza in his trailblazing feat in the science fiction genre.
His novel “Munahacha Maive Nei?” (Belontos Books) is the first science fiction or speculative fiction novel in Shona language. The novel first appeared five years ago as an e-book before its print edition and now it is available in the new paperback, hardback and e-book editions. Hopefully, the reading public in Zimbabwe will soon have a chance to buy personal copies in local bookstores.
(2) SOUTHERN VIEW. The Southern Fandom Confederation selected officers at its DeepSouthCon business meeting last weekend. Gary Robe is the new President, and Jennifer Liang is the new Vice-President. As Tom Feller notes, they swapped positions, each having held the other office last year.
(3) LUCKEY OBIT. From the BBC: Bud Luckey, “Toy Story Woody’s designer dies”. Born in 1934, he designed several other characters for Pixar, and did some voices. He also worked on number and counting features for Sesame Street.
(4) LONG ARM OF THE LAW. “Supreme Court considers Microsoft overseas data row” — seems subtle, but far-reaching consequences:
A five-year legal battle between Microsoft and the US Justice Department reaches the Supreme Court this week.
The row is over whether US laws give the government the power to make tech companies surrender data they have on users that is stored overseas.
The case dates from 2013, when prosecutors sought emails on a Microsoft server in Ireland sent by a drug-trafficking suspect.
The US government said as Microsoft was a US company it could request the data.
Microsoft disputed this interpretation, saying a warrant issued in the US could not be used to recover information outside the country.
(5) GOT TO GET BACK TO THE GARDEN. “Against a bleak future: Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds reaches one million mark”: that’s a million types, not just a million seeds. Who knew there were that many discrete varieties?
The vault storing the world’s most precious seeds is taking delivery on Monday of consignments that will take it to the one million mark.
More than 70,000 crops will be added to frozen storage chambers buried deep within a mountain in the Arctic Circle.
Cereal staples, unusual crops like the Estonian onion potato, and barley used to brew Irish beer are among them.
Monday marks the tenth anniversary of the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard.
One of three chambers is now almost full of packets of seeds, each a variety of an important food crop.
The number of deposits amounts to 1,059,646. This number excludes emergency withdrawals of about 90,000 seeds needed to make up for precious samples stranded in Syria due to the conflict there.
(6) ZAP THE APP. BBC reports — “Sarahah: Anonymous app dropped from Apple and Google stores after bullying accusations”.
A wildly popular anonymous messaging app has been removed from the Apple and Google stores after accusations that it has been facilitating bullying. But the company’s chief executive denies the claims and says the app isn’t meant to be used by younger teens.
Katrina Collins was appalled by the anonymous messages her 13-year-old daughter was receiving. One person said she hoped her daughter would kill herself. Others used extremely foul and offensive language.
The messages appeared on the Sarahah app, which was designed to allow people to leave “honest feedback” about colleagues and friends. Although Collins’ daughter wasn’t actually using the app, she saw the messages after a friend downloaded it and showed them to her.
[Thanks to JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Rich Lynch, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, Carl Slaughter and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rev. Bob.]
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Scroll’s too short to Pixel with Godstalk?
Super-first! (I’ve been rereading The Oxford School Harmony Course.)
(6)
Sounds like an app for bullying to me.
Safe travels, Mike.
(3): Bud Luckey also did the hilariously insane short Boundin’ that accompanied The Incredibles. RIP.
(6) of course this was going to be used for bullying. Anyone with half a brain could see that.
Pixel Faux (for added good things):
(1) Fighting in Ballgowns
(2) The Animated Bayeux Tapestry
Been overloaded and only intermittently lurking for awhile so don’t know if these have already been posted.
I lurk therefore I scroll
Jeff VanderMeer tweets about a strange side effect of fame—a Glamour article about the khakis in the movie take on Annihilation:
When you write a deeply personal novel about the place you hike in, not even sure it’s a story, you often dream of the time there will be an article about khakis related to it. (Srsly, tho, kinda interesting)
Bad news for Proxima b tourists: Anybody not wearing 2 million sunblock is gonna have a real bad day.
Related to (2):
Deep South Con uses Nazi joke in program room titles
@Rob Thornton: Your links got borked – I think they are missing the colon part of the aitch tee tee pee ess colon slash slash bit.
Thus presumably VanderMeer’s tweet should be here, and the Glamour article should be here.
ATTENTION ALL FILERS OF THE PIXEL FEDERATION: MIKE HAS RESUMED THE SCROLL
QOTD: ”Naturally, when a rocket company calls the fire service, they come prepared with a full response […]” said Beck [of Rocket Lab] http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12002151
5). Wait! Somewhere in the world there’s an ONION POTATO??!!? Do I have to fly to Estonia to get one? As someone who starts almost every meal prep by chopping at least one onion and slicing a couple of potatoes, this could potentially change my world. Totally stoked. (Yes, I know that my need for an onion potato is not completely germane to the genre. But, hey, Onion potatoes! I saw it here first!)
(1) Yay! for more sf for the people. Though given the experience with Swedish-language sf, I’m not sure it will help develop the vocabulary of the Shona language; at least not more than any other story written in the language.
(4) Thing is, Microsoft had to fight this. If they handed over the data, they’d be in so much shit based on EU laws, and rightly so. I’m also not sure how the EU-US Safe Harbour agreement factors into this. On the other hand, if the Justice Department had made a request for the data via Irish courts, they might just have gotten it several years ago.
@Lenore Jones–
That’s…I’m speechless. And I can’t imagine wanting to gove that can a try. Ever.
Mansplaining = exposition?
Tumblr-user liveblogs watching The Fellowship of the Ring for the first time.
I think this is the first time I’ve ever scored two titles in such rapid succession. Woot!
@ Nicole
Thanks, much appreciated. 🙂
@ Karl-Johan:
Aw, without early Swedish SF, we would not have words like “luktklaver” (or, at least, possibly not) in Swedish. Clearly a linguistic win. Althopugh I think “doftorgel” would be the new, more modern, version of the ‘fragrance keyboard’.
@Lenore I saw Laura Anne Gilman react to that yesterday. Yeah, who thinks this is a good idea?
@Meredith — That Tumblr post was a thing of beauty and a joy forever.
@nicole j le boeuf: wonderful Rush tag! From Virtuality: “Astronauts in the weightlessness of pixelated space”
“Pixels in the scrolls of an angry file”
5 – Man that’s a lot of seeds, I imagine if they ever tried to transport those to another location the logistics would be insane and leads to some tough voyaging.
6 – I saw that Black Mirror episode.
And now (Meredith Moment) Brust’s Iorich is $2.99. Again, my patience is being rewarded …
@Paul Weimer: maybe somebody who thinks waving any form of the Confederate battle flag is a good idea. (They also fail spelling….) And they don’t even have the craft/persona excuse some LA-area SCAdians did recently; guess it’s another instance of Scalzi’s Law.
(5)
I suspect that a certain Wombat might have had a sneaking suspicion.
Of course, those who are in the know, as it were, know that one species of plant can have many many varieties. Like how cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, the awesomely fractal romanesco, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi (and more, see WikiP) are all variants of the same species of vegetable.
WTF, plant world?
Owlmirror, and now I know why I hate ALL of those vegetables you named….
John Scalzi on Twitter:
My name is John Scalzi and I have consumed an entire cup of Auntie Annie mini-pretzel dogs at the Newark airport am now having visions AMA
Twitter question:
Why do people hate on brunch so much?
Scalzi:
People fear what they don’t understand, especially when it comes with mimosas.
Ever since the damn trees got imported into the United States, the average American yard has had mimosas coming all over it.
John A Arkansawyer: Ever since the damn trees got imported into the United States, the average American yard has had mimosas coming all over it.
You know Scalzi is referring to the cocktail, not the tree, right?
#1: Somewhere around here I have a softcover book of Zimbabwean SF, issued in the 1990s before everything went to hell there. I believe it’s in English, though.
“Scrolling occupants of interpixellary craft…”
Lis Carey: That’s…I’m speechless. And I can’t imagine wanting to [give] that can a try. Ever.
Um… yeah. And then there’s this. 😐
National Writers Union reaches a settlement with Ebony Magazine to pay $80,000 it owed to freelancers. YEAH NWU! Now let’s see if Ebony pays up.
Look at the Before and After photos of this island where they eradicated invasive rabbits.
I picked up Steven Brust’s Tiassa yesterday morning and ended up reading it all last night. (I should have been balancing my checkbook and doing dishes, oh well.) I’m somewhat disappointed by it. It was entertaining in parts, and was buoyed along by Brust’s zippy prose, but the whole thing didn’t hang together as a story–it was more like a bunch of stories, most of which involved Vlad in some fashion, but otherwise without any relationship to each other.
Despite this, I picked up Iorich in today’s sale.
Tiassa is a bit of a fan service book, fills in some background info, has Kharaveen meet Vlad.
Iorich is a regular story, with some wry observations on the nature of justice and law thrown in. I think you’ll enjoy it more.
Clocktaur Wars # 2 dropped today! Whoot!
To think that I scrolled it on Pixelberry street
@Owlmirror & @Cassy B: This does explain much, though I’m surprised I like some of them raw, one of them raw or occasionally cooked, and some of them not at all. Not counting the ones I’ve never heard of.
@Cassy B: just curious if you’ve tried any of the edible-raw ones raw. I’m convinced cooked broccoli (especially) and cauliflower were invented by Satan, but I discovered years and years after I’d sworn them off that they were fine raw (a bit cabbage-like – now I know why! – and crunchy, which is how I like my raw veggies).
@Kendall: I used to have the same feelings about cooked broccoli and cauliflower. Then I discovered that light steaming left them tough enough to enjoy chewing and improved the flavor. A little butter for the broccoli. This summer I had to find something affordable on a menu and got roasted cauliflower with pesto. I must learn to make that!
Yes, steaming is the way to go with broccoli and cauliflower. Overcooked, even a little, and they smell and taste like cabbage.
Why anyone eats cabbage remains a mystery, but to each their own.
Because I was curious, I looked it up.
Mimosa, the cocktail, is champagne and orange juice. If more champagne is added, the drink is called a Buck’s Fizz.
Mimosa, the tree — well, Mimosa is a huge genus, and includes the touch-me-not plant. According the to WikiP, the tree was once considered to belong to the genus Mimosa, but no longer. It is Albizia julibrissi. Albizia is related to the genus Mimosa; both are in the Fabaceae, or legume, family. Well, I do recall seeing those huge brown seed pods hanging from the trees.
/edumacationing myself
Speaking of legumes, I know that some people are repulsed by all legume-based foods. No hummus, lentil soup, or split pea soup. Is it an allergy or sensitivity, or does it just a matter of tasting something that I don’t?
AUUUGHH don’t get me started on those damn mimosa trees! My hate is a pure hate.
I do like the drink, though.
@Lis: Why anyone eats cabbage remains a mystery, but to each their own. The Pennsylvania-Dutch side of my family resembles that remark. (And there’s an obvious practical reason: calories, vitamins, and fiber (try an outhouse on a winter night when you’re constipated!), all in one long-lasting package.)
I grew up liking not-overdone broccoli; I still eat it a couple of times a week (Trader Joe’s frozen florets are good quality & price, and nuke easily), but I no longer chant a nasty remark about Bush Sr. when I eat it. Actually, Bush Sr. started looking pretty good after Bush Jr. took office — and given New England cooking in George Sr.’s childhood, he may have had an excuse.
I rather like the taste of raw cabbage. Why anyone would cook it is beyond me. But then, another time I was looking for something I could afford on a menu, I saw seared lettuce with couscous. I took a chance on it and it was delicious! It’s good to have one item I like at the weird places bands play in town.
Lis Carey on February 28, 2018 at 7:38 am said:
Lis, I’ve met steamed cabbage, and it was delicious. (I think the trick is not overcooking it.) Also, coleslaw!
Oooh…now you’ve reminded me of that incredibly unhealthy, incredibly yummy cole slaw with bacon grease salad my mom made. I hope I find that recipe!
@Owlmirror–
Peanuts are a legume, and the most common food allergy. Allergy, tasting something common to them, and a “better safe than sorry” policy because they’re allergic to peanuts are all plausible reasons.
@Chip–
Hey, “let’s not starve or freeze this winter,” is a totally reasonable reason.
Hey, for all I love properly cooked broccoli, I cheered him for that. Not the disliking broccoli part, but for saying he didn’t and refusing to be bullied on it. As a kid I had to eat what I hated, and smile, say thank you, and ask for more, because my mother didn’t want me to make her look bad by saying politely, “No, thank you, I don’t care for any.”
I had to endure it as a kid. I felt Bush Sr., who probably did have to eat overcooked broccoli as a kid and pretend to like it, was standing up for former kids everywhere in saying a firm no to broccoli.
Cruciferous veggies — > Good
Legumes — > Good
Mimosa cocktails — > Good
Mimosa trees — > Good (I have an excuse. My grandma had a big one in her back yard, and I have fond childhood memories of it.)
Black-eyed peas — > BLECH.
Which irks my mother every New Year’s Day. 😉
I find frozen broccoli tastes too sweet, and can’t be cooked to the best texture. It is awfully handy to keep around for the fussy teenager, though.
I have as of yet not found a cabbage-family food I don’t like. Romanesco broccoli, which I’m not sure is really broccoli as opposed to something halfway between brococli and cauliflower, is my current favorite.