Pixel Scroll 5/26/17 Hey Mr. Tatooine Man, Use The Force For Me

(1) PHOENIX COMICON SUSPECT NAMED. Phoenix’s 12News, in “Phoenix Comicon suspect said things would get bloody, according to court papers”, reports the suspect’s name is Mathew Sterling.

The man Phoenix police arrested Thursday for carrying four loaded guns inside the Phoenix Convention Center during Phoenix Comicon has been booked for attempted murder and several more charges. A judge set his bond at $1 million on Friday.

Police said 31-year-old Mathew Sterling made threats to harm a performer at the event. Police also believe he intended to attack officers as well.

According to court documents, Phoenix police received a call from the Hawthorne Police Department in California. Hawthorne police said a witness reported reading Facebook messages from Sterling who was posting pictures of Phoenix officers and threatening to shoot them.

Sterling resisted when approached by police at Phoenix Comicon and even ripped off an officer’s police patch on his uniform, according to court paperwork. He was eventually overpowered and taken into custody.

Police say Sterling was armed with a shotgun and three handguns that were all fully loaded. He was also carrying a combat knife, pepper spray and throwing stars. Police said he was wearing body armor.

Signs posted throughout the Phoenix Convention Center prohibit these kind of items at the event. Sterling avoided the stations where prop weapons are secured and marked, according to court records.

He later told police in an interview that he believed the signs and law prohibiting weapons at the venue did not apply to him, according to court paperwork.

Court documents show Sterling admitted to carrying the weapons into the venue and told police he was the Punisher — a popular Marvel comic book character. Sterling said if he deemed the officers to be what he called “Aphrodite officers” or “bad” officers, he would shoot them. He said these types of officers can hide behind kind faces and police badges.

According to court documents, Sterling purchased a four-day pass to the event and told police he believed with the person dead, the person’s wife and child would be happy.

Sterling appeared in court for his initial appearance Friday. He did not say a word and is being held on a $1 million bond.

Sterling was also booked for three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, wearing body armor during the commission of a felony, resisting arrest and carrying a weapon in a prohibited place.

After yesterday’s incident, Phoenix Comicon Director Matthew Solberg announced radical changes to attendee screening at the entrances to the event.

In light of recent events, Phoenix Comicon, in cooperation with the Phoenix Convention Center and the Phoenix Police Department, will be implementing enhanced screening to ensure the safety of all our attendees. This screening includes three dedicated access points, no longer allowing costume props within our convention or the Convention Center, and other methods as determined in conjunction with the Convention Center and Phoenix Police Department. We anticipate some delays as you are entering the building and we encourage you to carry as little as possible to make the process easier. …Costume props will no longer be allowed on-site. All costume props should be left at home, in your car, or in your hotel room. This includes costume props for staff, crew, costuming groups, panelists, and participants in the masquerade ball…. Convention staff is also trying to bring some relief to those stuck in line.

(2) CHEESECAKE UPDATE. The crowdfunding appeal to raise $500K for charity as an inducement for Neil Gaiman to do a reading of the Cheesecake Factory menu, reported in May 22’s Scroll, has raised $59,017 in the first four days.

(3) ENOUGH ABOUT YOU. Felicity Harley is catching heat for her narcissistic “interview” with N.K. Jemisin, “Science Fiction Author Felicity Harley talks to Hugo Award Winning Author NK Jemisin” (links to Internet Archive), where Harley spends half the time talking about herself.

…Jemisin says that she writes not to educate or convey her political views but to entertain. I questioned her on her social and political views, and since her books are speculative, I wouldn’t say she deliberately addresses these head on. Rather I think she tends to use allegory and metaphor to introduce them into her stories.

I’m a different kind of writer — I come out of a strong background of political and social activism. For instance, my current book deals specifically with corporate plutocrats and how they are exacerbating climate change, and also some of the moral and ethical dilemmas that we face as we develop highly intelligent, human forms of artificial intelligence. I’m also more of a hard core science writer — I have a three or four page glossary of scientific terms at the back of my book. I’m like an Andy Weir if you like, who I’ll be chatting with later on in this series.

I would say however, after reading her work, that Jemisin is by far the superior artist of the two of us. She writes from her colorful imagination and her Jungian dreams, weaving her political ideas like subtle silver threads throughout her narrative….

Jemisin let loose a hail of tweets about the interview and how it will reshape her policy for dealing with interview requests henceforth. (Her complete comments are available at Storify.)

(4) NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME POSTER. Tommy Lee Edwards tells The Verge: “What went wrong with the Spider-Man Homecoming poster: a veteran film artist explains”.

Not long after a pair of excellent new trailers for Spider-Man: Homecoming landed online, Sony and Marvel unveiled a poster for the film, showcasing nearly everyone in the principal cast. It is, to say the least, crowded. Peter Parker, Tony Stark, and the Vulture appear twice; poor Marisa Tomei is a tiny floating head at the bottom right; and the background features fireworks, lasers, the Manhattan skyline and the Washington Monument.

It didn’t take long for fans and critics to roast the poster on Twitter…

(5) A SHORE THING. Scott Edelman invites everyone to gobble glass noodles with the legendary William F. Nolan in Episode 38 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Welcome to the permanently moored Queen Mary, which sailed the seas from 1936 to 1967, but which is now a retired ocean liner turned hotel in Long Beach, California — and last month the home of the second annual StokerCon. My guest for this episode snuck away with me from the con for some peace and quiet in my room — and to share take-out food delivered from nearby Thai Silk….

 

William F. Nolan. Photo by Scott Edelman.

We discussed how Ray Bradbury helped him sell his first short story in 1954, the way a slush pile sale to Playboy convinced him to abandon a successful career as a commercial artist, why his Twilight Zone episode was never filmed, the difference between the real truth and Charles Beaumont’s “greater truth,” why he only acted in only one movie (and got punched by William Shatner), how Stan Freberg pranked diners aboard the Queen Mary and made them think the ship was sinking, which novel he thinks is his best (and it’s not Logan’s Run), and more.

(6) OXYGEN. On behalf of writers everywhere, Dawn Witzke pleads for your Amazon reviews: “Review the KISS Way”.

Imagine walking blindfolded into a room. You tell a story and at the end there is silence.

Feeling a bit worried? Well, that is what it’s like for authors.

We know you have our books. We know some of you have even read them. But, without reviews, it’s like that silent room.

Don’t write reviews because:

“I would, but I don’t know what to say.”

“I don’t like doing reviews, it takes so much time.”

“I didn’t like the book. I don’t want to be mean.”

I’ll admit it, I have said those things before.

However, writers depend on reviews. Reviews not only lets the author know how they’re doing their job, it helps others decide whether to buy the book or move along to another book….

(7) SUSTAINABLE SPACE. Authors argue a new vision for economically-viable space stations: “Towards an Economically Viable roadmap to large scale space colonization”.

Al Globus and Joe Strout have an analysis that space settlements in low (~500 km) Earth equatorial orbits may not require any radiation shielding at all. This is based on a careful analysis of requirements and extensive simulation of radiation effects. This radically reduces system mass and has profound implications for space settlement, as extraterrestrial mining and manufacturing are no longer on the critical path to the first settlements, although they will be essential in later stages. It also means the first settlements can evolve from space stations, hotels, and retirement communities in relatively small steps.

(8) TEMPORARY GRAFITTI. Last night stfnal creatures were illuminated on the outside of the Sydney Opera House. Here are two examples — more on Twitter.

(9) SPIT TAKE. Another unexpected consequence of tech (or maybe it was to be expected, given lawyers): Ancestry.com‘s license-in-perpetuity. The BBC has the story: “The company’s terms and conditions have stated that users grant the company a “perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide, sublicensable, transferable license’ to their DNA data, for purposes including ‘personalised products and services'”

A leading genealogy service, Ancestry.com, has denied exploiting users’ DNA following criticism of its terms and conditions.

The US company’s DNA testing service has included a right to grant Ancestry a “perpetual” licence to use customers’ genetic material.

A New York data protection lawyer spotted the clause and published a blog warning about privacy implications.

Ancestry told BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours its terms were being changed.

Headquartered in Utah, Ancestry is among the world’s largest for-profit genealogy firms, with a DNA testing service available in more than 30 countries.

The company, which uses customers’ saliva samples to predict their genetic ethnicity and find new family connections, claims to have more than 4 million DNA profiles in its database.

Ancestry also stores the profiles forever, unless users ask for them to be destroyed.

The company’s terms and conditions have stated that users grant the company a “perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide, sublicensable, transferable license” to their DNA data, for purposes including “personalised products and services”.

In a statement to You and Yours, an Ancestry spokesperson said the company “never takes ownership of a customer’s data” and would “remove the perpetuity clause”.

(10) STACEY BERG PROFILE. Here is Carl Slaughter’s overview of Stacey Berg.

ECHO HUNTER 367 SERIES
by Stacey Berg
Harper Voyager Impulse

DISSENSION

For four hundred years, the Church has led the remnants of humanity as they struggle for survival in the last inhabited city. Echo Hunter 367 is exactly what the Church created her to be: loyal, obedient, lethal. A clone who shouldn’t care about anything but her duty. Who shouldn’t be able to.

When rebellious citizens challenge the Church’s authority, it is Echo’s duty to hunt them down before civil war can tumble the city back into the dark. But Echo hides a deadly secret: doubt. And when Echo’s mission leads her to Lia, a rebel leader who has a secret of her own, Echo is forced to face that doubt. For Lia holds the key to the city’s survival, and Echo must choose between the woman she loves and the purpose she was born to fulfill.

REGENERATION

Protected by the Church for four hundred years, the people of the City are the last of humanity — or so they thought. Echo Hunter 367, made to be faithful to the Church and its Saint at all costs, embarks on what she’s sure is a suicide mission into the harsh desert beyond the City. Then, at the end of all hope, she stumbles on a miracle: another enclave of survivors, a lush, peaceful sanctuary completely opposite of anything Echo has ever known.

But the Preserve has dark secrets of its own, and uncovering them may cost Echo more than just her life. She fears her discoveries will trigger a final, disastrous war. But if Echo can stop the Church and Preservers from destroying each other, she might have a chance to achieve her most impossible dream — saving the woman she loves.

PRAISE FOR REGENERATION

  • Echo Hunter 367 may be a clone and callous killer, but she’s one with true heart and soul. Regeneration is a thrilling conclusion to Berg’s dystopia duology.” — Beth Cato, author of The Clockwork Dagger series
  • “Regeneration by Stacey Berg is a paean to resistance, hope, and love, a Canticle for Leibowitz that passes the Bechdel Test and then some. This post-apocalyptic clash of values and technology demonstrates beautifully that physical bravery can only take you so far; real change only happens when we have the courage to listen.” – Nicola Griffith, author of Hild

STACEY BERG BIO

Stacey Berg is a medical researcher who writes speculative fiction. Her work as a physician-scientist provides the inspiration for many of her stories. She lives in Houston and is a member of the Writers’ League of Texas. When she’s not writing, she practices kung fu and runs half marathons.

(11) FOLLOW THE MONEY. Lela E. Buis ponders “Why Are Literary Awards so Popular?”

A recent article by Deborah Cohen cites James English The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value. According to English, the number of literary awards has more than doubled in the UK since 1988 and tripled in the US since 1976. Not all these are for SFF, of course. Some of them are big competitions for national recognition and some are only small prizes for local authors. Still, there’s been that explosion. So why are awards so popular?

The answer appears to be economics, which is the answer to a lot of questions about human behavior, i.e. there’s money tied up in the awards process. First of all, many of the prizes charge an entry fee, which means it’s a money-making proposition for the organization offering the award. The Newbery is free. The Pulitzer charges $50. But other smaller contests often have higher fees. The Florida Authors and Publishers Association, for example, charges $75 for members and $85 for non-members to enter their contest. These small organizations tend to cater to independent publishers and authors who hope to gain some of the advantages a literary award can offer, meaning you can add “prize-winning author” to your bio.

(12) DIETARY LAWS OF THE AMAZONS. Speaking of following the money, here’s another entry in the Wonder Woman nutrition sweepstakes.

(13) GREATCOATS. At Fantasy Literature, Bill Capossere does a mock dialog involving Sebastien De Castell and his characters as a salute to “Tyrant’s Throne: A near-perfect close to a great series”.

De Castell turned to Kest. “How would you rate our chances?”

Kest rifled through the manuscript. “We’ll get four and five-star reviews and show up on a dozen Best of the Year lists, after which you’ll get one, no two, major nominations. People will be very sad it’s over and will repeatedly beg you for more. Falcio will appear on five or six €˜Best Characters in a Series’ lists, which won’t do much for his humility, I hate to say.”

“I’ll have you know I have the best humility of anyone.”

“My point exactly. I’ll get a Top 10 mention on a list of Best Swordsperson in a fantasy work, but poor Brasti will almost certainly be forgotten, unless someone makes a list of €˜Characters Who You Only Remember as €˜That Other Guy.’”

Brasti glanced up from polishing his bow.

Falcio raised a finger before Brasti could speak. “Please tell me that isn’t a euphemism. I really€”“

De Castell interrupted. “Don’t break perspective, Falcio. And yes, we all hope it isn’t a euphemism.” …

(14) HISTORY OF FINLAND. Here’s an artistic byproduct of DNA-community research: “Genomes tell their story in a stamp celebrating the 100th anniversary of Finland”.

This year, in Finland, we are celebrating the first one hundred years as an independent country. Our history books tell many details of the past decades that have shaped the present day Finland. With modern technology we can complement the written history by another readable source that has literally travelled with our ancestors throughout millenia. This readable source is, of course, the human genome that we are studying at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) of University of Helsinki. A figure of our population genetic analysis based on the FINRISK study of the National Institute for Health and Welfare ended up in a special stamp designed by Pekka Piippo to celebrate Finland’s 100th anniversary. It is a bit fancy stamp with a price tag of 10 euros and you can see our contribution in it only in UV-light!

(15) HONORING THOSE WHO DIED IN WW2. Robert Kennedy suggests that as we begin Memorial Day Weekend in the U.S. we increase our appreciation of the cost of war by viewing The Fallen.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, JJ, Robert Kennedy, Mark-kitteh, John King Tarpinian, Carl Slaughter, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]

106 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 5/26/17 Hey Mr. Tatooine Man, Use The Force For Me

  1. My enjoyment of BayCon is being interrupted by an attack of depression which is interfering with my ability to wander around looking for socialization opportunities. (It’s a conundrum: one of the surest ways to get me out of this mood is small-group socializing with congenial people, but what the mood most interferes with is my ability to seek out socializing and look like I’m open to it. At the moment, I’m hiding in my room.)

  2. Hampus! I am so excited for you! I hope you will keep sharing pictures with us.

    It makes me a bit wistful, because the rescue kitten I picked was already at least 5 months old (they’re not sure) and pretty good-sized by the time I got him. Still fun, but not the same as a baby kitten to whom everything is new and exciting. So I enjoy getting to hear other peoples’ adventures with their baby SJW credentials.

  3. I am currently reading The Wanderers by Meg Howrey, and I have to ask if anyone else thinks that there’s no way in hell a private space exploration corporation out of Utah, which has hired American, Japanese and Russian astronauts to crew their flight to Mars, would ever name their Mars spacecraft Red Dawn.

  4. @Heather I empathize, although I think I am more tired than blue. Currently hiding in my room summoning up the strength for dinner and or the masquerade. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you jump to a new mood.

  5. @Heather Rose Jones
    My sympathies–I’ve run into that problem as well. Do you know anyone at the con that you can call or text to make plans with? Sometimes having specific commitments will help me drag myself out of hiding. In any case, take care of yourself, and I hope you feel better soon.

  6. Book purge report:

    All books are sorted into alphabetical piles. After that happened , I curled up next to the cat in bed for just one minute…and fell asleep for three hours. My cat emits sleep rays.

    However, I am now clearing the couch area prior to Doctor Who, and will make the decisions to keep, store, or donate tomorrow. Then I have a day to recover!

  7. @Xtifr & @Stoic Cynic: Gateway retrieved from shelf. 🙂 Maybe I’ll read it before or after more Hugo reading.

    @Beth in MA: I like ReaderWare and, like @Kip W, I use a CueCat to scan barcodes, though of course for older ones, sometimes I had to type them in. For pre-ISBN books, I can drag an Amazon URL to a box in the program and it’ll get the data right off the page (or I can manually enter data). That said, whatever you find easiest! But IMHO some program or mobile app automation would make it easier. (I forget if the ReaderWare app lets you scan barcodes from the phone like LibraryThing, since I add new books at my computer and just sync to my phone.)

    I need to talk with my other half (who will no doubt be all “sure, get rid of your books, heh); we’re way past due for another thinning of the herd (sniff, sniff).

    @Hampus Eckerman: Congrats on KITTEH ARRIVAL! Amazingly beautiful kitteh, at that.

    @World Weary: “Kinder Eggs are coming to the US” – Yay! Well, it’s not exactly the same, but probably close enough. I’m curious to see one. 🙂

    @Paul Weimer: Happy trails!

    @Charon D.: LOL at the socks; I just Google’d them and they! look! awesome!

    @Stoic Cynic: In that vein, you reminded me of Suzanne Vega’s “(I’ll Never Be) Your Maggie May” response to Rod Stewart’s old song “Maggie May.”

  8. @ Charon D & Linda S

    Specific plans would help, the problem is that making them requires a level of emotional stamina that’s part of the problem in the first place. Having just finished a couple of minor writing projects, I’m going to go down and have dinner. Alone, if necessary. With company if someone invites me.

  9. @Kendall
    The Kinder Joy eggs have been around in Europe for a while as a summer replacement for regular Kinder surprise eggs, because the chocolate has the tendency to melt in higher tempeatures, which can deform or damage the egg. Ferrero still suspends many of its products (e.g. Mon Cheri, Rocher, Ferrero Kisses) from sale completely during the summer months in spite of improved refigeration. Kinder Joy originally was something of a compromise, because it’s difficult to explain to a kid why they can’t have a Kinder surprise egg in summer.

    You can see some pics what they look like here.

  10. Heather, I hope you find company and that they help you feel better.

  11. “You can see some pics what they look like here.”

    Those are not real kindereggs! >.<

  12. Nope, they’re not. But since the real thing can’t be sold in the US because of regulations, they’ll have to settle for Kinder Joy eggs.

    For that matter, I wish Ferrero would finally stop suspending some of it products from sale during the summer. We have proper refrigeration and I for one also like to eat chocolate during the summer.

    Besides, it’s frustrating if you want to buy a Kinder surprise egg during the summer, either for yourself or as a present for children in the family or neighbourhood and have to settle for a Kinder Joy egg instead.

  13. I haven’t managed to find Charon yet. Heather knows what I look like, tho, maybe we can ask her for a mutual introduction.

    “I say, Miss Jones, I should appreciate it ever so much if you would do me the kindness of properly introducing me to Miss D.”

    Also, YAY for KITTEH.

  14. Wait. What do you mean you can’t buy Ferrero Rocher during the summer in Europe? They’re on sale all year round in the US, although more at Christmas, which is the only time they’re advertised. I could get a giant tub of them at Costco, or a regular size at all the grocery stores until 2 AM.

  15. Hampus
    You’re in a cooler climate, I expect… (Thinking now of the old line, “It was so hot today, the cats were THIS long!”)

  16. @Heather Rose Jones

    My enjoyment of BayCon is being interrupted by an attack of depression which is interfering with my ability to wander around looking for socialization opportunities.

    I feel you. I had an anxiety attack at Emerald City Comicon. Considering that conventions tend to be a “safe space” for me, I was horrified that I couldn’t function. Depression and anxiety really suck the joy out of life.

    I hope the dark cloud passes quickly and you can get back into “con mode”, which is what my husband calls it when I’m actually able to socialize.

  17. @Cora: Thanks for the info! I was going to say I couldn’t imagine a candy I couldn’t buy just because it was summer, but then, there are lots of seasonal candies out there. I found some more pix – hey that’s completely different, but more interesting looking, compares to the regular Kinder chocolate shell. Hmm, in Japan they label the eggs for boys and girls. (sigh)

    “. . . they’ll have to settle for Kinder Joy eggs.”

    I try to buy the real thing any chance I get, though not so much for the chocolate as the silliness. 😉 They make about 50 other types of chocolate that are better, but they don’t contain surprises.

  18. /KinderStalk (yeah, yeah, I should’ve checked it on my previous comment, sorry)

  19. Mallomars are seasonal, too. It’s always a little bit of suspense, wondering if the grocery store will get them back in when October rolls around, or if they’ve decided since they haven’t sold any in a couple of months, nobody wants them.

  20. @Kendall
    The gendered Kinder surprise eggs (regular red and pink for girls) have been available in Germany for a couple of years now. I first came across them when buying Kinder surprise eggs for St. Nicholas day trick or treaters and wondered why Kinder surprise eggs had suddenly gone pink. At home, I realised that I had accidentally bought the pink girl version and promptly bought another batch of regular eggs, because I didn’t want to hand out the pink eggs to trick or treating boys. Ever since then, I’ve always been careful to buy just the regular red and white eggs.

    The gendering of Kinder surprise eggs has been widely criticised and I personally hate it, but apparently it’s paying off for Ferrero. But then Ferrero’s marketing department seems to be very conservative. Kinder Chocolate has always had the face of a kid on the packaging. The face is changed every ten years or so, but so far it’s almost always been boys. There were both girl and boy faces briefly available in the 1970s and again in 2007, but they quickly reverted to using only a boy’s face. And last year, when Ferrero did a marketing tie-in with the Football World Cup and printed the childhood photos of several players of the German national team onto Kinder Chocolate packaging, the usual racists complained because some of the players were POC. Coincidentally, when I suddenly saw a black kid smiling at me from a packet of Kinder Chocolate, I was happy, because we finally got a bit of diversity. I didn’t even realise that it was a childhood photo of Jerome Boateng at first.

    I understand that specific holiday products like Christmas or Easter chocolates are seasonal (though Christmas chocolate regularly shows up in stores in September and Easter chocolate in January, i.e. way before their season). But for regular chocolate products, it doesn’t make any sense in the modern time. And for products aimed at children such as Kinder surprise eggs or Kinder chocolate and other products from Ferrero’s Kinder line, it makes even less sense. For even if adults supposedly eat less chocolate during the summer (and I haven’t even seen any reliable data about that), children don’t care.

    Nonetheless, quite a few manufacturers still stick to the summer break for chocolate. Ferrero is the biggest, but Lindt also suspends sales of some types of chocolate during the summer as do some smaller boutique manufacturers.

    As for why, the most likely reason is that it’s simply an advertising move for Ferrero – look we care so much about quality that we’re willing to forego sales. I’ve also heard that some manufacturers use the summer months to carry out cleaning and maintenance work on their production lines. But considering Ferrero has multiple factories worldwide, that doesn’t really apply to them. And people who’ve worked for chocolate manufacturer Hachez (Hachez is a local company and a popular summer job for students – plus, workers can eat as much chocolate as they want) have told me that there is no scheduled maintenance time in the summer. But then Hachez products are available all year (except for seasonal products), even though Hachez is a high end brand, whereas Ferrero is a mass market brand.

    One possible reason I can imagine is that the problem with improper refrigeration lies not with the manufacturer or the shipping company, but with the retailers. Unfortunately, air conditioning is still not widespread in Europe, particularly Northern Europe. Supermarkets usually do have air conditioning, but they often don’t switch it on for cost cutting reasons (there’s one supermarket chain I call “Stinkoop”, because they can’t even be bothered to switch on the ventilation, let alone the air conditioning, so the smell is awful in there). And smaller shops often don’t have air conditioning at all. So heat damage to chocolate can happen in the summer and if the manufacturers have a contract which requires them to take back or reimburse damaged merchandise, this could become costly.

    BTW, I always have a few Kinder surprise eggs in the cellar, just in case I need one for a neighbour kid, etc… I’ve never had any melt during the summer.

  21. As to chocolate and its availability/non-availability, I had an experience which resolved the question for me once and for all.

    I’m rather fond of malted milk balls and I have an outfit which sells really good ones which I buy as often as is wise (my waistline is the determiner there). They’re in New England, which is typically cooler than it is here in Arizona. They don’t ship chocolate anywhere in the late spring to early fall. I shrugged my shoulders, wondering why but figuring it was their choice.

    I ordered some in early April one year, ahead of their deadline. The temperature here at the time was in the high 70s. It was low 80s when they got here, mild, I thought.

    When I opened the box and looked in the bags, my malted milk balls had melted and fused together in lumps (one per bag). I put them in the refrigerator and basically pried two or three of them loose at a time.

    My innate respect for chocolate means I no longer subject it to the hazards of transit between April and October. It either gets here earlier and I store it, I buy it locally or do without.

  22. @Cora: Thanks for the info & comments! But oh, I like the thought of handing out the pink eggs to boys and blue ones to girls. ::evil grin:: Gendered chocolate, what’ll they think up next. 😛

    “the usual racists complained because some of the players were POC”

    OH GOOD GRIEF! Ahem, sorry for yelling. Le sigh. (Das sigh?)

    “Unfortunately, air conditioning is still not widespread in Europe, particularly Northern Europe.”

    Er, I’ve been meaning to talk to y’all about that. 😉

  23. These are the “shocking” photos of a young Jerome Boateng and Ilkay Gündogan BTW. They were the only two POC in a set of eleven BTW, every other player featured was as white as the inside of Kinder chocolate.

    This is the current regular Kinder Chocolate packaging BTW. And here is an overview about how the packaging has evolved through the decades. It’s telling that the kid on the packaging became steadily blonder and more blue-eyed over time (and it’s been the same boy for over thirty years), while the first photo didn’t look all that different from Turkish German football player Ilkay Gündogan.

  24. Ferrero spokesperson: “It’s totally not true that after 30 years, we are suddenly dropping his picture from our packaging because he has just now revealed how we have screwed him out of royalties for using his image all those years.” 🙄

  25. The Kinder Chocolate packaging was hopelessly old-fashioned long before 2005, which was part of the appeal. Because even while we grew older, the Kinder Chocolate kid was still there, same smile, same eyes, same freckles, never aging and never growing up just like Peter Pan, assuring us that the chocolate tasted just like it always had.

    That is, yes, I agree with you that the reason they changed the kid was because he went public. Especially since the identity of the Kinder Chocolate kid was a closely kept secret. A fellow student at university examined Kinder Chocolate packaging as part of her thesis on childhood imagery and representation and did everything she could to suss out the kid’s identity or at least the history of the packaging. She wrote to Ferrero and got no response and even contacted an actor who’d been rumoured to have been the kid on the packaging (he wasn’t). Coincidentally, she’s also the one who told me that there had briefly been an image of a girl on the packaging in the early 1970s (which I faintly remember – she had pigtails), but that she vanished while Günther Euringer’s face remained.

  26. It’s sort of funny to me that we can’t seem to handle refrigeration in intra-country situations and yet I can happily buy chocolate imported from the UK, US, Europe, Japan, etc., year-round in Thailand, where it’s basically always hot.

  27. @Oneiros: refrigeration on a moving platform is more difficult than at a fixed site. I know refrigeration in shipping is possible — my wife’s brother-in-law added refrigeration to his marine-engineering qualifications — but I don’t know how hard it would be to make sure that a shipment probably-smaller-than-a-container stays cool. Add to this that most cold shipping is probably either refrigerator temperature (~2C) or freezer temp. (>-15C IIRC), while chocolate often shouldn’t be kept even as cool as a refrigerator because it can “bloom” (fats drifting to the outside to make a moldy-looking coating) and I can see why it’s tricky.

    How is chocolate kept in Thailand? Is it cool-boxed, or do you get a different formulation with a higher softening point?

  28. I enjoyed Baycon, but, much like Heather, spent a lot of time in my room. Unlike last year, I could not summon the courage to step into any party rooms. Even though WorldCon San Jose was just around the corner (literally).

  29. Sorry for the delay. I read this a couple times a few days ago, but didn’t have a keyboard at the time.

    (6) Always working on it. Always behind!

    (13) Hilarious piece! Thanks for including it!

    (15) Very thought provoking. Well timed for our Memorial Day observance.

    Regards,
    Dann

  30. @ Chad

    Maybe next time we should make positive arrangements for a group Filer dinner or something. There’s a lot of free-floating introversion getting in the way of spontaneous meetings. (For me, the problem with party rooms isn’t courage, it’s that awkward thing where you’ve walked into a room with no actual purpose other than walking into the room and you’re staring at these other clumps of people thinking, “Now what?”)

  31. @Chip Hitchcock Refrigerated containers or Reefers are actually quite common. They’re the reason why you can get fresh produce or cut flowers from overseas in every supermarket even out of season. Not sure if they ship chocolate in reefer containers, though I suspect they do.

    The problem, I suspect, is more inadequate cooling at the point of sale or in a warehouse than during shipping.

  32. The first time I came across the term “reefer” in a specification for a container vessel, which was equipped with reefer plugs (refrigerated containers require special spaces aboard container ships, because they need to be connected to power supply), I nearly did a double take, because even if you were planning to import that, surely you wouldn’t mention that in the specification for the vessel. It was only when I told the engineer in charge of the project that I suspected the customer might be dodgy, that I learned that reefer means something quite different in this context.

  33. @Cora: I understand about reefers; the question is whether they’re suitable for chocolate, which I’ve read shouldn’t be kept that cold. (I don’t know whether they can be set to maintain (e.g.) 15C, or whether the relatively cheap (lower-fat?) chocolate in Kinder Eggs etc. can be kept at 2C for several weeks without blooming.) I doubt that ship reefers are suitable for cut flowers; from what I’ve read, flowers have to be flown as they don’t last for the weeks needed to ship by sea. (Roses, brought to the US from South America each February, are certainly flown.) I wouldn’t even bet that the air-shipping containers are refrigerated rather than insulated due to the cost of flying non-paying weight.

    My copy of American Science and Invention (1954) suggests that railroaders were speaking of “reefers” by around 1880 (possibly to the dismay of their bosses, who wanted the higher net revenue from shipping live cattle); does anyone have a slang dictionary (e.g. Oxford) for when the term was applied to marijuana?

  34. @Chip Hitchcock: Most of the stores themselves are air-conditioned pretty much 24/7, particularly when it gets REALLY hot. I’m not sure about how they ship it, but I suspect there’s refrigeration involved. I did take a 40 minute walk home once while carrying chocolate and it didn’t seem particularly affected by the heat – I suspect that Morinaga use a chocolate mix that isn’t quite as sensitive to those temperatures, but I couldn’t say for sure. All I know is that dark chocolate DARS is delicious and I eat far too much of it whenever I can find it. (Luckily it doesn’t seem to be particularly common in Korea – my major vice here is Baskin Robbins ice cream)

    Completely the opposite experience: I ordered matcha kitkats to my UK address, and they shipped from Japan and each one had melted into a blob that only vaguely looked like it might’ve been a kitkat once. now I just make sure to buy a few packs whenever I’m heading home, since I’m in ths region most of the year anyway 🙂

  35. Speaking of chocolate, I finally found Salazon dark chocolate with coffee sprinkles again after finding them in Olympia, WA a year or so back. I’ve looked in pretty much every store I’ve been in that had an appropriate section. Wegman’s tends to have two or three Salazon selections, but till now they didn’t include these. The taste is lingering as I write this. (Yeah, I had a bite of chocolate before lunch today.)

  36. @ Kurt: Under many circumstances I’d be in complete agreement with you, and have made the same bitter observation elseNet more than once. BUT… the guy was in a crowded convention center. Even one gunshot would have most likely sparked a panic; an actual firefight would have resulted in casualties. I think the police acted responsibly and without reference to the race of the perp in this particular instance. They wanted him subdued and in custody without anyone else getting hurt or killed.

    (Full disclosure: my partner and I were there, in the dealer room.)

  37. @ Stoic Cynic: I keep wondering about the 8th woman — the one whose car he climbs into without bothering to ask her first, because he’s “gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me”. That line bothered me even as a teenager; now it sounds downright rapey. I guess I’m going to have to write that fic.

  38. Under many circumstances I’d be in complete agreement with you, and have made the same bitter observation elseNet more than once. BUT… the guy was in a crowded convention center.

    As noted earlier, I wasn’t suggesting they should have shot him, or that they were irresponsible in this instance.

    I was suggesting that maybe they could use such skills and training elsewhere, too, and not shoot the unarmed black men for a change.

    They wanted him subdued and in custody without anyone else getting hurt or killed.

    What a good goal. Would that it was the goal more often.

  39. When Modelez (Cadbury) changed what products are manufactured in New Zealand, their blocks of chocolate started being imported from Australia. Their production there is manufactured to be more heat-tolerant, and tastes different. They have been losing market share rapidly ever since.
    Intra-NZ chocolate linehaul is normally done in trucks (rather than containers carried on trucks) – I’m not sure about currently, interisland might involve containers as the transport industry routes around the road and rail links still under repair post the Kaikoura earthquake in November.
    I know a little more than the public about chocolate transport in NZ, but am unsure about how much is commercially sensitive. I will note that reefer containers are well insulated, as are refrigerated trailers. There are trucks and trailers fitted with lesser levels of insulation, which weigh less and give more flexibility (e.g. curtain-sided) .There is also a term in the industry ‘temperature controlled’ which means keeping the cargo within a specified temperature range.

  40. Mondelez has ruined pretty much every chocolate brand it touches. When they (not yet called Mondelez back then) took over Jakobs Suchard in the early 1990s, they immediately tampered with the formula of Milka chocolate. I’d been an avid consumer of Milka through my schooldays. While I was studying for my final exams, I got myself a bar of the “new improved” Milka. I ate a piece and it tasted all wrong. I’ve never bought Milka again.

    These days I only have Milka when someone offers me a piece and it would be impolite to say no. The stuff they produce nowadays doesn’t even remotely taste like the Milka I loved in the 1980s and early 1990s.

    I sometimes do translations for a truck company that builds a lot of insulated trucks. The walls of these trucks can be several centimetres thick and offer temperature-controlled environments in pretty extreme conditions. The projects I work on normally don’t involve the transportation of foodstuffs and produce, though I’ve seen the respective trucks in their workshop, including one that was specifically intended to transport chocolate.

  41. @Lee: If I were hitchhiking through Winslow, Arizona, I’d climb into any car that stopped not driven by Cthulhu without thinking twice if it’s alright. I’ve hitchhiked in blizzards and heat waves and all sorts of circumstances, and I’d be inside shelter in a flash if I had the chance.

  42. @Errolwi: fascinating! I’ll have to do some digging around my area (Boston USA) to see whether the taste change I’ve seen in at least two brands is a source change or just me getting old and not being able to taste as well. I don’t \think/ it’s heat tolerance — the new Lindt bars are just as ready to soften as the old ones — but I don’t know.

    Pepsi-Cola drinkers had an interesting difficulty around here. Coke ships their syrup pre-sweetened to local bottlers (of which there are many, because long-distance shipping of a product that is ~90% water is uneconomical), but Pepsi let local bottlers add sweetener; a New York fan who was frequently in Boston used to load up during his visits because the local Pepsi bottler used real sugar instead of corn syrup.

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