Pixel Scroll 6/23/16 Where The Scrolls Have No Name

(1) THE LEMONADE IS READY. Rachel Swirsky’s Patreon donors are enjoying the squozen fruits of victory.

One of those donors tells me the story has two Chapter Fives.

(2) AXANAR TEASERS. Space.com ran an exclusive story,  “Trailer for ‘Star Trek: Axanar’ Unveiled Amid Lawsuit”, about the filmmaker’s unexpected decision:

A second teaser trailer for a fan-made “Star Trek” movie was released this week, despite an ongoing lawsuit over the film.

The new teaser trailer for “Star Trek: Axanar” was released by the filmmakers yesterday (June 22). Called “Honor Through Victory,” the trailer shows Klingon ships flying through a planetary ring system and features an intense voice-over that sounds like a prebattle pep talk. This is the second of three teaser trailers set to be released this week. The first, titled “Stands United,” also appeared online yesterday. The “Honor Through Victory” teaser trailer was shared exclusively with Space.com.

 

(3) VINTAGE TV. Echo Ishii is tracking down antique sf shows in “SF Obscure: The wishlist Roundup” for Smart Girls Love Sci-Fi Romance.

Since it’s summer once again, it’s time  to I hunt down the really obscure classics or try to sample B/C list  shows and see how many episodes I can survive. This time around I decided to make a list of those shows which I have not seen, but added to my wishlist. Most are only on limited DVD runs.  Based on cloudy memories jarred by  the vast world of YouTube, I  tracked down a stray episodes, or a set of clips, or an old commercial to remind me of their existence. Here are a select few.

The post discusses Mercy Point, Birds of Prey, Starhunter, and Space Rangers.

(4) JIM CARREY TURNS TO HORROR. Variety reports “Jim Carrey, Eli Roth Team on Horror Film ‘Aleister Arcane’”.

Jim Carrey will star in and executive produce while Eli Roth directs the long-in-development horror movie “Aleister Arcane” for Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment.

“Aleister Aracane,” written by Steven Niles, was first published in 2004 by IDW Comics. Jon Croker will adapt for the screen.

Mandeville Films’ David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman will produce along with Michael Aguilar.

The story centers on a group of children who befriend a bitter old man ruined and shunned by their parents. After his death, only they have the power to thwart the curse he has laid upon their town.

(5) TODAY IN HISTORY

Logans Run

  • June 23, 1976 Logan’s Run (the movie) was released.
  • June 23, 1989 — Tim Burton’s noir spin on the well-known story of the DC Comics hero Batman is released in theaters.
  • June 23, 2016 – Today is National Pink Flamingo Day.

(6) FIRST PAST THE POST. Rachel Neumeier tells how she surprised herself in “Hugo Voting: at last, the novels”:

Okay, now, listen. I went in knowing, just *knowing* that I was either going to put Ancillary Mercy or Uprooted in the top spot, the other one second. I hadn’t read the other three nominees at the time. I was happy to try The Fifth Season, unhappy about being forced to try Seveneves, and okay if not enthusiastic with trying The Aeronaut’s Windlass.

That’s how I started out.

I have seldom been more surprised in my life as to find myself putting Seveneves in the top spot….

I guess I’d better read it after all. 😉

(7) PUPPY CHOW. Lisa Goldstein continues her reviews of Hugo nominated work with “Short Story: ‘If You Were an Award, My Love’”. About the review she promises: “It’s a bit intemperate.”

“If You Were an Award, My Love” is not so much a story as a group of schoolkids drawing dirty pictures in their textbooks and snickering.

(8) JUSTICE IS NOT BLIND. Joe Sherry continues his series at Nerds of a Feather with “Reading the Hugos: Short Story”, in which No Award does not finish last….

While I am clearly not blind to the controversy surrounding this year’s Hugo Awards (nor is The G, for that matter), I have mostly chosen to cover each category on the relative subjective merits of the nominated works. I understand that this is something that not everyone can or will choose to do, but it is the way that I have elected to engage with the Hugo Awards. While the result of the Hugo Awards short list is not significantly different in regards to the Rabid Puppies straight up dominating most of the categories / finalists with their slate, the difference is that this year they have selected to bulk nominate a group that includes more works that might have otherwise had a reasonable chance of making the ballot and also that meets my subjective definition of “quality”. That slate from the Rabid Puppies also includes a number of works that come across as little more than an extended middle finger to the people who care about the Hugo Awards. Feel free to argue with any or all of my opinions here.

(9) FEELING COLD. Not that Kate Paulk liked any of these Hugo nominees, but in her pass through the Best Semiprozine category she delivered the least condemnation to Sci Phi Journal:

Sci Phi Journal edited by Jason Rennie – Sci Phi was the only finalist with any content that drew me in, and honestly, not all of it. I could have done without the philosophical questions at the end of each fiction piece, although that is the journal’s signature, so I guess it’s required. I’d rather ponder the questions the stories in questions raised without the explicit pointers – although I will say they weren’t as heavy-handed as they could have been, and they did highlight the issues quite well. I’m just fussy, I guess.

(10) AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL GRAPHIC NOVEL. Paul Dini signs at Vromans Bookstore in Pasadena on Friday, June 24 at 7:00.

Dark Knight

This is a Batman story like no other the harrowing and eloquent autobiographical tale of writer Paul Dini’s courageous struggle to overcome a desperate situation.

The Caped Crusader has been the all-abiding icon of justice and authority for generations. But in this surprising original graphic novel, we see Batman in a new light as the savior who helps a discouraged man recover from a brutal attack that left him unable to face the world. In the 1990s, legendary writer Paul Dini had a flourishing career writing the hugely popular “Batman: The Animated Series” and “Tiny Toon Adventures.” Walking home one evening, he was jumped and viciously beaten within an inch of his life. His recovery process was arduous, hampered by the imagined antics of the villains he was writing for television including the Joker, Harley Quinn and the Penguin. But despite how bleak his circumstances were, or perhaps because of it, Dini also always imagined the Batman at his side, chivvying him along during his darkest moments. A gripping graphic memoir of one writer’s traumatic experience and his deep connection with his creative material, Dark Night: A True Batman Story is an original graphic novel that will resonate profoundly with fans. Art by the incredible and talented Eduardo Risso…

(11) WORLD FANTASY AWARD WINNER. Jesse Hudson reviews Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria at Speculiction.

If it isn’t obvious, A Stranger in Olondria is one of those novels where the road beneath the feet only reveals itself after the reader has taken the step—what the foot lands so rich and engaging as to compel the next step.  The novel a journey of discovery, there are elements of Robert Silverberg’s Lord Valentine’s Castle as much as Ursula Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan.  A coming of age via a very personal quest, Samatar unleashes all her skill as a storyteller in relating Jevick’s tale.

But the novel’s heart is nicely summed up by Amel El-Mohtar: it is about the human “vulnerability to language and literature, and the simultaneous experience of power and surrender inherent in the acts of writing and reading.”

 [Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day LunarG.]

249 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 6/23/16 Where The Scrolls Have No Name

  1. Migrant workers get paid–very badly, but they get paid. Undocumented workers don’t have much option for complaining about their treatment and wages if they want to stay in this country, but they do have the optsongas of walking away, and taking their families with them. They don’t face the risk that their spouses or children or parents will be sold away from them.

    Their conditions aren’t good, but it’s not slavery, or even close.

    As for how the poor, struggling slave owners could have survived without slavery–I say again, slave-driven agriculture was less profitable, not more. The north was eating the south’s lunch because they were learning to use the beginnings of modern agriculture. They were starting to use new tools, machinery, and techniques.

    But doing this required a more educated farm worker. Increasingly they had to be literate. The first agricultural colleges were being founded.

    But all in the north and west.

    The Slave Power couldn’t afford literate slaves. Every future Confederate state made it illegal to teach a slave to read. They had to, because for any individual slave owners, there was a real advantage in having literate, more highly skilled workers, but creating them undermined slavery, because it made those slaves both more able to run, and more likely to get work, in the north or in Canada, if they could make it there.

    It wasn’t really an economic system the slave holders were committed to; there was a way out of that. What they couldn’t accept was a breakdown of a social system that enshrined the planters as hereditary aristocracy, and gave even the poorest whites someone to be superior to, both socially and legally.

    There really is no defending the system and the people you’re defending.

  2. We aren’t ignoring anything else. Your choice of how to talk about slavery has kept this discussion on black slavery in the USA and going around and around.

    What we have and continue to do to Native American Indians in this country is horrendous and a disgrace. We owe them restitution as well as fixing our systems to treat them as equals also.

    We owe many nations throughout the world apologies and possibly restitution for actions we’ve taken.

    The USA is not a country others should look to on how to treat women, immigrants, PoC, etc. We need to stop trying to force our ideals on the world and clean up our act at home. Voters need to make better decisions instead of bigoted ones. They need to start voting for what’s best for them instead of falling for race and other coded messages and voting against their best interest to keep others from getting stuff.

    Maybe in the future you could try not being an apologist in which case we could have a discussion.

  3. There really is no defending the system and the people you’re defending.

    This is why I’m leaving the discussion. I’m not trying to defend it. You’re trying to force me into that position. I said early on that failure to deal with the realities during and after the Civil War are responsible for problems in the African American community today. The rest has been discussion of these realities.

    BTW, slavery is still alive and well in the US. See discussion above.

    Thank you for your comments. Have a good night.

  4. @Lela E. Buis: Again, you’re focusing on Southern plantation owners and erasing the atrocities committed against native peoples under the whole Colonial system. This included widespread slavery and genocide of several native peoples in the Americas, Africa and Australia by European colonists typically driven by economic stimuli and government policies. Some native peoples were entirely exterminated.

    The United States that fought to end slavery is the United States that fought to subjugate the Sioux a decade later, as part of a long history of genocide committed against America’s native people, sure. I focus on slavery, as practiced in the South, because it was the root cause of the Civil War, and a defining American conflict.

    Like everyone else, the South needs to own its history.

  5. “I’m repeating myself, plus I’m noticing that posters here don’t seem to understand the paradox of focusing on black slavery in the American South while erasing these broader repercussions of Western Colonialism, including enslavement of other native peoples and genocide.”

    Oh fuck off, will you? You are using that as an excuse to make southern slaveownership less bad than it was. Over the world some people were working against colonialism and slavery. Others were working for slavery and colonialism. The southern planterns were on the asshole side and they started a war killing one million people because they wanted to continue to earn money by enslaving others and torture them if they didn’t work hard enough.

    Stop apologizing for the bastards who stood in the way of progress, who stood for the continuing inhumanity of slavery.

  6. I will not calm down when a person comes here and claims that a war started to defend slavery had nothing to do with slavery, then says that slavery had nothing to do with racism and then accuses everyone else of ignoring genocide and colonialism.

    There are limits.

  7. There are limits.

    Yeah, there really are. I’m not sure why nearly every idea gets treated as worthy of discussion, but this one baffles me. An assertion that the Civil War was not about slavery is insupportable by anything approaching research into contemporary accounts and instead of everyone shrugging and saying, “ugh, troll,” people engage as if a serious discussion was possible.

    And that’s without the rhetorical flourishes Hampus ably describes as, “then says that slavery had nothing to do with racism and then accuses everyone else of ignoring genocide and colonialism.”

    It is perhaps obvious that the internet is on my last nerve today, but, really, not all ideas are equal.

  8. I would have thought that everyone here would be aware at this point that Buis is a bad-faith, disingenuous troll, after her repeated insistence in threads here on April 15 and April 18 that free speech and criticism are the equivalent of harassment and bullying, and her posts on her own blog which completely misrepresented what Filers said here.

    Today’s series of apologia for slavery is just more of the twisted, fact-free posting which permeates her blog.

  9. Cheryl S.: Those who are offended at others’ willingness to discuss a topic are free to exercise their right to not join in.

  10. No, it was a description of slavery from an economic context. I don’t agree with it because the people involved did not describe themselves in that way, their opponents did not describe them in that way, and because the South suffered one self-inflicted wound after another in slavery’s defense. They defended their system because they believed in it. Once defeated, they fought to retain it. The thing they defended most was racism. That’s what they kept. Looking at that, I can’t say that the desire to be rich was what drove them because most of the people involved were never enriched by slavery. All they gained from it was the ability to say that they were better than someone else because they were white. That’s a poor measure of personal worth.

    When Martin Luther King spoke about Stone Mountain, he did so knowing that it was an explicit monument to slavery. He did so knowing that he could go to cities across the South and see similar monuments, like the carved bones of a monster sticking out of the ground. I’m not from the South but I’ve lived in it for some time, and while it has changed, some people still search for the right necromantic ritual to raise that monster from the dead. Every year there are less of them around.

  11. Lela,

    You are getting so much push back because you have a tendency to say things that are ridiculous, such as this:

    I don’t think you can blame black slavery on “Southern governments.” African slaves were brought to the US by European companies and slave traders were independent businessmen, normally unaffiliated with governments.

    Slavery such as that found in the antebellum South cannot exist without government sanction. Southern governments are blamed for slavery because they created and perpetuated a legal regime that not only condoned bu promoted slavery. One might note, for example, that Southern state governments were unconcerned with state’s rights when it came to enforcing provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act.

    Large scale farming is pretty much unsustainable without government subsidies because it’s economically unprofitable.

    Except that northern farms in the 1860s were able to sustain themselves without government subsidies.

    Rather than continue with the trollish comments, please read the following, which includes a more extensive explanation of the economic issues behind the American Civil War.

    You might want to actually read links before you reference them. The page you linked has the conclusion “[m]oving away from economic differences and cotton as simplistic causes leads to a more complex and far more interesting story.” It, in fact, says that economic differences were not a primary driver of the Civil War, pointing as an example, to the fact that powerful Southern political forces fought to make Kansas and Nebraska into slave states, even though there were never more than a handful of slaves in either territory.

  12. I’m out of the discussion, but I’m encouraging people to read the whole thing. It doesn’t reflect well on the posters to reply to only the last few comments. This also forces the discussion in offensive directions.

  13. Lela E. Buis: Yes, please don’t pursue the discussion in offensive directions. Sincerely, Twelve Hours Ago.

  14. Lela E. Buis: Yes, please don’t pursue the discussion in offensive directions. Sincerely, Twelve Hours Ago.

    Who? Me? Would I do something like that? 😉

  15. Lela E. Buis: This also forces the discussion in offensive directions.

    … says the troll slavery apologist. 🙄

    Troll.

    Please read the discussion.

  16. Lela E. Buis: Please read the discussion.

    I’ve read the entire discussion. As have many other people here. Which is exactly why I called you a slavery apologist — because that is what you have been doing in this thread.

    The fact that people keep straightening out your incorrect “facts” again and again — not just in this thread, but in pretty much every File770 thread on which you’ve commented — while you continue to refuse to listen or learn, tells me that 1) you are a disingenuous, bad-faith troll, or 2) your intellect is so lacking that you are incapable of engaging in a meaningful discussion with intelligent human beings.

    So which is it?

  17. I was trying to be nice until that “You are erasing colonialism and genocide” shit. That was the sort of transparent bad faith that forfeits the right to respectful treatment.

    @snowcrash:

    Where are we at the number of flounces? I lost count at five.

    There are now so many that if Connectionism hadn’t been discredited I’d expect Buis’s flounces to attain sentience.

  18. Still lost count. Regardless, I look…forward? to the now-traditional post on Buis’ blog decrying how people disagreeing with her = Teh Oppressionz, and how people pointing out errors in her arguments and facts = Teh Personal Attack

  19. @Mike Glyer – Those who are offended at others’ willingness to discuss a topic are free to exercise their right to not join in.

    I totally agree. I stayed out of the floating (as in crap games, not as in rubber duckies) gun discussion, because it’s not a topic about which I can be theoretical. This was something else, the issue of Person Says Something Completely Ridiculous and Smart People Engage as if a Valid (but Wrong for Reasons) Topic Has Been Introduced.

    In my experience, when people say utterly silly things* at parties, other people grimace and back away slowly, murmuring about an urgent desire for cheese doodles. On the internet, no matter how ridiculous the idea and no matter the size of the community into which the idea is dropped, people will engage as if the idea has sufficient merit for a discussion to ensue.

    * I don’t mean something like whether Star Wars or Star Trek is better or who would win in a particular superhero fight, because those are fun conversations. I mean something like this, that the Civil War was fought over lawn ornaments or that aluminum foil will protect you from government interference. Only on the internet will intelligent, reasonable people routinely treat all four of those topics as equally worthy of discussion. Depending on my mood, I find that amusing, baffling or commonplace. Today I found it baffling.

  20. Cheryl S.: Most of my experience moderating a comment community has come since the beginning of last year. While some instinctive ideas about doing it served me well, I’ve had to adapt and refine many more.

    One idea I have found almost impossible to let go of, no matter how many times it has been disproved, is that people will realize it’s against their interest to fight with trolls.

    I think they should realize it because they know trolls thrive on attention and will continue to return as long as they get it.

    The reality, instead, seems to be that some folks are grateful to find themselves clearly in the right, or to have a socially acceptable opportunity to vent rage at someone, or feel entitled to act as a community gatekeeper, and to get that payoff requires engaging with the troll. And like most appetites, they increase the more they are acted upon. So, for example, one could never come to the end of a go-round with Brian Z. (though why Brian wanted to invest the energy to play his part I still don’t understand.)

  21. @Kip W.: The quote was sufficiently memorable that all I had to do to find it was type a few key words into Google Groups. Took all of about 30 seconds.

  22. Okay. I guess the thread is pretty much closed up. It’s been very enlightening about attitudes on the subject. Thanks to all who made thoughtful comments.

  23. Mike Glyer: I think they should realize it because they know trolls thrive on attention and will continue to return as long as they get it.

    I participate in a few forums, and my experience is that many trolls will keep coming around even if they don’t get a response at first — their posts will just become progressively more outrageous or abusive until they can finally provoke a reaction.

    What’s more, when community members allow those abusive posts to go unchallenged, it is seen by other people reading the forum as a stamp of approval or agreement. I point to the investigation done of Requires Hate, which discovered that numerous people who were attacked perceived the community in general as being in agreement with the abusive posts because no one spoke up.

    For the trolls like that, ignoring them does not work. The only thing that works is banning them.

  24. @Lela E. Buis:

    Interesting social dynamic here. I’m watching the group leaders check in.

    I am sure this nonsense consoles you, and maybe you can fool yourself with it. But it doesn’t fool anyone else.

    @Mike Glyer: The thing about responding to “trolls” is that it pays to be specific. In this case, Dunning-School mythology was the reigning, popular (mis)interpretation of the origin of the US Civil War until a generation ago, and there is still a desperate minority churning up FUD on the topic. It involves literal factual misrepresentation directly refutable by documentary evidence (the Cornerstone speech and state secession resolutions) and quantitative analysis (the strong correlation between the proportion of enslaved population in a state and the percentage vote for secession). So people are not inclined to let the nonsense stand.

    And in cases such as outright abuse, as JJ points out, “don’t feed the trolls” does the abusers’ work for them.

    Now, Brian Z.. I have always regarded as an old-school troll of the “don’t feed” sort, and have said as much. Someone like Dann I don’t regard as a troll at all: he seems to proceed as a good-faith member of the community who is simply wrong about a lot. This distinguishes him from, say, The Phantom, who seems determined to hang around people he despises, and indeed wants to hang around because he despises us.

    I tend to regard Buis as a don’t-engage; she’s clearly here to confirm her bias that everyone on the left except for her is doing social justice wrong, then run back and post what she imagines to be evidence of this on her personal blog. But on this specific topic, she represents an easily refuted rearguard action on a topic that matters not just for historical understanding but contemporary politics, and that merits making the refutation.

  25. @Mike Glyer
    For me I think there is a bit of optimism: maybe the person doesn’t quite mean what they are saying and I can help them see where they are mixed up. I saw Brian Z and The Phantom as out there trolls. Lela E Buis hadn’t pinged the level of hate, disrespect, and just trolling they did so I was in optimism mode combined with someone on the Internet is wrong.

    Combined with what JJ says only for really out there trolls I do feel once everyone has made it clear what they think once in a thread they don’t need to continue – community members will see it’s considered wrong – unless they are attacking someone in which case help person if they need it. Banning of such trolls with a statement they’ve been banned because of their ongoing disruptive rude hateful (whatever the reasons) behavior let’s the community know what is or isn’t acceptable.

    I didn’t stick with my flounce – bad Tasha – sorry filers.

  26. Also, the folks who pointed out Buis’ misstatements about “40 acres and a mule” being a systematic reparations program were giving her a chance: it was possible that she had made a good-faith error and would demonstrate that good faith with a forthright acknowledgement, and incorporate the new information into a better understanding of the history. That didn’t happen; instead she proved her bad faith on the topic. But it might have gone the other way.

  27. What’s wrong with me? I’m laughing at three dots here.

    By a coincidence, Jim’s longer statement just above sums up my feelings on the recent exchange. I mention it this once so I’m not supporting Buis’s points by my silence.

  28. Sociologically, I’m interested in seeing how being confronted by actual historical facts about the American Civil War will be presented as vile oppression and irrational attacks.

    And of course that interesting contrast about the Puppies.They’re all about being big super patriots. Right up until it comes to apologizing for an entire movement composed of traitors to the United States in the strictest sense of the word. One does wonder what about the old South, with its history so easily available, is so attractive to them.

  29. They’re not even the usual three dots. Normally, in humor, we find the Three Dots of Irony, placed at the end of the sentence to let the readers know they’re supposed to express amusement now. Like this…

    There’s also the Three Dots of Pathos, when someone is writing verses of soppy bathos and can’t be troubled to find the right punctuation. (Funerary tearjerking verses kept going long after Mark Twain elevated them to high kitsch. Now and then I would find a publication like The Highway Evangelist that exists in an alternate world from mine publishing doggerel about, oh, some poor abused orphan (of course it would be heart-rending in real life, but they manage to make it ludicrous), and the distinguishing feature would be a succession of sentence fragments with breathless ellipses at the ends of phrases (and the middles, sometimes) just piling on the hurt.

    A similar prose style exists in online comment sections, where there is an apparent belief that the more times you type the period key, the more deep thought is indicated in the preceding words (many or most of them in all caps). I am not above using it myself, since it is so clearly the mark of a keen intellect. I, however, save my all-important time and energy by efficiently typing ellipses instead of periods, thus trebling the return on my effort…………………

  30. Kip W: Very right you are about the dots. Using ellipsis to signal irony (or attempted irony) is practically my greatest literary crutch.

  31. Far be it from me to rob someone of a crutch. Crutches are good, because they help us stand and get around, though they can be a pain in the arm pit. But perhaps I’ve taken this analogy far enough.

    Also wanted to share some bounty: my favorite book of poems, a paperback which (safe in a plastic VHS sleeve) it used to be in my backpack around the calendar as the book I could always reach for. Besides the poems, it has a great little precis of each chosen poet that made it well worth its weight in my labor. It has a PDF of page facsimiles that I am putting on my phone in a minute. But I came here to tell you guys first. Because you are so swell.

  32. @Kip W, I’m pretty sure that book (found in a dust free but generally empty corner of my Catholic school’s library) was my first introduction to secular poetry. I downloaded it to my Kindle app, because I want to see the full glory of the facsimile. Thank you!

    @Mike Glyer, yep, root and branch.

    @JJ – What’s more, when community members allow those abusive posts to go unchallenged, it is seen by other people reading the forum as a stamp of approval or agreement. I point to the investigation done of Requires Hate, which discovered that numerous people who were attacked perceived the community in general as being in agreement with the abusive posts because no one spoke up.

    I don’t want to belabor the point, but I definitely draw a distinction between abusive posts, which should be refuted vigorously and with as much heat as possible, because everyone needs to see that abuse is decidedly not a community value (plus, bullies rely on bystander silence to increase their effectiveness, so it’s important to not let them have it) and stupid ideas.

  33. @Cheryl S stupid ideas

    But if we let stupid ideas stand lurkers & the ignorant poster might mistakenly think we agree with them. It would be awful for bad, wrong, foolish ideas to get ascribed to a community I’m a part of. I couldn’t stand by and let it happen… Apparently not yesterday or today anyways. 😉

  34. Cheryl S., it is my pleasure. I forgot to mention that I’m particularly indebted to this book for introducing me to Chidiock Tichborne’s elegy. The version in the book is, for some reason, slightly paraphrased (they have “fallen” where the original had “dropt,” for instance, a change that introduces a polysyllable to a work that is otherwise all in words of one beat), but the poem and its introduction are simply amazing, and I wouldn’t have missed either for the world.

  35. Tasha Turner: But if we let stupid ideas stand lurkers & the ignorant poster might mistakenly think we agree with them.

    I’m not at all good at reading people’s minds, and one way I can find out why they have views that conflict with mine (and each other) is to host a space like this where people can advocate for themselves.

    That means sometimes wise opinions are expressed here that I don’t hold, and may not adopt. As for the foolish opinions, or the arguments based on sham history, how many times in a 24-hour period do they really need to be refuted? I have more faith than that in the cognitive ability of most fans.

  36. During the BBS-times, we used to have irony-paranthesis. Like: (. Trump seems like a sophisticated fellow. .) Sometimes shortened to a (. .) at the end.

    Now it is easier to use italics.

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