Pixel Scroll 11/29/17 I Have Discovered A Truly Marvelous Pixel, Which The Margin Of This Scroll Is Too Narrow To Contain

(1) ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTING. A week ago Bleeding Cool reported “Adult-Themed Site Cosplay Deviants Has Trademarked Cosplay is NOT Consent”.

An explosion of chatter has erupted online as people have taken notice that the cosplay-themed porn website Cosplay Deviants trademarked the phrase “Cosplay is NOT Consent.”  The idea that this particular site is positioning itself as the “champion” or “leading edge” of the effort to have more conventions implement and post harassment policies has taken the community by surprise…

Additionally, there have been comments online to the effect of Cosplay Deviants CEO Troy Doerner approaching conventions attempting to get royalties for using the Cosplay is not Consent trademark.

In the face of negative public reaction, Troy Doerner says he has now legally abandoned the trademark.

So here’s the thing: I will continue to work to combat harassment of cosplayers in the fan community hourly, daily, and yearly until I retire from all of this. Cosplay is NOT Consent is a phrase that carries weight, impact, and meaning for those that listen to the message and not just read the words.

I have no intention of stopping my work supporting this vital movement in fandom.

I have, however, decided to legally abandon the trademark… a process which was finalized just prior to this post. There have been a number of valid points made regarding securing it, and (even if it was for the right reasons) doing so isn’t a simple solution to a very complicated topic. We’ve heard the community and we will continue to be a part of this discussion, but this just seems like the best course of action.

So thank you to everyone that professionally shared your opinions and feedback with me to help lead to this decision. It wasn’t an easy conclusion to come to, but that’s the best part of being a part of this business: the opportunity to learn, evolve, and finding new ways to grow.

Online records show the trademark surrender was received November 28.

(2) RSR. Keffy and several coauthors have written “An Open Letter With Respect to Reviews Published on Rocket Stack Rank”. This is just one of a number of points:

The reviewer, who is not trans and/or non-binary, makes judgments about the validity of pronouns and identities, and decides which author “makes good use of [transness]” and which authors do not. This is problematic and hurtful. This is a way of saying “you do not belong.” A way of saying “stories about you don’t belong.” When reviews specifically cite pronouns of characters as justifications for rating a story down, a line is crossed. A line where not only writers but readers may find their identity questioned, belittled, and willfully misunderstood. A line that RSR crosses often and with seeming impunity.

Over a hundred people have cosigned the letter in comments.

(3) FAKE NEWS. CBR.com reports the deception continued for over a decade: “The Strange Tale of CB Cebulski’s Time as Akira Yoshida”.

The comic book world was rocked today by news that new Marvel Editor-in-Chief, C.B. Cebulski, has admitted that he wrote under the pseudonym “Akira Yoshida” for two years from 2004-2005 while he was an editor at Marvel Comics.

The first work by “Akira Yoshida” was published at Dark Horse Comics in early 2004, but then he debuted at Marvel with an Elekta miniseries.

… Finally, today, Cebulski admitted to Rich Johnston that he was, in fact, “Akira Yoshida,” telling Johnston:

I stopped writing under the pseudonym Akira Yoshida after about a year. It wasn’t transparent, but it taught me a lot about writing, communication and pressure. I was young and naïve and had a lot to learn back then. But this is all old news that has been dealt with, and now as Marvel’s new Editor-in-Chief, I’m turning a new page and am excited to start sharing all my Marvel experiences with up and coming talent around the globe.

(4) WHALEFALL. Ursula Vernon’s Hugo acceptance and sea life speech, “An Unexpected Honor”, has been posted by the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.

Well. This is an unexpected honor. My fellow winners have said some very meaningful things up here on the stage tonight.

I want to talk to you about dead whales….

(5) WHERE’S MY CAR AT. The internet vote on this was so close they almost had to throw it to the House of Representatives.

(6) NO TURKEYS HERE: Jason, at Featured Futures, gives out a list of, and some comments on, some of the month’s fiction he was most thankful to read with the “Summation of Online Fiction: November 2017”.

As I mention in the relevant recommendation, I belatedly discovered that the SFWA had added the flash zine Grievous Angel to its list of pro markets, so I caught up on it. Even with its intermittent microfiction help, this was a light month in which I read about 134K words from thirty-four of thirty-six November stories. This month’s recommendations and honorable mentions, especially for science fiction, are also fairly light. There were still several good stories, though, and the 238th number of Beneath Ceaseless Skies was especially noteworthy.

(7) WRITING ADVICE. Author Susan Triceratops invites you to “Ask A Triceratops” at Camestros Felapton’s blog:

So would I include a love story in a zombie survival novel? You betcha! A group of survivors learning how to be tough in a world full of remorseless yet stupid predators? That’s practically soap-opera for a triceratops. You may not believe this but your average T-rex was either an idiot or a drunk or both.

(8) VESTIGES. It makes me glad to know someone has preserved this sort of thing, although I could not afford to own it: “The Bugle Which Sounded Taps for Lincoln”. The bid is up to $80,000. And come to think of it, if I had that money I wouldn’t be spending it on a collectible.

According to a June 17, 1923, article in the Columbus Dispatch, “the historic bugle has been located in Columbus and will be used in blowing the assembly call in the ‘Pageant of Memories’ which will be given at the state G.A.R. encampment June 26. The bugle is the property of H. M. Cook, who inherited it from his father, Hiram Cook, who was a member of President Lincoln’s bodyguard.”

The historic bugle has remained in the Cook family ever since. In 1973, it was loaned to the Smithsonian Institution as part of an exhibit of artifacts of slain presidents, and displayed alongside the bugle which sounded taps for President Kennedy. A photograph of the Smithsonian display accompanies the bugle, along with as letter of thanks from the Associate Curator of the Division of Political History. It has been consigned for auction by a direct descendent of Hiram Cook whose notarized affidavit accompanies the lot.

(9) FLASH EXEC PRODUCER FIRED. Variety reports “‘Flash,’ ‘Arrow’ EP Andrew Kreisberg Fired Amid Harassment Allegations”.

Andrew Kreisberg has been fired from his role as executive producer on superhero dramas “The Flash,” “Arrow,” “Supergirl” and “Legends of Tomorrow” amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment.

“After a thorough investigation, Warner Bros. Television Group has terminated Andrew Kreisberg’s employment, effective immediately,” said the studio in a statement.

…Warner Bros. Television, which produces the DC Comics-inspired dramas for the CW, suspended Kreisberg Nov. 10 from both productions and launched an investigation into multiple claims of sexual harassment on the series. Berlanti and Schechter met with the casts and crews of their series in the days after the allegations surfaced in a Variety report.

In a piece published Nov. 10 at the time of Kreisberg’s suspension, 19 women and men who worked on the Warner Bros.-Berlanti shows described being subjected to or witnessing incidents  similar incidents of inappropriate touching and endemic sexual harassment. The sources spoke with Variety on condition on anonymity. Kreisberg has denied the allegations.

[Hat tip to SF Site News.]

(10) KEILLOR FIRED. The former Prairie Home Companion host has been canned, too. “Garrison Keillor Fired for ‘Inappropriate Behavior’ 1 Day After Defending Al Franken”Jezebel has the story.

Garrison Keillor, the former host of National Public Radio weekend staple, A Prairie Home Companion, has been fired by Minnesota Public Radio for “inappropriate behavior.”

In a statement to the Associated Press, Keillor confirmed that he had been fired over what he cryptically described as “a story that I think is more interesting and more complicated than the version MPR heard.” MPR confirmed Keillor’s termination to the AP, writing in a statement that it is, “terminating its contracts with Garrison Keillor and his private media companies after recently learning of allegations of his inappropriate behavior with an individual who worked with him.” MPR added that it will no longer re-air episodes of Prairie Home Companion where Keillor is the host. “The program’s current iteration hosted by Chris Thile will get a new name,” the AP reports.

(11) FEELING BETTER. The Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge blog explores “How Independent Bookstores Have Thrived in Spite of Amazon.com”.

Here are some of Raffaelli’s key findings so far, based on what he has found to be the “3 C’s” of independent bookselling’s resurgence: community, curation, and convening.

  • Community: Independent booksellers were some of the first to champion the idea of localism; bookstore owners across the nation promoted the idea of consumers supporting their local communities by shopping at neighborhood businesses. Indie bookstores won customers back from Amazon, Borders, and other big players by stressing a strong connection to local community values.
  • Curation: Independent booksellers began to focus on curating inventory that allowed them to provide a more personal and specialized customer experience. Rather than only recommending bestsellers, they developed personal relationships with customers by helping them discover up-and-coming authors and unexpected titles.
  • Convening: Independent booksellers also started to promote their stores as intellectual centers for convening customers with likeminded interests—offering lectures, book signings, game nights, children’s story times, young adult reading groups, even birthday parties. “In fact, some bookstores now host over 500 events a year that bring people together,” Raffaelli says.

(12) INSIDE JOB. B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog recommends these “10 Fiendishly Clever Sci-Fi Locked Room Mysteries”.

The locked room whodunnit is a stalwart of the mystery genre—the seemingly impossible crime committed inside a sealed-off room. Agatha Christie had several famous locked-room mysteries, including Murder on the Orient Express, the latest cinematic adaptation of which is currently chugging through a successful theatrical run. But locked room mysteries aren’t just Poirot’s home turf—more than a few SFF authors haven’t been able to resist the lure of the format, crafting fiendish puzzles in science-fictional contexts (locked rooms beget locked spaceships easily enough). The 10 books listed here offer fantastic sci-fi mysteries that rival anything in Christie’s oeuvre.

First on their list:

Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty
A locked-room mystery nestled comfortably inside a big-idea sci-fi premise, Lafferty’s latest is a interstellar page-turner that puts an innovative twist on cloning tropes. Societal and climate collapse drives humanity to send 2,000 cryo-frozen people to a distant, Earth-like planet on a ship crewed by six criminals who volunteer to be cloned again and again as they shepherd their precious cargo to its final destination. Every time the crew is cloned, they maintain their collective memories. When they wake up at the beginning of the novel, however, their former bodies are dead—brutally murdered in various ways. The ship is in shambles (the gravity is off, the controlling artificial intelligence is offline, and they’re off-course); and their memories (and all other records) have been erased. The six have to clean up the mess—but they also have to figure out who killed them and why, and how to survive within a paranoid pressure-cooker of a ship.

(13) THE BARRICADES. Cat Eldridge sent the link along with the advice, “Do read the comments — there’s a lot of hate for the show which is actually quite good. I think too many haters of Discovery were the same ones who hated Enterprise in that both shows deviated in major ways from the so-called canon of the now fifty-year old TOS.  A show that at times was perfectly horrid.” — SyFy Wire’s Swapna Krishna discusses “The problem of gatekeeping in Star Trek fandom”.

…Some, like me, love it. Others don’t. Still others are angry about the delivery method. Whatever your feelings on the show are, they’re your business. No show is perfect, and no show is for everyone, and that’s okay.

That being said, there’s been a disturbing trend among the ranks of Star Trek fandom that has turned its back on the show. It’s not enough that they don’t like it; they’ve decreed that anyone who enjoys the show isn’t a real Star Trek fan. And they’ll pop up in Facebook comments, in Twitter mentions, everywhere they can to make sure you know it.

I’ve been called a lot of things because of my vocal support for Star Trek: Discovery, from a fake Star Trek fan to a shill for CBS. The words don’t bother me. The mindset behind them, the gatekeeping of what a “real” fan is, does. The fact is that some people, mainly men, are trying to tell those of us who are enjoying the show that we aren’t “real fans” of Star Trek. And it just so happens that the bulk of these fans are women and people of color.

(14) BEYOND THE PAPER CRANE. This news will do more than lift your spirits: “Robot Muscles Inspired By Origami Lift 1000 Times Their Weight”.

The delicate art of paper folding is playing a crucial role in designing robotic artificial muscles that are startlingly strong. In fact, the researchers say they can lift objects 1,000 times their own weight.

The researchers say the muscles are soft, so they’re safer compared to traditional metal robots in environments where they would interact with humans or delicate objects, and they can be made out of extremely low-cost materials such as plastic bags and card stock. Their findings were published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

(15) BAG YOUR TRASH. Space junk mission “”RemoveDebris” prepares for launch”.

A mission that will test different methods to clean up space junk is getting ready for launch.

The RemoveDebris spacecraft will attempt to snare a small satellite with a net and test whether a harpoon is an effective garbage grabber.

The probe has been assembled in Surrey and will soon be packed up ready for blast off early next year.

Scientists warn that the growing problem of space debris is putting spacecraft and astronauts at risk.

It is estimated that there are about half a million pieces of man-made rubbish orbiting the Earth, ranging from huge defunct satellites, to spent rocket boosters and nuts and bolts.

(16) LEAP YEAR. Not quite Mark Watney’s jump — but this doesn’t use special effects: “Daredevils jump from a mountain into a plane”. Video at the link.

Fred Fugen and Vince Reffet from France jumped from Jungfrau mountain into a moving plane.

It was to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Patrick de Gayardon’s achievement in 1997, when he jumped from an aircraft into a moving plane

(17) LUNARBABOON. Huffington Post profiles online comic creator Chris Grady: “Dad’s Sweet Comics Promote Empathy, Tolerance And Love”. Some of the examples in the article use genre references.

As Lunarbaboon gained a bigger following, [Chris] Grady decided to use his popularity for good. He often draws comics with positive messages that touch on social justice, gender issues, xenophobia and more.

“I think it is impossible not to be influenced by the world around you. There is a lot of bad things happening in the world, but there is also a lot of good,” he said. “I try to find the good or humorous in the difficult things that happen to us every day.”

(18) BLUE MARBLE. Video taken during a spacewalk: “Footage of Earth from the International Space Station”.

NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik filmed his maintenance mission outside the International Space Station. The mission took Mr Bresnik and astronaut Joe Acaba six hours and 39 minutes.

(19) BACK TO THE CANDY-COATED FUTURE. Adweek covers what happened next in “21 Years Later, M&M’s Unwraps a Sequel to Its Classic Christmas Ad”.

For over 20 years we’ve watched Santa and Red faint on Christmas Eve. Now find out how Yellow saved Christmas that fateful night and showed everyone the true meaning of the holidays.

 

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, JJ, mlex, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Hampus Eckerman, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]

115 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 11/29/17 I Have Discovered A Truly Marvelous Pixel, Which The Margin Of This Scroll Is Too Narrow To Contain

  1. @John: “It’s amazing his monologues stayed at the relatively high quality they did for so long. It’s a little unfair to kick them for having eventually grown stale, but they did.”

    Even Charles Schultz’s Peanuts eventually went stale. 😉 FWIW, I thought Keillor would have been better off retiring after the 40th anniversary of the show back in 2014, but there wasn’t a viable replacement in the wings just yet.

  2. Back from court. Was reminded that Alice the dog is almost certainly sixteen now, as it has been two years since she was seized from her hoarder owner. I testified, another foster mom of another of the seized dogs testified, and also the Animal Control officer.

    The president of the local humane society was not allowed to testify about the vet bills.

    We will hear nothing about a decision until at least next week.

    @techgrrl1972–

    You know, WRT Garrison Keillor, I would hate to see us fall into the trap of “we’ve been ignoring women for so long that every accusation MUST be true.” because so far there is no information about what exactly was going on.

    No, we don’t, but we do have a Not A Denial from Keillor. I mean, really, “The story is, I think, more interesting and complicated than MPR was told.” Seriously? That’s the best he can do?

    To me, that sounds like an admission he did what he was accused of, but thinks it was okay because Reasons. She just didn’t understand, see?

    It may strike you very differently, I know, but Franken’s and Takei’s responses were much more convincing to me (even as I see Franken’s actions and words as imperfect, and continue to go back and forth on whether he needs to resign.)

    Currently listening to Empress of Mars, by Kage Baker. Really enjoying it.

  3. Joe H. on November 30, 2017 at 9:44 am said:

    I hate “ya’ll” also. It’s wrong – if you’re going to shorten “you all”, it’s going to become “y’all”. That’s basic English contraction, and the apostrophe tells you where the missing letters were.

  4. WRT to the decision to terminate Keillor’s business ties to American Public Media, according to what I’ve read from reports there was an investigation that started several weeks ago after the alleged improper conduct was reported and that a decision was reached based on what was determined about the incident.

    Given Keillor’s financial importance (as well as historical importance) to APM (and Minnesota Public Radio), it’s difficult to believe that the decision to terminate the relationship was reached lightly, or was based on simply believing the accusation was true on the face of it.

  5. @ Paul Weimer

    Well, barbeque has been a regional thing for a very long time in America until relatively recently, when it has homogenized somewhat and spread to places like New York City (!). Texas has one way of doing it, North Carolina another, and so on. It used to be that barbeque cooks seemed to be speaking different languages.

    Cooks in each region often proclaim that they possess the One True Barbeque and sneers pass between each other fairly regularly.

  6. I’d hate to fall into the trap of repeatedly seeing evidence from multiple sources and circumstances (all of which corresponds with a more general hypothesis that itself has widespread evidence and which while intrinsically falsifiable is repeatedly not falsified but rather confirmed) and then draw some general conclusion – because maybe there would be some occasional exceptions and then on rare occasions my generalisation might be a bit wrong.

  7. @Rob Growing up in NYC…yeah, Barbeque was not a thing. I only learned about barbeque when I left. Now I am firmly in Midwest Kansas-City style land barbeque, so that’s what I am used to. But I don’t have a strong preference if I like the taste. It more comes down to what kind of meat is involved…

  8. (10) KEILLOR FIRED.

    A bit of context up front. I loved GK’s PHC. My family got to hate Saturday nights, but I loved them. But I gave it up about a decade or so ago after GK stated that people that were opposed to nationalizing our health care system should be denied access to all medical care. Seeking death (or at least harm) for people with whom one disagrees on a political issue is unacceptable. Or it should be.

    And I sorely missed listening PHC every week thereafter. (Perhaps he should have considered that NPR’s listenership demographics are pretty close to the rest of the nation; ~1/3 self-identifying as “liberal”.)

    The music wasn’t always my speed, but it was usually good enough. The radio theater/humor bits were great. And his Woebegone segments were almost uniformly entertaining and inspiring.

    So I find the report of his apparent crude behavior to be quite disappointing.

    I’m alarmed at how NPR/MPR/etc. are treating him. He is being quickly disappeared. I can easily understand discontinuing any current projects. I can also understand how the joint ownership of PHC and other existing properties make this difficult.

    But they have ghosted him from their websites. Links to GK’s profile on the PHC website have been 404’d. His current project curating poetry has been similarly black-holed.

    Without endorsing his treatment of women or opposing NPR’s decision to terminate their relationship with GK, I do want to support his right to retain control of and access to the creative properties in which he has a legal and vested interest.

    Regards,
    Dann

  9. Dann, do you have any evidence that he does not retain control of and access to the creative properties in which he has a legal and vested interest?

    MPR and co pulling that content from their website doesn’t mean Keillor does not still have control and access to his intellectual property.

  10. @Rob
    This is what happens when I leave NYC…the subways go to crap and the Barbeque and burgers get good.

  11. @Dann–

    A bit of context up front. I loved GK’s PHC. My family got to hate Saturday nights, but I loved them. But I gave it up about a decade or so ago after GK stated that people that were opposed to nationalizing our health care system should be denied access to all medical care. Seeking death (or at least harm) for people with whom one disagrees on a political issue is unacceptable. Or it should be.

    So, you’re absolutely livid at the politicians trying to kill the ACA and cut off my and millions of other Americans’ access to healthcare for purely ideological reasons, right?

    I’m alarmed at how NPR/MPR/etc. are treating him. He is being quickly disappeared. I can easily understand discontinuing any current projects. I can also understand how the joint ownership of PHC and other existing properties make this difficult.

    But they have ghosted him from their websites. Links to GK’s profile on the PHC website have been 404’d. His current project curating poetry has been similarly black-holed.

    Without endorsing his treatment of women or opposing NPR’s decision to terminate their relationship with GK, I do want to support his right to retain control of and access to the creative properties in which he has a legal and vested interest.

    What’s your evidence that he doesn’t still control his intellectual property?

    NPR or MPR not linking to it is not evidence of that. Not even a little bit suggestive of it. Not linking to the sites and content of someone they’ve fired and severed all ties with is an utterly predictable and normal event. He might even have told them to because he doesn’t want his content being used to make their sites attractive destinations anymore.

  12. FWIW, regarding The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor, my guess (based on the title, mostly) is that the program doesn’t belong to Keillor but rather features him. So I think it’s now permanently ended. Keillor may try and start his own version, but he’d have to hire new staff for it as the now ended program was produced by Minnesota Public Radio. MPR might revive it with another host later.

    As for the Prairie Home Companion program, my guess is that Keillor does own that intellectual property, hence the termination of rebroadcasts and the renaming of the current PHC with Chris Thile.

  13. With all the takedowns it’s getting hard to do on-line research on this stuff, but all the PHC stuff is at least partly owned by GK (produced by Prairie Home Productions), and The Writer’s Almanac is identified in the Google hit as also produced by PHP (though the page itself has been taken down). GK also owns the trademark for the Almanac, along with the various PHC-related names (Lake Wobegon, Powedermilk Biscuits, and so on). It’s entirely possible that at some point he got complete ownership of the programs, which would explain the completeness of the divorce from MPR, APM, and the rest of the non-profit/public-radio side.

  14. I suppose I should put away my Pixel Scroll Companion suggestion.

    I don’t mind ya’ll if it’s used by someone who I know grew up in places where its use is commonplace. I hate it when it’s used by those I know for a fact have never been south of the IHOP-Waffle House line. Like how I also hate how local newscasters have started saying, “over the pond” when talking about the United Kingdom.

    Next up: I complain about “rammed down our throats” in the newspaper comments.

  15. @ Leonora Rose
    Plural of singularized y’all already exists: all y’all.

    @Seth Gordon
    And slapping God with some passive aggression: “ the woman you gave me tempted me …”

    @ various announcing CJ Cherryh sale –
    yay!!!

  16. re Prairie Home Companion: Is it really a surprise that the quality of a variety show, and the individual pieces within it… varies? (Though I have to say that I rarely ever switched radio stations while PHC was on; if one segment didn’t engage me, the next probably would. Some of the Lake Woebegon monologues were great; some… weren’t.)

  17. @Lis

    Changing a government program does not legally prevent you from paying cash for health care or insurance or obtaining coverage via an employer. (and yes, I know American health care is expensive)

    Opposing food stamp programs is not the same as saying that a person should be legally banned from buying food.

    @Lis and Ultragotha

    If the works only exist on NPR/MPR sites and those sites have blackholed the works, then I’m not sure how much control he has. I’d like to be proven wrong by GK having the ability to publish that work in a different venue in the future.

    From what I have heard, he is alleged to have committed one act that was inappropriate and for which he promptly apologized. If NPR thinks the facts as they know them are serious enough to warrant cutting all ties, then fair enough. IMHO, going so far as to erase content and references in response to that one act is a bit excessive.

    Perhaps that one incident is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I would very much like to not be proven wrong on that count. Both because I don’t women to be harassed and because, our political differences aside, I like GK.

    ———-

    On a note that is tangentially related to SF/F, I ran across (3) heavy metal albums that were recorded by Christopher Lee (Dracula, Saruman, etc.). Two of those albums are about Charlemagne. The third is a mixture running from a cover of “My Way” to one song that uses quotes from Cervantes’ Don Quixote. He speaks more than sings.

    If you like metal, you might enjoy these.

    I found them on Spotify.

    Regards,
    Dann

  18. @Dann, come on. I’m not “legally prevented” from buying a Lamborghini either, but if I can’t afford it, what’s the difference? Either way, I DON’T HAVE IT. And if the thing I don’t have is the drugs and/or medical care that is keeping me alive…well, let’s revisit what you said, shall we?

    “Seeking death (or at least harm) for people with whom one disagrees on a political issue is unacceptable.”

  19. Bonnie McDaniel on November 30, 2017 at 3:01 pm said:
    Seconding this: some of us depend on government to stay alive at all. We aren’t independently wealthy, and Social Security and Medicare are insurance programs that we pay for, not “entitlements” that we get for free. (You pay for Medicare even after you retire. It’s not free.)

  20. @Lis and Ultragotha

    If the works only exist on NPR/MPR sites and those sites have blackholed the works, then I’m not sure how much control he has. I’d like to be proven wrong by GK having the ability to publish that work in a different venue in the future.

    For real? Do you seriously think Kiellor doesn’t have copies of all that? Whether he’ll be able to monitize it later entirely depends on what his contracts with MPR and other companies say. But it hasn’t ceased to exist.

    From what I have heard, he is alleged to have committed one act that was inappropriate and for which he promptly apologized. If NPR thinks the facts as they know them are serious enough to warrant cutting all ties, then fair enough. IMHO, going so far as to erase content and references in response to that one act is a bit excessive.

    PHC makes a lot of money for MPR. I do not think they’d sever all ties with Kiellor and rename and rebrand the show for “one act that was inappropriate and for which he promptly apologized”.

  21. P J Evans on November 30, 2017 at 4:15 pm said:
    We aren’t independently wealthy, and Social Security and Medicare are insurance programs that we pay for, not “entitlements” that we get for free. (You pay for Medicare even after you retire. It’s not free.)

    I’m on Medicare and I can vouch that it is not free. EVEN IF you are drawing the absolute minimum Social Security pension, you pay monthly premiums (somewhere in the $115 range) out of that pension. So, $1200/month pension, minus the Medicare premium.

    Since the premiums are income based, they go up as your income goes up. So I pay lots more than my mother did. Even then, it’s a great insurance program that I could not under any circumstance buy on the so-called ‘free market’, due to preexisting health conditions that will only get worse as I age.

    Medicare and Social Security are NOT entitlements — they are earned benefits.

  22. Techgrrl1972 on November 30, 2017 at 5:10 pm said:
    It’s especially fun for me, when my SS is less than $1200 a month. I am damned glad I have investments that I can draw on to keep ends meeting.

  23. @Dann–

    Changing a government program does not legally prevent you from paying cash for health care or insurance or obtaining coverage via an employer. (and yes, I know American health care is expensive)

    I’m 60 years old and on SSDI. I worked and paid taxes from the time I was sixteen until, in the last few years, I became disabled.

    I paid for my SSDI benefits.

    That’s not enough for someone with multiple medical conditions to be able to buy health coverage, in the absence of government regulation and subsidies. If you think it’s perfectly okay for that law and those subsidies to go away, then whatever you tell yourself, you are, in practice, perfectly okay with me being left without access to health care. No amount of dressing it up will change that; I’m exactly the demographic that for-profit insurance companies would rather not ensure at all.

    Opposing food stamp programs is not the same as saying that a person should be legally banned from buying food.

    Again, you can’t buy what you don’t have money for. And the same people who don’t like food stamps and the ACA generally also hate the idea of raising the minimum wage to restore it to what it was originally created as: a living wage for working adults. And who think that only evil commies or stupid, foolish socialists could possibly be in favor of labor unions and restoring the leverage American workers used to have in negotiating fair wages for their labor.

    And yes, if you oppose every realistic means by which people doing the essential work on the lower tiers of the labor force could actually get enough money to pay for both food and shelter, then yes, you are in practice okay with letting those people be either homeless or seriously underfed–possibly both.

    Saying that it’s legal for them to buy food doesn’t change the fact that you’re willing in practice to let them starve.

    If the works only exist on NPR/MPR sites and those sites have blackholed the works, then I’m not sure how much control he has. I’d like to be proven wrong by GK having the ability to publish that work in a different venue in the future.

    You have zero evidence for this bizarre notion, and Keillor has perfectly rational motives for pulling his material from MPR and NPR while preparing to host that material elsewhere.

    From what I have heard, he is alleged to have committed one act that was inappropriate and for which he promptly apologized. If NPR thinks the facts as they know them are serious enough to warrant cutting all ties, then fair enough. IMHO, going so far as to erase content and references in response to that one act is a bit excessive.

    Perhaps that one incident is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I would very much like to not be proven wrong on that count. Both because I don’t women to be harassed and because, our political differences aside, I like GK.

    Keillor and Prairie Home Companion were a major source of income for them, and a ton of good PR. As with Matt Lauer and NBC, it’s just not plausible that he was thrown under the bus without real evidence of serious offenses.

  24. @dann

    A bit of context up front. I loved GK’s PHC. My family got to hate Saturday nights, but I loved them. But I gave it up about a decade or so ago after GK stated that people that were opposed to nationalizing our health care system should be denied access to all medical care. Seeking death (or at least harm) for people with whom one disagrees on a political issue is unacceptable. Or it should be.

    Saying as a purely rhetorical device that X people should be taken out and hung for the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue (or whatever your pet political hobbyhorse is) without the least possibility that such a thing can happen, much less trying to arrange it, is IMO very different from calmly aiding in practical arrangements that WILL result in many real people predictably dying for political reasons, as is happening with the defunding of healthcare.

    Not that I’m particularly interested in defending GK, but it seems to me odd that you feel that a hyperbolic figure of speech that could never become reality is worse than abetting the removal of medical care that will result in the death of real people.

  25. I continue to shake my head at the mess that is the American (USA) healthcare system that requires people to crowdfund so they can afford essential medication. This is not something that should be happening in a developed country.

    As a counter example? Every other developed nation.

    I broke my knee five months ago & had to have surgery, and a four day stay in hospital. I don’t have health insurance. Earlier this week my specialist told me I was done. (There is still rehab to go but that is looked after by physiotherapy visits, and some time next year, there’ll be minor surgery to remove the metal pins currently holding my kneecap together.)

    The only things I have had to pay for so far are painkillers on discharge from hospital (which would have been less than $20) and visits to the physiotherapist which incur a $20 payment per visit (it’s subsidised).

    (And no, we’re not a communist country either. It’s paid for by our taxes.)

  26. @Paul Weimer: @Niall. Black Pepper. On a Pizza?!?. I might try that the next time the sausage shows up blander than I like, or the cheese is too oily; I owe a late friend much for showing me the wonders of fresh-ground black pepper.

  27. @Vicki Rosenzweig

    Also, I was using “zie” rather than “they” for nonbinary people, and for unspecified people (like “your doctor”) because that’s what I first knew someone to be using (back in the 1990s). Then I met someone who prefers “they” but will accept any invented nonbinary pronoun except zie/zir—because they are natively bilingual in English and German, and being called “zie” sounds as weird to them as “ask your doctor what you think” or “I talked to my friend, and you said…” would to most monolingual English-speakers. I still use “zie” sometimes, but am mentioning this because, until then, I’d thought zie/zir to be less ambiguous than other invented pronoun sets.

    zie/zir really does sound very weird in this context, if your German, since it’s very close to our female pronoun. I generally use the singular they, unless someone insists on a different pronoun.

    @Paul Weimer @Niall
    It’s an oddity of Italian restaurants in the UK that the waiter will always show up wih a big peppermill and insist on adding black pepper to whatever you just ordered. They are also very confused, if you say “No, thank you.”

  28. About Garrison Keillor: Maybe now I’ll have to burn my Bill Rotsler “Honorary Important Person” badge that I got signed by Keillor (where it states, “verified by”) when he walked by at an ABA convention back in the 80s.

    I’ll do that right after I get rid of everything Isaac Asimov and H.P. Lovecraft amongst many others were involved in. Or, to use the old fannish expression, Maybe Not.

    Political correctness gone mad!

  29. Andrew Porter: Violating someone’s physical boundaries is quite different from any verbal thing you might think of as political correctness.

  30. @Andrew Porter–

    Maybe now I’ll have to burn my Bill Rotsler “Honorary Important Person” badge that I got signed by Keillor (where it states, “verified by”) when he walked by at an ABA convention back in the 80s.

    I’ll do that right after I get rid of everything Isaac Asimov and H.P. Lovecraft amongst many others were involved in. Or, to use the old fannish expression, Maybe Not.

    Political correctness gone mad!

    Okay, who told you that you should get rid of stuff, whether books, collectibles, other memorabilia, associated with any of those people? Name names! Let us know who these crazy extremists are!

    Unless, of course, they exist only in your head, and you’re feeling picked on because for a possibly quite brief moment in time, women can speak up about molestation and harassment by more powerful men, and hope to be believed.

  31. Thank you Oneiros. It’s been a pretty smooth recovery so far. My left leg is still wimpy & constantly sore* from the physio exercises & I can’t kneel because it hurts but those are all minor niggles considering.

    *If it wasn’t sore, then I wouldn’t be regaining strength & flexibility as rapidly as I am, so there’s that.

    There’s be another surgery to remove the pins so for now, I am a cyborg.
    https://flic.kr/p/YeuokG

  32. I think that server with a giant peppermill is a reaction to leaving a little peppermill on the table and having people steal it. Then management tell the server to make sure to ask diners if they want any pepper, and next thing the server is attacking your lasagne with a peppermill the size of your leg.

  33. On the other hand, at some Italian restaurants near me they’ll offer to shred fresh Paramesian cheese on pretty much anything you order. And I always take them up on it… (For most pasta, there is No Such Thing as too much Parmesian.) But, yes, I’ve had my food threatened by the Giant Black Peppermill of Doom as well…

  34. Re: pepper and parmesan, I don’t mind as long as they ask and wait for a response

    @msb:

    @ Leonora Rose
    Plural of singularized y’all already exists: all y’all.

    1) extra o in my name.
    2) My question was, when the inevitable happens and all y’all gets singularized, what will the plural of that be?

  35. Hampus Eckerman on December 1, 2017 at 6:22 am said:
    The All y’alls is now my new band name.

    The Who??

  36. Yes.

    (Answering Ginger, not Jenora. Though the answer is applicable to both I suppose…)

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