(1) NEW FUTURE UP. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Just posted SF² Concatenation’s fourth and final “Best of Nature Futures stories” of the year, just in time to hold you over the Christmas break. The originals are behind a pay-wall so these re-postings (with permission of Nature and the respective authors) are the only way for the broader public to see these rather neat little SF stories.

The latest is “Fear of the Dark” by Stephen Battersby.  When the nature of dark matter is elucidated, it comes with a problem…

(2) DISNEY FOUGHT THE LAW AND THE LAW WON. “Disney agrees to $233-million settlement in wage theft case” – the LA Times has the story (behind a paywall).

Five years after workers first took Disneyland to court for allegedly skirting an Anaheim minimum wage law, resort owner Walt Disney Co. has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit for $233 million.

The company approved the preliminary settlement Friday, which accounts for back pay with interest as the Anaheim law is set to increase wages in January to nearly $20.50 an hour.

“What we believe is the largest wage and hour class settlement in California history will change lives for Disney families and their communities,” said Randy Renick, an attorney representing the workers in the class-action suit.

Back pay owed to workers from Jan. 1, 2019, when the wage law first took effect, until the date Disney adjusted wages at the end of the court fight last year, accounts for roughly $105 million of the total settlement….

…The company reached an agreement last summer with four unions representing 14,000 workers that raised base pay to $24 an hour….

(3) SEATTLE 2025 COMMUNITY FUND. The Seattle Worldcon 2025 Community Fund is dedicated to helping fans from diverse backgrounds participate in Worldcon by providing financial support for travel, accommodations, and memberships.

They are now taking applications for Community Fund grants. Full guidelines are at the Community Fund – Seattle Worldcon 2025 webpage. They are focusing on assisting fans who are:

First time attendees from the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Alaska, British Columbia)
LGBTQIA+ attendees
BIPOC/AANHPI attendees
Attendees from the Global South

If you belong to one of these groups and would like to apply for assistance, please submit your application here. We are approving applications in waves, with the first wave deadline set for January 17th. Though priority for the first wave will be given to people engaging in foreign travel, feel free to apply at any time if you fit into one of these focus groups.

(4) SEW THAT HAPPENED. Seattle Worldcon 2025 is also running a “Single Pattern Contest”. Contest Administrator Kevin Roche explains:

The Single Pattern Contest has been a tradition at Norwescon for nearly a decade, but the competition has a much longer history in costume/cosplay fandom. As the person who invented the contest (for Costume-Con 12 in 1994), I’m thrilled to have been asked to introduce it to the larger Worldcon audience.

This year there will be two options for patterns: 

• A vintage-style bowling shirt
• A 60s-style slip or sheath dress

In some years, a pattern selected for a single pattern contest has gone out of print or been difficult to locate, so a garment style rather than specific pattern number will avoid that difficulty. If you prefer a pattern, however, here are some suggested patterns:

Bowling Shirt: McCalls M7206* (available as PDF), Simplicity S9279, Simplicity S9157, Vogue V1622,  (unisex), McCalls M8459, McCalls M6972

60s-Style Dresses: McCalls M8466*, Simplicity S9848, Butterick B6990, McCalls M8402 (PDF), Simplicity S1609

More information at the website.

(5) AND WAIT, THERE’S MORE. Here’s the Seattle Worldcon 2025 presentation from last weekend’s “SMOFCon 41 – Worldcon QA”.

(6) I’LL BE DIPPED – IN BRONZE. Gothamist invites us to “Meet the sculptor tricking New Yorkers with art dedicated to the city’s fake history”. (See more at the “Compelling Mysteries and Forgotten Tragedies – NYC Urban Legends” website.)

Joseph Reginella has been building and installing legitimate-looking monuments across the city that commemorate legendary local events that never actually happened.

His most recent creation memorializes Nathaniel Katz, who introduced rats to New York City and was “catapulted into the Hudson River” as punishment, according to the weathered plaque beneath his pompous-looking, rat-covered bust.

Never heard the legend of old Katz?

It’s because he never existed. Reginella, a freelance artist who specializes in mold-making, imagined the tall tale and built the bust in the image of his pigeon-loving neighbor.

But many people both on and offline believed it to be true, according to Reginella and several news reports…

… The way Reginella sees it, the monuments are not meant to be “gotcha” pranks but escapist delights and gateways into a sci-fi version of New York history he has lovingly built and displayed for public consumption. (In addition to the monuments, he creates extensive backstories and even documentaries for his tall tales.)…

(7) DAVID A. MCINTEE (1968-2024). David A. McIntee, author of many spin-off novels based on Doctor Who, reportedly has passed. McIntee has written about many other franchises, too, including Final Destination and Space: 1999. His first full-length Star Trek novel, Indistinguishable from Magic, was released in 2011.  

He has written a non-fiction book on Star Trek: Voyager and one jointly on the Alien and Predator movie franchises.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 15, 1951 – David Bischoff. (Died 2018.)

Our community is blessed with many amazing writers of which David Bischoff was one. So let’s talk about him.  

His first writings were in the Thrust fanzine where he did a mix of commentary and criticism. (Thrust got one Hugo nomination as a fanzine and four as semi-prozine.)  Editor Doug Fratz would later convert it into a semiprozine where Bischoff along with John Shirley and Michael Bishop were regular contributors. 

His first novel, The Seeker, which was co-written with Christopher Lampton was published by Laser Books forty-seven years ago. He was extremely prolific. No, I don’t mean sort of prolific, I mean extremely prolific. He wrote some seventy-five original novels which is to say not within of any of the many media franchises that he wrote within plus another thirty-five or so novels falling within those media franchises.

What franchises? Oh, how about these for a start and this is not a full listing by any means — Aliens, Alien Versus Predator, Farscape, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Jonny Quest, SeaQuest DSV, Space Precinct and War Games. And no, I never knew there were Jonny Quest novels. 

Oh, and I must single out that he wrote two Bill, the Galactic Hero novels, Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Tasteless Pleasure and Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Ten Thousand Bars which is either a great idea or maybe not. Not having read them I have no idea. A Planet of Ten Thousand Bars? Do they clone livers there? 

And he wrote for the Trek universe, two most excellent episodes at that. He co-wrote the ”Tin Man” episode from Next Generation, a Nebula nominee, with Dennis Putman Bailey, and the “First Contact” episode from the same series written with Dennis Russell Bailey, Joe Menosky, Ronald D. Moore and Michael Piller. 

Almost none of his extensive fiction has been collected save that which is in Tripping the Dark Fantastic from a quarter of a century ago which collects a few novelettes and some short stories. 

Very little of his fiction is available from the usual suspects, and even Tripping the Dark Fantastic is not available. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

• Foxtrot alibis the missing LOTR cookie.
• Reality Check remembers why Santa’s sled is no longer pulled by these.
• Working Daze hasn’t solved all the tree-trimming challenges.

(10) MUPPET HISTORY SITE RUNNER CHARGED WITH HARASSMENT. “Muppet History was a bright spot online — now it’s embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal” reports The Verge.

For years, a fan-run account called Muppet History has been central to the Muppets fandom. It shared little-known facts, memes, and wholesome messages, amassing half a million followers on Instagram and more than 280,000 on X. Publicly, it was a wholesome and sweet platform, a passion project that took off. It became an unofficial ambassador of Jim Henson’s iconic cast of characters — inside and outside the world of diehard fans.

But on Monday night, a post on the account’s Instagram page had an ominous tone. “Good Evening,” the message started. “We wanted to take a moment to address some concerns that have arisen as of late.” The vague post — on which comments had been disabled — mentioned “overstepped” boundaries, the “harm” caused, and that people were made “uncomfortable.” It did not specify exactly what had happened.

Since that post, however, a rough sketch has come into focus. Fans claim that Muppet History’s co-runner Joshua Gillespie, who operates the account with his wife, Holly, was sending unwanted sexual messages to other people. Now, it’s gone from a bright spot on the internet to another soured piece of online culture, leaving a small community navigating the fallout….

…A few weeks after receiving the message, Maloney shared the screenshot of the conversation with a small group of close friends on Instagram. The screenshots were leaked and reposted publicly on X. After that, she says, “the floodgates opened” in her inbox.

“People found out that I was talking about this, and they just started coming to me and confiding in me,” Maloney says. They said they received messages “begging for nude pictures to depicting sexual acts and telling them they would like it … just really nasty comments from a Muppet account, and from [Joshua Gillespie’s] personal account.”…

(11) BOOTS. [Item by Steven French.] A pretty horrific cherry, to be honest: “Exceedingly good needle drops: why a 1915 reading of a Kipling poem is the cherry on top of the 28 Years Later trailer” in the Guardian.

The US Navy operates something called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, a training programme designed to equip military personnel with the necessary skills to survive in hostile environments. Part of this involves detaining them in a small cell while being repeatedly played the scariest thing that staff have to hand: a 1915 recording of actor Taylor Holmes reciting the Rudyard Kipling poem Boots.

The poem itself is terrifying enough, the percussive chant of an infantryman marching towards battle, trying to overcome his grinding sense of impending doom. But Holmes’s rendition almost defies definition. It begins haunted, but gradually rises to a possessed roar, as Holmes wails over and over again: “There’s no discharge in the war.” By its climax he’s screaming at the top of his voice, a prisoner of his own madness. It’s a scarring listen. It is also the soundtrack to the 28 Years Later trailer.

(12) TODAY’S THING TO NOT WORRY ABOUT. Although Gizmodo has learned “Tiny Black Holes Could Have Left Tunnels Inside Earth’s Rocks”, they say “A pair of imaginative cosmologists have great news for everyone: If a primordial black hole tunnels through your body, you probably won’t die.”

… “Familiar” black holes, if you can call them that, typically form in the wake of dying stars that collapse inwards. Primordial black holes, on the other hand, might have formed shortly after the Big Bang, when areas of dense space also collapsed inwards, before stars even existed—hence the primordial part.

Scientists have theorized the existence of PBHs for decades, but have never actually observed one. According to the study, some scholars even suggest that PBHs might be dark matter itself (the mysterious substance that makes up 85% of the universe’s mass). “Small primordial black holes (PBHs) are perhaps the most interesting and intriguing relics from the early universe,” the researchers wrote in the study…

(13) SALINE CREEP. “Saltwater Could Contaminate 75% of Coastal Freshwater by 2100” says a study reported by Gizmodo.

…New research from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) suggests that that seawater will contaminate underground freshwater in roughly 75 percent of the world’s coastal areas by the end of the century. Their findings, published late last month in Geophysical Research Letters, highlight how rising sea levels and declining rainfall contribute to saltwater intrusion.

Underground fresh water and the ocean’s saltwater maintain a unique equilibrium beneath coastlines. The equilibrium is maintained by the ocean’s inland pressure as well as by rainfall, which replenishes fresh water aquifers (underground layers of earth that store water). While there’s some overlap between the freshwater and saltwater in what’s known as the transition zone, the balance normally keeps each body of water on its own side.

Climate change, however, is giving salt water an advantage in the form of two environmental changes: rising sea level, and diminishing rainfall resulting from global warming. Less rain means aquifers aren’t fully replenished, weakening their ability to counter the saltwater advance, called saltwater intrusion, that comes with rising sea levels….

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]