90 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/21/21 Pixeland Is The Scrolliest Place On Earth”

1. 2) Still chewing over my thoughts and response to that.

   Will share link with all and sundry once published.

2. First!

3. (16) As Mr Rogers sang “Sometimes it’s very very very hard to wait.”

4. 3) I’m not disabled but there were a LOT of stairs particularly getting to the ballroom where the HUgos were held so I am very sympathetic to Ms. Ness’s complaint/

5. Worldcon:
   I’m a member of BWAWA, and was on the DisconIII mailing list… and didn’t know about Raytheon until we were at the con. We are not amused, esp with their intelligence division being bruited. Yes, I know exactly how tight money is for cons, but still.

   Accessability: I just skimmed her blog post, and would like to note that the ADA is a US law, not applicable in Iceland.

   Beyond that, my SO was in a wheelchair most of the weekend - it's that, or be exhausted and in pain for a week after. No, it wasn't fun. Yes, the wheelchair lifts seem to be powered by four burly squirrels. But we were both there, and my SO was very happy at really attending her first Worldcon. She worked around what she could. She's not complaining, knowing that we'd lost the Wardman Park, and that the Shoreham was what we were stuck with, and that the con at least made efforts to do what they could for accessibility.


   Please note that my SO has run Accessibility for 14 years (not counting the last two virtual ones, although she had significant input on virtual accessibility), so I trust her viewpoint.

6. 3) Not only were there a LOT of stairs, but the elevators were tiny. As were the bathrooms in the standard hotel rooms.

7. 2) I’m curious to know if Raytheon was a last minute sponsor or someone deliberately made the decision to keep it quiet until the last minute. Was Google sponsorship equally a surprise at the awards, or did people know about it before? In San Jose, it was obvious at registration that Google was a sponsor.

   3) One of the things I know how to do is get a stroller with a kid in it down stairs – when I had kids in strollers there were several times it was easier to do that rather than detour to the ramp. I had mostly forgotten about this till reading Mari reminded me that possible to navigate and convenient aren’t the same.

   7) I’ve only read one on the list – Project Hail Mary. I’m still trying to work out what I think about the ending of the book. It’s morally correct, I suppose, but I don’t feel quite right about it.

8. Kathryn Sullivan – you’ve got that right. I’ve never seen such tiny elevators… and I’m old enough to remember one or two that had an operator.

9. When I signed my lease for my new apartment here at 100 State Street, I specifically had to sign paperwork that I would never use the stairways here. It was because I had three right knee surgeries and therefore was deemed a liability if I used them.

   Given how y’all are describing the hotel, I doubt I would’ve been able to navigate it very well it either.

10. bookworm1398 on December 21, 2021 at 7:52 pm said:

    2) I’m curious to know if Raytheon was a last minute sponsor or someone deliberately made the decision to keep it quiet until the last minute. Was Google sponsorship equally a surprise at the awards, or did people know about it before? In San Jose, it was obvious at registration that Google was a sponsor.

    They aren’t listed as a sponsor in the souvenir book but Google was. I’m told Raytheon had a stall at the con.

11. Clickity

12. (10) i donated this commissioned GIF to locus like a year ago

13. (1) It’s so dark so much of the time, I’ve spent all this month thinking, “It must be bedtime.”

    (9) I don’t know anything about the case and don’t have anything relevant to say about the sentencing. I am surprised, though, that neither the prosecution nor the defense rejected Courtney Milan when choosing jurors. I’ve always had the impression that neither side wants a juror who is/was a lawyer, a law professor, a law clerk of the courts, or a writer, let alone someone who’s been ALL of those things.

14. The National Fantasy Fan completes 80 years of publication:

    Table of contents for Volume 80, number 12, December 2021
    In This Issue
    Denise Fisk to Lead Birthday Card Bureau
    Membership Recruitment — Neffys
    The Director’s View
    Letters of Comment
    Bob Jennings — Lloyd Penny — Heath Row
    Jefferson P. Swycaffer — John Thiel
    Sercon
    The Lone Ranger
    Bureaus
    Correspondence Bureau — Book Review Bureau — Fan-Pro Coordinating Bureau
    History and Research Bureau — Round Robins Bureau — Web Site
    Welcommittee — Writers Exchange — Zines
    Treasury — Short Story Contest Deadline Approaches

15. @Laura: You’d think, but when I got called in for jury duty a few years ago (not required to serve), they told a lawyer AND a deputy sheriff that they weren’t automatically excused.

16. 3) When I was much younger, I sometimes pushed around a fellow student in a manual wheelchair. It was a radicalizing experience, seeing how little would need to be done to make her life easier and how hard it was to get anyone in charge to do it. Eventually I talked a couple of deans into getting their lunches in wheelchairs, which pretty quickly led to changes there, but that was my only success.

    Perhaps a similar experiment – having multiple people who don’t normally use wheelchairs do so for the duration of a con – would lead to fewer failures of this nature. Because so far I’m unimpressed by the difference in stated intent of conrunners and the actual experience of congoers.

17. Actually, Marvel didn’t have Jackson’s permission to use his likeness in ‘The Ultimates’. Being a comics fan, Jackson was very surprised to see this. His agents got in touch with Marvel and a deal was made that he would play Fury should any movie ever be made.

18. 17) “ How do you spell Sergei Lukyanenko / Lukianenko? … Sergei Lukyanenko’s … If that is his commonly-used publishing name in the West then arguably it would be best to use that so that folk can internet search out his work.”

    As well as Internet search his Russian chauvinist, anti-Ukrainian, anti-Georgian views.

19. 13) I’m pretty sure Nance was (at least usually) credited as ‘Jack’.

20. Works for me. Jack it is.

21. @Rob Hansen: That makes it even cooler. 🙂

    yellow is the colour of my true loves scroll , in the morning, when we file

22. Tis’ the season to be fily. Fi-le-le-le-le, le-le-le-le. Now repeat 770 times.

23. The details of the Iceland writing workshop are here, and the ADA language was theirs, Mari Ness only copied it.

    Of note is that the accessibility section starts with some very… I don’t know how to put this. They say more-or-less the right things, if oddly and notably with more focus on addressing abled people about disabled people than disabled people themselves, which makes it sound more like performance than earnest effort.

    The access policy of Frameworks Workshop follows the Social Model of Disability. This regards barriers to the full participation of disabled people as the fault of society (and more immediately we as the organizers), not the “fault” of the person with a disability.

    Followed by some stuff aimed at abled participants, including “how not to be offensive” tips, then:

    We are committed to creating a safe, inclusive, and accessible experience.

    They were not, in fact, committed. Or even, you know, considering the possibility of doing anything except mouth some words before immediately moving forward with arranging the retreat exactly as they wanted it to be for abled participants, and then oh-well shrugging that it was not, in fact, accessible. (They couldn’t even commit to having large type handouts available except with advance notice. You can’t even manage to make some bits of paper available on request?) The failings in the accessibility details section are many and varied (I started to write out some of them, but this comment is very long already), and whether the “complimentary shuttle” is accessible isn’t even mentioned as far as I can see.

    It makes for an excellent example. This is what accessibility looks like more often than not, in fandom and elsewhere: The organisers say the things they’ve been told are the right things, and then promptly ignore and contradict it from that moment on. It’s rather like gaslighting.

    It would almost be better if they just admitted they didn’t really care that much about disabled fen – at least, not enough to actually do anything about making sure we have an equal and equitable experience while charging us the exact same entry fee as everyone else – so we could just not get our hopes up and save the time, money, and emotional expense.

    It’s not good enough. None of this is good enough. It needs to be built-in from the ground up, because quite clearly the current method of doing all the arrangements and then going ohhh noooo turns out we made an inaccessible event, maybe if you tell us far enough in advance we might be able to mitigate some bits around the edges, is not successful or effective. Every department needs to start considering accessibility as a basic goal from the very start of planning, because it’s a damn sight easier to do that than try to retrofit after the fact.

24. 9) Here’s the comment I got on facebook:

    “Yes, you are correct for most places and in most cases. In federal court and in most state courts the jurors are told that their job is to determine a verdict and the job of deciding penalty or punishment, if any, is for the Judge. The exceptions are in states where the jury has some say in sentencing, as used to be the case in Texas and a few other places. Says me who practiced criminal law for 34 years.”
    — Mike Krampner

25. Context: I’d asked whether jurors who decide on conviction are allowed to know about mandatory sentences.

26. Lully, lullay, thou little tiny file
    Pixel, lully, lullay

27. “Jack Nance”? Isn’t that a Kuttner pseudonym?

28. There are just six states where jurys determine sentences — Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia. In the other forty six, a jury asking about sentence matters could get and most likely would get a jury nullified.

29. 9) One of the primary reasons why I will probably never sit on a jury is that I make no bones about believing that juries (at least in the US) validate the law; content, creation, enforcement, and punishment. Should any juror believe that any one of those elements are unjust, then they should vote to acquit.

    Obscuring the punishment aspect of the case from the jurors is a sign of something being amiss.

    I got tossed from a jury by a judge I respected because I refused to take his oath to “take the law” as he presented it.

    7) Miles Cameron’s “Artifact Space” was quite good and I’m enjoying L.E. Modesitt’s “Isolate” at the moment. “Isolate” came out late in the year and probably won’t be on many radars yet.

    Regards,
    Dann
    Tronatology 101 – Never let the smoke out.

30. 9) I was once excluded from a jury because the prosecution pointed out that I was a steward in the same union that the Public Defenders’ legal secretaries belong to, and worked in the same building as they did.

31. I am surprised, though, that neither the prosecution nor the defense rejected Courtney Milan when choosing jurors. I’ve always had the impression that neither side wants a juror who is/was a lawyer, a law professor, a law clerk of the courts, or a writer, let alone someone who’s been ALL of those things.

    Same here. I’ve been looking for a transcript of voir dire because I want to learn what she was asked during jury selection and whether attorneys on either side knew that a potential juror had that much legal expertise.

    What interests me about Milan being on this jury is that if someone with her legal background had no idea a sentence of 110 consecutive years could be imposed from their verdict, what chance do ordinary jurors have of knowing that their actions could result in such a glaring miscarriage of justice?

    Jury nullification is a controversial check on the justice system touted by the ACLU and others, but there’s no chance for jurors to even consider it if the injustice occurs in draconian mandatory sentencing and they’re kept completely in the dark.

32. I’ve served as foreman of a jury on a murder trial, and one of my fellow jurors was a lawyer (albeit one focused on civil law rather than criminal). I suspect a lot of local factors determine who makes it into a jury–as an English professor, I would expect to be removed by prosecutors, and yet I ended up not only on the aforesaid murder trial but also on an assault-with-a-deadly-weapon trial. I suspect that having one of my neighbors murdered in the hallway outside my apartment door during grad school may have made me acceptable to the DA even though I’m nominally a bleeding heart liberal.

33. Meredith: whether or not the event in Iceland copied ADA language, it’s irrelevant to last weekend’s Worldcon.

    On the other hand… the folks putting on the con did what they could with what they had, which was the Shoreham. It’s not clear to me exactly what you think they should have done – cancelled the con, or magically given the hotel larger elevators that also went all the way down, or borrowed a Tardis to change what the architect a century ago designed (and I am given to understand he was a Mason, and thus believed certain layouts, and walking, made you a better person, so, sort of like a Western version of feng shui).

    I did push my SO a lot, since she had a manual wheel chair, and with my knees, and my surgery early this year, I didn’t appreciate all the ups and downs, not to mention the layout that I want a map of, should I ever need to design a confusing dungeon if I play D&D again… but we had a hybrid con, and we got to see a lot of folks we haven’t seen in years.

    Do you have a problem with a century-old hotel that the con had no other options to have something newer and better, that we could afford, and that were available?

34. mark, the one thing the concom possibly could have done better was better signage– for example, clarifying that there was a corridor between the two banks of elevators.

35. Sure there was a map posted at several locations, but said map lacked basic information.. If you didn’t know the name of the room where the Art Show was, for example, the map would not help you get there in the least.

    The route to the Exhibit Hall/Dealer’s room, in addition to being multiple staircases, was rather unintuitive. Even the signs placed to try and direct people to the Dealer’s Hall were less than completely clear.

36. I’d have never found the Empire Ballroom if I hadn’t been able to follow the sound of Seanan singing.

37. I got dismissed from a grand jury because I told the judge that, as a former special education teacher in a high-poverty school, I could not remain unbiased when faced with abuse crimes involving children. I–uh–might have been a wee bit graphic about it.

38. Regarding mark’s question of what DisCon should have done differently: communicate, communicate, communicate.

    Just one example, last year Discon polled members whether to go virtual (poll inaccessible, but wording and screencap on their Facebook)

    Right there, they could’ve been upfront and said the in-person event might be less accessible than they originally promised, due to issues with the hotels.
    I’m sure that information would’ve changed some voters’ minds. Even if the final result didn’t shift (I haven’t been able to find the counts online), people with accessibility needs would’ve known before they made travel plans.

39. (delurking)
    The Empire Star Ballroom was easier to find going by elevator, which I ended up having to do–I tried the stairs once because I was talking with someone who didn’t want to wait and ended up too winded to talk. On the other hand, I was late to the excellent The Chromatics concert because I allowed myself only 15 minutes to get there (Seanan’s concert was also excellent, despite the sound-tech problems).
    Added: The concom mostly did the rights things, but very late in the time-line.

40. Signage is always an issue. Go ahead, name a con that got it all right.

    And even so, fandom usually does better than a lot of other events I’ve been to, where “signage” is an unknown word.

    My own gripe was the joke of a con suite – closing at 8PM?!

    Right after we won the bid, I volunteered to run the con suite late at night (at non-virtual Balticons since ’10, I’ve been running it from midnight to 03:00). Never got a response, then with all the turnover, apparently no one knew I’d offered.

41. @mark

    You’re the one who brought up the Iceland workshop, when you snarked at Ness’ use of language – language she got directly from the workshop. Why do so if not because it was relevant?

    And, yes, it was relevant. Not just because Kowal was involved in both the Iceland workshop and Discon III – although she was – but because this is not Just One Fannish Event, or Just One Convention, or even Just One Worldcon. This is a consistent pattern of people saying things and then not even remotely following through, because most of fandom’s only got as far as thinking wouldn’t accessibility be nice and nowhere close to actually doing it.

    What I want is for conventions to be accessible, but failing that, that they admit they aren’t – and in what ways, and be specific – so we can make informed choices. Continuing to tell us how much they’re committed to accessibility while proving through their actions that they were not, in fact, committed to accessibility in any meaningful sense, is one of the worst of all the possible options.

    Fandom cannot improve if every time it’s criticised for its objectively and avoidably poor access results we get people like you jumping in to tell us how superior it is just be grateful for what we’re given and never ever to complain, because after all wasn’t a b c and x y z more important than whether a disabled panelist could reach a mic in a room that the con decided to put her in, in full knowledge of her disability?

    But I’m sure whether you got to have your snacks at nine o clock sharp matters so much more than that, and is a much more worthy thing to complain about.

42. Mike, I apologise for losing my temper – if mod-editing is appropriate to maintain the level of dialogue and tone you’d prefer I shan’t complain.

    (And, as it happens, readily available snacks and other con-suite related features can help with access, so a double failing on my part…)

43. Meredith: I was going to applaud, to tell the truth. We’re trying to discuss a serious topic. Sarcastic defensiveness gets in the way.

44. I have been kicked from several jury panels for having too much experience because I’ve worked with civil litigation (and a little criminal) for decades in various capacities. I’m not offended, I understand why, but I kinda wished I could have sat for the last one, where a small man with a concealed-carry permit shot a belligerent large man in the head — nonfatally. I looked it up later and the shooter walked; I’m pretty sure I would have sided with him.

    I also have a disability-con related issue that still annoys me. I went to the one in Kansas City. I don’t consider myself disabled but I do have a bad back that gives me trouble from time to time, and if I’m choosing, I usually pick a hotel that’s either close to the action or one that has a frequent shuttle.

    At Kansas City I signed up for the assigned-hotel room thing, thinking I’d get one of the hotels clustered around the con, but no, I got the hotel two miles away that required me to walk down a hill and across a couple streets to wait for the train to come haul me through Kansas City so I could walk a few more blocks to the convention. On the first day there was a shuttle, but then it was discontinued with no notice (I learned this after waiting for it for half an hour). When I called to bitch about this (because my back was in fact giving me grief that particular weekend), I got a volunteer who laughed at me. I’ll be arranging my accommodations outside the reservation blocks from now on.

45. @meredith
    I have issues, for one, with your reading comprehension. She brought up the ADA in the context of Iceland. That’s like bringing up the First Amendment in the context of, say, Saudi Arabia (apologies to any Icelanders here – not saying you’re like SA, but rather it’s out of scope, and an irrelevancy.)

    For another, how much do you know about hotel facilities? How much have you worked on cons to find facilities that were affordable and available? How accessible are hotels built before, say, 2000? How reasonable is it to expect older facilities to be completely ADA compliant? How much does someone have to say to make others aware of what is achievable and what is not?

    And you still have not answered: should they have canceled the in-person part of the con or not? Yes or no?

    Maybe they assume that you understand that they’re doing what they can, but there are physical facility limitations, and have been in older hotels in your life, and are aware of that.

    And you refer to me as being snarky, when you make idiotic comments about “needing my snacks at 9”, when I’m talking, as most fen know, that we talk until well past midnight, and want somewhere to gather to talk.

46. In general: let me say that I’m not happy defending SMOFs… but remember that cons are all volunteer run. And we pay for MEMBERSHIPS, not “buy tickets”. As a MEMBER, if I’m at a con, and see something that needs doing, if I’m not in a rush, I’ll do it. Notice that I said, as soon as we won the bid for Worldcon, I volunteered, and no one contacted me, otherwise, I would have been working it.

    If people are finding this much trouble with accessibility, can we assume that you, personally, will volunteer to help with accessibility at the next con you’re planning to attend? My SO, who as I noted, has been doing Accessibility at Balticon, has a lot of trouble finding volunteers to help, and winds up being stuck at the table most of the con.

47. I have issues, for one, with your reading comprehension. She brought up the ADA in the context of Iceland. That’s like bringing up the First Amendment in the context of, say, Saudi Arabia (apologies to any Icelanders here – not saying you’re like SA, but rather it’s out of scope, and an irrelevancy.)

    I wouldn’t call it irrelevant. Obviously the law only binds the U.S., but telling someone a facility in another country is not ADA compliant is useful information for people with disabilities. Especially when you’re an American writing to a mostly American audience, as the blogger was.

48. @Mike Glyer

    I’m afraid I can’t claim improvement.

    @mark

    Reading comprehension? You have now ignored three times that ADA was the language used by the workshop. Apparently, all disabled fen must be policed within an inch of their lives, while the workshop which used it in the first place? Well, they were doing their best.

    You have now ignored three times that a large part of the problem is the lack of communication around access, not just the access itself, preventing disabled fen from making informed decisions.

    Including, for example, whether to vote for the convention to have an in-person component or go fully virtual.

    They’re doing what they can. Sure. But they’re also misleading people about what is possible, which just makes everything about the situation worse.

    It’s not good enough.

    But sure. Con suite. That’s acceptable to complain about. Were they not doing their best for that, then?

49. mark:

    “How much have you worked on cons to find facilities that were affordable and available?”

    Yes, demanding to know how much persons with accessibility issues have worked for the con is a great way to hold this conversation. As is peppering them with questions demanding to know why they just don’t accept that they aren’t worthy of having a con to go to. 🙁

50. mark:

    “If people are finding this much trouble with accessibility, can we assume that you, personally, will volunteer to help with accessibility at the next con you’re planning to attend?”

    Why aren’t the people in wheelchairs and bodies wracked with pain doing more for the cons? Whyyyyyyy?

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