(1) THAT’S WHO. Paul Cornell has a few paragraphs about Gallifrey One, the Doctor Who convention he attended in LA last weekend.
An edition of The Cornell Collective recorded there will be going live in a few days, but in the meantime, you can find me guesting on another podcast from the convention, Doctor Who: The Writers’ Room, where myself, Graeme Burk, Stephen Schapansky and regular host Kyle talk about the career of Robert Holmes.
I also appear in this edition of Doctor Who: The Fan Show, recorded on the convention floor, and providing a wonderful snapshot of everything that makes ‘gally’ special.
Conrunner Shaun Lyon, Fifth Doctor Peter Davison, Paul Cornell, Laura Sirikul (Nerd Reactor), Sarah Dollard, and Steven Schapansky (Radio Free Skaro), all appear.
(2) GWEN COOPER R.I.P. ScienceFiction.com says it’s over: “’Torchwood’: Eve Myles Lays Gwen Cooper To Rest”.
The actress took to Twitter to respond to fan inquiries regarding the nebulous status of ‘Torchwood’ which aired its last episode in 2011, after the show was picked up by Starz and relocated to the U.S. Fans have held out hope that the show would revert back exclusively to the BBC, but Captain Jack, Gwen and whoever was still alive haven’t materialized on ‘Doctor Who’ or anywhere else. It’s been five years and at least Myles has given up hope and said goodbye to Gwen.
@HThorrington_ yea. well Iv made my mind up and GC is now Laid to rest..thanks guys for living/hating her… Nightnight.
— Eve Myles (@TeamEveMyles) February 13, 2016
(3) YOUR WRITE. Joseph Bentz has an outstanding post about writing – “Don’t Let Them Squash Your Creativity”.
Growing up, I always felt vaguely embarrassed about wanting to be a writer. I feared that if I said too much about it, I was simply opening myself up to mockery. It felt so pretentious to want to write a novel. Who was I?
So I hid it. I wrote my first novel almost secretly. When I would go off to write, I would be vague with family and friends about what I was doing, telling them simply that I had work to do. In college, I was so paranoid about my roommates reading over my shoulder that I developed a secret coded language in which I could write when others were around, which I then had to decode later.
Today I am still tempted to let my creativity be squashed, not so much by naysayers, but by other enemies such as procrastination, the pressures of life, fear of rejection, weariness.
Yet the words, the ideas, keep bubbling up. When the ideas come, I think, I have to write this. Why is no one else saying this? I find myself writing as fast as I can, letting the momentum carry me. In those great moments, the creativity blasts right through the doubts, tiredness, discouragement, and second-guessing. I write. I create.
(4) TOCK OF THE WALK. From UPI: “Harry Potter fan builds working GPS replica of Weasley clock”
Tbornottb used a gutted broken clock that he purchased from an antique store as the base and had a friend illustrate the new face of the clock, which featured locations such as on the way, home, work, holiday, forest and mortal peril.
He then used a Particle Photon that would communicate with an application known as “If This Then That” that would move the clock’s hand depending on each family members GPS location.
Each family member then set the parameters for what each geographical location would be represented by on the clock.
“Most of the rules are location-based (setting me to WORK if I enter my university library, HOME if I enter my dorm), but you can set other triggers too (set me to HOLIDAY if the forecast calls for snow, set me to MORTAL PERIL if the stock of the company I’ll be working for next year drops too low),” tbornottb wrote.
(5) VR. Steven Spielberg tries The VOID and declares, “Woah, that was a great adventure!”
Steve Spielberg headed into The VOID’s unique brand of free-roaming, mixed-reality VR experience at TED 2016, and it seems he was pleasantly surprised.
“Woah, that was a great adventure!”, was Steven Spielberg’s exclamation after stepping out of the bespoke, made-for-TED mixed-reality, VR experience constructed by the team behind the VOID.
Spielberg, who recently co-founded the immersive production startup The Virtual Reality Company, stepped through the specially constructed, Raiders of the Lost Ark-style VR experience, which has players exploring ancient ruins, avoiding traps and snakes and, we understand, some clever heart-quickening physical stage manipulation to coincide with some worrying virtual events.
David Doering says, “The Void’s scenarios will come from the pen of master storyteller Tracy Hickman, our own hometown hero of fantasy fame.”
(6) MORE VR. The New York Times has its own VR story — “Virtual Reality Companies Look to Science Fiction for Their Next Play”. Ready Player One’s Ernest Cline gets more ink, and so does Neal Stephenson –
Magic Leap, based in Dania Beach, Fla., and which counts Google as one of its big investors, has gone even further than most companies by hiring three science fiction and fantasy writers on staff. Its most famous sci-fi recruit is Neal Stephenson, who depicted the virtual world of the Metaverse in his seminal 1992 novel “Snow Crash.”
In an interview, Mr. Stephenson — whose title is chief futurist — declined to say what he was working on at Magic Leap, describing it as one of several “content projects” underway at the company.
More broadly, Mr. Stephenson said science fiction books and movies are often useful within tech companies for rallying employees around a shared vision.
“My theory is that science fiction can actually have some value in that it gets everyone on the same page without the kind of expensive and tedious process of PowerPoint,” he said. But the influence of the genre within tech companies is “surprising and mysterious to me as well,” he added.
(7) A MIGHTY OATH. George R.R. Martin pledged to a Not A Blog commenter yesterday:
I am not writing anything until I deliver WINDS OF WINTER. Teleplays, screenplays, short stories, introductions, forewords, nothing.
And I’ve dropped all my editing projects but Wild Cards.
(8) CON OR BUST DONATION. Crystal Huff, Worldcon 75 Co-Chair, announced —
Worldcon 75 [the 2017 World Science Fiction Convention, to be held in Helsinki, Finland] has donated 25 memberships and hotel room nights to Con or Bust to help People of Color attend our convention. We appreciate any assistance in spreading the news to interested fans. More details can be found at the Con or Bust website, including their application process: http://con-or-bust.org/2016/02/con-or-bust-now-accepting-requests-for-assistance-9/
(9) CREATIVITY DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT. Jim C. Hines has a good post “My Mental Illness is Not Your Inspirational Post-it Note” that doesn’t lend itself to out-of-context excerpts… so just go read it anyway.
(10) LAUNCHING MADE SIMPLE. How To Go To Space (with XKCD!) was posted last November but I don’t recall linking to it, and in any event, these things are always news to somebody!
(11) MARK JUSTICE OBIT. Horror author and radio host Mark Justice (1959-2016) passed away February 10 from a heart attack. Brian Keene discussed his writing in a memorial post.
Mark’s books included Looking at the World with Broken Glass in My Eye and (with David Wilbanks) the Dead Earth series. He also ran one of the first — and best — horror fiction-centric podcasts, Pod of Horror [with Nancy Kalanta].
He was also a long-time morning show disc jockey in Ashland, Kentucky. He occasionally used that morning show to promote horror fiction, featuring friends and peers like Richard Laymon, Jack Ketchum, F. Paul Wilson, Joe R. Lansdale, J.F. Gonzalez, and myself. I’ve signed in Ashland numerous times throughout the last twenty years, and Mark was always happy to have me on the show anytime…
He was generous and genuine, and very, very funny. He knew this genre’s history like few others. He will be missed.
(12) HELP BY BUYING BUD’S BOOKS. ReAnimus Press has a plan to benefit the late Bud Webster’s wife, Mary:
To help Mary with the financial burden, I wanted to announce that ReAnimus Press will be donating our publisher’s share of sales from all sales of Bud’s book back to Mary, so sales of those titles will be entirely to help Mary. We’ve published the ebook editions of Bud’s ANTHOPOLOGY 101 (http://reanimus.com/store/?i=1256 ) and THE JOY OF BOOKING ( www.reanimus.com/1409 ). We have PAST MASTERS in process.
I would also note that, if you can, purchasing through those links is of almost 50% more benefit to Mary, since there’s no chunk being paid to Amazon. (FYI this is for the ebook editions only; another publisher, Merry Blacksmith, has the print editions.)
Also, anyone know who I can contact who’s handling the Marscon donations? I’d like to offer copies of the ebooks to donors to sweeten the pot, say, one ebook for a $25 donation, all three for $50, and all three plus any three other ebooks from the ReAnimus store for $100+. (Retroactive to anyone who’s already donated, so don’t wait to donate.)
(13) TODAY IN HISTORY
- February 17, 1922 — Terrified audiences gaze upon FW Murnau’s Nosferatu for the very first time.
(14) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL
- Born February 17, 1912 — Andre Norton
(15) THEY SWEAR THESE ARE GOOD IDEAS. In Comic Riffs at the Washington Post, Michael Cavna and David Betancourt attribute Deadpool’s huge success to its attracting both superhero fans and people who enjoy R-rated snark such as is found in Judd Apatow films. Then they say — “These are the ‘R-rated’ comics that Hollywood should put on the screen next”.
MICHAEL CAVNA: So you and I knew that “Deadpool” would do reasonably well, but these monster box-office numbers that practically rival “The Dark Knight’s” debut certainly speak to a thirst for R-rated comics adaptations that don’t feel like the same old tales of origin reboots and capes-vs.-urban apocalypses. So if you were a Hollywood executive, what’s the first “mature content” comic you’d now try to option and adapt?
DAVID BETANCOURT: The top two that come to my mind are American Vampire and Y: The Last Man. Last Man [which was adapted in 2011 in short form] has been in movie limbo for a while now, and I’m surprised someone hasn’t scooped up American Vampire. Fox has somewhat of a fun dilemma on their hands. “Deadpool” literally made twice what most folks were thinking it would for its opening weekend. So if you can spawn X-Force out of “Deadpool,” given Deadpool’s connection with Cable, do you continue the “R” momentum and make an X-Force movie rated R as well? If X-Force was in development [prior to “Deadpool’s” release], Fox must have been thinking PG-13 — just like the X-Men films. But now, seeing the success of “Deadpool,: maybe Fox executives have more than one R-rated franchise. They have to at least be thinking about it. And because of “Deadpool’s” success, if that character [now] appears in an X-film, does he [himself[ seem diluted if he’s in a PG-13 movie?
(16) HE WAS THERE. Matthew Surridge looks back on “The Great Hugo Wars of 2015”, and devotes many paragraphs to how he decided to decline his Hugo nomination.
Then the next night I opened my email to find a message from the Worldcon administrators congratulating me for being nominated for a Hugo. If I wouldn’t be at Worldcon, could I please select someone who’d be able to pick up the award for me if I won?
I emailed Black Gate editor John O’Neill, and asked him if he’d be in Spokane. He said he wouldn’t, and also mentioned that Black Gate had been nominated for a Fanzine Hugo. That meant I’d now heard of three Puppy picks who’d gotten nominations. I poked around some message boards and found speculation from various people plugged into the field guessing that the Puppies would do spectacularly well when the full list of nominees was made public. One (non-Puppy) editor said that he’d heard that the Puppies had three of the nominations for Best Novel—the most prestigious category. I began to wonder if I wanted to be nominated for an award that was being shaped by the Puppy tactics. If nothing else, what kind of backlash would this create?
Over the next few days I did more research on the Puppy program. Beyond politics, it was clear I didn’t share the Sad Puppy sense of what was good and bad in fiction. Beale only spoke about “the science fiction right,” but Torgersen was putting forward an aesthetic argument about the value of adventure writing over “message fiction.” I like good pulp fiction, but prefer experimental writing. More: it became clear to me that Torgersen and Beale knew that what they were doing was a slap in the face of the SF community—the people who attended events like Worldcon and administered the Hugos. As far as they were concerned, many of the existing institutions of science fiction fandom were not only dominated by liberals, but corrupt, and therefore had to be either reformed or burned down. The Puppies were looking for a fight.
Black Gate put up a link to the post as well, which led to an exchange of comments between Surridge and his former admirer, Wild Ape.
(17) GRAPHIC ARTS. Camestros Felapton in “SP4 Book Families” proves Hugo voters and Sad Puppies 4 recommenders are equally innocent. Or equally guilty. Never mind, look at the pretty graph.
Another stray observation from SP4 Best Novel data partly inspired by an odd claim at Mad Genius that ‘weak correlations’ in Hugo2015 nomination data was evidence of secret-slate/cabals/whatever (um, nope it is what you’d expect).
I looked at which books had nominators in common and how many nominators in common they had. I then tabulated those books with more than 2 in common and drew a pretty picture.
(18) NEBULA PREDICTION. Chaos Horizon looked at the SFWA Recommended Reading List data from 2011-2014.
3/4 times, the top vote getter from the Recommended List went on to win the Nebula. Schoen must be dancing right now for Barsk, which topped the 2015 list with 35 votes (Gannon did get 33, and Wilde 29, so Schoen shouldn’t start celebrating yet). The only exception to this rule was Kim Stanley Robinson in 2012. Maybe KSR, who had 11 prior Nebula nominations and 2 prior wins, was just so much better known to the voting audience than his fellow nominees, although that’s just speculation. That KSR win from the #4 spot does stand out as a real outlier to the other years.
The Top 6 recommended works got nominated 19/24 times, for a staggering 79.1% nomination rate. If you’re predicting the Nebulas, are you going to find any better correlation than this? Just pick the top 6, and bask in your 80% success rate.
(19) LEGO. This year Lego will release 25 Star Wars-themed sets. The “Assault on Hoth” set, coming May 1, has 2,144 pieces and costs $250.
(20) MONOPOLY UPDATE. No paper money in Hasbro’s “Ultimate Banking” version of the Monopoly game – bank cards only, fortunes are tracked electronically, and that’s not all —
The latest version of Monopoly adds a new spin to the debate over who gets to be the banker. The decades-old board game, a Hasbro Inc. brand, is getting a modern upgrade this fall with an “Ultimate Banking” version that does away with the game’s iconic paper money in favor of bank cards.
Transactions, including purchasing property and paying rent, will be handled as they are in modern-day real life, with the tap of a card on the “ultimate banking unit.”
And for the real-estate mogul in the making, the bank cards also track wealth and property values, which can rise and fall. Rents for properties on the board also fluctuate, according to Jonathan Berkowitz, senior vice president of the gaming division of Hasbro
(21) OVER THE TRANSOM. Alan Baumler sent this in email – a bit long to use as a Scroll title, so I’ll quote it here:
In place of a pixel, you would have a scroll!
Not dark, but beautiful and terrible as the dawn!
Treacherous as the sea!
Stronger than the foundations of the earth!
All shall love me, and despair!
(22) KYLO REN’S TEEN ANGST. Mamalaz has a whole series of ridiculous “Modern Solo Adventures”.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, Mark-kitteh, and Dave Doering for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
KT: JJ, I decline to accept you as the internet police, rhetoric division.
And I see that you also decline to substantiate your false claims and apologize for them.
please provide evidence of my racism or apologize for the slur.
Okay, when describing Con or Bust, you made this racist argument:
After a number of racist evasions and other dog-whistles, you made this racist claim:
You’re a racist. You don’t want people to point it out, but numerous arguments you’ve made in this thread demonstrate it quite clearly.
But if you do, please feel free to ask Alexandra if she is a Person of Color and if she has received help from Con-or-Bust. I really want that denial.
Based on your inability to answer simple questions, we can conclude that you were lying when you said she benefited from Con or Bust. Not only are you a clumsy racist, you’re a clumsy liar too.
Nigel, you need to look up the definition of the word “reason.”
Good luck.
I think you’re just a emotion-driven non-critical thinker of limited intelligence who hasn’t the courage to challenge the PC culture or think for himself.
Yeah, and your posts are “reason” enough for that evaluation.
Sheesh…
Lis Carey,
Yes, I know it was an insult. But I honestly can’t comprehend why it still is an insult. Given than many women serve honorably in the armed forces.
That’s like using “your mother is an actress!” as an insult, because two hundred years ago it was assumed that all actresses were prostitutes on the side… when now it might mean you’re lucky enough to be descended from Meryl Streep.
Cassy
Meh. I think that this piñata’s out of candy, it just keeps repeating itself.
And here I was just trying to be considerate and cover all the bases, as I don’t know what Mr./Miss/Ms. Erin identifies as.
Did you bother to ask? Also, “it” is a clear signal of transphobia. You’re not very good at disguising your hatreds. That’s been the primary problem you’ve faced in this thread: You believe you are being oh so clever, but you have revealed yourself to be the most dim-witted troll to show up here in a long time.
Nigel, you need to look up the definition of the word “reason.”
Because you’re not going to get any out of KT. They’ve shown that simple facts are beyond their ken. KT doesn’t realize that the only person making emotion-laden irrational arguments in this thread is, in fact, KT.
You need to look up ‘substantive responses that address the central point rather than empty inflammatory bumf that avoids saying anything at all but in a provocative manner because provocation’s all you got.’ I think you’ll find it under…..’S.’
Aaron, is that the best you’ve got?
“JJ, if you want to give your money to an organization that discriminates against people based on the color of their skin, no appeal to fairness or logic is going to sway you anyway.
From the Con-or-Bust website:
“Reminder: Con or Bust will be accepting requests for assistance from fans of COLOR/NON-WHITE fans to attend SFF cons through Thursday, February 25.” (EMPHASIS MINE)
I have repeatedly said that I think discrimination based on skin color is barbaric and wrong and stupid, but in your Topsy-Turvy world I’m the racist..
Against such stupidity the gods themselves do contend in vain.
In your topsy turvy world, with all the discrimination goin’ on all over the place, violence and shootin’ and mean nasty horrible things, you choose to stand astride a fund to send people to cons and shout NO MORE. This is where you draw the line. This is your modern equivalent of the KKK. All your passionate, trenchant antiracist rhetoric directed at this tiny little thing that happens to benefit non-whites. It’s hard to believe that anyone could question your motives for doing so. It really, really is.
JJ writes,
“Meh. I think that this piñata’s out of candy, it just keeps repeating itself.”
Actually, I think Aaron’s posts are more like a bottomless bedpan.
@KT
None of us are your fucking mother. We don’t have the responsibility to bring you down a sandwich, and we don’t have the responsibility to point out the trolling behavior you obviously know about because you did it. The cute sealion cartoon is only cute on KotakuInAction; everyone else thinks it’s a sign you’re a dick.
Aaron, is that the best you’ve got?
We have an entire thread of your racist bloviations. You might note that you have failed to convince anyone that you aren’t making racist statements, no matter how much you whine about it. In fact, the more you have posted, the more amply you have demonstrated that you are, in fact, a racist.
I have repeatedly said that I think discrimination based on skin color is barbaric and wrong and stupid, but in your Topsy-Turvy world I’m the racist.
You’re willingness to benefit from centuries of discrimination based on skin color while loudly opposing even small measures aimed at remedying the disparate impact resulting from that discrimination is what makes you a racist.
You have also completely dodged answering the question concerning Alexandra Erin’s benefiting from Con or Bust. Are you willing to admit you lied when you made that up, or are you going to continue to dig deeper?
Cassy, yes, but I think KT becomes a lot more comprehensible if you think of him as a refugee from the 1950s, when it would still have been an insult.
@Lis Carey – perhaps he’s come forward in time through a warp in a diner to save Donald Trump from character assassination where someone shockingly reveals that underneath it all he’s a nice guy.
Nigel writes,
“This is where you draw the line.”
Well, you might not be able to chew gum and walk at the same time, but I can and do fight the good fight against injustice and racism both big and small.
The small stuff can be even more insidious than the big stuff because fools like you think it’s benign if practiced by minorities. No, it’s corrosive and will not lead to justice and peace.
There’s a reason white men have dominated the world for the past five hundred years, you know.
I bothered to google Alexandra Erin and Con-or-Bust. The only hits I got that were related to her at all were directly related to her raising funds for the charity. None going the other way. Sadly, some of the links were to VD’s transphobic bile.
KT: There’s a reason white men have dominated the world for the past five hundred years, you know.
Actually, there are two reasons: racism and sexism.
You know, I heard that Black Lives Matter? Apparently that means it’s okay to murder me! Help me, KT, you’re my only hope!
Is it because someone set up a fund to help them go to cons?
@KT @Nigel @JJ
No, no, I want to hear this. So, KT, do please tell us what reasons you have for why ” white men have dominated the world for the past 500 years.”
Right, Oriental and Arabic men are not racist and sexist, esp. during the past 2000 years. Just ask their chattel…er, women.
Try again, genius.
“Is it because someone set up a fund to help them go to cons?”
Almost clever, Nigel!
Actually, it’s probably because nobody set of a fund to help them go to cons.
@KT
Pro tip: if you want to convince people you’re not racist, it might jot be a good idea to say things like this. Of course, if you don’t want to be racist, you might also want to avoid believing things like this, but vary steps.
So KT tried to imply that Con or Bust gave Alexandra Erin money, and has no proof and refuses to look it up, but is really worked up about it, despite not knowing if it’s true. That’s…
…weirdly specific, actually. Was that a VD talking point at some point that he’s regurgitating, or did he come up with that sucker out of the blue?
I think so. I seem to recall something along those lines before. If not VD then maybe somebody trolling at Whatever.
Of, for pity’s sake. Con or Bust is racist because it won’t offer grants to white people? Or because it specifically offers grants to fans of color? Then so is the National Italian American Foundation, the Kosciusko Foundation, the–I’m pulling names of various ethnic and cultural foundations and societies off of the internet at random now, but you get the point: a charity aimed at giving money to a particular ethnic group is not racist. Nor is it affirmative action. It’s a charity. If you don’t want to give to it, don’t. If you think its goals (sending people of any group who might not otherwise attend sff cons to particular sff cons) are worthwhile, then do. If you think it’s unfair that fans of color have a specific charity encouraging their attendance at cons, then A) don’t give to Con or Bust, and/or B) start your own charity for different group(s).
And if you are offended by the specific ethic group benefiting from Con or Bust, just because of the identity of that group, then you are a racist. If you think that none of these societies should exist because they are all “racist,” then why pick on one? Especially one that is really very small potatoes in the larger scheme of things.
Sorry. I just get irritated at the need to respond to stupidity like this. I know that most of the people arguing with KT–for a certain value of the word “argue”–were mostly just expressing their incredulity, and I understand the need to stand up and say, “Sir, you are wrong,” but not only is this pinata out of candy, in my opinion it never had all that much in it to start with . . .
VD – ROT13 – IQ
This amuses me.
@Soon Lee
Can’t be a coincidence, that’s got to be some sort of 4GW sooperplan, right?
Huh, so the troll is still trolling?
@PIMMN
He appears to have made bail and found a computer again, yes.
@PIMMN: I’m surprised people are still feeding it.
@People: Remember, feeding trolls on days ending in ‘y’ only makes them hungrier for more. 😉 Plonk/stylish/personal CSS stylesheet can be your friend.
ObSF: My other half and I saw “Deadpool” this weekend and it was great! Hilarious, although the movie studios are oblivious if they believe the “R” rating was *why* it was great. It wasn’t funny because of cutting off heads or cussing. (It may have been a little funn*ier* because of the lack of restriction on language. But that’s not the main reason it was a good movie, IMHO anyway.)
ETA: @Soon Lee: HAHAHA! That’s great, thanks.
JJ:
I’d’ve thought so too. I was ready to un-ticky on this thread. But KT upped his game rather than risk losing too much of the audience. I really can’t wait to hear what he thinks the
might be.
I know I should stop watching the slow-motion train wreck this conversation has become, but…
@Kendall:
I am worried the studios will take the wrong lesson from the success of “Deadpool” and we will soon see a rash of mediocre gory cussing semi-comedic superhero films.
I know I should stop watching the slow-motion train wreck this conversation has become, but…
In suspect that we won’t find out, because the troll will end up doing the same thing the troll did in response to a request for a cite regarding its Alexandra Erin/Con or Bust claims: Dodge, weave, evade, dissemble, and lie.
Deapdpool was a lot of fun. Sadly, I expect the lesson the studios will take from it is “we need more fart and dick jokes” and not “write a smart movie”.
Dang it, I thought fart and dick jokes had finally faded away after the “glory” days of the 1990s.
I’m still a little bummed that the lesson the comics industry drew from the success of “Sandman” was not “write more smart comics” but “write more supernatural gore and daaarrrrrrrkness”. But then comic books seem to have gotten better with movies and TV lately so I am more kindly disposed towards them.
Alexandra Erin and Scalzi raised over $10k for Con or Bust last year, by taking the piss out of an internet troll. That’s a lot of money and a lot of people given access that might not otherwise be able to attend cons. My takeaway from that is that internet trolls can have some value, even long after they’ve run out of candy.
@KT, eventually you’ll stop frothing at the mouth and go back to where your ideas are seen as intelligence instead of malign idiocy. When that happens, I’ll count up your posts here, add a multiplier if necessary, and make another donation to Con or Bust. It’s my way of making hatefulness useful.
I find it amusing (in a facepalm-y kind of way) that our troll expects us to believe the factual claims they make about Alexandra Erin, and yet also wants us to believe that that “his/her/its” comment stemmed from genuine ignorance as to Erin’s gender. Their claim to encyclopedic knowledge of all things Erin is oddly selective.
Also, for Stylish purposes, KT = 85530e31e58828917014082a34c6ef57 . It was mentioned before, but I’m all about convenience.
I’m excited to find out as well. I’m guessing that the answer isn’t likely to be ‘not getting melanomas’ but ‘avoiding vitamin D deficiency in cloudy places’ might stand a chance. Though the ‘men’ thing has me stumped.
I’ll take smallpox and lack of reliable contraception for 500, Alex?
I’m betting on the weather was so crappy in north west Europe that they just had to go and steal everybody else country. Hence the Welsh* becoming the most powerful nation on Earth.
*[this theory may need some minor adjustments]
I’ll take smallpox and lack of reliable contraception for 500, Alex?
I’m going with Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA.
@RedWombat, Aaron, Camestros
Actually I think Jared Diamond wrote a book about that. It’s called, Guns, Germs and Steel. According to Wikipedia:
The book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations (including North Africa) have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example, written language or the development among Eurasians of resistance to endemic diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures (for example, by facilitating commerce and trade between different cultures) and were not inherent in the Eurasian genomes.
So: White men dominated other societies 1) by sheer accident; and 2) sheer nastiness.
Neither is a reason to boast, and when you think about what Europeans did to Africans and Native Americans in this country, it’s also nothing to be proud of.
(Also, KT, if you feel like shooting your mouth off over this comment, don’t bother. I’ve got you blocked in Stylish, so I won’t even see it. Assholes gotta shit, but that doesn’t mean I have to smell it.)
Kind of edgy but I think it is in the running
Oh my, no, no far to reasonable.
“Dodge, weave, evade, dissemble, and lie.”
Not at all. Whatever Alexandra Erin identifies as (and I honestly have no idea, nor do I care), Alexandra Erin refuses to answer my query as to whether Alexandra Erin has received benefits from Con-or-Bust or if Alexandra Erin is a Person of Color (however the hell that is defined; I may be one). I’m hoping one of you disinterested seekers of truth might have better luck. All Alexandra Erin has to do is deny getting help to settle the matter. Though I pretty sure Alexandra Erin will never do that.
Cheryl S,
I fail to see how getting you dupes to donate your money to a racist organization so inept that it can’t over the course of a year fill out some simple IRS forms to reinstate their tax exemption and thus gather even more donations, takes the piss out of anything. It certainly takes the green out of your wallet, which is lots of fun to be a part of I admit. Heh! Heh!
I certainly urge you to donate even more to Con-or-Bust. I’m sure the folks running the Carl Brandon Society love getting money they don’t have to account for to the IRS or anybody. I know I would.
@redheadedfemme
GGS, although I understand is far from perfect (and he gets crap from all sides in the debate), is the best theory I’ve seen advanced on the subject
Camestros writes,
“It’s called, Guns, Germs and Steel.”
Not considered seriously anymore but too complex to go into as to why with the mal-educated here.
MODERATOR’S COMMENT: I don’t know how it works on other blogs, but the way these wildfires of white supremacist arguments generally start here is that the arguments are quoted by people who want to refute them or hold them up as bad examples, and presto! the camel is invited inside the tent to defend itself.
So argue with KT about any of the other topics you disagree with him about, please, and leave this particular tent flap shut.
For all those curious as to where your Con-or-Bust dollars go.
Ok, Mike.
@Cheryl S.
I will also do what you are doing. A factor, multiplied by KT’s comments, into money to bring nice people to Cons.
KT: Alexandra Erin refuses to answer my query as to whether Alexandra Erin has received benefits from Con-or-Bust
You’re still refusing to say why in the world you think Alexandra Erin received con subsidies from Con or Bust, since there has never been any evidence to support that idea.
The reason you’re refusing to do so is that your poor reading comprehension made you originally assume that’s what her Tweet meant, and now that you’ve been utterly humiliated by your misreading of her Tweet, you are unwilling to walk back your claim.
A word to the wise: When you do something like this, own up immediately, apologize, and everyone will move on. When you continue to try to pretend that you didn’t fuck up, you’re not fooling anyone — everyone still realizes that you fucked up, and you look like even more of an idiot for not being willing to own up to your mistake.