(1) COMPLETE WEAPONS BAN AT SUPERCON. Florida Supercon (July 1-4) will not permit any real or replica weapons to be brought into the con. Includes blades, blunt weapons, whips, tasers, or even things that “cause excessive noise levels like vuvuzelas.”
In light of recent events, we have chosen to tighten security around the event and have recently updated many of the rules. This is done to protect our attendees and make sure that everyone may enjoy the convention without concern.
Florida Supercon is dedicated to the safety and security of ALL attendees.
Use common sense and remember what seems harmless to you may appear like a threat to someone else. All attendees must adhere to Florida State Law at all times during the weekend of Florida Supercon, including laws regarding firearms and weapons. If it is illegal outside of the convention, it is illegal inside the convention.
Please read this entire policy before attending Florida Supercon. Failure to follow this policy may result in your removal from the convention without refund. We have a ZERO TOLERANCE FOR WEAPONS.
(2) FAN OF THE SUPREMES. Michael Z. Williamson had this out earlier in the week: “Orlando: The AAR and BFTNP”.
This is going to be part pep talk and part “There there, here’s a foot in your ass.”
The Orlando shooting was not your fault. You bear no guilt and no shame. By embracing guilt and shame you give the terrorists what they want. Stop it. That way lies madness….
MAKING YOURSELF MORE HELPLESS HELPS NO ONE. “I don’t need guns,” you say. I know more about guns than you, and you’re wrong. You may not want any, and that’s fine, that’s your decision to make, FOR YOU, not for me, nor anyone else. “I couldn’t have done anything.” You’re right. So stop trying to Monday Morning Quarterback the whole thing. “Nobody needs an AR15.” Again, you’re wrong, and at this point you should be reminded of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
See this article here: http://www.michaelzwilliamson.com/blog/index.php?itemid=219
Get that? Access to firearms is a constitutionally protected right, and SCOTUS says so, the end.
(3) FINDING DORY FILLS TREASURE CHEST. Yahoo! Movies confirms the latest Pixar film, Finding Dory, set a record for an animated movie, earning many dollars in its worldwide debut.
Some 13 years after Finding Nemo first hit theaters, Pixar and Disney’s sequel Finding Dory made a huge splash, landing the biggest domestic opening of all time for an animated title with $136.2 million from 4,305 theaters….
The previous crown holder for top animated launch was DreamWorks Animation’s Shrek the Third, which debuted to $121.6 million in 2007. Until now, Pixar’s best was Toy Story 3 (2010) with $110.3 million.
(4) MASSIVE SPOILERS. ScreenRant spills all the beans in “The Alternate History of Independence Day Explained”.
Picking up in real-time, ID:R portrays a much different recent history than our own alien invasion-free world. The alternate events that occur following the War of 1996 in Independence Day definitely depict a darker timeline.
Thanks to a big viral marketing campaign, a prequel comic, a prequel novel – Independence Day: Crucible – and various Independence Day: Resurgence clips and trailers released during marketing, this dark timeline has become a little more clear.
Forget the history you thought you knew, and prepare yourself for some spoilers. Here is the full alternate timeline leading to Independence Day: Resurgence.
(5) JEMISIN IN NYT. N.K. Jemisin’s latest “Otherworldly” column for the New York Times Book Review covers new works by Claire North, Jonathan Strahan, Mira Grant, and Malka Older.
The easiest comparison that comes to mind when reading Malka Older’s INFOMOCRACY (Tor/Tom Doherty, $24.99) is to its cyberpunk forebears. There’s an obvious line of inheritance here from William Gibson and Neal Stephenson to Older’s futuristic world of global information networks and cool, noirish operatives vying for power and survival. Yet there’s also an inescapable “West Wing” vibe to the book. This probably owes to the fact that Older is herself a global player, with impressive bona fides in the field of international affairs. This lends the story a political authenticity that’s unusual in the field of cyberpunk, and very welcome.
(6) PULP FIRST CONTACT. James Davis Nicoll explains why he started Young People Review Old Science Fiction.
Young People Read Old SF was inspired by something award-winning author Adam-Troy Castro said on Facebook.
nobody discovers a lifelong love of science fiction through Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein anymore, and directing newbies toward the work of those masters is a destructive thing, because the spark won’t happen. You might as well advise them to seek out Cordwainer Smith or Alan E. Nourse—fine tertiary avenues of investigation, even now, but not anything that’s going to set anybody’s heart afire, not from the standing start. Won’t happen.
This is a testable hypothesis! I’ve rounded up a pool of younger people who have agreed to let me expose them to classic works of science fiction1 and assembled a list of older works I think still have merit. Each month my subjects will read and react to those stories; I will then post the results to this site. Hilarity will doubtless ensue!
First in the barrel is “Who Goes There?” by Don A. Stuart (John W. Campbell). The responses are quite articulate and the young readers weren’t too rough on old John.
This reminds me of a “teens react” YouTube series – James may be missing out on millions of views by doing this in text!
(7) YELCHIN OBIT. Anton Yelchin, Star Trek’s Chekov, was crushed to death by his own car this morning.
Anton Yelchin, the Russian-born actor who played Chekov in the new Star Trek films, has been killed by his own car at his home in Los Angeles, police say.
It struck him after rolling backwards down the steep drive at his Studio City home, pinning him against a brick postbox pillar and a security fence.
He died shortly after 01:00 (08:00 GMT) on Sunday.
Yelchin, 27, also appeared in such films as Like Crazy (2011) and Green Room (2015).
The third movie in the rebooted series, Star Trek Beyond, comes out in July.
(8) DECORATE OR EDUCATE? The University of Glasgow’s Robert MacLean ponders the question, “How can we be sure old books were ever read?”
Owning a book isn’t the same as reading it; we need only look at our own bloated bookshelves for confirmation. You may remember this great cartoon by Tom Gauld doing the rounds on social media a year or two ago. We love it because, in it, we can clearly see our own bookshelves and our own absurd relationship with books: unread, partially read and never-to-be-read books battling it out for space with those we’ve successfully tackled. With our busy lives and competing demands on our leisure time, the ever-growing pile of unread books can even sometimes feel like a monument to our failure as readers! Although this is surely a more common anxiety in a time of relatively cheap books and one-click online shopping we should be reassured that it’s nothing new: Seneca was vocal in criticising those using “books not as tools for study but as decorations for the dining-room”, and in his early 16th century sermons Johannes Geiler (reflecting on Sebastian Brant’s ‘book fool’) identified a range of different types of folly connected with book ownership that included collecting books for the sake of glory, as if they were costly items of furniture1. When we look at our own bookshelves we can fairly easily divide the contents into those we’ve read and those we haven’t. But when it comes to very old books which have survived for hundreds of years how easy is it to know whether a book was actually read by its past owners? ….
Dog-ears
Different readers have different methods of physically marking their reading progress in a book. Once upon a time (I confess!) I was a dog-earer, who turned over the top corner of the page to mark my place; now – evidence of where I do much of my reading – I tend to use a train ticket as a bookmark. In this fascinating blogpost Cornelis J. Schilt, editor of the Newton Project, describes how one famous reader of the past, Isaac Newton, used large and often multiple dog-ears to act as mnemonic aides reminding him of specific words and references in books he was reading.
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY
- June 19, 1958 — Wham-O filed to register Hula Hoop trademark.
(10) LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED. Word of the Hugo Voter Packet finally reached readers of Sad Puppies 4: The Embiggening on Facebook.
The voter packet is out! Remember, ?#?Wrongfans read before they cast their votes, ?#?trufen just vote how they’re told to NoAward.
(11) ALPENNIA ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED. Heather Rose Jones bids you “Welcome to the New Improved Expanded Alpennia Website!”
Quite some time ago (nearly two years, I think), I decided I needed a more professional looking website for my writing activities. And it could have all sorts of bells and whistles! Book reviews! Forthcoming publications! Future convention schedules! I could not only move the Lesbian Historic Motif Project to the new site, but I could make it the primary home of my blog. And then it could push content automatically to LiveJournal and Twitter and Facebook. And the LHMP could have improved functionality, with better tagging, and a dynamic index page, and…and everything
(12) KEEP ‘EM CLICKING. “If Amazing Stories Were A Hugo Finalist, My Love: The Top 25 Posts of All Time” – Steve Davidson counts off his site’s biggest traffic magnets.
At the top of the list:
(13) SDCC LIVE. Syfy is starting to beat the drum for its upcoming Syfy Presents Live From Comic-Con broadcast.
Syfy will invade the world’s largest pop culture convention this summer with a three-night telecast directly from the heart of San Diego Comic-Con. The special – Syfy’s first-ever live broadcast from Comic-Con – will air on the network Thursday, July 21 through Saturday, July 23 at 8/7c.
Each night, SYFY PRESENTS LIVE FROM COMIC-CON will bring the Con’s non-stop action directly to viewers across the country, featuring celebrity interviews, breaking news and behind-the-scenes reports. The hosted live broadcast will highlight the biggest stars, top franchise reveals, panel news, exclusive sneak peeks of the hottest films, as well as audience interaction, games, party coverage and much more.
(14) ACKERMAN CENTENARY PROJECT. There’s a Kickstarter appeal for a 4E Ackerman tribute: “Famous Monsters is making a star-studded comic book anthology of weird & Terrifying tales in honor of Forry Ackerman’s 100th Birthday” has raised $3,875 of its $10,000 goal with 42 days remaining.
The year 2016 marks what would have been the late Forrest J Ackerman’s 100th Birthday. Famous Monsters and its comic book publishing imprint, American Gothic Press (AGP), are celebrating Forry’s centennial with an original hardcover anthology called TALES FROM THE ACKER-MANSION, to be released in October at our ALIEN CON event in Silicon Valley, CA!
Famous Monsters is a big name, but we are a small company. Despite our well-known magazine and iconic logo, we are a boutique operation. Still, we manage to make an enduring magazine, cool comic books, neat merchandise, run film festivals, and now are producing a major convention in October. As we spin several creative plates in the air at the same time, we are always mindful of “Uncle Forry” and the imaginative endeavors he championed. For Forry’s centennial celebration, we thought TALES FROM THE ACKER-MANSION would be a super-cool tribute, but in order to pull it off, we need help! That’s why we are doing FM’s first-ever Kickstarter/crowdfunding effort to cushion the incredible launch costs of such a project (more details at the end under RISKS & CHALLENGES)….
The magical thing about Forry is that he connected people from all fields and industries — be it film, music, comics, or literature. In the spirit of that connection, we have sought to make TALES FROM THE ACKER-MANSION a truly eclectic offering.
John Carpenter: “For TALES FROM THE ACKER-MANSION, John Carpenter channels O. Henry in an original short horror folk-tale, “The Traveler’s Tale”. It tells the story of an old British traveler who steals a cursed bejeweled box from a Middle Eastern bazaar. Written by the Horror Master himself!”
William F. Nolan: “His contribution for TALES FROM THE ACKER-MANSION is ‘the story of how Forrest J Ackerman and the robot from Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS became acquainted.’”
John 5: “He currently plays for Rob Zombie on tour and in the studio. John has also produced numerous solo records — one of which, ‘Careful with that Axe’, shares the title of his story for TALES FROM THE ACKER-MANSION, a surreal rockstar fable about a Telecaster guitar that seems to give a young boy special powers.”
Richard Christian Matheson: “His short story ‘Barking Sands’ is appearing in TALES FROM THE ACKER-MANSION as illustrated prose”.
Joe R. Lansdale: “His short story ‘The Dump’ is being adapted for the anthology by MARK ALAN MILLER.”
Also included:
- An apocalyptic monster truck comic from creator Cullen Bunn (HARROW COUNTY) and artist Drew Moss (TERRIBLE LIZARD)
- A painted robot tale from comics writer and artist Ray Fawkes (CONSTANTINE)
- A cannibal story in the style of old Creepy and Eerie from HELLRAISER: BESTIARY’s Ben Meares and Christian Francis
- Stories by FM Editor David Weiner and AGP Editor Holly Interlandi
- An unconventional coming-of-age story by reknowned fantasy author Nancy Kilpatrick, illustrated by Drew Rausch (EDWARD SCISSORHANDS)
- A Golden Age noir-style romp from Victor Gischler (X-MEN)
- A Sci-Fi alien saga by Trevor Goring (WATERLOO SUNSET)
- A legend about lethal knitting needles from Travis Williams and Jonathan La Mantia
- Art pinups by many Famous Monsters cover artists
(15) SMASHUPS. ScreenRant believes these are the “13 Best Comic Book Crossovers of All Time”.
More often than not, this means comic creators throw together as many popular characters as they can get their hands on. It’s good business to throw characters together that no one expects to see sharing a page; companies as adversarial as DC and Marvel have been known to join forces for a good, crazy story. This has led to more than a few fantastic crossover stories over the course of comic book history….
- JLA/Avengers
…Arguably the most famous of all crossover comics, JLA/Avengers was actually the result of over thirty years of negotiations between the two companies, as the initial plans had been made in 1979 before plans were put on hold due to editorial differences between Marvel and DC’s higher ups. For a time it seemed as if JLA/Avengers was the sign of more cooperation between the two comics publishers, but there hasn’t been any further successful attempts to unite the two brands since.
(16) COMIC SECTION. Tom Gauld has been cracking them up on Twitter
A recent cartoon featuring @MarsCuriosity for @newscientist pic.twitter.com/BSkA9CqX7n
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) April 10, 2016
'James Bond is driving in his underwater car…' (My cartoon for today's @guardianreview) – pic.twitter.com/JGOUE89yLm
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) June 18, 2016
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, James Davis Nicoll, Cat Eldridge, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Heather Rose Jones.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
Yay, found my old swedish translation of Slan!
Whips are banned?
I demand the right to be repressed 😉
(not really but with an straight line like that who can resist?
What’s an old-lady cane? A retired hurricane?
@Johan P: it has Bach in it and is available, in English, at the local library (not for checkout, unfortunately). Another on the list….
@Chris S: what? You’ve never heard of mental bondage? You have to imagine being struck!
Senate just voted against extended backgroundchecks.
1) If I’m not mistaken, there’s already been one “active shooter” event at a science fiction convention in Florida, although right now any Google search for it is being swamped by references to the Orlando atrocity. I am not at all surprised to hear that a major media-con in Florida is locking down hard on weaponry. The last several comic-cons I’ve attended have all had very strict weapons policies, which is hard on cosplayers but understandable. I bought a cheap fake blaster for my “not really Han Solo” costume at ComicPalooza, and have been thinking very hard about how to make an effective peace-bond for it before I even consider wearing it.
2) I’ve known MZW for some 40 years. He was always more politically right-leaning than I was, but he used to be a decent human being; the descent into crazy racist douchebag is post-2001. At this point I wouldn’t trust him if I saw him walking down the street with a gun.
Also, without bothering to list in detail the number of opinions that the Supreme Court has historically reversed itself on, I will merely mention one that even MZW ought to be aware of: Dred Scott.
3) One unexpected side effect of the success of Finding Dory is that pet shops are now being deluged (sorry not sorry) with requests for Blue Tangs, which do not make good pets.
6) What a terrific idea! Making it into a YouTube series wouldn’t be difficult at all; just sit the reviewers around a table and put a digicam on a tripod to record the discussion, as if it were a panel at a con.
8) My library is full of books I’ve already read and want to read again, and also of books I haven’t yet read, and of books that I bought for reference purposes and may or may not have read in whole or in part. Yes, I do cull from time to time, but there always seem to be more books coming in than going out. 🙂
@ howloon: So, the only way the Trumpetoons can win is to cheat? Well, at least they come by it honestly.
@ Rev. Bob: I’ve driven past that house! I remember thinking that I sure wouldn’t want to haul a load of groceries up those stairs every week, and that if I had enough money to buy it I’d also have enough money to make it accessible for my mobility-impaired friends.
@ TYP: I think perhaps what you’re trying to express here is that open-carry loons typically exhibit aggressive body language in addition to the simple display of a gun. There’s nothing “peaceful” about their behavior; it’s an open warning to racial and sexual minorities (not to mention anyone else who champions the rights of same; I haven’t yet encountered their politically-correct synonym for “n****r-lover”, but I’m sure there is one) that You Could Be Next.
@Hampus
Of course they did. Because, as I just said on twitter, it seems that the NRA have convinced a selection of lawmakers and citizens that the Second Amendment was written on stone tablets brought down by Moses from Mt. Sinai, and therefore it is absolute and inviolate.
Arrgh!
@Mike Glyer
What’s an old-lady cane?
Old Lady Cane was a trollish old knave
And a trollish old knave was she;
She called for pencils, and she crawled under bridge
And waited for billy goats three.
Every billy he had a brother
Each a brother bigger than he;
Oh there’s none so rare, as can compare
With Lady Cane plus billys three.
Dred Scott is not an example of a case later reversed by the Supreme Court. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the decision was simply made obsolete by federal legislation and the 14th amendment.
(1) All right-thinking people should be in favor of a vuvuzuela ban.
TIL Vaughn Meader existed!
Mike: Plessy v. Ferguson seems so apropos here that it may be what Lee was thinking of.
Oh god, not blue tangs. I wonder how many people going in to buy one because of Dory are going to even realize they’re a saltwater fish, let alone that they need at least a hundred gallon tank…
Darren Garrison on June 20, 2016 at 9:33 am said:
Back in the ’70s I went off to my local Technological University (…and hey, a shout-out to Lowell Gilbert (who sometimes posts here): I know you from the radio station…) and was delighted to discover that the school library had a multi-volume set of Goethe’s Works to help me fill my ample free time.
So I went to check out a volume, and discovered that the pages were uncut. It was “circulating” for nearly a century, and I was apparently the very first student to check out/try to read it.
(I briefly raised an eyebrow wondering about the generations of university librarians, too: but then I realized that academic libraries have different de-accession policies than do public libraries….)
Reading: I finished William Hope Hogdson’s Ghost Pirates and Other Revenants of the Sea (yes, he really was a sailor and knew the exact & precise terms for all of those ropey things and big sticks and whatnot) and resumed my Hugo reading with Seveneves. The first few chapters are generally enjoyable, although seeing Stephenson write in past tense is a bit weird; my previous exposure has been Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle. If Cryptonomicon struck me as Stephenson’s go at a Tom Clancy technothriller, so far, Seveneves seems to be pointing towards Stephenson’s take on Lucifer’s Hammer. But I’m only a couple of chapters in (for varying definitions of “chapters”), so things haven’t gone entirely pear-shaped yet.
On an unrelated note, why did nobody tell me about the new seasons of Luther and Wallander?!?
@lurkertype
Do you know the difference between a vuvuzuela and an onion?
NO ONE cries when you cut up a vuvuzuela…
@Lee
I think they’re just using “cuck” as an all-purpose “those-people-lover” these days.
Would I be banned o. The con if I said my hands are deadly qeapons because I was trained as a ninja.
Wow, that Pup page is…different.
As in, a different reality than the one I’m currently living in.
Get that? Access to firearms is a constitutionally protected right, and SCOTUS says so, the end.
Only since the Great Originalist, Anton Scalia, decided that his reading of # II was better than the one they had been in force. Stare Decisis ( settled law)? What’s that?
@Guess – Haha! Nice! Haven’t heard that one in a long while.
Finished The Aeronaut’s Windlass.
Short review: This book is not Hugo-worthy, full stop.
Longer review: This book disappointed me. I own all of the Dresden Files, and though they’re basically fun popcorn reads, they’re still good stories with memorable characters. After reading this book, I can say that, in my view, Jim Butcher has taken a step backwards in his writing. Harry Dresden may be flawed, angsty, and occasionally sexist, but his life and personality on the page puts all the dullards in Windlass to shame.
It is a shame, because this book could have been fantastic. The worldbuilding was top-notch, and the reason I kept reading to the end, even though I didn’t care about any of the characters. I wanted to know more about this world, how the Spires were constructed and who the Builders were, and why the surface of the planet was so dangerous. I loved the idea of the airships and how they operated, and the fight scenes with the battling airships were great. If Butcher had given me one–just one!–character to root for, a character with a distinctive voice and development like Harry Dresden’s, he might have gained a reader for the rest of the series. One or two of the protagonists came close in spots, and it was downright painful to see them on the page, trying to throw off their puppet strings and gain some life of their own. Unfortunately, none of them (including the talking cats) ever managed it.
As it is, I’m going to pass, and this book goes below No Award. I think that’s where I would have ranked it in any case, but in a year like this one, going up against the Big Three (The Fifth Season, Ancillary Mercy, and Uprooted) this placing is a no-brainer.
@Dr Strangelobe
Get that? Access to firearms is a constitutionally protected right, and SCOTUS says so, the end.
It’s funny how some people are so gung-ho over access to guns, and yet endlessly harangue over access to abortion, even though SCOTUS said so about that too.
@Dr Strangelobe
Obviously not, but the principle is the same. If it’s possible, according to some, that Roe was wrongly decided, then it’s also possible that Heller was wrongly decided.
@Lee I had a friend who was book manager for a local used bookstore chain. If a store has a lot of a specific title or series on the shelf, they likely have more in the back and won’t take them for trade anymore. When she took the job, she discovered some titles they had boxes full of in their back room.
It applies to other media as well. In the late 1970s, I worked at a used record store. We had boxes of copies of “Frampton Comes Alive” and the soundtrack to the movie of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” People would bring them in to sell, and we’d say, “no thanks, got too many already”, and they’d abandon them on the counter and walk out.
@ Vicki: Yes, thank you. This is what I get for not checking my memory against Google when I know I have trouble with names and dates.
@ TooManyJens: I had the impression that “cuck” was specific to MRA culture, derives from “cuckold”, and means roughly “beta male” or “loser”, or sometimes “male who is not a Manly Man like me but is still getting laid more than I am” (similarly to the common upending of “whore” to mean “woman who won’t have sex with me”). But language changes, and never more rapidly than in tribal subcultures.
kathodus: MZW, a fan writer packet full of anti-SJW rants and little SFF content
And most of it not even being originally written by MZW.
Dann: Also….”Pierce Anthony”? Piers Anthony instead? Sorry to nit-pick.
You know that, despite his obvious mastery of it, English is a second language for Hampus, right? Not cool to nitpick.
JJ: Maybe it’s just a typo. On extremely rare occasions even I have been known to make one of those. (And here comes the drink tray now!)
When I type too quickly in english, I sometimes exchange words that sounds the same. Not the same in swedish. Otherwise, File 770 has done wonders for my active vocabulary. My passive vocabulary has always been good, but usually I only use english as a written language for business. And yesterday I learned that “certiorari” is not an alien race.
Haven’t got a problem with nit-picking though. We are all nerds, we know hard it is to not make corrections. If poor Mike can handle it, I can. 😉
My brother has had two clown fish and a blue tang in his tank for some time, and yep it is a big tank. In fact he got them before Finding Nemo came out.
Hampus Eckerman: We are all nerds, we know hard it is to not make corrections. If poor Mike can handle it, I can.
You can say that again! If it weren’t for Mike’s typos, I’d have to buy my own booze. 🍷 😉
It definitely started in MRA circles, but the level of crossover between them and the larger “alt-right”, and the crossover between them and extremist Trump supporters has lead it to spread further and further.
@toomanyjens @lorcan @lee
When someone retweeted a tweet of mine recently and labeled me “cuck” I was confused–did they think I was a bad conservative and thus a cuckservative. But now I see that they were just using it to generally denigrate me. Hunh.
Cuck.
Paul Weimer: When someone retweeted a tweet of mine recently and labeled me “cuck” I was confused – did they think I was a bad conservative and thus a cuckservative.
It’s how they label intelligent, compassionate men who understand that treating women like equal human beings is a good thing. It’s an accusation that you are a loser “beta” male who just pretends to believe that, so as to suck up to women and get their approval (and/or laid).
Non-ironic usage of the term by someone is a sure sign that you’re dealing with a lowest-common-denominator Neanderthal MRA (my apologies to LCDs and Neanderthals for the comparison).
I thik it can be both. We Hunted The Mammoth definitely tracked the cuckservative thing before the more generic cuck thing started to go viral.
@Lee: \who/ didn’t expect a demand for Blue Tangs? I remember ~25 years ago when the live-action remake of 101 Dalmations came out, and the media had articles noting the demand and the fact that Dalamatians are lousy family pets — not endangerable, but high-strung, and generally Not Good With Children.) I see the story also mentions a demand for clownfish when Finding Nemo came out….
@Typ: in regards to open carry folks.
My personal, knee-jerk reaction to anyone open-carrying (when I’m not at a Wild West recreation fest, the police station or a paintball field) is that they must be terribly afraid individuals with very low self-esteem and/or (not mutually exclusive) males with teeny tinies who have failed to come to terms with their “shame”
and
that, tactically, they are complete idiots who have allowed their psychological issues to trump good sense.
If you believe that it is necessary to carry a firearm in order to be “protected” (or to protect others), what monumental brain fart led you to the brilliant idea that you ought to give your potential adversaries all the information they require to effectively neutralize you/avoid you/make you the very first target they take out?
They’re buffoons without the clown nose and over-sized shoes. Their guns are mere puffery. From what I’ve personally observed over the years, there’s hardly a one of them that has actually obtained any training in dealing with the situations they are supposedly preparing for. Shootin at the range is nowhere near anything like an active shooter situation in an area filled with panicked civilians. They’re all just like the martial arts “expert” who, when confronted by muggers says “hang on a second while I take off my socks and shoes”….
Or anyone who doesn’t want to immediately deport all undocumented immigrants, isn’t interested in keeping the US a “white nation,” etc. It’s pretty much become an all-purpose slur for people who aren’t bigots (or who are just less openly bigoted than the one casting the slur).
@Lee
“SJW” (Social Justice Warrior) is the modern equivalent of “N*gg*r-Loving Liberal.”
I see the story also mentions a demand for clownfish when Finding Nemo came out….
I read that most clownfish are captive-bred. Tangs are nearly all wild-caught, which is another reason not to have them.
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/wild-things/%E2%80%98dory%E2%80%99-sale-may-have-been-poisoned-cyanide?tgt=nr
‘AsYouKnow’Bob wrote: “(I briefly raised an eyebrow wondering about the generations of university librarians, too: but then I realized that academic libraries have different de-accession policies than do public libraries….)”
And I’m grateful for that. I had garnered an interest in book of short stories set during WWI and shortly after, POINTS OF HONOR by Thomas Boyd, published in 1925. Long out of print (some of Boyd’s other books remain in print), a check on WorldCat showed a copy was still available via Interlibrary Loan from the University of Kentucky.
– – – – –
Guess wrote: “Would I be banned o. The con if I said my hands are deadly qeapons because I was trained as a ninja.”
Back a few years ago on TPM, a commenter tried the hoary old “Don’t mess with me, my hands are registered as deadly weapons!” thing. I replied that I’d always wanted to see what a registration form for weaponized hands looked like, and would he mind posting an image of the form? I’m still waiting….
– – – – –
I think almost all the salt water fish tanks I’ve seen have been as decor in places like doctor’s offices, with a paid service coming in to maintain and clean the tank on a regular basis.
A friend who worked in a tropical fish store told the story of a private icthyophile who decided to install a salt water tank in his apartment.
A 500-gallon tank.
In a second-story apartment.
Do I need to mention how this story ended…?
It’s always a bad idea to put tang in your aquarium. The water turns all orange-y
I kept a very small saltwater tank for awhile–live rock and soft coral and one shrimp. And I might have had a fish, but I can’t remember now.
Great god they’re a pain in the ass. I admire hobbyists who can do the fiddly bits, because I clearly can’t. Whole thing got overrun with crap anemones and digitate hydroids and the joy of coming in at night to see what had come out of the life rock in the dark was rapidly offset by a sense of constant calamity. I gave up and broke it down. I see the appeal, but not for me.
“Blah blah blah, pixel, blah blah.”
Sorry you’ve got the blahs!
@Lee
There are a surprising number of terrible decisions that have never really been reversed. Buck v. Bell would seem to be the most SFnal; while Skinner limits it in some key ways, it’s still good law.
Be-bop-blah-luba, she’s my scrollby.
Sort of plagiarizing mysel… I mean, paying tribute to myself. Ten or twenty years ago, I took a photo of the big signboard outside the garden center I worked for, and thanks to the miracles of the computer age, I was able to put better messages on it than the ones we had facing the street. For several years, I kept a print on the wall of the sign saying BLAH BLAH BLAH PLANTS BLAH BLAH. Here’s hoping someone else finds it as inspirational as I did.
Come to think, I was doubtless paying tribute to Gary Larson back then. Guy was the Gary Larson of the comics page.