Newspaper of (W)rec(k)ord

 If you're a member of a conrunning organization, you know you're in serious trouble when the Guardian - an internationally known newspaper of record, for crying out loud - starts paying attention to the gigantic mess you've created for yourselves.

 As somebody who's watched the Chengdu Worldcon Hugo Awards debacle unfold with an appropriate sense of increasing horror, one thing I can say about the situation is that any good that was engendered by having a Worldcon in the People's Republic of China has now been canceled out by the backlash among fans (just one example here) towards the way the Hugo Administrator handled (or rather, didn't handle) questions concerning Hugo nominees being ruled ineligible by the Chengdu Hugo Awards committee. The controversy is continuing to explode all over the place, and it's brought up other questions concerning the legal status of the Hugo Awards that are potentially just as threatening (if not more) to the WSFS than the negative publicity caused by the Chengdu controversy. 

As for the Hugo Awards Administrator himself, he's got a serious problem on his hands. I know him personally and have worked with him on more than one local convention. I know that he can get quite salty at times. Big deal - any number of us can, myself included. But his continual response to this situation has been a combination of obfuscation and outright hostility towards anyone asking questions he doesn't particularly like, and he's done it over and over again ad nauseum. At that point, you start wondering exactly what he's trying to prove - or trying to hide. 

The Hugo Administrator in question has dug himself quite a hole, and at the time of this post is continuing to dig it deeper and deeper still. He's done so well at generating negative attention for himself that I've seen commenters compare him to someone far more toxic in terms of the damage he's done to the Hugo Awards. That's not a comparison anyone wants, but there it is.

What he seems to have accomplished is the fannish equivalent of career suicide. I can't imagine him working for any other Worldcons or the WSFS in any capacity. I can barely imagine him working for Chicago-area conventions, for that matter. What he needs to do is either keep a low profile until at least some of the current anger blows over, and if that doesn't work, gafiate.  

To be honest, he doesn't seem to have much in the way of other choices left.

January 6th, three years later

 This was something I wrote back on January 5th, 2021 - a day before a mob of complete idiots and their accompanying handlers decided to crash the Capitol Building in order to prevent the counting of electoral ballots that would seal their idiot king's fate in the 2020 Presidential election - and nothing I wrote in that or the follow-up has been proven in the least bit false or even inaccurate. 

I also knew what had been put in office back in November 2016, and although that post is full of far too much Monday morning quarterbacking the truth is that Donald J. Trump wasn't merely as bad as I thought he'd be - he was worse. And all indications are after four years of increasing paranoia about criminal prosecution, cognitive decline and stupid fascist tricks he'll be even worse than that. 

So remember to vote on November 5th. Because your future really does depend on it. 

Tags:

 
• us events

O no, he's back again

Well, maybe not at length this time, but I've decided to revive (or at least post a lot more often to) my blog after a very, very long time where I was barely posting at all. 

Yeah, this was tied to a New Year's resolution of sorts. Just not one specifically tied to this blog. 

Expect more posts in the future. Many more.

History, whether it chooses to repeat itself or not

 Considering the freakish outcome Yevgeny Prigozhin's armed rebellion has already produced (Prigozhin heading to "exile" in Belarus, Putin actually not killing him and somehow staying in power himself), Vladimir Putin might want to consider a history lesson:

 

On a previous occasion, there a major defeat of non-Soviet military forces caused massive political upheaval in an autocratic Russian government, and it was the Russo-Japanese War. What ultimately followed it was an abortive revolution in 1905, and although it was an abortive revolution it caused opponents of the Czarist regime (ranging from the Constitutional Democratic [i.e., Cadet] party to the Social Revolutionaries and the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party) to double down in their efforts to overthrow (or at least limit) the power of Czar Nicholas II. 

 

Another series of catastrophic failures against the German Army during World War I made things even worse, and although other factors were in play (severe social and economic inequity, the autocratic nature of the Czarist regime, you name it) those military defeats showed what a paper tiger the Russian Imperial army was. Could they suppress domestic dissent during peacetime? Of course. But could they do it after they were obliterated in military combat against the Deutsches Heer? Hardly. 

 

For a number of reasons I outlined above, Putin might be able to stay in power, but his seat behind his desk in the Kremlin is a lot less sturdy than it was in February 2022 when all of this started. And the only person he has to blame for that is himself.

A couple of reminders of a truly unpleasant event

Today is the second anniversary of the attempted self-coup on January 6th, 2001, and a couple of things you should read on it (provided you can find the time - one of them is quite lengthy, and the other isn't exactly a quick read, either) include the following:

The full text of the House January 6th Committee's report is available, but be forewarned: it's over 800 pages in length, and although you might want to read all the details it's going to take a good long time to actually finish it. 

RationalWiki's article on January 6th is shorter (but still extremely detailed) and has a good deal of appropriate snark that the official report had to avoid for the usual reasons. Either way, neither of these will let you forget what actually happened that day - which is precisely what the perpetrators, fellow travellers and apologists for the coup attempt don't want.

January 6th Committee Hearings: Day 4

  (NOTE: the following is a video copy and transcript of Day 4 of the US House Committee hearings tasked with investigating the attack on the US Capitol Building that occurred on January 6th, 2021. I'll attempt to post videos and transcripts for all meetings until the Committee has finished its hearings.)  

Day 4 hearing (courtesy C-SPAN)

Day 4 transcript (courtesy NPR) 

January 6th Committee Hearings: Day 3

   (NOTE: the following is a video copy and transcript of Day 3 of the US House Committee hearings tasked with investigating the attack on the US Capitol Building that occurred on January 6th, 2021. I'll attempt to post videos and transcripts for all meetings until the Committee has finished its hearings.) 

Day 3 hearing (courtesy AP News)

Day 3 transcript (courtesy NPR)

January 6th Committee Hearings: Day 2

(NOTE: the following is a video copy and transcript of Day 1 of the US House Committee hearings tasked with investigating the attack on the US Capitol Building that occurred on January 6th, 2021. I'll attempt to post videos and transcripts for all meetings until the Committee has finished its hearings.) 

Day 2 hearing (courtesy MSNBC)

Day 2 transcript (courtesy NPR)

January 6th Committee Hearings: Day 1

(NOTE: the following is a video copy and transcript of Day 1 of the US House Committee hearings tasked with investigating the attack on the US Capitol Building that occurred on January 6th, 2021. I'll attempt to post videos and transcripts for all meetings until the Committee has finished its hearings.) 

Day 1 hearing (courtesy MSNBC)

Day 1 transcript (courtesy NPR.org)

Black robes, darker times ahead

 This week wasn't just about Roe v. Wade. Not by a long shot.

The Supreme Court of the United States handed down a series of decisions this week that don't merely smack of an effort to return the court to a pre-Warren court era; they practically look like an effort to go all the way back to the Taney court instead, and the rulings they set down are at times so mutually contradictory at that it looks like they're not even trying to justify them through stare decisis or any other comprehensible form of legal precedent.

We've been told as a nation that although it's perfectly acceptable for state legislatures to regulate and even ban abortion, it isn't acceptable for them to regulate concealed carry rules for firearms. SCOTUS also ruled in favor of the proposition that if a state subsidizes tuition to private schools it must also subsidize tuition to religious schools, which effectively means that the only way out for states choosing not to do so is to cut off all tuition assistance to private schools, secular or otherwise. And then there's there's Vega vs. Tekoh, which weakens Miranda protections against self-incrimination. It wasn't a week where the Supreme Court covered itself in glory, and that's a huge understatement.

And then on Friday, Roe v. Wade was overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

My own personal view on the issue of abortion is that it's strictly between a woman, her physician and whoever else she asks for an opinion as to whether she chooses to obtain one or not. My view shouldn't enter into the issue unless I'm specifically asked about it, and if I'm not asked about it it's none of my business.

Women involved in making such a decision have enough to worry about without everyone else throwing in their own two cents, and if they can't negotiate the issue despite the input of their spouse or partner, friends, family members and their own religious views (or lack thereof) the opinion of someone who neither knows their situation or can be in their head to know what they're going through won't be of help, either. And because of Dobbs, that decision has just been made all the more excruciating. Considering how many states passed trigger laws greatly restricting or outlawing abortion that went into effect when Roe fell, the decision has become incredibly expensive as well. So is raising an unexpected child, but the majority of the court doesn't seem particularly concerned with that. And if the pregnancy is ectopic? Well, that's obviously the woman's problem, not the court's.

Regardless of this decision, abortion will not disappear. They'll merely become exceedingly difficult to obtain legally in several states and will be forced underground, but they'll still be performed - albeit at much greater risk to the health or even the life of the patient.

But as far as one of the things that could cut back on unwanted or unviable pregnancies - namely access to effective contraceptives - might be under assault as well. Clarence Thomas has already gone on record as stating that earlier decisions such as Griswold v. Connecticut (which allowed married couples to buy contraceptives) and Obergefell v. Hodges (the decision that legalized interstate protection of same-sex marriages) might have to be revisited on the same grounds that Roe was overturned. Of course, the irony with is that the same thing could be said of Loving v. Virginia, and that means that Thomas' own interracial marriage of 35 years could be invalidated.

But I'm sure he'd be perfectly okay with that, right?

It's been a while...

Hi. This is the first time that I've posted anything on this blog for nearly six months, and the reason for that is simple:

A lot of shit has happened. A lot.

If you look at the current situation in Ukraine or the hearings on the attack on the Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021 that are going on right now, news events have effectively been an avalanche over the last few months, and they distracted me to the point where I decided not to write anything here because there was just too damn much of it. I'm finally getting around to it now because a friend pointed out that it had been nearly half a year ago when I last posted. Again, it was due to a shitstorm of news that caused me to even feel buried by it at times. I'm sure any number of people - if not a majority - feel the same way.

All that being said, I'm posting this to say that I'm back. I'll probably be posting shorter entries like I did when I first got an account on LiveJournal years ago, but there will be longer pieces from time to time as well. The simple fact is that a blog is only good when it stays updated, and it's about time that I revived this blog and its mirror site. So I have.

Here's hoping that I can keep doing it for a good, long time.