About Ed Brayton

 This is going to be hard for me to write.

Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars has long been a favorite skeptical blog of mine, since it featured a wonderful combination of incisive analysis, strong opinion and outright snark. It's bounced around from when I first ran into it on Scienceblogs, but Ed has always kept the same degree of quality and intelligence in all of its incarnations up until now.

Unfortunately, serious health problems dropped his output to the point where he couldn't post nearly as often as he liked.

And then I read something that just ruined my night.

Ed has decided to apply for hospice care, since his medical condition has deteriorated to the point that palliative care instead of yet more trips to the hospital and yet more stays in rehab facilities would just make more sense.

I understand his decision and respect it.

That doesn't make it any easier to accept.

As somebody who has a blog that has nowhere near the following that he does, it's like a giant sinkhole appeared and ate the place where I live. He was one of those bloggers who kept swinging for the fences even when a number of completely spurious lawsuits from some of his targets started coming in to try to shut him up. They didn't, but you know how idiots are when you point out their stupidity. They just keep plugging away even though all that proves is that they're still idiots.

Unfortunately, being shut down by your own medical problems is something entirely different.

Ed is, in my mind, irreplaceable, just as any great blogger is. I'm sure he'll keep up at it until he no longer can, but the end is the end, regardless of that. And that's what's so difficult to stomach about it.

On the subject of conventions during a crisis like this

My personal $0.02 on convention cancellations due to the pandemic:

Even if we're exceedingly lucky and this thing eventually burns itself out like the 1918 flu pandemic did, it took that particular disaster roughly two years to be over and done with. Even if it only takes a single year from now because of a variety of factors (including the fact that we have better medical and scientific knowledge and treatment techniques than in 1918-19), that still means that it might not be safe to hold conventions until May 2021. That means that cons running from Anime Central this year until Acen next year won't be able to be held - or held in the same way they used to be.

This also means that local events ranging from Acen through Gen Con, Wizard World, Windycon, Capricon next year and possibly Acen in 2021 might all be washouts. No one can entirely predict how the pandemic will play out by then, but if the Illinois rule holding public events down to 50 people or less continues to be necessary that would completely wipe out all of the aforementioned conventions that are held in Illinois. As for Indiana, their events have to follow state law as well. And large events held outside the area like San Diego Comicon, Dragon*Con and Worldcon would have to follow their respective local law - or just admit that the accompanying liability issues just aren't worth the risk. And, IMO, they're not.

With all of those factors laid out on the table, this much can be said - conventions may have to sit on their budgets until a time they can be held safely. Vendors may have to rely on online or mail-order sales instead. And fans may have to find new ways to network or hold online "conventions" until we get out of this mess. Yes, the situation is bad. Quite bad, as someone who both staffs and attends conventions. But it's still far better than the alternative.

Predictable result, predictable revulsion

There are many moments in the history of the United States where our political leadership actually showed political courage and wisdom. This wasn't even close to being one of them.

As for the 52 Senators who couldn't be bothered to show any scruples or nerve in trying to rein in an out of control President, let me say this clearly: if Donald J. Trump keeps going down the path he's been heading ever since his inauguration, fuck every last one of you for your inaction. You deserve nothing more in terms of sentiment than that.

Online "journalism" at work

The fact that Lev Parnas, Rudy Giuliani and Devin Nunes were in fairly constant contact with each other is galling but hardly shocking (nothing surprises me about the Ukraine situation any more, really), but this following tidbit about former The Hill staffer John Solomon is especially interesting:

The call records also show Giuliani, Nunes and Parnas also were in frequent contact with John Solomon, a former columnist for the Washington news outlet The Hill. Solomon published a series of opinion pieces criticizing former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch as part of “a coordinated effort by associates of President Trump to push … false narratives publicly” in a bid to force Yovanovitch’s ouster, the Democratic report said, citing public statements, phone records, and contractual agreements.

After Solomon published an article critical of Yovanovitch on April 7, phone records show numerous calls between Giuliani, Parnas, Nunes and Solomon. For instance, on April 10, Giuliani and Nunes talked on three short calls in rapid succession, followed by a text message, and ending with a nearly 3-minute call. Later that day, Parnas and Solomon had a 4-minute, 39-second call.

The Hill had previously attempted some cleanup on Twitter and elsewhere after the mess Solomon caused, but if all of this comes off as "too little, too late", that's because it probably was.

Nothing good can come from this

It's not as if Qasem Soleimani wasn't a son of a bitch - he was, but a very high-ranking son of a bitch, to say the least - but his death on the business end of a US airstrike (and on neighboring Iraqi territory, on top of it) will do nothing to stabilize a region already fraught with sectarian violence and wall-to-wall atrocities against civilians.

But it couldn't possibly be a wag the dog hedge against certain domestic political issues, especially when embarrassing new evidence was about to come to light, could it?

Nah. Of course not.

Now reading

Chronopolis: the Science Fiction of J.G. Ballard (UK title Chronopolis and Other Stories) by J.G. Ballard

The limits of selective outrage

"Contrary to what President Trump says, Article Two does not give him the power to do anything he wants - and I’ll just give you one example that shows you the difference between him and a king, which is the Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility, so while the president can name his son Barron, he cannot make him a baron.”

- Professor Pamela Karlan, at the Judiciary Committee

Is that pun clunky? Yes. Most puns are. Was it maybe a bit uncomfortable? Sure. But the degree to which Republican apologists for the Trump administration decided to turn it into a cause celebre (the singularly idiotic Matt Gaetz being an especially glaring example) is an indication of their desperation to latch on to any issue they can to deflect from what was laid out in the committee meetings concerning the Trump administration's actions in Ukraine.

Conversely, it's unlikely that Barron Trump knows anything about a kid named Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez. The 16-year-old Guatemalan came down with the flu in a Customs and Border Patrol detention facility and died, apparently after lying on the floor for several hours without medical treatment.

Barron Trump can count himself lucky that he actually has a family to take care of him. Carlos didn't. Regardless of the accuracy of the ProPublica report - and I have no reason to doubt it as this point - there was no widespread national outrage when he died after laying on a cell room floor unattended for over four hours.

Barron Trump, in comparison, will grow up a child of privilege, probably reach adulthood unhindered and end up avoiding the scandals his father and older siblings are currently awash in if he's lucky. All of the selective outrage over a clumsy but inoffensive pun on his name that was uttered during his teens will be something he'll easily get over. And he'll still be alive.

The other, far less famous kid wasn't so lucky.

And if you're still in a fit of pique over what Barron Trump was or wasn't called, your continued selective outrage doesn't mean a fucking thing to me.

In memoriam: Ted Piwowar, 1965-2019

Ted Piwowar was one of my closest, long-term friends for over thirty years. He died on July 1st.

I didn't find out about it until September 29th.

This is something I'll get back to later in this post, but first, an introduction:

The first time I remember getting into a conservation with Ted about anything was a phone call where I tried getting a ride back from a meeting of the anime club we were both a member of back in 1985. Ted, it turns out, was voted in as the President of the Chicago branch of the C/FO (Cartoon Fantasy Organization) the previous meeting because he was sick. Yes, it literally was the "Congratulations, you're now in charge because you weren't there" excuse. Be that as it may, we were both anime fans, which was a an immediate, common bond between us. I got my ride back that night, and we kept in contact. And, in fact, became friends -  and stayed friends for over three decades, in fact.

Ted's primary interest in life was computer animation, which is the reason he had a deep and abiding interest in anime and manga in the first place. One of his greatest regrets is that he could never get his foot in the door in that industry (he certainly made enough efforts at building a body of work as a student at Columbia College and afterward), and it bothered him immensely that in the 31-plus years after he graduated he had to work in industries related to it but never in the actual industry itself. Part of his game plan was to head out to L.A. to do so. It never happened.

For years, we went to SF conventions as part of a group, Japanese bookstores, concerts at venues like Metro and Tuts or just hung out when we were too broke to do either. We kept in touch all the time, and I helped him move on more than one occasion. The one thing I didn't get to see was him succeeding at his chosen profession, though, and the problem with that was that his growing lack of long-term employability was beginning to wear on his nerves. He was a lot quicker to irritability and even anger as he got older as time and frustration wore on, and the fact that he had to move back in with family on more than one occasion didn't help matters much. He was still trying, though, despite all that.

And then, on July 1st, it all ended.

And I found out the hardest way possible, other than actually being there when the sudden heart attack apparently killed him while he was getting ready for work one morning.

It was through his Facebook wall, because no one in his family told me about this despite the fact one of his sisters got in touch with me after he went to the hospital in 2017 via text, and despite the fact they could've gone through his effects after he passed away to find out who they needed to contact. I'll remember that train ride for a very long time because of that fact. It wasn't a good feeling. Shock combined with anger never is, and that moment had enough of both.

All I know at this point is what other friends posted on his wall the day of the funeral and what two of them told me in instant messages after I contacted them. I'll try to contact his family to get a more complete picture of what happened, but as for now this is all I have to go on. And I'm leaving it at that.

All I know is that end came far too suddenly, and far too early.  He deserved a more complete memorial as well. Hopefully, I or someone else will salvage enough of his artwork to do that, but that's a subject for another time.

He just deserved better in life, period.

The content of his "character"

It's been a good long while since I posted here. But then this happened, and as usual the interesting times (in the worst Chinese sense of the word "interesting") we live in forced me to comment.

Donald J. Trump has always been a punchline to me. I considered him a self-absorbed, egotistic boor who I couldn't care less about decades ago when he started gaining attention for himself with his high-profile business dealings (more like business failures,but you know what they say about there being no such thing as bad publicity) and his crass acquisition of mistresses and trophy wives alike. I just couldn't be bothered to care about a man whose main purpose in life seemed to be putting his name on as many prominent buildings as possible because his ego was just that big. He was, on balance, a caricature of the crass, high-living tycoon that shows up in good satire and bad soap operas alike. And I was, at best, indifferent.

And then things changed. 

He got into politics. And eventually got elected President.

And then a whole bunch of other things came to light about him, and he went from being merely unsavory to being outright dangerous.

Donald Trump believes in a wide assortment of conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific woo and gives them a level of credence that belongs on a fringe web site. He's effectively used the United States government as a personal business marketing tool more than once, showed his contempt for Constitutional principles and nominated a number of sycophants and corporate lobbyists to positions in his cabinet and got rid of them when they weren't sycophantic enough for his liking.

He got in bed with wonderful international examples of authoritarian-to-totalitarian "leadership" such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Eun and did a number of things of things to insult or destabilize NATO, the European Union and individual allied nations. He uses his adult children as his personal public relations arm and is also dumb enough to personally involve them in his international and domestic political blunders. 

He makes himself out as a cartoonish ubermensch on Twitter, in reports on his physicals that read suspiciously like he personally wrote them and in assertions that he's a "very stable genius". And his racist, sexist and just plain assholish views and practices in and outside of his Presidency are just as well known.

Quite a few of these things are impeachable offenses while others are not, but regardless of whether he ends up getting impeached because of the Ukraine debacle one question remains, and it's a bad one:

How long will it take to clean up the damage he's caused?

Furthermore, will we be able to clean it up?

Rumors concerning my abduction by aliens...

...have been greatly exaggerated. But you might have given them more credibility in the two-plus months I haven't posted here.

An Open Letter (7/4/19)

The following letter was sent to the offices of Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth as well as Representative Jesus "Chuy" Garcia on July 3rd concerning the DHS Inspector General's report on CBP detention facilities in the Rio Grande Valley.)

Good afternoon. I recently had a chance to read the DHS Inspector General's report _Management Alert: DHS Needs to Address Dangerous Overcrowding and Prolonged Detention of Children and Adults in the Rio Grande Valley_ and was deeply disturbed by the conditions described in the report.

The repeated accounts of crisis-level overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate access to showers and hot food are disturbing enough in themselves, but the fact that the CBP's leadership attempted to deflect this criticism with a response that essentially says "this is the best we can do, given the circumstances" is no real comfort either. The CBP'S role is to detain illegal border crossers and then process them out to ICE within 72 hours of apprehension, not hold them in the equivalent of a overcrowded prison for weeks on end without processing. The fact that a good portion of these _de facto_ inmates are minors is equally disturbing. Likewise, the fact that I saw no mention of detainees being segregated according to possible criminal history is disturbing; are actual detainees with known criminal records or noticeable violent tendencies being segregated from the general detainee population, especially minors and women? Are such screenings even being made in the first place?

What is needed for improvement of these conditions is not merely increased funding of these facilities but thorough oversight by Congress. The Trump administration, as usual, can seem to range from a blase attitude to outright callousness towards this situation. The fact that they would prefer to bring tanks into Washington for an almost Soviet-style "salute to America" instead of working on comprehensive immigration reform speaks volumes about the administration's real priorities. It's apparently up to Congress to initiate positive steps to fix this issue. Please do your part in doing just that.

Thank you.