Words are inadequate

The case of the 500-mile email: "We can't send [e-]mail more than 500 miles." I was reminded yesterday that this exists and am the happier for it.

Two Slice: "A font that's only 2px tall, and somewhat readable!" 'Somewhat' is doing a decent amount of work there; I suspect enough letters are distinctive that your brain can fill in the missing ones from context. Still, impressive.

Clues By Sam, a daily logic puzzle. Starts easy on Monday, gets gradually harder over the course of the week. Been doing these for awhile now. It's nice to start my morning with a tiny dopamine jolt.

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Let's see.

( a multitude of things )

The paperwork for my credential has FINALLY gone through, so I am actually done with BCIT. Unless I need to get a transcript or something, I guess. \o/

Meanwhile, have some links. Roughly zero percent of these are cheerful.

The culture war is a metaphorical war (for now), but the metaphor is valid makes two points, neither in as much detail as I would like.

One: "We liberals really need to acknowledge that (a) we are in a culture war and (b) we are the aggressors. Racism, sexism, and homophobia have been features of the dominant culture since... well, pretty much forever. We are engaged in a conscious effort to marginalize -- and, if possible, extirpate -- these tendencies, and we are using whatever means we have at our disposal to do so, including the sword of the state."

Two: "...[A] very deep cultural and psychological problem on the liberal-left, which is a pervasive tendency toward various types of Whig history, in which history itself is more or less assumed to move in an inevitable direction, with a sort of vaguely Marxisant or quasi-Christian eschatological faith that in the end the good guys have to win because that’s the ultimate plot line."

I do not, in fact believe that 'the moral arc of the universe ... bends towards justice,' because why would it? Any bending has to be done by us, by people who act to bend it, and in the face of thousands of years of tradition, fear, and resource-insecurity.

San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. ... There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
--Hunter S Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"

Related, I Want No One Else To Succeed: "I've been doing this experiment on classes for the past 10 years and not one class has agreed unanimously because there’s always somebody who doesn’t want someone to have what they have because they don’t think they deserve it."

Also related, rachelmanija reviews Dying Of Whiteness: "[W]hite people perceive their own interest as upholding white supremacy and punishing people of color and liberals. They value this so highly that they are willing to deprive themselves of money, material goods, and even their own lives in pursuit of this goal. And they are doing exactly that: literally killing themselves as a side effect of killing people of color, in a kind of cultural murder-suicide." Erik at LG&M reviewed it some years back as well. His concluding words feel prescient. "Until whites stop preferring to kill themselves rather than admit non-whites as full citizens of the nation, fascism will continue to be a serious threat to the rest of us. And to themselves too, but they will be A-OK with that."

Who Goes MAGA?, a fictitious analysis of various personalities. "It attracts those who mistake confidence for competence, who confuse being loud with being right, who think that admitting uncertainty is weakness." (Also links to Dorothy Thompson's 1941 essay "Who Goes Nazi?", also worth a read.)

And, in case the previous weren't depressing enough: Assuming the can opener of free fair elections and a subsequent Democratic victory in 2026 and 2028: "Will America’s non-fascist party have the will to purge the government of fascists?" In which the FBI is conducting witch-hunts against employees who were friendly with people on the director and deputy director's 'enemies lists'. Primarily concerned with There Will Be No De-Trumpification:

Imagine it is 2028 and Democrat X has won the presidency. Kash Patel will only be four years into his term as FBI director. Dan Bongino is now a career employee of the bureau. The entire agency will be stacked, top to bottom, with Trump loyalists.

Would a Democratic administration have the will to purge these Trumpist elements from federal law enforcement?

I’m pretty sure I know the answer. And you’re not going to like it.

There will be no housecleaning of any Federal agencies; Trump appointees will remain in place despite their commitment to opposing Democratic governance and priorities. There will be no significant rollback of ICE's increased budget and powers.

We have the model for this: Obama in 2008 declining to go after the banks; Biden's appointment of Merrick Garland to fail to investigate the 6 January coup attempt. Hell, the pardon and rehabilitation of Richard Nixon.

Well. Two hundred fifty years was a good run, I guess.

ETA: forgot I'd seen this awhile ago. Fucking terrible moving company sues for nonpayment, is forced to pay instead. Reminder that 2 Burley Men Moving, based out of Victoria, are absolute shit: no communication, major delays, and broken stuff. Avoid at all costs.

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In A Succession Of Bad Days there's a bit where the sorcery students work with a fire elemental to design and build a house. The elemental does most of the design work. Including the basement, with a hat-tip to Mr Penrose:

The walls are, floor to ceiling, tiled black and white, black shapes like a flat cruciform kite and white shapes like an extremely stylized swallow or falcon or something, nothing to it but pointy wings. ... Kynefrid sounds shockey. "I don't think the tiling pattern ever repeats."

Naturally someone has actually done this, thirty years ago. It looks amazing and I want it. I also enjoy the circa-2000 webpage design. Sad that all the "here's some more examples" links are broken, though. All things come in time to die.

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I went to renew my US passport online last night (it's not up until late '26 but may as well). There's a form you fill out that will pre-fill a PDF form for you, and then you just print out the PDF form and mail everything off. It's pretty great.

It also includes the option for an X gender marker, which was mildly startling. More startling was that you can just select that, or for that matter M or F: no need to provide additional documentation or anything. I poked around a bit more and found the announcement from Sec'y Blinken, from spring 2022. It's... it's exactly what I would want it to be. "We're doing this; we talked to a bunch of people about the best way to do it, and figured that making it as easy as possible was the right call." It made me sniffly, both for its existence as the obviously, simply, right thing, and for the certainty that it'll be torched within six months.

I'm getting one, partly because it feels right and partly because if I draw flak that would otherwise have gone at someone more vulnerable that's all to the good. I considered not: it's got a nonzero, if low, chance of making my life worse. But: fuck preemptive compliance. Also fuck gender data. (Also fuck gender, honestly.)

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I went to see Steph, the day after Halloween. I saw a giant outdoor puppet show and talked a little about Abby. I made pancakes, which an extremely picky small child declared to be the best pancakes. I bought spices and washed a lot of dishes and was generally quietly domestic in loving company for a few days.

I came home Wednesday afternoon, so I did at least get to spend the initial Wednesday-morning shock with someone else.

Had a couple days to re-center now. I'm not angry and confused, like I was in 2004. I'm not hurt and incandescent, like I was in 2016. I'm just sad. Sic transit gloria mundi. Everything dies, and everything flies economy.

Though I did discover Mycopunk Principles (from Mastodon, I think via Charlie Stross), which I appreciate.

Onward, always onward.

Been awhile since I had a good linkspam.

Canon is Kayfabe: "We're not here to watch writers be consistent. We're here to watch writers come up with awesome moves in the game of consistency."

Coercion versus Care: "Compliance isn't sufficient. Something closer to obeisance is advisable, just to be on the safe side."

The Ones Who Take The Train To Omelas, a short parody by John Holbo, with lovely travel posters. Holbo has also written an essay about the story, which is also worth reading.

Frank Oz on life as Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy and Yoda: "To my absolute mortification, as I'm telling this story I burst into tears. I apologise for my unprofessional display of emotion. 'No, don't worry! So much of the time I'm a fencepost that people project their childhood on to, and that's a great compliment.'"

And, from early 2020 but still deeply relevant, LGM Book Review: Dying of Whiteness

A lot of people are wondering whether this will finally be the disaster that undermines [Trump's] support among the base. Reading Jonathan Metzl's Dying of Whiteness is a good way to cure yourself of this delusion. ... Metzl goes to hospitals where people simply tell him they would rather die than have Obamacare go to the undeserving.
...
Until whites stop preferring to kill themselves rather than admit non-whites as full citizens of the nation, fascism will continue to be a serious threat to the rest of us. And to themselves too, but they will be A-OK with that.

Underwater museum: how 'Paolo the fisherman' made the Med's strangest sight: "The underwater sculptures create both a physical barrier for nets [to block illegal fishing] and a unique underwater museum."

Literary puzzle solved for just third time in almost 100 years: "The first time I opened the box, I swiftly concluded that it was way out of my league, and the only way I’d even have a shot at it was if I were for some bizarre reason trapped in my own home for months on end, with nowhere to go and no one to see."

Loose Ends: "A literary supercut composed entirely of last lines from 137 science fiction and fantasy books."

A Testing Experience: "[T]elling me, in particular, that I was not allowed to take the test would be the one way to guarantee I did in fact become a Scientologist, because I was a teenager and also notoriously contrary. In the end, [my father] decided to trust my unwillingness to agree with any authority ever about anything."

The Unbelievable True Story Of How The Memphis Pyramid Became A Bass Pro Shops: "Several months later, Bass Pro Shops founder and Forbes billionaire Johnny Morris found himself hiking to the top of the silent, steel sentinel where Seger’s voice echoed that night. As he looked down from the rafters, visions of a cypress swamp began to fill his mind."

Anthony Ekundayo Lennon on being accused of 'passing' as a black man: fascinating interview with a white actor who's lived all his life as mixed-race.

Ender's Game, at Something Short & Snappy, in which Orson Scott Card's classic is subjected to a close reading, and does not come off well. Same guy did Speaker For The Dead immediately afterwards and it also has some problems. I adored Ender's Game when I discovered it in seventh grade, because it told me that the reason that everything was terrible was that I was so much better than everyone else.

America Has Two Feet. It’s About to Lose One of Them: "In one case, in a certain city that Dr. Dennis declined to name, the construction of a downtown high-rise that sat in the approach path to an international airport was delayed while the building was redesigned to be one floor shorter." Also includes a photo that really should have been captioned "The National Curio Cabinet of Standards."

Musical analysis of 'Solsbury Hill': I had somehow not realised it was in 7/4 time. Neat.

I do not actually know much about Tom Jones; my exposure is mostly limited to "Magic Moments" from the Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas soundtrack.

However. I went searching for EMF's "Unbelievable" (a dance hit from 1990) on Youtube yesterday, and turned up Tom Jones performing it with the band. Which is pretty great. (The thirty seconds of intro banter are adorable as well. Jones has a cute Welsh accent, and the two guys from the band are just so clearly overawed to be talking to him.)

That led me to the discovery that back in 1999 he did an album of covers, with a bunch of other bands who were not the original artists. From the track list I either don't know of or don't care for most of the songs, but I figured I'd check out the first one: Burning Down the House with the Cardigans.

It's... really good.

Again, I know the Cardigans solely from "Lovefool" from the Romeo+Juliet soundtrack. I never really thought of the singer as having a distinctive voice but when she joins in midway through the first verse, "Dear I fear we're facing a problem" just slides right into my brain.

So that was neat.

This isn't really a post but maybe it's a nudge to start writing again.

An interview with William Gibson, and a fine companion to his interview in The Paris Review some years ago. Gibson occupies a strange space in my mental library. I like the Bigend trilogy (Pattern Recognition / Spook Country / Zero History), and I remember enjoying the Neuromancer books but very little else about them. And I've really enjoyed reading interviews with him and the couple of times I've heard him talk. But he's somehow not a writer I follow closely, or one whose books I buy immediately. Interesting.

How Good Omens Changed My Life, Cured My Depression, and Fixed My Posture: looking for a pull-quote is futile, just read it.

A Long Overdue Tribute To Jason Statham’s Performance In 'Spy': "The thing that makes Statham's performance so great, however, is the commitment. He leans in so far you start to worry he’ll tip over. It’s incredible." Accurate.

The Kosher Salt Question: "The trouble is that the two major kosher salt brands -- Diamond Crystal and Morton -- perform in wildly different ways." Fascinating.

Via marthawells who says Okay, this? This is perfect. I cannot argue.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/21199367

(90second video, sound required.)

I'm familiar with about a third of the source material and it doesn't matter. It reminds me of nothing so much as the movie compilation Shut Up And Dance fanvid.

I may be quietly bopping around in my seat all day.

From a comment on Charlie Stross's blogpost about the current UK awfulness: "[Elizabeth II's] #1 priority since before she took the throne is to maintain continuity for the monarchy; don't underestimate the impact of her uncle's abdication crisis."

"of her uncle's abdication crisis."

record-scratch

Great-uncle, surely?

The wallpaper in my grandmother's bathroom had newspaper clippings from the early twentieth century. The only ones I can remember were an ad for a Wallace Beery movie (memory says The Sheik; IMDB says that was Valentino) and two headlines: KING OF JUGO-SLAVIA ASSASSINATED... and EDWARD SURRENDERS THRONE THAT HE MIGHT WED AMERICAN. So I was sort of tangentially aware of Edward VIII as a kid, as someone that happened ages ago.

But no. Twentieth-century English monarchs are Ed-George-Ed-George-Liz. And it's the second Ed, the second George's brother, that abdicated. And Elizabeth is 93; she was born in 1926. Perfectly reasonable for her to have been been ten when her uncle stepped down.

Just another reminder that history isn't so long ago after all. (Exhibit B: television footage of a witness to Abraham Lincoln's assassination.) When I was reading those headlines on Gram's wall, I was closer to them than today is to World War II and fighting actual Nazis. Those that do not remember, etc.