Links

Late Capitalism in one headline

No one who knows anyone about Tucker Carlson was surprised by this

Here's why children are in cages 


Who knew the horse could do that?

Why we build the Wall

This is very cool:

Review of Green Jay and Crow

My review of Green Jay and Crow, a SF novel by DJ Daniels, is live at Strange Horizons today.

What I'm Reading Now

Toby Barlow, Sharp Teeth

This is a book about werewolves. After I opened it to look at the first paragraph, I almost put it right back on the shelf. It's written in poetry. I suppose I should call that "poetry," since it's really a narrative written in "free verse," except it's not really verse at all. Just a very nice line now and then.

But it's a pretty good book, about relationships and trauma and refugees (among werewolves). I read it all the way through in about four hours, and it kept my attention the entire way. It's extremely heteronormative, and if you want accurate wolf behavior among your werewolves, yeah, no.

Recommended for those who like ripping yarns and nice writing.


K.J.Parker, The Folding Knife

Yes, I am still reading K.J. Parker. This is what my old writing teacher would call a "little tailor" story. That's a story in which the main character starts out as nothing special (a little tailor, though in this case a middle-class kid) and rises up to great heights. The book is the story of how that happens.

K.J. Parker writes a dense but extremely readable prose, and his characters, major and minor alike, are wonderful. They're all about war and politics, as well as the nuts and bolts of how things work. If that's the sort of thing you like (it's the sort of thing I love), you'll like Parker. This is a good one to start with, by the way -- a stand-alone, rather than the trilogies he usually writes. (Trilogies of three 900 page books.)

Kate Atkinson, Big Sky

This is the latest of Atkinson's "mystery" series about Jackson Brodie. "Mystery" in scare quotes, because while there are in fact several mysteries in each book that work as a plot, the books are really about Jackson and the lives of the other people caught up in the plot/s.

Atkinson is one of my favorite writers, and this was the series that started me reading her. It's very much worth reading. I don't think I'd start with this novel, though, which probably the weakest of the lot. Start with either Case Histories or Started Early, Took My Dog.

On the other hand, this is a pretty good book. I like very much (among other things) how Atkinson handles adolescents. And I'd read about Jackson Brodie if he was just buying groceries and doing laundry.



C.J. Cherryh, Cyteen, Regenesis

I'd read these before, but like K.J. Parker, Cherryh writes these wonderful dense books filled with great characters and the nuts and bolts of how politics and empires work. These are also about cloning and genetics, two of my sweet spots. We follow Ariane Emory, the chief officer of Reseune, a company that manufactures Azi (slaves, but happy slaves, psychologically engineered to like being slaves) to provide the workforce for expanding humanity, as we spread out through the stars. In Reseune, people live for about 150 years -- they have something called rejuv, discovered on Cyteen -- but Ariane is murdered at 120. Her family and her company rebuild her. They don't just clone her; they use "psychogenesis" to recreate the actual Ariane.

This is a duology that weaves together many strains -- the ethics of engineering a society to this degree; the murder mystery of who killed Ariane; the social, sexual, and psychological abuse of Justin Warrick; and the coming to power of the young Ari, as she learns who she is and why she exists, and the corruption that is at the heart of the corporation she owns (if she can take it).

Not as heteronormative as Parker -- several of the main characters are gay men or bisexual men. No trans or Lesbian people though.


Michelle Sacks, You Were Made for This

I did finish this one, but I skimmed the last half.  Extremely heteronormative, and filled with uniformly awful people. It's very well written, but I can't recommend it, unless you like books about terrible people doing terrible things. Content Warning: abuse and murder of an infant.


Joanna Ramos, The Farm

This is what we call in the trade a "high-concept" book. That means the log-line, the plot in a sentence or less, sells the book on its own. The log-line here is something like "Rich woman creates a 'farm' where poor women act as surrogates for the hyper-wealthy, with all the attendant abuses you might expect."

It's about that, and it's about how late-stage capitalism is destroying society along with the planet; but it's also about how the wealthy (the obscenely wealthy) treat the working class, including working class immigrants, as objects, as not quite human. The main point of view character, Jane, is a young woman from the Philippines, with a newborn daughter of her own. She ends up acting as a surrogate (a "host") even though this means she is separated from her infant for the months of her pregnancy.

One abuse perpetuated on the "hosts" is the curtailing of their relationships with family and friends. In Jane's case, the owner of the Farm uses a promised visit with Jane's infant daughter as a way to manipulate Jane into "behaving."

This is disturbing book, despite it's more-or-less happy ending. Worth reading, though I don't think I'd read it again.

So What's Wrong With Trump?

Quora asked the question.

This guy answered it:

Originally Answered: Why do people hate Donald Trump as President?I’ll take a stab at this. Before you pass my answer off as “Another Liberal Snowflake” consider that 1.) I'm an independent centrist who has voted Republican way more often in my life than Democrat, and 2.) if you want to call someone who spent the entire decade of his 20’s serving in the Marine Corps a snowflake, I’d be ready to answer the question what did you do with your 20’s?

Why Liberals (And not-so liberals) are against President Trump.

A.) He lies. A LOT. Politifact rates 69% of the words he speaks as “Mostly False or worse” Only 17% of the things he says get a “Mostly True” or better rating. That is an absolutely unbelievable number. How he doesn’t speak more truth by mistake is beyond me. To put it in context, Obama’s rating was 26% mostly false or worse, and I had a problem with that. Many of Trump’s former business associates report that he has always been a compulsive liar, but now he’s the President of the United States, and that’s a problem. And this is a man who expects you to believe him when he points at other people and says “They’re lying” 

B.) He’s an authoritarian populist, not a conservative. He advances regressive social policy while proposing to expand federal spending and federalist authority over states, both of which conservatives are supposed to hate. 

C.) He pretends at Christianity to court the Religious Right but fails to live anything resembling a Christ-Like Life. 

D.) His nationalist “America First” message effectively alienates us and removes us from our place as leaders in the international community. 

E.) His ideas on “Keeping us safe” are all thinly veiled ideas to remove our freedoms, he is, after all, an authoritarian first. They also are simply bad ideas.

F.) He couldn’t pass a 3rd-grade civics exam. He doesn't’ know what he’s doing. He doesn't understand how international relations work, he doesn’t understand how federal state or local governments work, and every time someone tries to “Run it like a business” it’s a spectacular failure. See Colorado Springs’ recent history as an example. The Short, Unhappy Life of a Libertarian Paradise And that was a businessman with a MUCH better business track record than Trump. We are talking about a man who lost money owning a freaking gambling casino.
 

There's a lot more at the actual post -- he goes all the way through Z, and they're all legitimate.

It's just a commercial...

...but I really like this:

Kids Today

...don't make lists to take to the grocery store with them. Instead, they just take a photograph of the recipe they're planning to make.

We're living in the future.

Dr. Skull Leaves Home

Dr. Skull is working at the Arkansas Governor's School this summer -- I'm driving him across the state today, to start the job.

He's psyched. He's also had yet another interview for a faculty position, this one an actual tenure-track job. (That's four interviews over the past two months.) This school is bringing him on campus for an on-campus interview.

If you have any spare mojo, please send it his way.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (The graphic version)

This is very cool.  (H/t TYWKIWDBI)

New Chapter up on my Patreon

I've posted a new chapter of Triple Junction on my Patreon!

Here's a bit:

The evening before Parliament opened its Spring Session, Lord Oxford held a party at his guesthouse, which was just across Liberty Park from Harper’s house. Harper took both Jossa and Martin along with him.

Martin was one thing – he had a chip, so even if they ran into trouble, the most that would happen to him was he might get tanked. But Jossa was delinquent on her contract. Jossa, they would shoot.

“No one’s going to arrest me,” Jossa soothed, when Martin pointed this out to her. “It’s Oxford’s House. I’m as safe there as I am at the Academy when Efram is in residence.”

“Except the Academy ain’t hip-deep in Port City. Or filled with holders from Kadir’s side of the aisle.”

“Lord Holders from Kadir’s side of the aisle don’t even see contract labor, not unless they want something. We’ll be fine.”

Martin spread his hands at Dallas, lying on the bunk he and Jossa shared with Luc asleep beside him, but Dallas just shrugged. “I’m not the leader of the network,” he said. “Don’t ask me what she should do.”

Martin bared his teeth. “Maybe this is Harper’s way of dealing with the leader of the network.”

Jossa laughed. “Harper doesn’t want me dead.”

“I’d like to see him run the network without Jossa,” Dallas said, patting Luc’s back gently. “Tell Sen what to do?”

“Or Will, for that matter,” Jossa agreed. “Are you going to comb your hair before we leave?”

“I already did,” Martin said, and both of them laughed at him then.

For only $3.00 a month, you can have access to this chapter and 25 others, and read my critical essays on SF books and media.  What a deal!

Go here for more.

Happy 4th of July

Prisoner in Texas dies while being used as "prey" for dog hunt

More concentration camps for children

Jews and others being arrested for protesting, on the 4th of July

The planet is boiling

Conservatives whine because 'mermaids can't be black!'

Meanwhile, these same conservatives foment about the REAL problem in the USA

Trump celebrates himself with a military parade

ICE shows their true colors 

Happy 4th of July, all y'all! This can still be a good country -- vote the GOP out in 2020!

Books, Books, Books

Is there any feeling more satisfying than having a fat stack of books waiting to be read?

It is bliss.

Vox Writes about Ngo, Antifa, and the Milkshakes

This article is pretty good if you want to know the details about what happened with Andy Ngo, in Portland and elsewhere.

About Those Milkshakes...

So "Conservatives" have been playing this milkshake lie for all it's worth.

The conspiracy theory is evolving. Someone is absolutely going to be killed for holding a milkshake pic.twitter.com/OaNtSWSk0E

— Theynessee Pete (@Tennessee_Pete) July 2, 2019

(See more here:

https://twitter.com/Tennessee_Pete/status/1146028991121375232)

In case you aren't in the loop, what happened was Andy Ngo. that font of propaganda, pretended he'd been hit with a milkshake -- which as we know is the worst thing that can happen to a fascist these days -- and then someone else, probably another MAGA American, claimed Antifa members (you can't actually be a "member" of antifa, but never mind) were mixing cement into the milkshakes.

Then it became "quick-drying" cement.

Now it's quick-drying cement and battery acid.

None of this is true (see this article, but you have to go waaay down to find the paragraph where they admit it never happened), but as we are learning, if you're a "conservative" these days, you don't care what's true. You don't care if what you're telling people is not just a lie, but a silly lie.

You only care whether or not what you're saying justifies your bigotry, your hatred, and your ignorance.

See this thread for more: Thread starts here

(Scare quotes around conservative throughout because -- of course -- these aren't actually conservatives. They're reactionary fascists. Not to mention vile heaps of trash.)

Why Rod Posts about Scary Trans People

Apparently Ezra Klein interviewed Rod Dreher, which first off, why? Do we really need to give a bigger platform to heaps of ignorant, bigoted nonsense?

But Ezra asked Rod why his blog was so obsessed with LGBT people, especially T people, and Rod wrote yet another lengthy screed "explaining" why.

Because LGBT people (and especially T people) have destroyed America.

I'm providing a link, but I don't encourage clicking on it. Rod's blog-site, The American Conservative, is 90% ads now, many of them pop-up, all of them annoying. So, you know, click at your own risk.

Rod's main point is that by divorcing sexuality away from its "real" purpose, which as his religion tells us is Making Babies, those Evil Liberals opened the door to Transform* America into a place where people can be whatever they want and do whatever they want with their own bodies.

I mean, the horror. As we all know, God meant only rich white cismen to have that sort of privilege.

So now we have kids growing up with two daddies, or with a trans daddy. What will become of us all, et cetera.

I'd spend some time rebutting this, but it is nonsense on its face (if sex was just for making babies, for instance, we'd only have sex, or want to have sex, when we wanted a baby -- which, come on) and I have better ways to spend my time.

The real question is why Rod spends 80% of his time screeching about trans people when there are 900 more important issues he could be spending his time on -- the wealth gap, children in concentration camps, white nationalists in our government, the increasing inability of too many Americans to tell a decent source from utter propaganda, student debt -- but of course we know the answer to that one.


*Pun not intended, but I like it

Dog Pictures Please

Heywood thought he ought to be on the blog too.