Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
No bio...
User ID: 297
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
11mo ago
Replying to your top-level, though I did read the follow-ons.
So, BLUF, you're banned. Good-bye.
Now, working from the bottom up: Yes, your posts have (had) to be manually approved, because you are an infrequent poster who posts angry rants that get heavily downvoted, hence you were stuck in the new user filter like everyone else. Had you made any effort to be a reasonable participant, that wouldn't have happened, but instead, your posts sat in the new user filter while we mods discussed "Should we just remove this angry drunken rant, or approve it and then ban him, or what?" (Spoiler: we decided the latter.)
You should have reread that mod note of mine you quoted above, because I was trying to steer you in the direction of actual productive engagement.
"Trump bad" is a perfectly valid opinion (and contrary to what you seem to think, it is not unique or even that rare here on the Motte).
"Trump bad and everyone who thinks differently is bad fuck you" is not.
You're a classic law and order conservative who loves America and the Constitution? Good for you. Wish you'd been able to express yourself without over-the-top rage and contempt, because it would have been good to have a little more of that, some more diversity of thought.
So why did I ban you, if we wanted more diversity of thought? Because someone who only seems to be able to participate by raging at his enemies isn't actually contributing anything. We've had your type before (usually, though, they are Impassionatas or Marxbros or other leftists), who are so implacably convinced of their objective and provable correctness and righteousness that they are literally incapable of good faith engagement because everything to them is a scissor statement.
Any forum in which I'm not free to use my speech like this isn't a free speech forum.
There is almost no forum that is a "free speech forum" in the sense that you get to say literally anything you want. Such forums rapidly turn into shitshows and there is a reason people generally prefer moderated forums, no matter how much they disagree over how the moderation should work (usually, "ban more of my enemies and let me say anything I want," but so it goes). This is a free speech forum in the sense that we don't ban any views. No one gets banned for having the wrong opinion or having unthinkable thoughts or unpalatable beliefs. Instead, they get banned because instead of wanting to talk and actually hear what other people think, they just want to dump shits on the floor, or pour gasoline and light a match, or shit on the floor and then pour gasoline over it and light a match.
And that's what your post is doing. What exactly do you think anyone who supports Trump (or even, not necessarily supports him, but thinks he's maybe not the most damaging person in US history) is supposed to say to your rant? Do you think they would have any expectation that calmly explaining why they support Trump would get anything more than another round of angry "fuck you"s and "repent sinner"s?
So you got your shot off, and now you're banned, because you're an angry ranter who got warned four times and banned twice for doing the same thing.
TheMotte became a performative space where people were allowed to tell themselves the story that they were 'grey tribe' neutral at the same time they bitterly denied and resistance any news which made their actual side look bad.
Only some people here call themselves "gray tribe." There are leftists and rightists and moderates here and people who don't neatly fit into any particular label. No matter how much critics try to insist this place is all a bunch of Trump-apologist red tribers (when they aren't screaming at us for being too accommodating to Blue Tribe sensibilities or being converged by Da Joos or whatever), it's not, and your anti-Trump arguments would have been welcome here, except what you tried to do was enforce consensus. Like, literally your entire post was an argument that we should all get on the same page about how bad Trump is. You can go somewhere else looking to force everyone into agreement with your position or browbeating those who won't, but if you actually want to participate here, you have to do so accepting that people are not going to agree with you and you need to deal with them, civilly.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1yr ago
You know man, you get reported a lot and even the other mods have a hard time with you because a lot of people think you are and always have been a bad faith borderline troll who just says things to get under people's skin, without regard to truth or accuracy. And I have always leaned towards leniency, maybe because I'm a quokka and too willing to assume people actually believe the things they are saying and are sincere in their argumentation, even if they're really annoying. But I have frequently argued against banning you because it's too easy to find things you say that are moddable when most of the forum is trying to get you banned.
I guess this is the point where I say "Goddamn, I get it now," because frankly, you are either being astoundingly clueless or just flat out disingenuous.
(Let me also be clear, this response is with my mod hat off, and I am not threatening you with mod action for the above post, because I found it merely aggravating, but not in violation of any rules.)
You have actually spouted a ton of bullshit about something I know a lot about (for my sins), so let's go through this.
Well, someone has to, if this forum is going to be anything other than a complete echo chamber.
Also 'reflexively' and 'intentionally, as an intellectual exercise' are different things.
Just for starters, and not strictly on topic, we get accused of being an echo chamber so often it's tiresome. You are right that you're an outlier here, as an unabashed leftist. You are definitely not some unique snowflake with views unrepresented by anyone else. And "intentionally taking a contrarian position" is pretty close to trolling. I mean, if you really believe the things you are saying, fine, argue them, but if you're just doing it as an "intellectual exercise" (or to "own the righties") you should know that most people do not like feeling like they are being treated as NPCs in your roleplaying game, and this is perhaps a reason why you generate so much resentment and hostility.
First of all, there's a reason I said 'People like Rowling' and 'they' in that sentence. The whole post, if you read the rest of the post and not just that sentence, is about different factions on the conservative side of this issue, and the differences and disagreements between them.
Okay, that's a hell of a waffle. If you say "People like Rowling want to eradicate trans people" and I rebut that by pointing out that Rowling emphatically does not want to eradicate trans people, it is not a credible defense that "You meant people like Rowling." I mean, I could say "People like guesswho want to literally guillotine landlords, redistribute the property of all rich people, and disenfranchise whites." (Because some of your fellow travelers certainly do.) If you objected, reasonably, that you want no such thing and have never endorsed that, I don't think you would be satisfied if I said "Well, there's a reason I said 'people like you.'" You'd find it disingenuous and evasive. We are talking about JK Rowling, not everyone who has ever expressed an anti-trans sentiment.
While it's mildly true that Rowling plays a careful balancing act with her public image by not being too extreme in her own personal rhetoric,
It is not "mildly true," it is absolutely true. Her personal rhetoric is not "extreme" by any reasonable definition. Again I will ask you to cite an example if you think otherwise.
she is very much a part of a faction that does use rhetoric of that level of extremity (including onstage at national political conventions),
What do you mean "part of a faction"? If you mean "Everyone who is gender-critical/trans-skeptical," well, that's a hell of an umbrella and she would reasonably reject it, as would I. I have in fact seen absurd allegations online that she literally donated to the Texas GOP (!!) just because they are anti-trans, an accusation that makes no sense on multiple levels. If you're trying to lump JK Rowling with the Texas GOP just because they are both critical of trans activists, your idea of what constitutes a "faction" is just frankly ridiculous. I believe IQ is a real measurable thing and there are racial differences in IQ; by this standard, I guess you would put me in the same "faction" as white nationalists and holocaust deniers, because they also believe that.
and she very much supports and promotes (through valuable social media links and personal defenses and endorsements on her hugely popular accounts, through partnerships and collaborations, and by selectively endorsing and promoting the rhetoric of) people who famously do express those extreme views.
Show me. Show me her endorsing someone who literally wants to "eradicate trans people." The most extreme example I can think of coming anywhere close to this is Maya Forstater, a gender critical feminist whom Rowling has famously supported. Forstater's public statements are mostly pretty mild (you could more legitimately accuse her of carefully curating her public statements than Rowling) while she has occasionally, in public and private, gone full mask-off with rather derogatory language about trans people. But even Forstater has never, to my knowledge, said anything remotely close to advocating violence or eradication of trans people. It's probably fair to say she thinks they are all perverted AGP men. Maybe Rowling actually believes that herself in private too. She famously got in a spat with Ben Shapiro because Shapiro endorsed her trans-critical views and Rowling was quick to point out that mildly agreeing about one thing does not make them allies.
I don't think you can actually show Rowling endorsing the views you claim she does. Even with this wide net you are casting where anything she has ever touched, by transitive property, is endorsing any statement by anyone else who is touched by it.
But this many years later, that's not a tenable position. She's not that dumb, at this point she understand who her bedfellows are and what their political program is about, and wholeheartedly assists them at every turn. At this point, the fact that she maintains a veneer of respectability in her own public statements is more cowardice and manipulation and intentional pipeline-creation than it is a sign of a mild position.
Again: show me. No, one person on the Internet who says something nasty about trans people who is also a Harry Potter fan does not by transitive property mean Rowling is endorsing anything they say. This is the kind of nutpicking that LibsOfTikTOk does. LoTT regularly finds some trans person being accused of rape or child abuse and blasts it to the Internet, the implication clearly being that this is typical trans behavior. I'm pretty sure you don't appreciate LoTT's tactics and would consider it offensive and disingenuous for them to say "But these are their bedfellows, this is the faction they are part of." So no, you don't get to do this either.
And, like, come on, you're obviously underselling what she says herself and what the implications of that are.
This is not obvious to me, as I think I am very accurately describing what she says herself, and the "implications" seem to be irrational projections you have made up.
She wrote a whole book about a serial killer pretending to be trans to prey on women in women's spaces.
You are referring to Troubled Blood and you are taking her most hysterical critics' claims about the book at face value, most of whom never read it and just repeated what other people said in a game of Chinese whispers, until it became "a book about a serial killer pretending to be trans." That's not a remotely accurate description. I can post a whole damn book review if you want, but a serial killer who in one scene disguises himself as a woman is not something any reasonable person would read as some sort of metaphor for trans people. The killer never "pretends to be trans" (I don't think trans people are ever even mentioned in the book, but I can't remember for certain) he does not "try to get into women's spaces," and the cross-dressing scene is a single incident that's there as a red herring.
My point here is that you haven't read Troubled Blood, and you're just repeating the bad faith accusations of Rowling's haters who also haven't read it, and this is how you arrive at nonsense claims about Rowling being a literal fascist who wants to genocide trans people and Jews. (I mean, you didn't say that. But people "like" you have! You know, people in your faction.)
She says that she is glad trans didn't exist when she was growing up because she might have been socially infected with it and it would have ruined her life. Etc.
This is possibly true, and while you may find it offensive, the belief that trans social contagion is a real phenomenon and that many troubled girls today are embracing trans identity as a way of escaping what they perceive to be an unpleasant existence as a female, and that other kids adopt it because it's "cool" and trendy and rebellious, is one I share. So does that mean I also want to eradicate trans people?
These types of things are the blood libel of the trans debate; they are all part of building a worldview in which trans women are just perverted men intentionally trying to prey on women and destroy them, and where trans identity is merely an infectious meme that needs to be stamped out before it takes more lives.
"Blood libel" would be something that's wholly untrue (like "Jews drink the blood of Christian children").
My personal belief is that the "blood libel," as you put it, does accurately describe a significant number of trans women today, especially the ones who are going out of their way to be public activists. I also believe many trans women are sincere in their gender dysphoria, and even if not, they are sincere in wanting to live as women and be left alone, and they should be allowed to. I can't speak for JK Rowling but I am pretty sure that's reasonably close to her position. This is a far cry from spreading "blood libel" because you believe trans people should be "stamped out."
The fact that, after establishing that worldview and narrative, you don't vocally take the next step of saying 'and therefore we need to eradicate transgender people from the culture as a whole' is sort of irrelevant. You've spent decades carefully constructive a narrative in which that is the obvious and inescapable conclusion, if you convince people of your narrative then they will come to that conclusion without you needing to say it, that was the whole point of the narrative.
Nothing I or JK Rowling have said (that trans women are not the same as women, that they shouldn't be in women's prisons, that social contagion is real, that children probably shouldn't be put on puberty blockers and SRS) leads to the "obvious and inescapable" conclusion that we need to eradicate transgender people.
Anyway, if you want me to go find you links on all the Breadtube Rowling videos so you can comb through them for receipts, I guess I can.
Yes, I do want you to do that. But before you go to the trouble, let me be clear that the "receipts" I want are JK Rowling actually saying or endorsing any of the things you've claimed. Not shaun or contrapoints (whom I've watched) constructing a fallacious argument like you have that her statements "imply" or "inevitably lead" to this, not guilt-by-association where someone whose tweet she once Liked might have said something extreme. You seem to think I am unfamiliar with the charges against her and why trans activists claim these things about her. I am not.
Honestly I bet if you google 'JK Rowling anti-trans statements' you will find a comprehensive list pretty quickly, if you actually want to know it doesn't take me to do the googling for you.
Sure, let's play!
Top result: A Complete Breakdown of the J.K. Rowling Transgender-Comments Controversy.
Reading through that post, I see a rehash of all the statements I am already familiar with (from her snarky "people who menstruate" tweet to her long "TERF Wars" blog post in 2020). And this example of her "hatred of trans people":
The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women—i.e., to male violence—‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences—is a nonsense.”
She continued, “I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”
Most of the other links are similar collections of snarky tweets and her trying to defend her views while emphasizing the same things I have said above.
GLAAD's summary is predictably uncharitable, if not outright dishonest. They repeat your bad faith summary of her books, and say things like:
07.05.2020—Tweeted false information equating trans-related medical care with mental health care, writing: “Many health professionals are concerned that young people struggling with their mental health are being shunted towards hormones and surgery when this may not be in their best interests.” In the same thread, falsely equated transitioning with a “new form of conversion therapy for young gay people” and suggested that gender transition is “driven by homophobia.”
So "Many health professionals are concerned that young people struggling with their mental health are being shunted towards hormones and surgery when this may not be in their best interests" is false information? Or just something you and GLAAD disagree with? Likewise, you may disagree with her about trans social contagion and homophobia, but that does not substantiate the extremism you claim is so obvious and well-documented. GLAAD's page is full of "Falsely claimed" accusations, followed by a tweet by Rowling simply asserting something they disagree with (but nothing that resembles "blood libel").
The Cut's Here's what J.K. Rowling has Actually Said About Trans People is mostly just repeating everything GLAAD said, and statements like:
No, she simply doesn’t seem to believe that trans women really are women — an attitude that denies the validity of their existence.
I mean, that's just describing how their viewpoints differ. Where is the extreme rhetoric, the "inevitable conclusion" that trans people must be eradicated?
I scrolled through a lot more results, and got the same thing. Nowhere did I find any quote of Rowling actually saying anything more extreme than what I've mentioned, implying it, or endorsing it.
So, got anything else? Bring it.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2yr ago
Among other, more obvious mistakes, Edmiston’s most grievous error was not pretending to believe the lie.
This is something that has seemed obviously true to me for a while, but of course you can't prove it unless you are deeply inside the system. You express concerns about children being casually, almost instantly, referred for "gender affirming care" up to and including surgery, and clinicians and trans activists say "Don't be ridiculous, of course we don't think doctors should just write blank prescriptions everyone's needs are carefully assessed they get a comprehensive evaluation it's all very cautious and evidence-based blah blah blah..."
Every bit of anecdotal evidence I have ever read - but it's still anecdotal! - is that in practice a trans-identifying kid will be "confirmed" as trans basically on their say-so. I've never actually heard of a doctor at one of these clinics saying, "Well, actually, have you considered you might not be trans? Let's work on some of your other mental health issues and then revisit this."
I'd love to find out I am wrong, that the typical clinician is in fact cautious about going along with every child who presents as "trans" and pursues other avenues of care first. But I have yet to see any evidence that this happens... anywhere. Rather, it seems increasingly like anything other than immediate and unreserved validation of any child who presents as trans is treated as transphobic and life-threatening.
Jesse Singal does the lord's work, and he has two problems.
The first is that his work is very wonky. Like, he does deep dives into statistics, he actually reads the charts in the papers cited (and mis-cited) by activists, and points out all the errors, but it's not something easily summarizable if you really want to have an understanding of what he's saying. All his opponents see is "There goes Jesse Singal, known transphobe, obsessively bullying a marginalized community again." Who actually reads and parses his work in detail?
I'll admit while this whole thing was happening on Twitter, I didn't quite get the back and forth the first few times until I finally sighed, dug in, and reread the entire comment chain to figure out who said who said who said what about what when. And I'm fairly current on the issues, reasonably intelligent, and sympathetic to Singal. Meanwhile, everyone else is just posting dunks and high fives and "yikes!" And even after this fairly comprehensive vindication of Singal, I doubt a single person on the other side actually had their mind changed or their priors shifted an iota. What I have seen in response has been a lot of tepid "Well, obviously it's a very complex topic mumble mumble but jeez why does Jesse Singal care so much anyway?"
Which brings me to my second point: Jesse Singal does himself no favors fighting these things out on Twitter. I get it - I understand his mindset. "People are lying about me on the Internet! People are saying I said things I clearly did not say! They're also wrong about the facts! They're saying things that aren't true, just read this damn paper right here that proves it!"
He cannot shake the conviction that if he yells this often and loudly enough, he will make them see. And he won't. Ever. So he ends up looking like deranged Reply Guy who is obsessed with this topic and wants to fight everybody. Meanwhile, his enemies, who don't actually care whether he's right or not, only that he's on the wrong side, see that they can keep winding him up by saying "Look at Jesse Singal being transphobic again."
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2yr ago
I once had a post written about JK Rowling and her most recent book, The Ink Black Heart, and then decided it was too nerdy and never posted it. Thanks for this - coincidentally, I had another effortpost written and almost ready to go, and then thought it was maybe Too Online and nerdy to post here. But since you led the way, I will post it shortly.
Now - I have been following the Rowling/TERF wars for a while now, and I have to take issue with a number of points in your narrative.
Disclaimer: I am kind of a fan of Rowling. Both for her books (yes, I came late and old to Potter fandom and still liked them - sue me - but I also like her Cormoran Strike novels and I even think The Casual Vacancy was pretty good), and for her principled stance and willingness to take the immense amount of shit she's taken without backing down or turning nasty and bitter.
Now, just for starters, I realize this is a semantic battle that's lost, but I will nonetheless keep pointing it out: "TERF" at least originally meant Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. Radical feminism is a specific school of feminist ideology, it doesn't just mean "feminists who are really zealous and strident." It's actually quite fringe in modern feminism. Rowling is a feminist, and could probably be described as a Second Wave feminist, but she is certainly not a radical feminist.
I would also dispute the "Trans-Exclusionary" label, but that's somewhat more subjective, depending on what you mean by "exclude."
Criticism of Rowling began in 2020 when she exposed criticism of certain linguistic tendencies that she had progressively seen engross within her social circles. An article was posted on Devex with the headline…
Actually, it began earlier than that. At one point she "liked" a Tweet by an actual TERF, got called out on it, and sort of walked it back, but there had been hints earlier. 2020 was when she basically went "mask off."
She had become more fervently anti-trans since then, to points which are often hilarious.
I have been following Rowling on Twitter since before she got Voldemorted, and I actually do not think she is "anti-trans" except in the sense that no, she does not believe that TWAW. Of course this is enough to make her a transphobic bigot who is Literally Killing People, according to trans activists, but her actual position, every time she talks about it, is basically standard old school liberalism. She does not hate trans people or want them back in the closet or legally denied the right to live as women, and I think "anti-trans" is frankly a lie that trans activists keep pushing despite her actual words on the subject.
Has she become increasingly more willing to snap back at people who are taking shots at her? Yes. I have yet to see her actually say anything that could be called "bigoted" in good faith.
But it is important to point out that J.K. Rowling is a legitimate opponent of transgender ideology.
This is true, but again, I think some clarification is called for. "Opponent of transgender ideology," especially here, can sometimes be read as "Thinks trans people are gross and mentally ill," or even suggests that she's some sort of tradcon. She is definitely not. She's an opponent of the excesses of the modern trans movement, and putting trans women in women's shelters and prisons, etc. She is not an opponent of trans people having civil rights, being free to live their lives as trans people, etc.
Her most recent books have delved into themes that are consistently similar to the themes she has espoused. One book is literally about a detective trying to solve the case of a male serial killer who dresses up as a women in order to fool and kill biological women.
Okay, that book is Troubled Blood, and I've actually read it. I'm afraid you are just repeating a lie that her critics (most of whom did not read the book) made up. There is a single scene in that book where the serial killer dresses as a woman to avoid detection and escape. He is otherwise a plain old straight dude who likes killing women, but it is never implied that he's trans, or even gay, and dressing as a woman is not a recurring MO of is.
Rowling gives extremely large donations to many charities who are their ideological enemies, as well as essentially banning transgender people from using any of her own charities that help victims of female abuse.
She funded a women's shelter specifically for biological women. So far as I know, she has not otherwise "banned transgender people from using any of her own charities that help victims of female abuse," and I doubt she even has the power to do so.
Now, I'm off to finish my somewhat related post about another famous fantasy author and fandom.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1yr ago
Sometimes I think you just read posts, decide who's expressing the "conservative" (bad) position, and reflexively argue the opposite.
Whereas people like Rowling aren't fully committed to that broader conservative project, they just want to slander and eradicate trans people
All right, you have hit one of my pet peeves, because I hear this shit all the time from my nice progressive friends. It's just repeated ad infinitum, as an article of faith, as a proven, established fac, that JK Rowling "hates trans people," that she "wants to slander and eradicate them," etc. In unrelated hobby spaces, I've seen it argued unironically, in all seriousness, that she literally advocates "genocide of trans people" (and also that Harry Potter goblins were intended to be metaphors for Jews because she also hates Jews).
I have been a Rowling fan since before she got on Twitter. Yes, I actually like the Harry Potter books (despite being way too old for them). I've read all her Cormoran Strike novels, and even The Casual Vacancy. I follow her on Twitter and I read her blog. So I know whereof I speak, though I won't claim I can remember every single thing she's ever said in public.
I have never seen her say anything that approaches "hate" or "wanting to eradicate" trans people. She has said the opposite many times. She is a standard issue very liberal second wave feminist.
What does she say?
- She does not believe trans women are women.
- Therefore she does not believe trans women should play in women's sports or go to women's prisons.
- She believes trans people should be free to live their lives in peace without harassment.
- Some so-called trans women (like the sexual predators she highlighted) are bad faith opportunists claiming trans status for political purposes or because they would prefer to go to women's prison rather than men's prison.
I think all of these points are reasonable, and even if you disagree with some or all of them, none of them resemble anything like "hate" or wishing for a "trans genocide."
I would love it if you could point to me any public statement of hers, or even a reliable second-hand account of some alleged private statement, in which she's said anything that resembles what you are claiming.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2mo ago
AI DESTROYS THE HUGOS!!!
Okay, that's totally a clickbait title and not really accurate. But hey, it's not as high stakes as a potential nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, or Trump's tariffs, or even whether or not polyamory is ruining society, but it's my beat: nerdy sci-fi bullshit.
It's a year beginning with a 2, which means there is drama over this year's WorldCon.
What is WorldCon?
We're all nerds here, but I know not all of us are SFF nerds, so for @2rafa and the handful of others who'd never lower themselves to reading shit with elves, WorldCon is the annual science fiction convention, held in a different city every year, that awards the Hugos, at one time considered the most prestigious award in science fiction. The drama and controversies over past WorldCons and Hugo Awards have been enumerated here often; at this point, as my lede says, it's practically an annual tradition. I don't collect links but maybe if you ask @gattsuru nicely he'll post some of the past dirt.
Usually these controversies are something Culture War-related. The Hugos are widely perceived to have gone fully Woke, and I must admit that I am one of those heavy SF readers who not only no longer cares much about the Hugos, whereas at one time I would have at least checked out the latest Hugo winner, I now consider them to be almost an anti-recommendation.
Just to give you an idea of the state of the Hugos: it's been ten years since a man won the Hugo for best novel (Cixin Liu and his translator Ken Liu (no relation) for The Three-Body Problem in 2015), and most years since then have seen between 0 and 2 men even nominated. This year actually features three men on the ballot (including Adrian Tchaikovsky nominated twice)! I'm rooting for Tchaikovsky since I actually read his books but, well, John Scalzi is the last white guy to get a Hugo, in 2013 (for one of his worst novels, Redshirts).
So anyway, technically this year's drama is not (so far) about the Hugos themselves, but about WorldCon (which this year is being held in Seattle).
What did they do this time?
Short version: They used ChatGPT to vet WorlCon panelists. Several WorldCon committee members resigned in protest, and the list of authors and other program participants doing likewise is growing.
https://file770.com/seattle-worldcon-2025-hugo-administrators-and-wsfs-division-head-resign/
https://www.patreon.com/posts/128296070
https://gizmodo.com/worldcon-2025-chatgpt-controversy-hugos-2000598351
Longer version: Reportedly there were as many as 1300 people applying to participate in various WorldCon programs this year: this would be book signings, readings, panels, workshops, etc. Obviously not everyone who wants to be on a panel can be, and WorldCon has to be selective about who it invites. The vetting is done by volunteers, and researching 1300 people must be pretty time consuming; apparently they had the bright idea of using ChatGPT do a search and summary of all prospective participants as a "first pass."
I assume they mostly want to weed out obvious crazies and literal Nazis and pedos, but given that WorldCon skews very woke nowadays, the vetting almost certainly includes looking for any "problematic" public statements or other transgressions in someone's background that might lead to a Cancellation or Drama.
Honestly, using an LLM to summarize and categorize your list of randos seems like a pretty good use of AI to me. Supposedly all final decisions were made by humans, but nonetheless, the concom is imploding.
If you're unaware, most artists and authors hate AI. This has also been covered extensively in past CW threads, but the stated reason for the disdain towards AI is that authors' and artists' work was "stolen" to train LLMs without compensation, but there is also a very real fear of being replaced.
This generalized antipathy has basically been extended to any use of AI at all, so even though the WorldCon committee is insisting there has been no use of generative AI, no final decisions made by AI, and that AI has nothing to do with any Hugo nominations or decisions, people are still Very Very Angry that it was used at all.
If you read the commentary, it's not just general AI-hate (though there is plenty of that), but also concern that the LLMs might have made Problematic Decisions. Obviously, people are bringing up hallucinations (what if ChatGPT made up a racist Twitter post?) and the possibility of false negatives, but, there is also concern about false positives. What if ChatGPT missed something Problematic? Again, supposedly humans were supposed to make the final decisions, but cynically, I think they're worried that ChatGPT might approve too many cishetwhitemales. Also much outrage at "Entering private data into an AI without permission" (i.e., typing someone's name into ChatGPT and asking it to do an Internet search).
This isn't as juicy as past WorldCon/Hugo dramas, but it's very Current Year. I cannot help finding it ironic that we're now at a place where science fiction fans are demanding that we ban AI tools.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1yr ago
We seem to be having a spate of low-effort ramblings that are basically "I'm mad about something and want to vent." I am sorry if you're having an existential crisis over Trump (for months at a time now?) but if you are going to post a top-level post, please make it relevant, interesting, or at least present an argument. We don't want to see free-form rants about how Trump or Biden or whoever is The Worst, devoid of anything but your own undigested disgust.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2yr ago
This post is bad.
It's bad because you are framing it in a confusing and, I suspect, deliberately misleading way. You clearly think you're being clever with your ironic commentary. You are not speaking plainly. I had to actually go search this story to figure out what is actually going on and determine what point you are trying to make, or pretending to make.
This and several other posts, and the newness of your account, make me suspect you are not participating here in good faith.
Don't do this again. If you have a point to make with a news story, make it clearly and straightforwardly.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1yr ago
This seems a little low effort. If you want to feed an AI some random questions with vaguely CW topics and post the results, provide context, an argument, some relevance. We would rather not see lots of posts about "Look at what ChatGPT says if you ask it about Muslims and trans."
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1yr ago
What's the point of this comment? No one is going to get in a room and fight, you're just calling people cowards and thus engaging in the same sort of Internet Tough Guy act you're accusing others of doing. Attack arguments, not people, and if you have something to say to any specific individual about the lack of congruity between their words and their actions, make sure it's relevant, not just a sneer.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1yr ago
I've been reading a lot about this conflict, and the history of Israel and Palestine. I've read books by Israeli historians and by Palestinian historians and by American historians and journalists. I've followed pro-Israeli channels and pro-Palestinian channels. I've also spoken to no small number of Arabs (since I am studying Arabic).
It's messy and complicated all around. What strikes me in every narrative is that most of them tell a more-or-less accurate version of known historical events, but always leaving out a few bits that make their side look less noble and less like the victim. The Israelis talk endlessly about how five Arab nations declared war on them the day after they declared independence, and they offered full citizenship rights to those Palestinians who stayed instead of fleeing (in the expectation that the Jews would soon be exterminated and they could return home). They don't talk about how there were explicit plans to remove even peaceful Palestinians and some of those expulsions were performed under presumed military necessity and with the full foreknowledge that they were uprooting locals from their land. They don't talk about some of the outright terrorist actions of their predecessors, and some of the atrocities that Israelis committed. (It was war, the Israeli army mostly conducted itself in a modern, disciplined fashion, but there were some civilian massacres, and other war crimes. The Israelis will retort that the Arabs did far more and far worse, which is probably true but doesn't make what they did not happen.)
The Palestinians talk endlessly about the Nakba and how 750,000 Palestinians were forced off their land. They don't talk about the fact that yes, many of them did explicitly leave so the Arab armies could exterminate the Jews, and thus they obtained the fate of a people who lost a war they started.
Dig into that event, and then you have to dig deeper - why did the Jews arrive in the first place, who was behind it, did they acquire land legally or did they forcefully occupy it? (They mostly acquired the land legally by purchase, prior to 1948, but Palestinians will then retort, accurately, that the Jews often bought the land from wealthy absentee Turkish (former Ottoman) landlords and then expelled the villagers who'd been living on that land for generations.) Was the Zionist movement an organic Jewish nationalist movement or was it a "Colonialist-Settler project" by Europeans whose motivation was essentially to get Jews out of Europe? (Answer: a little of all this and more.)
"It's complicated." People who want a clear right-and-wrong narrative hate that phrase, but it is. Move forward into all the many failed peace processes; Israelis claim Palestinians have been handed opportunities for peace over and over and rejected them. Palestinians claim all those peace offers were either made in bad faith or were very bad deals for the Palestinians. Who's right? A little of both. Palestinians have turned down deals that would have been objectively far better for them than what they have now, or have ever had. These agreements have also always been, at best, offers of divided rump territories with very little chance to ever develop into real countries. Many Palestinians feel that the offers themselves are fundamentally illegitimate because Palestine was stolen from them and only full restoration can make things right again. Regardless of whether you think this is a morally correct argument, it unfortunately carries the logical conclusion that there is literally no peace agreement they will accept that allows Israel to continue to exist. No matter how convincingly you argue that your people and your ancestors were screwed over and robbed and are entitled to reparations, if it ends with "... and therefore Israel must cease to exist," it's just a non-starter. But Palestinians (and many of their supporters), either out of stubbornness, or a belief that somehow either Hamas and Iran will actually succeed in destroying Israel, or else Israelis will somehow all be persuaded that they must dissolve the nation-state of Israel, persist.
You basically have three options: one state, two state, no state. The latter ("no state") is basically one side exterminates the other. Israelis are being accused of trying to do this now. I don't really think that's true, but certainly some elements of Israeli society and the government would not mind literally wiping out the Palestinians if they thought they could get away with it. Hamas is pretty explicit about wanting to eradicate Israel. Some of their more savvy apologists will say no, they just don't want Israel to exist "in its current form." Usually, if you pin them down, what they propose is something like the "one state" solution, where "From the river to the sea," the entire country becomes a multi-ethnic non-Jewish state with Jews and Arabs having full equal citizenship rights. Essentially, merge Israel and Palestine into one country. In theory, doesn't sound like a terrible idea (as long as you're not a Jew who is invested in a Jewish nation state), but it just sort of assumes that at that point, all the Palestinian Arabs (who outnumber the Jews considerably), who for generations have been openly calling for the literal extermination of all Israelis and claiming that every last Israeli is living on stolen land that must be given back, will say "Okay, we're cool now, you can live here with us. Let's all build a progressive multicultural society together." Let's just say I cannot blame the Israelis for considering that a non-starter.
That leaves the two state solution, which was fraught and unlikely before October 7 and pretty much impossible now, at least for a generation or two. The various schemes to apportion land to a new Palestinian nation have always struggled with Palestine being divided between Gaza and the West Bank - obviously not much of a country if you're divided between two regions with a historically hostile neighbor controlling all the land and travel between them. Also there's the problem of whether the Palestinian nation gets to have its own military, and build whatever they want in the way of weapons. Israelis have pretty good reasons to say hell no to that, at least until maybe we have a generation or two of peace convincing them that any new Palestinian army will not promptly start lobbing rockets and artillery shells at them. So the Palestinians argue (with some justification) that every offer they've been given has been for a fragment of a country that will still for all practical purposes be a protectorate under the military control of Israel, and the Israelis argue (with some justification) that the Palestinians have to prove they aren't going to keep trying to kill Israelis before they can have more.
Bringing us to today. Most people in the West are more sympathetic to the overall perspective of the Israelis, because we can see that yes, historically the Arabs really have been trying to kill them for decades now, and the Israelis have made at least some attempts to ease up on the Palestinians and let them try to build a society, and every such easing up has resulted in more suicide bombings or October 7. Leftists say, well, the Palestinians are an oppressed people, they are entitled to armed resistance. I always try to get them to say the unspoken part, to reveal their power level (just like I do with our friend @SecureSignals): okay, what is the end goal? Tell me what you really, really want to happen if you "win"? Most leftists won't come out and say "I want Israel to be destroyed." Some of them will give some sort of pie-in-the-sky one state answer, like above. But the reality is that the literal destruction of Israel is the only real "win condition" for them.
For those people like you (@4bpp) who I assume does not actually want the destruction of Israel, what do you see as a solution? Besides just "Stop the bombing now," which I can sympathize with, but let's say Israel stops the war in Gaza today and withdraws, and promptly allows unlimited international support in to rebuild. What happens next? What I think happens next is that Hamas grabs as much of that as they can and plans the next October 7, which will happen sooner rather than later. As much as I would like to see Gazan civilians not being bombed (and I do not care if "80% of them support Hamas," which is a frequent justification for why, essentially, we should not feel bad about them being slaughtered), I can understand why Israelis are not willing to accept a stopping point that just returns to the status quo and another October 7.
The more peaceful leftists will then say "They should cease fire now and then negotiate a real peace that gives Palestinians a real state so there is no need for Hamas etc etc etc." Okay, great idea. Everyone's been trying to do that for decades. See above.
So, simply saying "The Palestinians have a clear moral case," even if you're right, does not solve the current problem. Unless you are willing to bite the bullet and say "Yes, actually, I think Israel needs to cease to exist." Followed by either how you think peaceful coexistence between former Israelis and Palestinians will be accomplished, or your plan for forcibly resettling all the Israelis to another continent. Some would at this point show their power level and say "Yeah, actually, just let them slaughter all the Jews, they have it coming." But that would make the Palestinians' clear moral case a little less clear.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2yr ago
(3/3)
DEI…. in Spaaaace!
You've already picked up all of the major Culture War points, but I cannot emphasize just how very, very much a product of a bonafide card-carrying SJW this book is.
Pretty much everyone is queer and/or genderfluid and/or female, except (you guessed it) the unambiguously villainous corporate types (the ambiguously amoral corporate types are genderqueer, and the sympathetic ones are female) and a few government drones. Oh yeah, and the aliens. The male aliens get to be likeable, because the females are in charge.
There are multiple conversations about pronouns and nametags. A minor plot point is that the aliens are matriarchal and so it matters to them who actually gives birth, and Judy's transman housemate is really upset that she didn't put her foot down when the aliens were asking hurtful questions. We also learn that her transman housemate was (of course) abused and almost driven to suicide by bigoted parents who live in one of those conservative enclaves where people are still technophobic, transphobic, and religious.
The wrong kind of religious, I mean. We get multiple digressions about Judy's Jewishness. Growing up in an ultra-leftist Jewish commune, one of the defining moments of her childhood is that some asshole kids drew swastikas on her schoolbooks. In the 2060s. At the corporate-hosted reception for the aliens, she stands around angsting about whether the food (made out of corp-paste or something) contains shrimp or pork. And there's a long talk with the other human mommy in the book (I'll get to that) about the Holocaust. See, the governments and corps put on a display to summarize Earth's history for the aliens, and Judy is very upset that they didn't mention the Holocaust. Like, very upset, in tears.
I don't care about a lot of the woke shit and the neopronouns. I mean, realistically, transpeople are not going away. A writer who writes a story set in 2083 that isn't post-apocalyptic might try to wave away genderspecials as a fad that died out in the 30s, I guess, but otherwise, sure, they are probably a part of the landscape for the foreseeable future, whether you like it or not.
The character is Jewish and Jewish identity (and anti-Semitism) is still Very Important in 2083 - okay, I'll buy it. Our resident Joo-posters I'm sure will have much fun with this, but I mostly shrugged it off, other than, ahem, noticing it. Yes, I did also notice that no one else gets to be religious and not a backwards technophobic asshole. (The aliens have some sort of "spiritual but not religious" thing going on and they even have what I suppose is supposed to be a touching scene with Judy and her transman housemate. The alien wants to do a ritual, Judy can't because she's afraid it might violate her own religion, so the transman, after carefully questioning the alien about what exactly their beliefs entail, overcomes his childhood religious trauma to participate.)
There's also a sex scene. With an alien. Judy (the lesbian) falls in love with one of the male aliens. He's such a good talker and such a good listener, you see. So she discusses it with her wife and they agree to invite the alien into their polycule. This is before they've decided whether to actually have sex with the other humans in their household. But they have a very serious relationship talk with the alien in which they say hey, we kind of like you, and he says well, I kind of like you too, and then they have a threesome.
So human dick is out of the question, but two lesbians are totally DTF with a headless alien spider-thing who is male enough to make hentai jokes.
Even that didn't really squick me much, though. (Larry Niven was writing about alien sex in the 70s.) What did squick me? What made me want to DNF it? (I did finish it.) The many, many, many fucking mommy moments. Yes, I get it, the author is trying to make mothers important characters, not like groty old white dude engineers. Lactating women (and aliens) will save the world.
Judy and her wife literally change a diaper at the moment of first contact. We are constantly treated to descriptions of Judy nursing, how her breasts are feeling, taking nursing pads out of her gear, checking medications for nursing safety, hey, did I mention yet that the main character is a nursing mother nursing throughout the book? (So is the alien girlboss in charge of their expedition.)
One of the other characters, who is so brilliant and important that she's called back from leave to help talk to the aliens, is a NASA engineer who's also a nursing mother. She and Judy talk to each other about aliens and the sociological ramifications of Star Trek captains (yes, seriously) as they "gently sway in sync" while nursing their babies.
Like, hitting on this once or twice would have been an interesting non-traditional perspective. Hitting it as often as Emrys does, I started expecting the book to lactate.
If a man wrote this, we could probably call it a fetish.
The greatest sin of A Half-Built Garden as science fiction is that it turns the entire saga of mankind's (hah, see what I did there?) first contact with aliens into a bunch of table talks about boundaries and consent. And I mean this literally, in every sense – one of the big table talks is on Earth, where the aliens come to Judy's Seder gathering. There's another on a corporate "aisland" (the one where Judy is worried about whether corp-food is kosher.) The last one is in the Ringers' home system, where besides asserting their right to self-determination, the humans lecture the aliens about their wrongbad gender essentialism and explain that humans aren't actually sexually dimorphic and give a speech about gender fluidity that could have come straight out of a LGBTQ+ DEI session. At the end of this speech, one of the aliens comes out as nonbinary (no, I am not making this up), and then we get the big reveal that Judy's wife is, in fact, a transwoman.
Congratulations Earthlings, you've spread ROGD to the stars!
For all my snark and bitterness, the real crime here is that Emrys is not a bad writer. The aliens are genuinely interesting (and alien), the situation that she sets up is plausible and has plenty of potential for actual conflict (which does not have to be armed), and I have to admit that her prose was above my usual expectations for SF&F. A less hyper-woke writer could have written a pretty good book. Instead, she wrote a Hugo-worthy one.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
6mo ago
People will still hem and haw, and not accept violence RIGHT THIS SECOND is called for, and that we should feel anguish and moral scorn every second we're delayed by practical realities, eternally filled with fury, humiliation, and longing, with sharpened knives and hearts of hatred for the day of justice and vengeance.
Dude, your schtick is old. You aren't outraged by a bunch of girls being raped. You are constantly telling people on Twitter that they should be starting the Final War over immigration, over DEI, over vaccines, over television license checkers, over whatever you think will get some traction today. That's your whole grift. Internet Tough Guy dialed up to 11.
I don't think anyone should take you seriously, and not because I dislike your constant agitating for violence and race war, but because it's so self-evidently as performative and fake as your "catgirl" persona, which so many of your Twitter followers inexplicably seem to have bought. Go figure.
Your rage, your demands for ACTION, are performative. You wrote in this space once a rant directed at pro-lifers that went something like (paraphrasing from memory) "Why don't you do something about it, you pussies?"
Well, why don't you do something about it? Oh, you're posting on Twitter. Am I supposed to believe that out in the real world you're doing manly violent things and preparing for The Day? I don't.
I have no doubt you want people to do what you say, so you can praise them and take credit for it. But where are your feats, your accomplishments? What have you done, besides praising Russia and calling Jews poison and publishing links to a bunch of crappy old Paladin Press books?
Your grift is entertaining, I will give you that. But it's still a grift, and less entertaining when I consider how many unstable types there are whom you are trying to set off.
Almost as annoying is how frequently and shamelessly you misunderstand (or just manufacture) facts about everything from history to ancient Greek mythology, but whatever.
I believe absolutely that you, personally, do not walk the walk and are never going to walk it. What is your bodycount, as you keep demanding of everyone else who is upset about something but hasn't yet truck-bombed a government building?
You are not Thanos and no one is dying for you. Stop trying to make Fetch happen. It's not going to happen.
Anyway, I should probably ban you - this reads like a swan song and intentional "suicide by mod," and it's very clearly a (poor) attempt at recruiting for a cause, and it's surely fedpost adjacent. But I'm not going to, because I want you to prove me right - you can't stay away and you'll come back to repeat the schtick. Other mods might decide differently, though.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
8mo ago
I guess I'll just use this thread to say: I fucking hate this election.
I hate my choices. I hate having to choose which shitty option might taste slightly less like shit. I hate choosing from two stupid, bumbling mediocre embarrassments and knowing one of them is going to be the fucking President of the United States of America. "Vote for the lesser of two evils" has been a motto representing resigned acceptance of political reality my entire life (I have the Cthulhu for President t-shirt and everything), but never have I felt it so keenly. They're both bad and repulsive, and I honestly don't know which of them will actually be worse for the country because I expect either of them to be terrible. I have said before I probably won't even vote, for the first time since I turned 18. (At least for president; I'll still probably vote for local/state candidates.)
And it's entirely the fault of both parties for putting us here. The Republicans, for letting MAGA cultists take over the party and drive all serious grown-ups out, and the Democrats, for letting bad faith woke identity politics take over everything. And both of them, for turning us into a gerontocracy that very effectively shuts younger candidates out before they can even sniff a primary.
If you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose, I guess it would be Kamala. But I might take the bullet instead.
I think Trump will be more damaging to the economy, and I think he will epically fuck up what's left of America's standing in the world. I think he will be an embarrassment who fails to accomplish any of the things his followers think he will (just like last time) and what he does accomplish he will fuck up. I think Harris will continue our inflationary money-isn't-real spiral into economic doom, hand out more gobs of cash to whatever identity group is most effective at yelling and screaming, and I think Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will roll her like a floured chicken breast. She's a midwit mediocrity who should never have come within line of sight of the Presidency, and I cannot believe how quickly I watched people in real time shift vibes to Kamala-enthusiasm, Kamalanation, Kamala is brat (W. T. F????) and pretend they had always been enthusiastic about her. Way back in 2019, when she was being floated as a Democratic candidate and I knew little about her, I admit I was tepidly favorable towards her because she seemed like maybe the least bad of a mediocre lot, but nothing she's done since has impressed, and she seems like Generic Extruded Political Product.
But, you know, Trump. I do not have TDS, I do not think he is Literally Hitler, but I do think he's a con, a huckster, an embarrassing buffoon who I believe actually loves America as much as I believe he goes to church on Sunday and has ever read the Bible in his life. I think he totally would become an absolute dictator if he could manage it, but it would require too much effort and political acumen and cunning, which he does not have. He has a huge personality and charisma, and some people think that translates into him being a skilled politician. He's not. He's got performer's instincts and a gift for graft. This doesn't really make him unique among American presidents, but it makes him uniquely bad in this time and place.
This sucks.
So I will repeat what I said a few weeks ago: my only consolation is going to be breaking out the popcorn and watching the wailing and gnashing of teeth post-election night. If Kamala wins, I will read the Motte and other places for the rage, the futile fist-waving, the impotent Internet tough-guy promises to Res1st and Retrn and start a civil war or some shit. If Trump wins, I will read Twitter for the wailing, the gnashing of teeth, and the hordes of smug, self-righteous fucks driven to existential despair, and I will drink their tears.
This is not nice, it is not charitable, it is not noble. It is petty and mean and beneath me. It is my coping mechanism, because this election sucks.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
11mo ago
I am not a fan of overusing "Orwellian" but this is as close a case as I've seen to all those comments about everyone receiving a simultaneous "download" of their new talking points.
"Border czar" is not and never was an official title - so when everyone says "Harris was never appointed border czar" - yes, technically that is true. (Technically, the Vice President has precisely one official duty, which is breaking ties in the Senate. Other than that, the VP has only whatever duties and authority the President assigns, and there have been VPs who basically faffed around for four years with nothing to do.) But clearly Harris was referred to as "border czar" and everyone understood what that meant, even if it was a strictly informal title.
Frustratingly, mentioning this to my Harris-supporting friends just gets sighs and eye-rolls, like "Why does this even matter?" And how good a job she did as "border czar" probably doesn't matter all that much - what matters (to me) is watching the entire media apparatus turn on a dime to reinforce DNC talking points and everyone thinks that's fine and that people trying to point out the discrepancy are just bad-faith Harris-haters.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1yr ago
Oh no, you don't get to duck out that easily.
You started this, and you started it with multiple, very specific, very damning statements about a very specific person (JK Rowling) which you claimed were obviously and provably true. And when I took on the challenge and went down the list of every one of your accusations, you suddenly play "Oh well, that wasn't my point, I don't actually care about Rowling"?
No, dude. You clearly do care about Rowling.
I will say that 'carefully litigating every word JK Rowling has ever said to determine whether it is about X of just mentions X' is exhausting and frustrating.
If we're talking about JK Rowling (and we are), it actually matters what she actually said. I mean, if you were accusing me of being a Holocaust-denying white nationalist who also thinks we should abolish the age of consent, and you based that on my saying some things that Holocaust-denying white nationalists who also think we should abolish the age of consent say, you can bet I would care a lot about carefully litigating the words I actually said, because if you are accusing someone of holding reprehensible views, it matters whether they actually said the things you are accusing them of! You don't get to just accuse them of believing all the things the very worst people in their "faction" say!
Frustrating because it's really super irrelevant to my larger point about the rhetoric and factions involved here, which is the relevant thing I actually care about, which few have bothered to respond to
I directly addressed your entire "This is what her faction believes and this is what her rhetoric inevitably leads to" argument! If you disagree with me, go ahead and point out where my reasoning is flawed, but don't claim I didn't bother to respond to it!
I find it frustrating that you make specific, provably untrue statements (for example, repeating bullshit about how Troubled Blood is about a serial killer who pretends to be trans and tries to sneak into women's spaces, as evidence of how much Rowling hates trans people) and when this is contradicted by people who actually read the book, you don't even acknowledge it, you're just all "Oh, I don't actually care about Rowling."
So many of the comments are nit-picking about whether I'm being 'fair' to Rowling, and I frankly don't give a fuck about one person like this and what they did or didn't say, the interesting issues are the larger factional concerns
I mean, we can all agree Rowling has FU money and immense popularity and can't actually be harmed by anyone saying mean and dishonest things about her. The reason we're arguing about Rowling is because people much less wealthy and powerful than her who say similar things (the people in her "faction" as you keep calling it) are suffering tangible harms, harms which you apparently believe are justified. So yeah, if you claim that JK Rowling wants a trans genocide, or that her "faction" does and she's abetting it, then that has implications for people who are not JK Rowling and that's why you are being challenged, not because everyone here is a JK Rowling fan.
I'd be happy to just say 'sure, whatever, Rowling is a perfect angel who has never done anything wrong, if that's what you want to believe;
Transparent straw man. Stop this kind of disingenuous whining.
can we please talk about my actual point though'
Yes, let's. It's your turn.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2yr ago
Becoming Radicalized by the Hugos
A Very Culture Warrish Review of A Half-Built Garden, by Ruthanna Emrys
In which my fellow nerds will recognize the battlefield and everyone else will roll their eyes and not know who the fuck these people are.
Wordy Pretentious Preamble About My Reading Habits
Everyone remembers the Sad Puppies affair (and the sequel, the Rabids), right? It's been covered here (well, at the old place) before. At the time, I admit to some schadenfreude at the wailing and gnashing of teeth, but I thought Vox Day and Larry Correia were making entirely too much of the fact that phallic rocketship stories don't win Hugos anymore. I actually read some of Vox Day's "Hugo Nominated" fiction. He is… not a good writer. I enjoy Larry Correia, but it's bubblegum bang-bang shoot'em up wish fulfillment, which is all well and good, but the same caliber as Ian Fleming's writing – entertaining and marketable and would make for great movies, but not really, well, whatever the Hugos used to represent. Ditto Brad Torgerson; serviceable prose, but fanzine-level execution.
As for the three Johns (Kratman, Ringo, and Wright), I've read all of them, and Kratman and Ringo tell rippin' good yarns with execrable prose and plotting. Only John C. Wright is actually a really good writer (though he does get a bit up his own ass, especially since his conversion to Catholicism).
I'm just saying, if the right wants to reclaim any creative spaces, they need to find better creatives.
Conversely, I used to really like John Scalzi. I watched Vox Day beat him like a pinata online, and though I hadn't gone full anti-SJW yet, I started to think…. "VD is right." His cruel but accurate takedowns were intensely petty, spiteful, and personal, and yet he had the squishy little man pegged.
Scalzi has since become ever more pretentious, ever more virtue signaling, ever more… well, VD would say "effeminate," I'd just say I started to recognize the sight of someone rolling over to show his belly, someone desperate to stay in the good graces of a clique where being a straight white male who cites Heinlein as an inspiration means he's always one bad Tweet away from being consigned to the outer darkness. My fondness for his books curdled, as I started to see his smarmy potato face in all his characters.
As went Scalzi, so went the Hugos, where for the past few years it seems like there's a little bit of straight white guy affirmative action so that John Scalzi and Clarkesworld can stay relevant, but basically it's a women's fiction award now, and if there's ever a white dude-dominated slate again (yet alone a white dude-dominated winners' list), Worldcon will burn.
And ya know, I don't hate women's fiction, or women in SF. I really am an omnivorous reader. But over time, some things have become hard not to notice. Like the fact that N.K. Jemisin is a fanfic-level hack who's fawned over and feted and cooed adoringly as the next Octavia Butler (she's not). Like how Kameron Hurley and Seanan McGuire and Ann Leckie are all decent writers but such insufferably hateful harpies that, like Scalzi, I can't stand to read them anymore.
Vox Day and the alt-right say "Don't give money to people who hate you," but I am not alt-right and have remained determinedly apolitical in my media consumption. But gods help me I'm becoming one of those guys who side-eyes anything written post Great-Awokening by a chick.
Which brings me to…
A Half-Built Garden, by Ruthanna Emrys
A literary descendent of Ursula K. Le Guin, Ruthanna Emrys crafts a novel of extra-terrestrial diplomacy and urgent climate repair bursting with quiet, tenuous hope and an underlying warmth. A Half-Built Garden depicts a world worth building towards, a humanity worth saving from itself, and an alien community worth entering with open arms. It's not the easiest future to build, but it's one that just might be in reach.
I know, I know, I should have paid more attention to that blurb.
I picked this up because it's a First Contact story that got batted around as some new hotness in SF, and I like alien stories with a modern perspective that are more original than "How will we repel the invaders?"
(I like alien invasion and other MilSF stories too, but like I said, I am an omnivorous reader.)
A Half-Built Garden is very likely going to wind up on the Hugo shortlist this year, and probably has a decent chance of winning. It's a well-written, creative story that brings some interesting ideas to the table, it's innovative science fiction…
.. and it's also a meandering, actionless piece of women's fiction dwelling on pronouns, interstellar consent culture, lactating breasts, and internal monologues that all but drowned me in estrogen.
I've seen this book compared to Becky Chambers. I haven't read any of Becky Chambers's books, but they sound exactly like the kind of story I am not interested in (people go to space, have problems which they solve by talking them out in a civilized fashion, the end?).
A Half-Built Garden is "Aliens arrive, people have problems which they solve by talking them out in a civilized fashion, the end."
(1/3)
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2yr ago
I am torn between enjoying your rambling narrative, and agreeing with your critics who find it to be without a clear point, just a few little gleams of insight amongst the dross and bashing on your "enemies."
I mean, I won't judge you for dropping $1200 on strippers per se. People with discretionary income spend it on what they want to spend it on, and I am not an Effective Altruist spending all my money in the most qualia-maximizing utilitarian way either. But telling this story of wasted carousing followed by some sort of Oprah-worthy parable about how you made a homeless guy cry in gratitude because you asked his name and bought him $30 worth of candy... come on, man. Congratulations, you discovered the Inherent Dignity of All Human Beings. Then you go off on some sort of rant about everyone who's not as enlightened as you is a hypocrite and we should all agree with state welfare solutions or we're your enemy?
I mean, I actually do agree that even homeless meth addicts are entitled to basic human dignity and we should help them if we are able (as opposed to shipping them off to @Hoffmeister25's "farms"), but you're ignoring basically every argument about this subject that's ever been made on The Motte. Most of those guys don't want help and we can't make them want help. About the best solution we can come up with is making resources available to those who actually want to get clean and salvage something of their lives, and minimize the damage done by those who don't. The problem is that your kind of superficial do-gooderism tends to focus on maximizing the drain that the hopeless wretches who fall into the latter category put on the system. Sure, look them in the eyes and buy them candy now and then, that will make them feel briefly human for a few minutes. Tomorrow, he won't even remember your act of kindness, but he will still be looking for a car to break into to get his next fix.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
30d ago
Look, I don't hate her or think she should be insulted, abused, dragged, etc. I dislike dogpiles and sadism and gleeful cruelty.
That said, her entire schtick is stirring up controversy, posting provocative things as "thought experiments," and bragging about her gangbangs. That she suddenly discovered that people say mean things about her on the Internet and it hurts her feelings that more people aren't defending her is really hard for me to find credible. She's either having some kind of mental breakdown or this is as performative as most of the things she does.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1yr ago
I have a genuine question, because I haven't been able to find a reliable answer:
Is the "blue octopus" actually an anti-Semitic dogwhiste, like, anywhere? Or is this an association that was just invented yesterday to pile on Greta Thunberg?
I've seen the infamous Nazi cartoon, of course, and it's not unique, but octopuses have long been used to symbolize conspiracies. A fishy alien thing with lots of tentacles reaching everywhere makes a pretty convenient metaphor for any group you're accusing of being sinister infiltrators.
I have never before yesterday, however, seen the claim that blue octopus plushies, specifically, are some sort of secret mascot used by white nationalists.
If they are, I seriously doubt that Thunberg was aware of it and deliberately signaling her own hatred of Jews. So this seems a lot like people freaking out over the "okay" signal.
I also suspect that, just like the "okay" signal, we're now going to see actual white nationalists unironically adopting blue octopus plushies as mascots.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1yr ago
A good essay. I was never as cool and radical as you, but I did use to be very liberal - I never counted myself an "SJW" but I mostly agreed with them, just thought they were kind of extreme. Eventually I realized that in recognizing they were "extreme," I was actually recognizing that their arguments were disingenuous and incoherent and made in bad faith, and that the frequent conflicts I had with them despite being "on their side" were because, well, they were wrong, and I was interested in what is actually true and practical, and they were not.
On the subject of prison abolition and ACAB - I have mentioned to you before that I watch a lot of YouTube channels showing police bodycam footage, and also parole hearings. (I don't know why, I just find them interesting.) I realize these are mostly curated for what will look interesting on YouTube, but in all the police bodycam footage I have watched, it's almost entirely dysfunctional idiots behaving like criminals and children, often escalating routine traffic stops into full-on brawls with multiple cops having to hold them down. I have seen perps screaming, spitting, kicking, hurling abuse and screaming "I can't breathe!" and "You're traumatizing me!" and everything else they can think of, and 90% of the time, the cops are impeccably polite and professional and even kind to them despite having just been kicked and spit on. I'm sure the fact that they all know they have bodycams which people now file FOIAs to put on YouTube has something to do with that, but however it happened, I have really moved to Team Blue over the last couple of years. Sometimes you do see cops acting more aggressive and antagonistic than the situation calls for, when it's clear they are out of patience, but only rarely have I seen cops really behaving like "bastards" or taking down someone who didn't need to be taken down or using unnecessary force.
Between these clips, and the parole hearings I have also watched, it's clear to me we have a substantial population of outright dysfunctional people who are at best self-centered entitled narcissists, and at worst, sociopathic predators. These are not criminals who were created by capitalism and/or wealth inequality. Many, many of them have drug problems, but not all. Maybe a better, more just world would create fewer people like this, being raised in fewer dysfunctional environments, but I think we will always have some very bad people who will prey on anyone around them given a chance, and the only solution I have ever heard from the "restorative justice" crowd appears to be a sincere belief that a guy who sexually molested his six-year-old daughter and three other neighborhood children can be rehabilitated if put in a proper therapeutic environment with community support. (Would this "community support" include keeping him the fuck away from children, I hope? And if he decides he doesn't want to stay away from children, how will they enforce that?)
Freddie deBoer has written several articles about this. Despite being a Marxist who hates cops himself, he has pointed that those who want the Brock Turners and Derek Chauvins and Kyle Rittenhouses of the world locked up forever are frequently the same ones who claim to want to abolish the "carceral system," so... ¯_(ツ)_/¯?
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2yr ago
(2/3)
The Bitter Review I Would Not Post on Amazon
The year is 2083. Earth's climate has suffered and we're not out of the woods yet, but the world is finally getting its shit together enough to undo some of the damage.
There are basically three factions in the late 21st century:
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Environmental Cooperatives, sort of NGOs on steroids who have vaguely-defined authority over most environmental concerns and are doing the actual work of repairing the environment. How exactly they obtained their authority is never really explained, but presumably it's something like "Everyone finally realized we're all going to die if we don't listen to the environmentalists." Okay. They have lots of virtual meetings and talk about species and ecology preservation, carbon emissions, virus containment, and weather forecasting. They invented this whole new kind of networking called the "dandelion networks" which are kind of like Twitter except very peaceful and everyone reaches a consensus and they are resilient against disinformation and wrongthink.
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Governments. The old nation-states (including the USA) are still around, creaky old dinosaurs who are kind of obsolete except they still have armies and nukes so you can't exactly ignore them. When the aliens arrive, NASA is ecstatic to become relevant again.
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Corporations. When the environmental cooperatives effectively took over the world (it's never put this way, but it seems like basically they run everything and the governments with… armies and nukes just… let them) the corporations had the choice of getting with the program or fucking off to their own micronations. They decided to fuck off to literal and/or figurative islands. So the remnants of late-stage capitalism now exist in little "aisland" enclaves of their own where everyone plays status-seeking corporate reindeer games while trying to stay relevant by offering goods and services to the environmental cooperatives and governments. They aren't literally given black hats but the author's voice heavily implies they are bad guys who want to go back to the bad old days of despoiling the Earth. (Spoiler: They are the bad guys and they want to go back to the bad old days of despoiling the Earth.)
Aliens Arrive!
They land on the Maryland shore, just outside of Washington, D.C., and are stumbled upon by our first person POV protagonist Judy Wallach-Stevens, a Jewish lesbian who lives in a large manor house with her polycule, including her wife and their infant daughter, a they/them, and a transman (who have a they/them toddler of their own whose gender is pointedly never specified). Judy does ecology stuff for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Network, but mostly she cooks. She seems like a really interesting and original char-
About the Author:
Ruthanna Emrys is the author of the Innsmouth Legacy series, including Winter Tide and Deep Roots, and the Imperfect Commentaries collection. She writes radically hopeful short stories about religion and aliens and psycholinguistics. She lives in a mysterious manor house on the outskirts of Washington, DC with her wife and their large, strange family. She creates real versions of imaginary foods in her crowded kitchen, gives unsolicited advice, and occasionally attempts to save the world.
… okay, well, Larry Correia writes himself as his MC too, so anyway.
Judy and her wife happen to be carrying their infant daughter while out for a stroll, and this turns out to be significant, as the aliens are matriarchal and bringing your children to diplomatic negotiations is a sign of good faith. So by sheer coincidence, while baby and hir two mommies are staring at the spaceship that landed on their front lawn, they have initiated peaceful contact with their visitors, who respond in kind by sending out one of their own with her children.
Or Hor or Its or Zis… this book was full of neopronouns, though actually the humans were more varied than the aliens.
The "Ringers" are actually two species, who made contact with each other ages ago. Since then, they have searched the galaxy for other intelligent races, and found mostly dead worlds where civilizations once existed. It turns out that most races fall into an industrial death spiral: their technological advancement outpaces their ability to manage their environment, and they all wind up making themselves extinct. The Ringers avoided this by going into space, treating their homeworlds as mere raw materials, and have thus concluded that intelligent species are not meant to be planet-bound. When they picked up radio signals from Earth, they sent an expedition to save us.
This is the central "conflict" of the story: the Ringers believe that humanity has to leave Earth or die. Judy and her eco-coops insist they're actually fixing their world (yes, the whole book is literally a Tikkun Olam meme), but the Ringers claim that Earth is already doomed.
I put "conflict" in scare quotes because it's implied that the Ringers might try to force humans to leave Earth. Except.. other than a few tense conversations where Judy says "What if we don't want to?" and the Ringers say "But you have to!" there's never really any kind of threat. The Ringers sent a diplomatic mission, not a warship, and while there's some talk of nanotechnology and how the Ringers could conceivably start disassembling Earth right out from under us (they are apparently advanced enough to have started building a Dyson sphere back home), there's never any indication that this was actually something they had in mind. They just sort of assumed they'd explain the situation to us in a reasonable manner, and humanity would agree that their solution makes sense.
So all that is interesting enough as a setup. The rest of the book is mostly about the nation-states and the corps and the coops all jockeying to influence the aliens, while the aliens are playing politics in return. Eventually Judy and her wife and child and some corp reps go to the alien home system, there is a bit of nefariousness, but nothing that can't be solved with impassioned speeches inspired by Star Trek (literally).
And that's pretty much it. There is a lot of talking and soapboxing. Every conflict is solved by talking and being more empathetic.
The first is when Judy is invited to visit one of the corporate "aislands" with her new alien friends (who insist on Judy coming along because having made the proper initial diplomatic overtures, they consider her to be Earth's spokeswoman, more or less), and she brings along a weapon that will DDoS the corporate networks. See, the coops' computer network was almost taken down by a virus, which they are pretty sure was caused by the corporations, so Judy's activist parents from a radical Jewish commune cook up a poorly thought-out plan to stick it to the corps. But the whole time Judy is carrying the device around in her pocket she's feeling really bad about using it and feeling sorry for all these capitalist planet-rapers who are, after all, still people just like her. Then one of the capitalist planet-rapers detects the device in her pocket and they talk it out and Judy hands over the device. Then they go to a party and eat lots of food and Judy and the aliens go back to Maryland.
Later, there is another conflict where some of the coop folks want to sabotage the aliens' communications gear. There is some scuffling – someone actually uses a judo throw on someone! Judy lectures everyone about what an immature species we're being. They talk it out.
Finally, they go to the aliens' home system, and the aliens and humans argue a lot, and then the humans demand that they not be "colonized," and the aliens recognize their demand for affirmative consent. They talk it out. The end.
Sigh.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
11mo ago
I was the sort of guy who believed advice that got you friend-zoned in high school, and even I wouldn't have fallen for advice like that, and from the responses to her tweet, I don't think anyone is buying it now. She might want to convince people that if you take her bad advice you will get laid, but you have to actually have a convincing message.
That said, I think some of you are dramatically overestimating how much impact "Sexually humiliating the other side" or "Jokes about couch-fucking" actually swing voters. Most people see this as the shit-posting it is. What people are actually going to vote on are not which candidate gives better psychosexual "vibes," but which candidate makes them believe they'll make things better, or at least not make things worse. I wouldn't say most voters really have a great handle on the issues, but the issues (economy, housing, global conflicts, and yes, culture war stuff) are what actually drive votes and turnout.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
11mo ago
+1 on the "Good post." It also brought to mind another video I watched recently. A woman who's a prison abolitionist, addressing critics who ask the "So what do you want to do about rapists and child molesters, then, just let them go free?" question.
She spoke at great length about her own horrific abuse, being raped by her best friend's stepfather, who also molested her best friend, and her experience of having to go through the court process, being torn apart by the defense attorney, being sneered at by the police, only to discover that her rapist's supposed 10-year-sentence was reduced to 5 without her being notified or consulted. And how the prison system would abuse him and make him worse, and how she was also revictimized and abused by the process, and never asked what she thought justice should look like, because it was all about "punishing" her abuser and not actually addressing the needs of the victim. What she wanted, she said, was for her abuser to acknowledge what he did and apologize, which he obviously would not do when it would amount to a confession and be used against him.
It was a very passionate and emotional argument. I could see her point of view.
And yet... the holes in her thinking were glaringly apparent. Did she really think that, absent the threat of punishment, the right sort of mediator would get her rapist to give her an apology sincere enough to make her feel better? And what if his other victims did want to see him behind bars? For all her cataloging of the horrors of the "carceral system," she never really did get around to answering the key question: what do we do with very bad people who will hurt other people again if not imprisoned? I imagine it's somethingsomethingmumblerestorativejustice, because they really do believe that rapists and child molesters are produced by "the system" and if the system weren't so terrible, we wouldn't have rapists and child molesters.
So, yeah - this was an extreme case, but very much "woman wanting the system to focus more on victims, less on perpetrators." Of course I know there are men in the prison abolition movement too, but I notice they tend to stress the racism angle more. (This woman did of course hit the "Prison especially victimizes marginalized communities" talking points.)
Thanks to @TheBookOfAllan, I decided maybe Twitter slapfights about fantasy authors might not be Too Online to talk about here. I mean, let's face it, the nerd quotient here is pretty damn high. On the rare occasions I write a top-level post, it's usually about the intersection of Culture War squabbles and hobby drama. So -
First They Came for the Fantasy Authors
Brandon Sanderson, in case you don't recognize the name, is a best-selling fantasy author. In impact on the genre today, he's probably second only to George R. R. Martin. He famously finished Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, and he churns out new books at a rate that makes Stephen King look lazy.
(I have read quite a few of his books, and find them reliably entertaining, but Sanderson is a mediocre writer whose schtick is rigorously-defined magic systems and world-building, to the point that his books sometimes read like LitRPGs, and a big overarching cosmology called the "Cosmere" that unites every one of his series into his own personal MCU.)
Sanderson is also a Mormon. If you've noticed we're in the Culture War thread, you might have an inkling where this is going.
From time to time over the years, some LGBT folks have taken a run at Sanderson over his religion. In 2007 or so, he wrote a blog post offering a sort of milquetoast apologetic, basically saying he was totally cool with The Gays but he also believed in the divine revelations of his church so gay marriage is still a no-go, mmkay? He's been under continual pressure by fans to "update" his views, and he kind of has, saying he continues to "learn and grow." He's tossed a few gay and trans characters into his stories, and he's even written a FAQ: How Do You Feel About Gay Characters?. However, he remains a practicing Mormon, continues to tithe to the LDS, and has very carefully never actually walked back the belief that homosexuality is a sin.
So how has he avoided getting the Orson Scott Card/JK Rowling treatment? Well, for one thing, Sanderson is a genuinely nice guy who is affable with everyone, loves his fans, is very encouraging of new authors, and most importantly, generally avoids any kind of culture war and does not get into Twitter fights. He's got legions of defenders, and most of them accept his bland statements of tolerance and acceptance. It's pretty obvious that he does not personally dislike gay people, and I'm sure he would be thrilled if the LDS elders announced tomorrow that they just received a new revelation from God that He's totally cool with The Gays.
For most people, this is sufficient. There are people who are zealous and dogmatic about everything their church teaches, and there are those who clearly struggle sometimes with a religious doctrine that conflicts with their personal feelings. Most people recognize that everyone wrestles with cognitive dissonance, think "live and let live" is good enough, and if they like Brandon Sanderson despite disagreeing with his religious beliefs, they'll recite "no ethical consumption under capitalism" or "how to be a fan of problematic things."
Most people, but not Gretchen Felker-Martin.
Gretchen Felker-Martin is a transwoman with a single published book: Manhunt. If you wanted to create a hostile caricature of an unpleasant leftist conflict theorist who checks every stereotype, you'd have a hard time finding a better archetype. Think trans Arthur Chu with a foothold in SFF.
Manhunt is about (caveat - I haven't read it, this is what I gathered from reviews) a plague that turns all cis men into feral zombies, and in the post-apocalypse, brave stunning transfolx battle for survival against cismen and TERF hordes. (Yes, seriously.) They also harvest testicles for hormones or something, there's a ton of graphic rape and murder, and also apparently there's a throw-away line about JK Rowling being burned alive in her mansion.
Manhunt was published by Tor, which also, incidentally, publishes Brandon Sanderson.
So, a few days ago, Felker-Martin posted this tweet. (ETA: Hilariously, Twitter's new "added context by readers" feature is now defending Sanderson. I wonder how enraging that is to Felker-Martin?)
In itself, this would be hardly a skirmish in the Culture War. Trans woman doesn't like a Mormon author, wants to cancel him, writes stupid Tweet. It looks an obvious move to try to kneecap a rival, but Felker-Martin probably bit off too much to chew this time and has mostly been mocked for presuming to have some sort of gatekeeping role in deciding who SFF will "tolerate."
But - the reason I wrote this is because I've seen the Sanderson criticism take off a little bit, more than in previous attempts. His haters are really trying to give it legs. The Midnight Society, for example, is a woke satirist who is actually, pretty funny most of the time with really on-point skewerings of SFF and horror authors (except when taking obligatory swipes at JK Rowling by portraying her as a slithering snake hissing about Jewssss and transsss), and this tweet started out great (a completely deserved send-up of Sanderson's tropes) before shifting to an unsubtle signal-boost of the discourse started by Felker-Martin.
Twitter and Reddit seem to have an awful lot of "Hey, did you know Brandon Sanderson is a Mormon?" threads. (It is amazing to me that there are people who've been reading his books for years and had no idea - he does not make it a secret, and also I guessed by the end of the first Mistborn trilogy that the author was a Mormon without knowing anything about him.)
You can see all the usual arguments being recycled: "Should we cancel all Mormon/Catholic/Christian authors then?" (Felker-Martin: "Unironically, yes.") "It's just his personal belief, has nothing to do with how he treats gay people." ("But he TITHES and that means he is funding the LDS's Anti-Gay Death Camps!")
So woke fandom tried to take a scalp and overreached (this time), because while Tor is pretty darn woke, they're still not going to drop one of their biggest cash cows. Yet.
Can You Cancel a Bestseller?
Not literally, no. But can you hurt even a big name? Yes.
JK Rowling is still mega-rich, still a best-selling author, still beloved in most of the world. Yet I'm sure it does sting, even if she never says so publicly, that she and her books will never be celebrated again without an asterisk, that Harry Potter fandom tries to put her name in small print if at all, that she will never be reunited with the stars who she saw grow up and considered friends, until they were forced to denounce her. (Though in Emma Watson's case, it doesn't seem like much forcing was needed.)
They might not be able to Voldemort Brandon Sanderson, but being turned into a homophobic villain who is reviled by fandom and no longer invited to conventions would definitely hurt him. More cynically, Felker-Martin might know that Sanderson was too big a target, but that much smaller Mormon (and Catholic and Baptist, etc.) authors might be intimidated.
(Which makes me tempted to say, "Okay, now do Muslims," but there are only a handful of Muslim SFF authors I know of. The most famous is probably Gwendolyn Willow Wilson, an American Karen who converted to Islam and writes the Ms. Marvel comic book series. Saladin Ahmed wrote a few fantasy novels and also the Miles Morales Spider Man. Amal El-Mohtar is very in with the woke Hugos crowd. All of them apparently believe that Mohammad was totally cool with The Gays. It will be interesting to see if an actual tradcon Muslim ever tries to break into the industry.)
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