Stuff Waiting a Week [or More] to Get Posted

It's the low-level despair.  It's the kerfuffle, it's the Trump campaign, it's some family stuff, it's the general life situation.  It was probably the earthquake Monday, which was much too close for comfort.

I'm looking at a lot of posts and sighing "You want to write about that?"

• Anthony Vicino (SF Signal) wanted to know why where are all the People of Color (PoC) in science fiction and fantasy is still being asked.  Tobias Buckell responds in a comment there and expands on the subject.
  
  All I'm going to say here is that:
  1. A piece of this is marketing "wisdom" which is actually a lot of ossified "rules" from the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, usually couched in "tend to" language.  Survey results sometimes budge a few of the assumptions of marketing a millimeter or so, but the process takes years and meantime the old "guidelines" are in effect.  Marketers tend to (see what I did there?) prefer highly stratified markets because it is easier to "tailor" the message of "You wanna buy this for [emotional or status reason]" rather than actually extolling the product.  For example, cigarettes.  Nobody born after 1975 has any reason to believe smoking makes one "cool."  Very few people would respond to "Cigarettes!  Because respiratory/pulmonary ailments are so much fun!"  But because humans have a basic bias toward not doing what we're told, cigarettes are currently touted as A Choice one can make as an adult,  knowing the dangers.  You know, like suicide bungee jumping.  And that message is subtly tailored to various demographic groupings, including the teenagers that are not supposed to be targeted because underage and illegal. (Whooops! Rant!)
  2. Spend a day on the New York City subways and then tell me PoC don't read sf/f.  (Of course the people who need to do this won't.  Cowards.)
• When I saw this item, my first thought was Purple Rain.  Guess it's time for a rewatch.  Let's get nuts!
• Cerberus at Sadly, No! on a reaction to the Boy Scouts' decision to allow gay adults to serve as leaders:

  And we end with the usual Scott Lively bullshit and calls for violence, but yeah, it runs a little hollow when you try to claim the moral high ground after claiming it is only “natural” for you to lust after some 12 year old girl, because that’s “not really pedophilia”. I’m sorry, you can’t spout that shit and then expect to come off like the sober defender of values. You just can’t.
  
  And it is amazing that losing so many battles against feminists and queer rights activists is revealing you “traditional culture enthusiasts” for what you are and burning away the little pockets you like to hide in to cultivate your victims. And so, I say shine the sun bright into your little troll holes and kill traditional culture so dead that no other child needs fear some fucker who thinks “sexual urges” are so powerful that the natural result of an adult and a child together must be rape.
  
  And then let us cleanse it all with fire.

• Scott Lemieux on John Roberts (Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts, that is) efforts to hollow out the Voting Rights Act.  Lauren Kelley at Rolling Stone interviews Ari Berman on his new book which traces the history of the Voting Rights Act.  (PS:  There are more unicorns in Nebraska than there is voter fraud in the United States.)
• Zandar on Democratic party internals.

  The really weird part is that nowhere in the entire piece do I see the words “Debbie Wasserman Schultz” who, as chair of the DNC, would ostensibly be the person in charge of the election strategies and GOTV tactics that Greenfield is complaining about, but I guess Greenfield has never met her or something.
  
  Also, there is the small matter of the impressive number of Democrats who lost by running as far away from Barack Obama as possible in 2010, 2012, and 2014 but no, the problem is of course Obama.
  
  That’s the Beltway wisdom, and it will be for a very, very long time.

  And of course I have to wonder why that is.
• Avedon's Sideshow's latest is chock-full of informative links, so just go there.  You should do that anyway.

Weekend With Bernie

Video of Senator Sanders at the Iowa State Fair.  With summarizing article above by Bethania Palma Markus, from Raw Story, at AlterNet.

Yes, I do have to get a link to the Greens.  There are months of this ahead of us.

In Memoriam

Julian Bond.

Civil rights leader, legislator, real social justice warrior.

The world is very much poorer today.

Wreaking Crew (Wrecking Crew, Too)

• Republicans still want to abolish Social Security.
  

  From Rand Paul to John Kasich, from Marco Rubio to Rick Perry to Lindsey Graham to Ted Cruz to Jeb Bush to George Pataki, all agree that Social Security should be privatized. And with the possible exception of Mike Huckabee, all agree on undermining the only program that keeps millions of older Americans from ending their lives in poverty rather than dignity. Chris Christie, robber of public employee pensions, would swiftly raise the retirement age to 69, threatening grave hardship for blue-collar, lower-income Americans. Carly Fiorina would inflict similar suffering on workers who weren't fortunate enough to snag an undeserved $40 million "golden parachute," like she did.
  
  Behind Republican warnings about the solvency of Social Security -- and their enduring desire to privatize -- are major financial interests that would like to seize the system's revenue streams for their own profit.
  
  

  Joe Conason at AlterNet
• Bonus: Mr. Trump as American authoritarian (he's increasingly reminding me of a cross between Greg Stillson [The Dead Zone] and Pol Pot.  Not my idea of fun times, if you catch my drift).  And there are journalists and pundits who absolutely love that sort of thing.  You don't want to live under authoritarian rule.  (We used to know that.)  And you don't want to have to find that out first hand.  Capisce?  (John Dean at Justia.com, reprinted at AlterNet.)

Plus and Minus

• Via Mercury Rising, the Digital Bodleian (Oxford) Library collections.  (I don't know how accessible it is because I haven't figured out how to use it yet.  Also, the links are a bit slower than their appearance, if that makes sense.  Also also, it continues to crack me up that Hebrew manuscripts are classed as "Oriental.")
• Zandar excerpts a long piece from the Washington Post on the gradual dismanatling of public education in North Carolina.  It's ugly.

  That’s right–our state government has maimed public schools so it can offer tax dollars to for-profit charters and private schools with totally inadequate government oversight from the same systems that declared public schools inadequate in the first place.
  
  [...]
  
  ... With an unassailable, veto-proof majority, North Carolina Republicans seized control of this state and unleashed a devastating blow to public schools.
  
  They have systematically pared budgets to the bone. They have insulted, antagonized, and demoralized teachers through stingy salary offerings–and they’ve muted the organization that had for many years protected them.
  
  As a result, public schools have suffered, and Republicans went the extra mile to design a new school rating system that exploited every weakness. It became the perfect excuse to bring private schools and for-profit operators into the mix, diverting critical taxpayer dollars from public schools into the deep pockets of companies like Pearson, sometimes without even a competitive bid process.
  
  And now? What’s happening today?

  Research Triangle slowly becomes an island?
  

Creepy Crawly Creepy Crawly Creepy Creepy Crawly Crawly Creepy Creepy Crawly Crawly Creepy Creepy Crawly Crawly Creepy Crawly Creepy Creepy

• There are reasons for separation of church and state.

  This is what freedom of religion really means in America: the freedom to inflict Christianity by law upon the rest of the people, but any other religion (or distinct lack of one) is not tolerated. I'm glad that Lincoln County finally got rid of the prayer sessions, but the journey to get there was spiteful, ignorant, and discriminatory to say the least.

  Zandar Versus The Stupid.  For the win.
• Margaret and Helen, specifically Helen, pointing out the realities of Planned Parenthood, rather than the falsehoods and lies the Republican candidates for president would like people to believe:

  Millions of women have been going to Planned Parenthood for nearly 100 years. We all remember the exceptional care and the quality of the information we received from the staff at those clinics. We remember when Planned Parenthood staff held our hands and comforted us during some of our scariest moments. We remember the relief we felt when they provided us with medically accurate information that we so desperately needed. And women of my age also remember what it was like when safe, legal abortions were not available.
  
  Contrary to what Republican men think, none of us ever went into a Planned Parenthood for a well woman exam, cancer screening or birth control and mistakenly had an abortion instead.

  No one not in possession of a uterus should have anything to say whatsoever about what possessors of uteri do with said uteri. This is the sort of thing that makes me regret that there is not nearly enough solidarity among women to pull off the Lysistrata strategy.
  

In Memoriam

Robert Conquest, historian (via File770.com)

Mr. Conquest, a poet and science-fiction buff, turned to the study of the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s out of dissatisfaction with the quality of analysis he saw at the British Foreign Office, where he worked after World War II in the Information Research Department, a semi-secret office responsible for combating Soviet propaganda.

“The ambassadors varied between people who were interested in politics and people who were interested in music,” he told The Guardian in 2003. “I wanted to study the evolutions at the top in Soviet Russia.”

Fascinating.

There Was a Crooked Man

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been booked at a Dallas-area jail on felony charges alleging that he misled investors before becoming the state's top lawyer.

Paxton arrived at the Collin County jail Monday to be processed on two counts of first-degree securities fraud and a lesser count of failing to register with state securities regulators.

From sfgate.com; the article is only a little longer.

Mentioned here exactly 1 month ago.

Because "Conservatism" Depends on Not Remembering Anything Happening Over a Day Ago

Why the Iranian government doesn't trust the U. S. (Paul Bibeau, Goblinbooks)

6. Our highest-level officials call for the destruction of their government. We know that Iranian officials are targeting US troops and calling for "death to America." But people in the most powerful positions in Washington have spent decades looking for ways to destabilize and topple their government.

(Links in article.)

It's a funny thing. People in positions holding power almost always demand total trust and almost never deserve it. But suggesting caution or skepticism or even out-and-out distrust on the part of the less powerful group or individual toward the more powerful usually yields accusations of impugned honor, whining about hate, or displays of hurt feelings.  And usually the less powerful group or individual backs down until the next reminder that caution, skepticism, and out-and-out distrust are in fact the correct response to the provocations of power.