Obsidian Wings

Silence

Silence.

Also.

The Stupidest Environment Imaginable - Open Thread

by Ugh

Holy flippin' Jeebus, do things just get stupider and stupider, with a side of the crazy, also a bit o' scary. Honestly, can we please just shut this whole simulation down for abject ludicrousness and dumb plot twists? I mean, CNN had a chryon just now entitled something like "The Playmate, the Porn Star and the President" I sh1t you not.  Stop mailing it in show runners!

Meanwhile, apparently we need a reboot of the Karate Kid entitled Cobra Kai on YouTube Red of all things and YES Ralph Macchio and William Zabka will be reprising their roles fnck you very much.  I can't even.

Also, too, Facebook sold your soul to Cambridge Analytica and one of Steve Bannon's shirts (the most interior one, sadly).  We've started a trade war, a friggin' train war! What's next, Great Depression Part Deux Electric Boogaloo and Dust Bowl: The Reckoning?  A #1 seed lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament for the first time and what-else-has-never-happened-before-that-the-screenwriters-are-going-to-throw-in-before-the-world-is-canceled?  That's a great South Park episode, BTW (ok maybe great overstates things).

This is your can't-even-make-it-to-the-effin'-weekend Open Thread!  Congrats.

UPDATE: Bolton as NSA effective April 9. Really the writers are just mailing it in now.

Why the Heck Not? – Weekend Open Thread

by wj

It occurs to me that, since an Open Thread is desıgned to wander around multiple topics, why shouldn’t the post do so as well. So this one is going to start with technology and end up at politics.

This past year, I’ve been working on a project with ICANN (Internet Corporation for Addresses, Names, and Numbers). These are the folks who keep track of things like domain names – so you can’t go out and register obsidianwings.blogs.com, because we already got that. Also of the servers which translate those domain names into actual addresses.

This project is on the Internationalization of Domain Names. We are all accustomed to names which end with .com or .gov or .edu – a legacy of the Internet’s origin as a US government project. ICANN has opened up the possibility of new TLDs (Top Level Domain names) like these, so there are now things like .hotel and .ru. But at the moment, you are limited to the 26 letters used in English. So while you could get .cologne or .koln, you can’t get .köln, which is how the city’s name is properly spelled in German. Likewise, while .jp is available in Japan, you can’t get .日本. This project is intended to expand the repertoire of symbols which are available.

And to figure out which symbols conflict. For example, if one domain name uses the letter a, there probably isn’t a problem with another which is the same except for using ắ (Latin Small Letter A with Breve and Acute) – there’s enough difference that people would notice. But how about i and ı (Latin Small Dotless Letter I), which is used in Turkish? Would you notice? DID you notice, when I slipped it in in the first sentence? Nah, you probably saw what you expected to see. It’s not a trivial problem.

Anyway, this past week I’ve been at an ICANN conference where we have been, among other things, thrashing out some of the issues face-to-face. It’s been in San Juan, Puerto Rico, as scheduled. After Hurricane Maria, there was some discussion about relocating. But we decided to stay, and it’s worked out fine. The lights (and the AC!) are on, the Internet works fine, etc.

But we’re the first major conference here since the hurricane, and the Puerto Ricans have pulled out all the stops to send a message that they are up and running again. To the point that we even had the Governor, Ricky Rosselló, at the Opening Session. He’s a young guy (late 30s and looks mid-20s), and he got off the best line of the morning: “I want to assure you that I am not just some junior staffer from the Office of the Governor. I actually am the Governor!” It got a good laugh.

But it caused me to wonder. Suppose at some point he were to decide to run for President. He’s a “natural born citizen”** of the United States, after all. And since Puerto Rico has no electors, the requirement that electors must vote for at least one of President and Vice President who is not from their own state doesn’t matter. So, why the heck not?

** It occurs to me suddenly to wonder. If we get to the point of having uterine replicators, would those who gestate in a bottle be regarded as “natural born”?

Brainstorming my Hugo nominations: Best Novel and Best Series

by Doctor Science

Hugo nominations have to be in by Friday, so I'm going to put up my longlist and hope the process of writing helps me make up my mind. I'm resurrecting my goodreads account to better keep track of what I've read (and what I started but did not finish, and why).

I thought I had already written and posted reviews of most of these, but apparently I wrote many only in my head. Way to drop the ball, brain.

The long list, in alphabetical order by author:

a. The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden. Historical fantasy set in 13th-C Russia. Wonderfully atmospheric: I kept needing to huddle under a blanket to combat the Russian winter. I especially liked all the little spirits, the household fay that keep things running smoothly--or not.

Beautifully written and with coherent world-building, but not, I think, quite what I want in a Hugo-level novel.

b. * # City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett. Deeply moving and complex conclusion to The Divine Cities, which definitely goes on my Best Series ballot. An exploration of colonialism, imperialism, and the cycle of abuse for groups and individuals. Best of all, the conclusion is (without spoilers) NOT to look to Gods or a Rightful King or a group of Best People to take care of the rest. An important book for a stressful time. (If only there was a map...)

c. # Within the Sanctuary of Wings by Marie Brennan. Deeply satisfying conclusion to The Memoirs of Lady Trent series. The world-building and the plot march together, Connecting All This Up to lay out the core secret of dragons, and to show how this world can move forward.

One thing I love about this series is that it's about dragons, the quintessential fantasy creature, but it is clearly science fiction. Not just SF, but fiction *about* science, about how science is a way of addressing the question of how our world is put together. Lady Trent's life work doesn't answer all the questions about dragons, but the unanswered ones will have scientific answers, not magical ones. As you can tell from my user name, this is precisely My Jam.

Brennan's style is consistently just antique enough to sound "authentically Victorian", though much less long-winded. What an excellent series overall.

d. Persepolis Rising by James S. A. Corey. Previously reviewed here. The Expanse is an obvious pick for Best Series, as well.

e. * Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys. We are truly living in a golden age of Lovecraft fanfic. Facing up to how problematic Lovecraft (and his writing) were has freed writers to explore, in depth, the kind of people HPL was afraid of, the people he thought of as monsters. When you flip the script, you can see how monstrous HPL's racism--and the racism baked into the American cake--really are. HPL's Shadow Over Innsmouth ends with the town's inhabitants being sent to a concentration camp (in so many words); Winter Tide is the story of Aphra and Caleb Marsh, the only survivors. Count me on Team Deep Ones!

f. # The Ruin of Angels by Max Gladstone. Part of The Craft Sequence, an obvious choice for Best Series. Previously reviewed.

g. The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter. Previously reviewed.

h. * Terminal Alliance by Jim C. Hines. There's a viral tumblr post about how aliens would think humans are hideous and terrifying. This Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse series is set in that universe, where humans are the most feared military troops in the galaxy...but stars the humans who do the boring, dirty work. I've found Hines hit-or-miss in the past, but he's finally hit the Pratchettian sweet spot: funny, witty, thoughtful, and where the heroes aren't Chosen Ones.

i. # The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemison, conclusion to the masterful Broken Earth trilogy. For me, this didn't work 100%, because the proportion of fantasy (magic) got higher, the proportion of science lower. Also it never stopped baffling me to have Earth called "Father", not "Mother". Nonetheless, one of the great achievements of our day.

j. * Provenance by Ann Leckie. Reviewed here.

k. * Raven Strategem by Yoon Ha Lee. Ninefox Gambit plunged you straight into the story, making you figure out the world on the fly. Raven Strategem carefully gathers building blocks, until Surprise! you see the whole picture of the Hexarchate, the violence inherent in the system, and what our protagonists want to do with it. Another book that felt very necessary, this year.

l. Barbary Station by R.E. Stearns. Previously reviewed.

m. The Delerium Brief by Charles Stross. I really hate it when a Lovecraftian satire starts to seem kind of realistic. It's good, but I'm not sure it passes my 2017 Rule: No Fictional Dystopias I Get That from the News.

---

There will be six nominees for each Hugo, and we get to nominate five things each. I'm going through the above list, marking * for each novel I'll nominate, # for each series. I may leave off works (e.g. Persepolis Rising/The Expanse) that I'm certain will be on the ballot without my vote.

[pause for decision-making]

So, that makes 5 novels and 4 series. I think I'll also nominate Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series, because it's really long and varied, starts out being about an assassin but then looks at the violence inherent in the system, yet doesn't get enough love.

Musical Titanic Cabinet Torture Chairs

by Ugh

Tillerson out! He very much wanted to stay, apparently. Wasn't told, doesn't know why.  

Mike Pompeo to State.  Some wag on twitter notes that with access to both the CIA and State Department files, Pompeo can surely get to the bottom of....Benghazi!

Gina Haspel will lead the CIA, she was directly involved in the, um, wonderful torture regime run by the prior republican president who took office after losing the popular vote.  We must look forward, not back, but apparently we didn't look far enough forward did we?

Only the best people y'all.  

I got nuthin' Open Thread

by Ugh

The perpetual infrastructure week debacle is entertaining in an "OMFG look at that train wreck" dumpster fire-esque sort of way. I think.

I'm sure our deal-maker-yet-can't-get-the-hush-money-NDA-correct-in-chief will end up getting North Korea to... eh.  Maybe he'll end up like John McCain, tweeting about his visit with "Qadhafi" and how he is an "interesting man." "Wow, your people really love you little rocket man, we should do this in the United States.  How big are your military parades?"

Selection Sunday is, uh, Sunday, so let the Madness begin. My super tournament idea has yet to be adopted though.  Also they need to pay the players.

Finished Westworld, pretty good, although I wonder what they have in store for next season now that they seem to have gone through a lot of the mystery and intrigue (though the trailer looks awesome). 

What else? Bueller?  Open. Thread.

New York city recommendations

by liberal japonicus

My oldest daughter is going to NY city for an academic program with her university in June. Of course, I would like her to soak up that liberal elitism that I have heard so much about as well as learn to properly hate all conservatives and all things conservative, as I know I've been falling down on that part of my job. I have assigned her to read Ian Frazier's essay 'Your face or mine', of which I found an excerpt in this profile of the man.

First thing every morning when I sit down to eat, I get in my breakfast’s face. I violate the space of that breakfast—the dry cereal, one-per-cent skim, fruit juice, what have you—I really get loud with it. I tell it what I want it to do for me that day from a nutritional standpoint. Hey, I’m a New Yorker—my food doesn’t give me ulcers, I give it ulcers. Then I eat it. I go at that breakfast one hundred per cent. And I don’t care what you’re havin’, eggs over, hash browns, grits like they got down South (grits! what a joke!), my breakfast can kick whatever you’re havin’ ’s ass. It’s not what’s on the plate, it’s the attitude. With the right New York attitude, I can take my breakfast and beat your breakfast, then take your breakfast and beat my breakfast.

A word of warning here, in case you’re thinking that because I get in my breakfast’s face you can just come up and get in my face. Think twice about that, my friend. You want to get in my face, take a number. Let me explain: I’m a New Yorker, so naturally I’m not going to hear you unless you get in my face. In fact, I restrict myself exclusively to in-your-face people, places, and things, because that’s the way I like it. Unfortunately, there’s just one problem. Recently, I measured my face, and I don’t think I’ve got more than about seventy square inches of surface area there. Think about it: not a lot of room. The Daily News gets in my face every morning, and that more than fills my face right there. So I guess, loving this ass-kicking city as I do, what I really need is a hell of a lot bigger face.

So she'll have the attitude, but what should she do? There seems to be a wealth of info in the commentariat here, so I'd love to seem smarter and more experienced to my daughter than I am by passing on your suggestions as my own. Just like any father would.

[note: if this works out, I may just post open threads asking for recommendations for random cities]

We're All Gonna Die - Open Thread

by Ugh

Well then.  This has been, uh, a quite something of a week. Latest is that McMaster is on his way out as NSA and one of the possible replacements is....John Bolton!  Mr. "Let's Launch a Preemptive Strike on North Korea Because Wheeee!"  These are not the good times you're looking for.

And woke up this morning to Trump tweeting that "trade wars are good!" and, more substantively, that Darrell Hammond was better at the SNL impersonation of Trump than Alec Baldwin.  Oh also Trump is in favor of gun confiscation with, uh, delayed due process, and increasing the age for purchase of assault rifles* to 21.  Or at least he was earlier in the week.

Also, too, Paul Ryan is the worst. 

Open thread.

*Or whatever the technical fncking term is.