#andrew liptak

[charliejaneanders]

Hi! I have a question related to your blogpost “here’s what bugs me about comics.”

In it, you talk about comic discoverability, and I cant help but think that novels have a similar discoverability problem. Is this a real thing?

I’m sure there are good blogs or websites for this—your Washington Post column is actually one of the few places I know I can get good, thoughtful recommendations online—but I don’t know how to find those, either! Do you have any recommendations for places to find out about books?

(I know the obvious one I’m leaving out is going to indie bookstores and libraries, which *is* a great strategy, but sometimes going in-person isn’t possible. Goodreads and the Barnes and Noble website used to work for me, but seem to have gotten much worse, but maybe that’s just me.)

Oh yeah, that’s a totally valid question!

I think that prose novels, in general, are about as discoverable as single issues of comics. You know, publishers put out a lot of promo stuff when the first issue of a new comic is coming out, and you’ll see lots of stuff about it, but the trade doesn’t get that level of hype most of the time — which still feels sad to me. I think just like with a random issue of a comic book, you might need to be tapped into some networks.

Places I recommend for finding out about new science fiction and fantasy books... the Transfer Orbit newsletter by Andrew Liptak is *great*. Also, Reactor.com (formerly known as Tor.com) will have some great recommendations of brand new books. And Locus Magazine is always super useful. Hope this helps!

[cirquedepacchan]

My contribution to Round 2 of the HWS Razzle Dazzle fan anthology! 🥳🎉🎊

This is a redraw of a postal stamp that was created in 1953 to commemorate the state visits, made by Indonesia and the Philippines with one another, ever since signing a treaty of friendship (I say that last word while gesturing quotation marks). I recommend taking a look at the compilation by the late Andrew Liptak in his postal history blog.

The only real difference to my interpretation is the visibly romantic undertone. 🫣

[ulkaralakbarova]

In 1863, Mississippi farmer Newt Knight serves as a medic for the Confederate Army. Opposed to slavery, Knight would rather help the wounded than fight the Union. After his nephew dies in battle, Newt returns home to Jones County to safeguard his family but is soon branded an outlaw deserter. Forced to flee, he finds refuge with a group of runaway slaves hiding out in the swamps. Forging an alliance with the slaves and other farmers, Knight leads a rebellion that would forever change history. Credits: TheMovieDb. Film Cast: Newton Knight: Matthew McConaughey Rachel: Gugu Mbatha-Raw Moses Washington: Mahershala Ali Serena Knight: Keri Russell Daniel: Jacob Lofland Sumrall: Sean Bridgers Lieutenant Barbour: Brad Carter Miss Ellie: Jane McNeill Prosecuting Attorney: Gary Grubbs Jasper: Christopher Berry Amos Deason: Joe Chrest Quitman: David Jensen Injured Soldier: Kurt Krause Confederate Color Guard: Carlton Caudle Freedman 1: Martin Bats Bradford Matthew Yates: Matt Lintz Mary: Kerry Cahill Annie: Jessica Collins Confederate Soldier: Juan Gaspard Junie Lee: Liza J. Bennett Polling Station Clerk: David Maldonado Schoolgirl: Serenity Neil Chester: Lawrence Turner Mrs. Deason: Lara Grice Col. Robert Lowry: Wayne Pére Farmer 1: Jim Klock Town Folk: Emily Bossak Sergeant: P.J. Marshall Third Man: Ritchie Montgomery Stillman Coleman: Mattie Liptak Aunt Sally: Jill Jane Clements Col. McLemore: Thomas Francis Murphy Old Man: Johnny McPhail Lt. Barbour: Bill Tangradi First Man: William Mark McCullough Edward James – Cotton Field Worker: Sam Malone Boy at Alice Hotel: Kylen Davis Farmer 2: Will Beinbrink George: Troy Hogan Confederate Soldier: Cy Parks Ward: Dane Rhodes Second Woman / Yeoman Farmer: Lucy Faust Yeoman Girl: Stella Allen Older Coleman Brother: Cade Mansfield Cooksey Maroon (uncredited): Tahj Vaughans Davis Knight: Brian Lee Franklin Film Crew: Casting: Debra Zane Production Design: Philip Messina Costume Design: Louise Frogley Editor: Juliette Welfling Producer: Jon Kilik Supervising Art Director: Dan Webster Editor: Pamela Martin Director of Photography: Benoît Delhomme Producer: Scott Stuber Executive Producer: Oren Aviv Set Decoration: Larry Dias Writer: Gary Ross Executive Producer: Robert Simonds Executive Producer: Robin Bissell Art Direction: Andrew Max Cahn Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Paul Hsu Executive Producer: Wang Zhonglei Executive Producer: Stuart Ford Prosthetics: Gary Archer Foley: Marko Costanzo Makeup Department Head: Nikoletta Skarlatos Executive Producer: Wang Zhongjun Co-Producer: David Pomier First Assistant Director: Eric Heffron Assistant Costume Designer: Meagan McLaughlin Foley: Eric Milano Second Unit Director: Garrett Warren Visual Effects Editor: Gershon Hinkson Executive Producer: Michael Bassick Makeup Artist: Kris Evans Executive Producer: Bruce Nachbar “B” Camera Operator: Jerry M. Jacob Executive Producer: Matt Jackson Additional Camera: Michael Watson Executive Producer: Christopher Woodrow Hairstylist: Felicity Bowring Casting: Meagan Lewis Music Editor: John Finklea Executive Producer: Jerry Ye Set Designer: Randall D. Wilkins Still Photographer: Murray Close Sound Re-Recording Mixer: Mike Prestwood Smith First Assistant “A” Camera: Chad Rivetti Special Effects Coordinator: David K. Nami Hair Department Head: Jules Holdren Key Hair Stylist: Melizah Anguiano Wheat Set Costumer: Adriane Bennett Costume Supervisor: Carlane Passman Prosthetic Makeup Artist: Matthew O’Toole Visual Effects Producer: Lisa Beroud Key Hair Stylist: Theraesa Rivers Executive Producer: Russell Levine Additional Camera: Greg Morris Set Costumer: Tom Cummins Art Department Coordinator: Wylie Griffin Supervising Dialogue Editor: Branka Mrkic Visual Effects Supervisor: Kelly Port Second Assistant “C” Camera: Griffin McCann Set Costumer: Lisa Magee Wigmaker: Khanh Trance Art Direction: Chris Craine Gaffer: Bob Bates Original Music Composer: Nicholas Britell First Assistant “C” Camera: Wade Whitley Co-Producer: Diana Alvarez Second Second Assistant Director: Marvin Williams “A” Came...

[kulturado]

The Story: 15 recent sci-fi books that forever shaped the genre

The Writer: Andrew Liptak

(photo: Andrew Liptak)

[ovnihoje]

Em 11 de dezembro de 1972, a Apolo 17 pousou na Lua. Andrew Liptak explica porque a esta foi a última a levar humanos até a superfície lunar.

[sobreiromecanico]

Leituras da semana (#02 // Jan 29, 2024)

Nos círculos da ficção científica literária o tema da semana foi, inevitavelmente, os Prémios Hugo de 2023, atribuídos na Worldcon de Chengdu, na China. Após uma longa e invulgar espera, as estatísticas das votações foram enfim reveladas, e dizer que a coisa cheira a esturro será talvez um eufemismo. Entre livros, séries, autores e fãs tornados inelegíveis à nomeação sem critério aparente, contagens de votos que não batem certo, e um administrador do prémio armado em parvo, o caso deu que falar (sobretudo na rede social BlueSky, para onde a maioria dos escritores anglófonos de ficção científica e fantasia parece ter migrado à medida que o elonificado e emerdificado Twitter se vai degradando). Como tal, aqui ficam algumas ligações para se tentar perceber o que se passou e preservar um pouco da memória de todo esta salsada:

No File 770*, Mike Glyer vai actualizando com frequência as novidades desta polémica, pelo que é ir seguindo página abaixo. Mas destaco: Pixel Scroll 1/22/24 Encounter at Fargo e, Chengdu Hugo Administrator Dave McCarty Fields Questions on Facebook (se tivesse de sugerir um título alternativo para isto, iria por "How to suck at PR and damage control in five easy steps"). Houve mais desenvolvimentos pelo meio, mas talvez valha a pena concluir com este: Dave McCarty Makes Statement About His Facebook Responses (que se poderia talvez resumir no título "SF Fan learns in 2024 that what one writes on the Internet is read by everyone").

-

Aidan Moher, no seu Astrolabe, foi agregando ao longo dos dias vários elementos desta controvérsia, o que gerou um resumo bastante completo e interessante (que ainda deverá ter mais actualizações): Astrolabe 36: Panic! At the Hugos.

-

Andrew Liptak, na sua newsletter Transfer Orbit, também discorre sobre o tema, e dá uma perspectiva interessante sobre as dificuldades (a resistência) à mudança de uma instituição e de um prémio que se encontram hoje num mundo radicalmente diferente daquele em que foram criados: Stress Test

No seu blogue pessoal, John Scalzi também fala sobre o tema: What's Up With Babel and the Hugos?

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Também Abigail Nussbaum, no seu excelente blogue Asking the Wrong Questions, coloca questões pertinentes e sugere possíveis caminhos a seguir: The 2023 Hugo Awards: Now With an Asterisk.

-

No portal Winter is Coming, Daniel Roman tem um bom resumo do caso, citando Rebecca F. Kuang, Neil Gaiman, e Xiran Jay Zhao: Controversy at the Hugo Awards: Works deemed "ineligible" lead to censorship speculation

-

Claro que a coisa já chegou à imprensa especializada:

Polygon, por Sadie Gennis e Susana Polo: Hugo Awards under fire over censorship accusations, and SFF writers want answers

- ... e à generalista:

The Guardian, por Amy Hawkins: Science fiction awards held in China under fire for excluding authors

--

Pessoalmente, estou curioso para ver que desenvolvimentos esta história ainda irá conhecer, e qual será o impacto na Worldcon 2024 em Glasgow (à qual ainda estou a ponderar ir) e na próxima edição dos Prémios Hugo. Mas que a coisa parece mais tremida do que estava há quase dez anos com a palermice dos Sad Puppies, lá isso parece.

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E agora, ainda sobre os Prémios Hugo, mas num registo completamente diferente: no seu blogue pessoal, Rich Puchalsky aproveita a polémica para fazer uma lista muito pessoal dos livros que, no seu entender, deviam ter ganho o prémio de "Best Novel" em cada ano: My crank list of which novels should have won the Hugos

(via Adam Roberts/Twitter)

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*Já agora, fica a referência: é absolutamente incrível o trabalho que Glyer faz no File 770, que já virava frangos espaciais décadas antes de eu próprio me ter aventurado neste pequeno nicho da blogosfera em 2012 (podem ler sobre a vasta história da fanzine aqui). Bem sei a energia que manter um projecto destes com regularidade requer!

[65oh7]

I just went down a massive cosplay rabbit hole

So, if you've ever wondered about the International Costumers' Guild (ICG) like I have, it sounds like a great idea right? Like, it's not just one kind of costuming, it's cosplay, OCs, historical, furry, literally anything is supposed to be accepted. I find it talked about in the Cosplay: A History (https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Cosplay-A-History/Andrew-Liptak/9781534455825) and Adam Savage even attended Costume-Con 41. So of course I'm excited to find out that the DC region is where the GCFGC, the founding group, who that they made the pronounciation of GCFGC "Founders". I'm like all gung-ho to look into how to join and I... where the heck are all the websites? The ICG website doesn't even list the GCFGC, someone from the GCFGC is *on* the board for the ICG. The last time the GCFGC website (hosted at some guy's website?) was updated was 2019. The facebook groups chain via one last post into some Maryland Costuming and Cosplayers public chat. Doing digging, I'm finding... maybe the ICG is trying to keep from falling apart? Like, this report from the president isn't looking so hot. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSFSD2hyS33tF4iPW5y3j0tDiheNJEy2JGdT_Wtb6aGs_tqWjhP50TiNVPL03IB0s39Zfvo8-Sto2sp/pub) Did the ICG... have to disband it's founding group? Do they need help? Like, you're telling the group is next to Awesomecon, MAGFest, Katsucon, and can't like... find members? I mean, besides the exclusive membership requirements of having two sponsors. (Yeah, I get it keeps people out for vetting but even the Masons only require one sponsor.) You could totally recruit some fresh blood.

I'm just kinda lost - I'm someone who wants to costume, cosplay, fursuit, just all that stuff and... the club that looks like it's closest to my interests just kinda... poofed. So here I am - like I guess I'll email... someone from the Founders and see if they're still meeting. Like, it's just kinda wild to me. Almost smelly - maybe I'm just sticking my nose in politics I'm not aware of but I expect the Founding chapter to be the most likely to exist. Anyway... /rant

[redrusty66]

Zombie Fest : Day 2 : Quarantine 2 : Terminal (2011)

Discussing the 2011 Zombie Apocalypse Horror Film :Day 2 : Quarantine 2 : Terminal

Starring : Mercedes Mason, Josh Cooke, Mattie Liptak, Ignacio Serricchio, Noree Victoria, Bre Blair, Lamar Stewart, Andrew Benator Director : John Pogue Writer : John Pogue

Mt Score 8.2/10

IMDB : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1699231/

Trailer : https://youtu.be/0_QXWQHHr7c

My IMDB : https://www.imdb.com/user/ur48636572 My Letterboxed : https://letterboxd.com/Redrusty66/ My Poetry : https://allpoetry.com/Redrusty66

#horror #horror movies #movie reviews #films #horror review #scary movies  #slashers #supernatural #Vengeance #cinema  #horror recommendation  #movies  #thriller #zombie #infection  

[cosplayinamerica]

I had the opportunity to send some questions to Andrew Liptak about his new book Cosplay: A History so I asked him about his cosplaying days first.

1) What was your first cosplay and what are you working on currently?

My first “real” costume after Halloween costumes was an Imperial Stormtrooper. It was a costume that I’d coveted ever since seeing A New Hope in theaters in 1997, and I’d spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make one. In my final year of high school, my high school band played music from Star Wars (I played trumpet), and we were able to get a member of the 501st Legion to come and join us.

His costume blew me away, and that summer, he sold me an FX kit (the then-standard Stormtrooper costume that was out there), which I then assembled and wore for a little over a decade before I replaced it with a more accurate version. I still have it: it’s on a mannequin in my basement.

I’ve got a couple of random projects in the works now that are in pretty early stages. I have a Shoretrooper kit from 850 Armor Works that I’ve been piecing together. I’d originally bought it for my wife, but she sort of lost interest, so I’m planning on doing it up as a Captain variant of that particular costume. I also have a First Order stormtrooper kit that I want to put together to replace my existing FOTK (this new kit is plastic, so it’s much, much lighter than my current fiberglass costume.) And finally, I have a 212th Airborne Clone from Revenge of the Sith that is done: I just need to get it to fit me.

2) Has cosplay impacted your life personally?

Cosplay has impacted my life considerably: it provided a community at a time when I most needed it in the years after college. After graduating, I had disposable money and a car, so I was frequently out and about throughout New England trooping with my local 501st garrison. I’ve made some of my best friends in the world through the group, and it’s still a big part of my life.

But it’s also imparted an element of what I call “practical creativity”. I grew up in a household that had a workshop and I learned from my dad how to do things like cut wood, construct things out of it, change my own oil in my car, and generally do things on my own: working with my hands. Cosplay reinforced that: it’s helped me realize that with time, patience, and a little research, you can do a lot of things on your own: I’ve painted houses, redid my bathroom, fixed leaks/cracks/carpet/siding, etc at my house, and found creative solutions that I might not have arrived at if I hadn’t spent time building costumes. I know more about glue, paint, cutting materials, and whatnot, because of that experience.

3) What trends have you seen in cosplay from when you first started till today?

There are so many things that have changed! I think the first is just how popular science fiction and fantasy franchises have come since I started back in 2003: Star Wars has always been a mainstream thing, but the act of cosplaying has come a long way along with that growing popularity. Those films and genres have always been popular for good reasons: they’re exciting and interesting, and it’s good to see people reacting to it more and more, and with less shame than they might have before.

There are two other big trends that come to mind: the advances in how we use materials to build costumes has changed quite a bit. Materials like EVA foam and Worbla weren’t nearly as popular when I started, so the adoption of those materials makes it easier for cosplayers to start in on this hobby. Things like 3D printing and YouTube tutorials also really help.

The other is logistics, helped along by big online platforms like Amazon or Etsy: it’s easier than ever to buy a costume or the components. When I bought my first set of armor back in 2003, I had to know a guy who know a guy. Now, you can just click a couple of buttons.

4)  What's the process like in writing this book?

Long. The pitch for me to write it first came in 2016: the earlier version would have been entirely about the 501st Legion. But as I researched, I realized that I couldn’t just tell the story of the group: I had to expand it out beyond its borders to talk about the context of where it came from, which is what this ultimately became.

From there, it was a matter of coming up with an outline, which guided what I had to research: there was a lot of work in finding early examples of cosplay, looking through documents and records from older conventions and fan groups to try and get a clear story for how this hobby evolved over the decades.

The other component of that was interviews: I attended a whole bunch of cons in 2019 before the pandemic, and interviewed a whole bunch of folks about their experiences and history as cosplayers, and photographing them at cons. It was a lot of fun. It was also the tip of the iceberg: there are so many people in the cosplay field, with so many stories, and while I got a good cross-section of folks, there were so many rocks that I’d tip over to find a whole new thread of stories and people to talk to. But, the reality of the book is that there are deadlines and a finite number of pages, so you take what you can get and work with it.

5)  Has the book changed from the original conception to how it is today?

Very much so. As I noted a moment ago, I had originally set out to put together a book about the history of the 501st Legion. That didn’t end up happening for a variety of reasons, but I repackaged and repitched it as a history of cosplay as a whole. (The original title was Knights in Plastic Armor). I’m happy that I did that, because the larger story of cosplay is rich and fascinating.

But even while writing the book, we made some significant changes. I had originally outlined the book in three parts: When We Cosplay, Why We Cosplay, and House We Cosplay, which has been reorganized a bit for this final version (it’s much stronger now). There were also some interesting topics that I came across while researching: a picture of a reenactment in the 1800s led me down the path of living history and military reenactments, which I included. A chance encounter with a book about Jules Verne led me to track down details about a costume party he threw, and things like that: every new revelation brought with it new details to uncover, and every new interviewee brought me new fidelity to the history.

A good example here is a woman named Astrid Bear, who was heavily involved in the science fiction fan community. She was party to a lot of those early developments from an early age, and she outlined something really interesting to me in my interview with her: Star Trek had a huge impact on the cosplay community, because the costumes were relatively comfortable. When the show arrived, costuming at cons was largely restricted to designated times for specific events. When Star Trek arrived, it brought in new fans, but also new attitudes: fans started wearing the costumes in the halls (there was some friction from long-term con goers about this!) and that change in culture helped to bring about the con environment that we see these days.

6)  Were there topics cut from the book that you hope to revisit one day?

Not so much things that were cut: we made some cuts for length and clarity where I got a little too into the weeds, but there were some things that I’d hoped to have gotten to that I didn’t end up covering that much: I wanted to do a chapter about Furries, but just didn’t get to that. I also wanted to put together a chapter about the KKK and how they used masks to convey their horrible views, and the repercussions that came with that: masking laws and whatnot that still are on the books today. Author Arthur Conan Doyle liked to dress up as his character Professor Challenger, which I learned too late to include as another early example.

I’m hoping though, to actually write those chapters (and some others — I have a short list) up, and release them to my newsletter, Transfer Orbit as a series that I’m thinking I’ll call the “Lost Chapters”, which should be fun to do in the coming months.

7) Advice for first time cosplayers?

I think the best advice that I have is to make characters that you love: don’t pay attention to the cycle that we’ve found ourselves in where everyone rushes to make the most popular character of the moment (and by extension, don’t get sucked into the world of social media likes and churn). Make that obscure character that you’ve always wanted to do, take the time to make the costumes that you want to make, rather than rushing to meet a self-imposed deadline or to stay relevant.

Also, make sure you use proper ventilation when you’re using chemicals / sanding / painting, etc., wear safety equipment, and so forth. Safety first!

[tachyonpub]

Excitement builds for Jo Walton’s beautiful STARLINGS

With less than a month before publication, the Internet is abuzz about  Jo Walton’s STARLINGS.

At CHICAGO TRIBUNE, Gary K. Wolfe calls it a new short story collection worth reading.

Jo Walton has won just about every major award in the field for her humane and literate novels, but her short fiction has been comparatively sparse. She acknowledges that she's among those writers not especially comfortable with short forms, and so the stories and poems collected here (along with one play) show a fair amount of experimentation. One of the best stories concerns a TV producer and possible Cold War Soviet spy resurrected as a simulation by a future biographer who wants to interview him, while another describes a technology that enables patients suffering chronic pain to temporarily offload their pain to others willing to share the burden, in this case a young woman's parents. 

<snip>

That sense of the comic infuses what Walton calls extended jokes, some of which play with point of view. One story is actually narrated by Google, another by Snow White's mirror, and in another Jane Austen's letter to her sister Cassandra somehow gets delivered to the Cassandra of Greek myth. But for all her playfulness, Walton offers a beautiful, original fairy tale in three elegantly interwoven stories of a man made of moonlight and his magical effect on the denizens of a village inn.

Andrew Liptak on THE VERGE recommends the book.

Noted author and commentator Jo Walton collects some of her works, including a play, poetry, and short fiction, alongside extended commentary on each entry. Alongside stories of sentient search engines, generation ships, and fantastic quests, Walton musts on the nature of writing and storytelling. Kirkus Reviews calls the book an “intriguing peek inside a fertile mind.”

For BOOK RIOT, Rincey discusses the volume in Ready, Set, Hold: February 2018 (starting at 4:12).

For more info on STARLINGS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

[thefandomentals]

Gizmodo writer Andrew Liptak weaves an engaging story around the history of cosplay in his new book, Cosplay: A History. Check out Rachel's full review and get your copy on June 28.

[applesauce365]

Books for Learning Korean

Korean Picture Dictionary by Tina Cho

The Sounds of Korean (Cambridge)

Korean English Picture Dictionary (Fandom Media)

Elementary Korean (Tuttle)

Continuing Korean (Tuttle)

Advanced Korean (Tuttle)

Korean Made Simple 1 (GO! Billy Korean)

Korean Made Simple 2 (GO! Billy Korean)

Korean Made Simple 3 (GO! Billy Korean)

Korean Honorifics and Politeness in Second Language Learning by Lucien Brown

Let's Study Korean, Complete Practice Workbook by Bridge Education

500 Basic Korean Verbs by Kyubyong Park (Tuttle)

Basic Korean a grammar and workbook by Andrew Byon

Essential Korean Grammar by Laura Kingdon

Korean Grammar in Use, Beginner (DARAKWON)

Korean Grammar in Use, Intermediate (DARAKWON)

Korean Grammar in Use, Advanced (DARAKWON)

비타민 한국어 (DARAKWON)

Correct Your Korean (DARAKWON)

한국어 문장 쓰기의 모든 것 by Park Mi Gyung, Kim Ji Yeon, Kwon Je Eun

Easy to Learn Korean by Chad Meyer, Moonjung Kim

Essential Korean Phrasebook and Dictionary (Tuttle)

Korean Stories for Language Learners by Julie Damron

Dirty Korean by Haewon Geebi Baek

Korean Slang As Much As a Rat's Tail by Peter M Liptak and Siwoo Lee

여성결혼이민자와 함께하는 한국어 (국립국어원)

Essential Korean Reader by Jaemin Roh

Practical Korean (DARAKWON)

Every book by TTMIK

Korean Books to Read

꾹꾹다진 국어 1

한국어-영어 단편 소설 대역본 by Hye-min Choi

설화로 배우는 한국어

감성 일본자전거 여행툰

고양이 손님

나는 나로 살기로 했다 by 김수현

죽고 싶지만 떡볶이는 먹고 싶어 by 백세희

우리는 작은 가게에서 어른이 되는 중입니다 by 박진숙

Children's Korean Books

꾹꾹다진 국어 1

꾹꾹다진 국어 2

꾹꾹다진 국어 3

꾹꾹다진 국어 4

[heads-photo]

Welcome New Colleagues!

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week Dean of Faculty Kristen Fischer is guiding our new instructional colleagues through a wonderfully robust schedule of meetings and activities for their orientation to Holderness.  As is always the case, the orientation always begins with time at our outdoor chapel. It was a glorious August morning with few bugs and cool temperatures in this very Holderness setting.

After we introduced ourselves, Ms. Fischer, Ms. Pfenninger, Mr. Durnan, and I welcomed our new colleagues to Holderness and shared some reflections on why we have found Holderness so compelling for many years (over 100 between the four of us!).  Our newest employees are wonderfully engaging, and we know our colleagues and students will enjoy learning with and from this remarkable group.

Pictured above are Julianne De Sal (Theater), Andrew Gleason (Chemistry and Biology), Cayla Liptak (Assistant Athletic Director), Mb Duckett Ireland (Dean of Students, English), Andrea Sweet (Strength and Conditioning Coach), and Autumn Glenn (Physics, Science).  Missing are Elizabeth McClellan (English, Sustainability) and Abby VanderBrug (Chaplain, Theology).

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 13 Mar 2020 (The third Little Brother book, Where I write, stream global news, AT&T's CEO gets millions for his failures, Chelsea Manning freed, Katie Porter vs CDC, Trump's scientific nihilism, Covid-malware co-evolution, Siennese solidarity)

Today's links

Announcing the third Little Brother book, Attack Surface: And a new Little Brother/Homeland reissue, with an intro by Ed Snowden!

Where I Write: A column for the CBC that's really about how I write.

Stream 200+ global news channels: Each hand-picked, no registration required.

AT&T's CEO fired 23,000 workers and gave himself a 10% raise: Life on the easiest setting.

Chelsea Manning is free: But she's been fined $256K for refusing to testify to the Grand Jury.

Rep Katie Porter forces CDC boss to commit to free testing: Literally the most effective questioner in Congress.

Trump's unfitness in a plague: It's not because he's an ignoramus, it's because he's a nihilist.

Malware that hides behind a realtime Covid-19 map: Peter Watts' prophecy comes true.

Locked-down Siennese sing their city's hymn: A cause for hope in the dark.

This day in history: 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Announcing the third Little Brother book, Attack Surface (permalink)

Attack Surface is the third Little Brother book, coming out next October.

It's told from the point of view of Masha, the young woman who is Marcus Yallow's frenemy who works first for the DHS and then for a private spook outfit. It's a book about how good people talk themselves into doing bad things, and how they redeem themselves. It ranges from Iraq to the color revolutions of the former USSR, to Oakland and the Movement for Black Lives.

The story turns on cutting-edge surveillance and counter-surveillance: self-driving cars, over-the-air baseband radio malware, IMSI catchers, CV dazzle and adversarial examples, binary transparency and warrant canaries.

This week, I did a wide-ranging and deep interview with Andrew Liptak for Polygon about the book, the Little Brother series, the techlash, the tech workers' uprising (and #TechWontBuildIt), and the future of technological self-determination.

We also revealed the cover for Attack Surface, which was designed by the incomparable Will Staehle (who is eligible for a Best Artist Hugo – nominations close today!).

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

Not only that, but Staehle has also designed a cover for a new omnibus edition of Little Brother and Homeland that comes out this July, and as you can see from that cover, the book has an all-new introduction by none other than Ed Snowden!

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

(In 2017, Staehle also designed all-new covers for my adult backlist)

https://www.tor.com/2017/10/18/cory-doctorow-will-staehle-covers/

The Little Brother books are neither optimistic nor pessimistic about technology: instead, they are hopeful. Hope is the belief that you can materially improve your life if you take action. A belief in human agency and the power of self-determination.

The message of Little Brother is neither "Things will all be fine" nor "We are all doomed."

It's: "This will be so great…if we don't screw it up."

Where I Write (permalink)

I learned to be a writer while my life was in total chaos. Decades later, I have a beautiful office to work in, but I still do my best writing typing hurriedly on subway trains, in taxi-cabs, and airport lounges.

https://www.cbc.ca/arts/finding-comfort-in-the-chaos-how-cory-doctorow-learned-to-write-from-literally-anywhere-1.5489363

My CBC column on where I write is really a primer on how I write: what it takes to be able to write when you're sad, or anxious, or wracked with self-doubt.

Unquestionably the most important skill I've acquired as a writer.

"Even though there were days when the writing felt unbearably awful, and some when it felt like I was mainlining some kind of powdered genius and sweating it out through my fingertips, there was no relation between the way I felt about the words I was writing and their objective quality, assessed in the cold light of day at a safe distance from the day I wrote them. The biggest predictor of how I felt about my writing was how I felt about me. If I was stressed, underslept, insecure, sad, hungry or hungover, my writing felt terrible. If I was brimming over with joy, the writing felt brilliant."

Stream 200+ global news channels (permalink)

TV News is an Android app that pulls like Youtube streams from 200+ global news channels in 50 languages, each manually selected by the app's creator, Steven Clift, whose work I've previously admired.

http://tvnewsapp.com/

You can filter the feeds by country and language and watch them as floating windows that let you continue to use your device while you watch. No registration required, either.

They're shooting for 1000+ channels soon.

AT&T's CEO fired 23,000 workers and gave himself a 10% raise (permalink)

Randall Stephenson is CEO of AT&T. Ajit Pai killed Net Neutrality so that Stephenson could legally slow down the services we requested to extort bribes from us. Then, Trump gave his company a $20B tax cut.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nepxeg/atandt-preps-for-new-layoffs-despite-billions-in-tax-breaks-and-regulatory-favors

Stephenson used that money to raise exec pay, buy back his company's stock to juice its price and to pay off debts from earlier, disastrous mergers. He cut 23,000 jobs and slashed capital spending (America has the worst broadband of any rich country).

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/att-promised-7000-new-jobs-to-get-tax-break-it-cut-23000-jobs-instead/

After all that, Stephenson congratulated himself on a job well done by giving himself a 10% raise in 2019, bringing his total compensation up to 32 million dollars.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/att-ceo-pay-rose-to-32-million-in-2019-while-he-cut-20000-jobs/

I mean the guy earned it. He blew billions of dollars buying Warner and Directv, and then lost billions more on the failed aftermath. If that doesn't warrant a raise, what does?

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/att-loses-another-1-3-million-tv-customers-as-directv-freefall-continues/

Chelsea Manning is free (permalink)

A judge has ordered that Chelsea Manning be released from jail, a day after her latest suicide attempt. She was jailed last March for refusing to testify before a grand jury, held in solitary for two months, then jailed again a few days later, in May, She's been inside ever since.

The judge ordered her release because the Grand Jury had finished its work.

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.412520/gov.uscourts.vaed.412520.41.0.pdf

It's fantastic to that Manning got her freedom back, but she has been fined $256,000 for her noncompliance. I just donated to her fund:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-chelsea-pay-her-court-fines

(Image: Tim Travers Hawkins, CC BY-SA)

Rep Katie Porter forces CDC boss to commit to free testing (permalink)

I am a huge fan of Rep Katie Porter. Her outstanding questioning techniques and unwillingness to countenance bullshit from the people she questions are such a delight to watch.

Here she is demolishing billionaire finance criminal Jamie Dimon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WLuuCM6Ej0

Oh, Ben Carson, you never stood a chance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVWy3q2kmNM

Steve Mnuchin always looks like a colossal asshole, but rarely this comprehensively:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78zpa0hQ1aw

I almost feel sorry for this Trumpkin from the Consumer Finance Protection Board as she faces Porter's withering fire.

Almost.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBaCc5VUHS8

Porter – an Elizabeth Warren protege – doesn't do this to grandstand. Like AOC, she uses her spectacular skills to elicit admissions and get them on the record, and to hold Congressional witnesses to account.

Today, Porter attained a new peak in a short, illustrious career. That's because today was the day she questioned CDC assistant secretary for preparedness and response Robert Kadlec, asking him to clarify Trump's televised lie last night that insurers would pay for Covid-19 testing.

https://twitter.com/RepKatiePorter/status/1238147835859779584

Porter doggedly held Kadlec to account, forcing him to acknowledge that the cost of a Covid-19 test – $1,331 – was so high that many would forego it, and then to admit that these Americans could go on to transmit the disease to others, making it a matter of public concern.

Then she forced CDC Director Robert Redfield to admit – as she had informed him in writing the week before – that the CDC had the authority to simply pay those fees, universally, for any American seeking testing, under 42 CFR 71.30:

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2019-title42-vol1/xml/CFR-2019-title42-vol1-part71.xml#seqnum71.30

Having laid this factual record, Porter insisted that Redfield commit to using that authority. Not to consider it, study it, or consult on it. To use it to help save the country. Whenever Redfield waffled, she reclaimed her time and forced him back on point.

KP: Dr. Redfield, will you commit to the CDC, right now, using that existing authority to pay for diagnostic testing, free to every American, regardless of insurance?

RR: Well, I can say that we're going to do everything to make sure everybody can get the care they need –"

KP: Nope, not good enough. Yes or no?

RR: What I'm going to say is, I'm going to review it in detail with CDC and the department —

KP: No, reclaiming my time [repeats the question]

RR: What I was trying to say is that CDC is working with HHS now to see how we operationalize that

KP: Dr. Redfield, I hope that that answer weighs heavily on you, because it is going to weigh very heavily on me and on every American family

RR: Our intent is to make sure that every American family gets the care and treatment they need at this time in this major epidemic and I am currently working with HHS to see how to best operationalize it.

KP: Excellent! Everybody in America hear that — you are eligible to go get tested for coronavirus and have that covered, regardless of insurance

[Curtain]

Trump's unfitness in a plague (permalink)

In this editorial, Science editor-in-chief H Holden Thorp makes a compelling case that Trump is not capable of leading the American response to Covid-19.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6483/1169

Trump has spent years denigrating and ignoring science before taking office, and it's only gotten worse, since.

As Thorp writes, "You can't insult science when you don't like it and then suddenly insist on something that science can't give on demand."

His policy track-record is even worse: "deep cuts to science, including cuts to funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the NIH…nearly 4 years of harming and ignoring science."

This reminds me of an argument I often have with digital rights activists who attribute bad technology policy to the inability of clueless lawmakers to understand the technical nuance. I think that's wrong. The fact that we're not all dead of cholera, even though there are no microbiologists in Congress proves that you don't need to be a domain expert to make good policy.

Good policy comes from truth-seeking exercises in which experts with different views present their best evidence to neutral adjudicators who make determinations in public, showing their work in explicit, written, public reasoning. These processes are made legitimate – and hence robust and reliable – by procedural rules. The adjudicators – regulators, staffers, etc – are not allowed to have conflicts of interest. Their conclusions are subject to the rule of law, with mandatory transparency and a process for appeal.

It has to be this way: there's no way that – say – a president could be an expert on all the different issues that might arise during their tenure.

This, then, is the problem with inequality and market concentration: it merges the referees with the players. When an industry only has a handful of players, they all end up with common lobbying positions – a common position on what is truth. That's because the C-suites of these five companies are filled with people who've worked at two, three or four of the competitors, and are married to others who've worked at the remainder. They're godparents to one anothers' kids, executors of each others' wills.

There's no way for there NOT to be collusion in these circumstances.

And when an industry is that concentrated, the only people who understand it well enough are those same execs, so inevitably the regulators are drawn from the industry.

That's why Obama's "good" FCC Chair, Tom Wheeler, was a former Comcast lobbyist, and why Ajit Pai, Trump's "bad" FCC chair, is a former Verizon lawyer. Apart from Susan Crawford, there's not really anyone who's not from the top ranks of Big Telco qualified to regulate them.

So many of us saw the photo of Trump meeting with all the tech leaders and were dismayed that they were throwing their lot in with him.

But we should also be aghast that all the leaders of the industry fit around one modest board-room table.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/donald-trump-meets-with-tech-leaders/

The problem with Trump's Covid-19 response is that he does not believe in a legitimate process with neutral referees. The refereeship, in trumpland, is an open-field auction, a transactional process that works best when it enriches Trump and his party.

The problem of Trump taking charge of the epidemiological crisis of Covid-19 isn't that he doesn't understand science: it's that he doesn't believe in evidence-based policy.

He is part of the cult of "Public Choice Theory," the belief that there is no one who can serve as referee without eventually colluding with the players for their mutual enrichment, a cynical, nihilistic philosophy that holds that there's no point in seeking to govern well. These people project their own moral vacuum onto all of humanity, a kind of cartoon Homo Economicus who is incapable of anything except maximizing personal utility.

For these people, the existence of bridges that don't fall down and water that doesn't give you cholera are lucky accidents, not results of sound policy and careful truth-seeking. They reason that since they would take bribes to poison the water of Flint, so would everyone.

Trump isn't just a non-expert, he's an ignoranamus, but that's not the problem. The problem is that he is a nihilist, someone who doesn't believe that truth-seeking is even possible.

Malware that hides behind a realtime Covid-19 map (permalink)

Hackers have developed a malware-as-a-service that packages up realtime Covid-19 maps with malware droppers that infect people who load them.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/03/live-coronavirus-map-used-to-spread-malware/

This reminds me intensely of Peter Watts's 2002 novel Maelstrom, in which Watts uses his background as an evolutionary biologist to posit an eerily plausible and devilishly clever way that a digital and a human virus could co-evolve.

https://rifters.com/real/MAELSTROM.htm

This has stuck with me! In May 2018, I wrote about it in Locus Magazine:

http://locusmag.com/2018/05/cory-doctorow-the-engagement-maximization-presidency/

Maelstrom is concerned with a pandemic that is started by its protago­nist, Lenie Clark, who returns from a deep ocean rift bearing an ancient, devastating pathogen that burns its way through the human race, felling people by the millions.

As Clark walks across the world on a mission of her own, her presence in a message or news story becomes a signal of the utmost urgency. The filters are firewalls that give priority to some packets and suppress others as potentially malicious are programmed to give highest priority to any news that might pertain to Lenie Clark, as the authorities try to stop her from bringing death wherever she goes.

Here's where Watt's evolutionary bi­ology shines: he posits a piece of self-modifying malicious software – something that really exists in the world today – that automatically generates variations on its tactics to find computers to run on and reproduce itself. The more computers it colonizes, the more strategies it can try and the more computational power it can devote to analyzing these experiments and directing its randomwalk through the space of all possible messages to find the strategies that penetrate more firewalls and give it more computational power to devote to its task.

Through the kind of blind evolution that produces predator-fooling false eyes on the tails of tropical fish, the virus begins to pretend that it is Lenie Clark, sending messages of increasing convincingness as it learns to impersonate patient zero. The better it gets at this, the more welcoming it finds the firewalls and the more computers it infects.

At the same time, the actual pathogen that Lenie Clark brought up from the deeps is finding more and more hospitable hosts to reproduce in: thanks to the computer virus, which is directing public health authorities to take countermeasures in all the wrong places. The more effective the computer virus is at neutralizing public health authorities, the more the biological virus spreads. The more the biological virus spreads, the more anxious the public health authorities become for news of its progress, and the more computers there are trying to suck in any intelligence that seems to emanate from Lenie Clark, supercharging the computer virus.

Together, this computer virus and biological virus co-evolve, symbiotes who cooperate without ever intending to, like the predator that kills the prey that feeds the scavenging pathogen that weakens other prey to make it easier for predators to catch them.

Locked-down Siennese sing their city's hymn (permalink)

In times of crisis, we typically pull together, but elite panic's pervasive mythology holds that these moments are when the poors reveal their inner beast and attack their social betters. That libel on humanity is disproved regularly by our everyday experience. As common as these incidents of solidarity are, they still warrant our notice.

The Song of the Verbena is the hymn of the Italian city of Sienna, currently on lockdown.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canto_della_Verbena

This video of Siennese people singing their hymn from the windows of their houses, into their empty street, is one of the most beautiful, hopeful things I've seen this week.

Truly, it is a tonic.

https://twitter.com/valemercurii/status/1238234518508777473

This day in history (permalink)

#5yrsago NYPD caught wikiwashing Wikipedia entries on police brutality https://web.archive.org/web/20150313150951/http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2015/03/8563947/edits-wikipedia-pages-bell-garner-diallo-traced-1-police-plaza

#1yrago Gimlet staff announce unionization plan following Spotify acquisition https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18263957/gimlet-media-union-spotify-recognition-podcasts

#1yrago With days to go until the #CopyrightDirective vote, #Article13's father admits it requires filters and says he's OK with killing Youtube https://www.golem.de/news/uploadfilter-voss-stellt-existenz-von-youtube-infrage-1903-139992.html

#1yrago Spotify's antitrust complaint against Apple is a neat parable about Big Tech's monopoly https://www.wired.com/story/spotify-apple-complaint-warren-antitrust-issue/

#1yrago A critical flaw in Switzerland's e-voting system is a microcosm of everything wrong with e-voting, security practice, and auditing firms https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmakk3/researchers-find-critical-backdoor-in-swiss-online-voting-system

#1yrago McMansion Hell tours the homes of the "meritocratic" one-percenters who allegedly bought their thickwitted kids' way into top universities in the college admissions scandal https://mcmansionhell.com/post/183417051691/in-honor-of-the-college-admissions-scandal

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Empty Wheel (https://www.emptywheel.net/), CNN (https://cnn.com), Memex 1.1 (https://memex.naughtons.org/), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Currently writing: I've just finished rewrites on a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I've also just completed "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel next.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330_-_A_Lever_Without_a_Fulcrum_Is_Just_a_Stick.mp3

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

[jkottke]

Second trailer for The Mandalorian

The "streaming wars" are starting in earnest with the launch of Disney Plus and I'm wondering how things will turn out, who'll lose out, who'll get favour swinging on their side. I can't help but be disappointed that Disney owns so much of what I loved as a kid and teen (and still), and I don't intend to have multiple subscriptions so there's a good chance I won't be seeing The Mandalorian for a while but... damn that looks fun! And that's even before having Pedro Pascal smirk his way out of things à la Han Solo.

Andrew Liptak for Tor.com has some additional insights and links to visuals and more info about the series.

There's other staples from the Star Wars universe present: carbon freezing (which seems to become a regular practice since Darth Vader froze Han Solo), speeder chases, giant creatures, and bars full of aliens. What's also neat to see is that the Mandalorian seems to have two sets of armor: one that looks as though it's cobbled from bits of armor from other places, and a nice, shiny set.