#oh upton sinclair we’re really in it still

[chamerionwrites]

Nearly a dozen children were working shifts cleaning meat processing equipment used at an Iowa pork plant’s so-called kill floor over a four-year period, the US Department of Labor announced.

Eleven children were using corrosive chemicals to clean as well as perilous “head splitters, jaw pullers, bandsaws, neck clippers and other equipment” at a Seaboard Triumph Foods pork processing plant in Sioux City, according to officials. This is the second time federal investigators have found children working at that particular Sioux City meat processing plant.

The most recent settlement comes with Qvest LLC, an Oklahoma-based cleaning company hired by Seaboard from 2019 to 2023. The company was fined $171,919 for violating federal law.

In September 2023, Seaboard hired a new cleaning contractor: Fayette Janitorial Services, headquartered in Tennessee. Investigators found Fayette hired 24 children to work overnight shifts – some as young as 13 and carrying glittery school backpacks – including some of the same minors who were employed by Qvest, the previous cleaning company. In May, Fayette was fined $649,304.

“These findings illustrate Seaboard Triumph Foods’ history of children working illegally in their Sioux City facility since at least September 2019,” said wage and hour midwest regional administrator Michael Lazzeri. “Despite changing sanitation contractors, children continued to work in dangerous occupations at this facility.”

The federal investigation comes after a 2023 New York Times report on migrant child exploitation, in which the paper documented children working dangerous jobs and overnight hours.

Children who arrive at the US’s southern border alone often stay in the country for years before their cases are adjudicated. While they wait, they live with sponsors. As of 2023, only one-third of migrant children went to live with their parents, a sea change from a decade ago. That can leave children vulnerable to exploitation or trafficking.

[sopheadraws]

💌 send this to the twelve nicest people you know or who seem to have a good heart and if you get five back you must be pretty awesome >:p💌 /np

hey! just wanted to pop into your inbox and let you know that i think you’re a really neat person and i’m glad we’re mutuals. how has your week been? have you read anything interesting lately? what’s a song you’re really into right now?

i hope you have a lovely day!

(Firstly, I'm not going to send this around because I know I'll overthink the definition of nice and worry about leaving people out and convince myself I'm unlovable if I don't get many back etc. etc. etc.)

Hey, Max! I'm glad to be your mutual too! As for your questions, I made a post about my current situation this morning that sums up my week (and the surrounding weeks) pretty well:

If anyone's missed me, I want to share that I'm doing the best I have in many years! I'm in a new environment that's specially catered to my needs, and I feel like I'm a part of human society, something I last felt at 12. However, I have a very structured day, and being on Tumblr is not my priority while I relearn peace and joy.

I'm still trying to get a hang of including my hobbies into my new schedule - reaching for my phone during my limited free time is the main issue - but I'm slowing trekking through The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle by Vladimir Nabokov. Reading the later requires a dictionary and a prayer. Oh! And, for classes, I'm reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, which are both fantastic. It's my dark classics era.

And "LA Hallucinations" by Carly Rae Jepsen is currently on repeat for me :)

[writethehousedown]

umbrella. (Jackie/Jan) -- meggie

A/N: Hello hi. This is from the teachers!AU universe, but it focuses on two of the students instead. (A concept.) Y’all know I’m in love with Jan by now, so of course, I was going to include her. This is also a response to a prompt I got a couple of weeks ago from an Anon (Jackie/Jan, “let me take you home”).

Thank you, Mia, for looking over this, and THANK YOU, MAC, for my Cameo from Jan!!! It was exactly what I needed for inspiration for life. Love you both big big big.

Let me know what you think! I’m @janssports

Jan is walking home from school in the rain when it finally happens.

Her umbrella has been on its last legs for some time now, the metal skeleton underbelly warped just enough to make it a little bit floppy on the backside, but Jan doesn’t care, because it’s her favorite umbrella and it was the last gift she got from her grandmother before she passed five years ago and she’s been hesitant to replace it because that would feel like replacing Nanny and Jan isn’t quite ready to do that yet.

Anyway.

But she’s walking home from school, purple polka dotted umbrella held aloft, every once in a while tilting her head up to the sky to let the drops of moisture fall on her skin when there’s a gust of wind that catches her umbrella in just the wrong way and the whole thing collapses on her head.

“Well, fuck,” she mutters, the curse word heavy and unfamiliar in her mouth. It’s pouring now, and she’s been standing there, contemplating the demise of her poor umbrella for a mere 20 seconds and she’s already soaked. And she still has quite a way to go until she gets home.

She could have ridden the bus, like she usually does on rainy days, but it had just been sprinkling when school let out, and sometimes she likes to walk in the light rain; it clears her head, letting her recenter after her day at school. Especially with her umbrella from Nanny in her hands. It’s almost like they’re having a conversation. Almost like she can hear the woman’s voice in her head giving her advice, telling her what she needs to know.

“Guess that’s over now.” Jan twists the umbrella in her hand, looking for any redemptive qualities although she knows that it’s too far gone to be saved. She has other umbrellas: her parents have bought her umbrellas for the last two Christmases, ever since her cousin Rose stepped on the umbrella and caused the first flaw. But this one feels special, sentimental. She can’t just give up on it.

She trudges on, the rain cold as it trickles down her back in rivulets, and Jan shudders a little. The light cardigan she’d wrapped herself in before leaving the house this morning is doing very little to keep her warm now. It doesn’t wick the water away from her skin at all; it feels something like wearing a wet towel draped over her shoulders.

She’s miserable, on the verge of tears, and positive that all the homework in her bag is going to be ruined when a silver car slows on the road beside her.

Jan puts her head down and keeps walking. This isn’t the first time a creepy guy has stopped and asked to give her a ride, and while she may look naive and dumb, she listens to far too many true crime podcasts to fall for that helpful nice guy nonsense.

“Hey, Jan!” The voice is female and almost drowned out by the driving rain, but she ignores it just the same. So what if they know her name?

“You’re Jan, right?” The voice calls to her again, and this time (mostly out of curiosity), Jan turns her head to look.

“Hey!” Jackie Cox waves her over upon making eye contact. “Oh my god, girl, get in the car. It’s pouring!”

Jan knows Jackie. Well. She doesn’t know her, but she knows of her. (She’s always admired her a little.) Plus Brianna is friends with Jackie (as vice president, Jackie is heir apparent to Brianna’s student body presidency) and Jan and Brianna are close. So she guesses that makes her friends by proxy with Jackie, which is more than reason enough for Jan to consider accepting a ride.

She must be hesitating for far too long because Jackie waves to her again. “Come on. Let me take you home?”

The facts were, as Jan saw them, fairly straight forward: Jackie was probably not a serial killer. If she was, then she managed to organize her day in a way that Jan envied, because not only was Jackie involved in student council, but she also started on the girls’ lacrosse team, served as secretary of the history club, and had the highest grade point average in the junior class.

So yes. Jan knew Jackie, admired her even, and if Brianna trusted her, it was probably okay for Jan to do the same.

So she quirks her lips to the side, shakes out her stringy, sopping hair, and jogs to the side of the car.

Once she’s settled, Jan shoves her poor broken umbrella in the side pocket of her backpack and studies the interior of the car. It’s pristine, as she would have guessed. Jackie is not a messy kind of person; she’s meticulous and careful and perfect. It’s another reason Jan has always been a little bit fascinated with her. Jackie is, truly, everything Jan wishes she was.

“Oh, here.” Jackie reaches over to the center console and twists knobs until the heat blasts on Jan’s feet. “God, you must be freezing. What are you doing walking in this mess?”

“My umbrella broke,” Jan offers feebly. “And I kind of didn’t know how to react. I…” She sighs. “It’s dumb, and it’s just an umbrella, but it means a lot.”

Jackie nods, but doesn’t look convinced. “Just tell me where I’m going, okay?”

“Straight until Sinclair,” Jan says, tucking her hands under her thighs. “Your car’s going to be trashed. I’m so sorry.”

Jackie brushes her off with a wave of her hand. “No biggie. Besides, I’d rather have a messy car than have you get pneumonia out there. What are you doing walking in all this rain?”

Jan shrugs. “I like walking. Gives me time to think. Plus it’s good exercise. Good for the lung capacity.” She hates herself in this instant. Wishes she could take back everything she’s said since Jackie picked her up.

“Oh yeah!” Jackie nods. “You’re really into show choir, aren’t you? Like the main soloist or whatever.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Jan’s cheeks burn hot and she ducks her head. “I mean, we don’t really have a ‘main soloist,’ but Ms. Act has been really nice to give me some solos this year.”

“Most solos from what I’ve heard,” Jackie tacks on quickly. “But anyway.” 

“Yeah.” 

Jan wonders for a brief moment how exactly Jackie knows that she’s been given more than one solo this year. Logically, she just assumes that Brianna has mentioned it. But the girl never gives Jan information about Jackie or Kameron or really any of her other friends that Jan doesn’t know very well. 

“So where am I going now?”

Lost in her thoughts, Jan has completely missed the fact that they’ve turned onto Sinclair, so she gestures wildly with her right hand. “Just straight. I live off Upton, so it’s a few more blocks.”

Jackie snickers. “Upton and Sinclair.”

“Yeah, I know.” She rolls her eyes. “I think that’s half the reason my dad bought the house in the first place. He calls the house The Jungle, which is just… It’s so stupid.” Why is she still talking?

“No!” Jackie insists. “I think it’s cute.”

Silence descends on them once more, and Jan watches house after house pass by, still wondering how exactly Jan knows things about her.

You’ll never find out until you just ask, she practically hears her nanny’s voice in her head.

So despite her instincts to just shut the hell up, Jan clears her throat. “You, umm. You pay attention to the show choir? I thought most people just made fun of us.”

Jackie’s mouth falls open. “Oh my god, why? That’s awful.”

Jan shrugs. “I mean, it’s not like we’re that good.”

“Now that Ms. Act’s taken over, you guys are pretty good,” the other girl says. “And since you started getting the solos.”

Jan blushes again, tells herself it’s just the blast of the car’s heater, and not the way that Jackie keeps looking over at her and smiling that tiny, genuine smile that kind of makes Jan burn hot all over.

It’s definitely the heater.

She shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “I’m the fourth house on the left,” she mutters quietly, pointing at the towering brick structure as the car pulls closer.

Jackie drives around the cul-de-sac and parks just in front of Jan’s house. “Here you go,” she says brightly. “Still damp, but… Maybe not as wet as you would have been.”

Jan blushes harder and reaches for the door handle. “Thank you,” she says sincerely. “Seriously. I can’t imagine what that walk would have been like if you hadn’t come along.”

“Wet,” Jackie deadpans, then smiles that radiant, lovely grin over at her. 

Jan giggles. “You’re right. Well. Thanks again.” She gathers her backpack, tugs on the handle, and has just stepped onto the sidewalk after closing the door when she hears the power window roll down.

“I’ll see you around school, yeah?” Jackie asks, her voice full of optimism and (Jan could totally be misreading this) hope. (She thinks it’s hope. It really sounds like hope. She really hopes it’s hope.)

“I’d love that,” Jan says and smiles.

She stands on the stoop and watches the tail lights of the car until they disappear from view.

***

Jackie’s waiting for Jan at her locker between second and third period the next morning, a pale purple gift bag dangling from her hand.

“Hey!” She waves as she steps aside, allowing Jan access to her locker. “Sorry, god, this is really creepy. It really wasn’t this creepy when I thought it out in my head.”

Jan shakes her head. “It’s not creepy. I guess Brianna told you where my locker was?”

“Correct,” Jan says. “I just wanted to give you this.” She holds out the bag to Jan and bounces a little.

Jan pulls the bag open and glances inside. It’s her broken umbrella. But it looks slightly… Less broken.

“Did you fix it?” Jan asks incredulously. “I thought it was totally wrecked.”

Jackie nods. “Well, it was a challenge. But my mom helped me. She’s pretty handy. I don’t know. I found it in my car, noticed it was broken and… It seemed like it was really important to you.”

“It is.” Jan lunges forward and captures Jackie in a tight hug. “Thank you.”

“No biggie.” Jackie shrugs. “Really. It was a pleasure.”

Jan could be imagining it, but she could swear that Jackie blushes a little as she smiles at her. 

[passionate-hedgehog]

Questions Tag!

Tagged by @isearchedtheyooniverse I’ve never been given so much attention on this site before! 2 in one day! (Week, month, year, decade...)💜💜💜💕

Rules: Answer the questions and tag 10 people

How tall are you?

5 ft 8 inches or 173 centimeters.

What color and style is your hair?

It’s a chestnut brown, in the bright sun it’s got a golden and reddish shine (but that could also just be my white ass skin burning who can know). It reaches my chest.

What color are your eyes?

All of ‘em. They’re a blue green but have brown on the outmost part of my iris (is that what the colored part of your eye is called? 7th grade me would be so hella ashamed).

Do you wear glasses?

One day I’ll have contacts and won’t stab myself with my eyeliner. But until then 🤷🏻‍♀️ ol four eyes is here to stay 🤓

Do you wear braces?

LORD AND KING I WISH I HAD THAT KIND OF INSURANCE.

What’s your fashion sense?

My body lives in eternal summer. I mean, I live in Michigan so I have all 10 seasons, but my legs don’t know it. I wear a lot of shorts and crops. Scrubs for work and t shirts for my group nights. But I make sure to have days during the week in which I wear some cute ass shit. All of my shoes consist of Brooks Launch. Until I get some black church flats.

Full name?

Shelby Lynn. Y’all ain’t needing the rest.

When we’re you born?

Along time ago, I’m a galaxy far away...

Jk. I’m a 91 liner. And my birthstone is sapphire.

Where are you from and where do you live?

These q’s be gettin hella sus. Michigan.

What school did you go to?

Public school for grade and private for college.

What kind of student were you?

L O L I never finished college if that answers it for you.

Do you like school?

I loved it. I constantly have dreams of my being back in high school. I lived for junior year. I ran that shit when I was a senior.

Fav subject?

I wasn’t particularly great at too many subjects. There were certain parts of the lessons that I liked. I loved genetics. I did really enjoy chemistry. And anything that deals with world culture and languages. I LIVE FOR THAT SHIT.

Fav shows?

I mostly watch tv when I’m at work and I generally don’t get a say in what the residents watch. We watch a lot of HGTV and That 70’s Show. I do love Friends. I like to watch Guy’s Grocery Games. I’m hoping that Age of Youth gets a 3rd season. The only show I’ve ever watched start to finish while still on air is Teen Wolf. Ope. And Friends.

Fav books?

The last whole series I read was twilight in high school. But I’ve been reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and it’s a good read. Hard to face, but a good read.

Fav pastime?

Uh...is that basically the same thing as a hobby? I don’t know if I have any of those...I like to stay busy...does that count? I play Sims Freeplay...I like tabletop games like Ticket to Ride. I LOVE TTR. I like to go blackout shopping. That’s where you go shrilling but can’t remember what you’ve purchased until you go through the bags once you get home. I do that at least once every other week. It’s not healthy, I’m sore but ayyyye.

Do you have any regrets?

I mean, I’m sure I do. I can’t think of any right now. OH WAIT-I regret not going to that Big Time Rush concert or that Parachute concert. But I think that’s it.

Would you ever like to be married?

I could take it or leave it, honestly. As long as o have someone- a really good friend either platonically or romantically- it doesn’t really matter.

Would you ever like to have children?

I’m unsure right now, I can’t say for the future. I’m good without them as of at this current moment. But I’ve also never been with someone I wanted to have kids with. I’ve also never BEEN WITH 🤓 someone. So.

If so, how many?

In high school I wanted to grow old with 9. 4 birthed and 5 adopted. Honestly, I’d love to foster. So I lied in the previous question. With the whole planned parenthood debate happening, I’d love to give children that don’t have a happy family one that they could be proud of. Even if it would just be me.

Do you like shopping?

I think we’ve already established that I have a problem LOL

What countries have you visited?

I went to Thailand when I was...23? It was a mission trip. I worked with many kids that spoke various languages and it was a wonderful time. It was August, so it wasn’t the coolest of temps but it was monsoon season. I just remember running through a Main Street in Ao Nang, Krabi, BAREFOOT as it was down pouring. It was an adventure and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Scariest nightmare you’ve ever had?

I don’t think I’ve ever had a nightmare but I’ve woken up crying to a dream once. My best friend was born in Africa and live there for the first 8 years of her life. When we were in college, she felt like she was being called back and so that’s where she’s been off an on (she lives in Mozambique now). Anyway, when she went over to learn the language and meet the people, it would be for 2 years at a time, only coming back at Christmas. I had dreamt, the first time she left, that she had come back for a visit. I had woken up to realize it wasn’t real and I cried so hard for half an hour and the rest of my day was off. I still tear up at it a little when I think about it.

Any enemies?

My damn eyesight? My eyes try their best, tho. I don’t think I really have any. I pull myself from situations where trouble starts to brew and I disconnect from everything relevant to it.

Do you have a significant other?

Does my cat count?

Do you get along with your family?

I live with my parents and pay for their WiFi so yes lol. And my brother and I have been getting along SO MUCH BETTER now that we’re both grown ass adults. I mean, we still don’t act like it but.

Do you believe in miracles?

I do! I’m in the faith, so it’s a heavy thing to believe in for me.

How are you now?

Trying to patiently wait for my work wife to bring me Taco Bell.

I decided ( because I just tagged 9 people in the other tag list) to tag the next 9 blogs in my activity. @hoe9for9kpop @peachyytaetae95 @siriusmoonlight @otomae-game-lover @yxxngxdxrks @rosazamoravidal @dumbstudclub @ffviigirl @miiiinyoooongi

[valuentumbrian]

The Invisible Hand Will Sink These Markets

Image: Nan Fry

By Brian Nelson, CFA

Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” is often thought to be a blessing by the capitalists of the world. The free-market economy will find the right answer, they may say. Self-interest and greed will inevitably push humankind to new horizons and achieve levels of greatness no person before thought possible. What fools we are to believe.

Irrational behavior around shares of GameStop (GME) continued Friday, February 26, with the company trading in a huge range of $86.00-$142.90 on the session. We re-released our 16-page report on the stock and peg a fair value estimate of just $4 per share, with the high end of the fair value estimate range of $7. A Bank of America analyst reiterated a $10 price target. GameStop shares closed at ~$102.

There’s clearly no reasonable basis for owning GameStop’s stock at current price levels, in our view, and there certainly was no reasonable basis when the stock was trading as high as $483 per share earlier this year. An equity capital raise by management would result in a fair value estimate increase (perhaps a material one depending on how many new shares the market can stomach), but the takeaway is the same:

These markets are nuts. The iceberg is coming, and we’re still going full steam ahead.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) noted February 26 that “as part of its continuing effort to respond to potential attempts to exploit investors during the recent market volatility,” it had suspended trading in 15 more stocks—all “because of questionable trading and social media activity.” We applaud the SEC for its swift action, though much more is needed, and it may be too little too late.

Unlike the dot-com bubble roughly two decades ago, the fervor of the price-agnostic trading frenzy of 2021 has an aura of permanence to it. This “craziness” is here to stay. Where during the dot-com bubble, sell-side analysts were in a race to set the highest price target, regardless of their underlying opinion of the firm, there was a solution to the problem. Get rid of the bad apples. But today, we have a fraction of the sell-side analysts we used to; they’ve been out of a job for some time now.

Fired – in favor of underperforming statistical quant work or the fantasies of artificial intelligence and machine learning. More than 60% of trading in the marketplace is now driven by indexing, algorithms and quant traders chasing momentum or following trends--or moving stocks higher or lower based on simple P/B or P/E ratios. The quants know statistics, but of finance they know little.

Moreover, there are trillions in indexed products, and their overseers believe we still operate in an environment like that of even a few decades ago—when sell-side analysts were pulling seven-figure salaries because the invisible hand rewarded price discovery. We are not operating in such an environment. The price setters have almost all left. Shown the door, even.

The best finance schools aren’t teaching how to responsibly evaluate the fundamentals of a company and haven’t been doing so for decades. Heck, they think they’ve “solved the market” with backtests and “made up” factors. They are teaching coding or indoctrinating students to believe that any share price is as good as the next (GameStop at $450, for example – what a deal! – yes, sarcasm), or that the market simply knows best. Maybe years ago, the market was once a decent price-setting mechanism, but today, it is most certainly not.

GameStop is just one of at least a few dozen rather large stocks whose share prices make no sense--and I’m not talking about Tesla (TSLA). There's actually some reasonable basis to Tesla’s valuation. It’s not just the two dozen or so companies that the SEC suspended trading today either. This nonsense is everywhere. Do we really believe that a $7 trillion asset manager like Vanguard, or the trillions in indexed products today that pay little attention to intrinsic value are not also distorting market prices?

Pretty straightforward, no? But some of the brightest minds on the Street today may say in disbelief: “Full Steam Ahead!” Of course, some of them are just stubborn. They’ve been singing the same tune for decades, finding different ways to say the same thing over and over again, and they can’t change it now. They’d be wrong, and their egos couldn’t take it for one second. The invisible hand is yet still working overtime.

Elon Musk tweets out a Clubhouse app and a completely different company with the ticker CMGR soars. The same situation happened to another company called Signal Advance (SIGL) over another one of Musk’s tweets. Yet another instance like this but without a Musk tweet occurred with confusion of ZOOM last year. There’s no fix to this, and these are just the distortions we see clear as day.

You can’t convince a die-hard index aficionado that’s hauling in $20 million a year on a book of business that he’s built based on the faulty efficient market hypothesis and underperforming modern portfolio theory to all of sudden care about the greater good of society. What did Upton Sinclair say: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Nobody cares that these markets are going straight to the bottom of the ocean like the Titanic, no more than uninformed nations can heed the warning of climate change before it's too late. We’re headed for disaster one way or another. The incentives have been in place for a long time. “Sell index funds. Look – random factors can explain these returns.” Most of what’s coming out of finance today is nonsense, padding the wrong pockets.

How many people celebrate when they get the fair value of a company, correct? Where’s that on the news? Pay a man twice as much to not do individual due diligence on stocks, and just mechanically rebalance assets every six months or so and not give a damn about the health of the marketplace, what do you expect? You don’t think Jack Bogle is hailed as a hero by advisors for saving individual investors money, do you? Jack hasn’t saved the prudent stock picker a plug nickel.

Adam Smith’s invisible hand of active management used to result in the optimization of price discovery, where participants would do their very best work to buy and sell to “uncover” the best market price, creating a positive externality for all investors--even those quants and indexers that are now polluting the system. Today’s invisible hand is leading us off a cliff. Incentives are in place to continue to discourage price discovery, and to no surprise, we’re seeing just a glimpse of it.

Iceberg ahead, and very few see it. Sure, there are perma-bears that have been bearish for the past two decades that are right twice a day like a clock, but we’ve been bullish. The ship is damaged, the markets are going to sink, and it’s not the “little guy’s” fault. The distortions in the financial markets are clear when viewed through the lens of a $6 billion company GameStop, but they are no less evident than implicit distortions caused by a bunch of index funds piling into the same name at once.

We didn’t hand out Nobel prizes just for Long-Term Capital Management to blow up. We didn’t hand out Nobel prizes for EMH just to witness what’s happening in the markets with stocks like GameStop doing what they’re doing. We didn’t hand out Nobel prizes to provide excuses for why modern portfolio theory in the form of the 60/40 stock/bond portfolio has failed investors for the past 30 years relative to a monkey throwing darts at the WSJ pages.

Why are we handing out Nobel prizes -- and why doesn't Warren Buffett have one? You get the type of academic work you incentivize, and incentives are out of whack. I’ve said jokingly that finance for the past 60 years can easily be summed up by two developments: 1) Oh, you can’t do stock analysis? Well, here’s indexing. 2) Oh, you can’t beat the S&P 500? Well, here’s some quant jargon.

Indexing and quant jargon are doing far more damage than a few traders on social media. Believe you me. These markets are not well, and the invisible hand is guiding through a fog of misinformation to disaster. Markets have bounced right off the high end of our fair value estimate range on the S&P 500, and we’ve raised cash. The violins are playing on the Titanic. The “unsinkable” ship we call the price discovery mechanism of the markets can sink. Let us not be fools to think otherwise.

There will be an epilogue to Value Trap, and you and I both know that I don't want to write it. Let's keep playing the violin for now.

Tickerized for GME, CMGR, SIGL, TSLA, ZM, ZOOM

Temporarily Suspended Trading: Bebida Beverage Co. (BBDA); Blue Sphere Corporation (BLSP); Ehouse Global Inc. (EHOS); Eventure Interactive Inc. (EVTI); Eyes on the Go Inc. (AXCG); Green Energy Enterprises Inc. (GYOG); Helix Wind Corp. (HLXW); International Power Group Ltd. (IPWG); Marani Brands Inc. (MRIB); MediaTechnics Corp. (MEDT); Net Talk.com Inc. (NTLK); Patten Energy Solutions Group Inc. (PTTN); PTA Holdings Inc. (PTAH); Universal Apparel & Textile Company (DKGR); and Wisdom Homes of America Inc. (WOFA),  Bangi Inc. (BNGI); Sylios Corp. (UNGS); Marathon Group Corp. (PDPR); Affinity Beverage Group Inc. (ABVG); All Grade Mining Inc. (HYII); and SpectraScience Inc. (SCIE)

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Valuentum members have access to our 16-page stock reports, Valuentum Buying Index ratings, Dividend Cushion ratios, fair value estimates and ranges, dividend reports and more. Not a member? Subscribe today. The first 14 days are free.

Brian Nelson owns shares in SPY, SCHG, QQQ, and IWM. Some of the other securities written about in this article may be included in Valuentum's simulated newsletter portfolios. Contact Valuentum for more information about its editorial policies.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Jeff VanderMeer & Cory Doctorow Discuss the Future of Sci-Fi & the World

Twenty-five years ago, Cory Doctorow and Jeff VanderMeer both attended the Clarion Writers Workshop, the premier science fiction and fantasy writing program. Since that time, VanderMeer and Doctorow have each gone on to long literary careers. By chance, their new novels, Borne(VanderMeer) and Walkaway (Doctorow) are being published on the same date this year, April 25th, which got them to talking, which got us to publishing their conversation.

Jeff VanderMeer: Fresh-faced and eager as we both might seem, I’m calling it: we’re pretty much grandpas now. (Literally, too.) Looking back over the past quarter century, it’s pretty clear that a lot has changed. And a lot of it for the good. The genre boundaries are much more fluid now. I’m one of those continual label-evaders so this suits me fine. I’d prefer to shape-shift, in part because my interests and curiosity vectors are always changing. One way I think we are definitely alike is in adapting well to the new environment, if in very different ways.

Cory Doctorow: We’re in the midst of a curious era for nerdy subculture, which is something I’ve been involved with since I started taking the subway to Saturday D&D clubs when I was 9 years old. Back then, it was *really hard* to find other people who found genre sensibilities satisfying. The covers of paperbacks on buses became a recognition semaphore (“I see you are reading a John Wyndham novel; I too, have read of the Triffids!”) Networked communications brought subcultures together — counterculture fashion identities like goth and punk; out-of-mainstream political identities from anarcho-syndicalism to intersectional feminism to (alas) neo-fascism.

VanderMeer: Coming into Clarion, you were a Heinlein enthusiast and I was an Angela Carter devotee, and we didn’t so much clash as — as I recall — have a few discussions about it. But I was definitely young and arrogant, so have to imagine I was annoyingly vehement. Sorry about that. I also know that I’ve taken great pleasure in watching your career take off — I feel like we’re both survivors over a pretty long span now, though we’ve taken different paths.

Doctorow: No apologies needed! If you’re not abrasive at some point at Clarion, you’re probably not trying hard enough. (I’m sure I was!)

VanderMeer: Oh, you were. But it was a group of total eccentrics and I think the whole nature of throwing 18 strangers together — especially a bunch of introverts and weirdos — and expecting harmony is kind of absurd. As for Heinlein, though, I still don’t like his work. Do you still read him? It’s curious how he’s become invisible to readers recently, especially given some of his libertarian leanings would seem to match the times.

Doctorow: Heinlein invented and refined a lot of the field’s signature moves, and moreover was at the epicenter of a lot of high weird craziness in his “real life” — he was a socialist Upton Sinclair doorbell-ringer; a Crowley-adjacent polyamorous pioneer whose alcoholic “white witch” story-doctor wife took up with the recently discharged ex-Navy-man L. Ron Hubbard; a vicious racist who was certain he wasn’t. Today, he’s a litmus test of sorts. You can learn a lot about a person by what they think Heinlein was all about. I personally love the way that contemporary SF is engaging with him — Charlie Stross ripping into the guts of Friday with Saturn’s Children; John Varley using the juvies like Red Planet to savage GWB’s war on terror; and now Ian McDonald’s Luna books, a frontal assault on Randism by way of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It’s deeply kinky, taking all this problematic stuff and just *owning* the way it bent the field, using it to bend the field in the other direction.

VanderMeer: I want to get back to this idea of how the landscape has changed since we started our careers. On the negative side, it can be noisy and time-consuming in how writers are expected to engage on social media. But creatively I find it very positive in the sense that the fracturing of media and of hierarchies leads to all kinds of beautiful cross-pollinations. If there’s one thing I’ve been devoted to my whole career it’s been to breaking down barriers between speculative fiction and realism, if you will — in my fiction but also in the anthologies my wife Ann and I edit. For example, it was great to publish you in The Big Book of SF alongside Borges.

Doctorow: I think of it in terms of our communications tools, which always constrain the kinds of experiences we can have. When all you have is live performance, every live tale told is either a stage-play or a puppet show. Invent movies, and all the stories that had been shoehorned onto the stage (but really need to be movies) are liberated from stages and brought to the screen — meanwhile, all the tales that had lurked in potentia, unable to find any expression in the constraint of live performance, finally come to fruition. What’s left behind on-stage is irreducibly stage-like; it’s a purer expression of what you could only ever do onstage. And so on! Youtube gives us “shows” that are 19 seconds long, or 75 hours, things that couldn’t have lived on stage or cinema or TV screens.

The Rise of Science Fiction from Pulp Mags to Cyberpunk Ann and Jeff VanderMeer break down Sci-Fi’s many eras, icons and offshoots — from Jules Verne to William Gibson and…electricliterature.com

VanderMeer: I’m definitely thinking in terms of fabulist fiction this time around, but I’m also interested in the moral/ethical questions involved with biotech, against a backdrop of a scarcity scenario. I think that’s what’s beginning to play out now in the world, and I wanted to approach the present through the future in a more direct way than I was able to in the Southern Reach books.

As I read Walkaway, I’m struck by some similarities at the paragraph level in the way we both deploy biotech, but you’re of course working from a kind of post-climate-change scenario. I read your Wired essay about hope and dystopias, and I agree whole-heartedly that it’s important to conceive of hopeful futures — Borne is meant to convey a hopeful future, because we’re still in it. But I do wonder at what cost imagining hope comes, in terms of things that are uncontrollable, i.e., we cannot manipulate our environment to the extent necessary to reach a post-scarcity scenario right now without basically eating or burning all the biomass on the planet that is not ourselves. I’d like to think we can just go kind of post-post-capitalist and get there, but I’m not sure. I like your example of people sharing food during a disaster…but we all know there will also be complete bastards out there. We live in a world that’s full of bad people doing bad things, but also good people doing good things. But it’s good that my approach in Borne and yours in Walkaway are so different, because we need as many different possibilities and entry points as possible in such an urgent conversation.

Doctorow: I think that a signature stfnal move is to mix in some technological whoppers with some truths and hope that the reader doesn’t notice ’em, they’re protective coloration.

Read the rest:

https://electricliterature.com/jeff-vandermeer-cory-doctorow-discuss-the-future-of-sci-fi-the-world-9452565b2334