It’s not the right to healthcare. It’s the right to seek healthcare. Ie, they can’t deprive you of life or liberty without charging you. Restricting you from seeking healthcare deprives you of both.
They used whichever they thought was more likely to get through SCOTUS.
Restricting you from seeking healthcare deprives you of both.
This does not stand up to constitutional muster, is my point. The argument is that the government has a right to prevent certain things that could be healthcare, and that does hold water constitutionally.
Like, I love your energy here but this is not the way to guarantee abortion/reproductive care access
SCOTUS refused to entertain Trump’s election lie. Don’t be so certain they will be friendly to him this time. I hate the current SCOTUS, but they can surprise you sometimes.
It’s also not like he can retaliate in any way (other than trying to provoke his supporters into acting). They are set up for life, and can continue to influence the country for years to come with or without him. They may choose to let him drown.
Exactly. They are in no way beholden to him. And even their pet issue of abortion has been taken care of, so they’ve paid their dues. Now they can do whatever they feel like.
He’s been shown to indirectly threaten judges, juror, investigators, and witnesses. By turning the hate and violence of his supporters their way. He doesn’t have to personally do anything, there will always be a sympathizer willing to lay down their own life and well-being for his political cause, that’s how fascism works.
He very much can retaliate. And has a rich history of it at this point.
Another way that retaliations can be had is with a corrupt Supreme Court who are influenced by external parties by way of wealth or influence. In which case sources of wealth can be pulled or affected.
Good thing we don’t have any Supreme Court members on dubious grounds related to ill-gotten gains…
The only certainty is that Roberts and the liberal judges would definitely not be onboard with ignoring the 14th. Kavanagh probably, Thomas all but certainly.
We can definitely hope. But it’s really going to come down to how well the individuals are owned.
If this were just a panel of supreme Court justices voting along their biases, It’s anybody’s guess what they could do. But they’re not exactly impartial and lots of people have lots of dirt against them then gobs and gobs of political power.
The Supreme Court doesn’t really have any say in how states run their elections. That’s the only wrinkle I see on this. If they tried to dictate state elections, states could just ignore it.
Unlike other republicans who are at the whim of trump, the Supreme Court can’t really be touched and don’t have to bow down to him while still being shitty republicans.
Going with C. Without explicit language to the president, they will need to interpret this to mean the president included, which may be up to anyone’s interpretation.
I feel it should, however it could be argued it doesn’t.
who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof
It cannot be argued in good faith. Talking about the presidency as an office has been a thing forever, and therefore the president is an officer. He’s also an officer just by the plain meaning of the word officer. I never heard one peep to the contrary until people started looking for a way for Trump to weasel his way out of the 14th amendment.
It’s all up to interpretation though, you might not see it, or you might have heard it in a way, but it can be argued. Similar to the lower court judge saying so.
Similarly one of the judge points out in the dissenting opinion there is no conviction of insurrection.
So I still think C will win, but A or B is a possibility too.
"In the absence of an insurrection-related conviction, I would hold that a request to disqualify a candidate under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment is not a proper cause of action under Colorado’s election code. Therefore, I would dismiss the claim at issue here”
Yea fair enough. Just a different set of eyes is all. Thanks for the response!
The lack of conviction is prolly the biggest hurdle here which makes me wonder who would, or even could, bring those charges (even if the lower court explicitly stated he did). Jack smith has his hands full and while interesting to follow it’s not a direct case of questioning insurrection. Curious as to where it all leads.
End of the day, it starts to ask the question, which prolly ends at the Supreme Court no matter what.
They will probably pass it back to the states. It’s not like the blue states were going to vote for Trump anyways, and the “unfairness” of it will probably boost him in purple and red states.
It’s extremely risky for him. It looks like this was brought by citizens. Citizens in purple states could also bring it and get the same result. Some might say yes, some say no, but if enough say no name on ballot, he has no path to victory.
Would the republicans implode, choose among the trash candidates they currently have in the debates, or would someone new step up?
I had to do a double take and make sure they weren’t talking about tenants… weren’t there plenty of problematic tenants who don’t pay rent because they couldn’t be evicted?
I was a tenured property manager when all the shit went down initially and I didn’t have a single tenant out of ~220 “take advantage” of the moratorium. I left the industry for lower paying work because of the owners’ amorality.
This is the same as the “welfare queen” argument. Yes, there are a few people who take advantage of something that helps many others. That doesn’t mean you stop doing it. At best, you make the system more robust.
I feel like a lot of problems in the US could just be solved by improving the courts. Eliminate the wait times, offer streamlined hearings, and evictions for fault, like nonpayment, could be a lot simpler.
Hmm I wonder why. Could it be because we can’t fucking afford anything?! Could it be because wealth inequality has been at a high that we’ve never seen before? Could it be because our world is slowly dying and nobody seems to care? Could it be because literal Nazis are roaming the streets and nothing is being done about it?
For me, in addition to all those other things, it’s that even most “good” companies are abusive, so there’s no escape. It’s just “how much abuse are you willing to put up with to work here?”, rather than “this place isn’t abusive”, and I can’t do that roulette anymore.
I’m taking some time off to reassess everything. Maybe in 6 months of absolutely minimal living (to coast on savings) I’ll feel better about it, but with the way things are racing downhill and picking up speed, I’m not optimistic.
The crazy thing seemed fairly relaxed until she said she “rebuked him unto Jesus”. Seemed like it went from “haha I don’t want to be around a person carrying boiling water”, and she seemed to respond jokingly with the Jesus thing, which immediately made the cop respond as if she just pointed a gun at him?
Does this guy think this lady is some kind of biblical sorcerer?
“She said she was going to ‘rebuke me in the name of Jesus’ and I felt my soul was in imminent danger from this woman and her boiling cauldron of witchcraft”
I definitely don’t think it was a joke. Her twitchy nature and constant fear strike me as someone facing a mental health issue. Specifically schizophrenia as she said she was hearing people around the house. All that said, a cop should be able to recognize those signs immediately and should have used less lethal force at the most. His first instinct shouldn’t have been to bridge the gap and get closer after he felt “threatened.”
Schizophrenic people still have a sense of humor… To me it came off as if she recognized that the cop was afraid of her and made a snappy comeback, because it’s generally offensive to be accused of wanting to mame strangers with boiling water.
Rebuke just means to criticize, it’s not an attack, or even aggressive. To rebuke someone to God, is just saying your going to complain about their behavior to God. Tbh the moments before she was killed seem to me the most coherent and responsive she behaved during the entire encounter.
This was what I got from it too. She was offended that they would think that she would attack them with boiling water.
It’s kinda like she said “don’t bring that Hateful ideas into my house.” She was warding of the bad juju and disagreeing at the same time.
I think she’s also not dumb and knows what officers are capable of and might have knew where things were going. The police were escalating the situation for no good reason. And she was scared, cause they kill people who are black for very little. In this case they killed her for listening to them.
Not when they’re paranoid. Which she is now confirmed to have been a paranoid schizophrenic. It runs in my family and I’ve seen it quite frequently and heard the stories of others in my family that have seen it. When you know the signs it’s incredibly easy to spot, and police should be trained on the simple signs to figure this out and better help them keep a situation calm.
police should be trained on the simple signs to figure this out and better help them keep a situation calm.
Or just maybe, we should have other workers available than tinhorn sheriff wannabes with guns in our local governments that you can call to de-escalate situations. But no no, that’d be too much like defunding the police.
A good friend of mine lives in Burlington, VT and has schizophrenia. There is a service there, First Call, that will send people trained to recognize mental illness and deescalate the situation only getting police involved as a last resort.
Or at least that’s how it is supposed to go. Said friend was still drug away by police with First Call on the scene before. At least they weren’t shot, I guess. Still if they are ever in need of outside intervention I saved the number in my phone and I’m sure as shit not calling the police on them.
She actively thought people were outside her house trying to get in. That’s what you send the police for. A counselor can’t ask someone to go away if there was an actual threat and they were armed. This is one of those events where a police officer was the best initial call and then as things continued the way they were they should have brought in a counselor.
I don’t think he turned it off before he shot her, just that he didn’t have it on until after he shot her.
This is still murder and he’s a fuckin pig that should rot in the prison industrial complex he feeds. Fuck him and his cop buddies. But I didn’t get the info from this article that he turned it off himself. Just didn’t turn it on in the first place, which he’s supposed to do before every interaction.
There is a guy, a politician, who said that gay sex releases too much greenhouse gas. Also blew cigar smoke into a plant terrarium calling it ‘necessary CO2 for the plant to live’.
Fun fact: most good comedians are actually highly intelligent. It takes a lot of creativity, psychological insight and often knowledge to consistently make people laugh about stuff they didn’t necessary consider fertile ground for hilarity.
Thinking comedians are less informed than your average Republican congressclown from Rifle, Colorado or the 1st district of Texas says a lot about a person, none of it good.
Also, what numbers are you even talking about? Arrest statistics? Convictions? Things originating in Wayne LaPierre’s ass?
I agree many if most are smart. But smart means different things and does not mean anyone should take him seriously from a bit. So unless Jeff, is rattling off a statistic that even implies through a causational link, that shows any evidence of 40M irresponsible gun owners then I’m not sure I care about his comedy routine not that it would disprove my point in any way.
smart means different things and does not mean anyone should take him seriously from a bit.
They should when the bit itself is full of poignant arguments expertly refuting common myths. Which is exactly what he does in this very bit which you apparently refuse to even watch.
So unless Jeff
It’s Jim. Jeff is part of his surname. Big Trump saying “Chairman Un” vibes 😄
rattling off a statistic
For someone who’s yet to provide any to prove his assertion, you’re awfully preoccupied with statistics
evidence of 40M irresponsible gun owners
You know that some factual conditions can be inferred through reason, right? That’s what “Jeff Jimries” does in the bit you automatically dismiss.
I’m not sure I care about his comedy routine
Clearly. It has convincing counterarguments to the claims that you seem to think are somehow proven by many people having guns.
Do you think that the fact that almost everyone has shoes mean that the vast majority of people walk with a healthy posture?
not that it would disprove my point in any way.
Easy claim to make when your “point” is as hollow and unsupported as a bendy straw in a vacuum.
I’ve seen the bit. I agree with most of it. It’s entirely irrelevant. You are just trying to bring the entire gun debate to a small, limited scope statement.
How is it inferred, in this bit, that most gun owners are irresponsible. That has gone above my head.
How does any of that relate to most gun owners being responsible people? Folks really suck with trying to ignore the absolute numbers and try to use relative comparisons to serve as justification.
The VAST majority of gun owners are responsible and never experience anything like this. Using parents who left their toddler in the car buying fireworks at night is an absurd representation of your average gun owner. Gun owners like this are the exception and the numbers aren’t hard, you’re talking about less than a hundredth of the percent of the population.
No, I would have said I didn’t have a clue about these individuals. I would take as many bets as you’d offer on a randomized selection of gun owners. I take that bet all day.
The fact that the number one killer of children in the US is guns?
You are asking me how that fact relates to responsible gun ownership?
Think really hard about how those children were killed by those guns, and maybe you can figure it out.
The children who died by guns are either:
Killing themselves, meaning that an irresponsible gun owner gave that child access to a gun, either deliberately or not deliberately. Irresponsible!
Being killed by the owner of the gun. This one should be self explanatory. It’s irresponsible to use the gun you own to kill a child.
Killed by someone with access to someone else’s gun. Again, whoever owned this gun was irresponsible enough to allow their weapon to be accessed by someone else to kill children.
No it’s not relevant to the argument that most gun owners are responsible. Well it is, only in the sense that it proves it. Even the worst country in the world is overwhelmingly responsible even you consider population size.
It’s not important that many gun owners don’t end up allowing their guns to be used to kill children. Your argument is miniscule, inconsequential, and not helpful to the sickness in the US society.
It is important, tantamount, and very relevant that because the US has so many guns, that the leading cause of death to children are the guns.
Idgaf about most gun owners, I care about reducing the number of children being killed.
Why don’t you care about reducing the number of children killed by guns?
No, I think you misunderstand and want to turn this into a debate about guns when I made a simple statement. Most gun owners are responsible. Most gun owners never experience gun violence because of irresponsible gun owners. To say our imply most gun owners are irresponsible is a lie.
If you didn’t give a fuck about him owners you shouldn’t have run your mouth with false information to my very simple and scooped statement which has nothing to do with the point you are trying to make.
These clowns will pray to take your guns and call you stupid for owning them while fretting about Trump and his cult seizing power and banning LGBTQ+ folks from existing.
No, I think you misunderstood, and want to turn a very important debate into a pedantic point about sheer ratios without wider context.
Increased gun ownership has been repeatedly shown to increase gun violence. That’s a fact. To say that it’s “responsible” to increase or even maintain the levels of gun ownership is false.
To say or imply that most gun ownership is responsible is like saying that most cigarette smoking is responsible…except when you consider every fucking horrible ill it wreaks upon society.
You shouldn’t run your mouth with false information that is so “very simple and scooped”, because that misses the entire fucking point.
I completely agree. Thank you for agreeing on the responsibility. Can you find a single statement in this thread where I state anything about the laws or enforcement? My point is simple and limited and you and this entire thread have thrown the entire gun debate team at me.
Gun violence should be reduced, national consistent laws should be put in place, background checks should be consistent and thorough.
Yeah sure I agree with all that. Frankly, and saying this as a former rural Appalachian Republican who owned firearms, I think we should go the UK route and effectively ban them altogether. I think I can make a compelling argument that they (a) do not make people safer, (b) do not defend against tyranny, and therefore (c) yield an overall net-negative to society. To me the crux of the issue isn’t the “responsible” gun-owners, but rather the ones who do fall through the cracks; for there are enough of them who have a serious impact of our nation’s bottom-line.
Potentially, but that implies leaving guns around outside of safes around kids isn’t all that dangerous considering the high number of gun owner and guns.
I don’t believe that’s the case. I think it is more likely a few idiots cause a majority of the pain and loss of life.
I have no data on this but anecdotally I can honestly say I despite being around idiots and gun owners in rural country with my now trump loving mother, that I have not met 1 single person even remotely close to dumb enough to leave a 2 year old in a car in the summer of GA, unbuckled and free to roam the car, that has a unlocked loaded gun.
I understand the challenge with using personal experience, but in the absence of any real data, this is what I have to work with.
The numbers really don’t support any meaningful mass of irresponsible gun owners. The challenge is that the consequences of those few are typically life.
You either have greater faith in the percentage of humanity that is responsible than is warranted, or your standards for responsibility are where I would expect considering your sealioning about your stupid toys.
Here’s a story for you. I’ve only really held a gun once, at a camp riflery range (very small calibers). I still end up doing a fair amount of gun research for understanding gun debates / safety practices, research for fiction where characters have to talk about guns, etc.
I have had to correct other Reddit users that are gun owners, about the workings of basic single-action revolvers, in a very deep/long thread. I briefly doubted myself and checked my own sources, and yes, I was correct and the gun owner was persisting off the idea I was wrong. I’m sure there’s some responsible owners out there, but the fact there are so many bull-headed idiots about their guns, who still say they’re responsible, should scare anyone.
The specific topic, if you’re interested, was on the situation where an old-style revolver is loaded and cocked by an inexperienced user, who then wants to safely decock/unload the gun without firing it (at that point, the cylinder is locked so basic approaches won’t work). Feel free to look it up - the approach needed there is pretty damn stupid.
I don’t handle guns, I just like westerns and play too many video games:
Don’t you have to hold the hammer while you pull the trigger to decock it? The trigger unlocks it, but because you’re holding the hammer it doesn’t strike the shell?
So in order to safely disarm you have to pull the trigger, which sure sounds like an accident waiting to happen.
Exactly right. It’s possible there are some newer revolver models that have fixed that quirk of design, but that’s been true of all the ones I looked up YouTube videos on.
Yeah, modern ones have a decocker to fix that problem. I’ve never looked up how they work exactly. I do know that some revolvers also have a little piece that comes up to block the hammer from striking.
The historic design is certainly unsafe, but in those days, guns were rare and expensive enough that if you had one, you were already going to be trained on it. (Also, compared to a semi-auto pistol slide spring, revolver hammer springs are surprisingly weak. The only time I’ve had to do it, in a safety class, I was using so much force to hold the hammer up, I didn’t realize I had to let off to let it down.)
I had a girlfriends father insist on taking the whole family to the gun range as a “fun day out thing”. Not my thing, but why say no to new experience? Besides her dad had always openly carried so it was clearly something HE was into, so being invited to family time with him felt like a kindness
But oh joy, was I thankful that a gun instructor was there, literally everything her dad said was corrected. From hand placement, to how to load to how to stand. The guy nearly kicked dad off the range at one point for having a loaded gun facing his kid.
Thankfully I never had to suffer his company since we broke up later, but it was a very eye opening experince. Being INTO guns definitely does not correlate with safe usage.
“Five percent of the population is now dead or wounded. Sixty percent of them are women and children. Some 200,000 housing units have been completely destroyed,” he continued. “Every university in Gaza has been bombed. There is now imminent starvation taking place.”
“So why you would invite somebody who has done such horrific things to the Palestinian people?” Sanders added. “I think it’s a very bad idea.”
I could see them barring them from walking for their degree, but to hold it completely is messed up. Bullshit that ‘the corporation’ overruled the faculty vote.
The fun thing is that people say “I graduated” or “I’m graduating” but it’s technically more correct to say “I am being graduated (by the university).” I might be mixing it up a bit, but the idea is that the university always has the final say over whether or not you get that important piece of paper at the end.
One of my teachers in high school taught us this, but I never actually thought I’d see it in action. It’s cruel.
Which is bullshit. If you got the grades and paid your tuition, a university should not be able to withhold your degree. They can ban you from the graduation ceremony, but that’s it.
It is crazy that a university hold such power over someone.
Harvard doesn’t give grades. You either pass, fail, or pass with honors, more or less entirely at the whim of your professors.
It’s much more of a social club than a school, and being denied a degree is more akin to having your country club membership revoked than your credentials refuted.
It’s almost pro-forma, as the real benefit of attending Harvard is rubbing shoulders with the children of billionaires. The goal is to find someone willing to become your financial patron, not to hold a piece of paper confirming that you did all your homework.
If these kids are on the outs with the school board, they’ve already been blacklisted by anyone that matters.
Headline is misleading. The article notes that they arent necessarily withholding them permanently, but because they are going through the disciplinary process, and so currently not in good standing, they can’t get them at graduation.
But they did “give the terms”: they are not in good standing right now, and when the disciplinary action is complete then a final decision will be made.
It might be technically correct because bar does not necessarily mean permanently, but it implies that, and your claim that it means permanent is definitely false, especially if you’re basing it on the logic you used to claim it’s permanent.
Technically are permanently barred unless overturned.
The articles notes that they are not in good standing because they are in the process of disciplinary action. So considering this is not a ruling against them that needs to be overturned. If you have some kind of evidence otherwise, I would like to see it.
The worst part is that he was saying this to a bunch of women who just graduated with degrees. He’s basically telling them all to give up after putting in 4+ years of work. This guy is a total shit bag.
It’s a football meathead speaking his dumb meathead thoughts, just garbage to toss out basically. Sad that his dumb thoughts were published though. Outrage journalism has lowered the bar for society pretty significantly.
A bunch of conservative Catholic women who gave him a standing ovation. Because, you know, you’re completely misrepresenting what he said and don’t actually understand that not everyone in this country agrees with your worldview.
Also, you people are literally incapable of reading with basic comprehension. There is literally no way to read his comments and arrive at the conclusion that he was telling anyone to “give up” on a career.
It’s almost like an individual is the person who knows what is best for themselves, instead of an agency that has never met them and only knows them through means-testing.
I think it’s also just a side effect of their place in life. If you have disposable income already, a few thousand dollars is more disposable income. You can’t picture what poverty is really like when you’re a few thousand short on bills for the year every year and so you have to give up meals etc to make ends meet.
Conservative ideology is based on the fundamental belief that society is a thin veneer over our base instincts towards self-destruction, and the only way to maintain the façade is with a strictly enforced hierarchy in which power is maintained by a ‘deserving’ ruling class. Conservatism was born during the bloody death of feudalism, in which Ye Olde Ruling Class learnt they must repackage their ideals tied in a bow of capitalism if they’d have any hope of maintaining their wealth and control.
It’s no coincidence that many of the same familial names holding power carried forward through that transitional period. It’s also no coincidence that the basis of much of that power is rooted in systems of religion.
The core belief it puts forth is that without a strict hierarchy in which every person knows their place, society will collapse into chaos. That if you’re ‘deserving’, the system will grant you comfort, and if you’re struggling and destitute, that is your lot.
It’s the ‘just world’ hypothesis, and deviating from it isn’t just bad, it can unravel the very foundations of society. It’s why someone like Obama being elected to the highest office was such an affront. It wasn’t just racism (though that was a big part of it), but perceived as a very dangerous subversion of the system.
The people who subscribe to this would disagree, and they can’t consciously articulate any of this. It’s in the subtext of their existence – they absorb it via osmosis, through their religious upbringing in the form of fables, and via cultural maxims surrounding family values and patriotism.
If it were just projection or logical fallacy, it could be reasoned with. But it isn’t and it can’t be.
Right wing media has the same formula for everything and it somehow keeps working with their brainwashed base. Phrase good things for society to sound bad and repeat it over and over. Don’t use facts, use fear and emotions to achieve this. Anytime an issue is caused by a power center the right supports, blame the individual. Find examples of the issue negatively affecting a person that the base will dislike or not identify with (typically a minority) to prop up blaming the individual. Project any negative attacks from other ideological parties back onto that party brazenly and repeat it over and over. Play the victim if anyone tries to question your motives or actually push back. Make showy gestures of support for traditional value social issues to make your base feel you are one of them (as long as they don’t affect the true agenda of advancing the goals of businesses and the rich). It’s the same playbook for 40+ years and it’s still working.
These events keep getting held in places like China and Saudi Arabia, where the organizers know they are going to have to make major concessions to those governments, because the organizers care far more about money than they do the event. At least that’s my theory.
It’s a better argument to not trust the awards admin with anything from now in, given that they did that independently and removed a ton of Chinese authors from the ballots.
This isn’t the first time the Hugo has been subject to controversy, about a decade ago most of the awards went to “no award” and the nominees got “asterisk awards” because a group openly coordinated to nominate a slate of works (which they claimed others were doing less publicly in the past). The voting rules were changed over this one.
The Hugos have always been a clusterfuck. Explaining all the nuance is beyond a single comment (I can’t even find a good writeup) but it boils down to the voting committee largely being opt/buy-in. If you buy a membership to the World Science Fiction Society, you get to vote on where WorldCon will be held which means you are voting on where The Hugos will be held. You ALSO get to vote in the Hugos themselves
Yes, that sounds really shitty but it is also why the Hugos are a lot more prestigious than a Goodreads award. People need to give enough of a shit which, historically, has resulted in more people who actually have read multiple entrants.
Of course, a couple years back we had the “sad puppies” incident where a bunch of racist incels basically voted as a bloc to shut down people of color and non CISHET male voices.
And… a lot of signs point toward “China” having gamed the system again. Whether that is a focused effort by the CCP or just passionate Chinese SFF fans is up for debate*.
As for excluding authors? I very much assume that is just a function of operating in China. The CCP cracking down on the event would not end well for anyone involved.
Personally? I think this is yet another indication that the Hugos, like most “old guard” SFF, can fuck off. It was just a few years back that George R R Martin rambled and talked about the good old days while butchering every single “ethnic” name on the ballot. I think the issue of “who gets to vote” is still a major issue but I also think there is absolutely zero reason that an event about celebrating forward thinking should restrict itself to an in-person gala. That shit should be going above and beyond vtubers and focusing on new voices who might have a day job because being “a full time author” is increasingly impossible for any newbies.
*: Because China actually has a ridiculously strong SFF community. In large part because there are authors who are very much pushing the boundaries of what they can and can’t say to actually tell interesting and thought provoking stories in the way SFF has always been able to.
I mean, they almost always are. You just have to understand that, much like with the Oscars (?), it is the SFF (mostly SFF writers) community voting on themselves. And, memes aside, good movies usually win at the Oscars. Sure they favor period pieces and character studies but those are generally well acted and directed. They may just not be “entertaining” to the masses.
That said, ever since Martin decided he should talk about how great a bunch of transphobes and racists were while butchering the names of up and coming authors because he couldn’t be bothered to read a pronunciation guide, a lot of great authors have started doing their own “awards” blog posts. Which are always nice.
This is probably the most helpful comment for me. I enjoy reading scifi and I’ve often used the Hugos as a barometer. Not anymore. Time to start checking blogs of good authors
Weird that the Hugos wouldn’t have excluded John Ringo and crew for being literal fascists, unless they open their slackened jaws for… Not even criticizing China? Depicting mecha Wu Zetian?
ringo and the sad puppies were only “acknowledged” because of the mass backlash. Otherwise, it was business as usual.
That is why I think the issue is less the works and more the venue. Because having a racist piece of shit present is one thing. People get mad. They move on because they need the blurb to get another printing from their publisher. But if the CCP gets angry? People start disappearing faster than Jack Ma.
See, Chinese fandom is relatively isolated from western fandom. And the convention committee didn’t realize that there was this thing called the WSFS Constitution which set out rules for stuff they had to do. I gather they didn’t even realize they were responsible for organizing the nomination and voting process for the Hugo awards, commissioning the award design, and organizing an awards ceremony, until about 12 months before the convention (which is short notice for two rounds of voting. commissioning a competition between artists to design the Hugo award base for that year, and so on). So everything ran months too late, and they had to delay the convention, and most of the students who’d pitched in to buy those bids could no longer attend because of bad timing, and worse … they began picking up an international buzz, which in turn drew the attention of the local Communist Party, in the middle of the authoritarian clamp-down that’s been intensifying for the past couple of years. (Remember, it takes a decade to organize a successful worldcon from initial team-building to running the event. And who imagined our existing world of 2023 back in 2013?)
The fallout from Chengdu has probably sunk several other future worldcon bids—and it’s not as if there are a lot of teams competing for the privilege of working themselves to death: Glasgow and Seattle (2024 and 2025) both won their bidding by default because they had experienced, existing worldcon teams and nobody else could be bothered turning up. So the Ugandan worldcon bid has collapsed (and good riddance, many fans would vote NO WORLDCON in preference to a worldcon in a nation that recently passed a law making homosexuality a capital offense). The Saudi Arabian bid also withered on the vine, but took longer to finally die. They shifted their venue to Cairo in a desperate attempt to overcome Prince Bone-saw’s negative PR optics, but it hit the buffers when the Egyptian authorities refused to give them the necessary permits. Then there’s the Tel Aviv bid. Tel Aviv fans are lovely people, but I can’t see an Israeli worldcon being possible in the foreseeable future (too many genocide cooties right now). Don’t ask about Kiev (before February 2022 they were considering bidding for the Eurocon). And in the USA, the prognosis for successful Texas and Florida worldcon bids are poor (book banning does not go down well with SF fans).
What’s some good “new guard” SF you’d recommend? I don’t read much anymore but I randomly stumbled upon and really enjoyed Megan O’Keefe’s Protectorate trilogy which is a typical space opera but with a female protagonist and openly queer characters and a couple interesting twists (unlike the Three Body Problem whose plot was as pretentious as it was bland and did not live up to even a hundredth the hype but I digress).
The ironic thing about parent comment is that for as much as it bashes the Hugos for being part of the “old guard,” they’ve actually been very good about surfacing and including queer- and minority- centric stories and works by authors with identities that have historically been excluded from the discussion. Arkady Martine won Best Novel in 2020 and 2022 with two entries in a series featuring a lesbian main character, with imperialism’s effects on those who are colonized as a major driver of the plot. Between 2016 and 2018 N.K. Jemisin swept the Best Novel award for successive entries of her Broken Earth trilogy, which revolved around themes of racism, environmental cataclysm, and slavery. The year before that the winner of Best Novel was Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem which was the first time a work originally published in Chinese won, and then the year before that Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice won, which created a massive uproar amongst the more reactionary types in SF fandom for positing a civilization where the only recognized gender was female (this is super unfair to the book, through, because there’s so much more going on thematically beyond that one small world-building choice!).
In fact, the way that the Hugo voting has swung noticeably towards exploring issues of imperialism, colonialism, and identity is what prompted the Sad Puppies campaign that OP mentions. What he doesn’t mention is that the Hugo voters overwhelmingly rejected that campaign, and the organization made changes to prevent any future attempts. That part of what makes what happened with the 2023 Hugos so surprising and appalling – it’s completely out of character with the recent history of the awards and the organization to meekly knuckle under and self-censor for fear of angering Chinese authorities, when it’s been so bold in standing up to outside influences so recently. I expect that steps will be taken to prevent a repeat occurrence.
That part of what makes what happened with the 2023 Hugos so surprising and appalling – it’s completely out of character with the recent history of the awards and the organization to meekly knuckle under and self-censor for fear of angering Chinese authorities, when it’s been so bold in standing up to outside influences so recently.
Has there been a change in organizational staff to account for this?
I was actually asking about when the 2023 administrator started her position (was she there for a long time or newbie), in relation to when the event in China happened, but your information is actually good to know too, so thank you.
I had not been following this at all, so I was just wondering if new management came in and then this happened immediately, or was it old existing management that for whatever reason changed their mindset to allow something like that to happen later on.
Ah, my bad… There’s a core of people attached to Worldcon Intellectual Property who are supposed to support the hosting convention’s committee. This included Dave McCarty (who was removed from his position within WIP back in January as this situation evolved), and it seems like he pulled together a support team of experienced hands when it became clear that the Chengdu committee had not realized the extent of their responsibilities and couldn’t assemble a local Hugo committee capable of handling everything in the time available. So while it would be convenient to say “hey, the local committee is ultimately responsible for the way the Hugoa are run!” that’s only sort of true at the best-run of cons, and certainly not true in the case of Chengdu.
People who’ve been doing this for a long time and should have known better ran scared from the Chinese government’s censorship bureaucracy, for shortsighted and poorly justified reasons. The good news, such as it is, is that as that has been revealed the folks responsible have been removed from their positions, but it’s still disappointing to find out about. I worked with Dave McCarty in the runup to a previous Worldcon and I would have expected better of him.
Not sure why you are painting me as some intentionally misleading anti-hugo monster (or why you are caping for the Hugos) but… okay. You probably missed the part where I pointed out it is still a prestigious outlet that carries a lot of weight and even that the buy-in voting is a necessary evil. But hey, I am sure you missed that part while you decided to paint me as some mustache twirling villain.
Yes. More people of color and fewer cishet stories have been spotlighted. In large part because that is where SFF has gone. The very nature of SFF is to explore fantasy worlds through the lens of social issues. Always has been. And that is why the sad puppies “movement” became a thing. Because you basically had “This is the world as it is becoming” versus “Yeah, but what if strong men were still the heroes”. It was a symptom of the ever increasing conflicts that manifested as Gamergate in the video game space and the alt-right in “politics proper” as it were.
And yes. Jemisin swept in 2018. In 2020 we had George R R Martin shitting on the “ethnic” names while making it a point to talk about all the great transphobes and bigots who came before. Which continues to be the Hugo’s problem. Because they can’t control how the people vote. But they can make sure to highlight that it is still an old guard institution.
Amd, much like with the Oscars needing to give a rapist who fled the country a standing ovation every chance they get, any author who wants to have a career needs to grin and bear it because that translates to publisher deals and money.
And that is why I encourage people to actually go to the blogs of their favorite authors (because many have them these days) and read what they are recommending. It doesn’t have the same weight but it is also a way to sift through the bullshit without the vibe of “We aren’t racist. See, we gave an award to the black chick”
The worst thing is that the organization censored things that even the CCP doesn’t - several of the excluded books are freely sold in China. Self-censorship is a hell of a drug.
Same way Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the labor party: Only those with paid memberships can vote on stuff (e.g. where the awards will be presented in the future). China paid for enough new memberships to flood the vote with people that voted to hold it in China.
Weird comparison. I don’t think the least Tory-lite leader of the Labour Party in the last 30 years was voted in as a Chinese conspiracy, as you are implying.
No, China didn’t have anything to do with Corbyn. Just, right before he took control of the party, the party leaders tried to vote him out. There are over 10 million labor voters, but at the time there were only 100,000 paid labor memberships, who were responsible for voting in the party leader. Corbyn got 50,000 (out of the 10 million) new paying members on the rolls and went over night from being on the edge of being expelled to becoming the party leader.
Same thing happened here: a very large group (all scifi readers) assuming that paying members would have ideals proportional to the larger group - but that smaller group can be manipulated through a large influx of single issue voters.
Firstly, I’m not really sure where you are getting your figures. There were 200,000 paid members under the previous leader and it went up to 600,000 just before he was elected.
Secondly, it seems like you’re attributing this sharp increase to a third party nefarious action. I would assume that it were simply a larger portion of those 10m voters deciding to register membership in order to vote in a leader more in tune with their party values.
I take the point that a small group only needing paid membership to vote is open to manipulation. However, I don’t really see a comparison between these two events.
I misremembered the number of members - looks like it went up much more drastically than I recalled. And I never said that either were “nefarious actions”, just that a huge influx of new voters with different opinions can alter outcomes.
I don’t even know where to start with this it’s so nonsensical. Sure there are rights in China but to compare it favourably to the US smells so bad I find it hard to believe anyone could genuinely believe it.
I’ve spent about 6 months in both countries over the course of my life (I’m old) and China is far, far more oppressed than the US. The population there are entirely cowed, can’t express themselves freely on social media, until recently couldn’t even decide the number of children they could have, can’t protest in numbers, can’t send end to end encrypted messages, can’t access the full internet, can’t use a VPN without risk of being prosecuted and on and on and on.
Sure the US has it’s flaws but trying to say China is doing better from a rights perspective is just bananas.
You can say “death” on youtube videos in the U.S. … Please find a popular bilibili video uses 死 (actual character for “death”) in the subtitle, instead of 亖 (pronouned the same, but means “four”).
Most of these are sexual words, but it is not hard to see that basically everything related to politics is a sensitive word, including names of politicians, current or past; political organization, position no matter they are pro or anti CCP; and political events, anywhere from massacre, protest, to just congressional meetings.
Many other words related to human right and economics. For example, words like 中国孤儿院 (chinese orphanage), 中国民主 (Chinese democracy), 中国特色 (Chinese specialty), 中国石油腰斩 (Chinese oil stock lowered 50%), 你乃人民 (you are the people) and many many more.
And before you say, “they don’t censor them they just demonetize them!” that’s functionally the same thing in a capitalist society.
Censorship is more than just outright deletion, suppression and control can also be censorship. You lack a lot of freedom of speech in both platforms, it just plays out differently.
(Also YouTube does outright delete a lot of content for pretty suspicious reasons so don’t get too excited even then.)
Aren’t all of these rights quite a lot weaker in China? None of this is a problem of course if you keep your head down or be a bootlicker, but not having to lick boots is pretty much the motivation for human rights.
A young woman enters the room and he immediately starts licking his chops and pulling his pants down. It was his first thought, his obvious modus operandi. How many underage girls did he abuse for that to become his pavolvian response? What gets me the most is that they pretend to be the moral arbiters for the country, but they are actually the monsters. It’s really gross.
news
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.