Quotes of the Day (![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
quoteoftheday_feed) wrote2025-06-21 12:00 am
quoteoftheday_feed) wrote2025-06-21 12:00 am
Unknown
"People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs."
WIL WHEATON dot NET (wwdn_feed) wrote2025-06-20 07:12 pm
wwdn_feed) wrote2025-06-20 07:12 pmin the heat of the summer better call out a plumber
Back in the old days, the good old days, when it was generally accepted that Fascism and Nazis were bad, bloggers would write these posts that were sort of recaps of what we were doing, what we’d been doing, with some links to stuff we liked. This is one of those posts.
Good morning. I’m in Jackson, Mississippi, for the Mississippi Comi Con. Come see me if you’re local! I’m here all day today and tomorrow.
My travel yesterday was basically uneventful, once I was actually on a plane and in the sky. My connection in Dallas was delayed three different times, and each time the airline told me that my gate had been changed from where I was, to the gate that was farthest away in the terminal. So I spent a couple hours walking back and forth, which honestly wasn’t bad at all. I probably got in more steps walking in that terminal than I get on a typical Thursday.
The invention of noise canceling earbuds has made all the difference for me, with travel. I can wrap myself in a bit of a cocoon, and just get where I am going without a lot of sensory overload and overwhelm. Usually, I just listen to one of my playlists, but I have a mountain of Audible credits that I’ve been turning into books. For the last week or so, I’ve been going back and forth between Rip It Up And Start Again, by Simon Reynolds, and Peter Hook’s book about Joy Division1. They are both oral histories of the post-punk movement from around 1976 to 1990, from different points of view. The parts where they overlap are just fascinating. Hookie has his memories of specific events, and Reynolds collects memories from other people who were at the same event. I’m sure there are other books, from other members of other bands, that would fill in even more details. This is one of the reasons I just love history so much, and why it’s so satisfying to track down primary sources.
When I wasn’t listening to those books, I read a short story that’s one of the Hugo finalists2, Marginalia, by Mary Robinette Kowal. It’s featured in Uncanny Magazine, which is where a TON of finalists were published this year.3
I usually arrive hungry (thanks, Anthony Bourdain4) but I did some math in Dallas and realized I wouldn’t be landing until almost 11, and I didn’t want to eat at midnight, even if my body insisted it was only 9pm. So I looked around the terminal and my choices were Starbucks and Whataburger, or some combination of granola bars, a dodgy-looking apple, and a sad Wil. So I chose Whataburger and OMG it was perfect. I don’t usually eat stuff like that, and it was like BOOM COMFORT FOOD from the first bite. It reminded me of the little burger shacks that were in parking lots in the Valley when I was a kid, with those perfect drive-thru fries that you’d eat half of before you got home. My body wasn’t thrilled that I put a burger and fries into it so late in my day, but my body’s been kind of a dick lately, so it can just deal with it.
ANYWAY. I finally got to my hotel. Finally got checked in. Got to my room just around 1130pm, not hungry, but wide awake. Neat.
I watched some YouTube, read some blogs, and finally fell asleep around 1am local time. I slept shockingly well, woke up feeling fully rested, and now I’m trying to find things to do until it’s time to go to work. I’ve actually run out of brain cycles for reading, or even listening to someone else read — does that happen to other people? You really want to keep going because you’re so interested or enthralled or whatever, but your brain is just like, “dude I can’t. I’ve run out of focus and I don’t know what to tell you.” It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem. It’s me.
While I was trying to wind my brain down, I watched this video about merch5, and now I want to record myself narrating a very short …. something … that’s up to about 5 minutes, and release it on extremely indie, extremely DIY, cassettes and vinyl. When Sean Bonner and I did Saturday Night Massacre back in 20176, as part of the Kickstarter one week project thingy, we wanted to do something like this, and I can’t remember if we actually made physical media or not. I don’t think we did, but just because we ran out of time. It looks like it isn’t too difficult to get the things made, though. It’s just the fulfillment that would take some meaningful time.
If I created some bespoke physical media that cost around $30 all-in after shipping, would you be into that? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll prioritize accordingly.
Oh! Speaking of physical things … we have a new enamel Good Morning Nerds pin for you at Stands! Check it out!
And I brought Trek Side of the Moon back at Cottonbureau.
This con marks the official beginning of my 2025 Summer Convention Season. Over the next month or so, here’s where I’m scheduled:
- July 4-5 I will be in Montreal for Montreal Comic Con
- July 11-13 I will be in Knoxville for Fanboy Expo
- July 20-22 I will be in Atlanta for ATL Comic Convention
I think there are one or two others that I’m not remembering, but that’s July. I really should have a page with this information that I can link to, rather than relying on my memory, but I’ve never done more than five shows in a calendar year before now, and my memory has been more than enough to keep them all straight. This year, I’m doing more than I have in a long time because I feel like we need to get out and do the fun things, get together with our fellow nerds in a safe place to express ourselves and see each other, now more than ever. Everything is terrible, but at least we can have a few hours, a couple days, of peace and respite, surrounded by people who love the things we love, the same way we love them.
Community is important in the best of times. It’s VITAL when we have thugs brutalizing, terrorizing, and kidnapping our friends and neighbors, under orders from a wannabe despot who seeks to use the power of the State — power that belongs to the people — to wage war against citizens who won’t accept him as our king. Going to conventions, game days at your local game shop, Neighborhood Nights Out in your community, and gently interacting with other people is a massive bulwark against tyranny7, according to professor Timothy Snyder, one of the leading experts in the world on the subject.
So do your patriotic duty and go to a convention this summer! It’ll be fun! Joy is resistance!
I’m so blessed and so grateful that I attract kind, creative, enthusiastic people when I am at a show. I always get the most surprising and beautiful things, and I love to share them. As always, I’ll be posting to my Instagram stories from the con. Clever is my Kryptonite, and there are always clever people at these things.
Okay, that’s all for today. I hope everyone has the most wonderful weekend possible. Take care of yourselves, and take care of each other.
- He has the most soothing voice, ever. I feel like I’m sitting in a cafe with him while he tells me all about this time in his life. The way he makes me feel as I’m listening to him is what I hoped to give to people who listen to Still Just A Geek.
︎ - I have this idea to narrate all the finalists in the short story category for my podcast. I don’t think we’ll be back in production in time to do this before the awards are handed out, but it’s something I’d love to do next year, and every year after that, if they’ll let me. ︎
- Have I mentioned that Lynne and Michael Thomas, who edit Uncanny, found all the stories I read in the first season of It’s Storytime? If I can afford it, I’m hoping to work with them again. They are amazing. ︎
- May his memory be a blessing. ︎
- As it relates to DIY and indie creators. This guy is as enthusiastic about this kind of thing as I am, and loves to make fun stuff just because it’s fun to make. There are a lot of ancillary benefits, as he observes, but even if you’re not someone who would enjoy (or is looking for) those particular benefits, his excitement, enthusiasm, and creativity shine though. I can see how just making this thing he thought was silly and fun affected not only his creativity, but the whole band’s creativity. ︎
- GodDAMN was this project fun. The history, the Kickstarter, all of it. It’s one of those things we did because we wanted it to exist, and we didn’t care if a hundred people or zero people liked it. As it turned out, 138 people liked it. That’s a nice, even, 140 when you count both of us. ︎
- 12. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society. It is also a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life. ︎
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (smbc_comics_feed) wrote2025-06-20 11:25 am
smbc_comics_feed) wrote2025-06-20 11:25 amSaturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Corpse
Click here to go see the bonus panel!
Hovertext:
I had a note for about a year that was just 'least appropriate way to call shotgun' and this was the best I could do.
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Whatever (scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-06-20 02:20 pm
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-06-20 02:20 pmThe Big Idea: Jane Mondrup
Sometimes when you look in the mirror, it can feel like you don’t even recognize yourself. This might be doubly true if you’re looking at a perfect copy of yourself that thinks you’re the copy, not them. Author Jane Mondrup brings us such a conundrum in her new novel, Zoi. Follow along in her Big Idea to see how evolution is just the beginning.
JANE MONDRUP:
An endosymbiosis involving humans and set in space—that is, in very few words, the big idea of my science fiction novel Zoi.
Symbiosis is a close relationship between two life forms, often (though not necessarily) to the degree of mutual dependency. Endosymbiosis is when one of those life forms gets integrated into the other, living inside it.
One very important endosymbiosis, which happened around two billion years ago, provided the conditions for the evolutionary jump from the simple life forms—the procaryotes (bacteria and archaea)—to the much more complex eucaryotic cell, of which we and our multi-cellular relatives are made. This is a whole little world in itself, full of internal structures and mobile elements, all with specific functions.
To furnish its lavish lifestyle, the eucaryotic cell needs energy—lots of energy—and that energy is provided by an organelle called the mitochondrion. And the really interesting thing is that this extremely important element didn’t develop inside the cell but was originally an independent organism; a small procaryote that somehow ended up inside a larger procaryote, managing to survive in there and become an integrated part of its host and all its descendants. These proto-mitochondrial lodgers were the kind who not only pay the rent and keep their room in order but start refurbishing the whole place, in this case developing a small hut into a veritable castle.
Not being a biologist, I heard about the origin of the mitochondrion on a podcast, the 2016 episode of Radiolab titled Cellmates, and found it endlessly fascinating. My subconscious started working on it, until it surfaced again in the shape of a dream vision of two identical women drifting apart. I knew it was a cell division, happening in space. Like proto-mitochondria, the women (originally one person) had become part of a larger organism and was now included in its procreation.
There was a story here, but what story exactly? And how could I tell it?
That’s often how a story begins for me, with a situation I either have to work from or get to. Making up what feels like a plausible background for this (usually quite strange) situation will send me in all kinds of interesting directions. In this case, I had to invent a creature fitting the picture, a cell-like, space-dwelling species that I decided to call zoi, based on the Greek word zoion (living being).
The zois, I figured, had not developed an immune defense, but the opposite. In space, life would be very rare. You wouldn’t have to defend yourself against parasitic intruders, and the chance encounters with other organisms would represent an evolutionary opportunity.
Whenever the zois came across another life form, they would invite it in, immediately discern its basic needs and start to accommodate them. Some needs would either be impossible or very costly to meet, and it would be more rational to solve the problem the other way around, helping the life forms it had engulfed with adapting to their new environment. Changing them.
This was the unsettling situation the woman (I named her Amira) was in—residing inside a living creature, experiencing changes to her body, and then starting to grow a double. It seemed very scary indeed, and my story could easily be a classic SF horror, ending in some terrible conclusion. But that wasn’t what interested me.
The horror elements were there, and I absolutely planned to harness them for emotional impact, but the horror ending didn’t fit my dream vision. The women in it had looked desperately sad. They obviously had a very close relationship which was now broken up. There was regret too, a hint of unsettled conflicts. But no enmity.
When a cell divides, the two resulting cells aren’t parent and offspring, but equally newborn. I saw the two Amiras in the same way, not as a human being with an inhuman clone, but a set of identical twins—one person becoming two. While the double grew, there was only one consciousness. Then, the two woke up with identical memories, both convinced of being the original. That would be a difficult situation, and very interesting to explore.
Amira would be part of a small crew of astronauts, the first to leave the solar system inside a zoi. They would know some but not all of the consequences, and they would react to them in different ways. The impact of these differences on their relationships to each other would be another backbone of the story.
Even before the cloning began, the astronauts were undergoing physical changes, starting with adaptation to the lack of gravity. In zero g, humans quickly start to lose bone and muscle mass, which is why astronauts on space stations have to do a lot of exercise. The zoi would recognize the deterioration as something that needed correction. This would be the first of many adjustments helping the mutual adaptation along.
Just like the bodily transitions and upheavals of a normal human life, such changes would have consequences for mood and physical well-being. This parallel allowed me to draw on concrete experiences with puberty, pregnancy, illness, menopause, and aging. These are all processes involving bodily reactions outside our control, influencing or even determining our thoughts and actions.
I have a lot of themes in Zoi, but they are all related to the big idea: becoming part of another life form, and what that would entail. My aim has been to write something both visionary and tangible, based in science but easily understandable, equally comprising ideas and emotions. If you find this essay concepts interesting, there’s a good probability that you will like the story. I hope you will read it.
Zoi: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s|Indigo|Kobo
Author socials: Website|Instagram|Facebook|Bluesky
Read an excerpt.
The Daily Bunny (dailybunny_feed) wrote2025-06-20 12:39 pm
dailybunny_feed) wrote2025-06-20 12:39 pmLarge and in Charge
Thanks, Lisa and bunny Mochi! Lisa writes, “Mochi is silently reminding everyone who the boss is. We hear you, girl.” Thanks also to Lisa for the caption!
Whatever (scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-06-20 12:28 pm
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-06-20 12:28 pmWe’re Seeing Art
And it’s giving us a lot to think about.
Venice continues to be lovely and also at this moment rather warm and sweaty. After a morning of seeing art we’ve retreated back to the air conditioning of our hotel room. We’ll go back out again when we’re not so darn sticky.
— JS
Quotes of the Day (quoteoftheday_feed) wrote2025-06-20 12:00 am
quoteoftheday_feed) wrote2025-06-20 12:00 amP. J. O'Rourke
"Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it."
Quotes of the Day (quoteoftheday_feed) wrote2025-06-20 12:00 am
quoteoftheday_feed) wrote2025-06-20 12:00 amHeinrich Heine
"Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid."
Quotes of the Day (quoteoftheday_feed) wrote2025-06-20 12:00 am
quoteoftheday_feed) wrote2025-06-20 12:00 amMark Twain
"I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting."
Quotes of the Day (quoteoftheday_feed) wrote2025-06-20 12:00 am
quoteoftheday_feed) wrote2025-06-20 12:00 amKatharine Whitehorn
"The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any."
Dinosaur Comics! (dinosaur_comics_feed) wrote2025-06-20 12:00 am
dinosaur_comics_feed) wrote2025-06-20 12:00 amand another thing, i haven't seen anyone say like they felt like roadkill on the information superhi
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June 20th, 2025: Today and this weekend I'm in in Utrecht for Heroes Dutch Comic Con - the biggest con in the Netherlands! I have never been to the Netherlands so please do send me all your SECRET NETHERLANDS RECOMMENDATIONS, and I hope to see you there! – Ryan | ||
Whatever (scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-06-19 08:57 pm
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-06-19 08:57 pmWhen Life Looks Like a Movie Set
The little island town of Burano, which for all the world looks just like someone set designed the place. Cute tiny colorful homes set next to a canal? Check! You half expect Popeye to show up, singing a sea shanty. But it is, indeed, real. And apparently it’s against the law to change the house colors without permission. The things you learn.
We’re still on vacation. It’s still lovely.
— JS