The Antisocial Socialist

What a lovely way to wake up this morning! My primarily anarchist servers have even issued rare permits for anarchists to lib out on Bluesky. 

Just finished: Nothing. Look, the degree to which my eyes are constantly blurry from fatigue and/or tears, it's a wonder I ever get to read at all.

Currently reading: The Long Red Tomorrow by Erik Grove. This continues to slap. We're at the point of the noir where everyone is dropping dead around our hero, there's probably no point in even solving the mystery, and he's held together by grit and duct tape. There is a particularly great scene where we get the guy going out a window, only it's Mars, so, lower gravity. Just one of the really nice touches that makes this book so well written. I adore how he's playing with all of the conventions of the genre but absolutely committing to the bit such that it feels fresh.

 Just finished: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI by Cory Doctorow. This was very good. Like I said in my last post, there are a few areas where I disagree. I think Cory's objection to copyright makes sense and he backs it up well but also it's ideological and that means he's not taking into account copyright reform and its use to protect, rather than profit from artists. (Full disclosure: I get a cheque every year from Access Copyright, which I very much appreciate.) He ultimately takes a line of AI as normal technology, which I find ideologically abhorrent, as currently my prison abolition beliefs are warring with my desire to see every AI techbro in forever jail for what they are doing to our climate and our culture. He is optimistic about what could be left after the bubble bursts. I guess we'll see.

I'm disheartened in the way that I find it disheartening when people took the "let's make covid endemic" line or when people talk about climate resiliency rather than fighting against the corporations and governments that are accelerating the climate crisis. Maybe it's the utopian optimist in me but I really think we could put the brakes on a technology that no one asked for and no one wants and that is being shoved down our throats. We will have to write our own emails but that seems a small price to pay (and I already write my own emails).

But this is absolutely worth reading, because his analysis is always very shrewd and backed up by evidence and insights. The basic framing of the essays in terms of technology meeting human needs and extending human capabilities vs. dictating agency is vital, as is the framing of AI as a labour issue first and foremost. Plus, because it's Cory, it's entertaining and accessible to read.

Currently reading: The Long Red Tomorrow by Erik Grove. I met the author at one thing and then another thing and he was like, oh do you want an ARC of my upcoming book, which can always be a bit dicey. Just because you get along with a person doesn't mean you'll like their book. However! It is actually engrossing af. It's a cyberpunk noir set on a Martian colony and the vibes are impeccable. An ex-cop searches for a missing guy, while haunted by the literal holographic images of two women he has lost, and accidentally also seems to have acquired a dog. This is 100% Elon Musk's Mars, settlement in a place where no life is meant to live, with gritty miners and dust everywhere and shortened lifespans. It's also very Catholic-inflected for some reason (the cyberpunk interfaces are called halos, the cops are Saints, guilt and sin lurk around every corner). It feels like someone kind of wrote a neo-noir for Mark Fisher. I'm loving it so far. 

 I actually have two for you today because one is paywall-locked. However, if you wish you become a Patreon of Canuck Is a Slur you can listen to the full episode of "Old Boys: The Powerful Legacy of UCC ft. Rachel A. Rosen", which is about an hour and a half of Temu dark academia. If you have a strong stomach for horrible stories of child abuse against children who grow up to be some of the worst men in the country (a.k.a., if you like Behind the Bastards), this episode is for you.

I'm legit sad it's paywalled; hopefully they will release it. CIAS is a relatively new-to-me podcast and it's very promising. If you want a longer sample of the kind of episodes they do, the recent Rex Murphy/Pierre Trudeau episode is not paywalled and it's extremely funny. (The thumbnail image is one of those "F*ck Trudeau" stickers on a truck, along with two stylistically identical stickers that say "Kill Murphy" and "Marry Lévesque," which is hilarious to me.

As neeuqdrazil correctly predicted, my regular recommendation for the week is In Bed With the Right's "Science Fiction Fandom" (Part 1, Part 2). This is very much the Jordan S. Carroll beat (and he does get referenced a lot as the person who has done by far the most extensive and important research on the topic), but it's doing something a little different in terms of exploring the tension through a psychological lens. Moira, not a sci-fi person, begins assuming that the far-right attachment to fandom properties is as a result of not wanting to grow up, and part of it is that, but Adrian, who is a sci-fi person, goes more into the "who owns the future" discourse. The second episode, which looks at why bad people like good things, is particularly interesting.

 Today's rec is yesterday's Wizards & Spaceships episode: "Cosmic Horroro ft. Devinder Thiara and Jesse Scoble." They're two game designers who are now making a cosmic horror Western comic called Dead Money, and for Halloween they join the W&S crew to discuss the genre, the challenges of writing the unknowable in different mediums, and the multitentacled elephant of the room of HP Lovecraft's racism. Check it out!

The only podcast you need to listen to about the Last Ditch covid-cautious lesbian bar drama is A Bit Fruity's "The Masked Lesbian Psyop." Matt and guest Moira Donegan explain the story for those of us who have jobs and only vaguely heard about this, and then explore it from every. Possible. Angle.

There is a lot going on here, obviously, and much boils down to the conversations you have with your friends and the conversations you have with normies and/or the media. It's obvious why the right loves this story—it's pure Libs of TikTok bait, as Woke Gone Too Far—but it's also telling that let's be honest, the left loves it just as much. I had to tamper down my own reactions to the use of therapy-speak to enact lateral violence, the equation of a sometimes-homeless young person trying her best to keep a community space afloat to an evil corporation like Target, the degree to which disabled folks are discounted even in progressive movements, and yeah, the clown school thing. We all know people in the movement like this. Some of us have been people in the movement like this. In the old days people grew out of it and also didn't have Tumblr, let alone IG, to give them additional vocabulary that they probably shouldn't have at their age. Nowadays it is immortalized forever on social media and that is of course a problem.

What I particularly like about both Matt and Moira is that for all they are snarky and mean, they approach the story, as they approach every story, with a core of empathy and compassion. Never once do they question why immunocompromised and disabled queer folks might want a covid-cautious space to socialize. That's not the funny bit here. They're interested in how this plays out over media, how corporate-owned social media disrupts and distorts regular leftist infighting and drama, and how we cope as communities.

A decade ago, my own cancellation still smarting, I would have not had as a mature and ethically consistent response to this story as they do, and it's really a good listen. Also it is funny/ The clown school thing is funny.

A short one today, but an important one: Factually's "How Big is Elon's DOGE Death Toll."

In a saner time, the world's first trillionaire, whose vast wealth is subsidized by American taxpayers, killing thousands, maybe millions of people, most of them very small children, would be sticky news. It was news, I know about it through the news, but not, like, my national or local news. I saw it on niche news for people interested in international politics, which is not many people. People like me read Lancet. I have no idea at all if it was mentioned in America's mainstream news, where perhaps the populace might have seen fit to revolt against their ruling class. 

Adam Conover does a good job in looking into the methodology behind both the claim and Elon's counter-claim that "zero-point-zero" children died as a result of his deliberate choice to abruptly cancel lifesaving aid to them, and it's a difficult, thorny claim to assess. Nevertheless, it will probably not surprise you that Elon is doing like, Stalin and Mao level numbers and deserves to remembered only as one of the greatest mass-murderers in history.

Listen, educate yourself, tell your friend with a Tesla.

I know what you're thinking, Dear Reader. Sabs does nothing but complain about how busy she is all the time; how does she have time to take off an entire day to drive to Port Hope?

The answer is she doesn't and will be up all night paying for it, but it was worth it to attend the Port Hope Turkey Vulture Festival, which is an actual thing (slogan: Keep Calm and Carrion, and yes, I bought the t-shirt).

Listen, turkey vultures are tied with hummingbirds for my favourite bird. I mean I have many favourite birds but I like it when a thing is much smaller or much larger than it should be. Hummingbirds are much smaller than any living creature has any right to be, and turkey vultures are so large that they don't look like they should be able to fly. Plus both have personalities to burn.

Turkey vultures are not native to Ontario and they have only been here for about 15 years or so, drawn north by climate change. The first time I saw them, I had no idea what I was looking at. Just a ton of massive black birds circling above a local park, what the actual fuck, it was like the world was ending. I snapped the best picture I could manage and showed it to a bird aficionado and he told me what it was. Since then I have always enjoyed seeing them circling overhead but I have never seen one up close.

This is salmon run season. And I have also not ever seen a salmon up close. As you probably know, zero salmon survive the massive sex-crazed death swim, and so there are tons of gigantic dead fish around the rivers where they go to fuck and die. This draws the vultures, and in Port Hope, both draw the tourists. A woman named Caolaidhe Keelor decided to make this A Thing and thus the inaugural Port Hope Turkey Vulture Festival was today.


This is the first time I've ever been close enough to one to see the head. Normally they just look like giant black shadows.

CN: There are fish remains in one of the photos + some people think vultures look gross. I think they are beautiful.

( this is edited; you should see how many photos I took )

Not pictured: a double-amputee rescue turtle, a heron, and loads of tourists. I very much hope there is a turkey vulture festival next year.

Just finished: Old Boys: The Powerful Legacy of Upper Canada College by James Fitzgerald. Really excellent book that goes a long way to explaining why Canada's ruling elite is Like That. Goddamn the British Empire have a lot to answer for. Men will really send their kids to drug-addled rape camps where they're tortured instead of going to therapy.

Note: I am still caffeinating and accidentally typed "Brutish Empire"; that fits too.

Currently reading: What We Are Seeking by Cameron Reed. Yeah we are all collectively losing our shit over this one, aren't we, and it finally came in on hold at the library. Reed writes like one book every hundred years and hopefully this time the SFF world won't forget all about her??? because of course this is great. It had me in the first few pages where a starship is changing over from summer to winter and the summer captain is about to be put to sleep in a coffin. It's zero gravity to artificial gravity as they approach a planet, but it marks a cultural shift as well as a physical one, and John, our protagonist, is going to be sent to the planet very much against his will. The first two chapters are almost pure vibes and worldbuilding but Reed is such a fantastic writer that I could read an entire book of that. Humanity has spread amongst the stars and lots of people speak "English," but you get little tidbits like "do you pronounce the silent n in the word 'sense'?" that gives you such a great sense of how things have shifted. John is particularly reluctant to go to the planet Scythia because they are backwards "marrying people," and he very much is not.

Anyway this is so cool. How amazing to live in a year when we get a new Cameron Reed book.

Just finished: The Hunger of Those Who Built It by Wendy Waring. I don't have a lot to add from last week. This was really good, and did something with eco-fiction that I hadn't seen before (examining the way in which green technologies can be manipulated to eco-fascist ends. You folks should check this out when it's released.

Currently reading: Old Boys: The Powerful Legacy of Upper Canada College by James Fitzgerald. Research for a hopefully fun project to be announced soon. UCC is the poshest of all Canadian private schools, a boarding school on the British model, established in the late 1800s to create a Canadian aristocracy. This is an oral history beginning with the class of 1922 and going into the 90s.

Most of the interviewees brag about their time there and are proud of their military discipline, sports prowess, and connections, but there are a surprising number of critical interviews who speak quite frankly about the rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse at the school, as well as the imperialist, misogynistic undertones. And, tbh, in most cases the lack of an actual education, as the purpose of the school was to turn the kids into aristocrats and build social connections, not to teach them to think for themselves.

It's, uh, pretty bleak stuff. It heartens me that a few of them did rebel and go on to do cool things, which suggests that even in the worst circumstances, people will still want to think for themselves.

Just finished: Nothing.

Currently reading: The Hunger of Those Who Built It by Wendy Waring. This is a really fascinating book on a number of levels. It involves a good amount of political intrigue, but that's not really the focus; it's almost backgrounded compared to the fraught family dynamics and the story of one woman's slow disillusionment. It's one of those "oh, only a very small press could do something like this," which is to say that it plops basically a literary fiction story inside almost hard SF with a fairly unconventional structure, and it works for me.

The literary fiction story: The bulk of the book is a flashback to Diane's early career as the engineer who built the GreenBelt (not to be confused with the Greenbelt that Doug Ford wanted to bulldoze for monster homes), a sustainable circle that divides the wealthy white enclave of downtown Paris from the starving masses outside. She starts out with the best of intentions, trying to use green technologies to create sustainable cities, but even as her bosses' plans become clearer, she deludes herself into thinking it's otherwise. Not to mention that while France mass-expelled its immigrant population and severely represses Muslims, America is much worse and she doesn't want to go back. Meanwhile, she tries to track down her estranged sister Helen after her father's death.

The hard SF story: The level of detail with the technology is impressive. I have no idea about these things, but it almost has a breathless sci-fi Golden Age feel, and it feels well-researched and technically possible. 

Anyway, it's very good. I'm almost through.