podcast friday

[sabotabby]

I dunno, why not make yourself more anxious this week. It Could Happen Here has the ability to send James Stout, an experienced war journalist, to LA to cover the uprising against ICE kidnappings. There's a lot of coverage in today's episode, which I'm currently listening to, but for detailed reporting, listen to "On the Ground in LA."

The scale of the so-called riots will surprise you—they surprised me, and I've been to LA. It's a very big city and unlike during the wildfires, very little of it is actually on fire. The uprisings, which are direct responses to people's families, neighbours, and colleagues being kidnapped by an out-of-control paramilitary organization, are actually only a few thousand people. Which is not to denigrate the bravery of those people—quite the opposite!—but to poke holes in the regime's propaganda.

P.S. If you are going to a protest this weekend, please ignore that "non-violent wave" thing and other similar memes going around. It is an op. If violence erupts and you do not want to be involved, don't sit down. Get out of there. I do not want to see a generation of young protestors with traumatic brain injuries, please. Also avoid bridges (don't let yourself get kettled or arrested en masse), and if you get teargassed, use water, not milk or anything else. Stay safe, I love you.

Comments

[greylock]

The scale of the so-called riots will surprise you

Last I heard it was a block or so, with a few hundred people.
But putting troops in a city kill cause a response.

Please ignore that "non-violent wave" thing and other similar memes going around. It is an op. If violence erupts and you do not want to be involved, don't sit down

This is new to me.
I've heard accounts (on reddit, FWIW) of whole families going. This could get ugly.

[sabotabby]

Families should go. Fascism is actually a very small group of people and they expect to rule through harsh crackdowns that will make everyone else fall in line. The thing to do is no matter what, don't fall in line.

Also, they're going to come for your kids regardless.

[blogcutter]

Well, yes, I get it. Although I won't be at a protest this weekend, I'll be reading volume 1 of the Antifa Lit Journal (perhaps you've heard of it?), which I just picked up yesterday from my local indie bookshop. I particularly loved the statement regarding AI in the preliminary pages, assuring us that no generative AI was used in its writing, and expressly prohibiting any entity from using it to train AI technologies (unless appropriate compensation for the contributors is negotiated, presumably in advance, directly with the copyright holder).

[greylock]

They do like driving cars into crowds.
(Legal in Florida, apparently).

The thing to do is no matter what, don't fall in line.

I've seen the 3.5% number bandied about a lot lately.
Spending on who you believe the No Kings marches reached that level, and that's before the budget.

[sabotabby]

I am suspicious of the 3.5% number tbh. I don't buy the research on it, for one thing, but also it would be remarkably convenient if the actual crowd size matched something so easily memeable.

[greylock]

The number is for sustained protests, so I can believe it might be that small.
I assume in countries like Bangladesh, you can get a lot of grumpy unemployed.

In the US..... less.
The US has a lot of guns. And cars.

Unrelated, I was going to ask you about the Hugos.

[sabotabby]

Sure.

[greylock]

I know you're reading, but I'm not going to scroll back just now:
What's your vibe? My friend is not a huge fan, especially the novellas.

I've felt, as an outsider, it's been fucked since the Puppies (if not before).

[sabotabby]

The novellas are what I think are the strongest overall. With short stories, if anything other than "Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole?" wins, it'll be both the wrong choice and statistically improbable. Everyone in any of the awards that has a story nominated against it is like. Hah. WTF. No.

Novellas I all think are pretty strong this year. So far I've read all of them except for "Navigational Entanglements" (there's a high degree of overlap with both the Nebulas and the Auroras) and I've enjoyed them all to the point that this is one of the harder categories to choose. I feel like "The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain" is technically and thematically the most interesting, and "What Feasts at Night," while well-written, is the weakest (but almost certainly the one that's going to win).

Best novel is actually the hardest for me. I suspect "Someone You Can Build a Nest In" will win, as it won the Nebulas (which imo tends to not go for the stupidest possible choice, whereas the Hugos often do). So far I have also read "The Ministry of Time," which I enjoyed a great deal but feels too flawed to really be the best book of the year, and "Service Model," which might get my vote if it lands the ending and/or I don't like one of the others more. But I feel like this is a year for strong novellas but not for strong novels (whereas last year there was a clear obvious choice for novels).

Weirdly, in both the Auroras and Nebulas, there is/was a clear choice for me for best novel ("Blackheart Man" for the Auroras and "Rakesfall," which should have won the Nebulas); neither are nominated for a Hugo.

[greylock]

This is interesting.
She seemed (and this is based on a text) to hate the novellas.
She thought AT was a hack.
If you don't object, I'll share this comment with her (anon, obv), purely for my interest.

This is the same person who I thought would love Cascade years ago. And would love 'whales kill billionaires XXX'. :P

[sabotabby]

For sure! I mean, tastes vary. I feel like there's a scale of literary to commercial, grimdark to cozy, and didactic to subtle, and everyone falls in different parts of it, even with roughly the same politics and genre preferences. So like, Tchaikovsky works for me personally, because I think he balances out his happy endings in such a way that doesn't feel cheap, he's literary enough that I don't bounce off his prose, and he wears his politics on his sleeve but his books don't read as instructional manuals for how to be a good person. Mainly, though, I think he's very funny in that particular British comedy way, which covers a multitude of sins.

I do think there's definitely a Theme with the novellas this year across all three awards, and if that theme "plucky woman goes up against colonialism" isn't to one's taste, it's going to be a problem.

[selki]

I'm mixed on AT. I liked his winning story (Elder Race) last year, DNF his Service Model (Best Novel finalist; made it 40% through before giving up) or City of Last Chances (1st book of Best Series finalist: boring annoying first few paragraphs), but I'm very intrigued by Alien Clay (his other Best Novel finalist; I'm 20% in). He has a variety of subject matters, I'll give him that.

I agree with Sabotabby that Novellas are the strongest category this year, with The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar at the top.

[sabotabby]

See, I loved City of Last Chances and think that series is the strongest of his work. But it's also the most aesthetically to my taste.

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain is absolutely getting my vote unless Entanglements blows me away somehow, and that is saying a lot because normally if there's a Singing Hills novella, it gets my vote.

[selki]

I finished *Alien Clay* and it's gone to the top for my Best Novel vote!

I feel Entanglements is not very standalone although the *characters* are all (as far as I remembered) new.

[sabotabby]

I started reading Entanglements and, to quote some of my form rejection letters, "it didn't grab me as much as I'd hoped." I'll probably still read it but the question in the novella category is "is this better than Practice,? if not it goes down the list until I've made a decision on best novel."

[dewline]

I'm planning to do care-support stuff on Saturday. Seconding your recommendations anyway.

[sabotabby]

Good luck.

[dewline]

Thanks.

Tomorrow is Bingo day and I've got relatives coming in from out west, too...

[dissectionist]

As someone who still feels as Californian as I am Canadian, I’ve been finding it too destabilizing to read much about. I’m so angry at this crisis that Trump wholly manufactured and then caused. Literally none of this had to happen. Migrants could have been left alone to go on, you know, supplying the entire US with food, helping businesses run, and living their lives. This escalation of rounding people up was completely unnecessary and then trying to cause a civil war - which is what he’s doing right now - is compounding the absurdity of it all.

Of course the cruelty is the point, but the cruelty is also fucking unnecessary unless you’re a person with a vast void inside them that can only be fed by cruelty and you have not even the slightest desire to deviate from that path. This kind of behavior is only necessary in their subjective realities based on hatred and bullshit.

[greylock]

As a non-American, not Canadian, if you're curious about how the NotAmerica sees it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjhaYz-HS4A

Everyone knows what is happening.

I hope your Non-MAGA family is out of the US.

[dissectionist]

I’m the only one who’s out. Everyone else is still back in Cali, including my lesbian niece and her fiancee; my disabled BFF is in Arizona. I worry for everyone.

[greylock]

Better Cali/West Coast then other places, I guess.
I've seen speculation about a Cali tax strike et al, and a west coast split.

I worry for everyone too. I feel like I am watching a slow motion car crash.

I don't see it ending well, but hopefully it does. There's an entire infrastructure ready to step in if needed, I think.

[minoanmiss]

Word.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, 100%. I lose it every time some Canadian shithead, including basically all major political parties, talks about, "well, we do need to limit immigration" fucking WHY. Who makes your food and builds your house exactly???

[dewline]

I don't see the point of limiting immigration either at this point for a number of good reasons, and that may be both the least and most important of them.

[dissectionist]

And works at Tim Horton’s, acts as waitstaff and cooks in restaurants, cleans hotel rooms and hospitals and schools, and all the other many, many jobs that society needs to function. I’d struggle to think of any everyday activity that isn’t in large part fueled by immigrants.

Well, the US is in the FO stage as their crops lie rotting in the fields, as they unsuccessfully beg white people to go pick fruits and vegetables.

[sabotabby]

Imagine if the news media did their job and reported on that and connected it to policy choices.

[dissectionist]

Despite my migraine, I laughed.

Though, shockingly, it is actually is happening in this case. NYT covered the farm crisis three days ago, BBC yesterday, Texas Public Radio back in Jan, tons of articles between Jan and now from lots of regional news outlets, etc. Nobody below the level of Trump lackeys wants farm workers gone.

Like, Financial Post is a shitrag, but even their coverage from Jan was sympathetic to the migrants:
https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/a-trump-voting-farmers-warning-mass-deportations-would-be-a-disaster

CBS covered the “well, we can get people to pick it if we literally give the food away for free” angle and was also very sympathetic to the migrants:
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/down-on-the-farm-a-shortage-of-agricultural-labor/

So yeah, in this case the media actually IS doing the thing… but I don’t think it’ll change anything. I don’t see any Fox News outlets or OAN covering it from the POV of the farmers and/or migrants, and those are the only outlets that Trumpians trust. All the centrist, center-right, and center-left news outlets in the world can cover it and it’s still only going to reach the people that are already frustrated by the situation anyway.

And the far-right outlets will continue to pump out their manufactured reality where any issues are Biden’s fault and those problems Biden left are REALLY REALLY HUGE, and it’ll take Trump some time to shovel all of Biden’s shit, and nothing that happens now is Trump’s fault because he’s busy shoveling.

[kore]

Fucking seriously.

[minoanmiss]

/I am a tiny bit pleased that I looked at the "sit down" advice and thought "that is nonsensical and dangerous". Now to counter it.

[sabotabby]

I've been pointing it out where I see it—no one is posting it maliciously, but a lot of folks have never been to a protest before and it shows.

[rachelmanija]

There was literally one car on fire. People set more than one car on fire if they're really excited about sports!

That being said, the protests are getting bigger. Angelenos don't like being occupied by a military force.

[sabotabby]

Oh, I remember from the G20 in Toronto when there were two cop cars on fire (at least one of which was determined to have been set on fire from the inside with all doors locked, so, make of that what you will). That was all the news showed.

I imagine most people don't like being occupied by a military force, something that the US gub'mint fails to learn time and time again.

[blogcutter]

Avoiding bridges during protests of any kind is good advice, but unfortunately it's not easy to follow in our neck of the woods, where we straddle a major provincial border! Like, many of us live in Ontario and work in Quebec, or vice versa. Or have kids/grandkids living on the other side, which was an issue during pandemic lockdowns. I remember picketing on bridges during a public service strike in the early 1990s. Funny, that. I distinctly remember a colleague, talking about the 1988 federal election (virtually a referendum on the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement), who said "I certainly don't want Canada to become the 51st state!" Now look where we are, 37 years later, where that precise scenario is being proposed. We're complaining about tariffs while the U.S. president has no regard for the FTA or NAFTA or any other agreements for that matter.

All that said, I don't intend to participate in protests or much of anything else this weekend, as I'm still recuperating from an exhausting (though very stimulating) conference of the Association of Canadian Archivists this week (P.S.the closing session was a conversation between our Librarian & Archivist of Canada and the former U.S. National Archivist thatTrump fired).

[sabotabby]

Oh, it's fine to walk over a bridge. The advice is more like don't try to shut down a bridge. I've seen it used successfully once here (Tamil protests during the genocide in Sri Lanka) but mostly it gets used to kettle demonstrators.

[blogcutter]

Yup, I remember the Tamil protests too. I was still in the workforce at the time and my commute home began with sitting in an OCTranspo bus on the Mackenzie King Bridge for a couple of hours (literally) while the Tamil Tiger protesters did their thing. Fortunately I had a good book with me! While I respect anyone's right to protest, their methods don't necessarily garner the sympathy or support even of those who are otherwise kindly disposed towards them, let alone their opponents or those on the fence (or the bridge!) Interesting that you say their bridge shutdown protest in Toronto was a success.

[kore]

But a DUMPSTER was set on fire! No not the dumpster!!

[sabotabby]

One dumpster? Or the entire country?