Tag Archives: rant

Writing

Why I hate Batman… someone on Bluesky asked!

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Someone on Bluesky asked me to talk about Batman. So, here I am, talking about Batman!

I’ll start off with a good “fuck Batman.” And let me tell a personal anecdote: I can read, basically, because of Batman. I’ve got a case of dyslexia. But – mostly by coincidence – when I was about five, my mother bought a box of comics at a garage sale. This big ol’ box of comics! Most of them were Batman comics, and I read the hell out of them. The images made it easier to put together the words, and the content motivated me to try. I can say with absolute sincerity if not for Batman comics, I might be semi-literate today. I think comic books are a great introduction to the world of literature. And for many years afterward, Batman was my favorite superhero. But, y’know, fuck Batman. Times change, and so do people.

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Political

Social media’s bias is money and power

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This video by a Danish military expert, Anders Puck Nielsen, talks about social media and how to improve it. What he suggests is typical of most well-meaning people who want to improve social media, but all of them are at least slightly bizarre because we all know that won’t happen without government regulation.

While watching Nielsen’s post, I saw some fnords. First, Nielsen starts by suggesting an unbiased algorithm. He’s talking about right-wing versus left-wing. He ignores – as do most people – that the biggest and most significant bias in social media algorithms is the one that creates profitability for their owners. I’d say that most of social media’s problems for society have this as their root: they are designed to make their owners fabulous amounts of cash and give them enormous power, and they’re highly successful in that goal, and everything else flows from the “make money and grow powerful” imperative.

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Political, Writing

Calling a Spade, a Spade: Neil Gaiman is a Rapist

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One of the reasons George Carlin is, in my estimation, one of the greatest comics of all time is because I keep going back to his work. This time, his bit where he tells us to be suspicious when people keep adding syllables to existing terms to diminish the impact. How “shell shock,” a powerful phrase, eventually become “post-traumatic stress disorder.” There was this term “shell shock,” and it is highly evocative. It’s direct, and the alliteration is powerful. It brings to mind the horrors of war.

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Table Top Role-Playing Games

Dungeons & Dragons Madness with the Open Game Licence

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I’m gonna talk about Dungeons & Dragons. I have more research-oriented, If God Did Not Exist stories queued up – and doing that writing has demanded that I do additional research that’s, y’know, reading books – but I’m trying to keep this whole blog thing semi-active. Thus, D&D talk, or, more exactly, the brouhaha around D&D right now.

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Political

Thoughts on the future of trumpism

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I woke up today and saw the news, and it was suddenly… sane.

I am no great fan of Democratic politics.  As I’m a leftist, I hadn’t seen a distinct difference between the two parties.  I often have characterized Democratic politics as a “cooling off” for Republican policies – a part of the country’s rightward shift.  Republicans will do something (say, start to bomb other countries with drones willy-nilly), and Democrats will freak out… but Democratic administrations will use the powers instituted by the Republicans. At that point, the Democrats shut up about it.  Pretty much everything in the war on terror – drone assassinations, torture, secret and illegal detention, etc. – are now part of US politics.

Trump made me modify my view.  Previously, I had considered the Republicans more doctrinarian and disciplined about their doctrine.  While I found their doctrine odious, there was consistency for it.  What Trump did – and this might be his lasting contribution to the Republican Party and conservatives, in general – is fracture that consistency.

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Book Reviews, Writing

Creating alternate timelines is weird

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Like, narratively weird.  As a sci-fi writer, the thing that gets into my head is… where does the energy come from?  A fair number of sci-fi stories – and this has been brought on by me (trying) to read William Gibson’s Agency – a future alternate timeline has a bit of a cottage industry of going back in time and messing stuff up to “see what happens.”  It is established that these alternate timelines are physically real and distinct.

So, every time some hobbyist gets an inch, they can go and create – materially, physically create – an alternate timeline?

WHERE DOES THE ENERGY COME FROM?!   How is all the free energy not the biggest point of all of this?!

Ahem.  That is all.

Book Reviews

Thoughts on A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

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I’ve finished reading A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, a seriocomic take on the Libertarian Free State Movement by illustrating what happened when the “Free Town Movement” came to Grafton, New Hampshire.

In short, it’s a funny book if you like black humor. (I do.) I am also amused that a couple years ago, I was seriously considering writing a novel that would be a spiritual successor to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The question central to the novel would be, “What happens to Galt Gulch if it was based on other libertarian attempts to create a utopia?” I planned for it to be a horror novel. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is, essentially, what I was going to write, except funny, and with bears.

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Table Top Role-Playing Games

Bein’ Critical of Twitch-streamed D&D Games!

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OK, then, more talk about tabletop RPGs on Twitch. This is where I get critical.

Most games on Twitch are Dungeons and Dragons. This is expected. I don’t play D&D anymore, and I haven’t for several years – and even when I did play it, well, I have been told I don’t play it in a very D&D way. I now have a much better idea of what that means.

Because, here’s the thing, when you start a game – and many of them do start in this exact way – saying a tiefling, a dragonkin, and a drow walk into a bar… that’s not the lead-in to an adventure. That’s an introduction to a fantasy-themed joke.

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