The illo for “All the Songs”―assembled by me, actually, using elements courtesy of Liam Andrew and Dai Mar Tamarack. Not too long ago—back before Covid took me out for the holidays— I attended the BUG’s latest fiction launch, sharing drinks with a horde of her fans and students from all walks of life. One such […]
Archive for rant
15
Nov
2021
COP/out
“Governments should be afraid of their people”—Alan Moore It was our “last chance to act”, according to Sheldon Whitehouse of the Democratic Party. The “last best hope for the world”, according to John Kerry. Boris Johnson invoked James Bond doomsday machines, declared it “one minute to midnight”, and warned that “If we don’t act now […]
29
Jun
2021
Family Values: or, Lipsticking the Pig.
From an upcoming lecture on Architecture and Design: This guy I know wanted to get his kids vaccinated against Covid. Got a special deal: took them across the border to Scarborough, handed them special forms that said they worked for a company called—I kid you not—”Matrix”; and told them that if anyone asked about their […]
11
Jun
2021
215 Little Indians: Or, How is Chevron like the Vatican?
“an act … committed for a political, religious, or ideological purpose that is intended to intimidate the public, or a subset of the public … or to compel a person, government or organization (whether inside or outside Canada) from doing or refraining from doing any act, and that intentionally causes one of a number of […]
22
Jan
2020
DeHumanize
Back before Christmas, Bakka-Phoenix hosted a launch for Sentient Tumor. In the course of that event—during the traditional Reading Of The Excerpts— I revisited a 2015 scenario in which gut flora reprogram the brain’s anger and image-recognition macros via the Vagus Nerve. People thus weaponized could be driven into a violent rage at the site […]
26
Oct
2018
The Adorable Optimism of the IPCC.
They showed us why we were there: the dust zones, the drowned coastlines, the weedy impoverished ecosystems choking to death on centuries of Human effluent. They showed us archival video of the Koch lynchings, which made us feel a little better but didn’t really change anything. —”Hotshot” People have noticed. I got it in Lviv. […]
29
Mar
2017
Cambridge Analytica and the Other Turing Test.
Near the end of the recent German movie “Er Ist Wieder Da” (“Look Who’s Back”), Adolph Hitler— transported through time to the year 2015— is picking up where he left off. On the roof of the television studio that fueled his resurgence (the network thought they were just exploiting an especially-tasteless Internet meme for ratings), […]
11
Jul
2016
Shooting Back.
For at least three years now— probably longer— I’ve been worrying at a perpetually-unfinished blog post that tries to take an economic approach to murders committed by cops. I’ve never posted it, for reasons that should be obvious when I outline its essentials. The basic argument is that conventional attempts to reform police behavior are […]
09
May
2016
The Smoke of That Great Burning.
There was a time, a few weeks ago, when I reconsidered my decision to stay out of the US. Most of you know that I’m banned from entering that country anyway. What you may not know is that, as of last summer, I don’t have to be. There’s a kind of expiration date on my […]
08
Oct
2015
Squirrel!
So that thing I can’t talk about is looking more likely to happen, and the rest of my 2015 is looking increasingly hectic, so (with the exception of the occasional Nowa Fantastique reprint) any blog posts I’m likely to make for the next little while will be short on deeply researched science and long on […]
