Category Archives: politics

No Words, No Ideas, No Future

glbt, politics, rhetoric, transgender Leave a comment

The following blog contains mentions of suicide, child abuse, bullying, homophobia, and transphobia. Poll: Only 52% of Democrats oppose Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ policy (Yahoo! News)Alabama lawmakers approve bill that criminalizes gender-affirming care for trans youth (USA Today via msn.com)Celebrating International Asexuality Day 2022 (thefword.org.uk) I don’t remember if the dune buggy in the back corner of my family’s backyard ever really worked or not, but I remember its rusting shell staying there for year after year when I was very young. It wasn’t exactly…

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Destroyed Discourse

politics, rhetoric, videogames Leave a comment

One of the common refrains in this past week’s online discussions of the violent incident at the Oscars was just how much attention was being paid to the interactions between Chris Rock and Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith on the one hand, and how little attention was being paid to other issues that many people believe to be far more important. From global climate change to the COVID-19 pandemic to the humanitarian crisis in the Ukraine, every other news story that felt like it would…

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The Master’s Tool

politics, television Leave a comment

The following blog contains mentions of violence, bullying, and child abuse. Will Smith Apologizes to Chris Rock for Oscars Slap: ‘I Was Out of Line and I Was Wrong’ (msn.com) On page 169 of his memoir No Struggle No Progress, American education “reformer” Howard Fuller writes about taking a flight for the purpose of using corporal punishment on one of his sons, Malcolm, for an alleged act of stealing. By itself, the description of this event wouldn’t have caught my attention so much, had it…

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Anything (Someone Else Does) for a Dollar

internet, politics Leave a comment

Bandcamp Bought By Fortnite Maker Epic Games (Spin via yahoo.com) I’d been looking forward to this month’s Bandcamp Friday for a while. The fact that Bandcamp has been willing to forgo its usual fees for selling music in order to assist independent musicians, who have been even more likely to suffer serious problems due to the pandemic than musicians with record deals, was a cool enough thing to start with, but I’ve been making an effort this year to give even more to independent artists.…

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Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost

politics, videogames Leave a comment

Nintendo announces closure of Wii U and 3DS eShop (Yahoo! News) I used to carry mini-notebooks around to jot down ideas in, and I can still distinctly remember making a list of video games I wanted to buy at some point in the nineties. One of those games was Arcana, a dungeon-crawler JRPG for the Super Nintendo along the lines of Shining in the Darkness for the Sega Genesis. I’d rented Arcana a couple of times, and while it didn’t feel like anything particularly special…

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