"Minneapolis band announces name change."

Thanks for being there!

Finally have time to start listening to Lisa Peers's latest: Motor City Love Song--a story of indie-rock, romance, and changing times. Noting in particular for @sarahpinsker.bsky.social and @randeedawn.com--it's not SF/F, but related to your other literary/musical interests.

That's no moon!

Or post-1000 to 1914 (taking into account theory of David Landes's son Richard regarding burst of European energy after world doesn't end) or 1100-1914 (the 12th century renaissance may have been more long-term consequential than the Carolingian renaissance).

Programming Schedule - Awesome Con Find Awesome Con's full Programming Schedule and plan out your day with can't miss panels & events! Be in the know and where you need to go

I have a panel tonight at #AwesomeCon at 6:30--Alternate Apollo: The Fictional Space Race Goes On. Panelists are Alan Smale (@alansmale.bsky.social), Rosemary Claire Smith (@rcwordsmith.bsky.social), and Andy Duncan (@andyduncansf.bsky.social). Hope to see you there! awesome-con.com/programming/...

History of the Germans Podcast • German History Podcast German history from the coronation of Henry the Fowler in 919 AD to German Reunification in 1990 in weekly 20-30 minute episodes

My favorite podcast, History of the Germans (@hotgpod.bsky.social), thanked me for my support in today's episode! Every Thursday morning I wake up looking forward to the latest installment. Highly recommend. historyofthegermans.com

It's getting very near the end
How soon is now?

I think the locusts will just need a little nudge, and poof, no more Laura Ingalls problem.

Saw them at a couple of 9:30 Club shows back in the day--one of them on New Year's Eve with 3 other indies, and they were the most consistently enjoyable of the bunch.

Great tune.

Sorry for rambling on--anyway, I agree with you about 1984 and meta-design. As a kid, I thought that a totalitarian happiness engine like Brave New World was a more likely outcome, but societies have death drives, so 1984 seems more the platonic ideal. (The Matrix couldn't build a utopian fantasy.)

Not sure what to make of the Soviet model--it's like they tried several forms of authoritarianism under the umbrella of "communism." But they had a 70 year run. Now they're back to standard fascism, and though very destructive of our system and their own lives, doesn't seem like it has legs.

...and what we're doing doesn't seem stable at all.

--even Franco's relatively long-lived regime couldn't continue after the Basques killed his chosen successor. China seemed for a while to have come up with a more stable institutionalized group authoritarianism, but the cult of the individual leader seems to be reasserting itself...

But if our current fascists are just following that classic interwar playbook (and not looking meta like 1984), they don't seem to have solved the old problems of succession and overreach. They were vulnerable to the fall of the leader...

Yeah, definitely that. Too many current "dystopias" miss the design element--they're just bad things happening. Tyranny by dedicated group definitely can have more stability than the standard dictatorship--Big Brother seemed like a mostly fictional construct by the time of the story, right?

I think Orwell had to balance everything very precisely to make a stable system that could be a boot in our faces forever. What those who try to create such unhappiness engines will find is that they are inherently unstable. That doesn't do us much good--mostly just increases the mortality rate.

Um, I think I just stumbled on a very bad oracle indeed--something I'd forgotten from childhood because it wasn't important then. From the original table of contents/chronology for The Martian Chronicles: "August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains."

No, no, no! The problem is hypo- (and not hyper-) thermia. I checked the patient's temperature and they're Cold As Ice.

You trying seeing what love is when your eyes are filled with that double vision.

I reviewed the Chris Columbus film Young Sherlock Holmes back in the 80s--curious to see how it compares.

Agreed--my logical brain just shut down in the horror of the moment. IIRC, it was at the culmination of a downward narrative spiral for them.

The Bardo of the Toys. I think they actually "die" in that scene and in the end they incarnate into their new lives.

Whatever its ups and downs, LOTR has the perfect ending, with a sadness that readers learn to cherish. And given the prequel madness on large and small screens, that may be the only thing that's saved it from somebody attempting a sequel... so far.

On the writing side, it's a gift (and far from a given) to be able to end one's story, and on one's own terms. The patron saint of this for me is US Grant racing to finish his memoir as throat cancer was killing him. But we have plenty of examples in our genres where the author didn't get to finish

The part where Theseus feels the oncoming Thera disaster still haunts me.

Saw Michael Shannon's REM tribute band last night--the album for this tour is Life's Rich Pageant. Always loved this bit from "These Days"--maybe now more than ever:
"All the people gather, fly to carry each his burden
We are young despite the years
We are concern, we are hope despite the times"

You're saying you'd prefer a Mesoamerican end times? Me, I'm looking forward to the great anti-apocalypse, when humanity finally decides we're too old for this sh*t, and then declares to heaven & hell "come at us, ye bastards."

It was different (but not better) not too long ago, when power and status was still correlated with the number of people in one's sphere of control (like how Russian lords counted the number of "souls" on their land). But yeah, once that connection became less direct, we became extra.