Category: Commentary

If you read nothing else today, read this by Kameron Hurley. It will take you a while so get a warm drink or a sugary lozenge and buckle up.

I remember being on the train in Chicago in a car with about a dozen other people. On the other side of the car, a man suddenly fell off his seat. Just… toppled over into the aisle. He started convulsing. There were three people between me and him. But nobody said anything. Nobody did anything.

I stood up, “Sir?” I said, and started toward him.

The entire article is about how we have a common and distasteful narrative of our lives and we struggle through sheer inertia and laziness to break out of it. It affects more than half the population in very negative ways. As we accept the normal narrative, we reinforce it. How a parent or mentor accepts these tropes has a direct effect on children and apprentices. It becomes necessary for us to upset these toxic memes and develop a new narrative that can be accepted. In this new narrative, any human can express themselves, any human can excel and position is based on merit. It works for all of us too as in the new narrative, the tyrants of the old narrative are forgiven.

It makes me wonder again how to write the stories I want to write. How I have struggled to write good narrative for my far-future heroine, Kesho Mbaye in my FRONTIER game. I struggle because I want to get it right; Kesho deserves more than a sidelining or to be the spoils of any male-pride display. She becomes an adult in a world that has been made free of the social tyranny of before and where the robber barons have been punished. Her life is hard but she knows she has the power to make the world a better place.

Kesho, a Zambian-born farmers daughter, rebuilds education in a post-apocalytpic Earth, scratching words in the sand and founding a series of international schools. She is mentioned first in helping her father as he tills the fields but as soon as she is able to cast off the shackles of societal duty, she does. And then she flies.

Kesha’s spiritual successor in the story is Masira Ba, another woman whose impact was to give humanity the first steps off the ruined earth and into futuristic space habitats. At no point do I mention her husband or the male influences of her life, I do mention the success of her sisters.

I want to make the default different. It’s hard to find an action movie without the hero being white or male or both. Even when the protagonist is female, there are often compromises and the writers forget they are dealing with humans and not just archetypes. Those of us who remember how awesome it was to see Ripley save the day in Aliens for the first time probably witnessed a sea change in the media. Yes, it took science fiction to do it but in the straight horror genre, she would have continued as the Lost Girl/Lady Survivor archetype. But give that archetype a machine-gun duct-taped to a flamethrower and you’ve just changed the narrative.

Thanks to @AngieMcKeown for pointing out the article to me.

Jemima Kiss writes at the Guardian:

What if a bionic leg is so good that someone chooses to amputate?

This raises some intensely challenging issues about whether we will see a far more profound human digital divide, already hinted at in sci-fi countless times: the augmented, and the unaugmented.

Those of us who have been following sci-fi have seen this before. Witness the hero of Cyberpunk 2013, Johnny Silverhand:

Would you be happier with a bionic eye that had zoom, camera, night vision and a pico projector? Would you want rewired reflexes? Would you want a port in your temple for uploading books and content or downloading memories that you don’t think you need right now?

Would you want a second heart? A lung that could remove toxins? Maybe even a gland that helps you regulate your body fat?

(Link via @ultramegajones)

Passion has overthrown tyrants and freed prisoners and slaves. Passion has brought justice where there was savagery. Passion has created freedom where there was nothing but fear. Passion has helped souls rise from the ashes of their horrible lives and build something better, stronger, more beautiful.

– Jim Butcher

After the release of “Goldfinger”, a friend of David Brown, Aston Martin’s owner, asked him for a DB5 at cost price. After much pestering he finally relented, and presented his friend with a brand new Aston and an invoice for £500 more than the usual sale price

Are you aware that businesses can apply for grant aid towards the purchase of electric cars or vans?

Are you aware that businesses are exempt from tax, excise duty and benefit charges for electric cars and vans?

Are you aware that businesses can retrieve the cost of an electric car or van against taxable profits in the year of acquisition?

How likely are you at present to purchase one or more electric vehicles for your business?

The survey is linked here:

Again it highlights to me that these advanced shaders and textures are great if you can afford them.

Honestly though, I don’t “get” the Blacksmith demo scene. It maybe shows the potential for Unity as an animation tool?

(This was a response to Denis on FaceBook attributing the need to have some respect for religion because science cannot know everything. I think it would be a grave mistake to assume religion knows anything that science has yet to find an answer for.)

Religion used to be the explanation for everything but as our science has developed, religion has retreated into the recesses where science has no business and little interest.

• The universe: Genesis or Big Bang?
• Person having fits: possession by devils or epilepsy
• Sickness: the presence of sin or germ theory

Piece by piece religion is unravelling and even the devout pick and choose what they want to follow based in their own prejudices.

Galileo had his conflict because he was one of the first to pick at the threads and he did so under possibility of death because religion has always responded with violence to those who would question its ultimate authority.

Religions like Christianity know their cards are marked in developed societies which is why they spend so much effort recruiting and indoctrinating in developing countries – where the people have not experienced the enlightenment, where they still suspect devils and call the lightning by a name. For the same reason religion insists on having access to our children – to chide them into their twisted belief systems.

Religion has murdered it’s way to dominance and you suggest we should treat it with humility? I do not think so.

A compound Spanish neologism meaning “child-buyers,” which was coined by Victor Hugo in his novel The Man Who Laughs.

Adopted as a pejorative term used for individuals and entities who manipulate the minds and attitudes of children in a way that will permanently distort their beliefs or worldview.

And we have a new word for those who are opponents of integrated education in Northern Ireland. People who wilfully distort the minds and attitudes of children, installing bitterness and fear where there is innocence and acceptance.