On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

Okay, I'm back.

Hosted by the Roddenberry people - yes, that Roddenberry family! - and they apologize up-front for the sound quality as it was recorded at Star Trek Las Vegas 2023. The panel title was inspired, of course, by Carl Sagan...

https://www.missionlogpodcast.com/the-demon-haunted-panel-live-at-stlv-2023/

I hope everyone involved got home safe from Las Vegas. Of course, I remain convinced that the Pandemic in Progress is not yet done with us. We need to do more work on multiple fronts, including resuming masking-up properly.

Depending on where you are, you may need to fiddle with VPNs to read this.

https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1560326928787202049

The title and summary of his opinion is in the URL. I'm not convinced that Mr. Maher is correct, and unsure of how much progress we're making towards building a more just society, but he has a case to make here.

https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/canada-has-shifted-to-the-left/

Once upon a time, Sarah Gelbard was my editor.

I'm going to heed a reading recommendation of hers.

Norway adds trans people to the "protected" list in their hate-crime laws.

https://www.reuters.com/article/norway-lgbt-lawmaking/norway-outlaws-hate-speech-against-trans-people-idUSKBN2852DL

CBC reporter Anthony Germain learns lessons about addiction.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/germain-pointofview-brothers-1.5852908

Baltimore Sun reporter David Zurawik on the need for a proper post-mortem among journalists in the wake of the Trump "Administration":

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/columnists/zurawik/bs-ed-zontv-trump-media-no-mercy-20201222-twriwoeftncvtc7vy7u6pldqj4-story.html

A boon of sorts for some of the bookstores I deal with:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/bookstore-business-rises-during-lockdown-1.5837661

Listening to this on the radio at the moment, after getting some morning and afternoon chores done here:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/writersandcompany/zadie-smith-s-latest-book-intimations-reflects-deeply-on-isolation-and-injustice-1.5729946

"Racial contempt" as a concept...I accept that it's real. "Fear of poverty"? Also real. Also fear of poverty as a contagion...as a related concept. I am certain that I have been taught those latter two concepts, whether my teachers realized what they were doing as such or not. I hope I wasn't successfully taught racial contempt. I plan to assume the attempt was made to bake it into my education.

Watched Black Panther on ABC tonight.

I am mildly surprised that they decided to not do commercial breaks for this showing. And I shouldn't have been surprised by that, not in today's context.

I am mildly annoyed by the removal of Shuri's middle finger moment. A small thing, but still...

I think Disney HQ got this mostly right tonight. But I don't and shouldn't get to have the last word on this point.

Thanks to twistedchick for pointing this essay out to me:

https://longreads.com/2020/06/18/the-long-con-of-britishness/

Good on Laurie Penny for this. She's been good for sometimes brutal honesty about the worlds we live in - real and fictional - for a few years now. This is another aspect of that work of hers.

And this comes to mind in particular:

"If you love your country and don’t own its difficulties and its violence, you don’t actually love your country. You’re just catcalling it as it goes by."

Canada's existence in its present form is another consequence of that long con, and the people living here are dealing with being consequences of that as well. Consequences for each other. We are a mess right now. We can do better. We can be better.

Whether we end up with balkanization back into what the Indigenous nations had before first contact with the European nations whose leaders wanted empires built upon the burned bones and spilled blood of the locals; into a mix of Indigenous and Settler holdings; the next conquest of the American Trumpist fascism if that survives this November upcoming; or something else hopefully unified by freely made choice and better for its struggles to accept our own ugly truths and better angels...?

I don't know yet.

Yes, I'm on the Broadbent Institute mailing list for reasons.

So I'm looking this over right now...an opinion piece by one Marshall Auerbach. I don't recall reading their work before, but I want to look this over carefully.


https://www.broadbentinstitute.ca/canada_s_response_to_the_coronavirus_better_than_the_us_worse_than_eu

Some of you will remember her name from her days at CBC, others from her time at the Wikimedia Foundation...and if you have an hour to spare, you might be interested in listening to this:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/a-matter-of-life-and-death-sue-gardner-on-public-broadcasting-1.4701029