politics

This is important

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It’s common to hear that the current financial crisis was caused by government meddling, specifically the Community Reinvestment Act. This is a Big Lie.

It’s important to fight these sorts of lies; they cripple our ability to fix the problem and to avoid a repeat in the future. Never mind holding guilty parties responsible, we need to have an accurate model of the way the world works.

Read that article and spread the word. It’s important.

Update: Comments are closed, even though I don’t have a plug-in that would allow me to turn them off without deleting comments already posted. Take the discussion elsewhere, please.

Randomness for Halloween

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1) The World’s Most Controversial Lego Model.

2) The Schweizer Guide to Spotting Tangents. Some nuance on comic art that I hadn’t heard about.

3) Mount Rainier casts a shadow on the clouds.

4) “Dude,” I said. “These people aren’t protesting money. They’re not protesting banking. They’re protesting corruption on Wall Street.”

5) Dahlia Lithwick earns respect for this article on Occupy Wall Street and modern media messaging.

6) Only remaining martial arts master searches for a student worthy of learning shastar vidya.

7) Creepy Old-Time Halloween Photos. Yeah, it’s a slide show. They’re still really creepy.

Bonus death-themed #8 because it’s Halloween and not all of these are holiday-related: A fantastic obituary.

Nicked from James Nicoll

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This is brilliant:

It’s also unavoidable in its implications and of course we as a people will do our best to completely forget about it.

If you can’t see the embed above, you can watch this talk here.

Randomness for 10/19

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1) We are the 1%, bitches.

2) The tragedy series.

3) Infographic political statements on your legal tender.

4) How taxing is it to run in heavy armor?

5) The world’s largest rooftop farm is in New York.

6) Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance.

7) The Dungeons and Dragons Coloring Book from 1979. These images are perfectly sized for printing. Just sayin’.

Randomness for 10/13

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1) What it’s like to work on a show in trouble.

2) Saveur magazine invites comix artists to write and draw their favorite recipes. Wonderful.

3) Cameos carved in Oreo cookies.

4) Cat vs. Hairdryer. Video.

5) Six big economic myths, debunked.

6) Super-rich superheroes (and villains) are the 1%!

7) TV/movie starships, to scale.

Randomness for 10/10

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1) Evangelicals try to rebrand Halloween into “Jesusween” because what’s more important that Jesus’s ween?

2) Photos of people scared shitless at a haunted house. This is so freaking amazing I don’t even know.

3) Ten stubborn food myths that just won’t die.

4) Want to see part of a mountain fall into the sea? Video.

5) I include this because it looks great and is technically well done, even if the “story” isn’t: Stop-Motion Ninja duel. Video.

6) This is why I’m not nostalgic about Steve Jobs, even though my home is full of stuff he sold.

7) This post by Ezra Klein is pretty good chronicling of the errors made when the Obama administration designed their stimulus.

Bonus link: There’s a site re-posting old Usenet articles exactly 30 years after they were originally posted. Use your newsreader: nntp.olduse.net.

Randomness for 10/6

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1) This is the guy who should be redesigning DC’s rebooted heroes.

2) Artwork created in rice fields.

3) The 20 Biggest Idiots on Facebook. via Marisol

4) Spooky Victorian Mansions made of Legos.

5) Who Killed Videogames, A Ghost Story

6) Microphotography contest winners.

7) “We are the 1%.”

Occupy Wall Street

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And other cities, too.

This is not the political post I promised. This is something I dropped in comments on Chuck Wendig’s G+ and thought should be reposted here, regarding the protestors who kicked off the formerly much-ignored Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

“Here are my thoughts: Hippies protest something. The rest of the country responds in this order:

Sneers at them.
Punches them.
Lectures them about how they should dress and behave so their fellow citizens will take them seriously.
Accuse them of being unrealistic.
Accuse them of being insincere.
Declare them “the fringe” and exclude their ideas.
Finally, years later, silently admit that they were right.”

At some point, the mainstream is going to stop attacking them and will start paying attention.

Friday quick notes

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1) I’m taking the family to see Steven Tobolowski live on our local NPR affiliate this morning. Exciting! My son loves his show (my son loves oral storytelling) and we can’t wait to see how it goes. And I don’t think I have to say that I’m also a big fan of Steve Scher, the interviewer.

2) I get a lot of people asking me about the status of the Twenty Palaces books, so I’m going to say: Please stop. I’m waiting to hear something official from my editor at Del Rey, but I’m not going to announce anything until I get the final word from them.

Believe me, when I finally hear, the first person I share the news with will be my wife. The second person will be the whole rest of the world. But it’s a stressful time right now, so please don’t keep prodding me. When I know, you’ll know, believe me.

3) After years of hearing about other writers receiving anthology invitations, I’ve started getting some of my own. The only one I’m sure I’m allowed to talk about is a book related to Evil Hat’s Don’t Rest Your Head rpg, which is being edited by Chuck Wendig. And I have a nasty little story idea in mind…

4) I sent a revised copy of A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark to my agent. New book! Hopefully soon.

5) I’ve been planning a large politics post for quite a while, and hearing that the U.S. government just killed a U.S. citizen without due process is prodding me to get around to it. Watch (or avoid) this space.

Norway first and only

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There are a lot of things I want to talk about, but Norway is just too big right now. It overshadows all sorts of other discussions I might want to have.

My sympathies to the families who have lost loved ones, especially their children.