It’s always interesting to see how long it takes to get everything loaded in at a given convention-and how it differs both from other years of that con, and from other conventions both at the same venue and at other venues. For a business, this can make a huge difference-being ready to sell when the doors open, vs scrambling to get things out of ( Read more... )

We're growing familiar with the problem of how Big Data (the compilation of enormous amounts of statistical information) can erode privacy, often by correlating information in ways that enable to identify individuals in unexpected ways. I've often compared it to Lovecraft's famous quote about correlating the contents of our mind -- sometimes it's ( Read more... )

This week's Odd Prompts writing challenge at More Odds than Ends was from Padre: Their method of selecting their leaders was arcane and misunderstood by outsiders, but surprisingly effective.Given that I received it the day after the general election here in the US, it seemed quite appropriate. So I immediately started thinking about which of my ' ( Read more... )

Online bullying is one of the new frontiers in the ways human beings can be cruel to one another. One individual, known as "Rabid," took it to new extremes on Discord, to the point that it became of interest to agencies dealing with terrorism ( Read more... )

There's a new vignette challenge over at Sarah Hoyt's blog. My effort is from the Grissom Timeline, as Lisa Fox has to maintain her cover in the face of appalling ignorance of a subject she knows intimately.

marycatelli has a new vignette challenge on her Dreamwidth blog. My effort is from the Chaffee Artilect 'verse, as Sierra is about to be punishedThere's ( Read more... )

This panel at Windycon is moderated by our own mount_oreganoMen and women think and observe the world in different ways, and there is strong evidence that this is the result of hormone-driven differences in the architecture of the male and female brain. Given that throughout history, the majority of authors, and particularly the "canonical" authors who are ( Read more... )

With all the crazy stuff going on this week (the election, the horror in Amsterdam), I'd completely forgotten that this weekend is Windycon. I'd intended to do a Bittercon for it, since we haven't been able to go to it since it lost money for us two years in a row, 2016 and 2017 ( Read more... )

I had been planning to post some reflections on the repeated use of the "Nazi" card in relation to Trump backfiring on the Harris campaign and the Democrats in general. And then I read several news reports on the outbreak of violent Jew-hate in Amsterdam, as thugs of Arab Muslim origin attacked fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv, an Israeli soccer team, ( Read more... )

Back in the 1990's, cold medicines would clear your nose and sinuses right away. I still remember being able to take cold medicine and feel almost as good as I would without a cold ( Read more... )

What a ride it's been.

One thing I've noticed in my circle of friends and family is how many people weren't voting for someone, so much as they were voting against the other candidate. Sure, we've had a long history of "voting for the skunk that stinks least," but this year it seemed that the main qualification for "stinks least" often was NOT $ ( Read more... )