Alas, a Blog | Feminist, anti-racist, pro-fat, plus whatever else we feel like talking about.

Drawing for April 2, 2019: Wentworth

Posted on April 2, 2019 by Mandolin

This is Wentworth, a scheming dachshund that I designed as a character for a role playing game about cats and dogs living together (called Cats and Dogs Living Together).

In his thirteen years, Wentworth has fully explored what he wants from life–accumulating large amounts of food and coveted objects, particularly stolen ones. The eleven pound miniature dachshund isn’t brilliant, but he is devious, and likes manipulating other animals to get what he wants or cause a stir. However, he has a weakness for puppies, kittens, and children.

His goals are to steal, manipulate, and enjoy the good things in life.

(Originally posted to my patreon)

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Just in case you were wondering…

Posted on April 2, 2019 by Richard Jeffrey Newman

Here’s definitive proof that poets are in it for the money—which, I hasten to add, takes away not a single iota of my gratitude to CavanKerry Press for keeping my book alive 13 years after it was published. I have always believed that poetry does its work very slowly, one book and one reader (and sometimes one poem and one reader) at a time. I don’t know who bought these two copies of The Silence of Men, but I hope the poems are bringing them not just pleasure, but meaning and fulfillment. It makes me very happy that the book is still finding its way into readers’ hands.

Posted in Writing | 3 Comments

Trains, Brains, and Computers

Posted on April 1, 2019 by Mandolin

When I teach my speculative fiction class (there’s a section this weekend, by the way!), I like to talk to the students about the most popular varieties of speculative poetry. A lot of speculative poetry is narrative, or works with imagery from mythology and folk tales.

One of my favorite varieties is poetry that uses science as a metaphor for understanding the human condition. Using sciencey science–the kind we teach in the classroom–may be relatively recent in the scope of human history, but as far as I can tell, people have used elements of the natural world to describe their inner lives as far back as we can track.

Concrete descriptions of the external world provide a way of translating ineffable internal states into concrete, shared experiences. I may not be able to point to the sensation of happiness, but I can point to grass–or photosynthesis–as something that exists outside myself in the world we share.

As our understanding of the world grows to incorporate more science and technology, our metaphors grow to include them. The static human behavior of looking outside to understand ourselves combines with an evolving society to give us reference points that shift over time and cultures. I love the throughlines like this we can see through human history, the ways in which we stay the same and also become different.

Here’s a cool example–apparently when we’re trying to talk about the human brain (at least in Western culture over the past couple of centuries), we tend to analogize it to cutting edge new technology.

Right now, computers are a dominant metaphor. We might talk about broad anatomical restraints as being similar to hardware, while software installation represents training that occurs within the anatomical structure. We run various programs to accomplish various tasks–our email helps us communicate, our search functions help us shuffle through data recorded in our memory banks, etc.

Before computers, there were other ascendant technologies, such as trains. Instead of comparing mental functions to hardware and software, they’re described as engine parts, or infrastructure. The things that keep trains on track become metaphors for the things that keep the human brain ticking.

In some ways, these are useful, clarifying metaphors. In other ways, they elide the plasticity of the brain. To risk extending the computer metaphor in the wrong direction, our software changes our hardware and vice versa. If we think of ourselves too strictly as machines, we risk ignoring the many other ways in which humans are not predictable systems of inputs leading to outputs. Like all metaphors, brain-as-technology rides a line between clarifying and confusing.

Science fiction wrestles with how to figure out the universe and our place in it. Poetry allows writers to focus on metaphors and internal states. Science fiction poetry can get straight to the point and ask, “What can we learn about ourselves from the world around us?”

Here’s a poem I wrote using the moon as a metaphor:

Moon, part II

White,
like the blankness
of a page.

Distant,
like friends
I’ve lost,

Like time
that’s passed,

Like youth
whose optimism winnowed
into the finite.

Alone,
against the stars
with no one to call,
no man, no lady, no rabbit,

only the footprints of men
who won’t return.

You can register for the class here: www.kittywumpus.net/blog/speculative-poetry-with-rachel-swirsky/

Posted in brains, Essays, metaphior, Poetry, Rachel Swirsky's poetry, science, SFF, Verses of Sky & Stars, Writing | Comments Off

Cartoon: If A Fetus Could Talk

Posted on March 31, 2019 by Ampersand

Help me make more cartoons by supporting my Patreon!

Okay, this one is probably in bad taste. But every friend I showed this to while I was working on it laughed.

The “fetus” in this strip – who is, like the pro-life illustrations I’m lampooning, drawn unrealistically to look like a born baby – is of course speaking my views, just as the talking fetuses in pro-life cartoons speak those cartoonists’ views. Because fetuses don’t have views of their own.

I’m going to quote a blog post I wrote years ago, on this subject. Head over to that post if you’d like to read more and see some supporting links.

Here’s what “personhood” means to me: the ability to subjectively experience consciousness; to have thoughts and feel emotions; to have a personality. This ability, in humans, is located in the cortex of the brain, where all our thoughts and emotions take place.

Why am I so focused on the brain as the center of what we are? Because the brain is the only part of a person’s body that cannot be destroyed while leaving the person still alive.

To see what I mean, imagine that you get an emergency call: Someone close to you has been in a terrible accident. You rush to the hospital, and are told that your friend’s heart has been destroyed. However, a tourist from Belgium happened to die the same day, in the same hospital, and luckily is a tissue match for your friend. (Luckily for your friend, not so luckily for the dead Belgian).

Repeat the same thought exercise, except this time imagine different body parts being replaced with a part from the unfortunate Belgian. A hand transplant. A kidney. Ears. Hair. Lungs. No matter which part is replaced, it’s still your friend. You’re not mistaken to feel you have an ongoing relationship with this person, despite the new heart/hand/kidney/ear/hair/whatever.

Now imagine that the doctors say your friend’s brain was utterly destroyed in the accident. But not to worry – they have put in the Belgian’s brain. The doctors tell you that your friend now remembers an entirely different life, speaks a different native language, and has a completely new personality; but other than that, she’s still the same person you know.

Does that make any sense? Is this the same person you considered your friend? Most people would say no. The survivor of that operation wasn’t your friend; it was the Belgian tourist.

In science fiction movies like The Man With Two Brains, some people can be reduced to brains in jar, but they’re still themselves, and audiences have no trouble accepting that notion. Why does that ring true with us?

Because it gets at a core truth. Our brains – and in particular, the personality imprinted in the cortex – is the one part of a person that cannot be destroyed and still leave the person in any sense intact. But as long as that part is retained, we are still, in a meaningful sense, the same person.

So when does personhood begin? I don’t know. But I know that it can’t possibly happen before the fetus has a fully functioning cerebral cortex, capable of supporting thought.

In particular, it’s not possible for there to be any thought or awareness before the emergence of pyramidal cell dendritic spines on neurons, which happens relatively abruptly at about the 28th week. Pre-dendritic spines, the cerebral cortex might as well be a pile of gray slush, in terms of how well it can actually function.

Once the dendritic spines are in place, does the fetus become a person that instant? I doubt it. I think a working cerebral cortex is a necessary condition of personhood (in human beings, anyhow – maybe Vulcans are different), but I don’t think it’s sufficient. Once a fetus has a fully working cerebral cortex, to some extent that’s like having a blank hard drive; the hardware is all in place, but the data is still to come.

Nonetheless, as far as abortion is concerned, I find the science reassuring. Personhood, as I understand it, can’t even begin to exist until at least the 28th week – and probably doesn’t exist in any meaningful form until well after that point. But virtually all abortions – even those abortions usually referred to as “late term” abortions – take place long before the 28th week of pregnancy.

The first panel is true – I really did have this conversation, with my housemate Sarah, which inspired this strip.

The art in this strip was very easy: I drew a cartoon baby with no clothes or background six times. But to do anything more, in any of those panels, would have detracted from the cartoon. To make up for it, I put a lot of work into drawing panel 1: Dumpster, litter, bricks drawn in perspective, etc.

Panel 7 – “notice who they’re leaving out?” – describes nearly all pro-life arguments.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has eight panels.

Panel 1

A woman and a man are walking down a city sidewalk, chatting. The woman is looking a little irritated; the man is holding up a finger in a “that gives me an idea!” gesture.

WOMAN: You know the genre of political cartoon I hate? Pro-life cartoons with a fetus lecturing from inside a womb!

MAN: I should draw one of those!

Panel 2

This panel, and almost all the remaining panels, show a fetus inside a vaguely drawn womb shape, which is itself in a blank void. The fetus, who is drawn to look like a baby rather than like a fetus, is smiling and talking directly to the reader.

FETUS: Hi folks! I’m Frank the friendly fetus, talking from inside the womb!

Panel 3

A close-up of the smiling fetus’ face. He’s pointing at his head with one finger.

FETUS: Except not really, because you know what? My cerebral cortex isn’t functioning yet!

Panel 4

FETUS: So I can’t talk! Or think! Or feel anything at all – not even pain!

Panel 5

The fetus is giving the “thumbs up” gesture with both hands.

FETUS: So if you need an abortion, go for it! It’s okay! I literally feel nothing and have no preferences!

Panel 6

For the first time, the fetus looks serious rather than smiling. It’s raising a forefinger to make a point.

FETUS: I’m not a person! But the pregnant person is! So it’s up to them to decide!

Panel 7

This panel shows a dark-haired pregnant woman, in a dress and carrying a purse, walking through what looks like a park. The word balloon leads down to her pregnant stomach.

FETUS: Speaking of which, pro-life cartoons often show wombs floating in a blank void. Notice who they’re leaving out?

Panel 8

A shot of the smiling fetus, who is holding up a medical instrument in one hand.

FETUS: In summary: Abort me! Or don’t! It’s your choice!

FETUS: Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights, Cartooning & comics, Feminism, sexism, etc | 16 Comments

Cartoon: Dear (Some Of) My Fellow Lefties

Posted on March 26, 2019 by Ampersand

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When Trump won the Republican nomination, I wasn’t worried about what he’d do as President, because I was confident that Clinton would win. (If the 2016 election taught me anything, it’s not to trust my own abilities as a prognosticator.) Instead, I was dreading the inevitable fat jokes about Donald Trump I’d hear coming from the left until November.

And there have been fat jokes. (But many fewer, I think, than I would have heard ten years earlier. The fat acceptance movement has made some progress.)

But it’s still pretty common for me to hear fellow lefties say things that make me inwardly wince. Not every time I talk to a lefty, not even most of the time, but often enough so it’s not surprising. Sometimes I say something to them. Sometimes, I’m embarrassed to admit, I don’t feel up to a possible conflict, or I don’t want to be a killjoy, so I let it go by.

Once after a comic-con, I was hanging out with some other cartoonists as we prepared to go home. We were talking about a cartoonist who was not present, and who has a rep for being full of himself and hard to deal with. And one of the other cartoonists – a woman who I have loads of respect for, and who is extremely “woke” – included “fat” on a list of the third cartoonist’s bad traits. I don’t remember her exact words, but it was something like “that smug, lying, fat, entitled jerk.”

I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want to bring the mood down, and anyhow I was exhausted and I like this woman. Honestly, it happens pretty commonly, and I generally shrug it off. But that doesn’t mean I don’t notice it.

What was extraordinary about this occasion is that the cartoonist wrote me that night, unprompted, to apologize. That’s never happened to me before. She said she should have known better, because she’s read my cartoons.

Wow. Now, that made me feel good. (And made my respect for this cartoonist rise.)

It’s not just fat jokes, of course. This cartoon touches on a bunch of areas, and I could have included more. (I didn’t because I figured that eight panels of lefties saying bad things is as many I could do without causing readers to sigh and skim the strip).

I don’t mean the final panel, of course. The “personality” of my comic strips is often harsher than I am in person; political cartoons work best when they’re not wishy-washy. I don’t want everyone who’s ever said one of these things to get off my side. (I’ve said some of these things, in my life. Maybe you have too.) All of us mess up sometimes. And we can all – like my friend who used “fat” as an insult – take the opportunity to do better. That’s what I want.

Strips like this one, with a different character in each panel, are the most fun strips to draw, and I usually enjoy looking at them once I’ve finished. In this strip, since I’m teasing people on the left for a change, I decided to draw caricatures of the kind of folks I see around Portland. (Yes, there really are people who look like the dude in panel 3!).

(Quick aside: Once I was waiting at the bus stop across the street from my studio, with a middle-aged lady I didn’t know. While we were waiting there, six or seven bike riders, all naked, whizzed past us. After a few moments, the woman sighed deeply and said “Portland.”)

The guy sitting on the sidewalk, in the second-to-last panel, originally had round eyeglasses. But they made him look even more like a muppet, so I erased them.

Do you like the spot reds? I don’t do that often, but maybe I should be doing it more often. In this case, there’s no symbolism in which objects I colored red; I just did it to make the art pop a bit more.

TRANSCRIPT OF COMIC

This comic strip has nine panels. The first eight panels each show a single character (a different character in each panel), speaking to the viewer.

PANEL 1

There is a caption at the top of panel 1.

CAPTION: Dear (some of) my fellow lefties:

The art shows a man sitting at a desk, laughing. He’s wearing a white collared shirt and a necktie.

MAN: Ann Coulter is a man! Haw haw!

PANEL 2

An older woman, with white hair and a floral-print blouse, is holding up her hands and laughing, as if she’s telling a joke.

WOMAN: Clarence Thomas’ parents should have named him “Tom.” Get it? Like Uncle Tom?\

WOMAN: As a white liberal, it’s totally my place to say that!

PANEL 3

A man with an enormous beard, wearing sunglasses, a bowler hat, and a coat with big puffs around the collar and wrists, speaks to the viewer, smiling. There’s a bike parked next to him.

MAN: I bet all these anti-gay conservatives are secretly gay!

MAN: Let’s laugh at them for being gay!

MAN: (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

PANEL 4

A thin woman, wearing a red knit cap, a hoodie, and hoop earrings, is speaking angrily.

WOMAN: Trump just keeps pulling lies out of his big fat ass!

WOMAN: God fat people disgust me!

WOMAN: Er… I meant, Trump disgusts me!

WOMAN: Whichever!

PANEL 5

A man, wearing glasses and a “this is what a feminist looks like” tee shirt, stands pointing to something on the screen of his tablet. There’s a hillside with paths and a couple of trees behind him.

MAN: When I see pro-life women, I think, who’d even want to get them pregnant?

PANEL 6

A person sits at a small round table, a coffee mug in front of them. They have heavily tattooed arms, the side of their head is shaved, and they’re wearing a small ring on their nose and several more in their ear. They’re smiling and holding one hand up to their mouth as if telling a dirty joke.

PERSON: Guys obsessed with protecting big guns are just making up for they lack downstairs, ifyaknowwhatImean.

PERSON: You do know what I mean, right?

PERSON: I mean penises!

PANEL 7

A woman stands outdoors, dressed for a cool day. She’s got a jacket, a scarf, and a big knit hat. She’s looking a bit aggravated as she speaks.

WOMAN: You know who votes Republican? Inbred, flyover state hillbilly retards!

PANEL 8

A redheaded man sits on a curb, leaning on one hand. He’s wearing a button-up collared shirt, open, over a striped long-sleeved tee. He’s grinning.

MAN: I love it when right-wingers get sent to prison. “Don’t drop the soap!” Ha!

PANEL 9

There is no art in this panel. Instead, the entire panel is black, except for a caption in big white letters.

CAPTION: Shut up and get the hell off my side.

Posted in Cartooning & comics | 39 Comments

Silly Interview with Debra Jess and Her Incredibly Handsome & Hunky Sidekick

Posted on March 25, 2019 by Mandolin

RS: In your bio, you say that your writing combines your love of fairy tales and Star Wars. You also write in a bunch of different genres. Do you write them singly or mix them up?

DJ: This was a question I had to give a lot of thought to. I don’t really mix-up genres so much as I dig deep into subgenres.

In the taxonomy of genre fiction, there is science-fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery, horror, western, and inspirational. Every single one of these genres has subgenres

When I decided to write Blood Surfer, I knew two things: 1) it would have superheroes and 2) it would have a romance. I didn’t give much thought as to which romance subgenre it would fall into until I had finished the manuscript. At that point I needed to figure out how I was going to market it. Around that same time I received an invitation to join the Science Fiction Romance Brigade. Before I could join, they needed to know if Blood Surfer was a science fiction romance, as opposed to a fantasy romance. When I looked back over my manuscript I realized I had created superheroes whose powers are created by their biology. There’s no magic involved, no arcane symbols, no mysterious shadows. I don’t spend a lot of pages detailing the biology, but it still falls into the genre of romance and the subgenre of science fiction.

Blood Surfer is also has thriller elements in that it’s very fast-paced, there’s a really big bad bang that will happen if the heroes don’t prevail, and a rip-roaring fight at the end.

RS) What kinds of things do you see in romance that you wish there was more of in science fiction?

DJ: HEA, or Happily Ever Afters, even if it’s not a romantic HEA. If not that, then HFN, Happy for Now (used when writing a series). Growing up in the 70s, I had a rude awakening after watching Star Wars. My dad, who worked for a newspaper, would buy boxes of books whenever the newspaper would sell the books mailed in for review. There were a lot of science fiction in those boxes because he knew how much I loved Star Wars, but every single one of the books he gave me ended with the hero dead, or these long, drawn-out pyrrhic victories that left me feeling disappointed or distressed. I was too young at the time to understand Star Was was more space fantasy or space opera than traditional science fiction. Luckily, my father didn’t give too much thought to what he was buying me, so there were also boxes filled with romances, mostly regencies or contemporaries. With maturity, I began to appreciate a less than HEA in a book, but I still prefer the HEAs you get with romances.

RS) What is your superhero name?

DJ: Agent Jess, International Woman of Mystery.

RS) Tell me about the first issue of the comic book based on your secret life as a superhero.

DJ: I first report to headquarters where my boss gives me a new assignment: stop Eric the Evil from wrecking havoc all over some exotic locale (preferably some place with beaches). Then I swing by a swanky bachelor pad to pick up my incredibly handsome and hunky sidekick (because what’s the point of having a sidekick if he isn’t handsome and hunky). We climb aboard our private jet aircraft (using our government issued credit cards) and plot how to take down EtE while enjoying several rounds of fruity drinks. Upon arrival, we track down EtE where I give him and his hench-horts (a cross between henchmen and cohorts) a big, bloody beatdown while engaging in witty repartee with my sidekick who’s busy protecting the civilians who gaze in awe at my prowess. Finally, EtE surrenders, exhausted of all witty comebacks. Then I toss EtE over to my still handsome and hunky sidekick who secures him in our indestructible and highly secure bounce house. The sidekick and I retire for a late afternoon stroll on the beach hand-in-hand (I did mention I write romances, remember?).

RS) You say that you write about ordinary people in extraordinary situations. What is it about that combination that appeals to you?

DJ: The idea that anyone, anywhere, at any time can rise to the occasion and save the day. Superhero storylines use this device all the time. Steve Rogers tried so hard to become a soldier, knowing deep down he already had the heart and the attitude of one. When he becomes Captain America, he’s already a superhero, but now his outsides matches his insides. Alternatively, Superman can leap tall buildings in a single bound, but Clark Kent still needs a day job to his pay rent and buy groceries. They are mirror images of ordinary people in extraordinary situations.

In Blood Surfer, Hannah was born with her Alt power. She can cure anyone of any wound or illness without a second thought, but she’s on the run from those who would abuse her powers. Scott has no powers when he meets Hannah, but he still disobeys orders and protects her when he knows he’s supposed to arrest her. Scott makes a brave choice knowing he could lose everything he’s worked so hard to achieve: a job he loves, his home, and his friends. That’s what heroes, not just superheroes, do.

RS) Any projects or anything else you’d like to talk about?

DJ: I’m having a lot of fun playing with my Thunder City superhero series. A Secret Rose and Blood Hunter (books 1.5 and 2) are now available. This year, I’ll be releasing A Secret Life and A Secret Love (books 2.5. and 2.6) and next year, I hope release book 3 currently titled Blood Avenger.

In the meantime, I have a couple of short stories available: Shaped By You is available in the December 2018 issue of Heart’s Kiss magazine, and Blood & Armor which is available in the Fragments of Darkness anthology.

If anyone is interested in exploring the Science Fiction Romance subgenre, I would recommend Portals published by the Science Fiction Romance Brigade. There are seven volumes of first chapters written by SFR authors. All seven volumes are free, so you can get a taste of what SFR has to offer.

Posted in debra jess, interview, Interviews | Comments Off

Cartoon: Climate Change and the Politics of Personal Purity

Posted on March 24, 2019 by Ampersand

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Wow, this one took forever to make.

It didn’t take long because of the drawing — the cross-hatching on the large figure took a little while, but on the whole this was an easy one to draw — but because of the scripting. What you’re looking at now is the third rewrite of the script. (This cartoon began life as a cartoon about corporate tax breaks!).

And to make it worse, for each of the first two scripts, it took me a while to figure out that I needed to toss out the script and rewrite — and I used that little while to start drawing the strip, drawings that then had to be thrown out too. The cutting room floor isn’t just for movies!

But that’s how it goes sometimes. I hope you like the final result.

Artistically, the main thing that excited me about this was the chance to play with scale. In my head, I’m imagining people scrolling down… and down… and down… and I think that could be a neat effect.

A lot of people engage in what I think of as “the politics of personal purity.” They have a lot of concern for the purity of what they consume: Is it locally sourced? Am I drinking the correct water? Is the bank I use doing unjust foreclosures? Does this movie have an actor with the wrong political opinions?

Maybe in some cases the politics of personal purity makes sense. But global warming is too big to be addressed by individual consumer choices.

Dealing with (or, perhaps more realistically, mitigating the effects of) global warming has to be done collectively, or it won’t be done at all. There’s nothing wrong with choosing not to use bottled water, but our actions as individuals are too small to address global warming.

Quoting Aaron Huertos of the Union of Concerned Scientists:

Rick Heede… a geographer… has done the careful work of figuring out how much of the carbon in our atmosphere can be traced back to the coal and oil that companies have extracted from the Earth.

The numbers are head-turning: Two thirds of all industrial carbon emissions come from just 90 institutions. Several of those institutions, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and Conoco Phillips, have extracted more carbon from the Earth than most countries.

As Heede put it, the heads of these institutions could fit comfortably in a Greyhound bus. And if you’ve been paying attention to the climate debate, you know that many of these same companies have spent decades deceiving the public and policy makers about science — practices that disturbingly continue to this day, despite the scientific risks of climate change becoming ever starker.

Global warming is arguably the single most important crisis we face. But our big institutions — our government and our corporations — have failed to take this as seriously as we need to. I think it’s fine to take the bus, or to bike (I do both these things), but what matters much more is electing politicians who will treat Global Warming with the urgency it requires.

Anyhow, that’s what I was trying to get across in this cartoon. I hope it worked!

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This is a five-panel cartoons; four ordinary sized panels at top, and an enormously tall final panel.

PANEL 1

We see a close-up of a woman with kinky hair, wearing a dark collared polo shirt, speaking intently, hands raised to about the height of her chin.

POLO SHIRT: Whenever I do something that contributes to global warming, I imagine smoke rising off me, fouling the atmosphere.

PANEL 2

The “camera” has zoomed out a little, and we now see that Polo Shirt is talking to a woman with dark short hair, a black tank top, and glasses. The woman with glasses has a friendly expression.

GLASSES: That’s now how climate change works.

POLO SHIRT: I know! But picturing it that way keeps me motivated.

PANEL 3

The “camera” has backed out a bit more, and we can now a large shiny black object at the right side of the panel. Polo Shirt is checking off points on her fingers.

GLASSES: So what sort of things do you do?

POLO SHIRT: I take pubic transit, I never drink bottled water, stuff like that.

PANEL 4

The “camera” has backed up still more. Polo Shirt has spread her arms apart, palms out, as she talks. To the right, we can now see more of the large dark object, which reaches up past the top of the panel, taller than the two characters.

PANEL 5

This is a very tall panel,. The “camera” has backed WAY up. The two women talking are now very tiny; we can see that the huge object next to them was a shiny black shoe. The shoe, which is approximately the same height as the women, is worn by a businessman. He’s wearing a dark three piece suit and towering above the two women like a skyscraper. The businessman is looking blankly out, holding a bottle of water in one hand and a briefcase in the other. Smoke rises from the suitcase and the water bottle, filling the air around the businessman’s head completely.

Polo Shirt is continuing to talk, and hasn’t noticed the giant businessman. Glasses is leaning back and looking up, beginning to notice the businessman.

POLO SHIRT: The most important thing we can do is clean up our own lives. There’s no better way to fight global warming.

This cartoon on Patreon.

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Environmental issues | Comments Off

Open Thread and Link Farm: Shrill Pool Party edition

Posted on March 23, 2019 by Ampersand

Why it’s fine to cast POC actors in traditionally white roles, but bad to cast white actors in POC roles, explained with a jar of chocolate covered raisins.
Wilbur Ross broke law, violated Constitution in census decision, judge rules – The Washington Post
“Ross claimed he was acting at the request of the Justice Department in the interest of enforcing the Voting Rights Act. In reality, the “evidence establishes” that the voting rights explanation was just “a pretext” and that Ross “acted in bad faith” when he claimed otherwise. He pursued the citizenship question after hearing from then-White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon and Kris Kobach, the vice chair of Trump’s now-disbanded voting fraud commission.”
Volunteers Sentenced for Leaving Food and Water for Migrants in the Arizona Desert – Hit & Run : Reason.com
Federal judge shuts down Trump administration’s discrimination against children of same-sex couples.
“U.S. District Judge John F. Walter of California rejected the State Department’s startling assertion that a married gay couple’s son was born ‘out of wedlock’ and thus is ineligible for citizenship.” Fucking hell, what asshats. They’d go back to putting people in jail for gay sex in a second, if they thought they could get away with it.
Women Do Ask for More Money at Work. They Just Don’t Get It.
These findings contradict some well-known earlier studies; this study’s different findings could be because it compares men and women in similar jobs. “Previous studies that reached the “women don’t ask” conclusion often failed to account for certain types of jobs (and industries) being dominated by one gender, focusing instead on the overall number of men or women who’d reported salary negotiations, which — given the number of women who work jobs with ‘non-negotiable’ salaries — skewed their findings.” (Alternative link.)
The girl who executed Nazis after seducing them in bars dies aged 92 – NZ Herald
It’s hard not to wonder what I would have done if I had been around then. I’m certain I would not have been this courageous.
In a first, U.S. calls on German banks to close BDS accounts – BDS – Jerusalem Post
The ongoing opposition to free speech on this issue is mind-boggling.
“The Tragedy of the Commons” is a terrible and racist paper.
“…we’ve let a flawed metaphor by a racist ecologist define environmental thinking for a half century.”
It’s time to stop calling climate activists hypocrites | Ricochet
I sometimes consider doing a cartoon on this subject, except that Matt Bors has already done the perfect cartoon on this subject.
Cultured meat will now be regulated by the FDA and USDA – Vox
Interestingly, this is regulation that lab-grown meat makers are really happy about. (Because it reassures investors.)
The American Family Act, Democrats’ dramatic plan to cut child poverty, explained – Vox
It can’t pass while the Republicans hold the Senate and White House, but it’s still good to get this on the Democratic policy agenda. The plan would pay all households (except rich households) $250-$300 per child, every month. “Poverty among children would fall from 14.8 percent to 9.5 percent, meaning 4 million kids would escape poverty. Deep poverty — the share of kids living on half the poverty line or less — would fall almost by half, from 4.6 percent to 2.4 percent.”
The Curious Career of Martin Brest | Dirk Knemeyer
The director of “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Midnight Run,” “Scent of a Woman,” “Meet Joe Black” and the famously disastrous “Gigli”… and although there are rumors, no one actually seems to know where his is now.
(132) Robocalls: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) – YouTube
I thought this one is unusually funny – especially his discussion of why he won’t use snail mail, which begins at about 8:10.
‘Whores But Organized’: Sex Workers Rally for Reform | by Molly Crabapple | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books
There’s nothing new here in terms of policy proposals. But the inroads into getting support from politicians seem new to me. I’m disappointed that NY NOW rallied against the NY decriminalization bill.
Very good twitter thread by Alexandra Erin on the limits of smoking guns.
“I am convinced that no scene in any superhero movie is less realistic than Batman Returns when Batman plays Penguin saying ‘I played this city like a harp from hell!’ for Gotham and they turn on him, instead of saying ‘You don’t understand his humor.'”
(132) Flight of the Conchords- Albi The Racist Dragon
Funny parody of stupid fake liberalism. I came to this via Lindsey Ellis’ evisceration of the Beauty and the Beast live-action remake.
Alan Krueger was the rare economist whose work improved the lives of millions.
Dr. Kruger’s research on the minimum wage has been cited on “Alas” many times over the years. He was crucial to the practice of natural experiments to economics. Kruger, who advised both the Clinton and Obama administrations, was only 58, and his final book, on economics and pop music, is scheduled to be published this summer.
Ramsey Orta filmed the killing of Eric Garner — and police and prison guards have punished him for it -Chloé Cooper Jones
Content warning for prisoner abuse. A long, depressing read.
Men’s Rights Firm Teases ‘Hot New Girlfriend’ In Ad Somebody Thought Was Cool | Above the Law
A short video by a group of female animators about standing up against a serial harasser in the animation industry.
How the CDC’s opioid prescribing guideline is harming pain patients – STAT
3 Ways John Wick is Deeper Than You Realized – Kiva Bay – Medium
Interesting stuff about the use of color, and the symbolism of cars, in the first John Wick film. (I wouldn’t call it deep, but I love that film.)
What Referendum? Florida GOP Set to Exclude Up to 80% of Felons From Voting
The law requires all court fees and fines – which can be very high (“As the WLRN report detailed, any conviction for drug trafficking—even a low-level, non-violent conviction—carries a mandatory fine of $25,000 to $500,000 per count”) – to be paid before voting rights are restored. Basically, a poll tax.
Voting Rights Roundup: Iowa GOP wants to legally ban many students at public colleges from voting
Unless the students sign a statement saying they intend to remain in Iowa after graduation. But private college students don’t face this requirement.
This Cohen hearing fight was everything wrong with how America talks about “racism” – Vox
Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals | Martin Lukacs | Environment | The Guardian
A Rediscovered Portrait of Harriet Tubman Is Unveiled
Mesa Airlines Flight Attendant Held by ICE for two months Has Been Freed – but could still be deported.
She’s lived in the US since she’s a toddler, married to an American, works and pays taxes – but ICE is still trying to deport her to Peru, and might succeed. There is no logic here, no rationality – just bigotry. But this is what the Republican party wants our country to be; this is the issue, more than any other, that Trump ran on.
Opinion | Getting Rid of the Electoral College Isn’t Just About Trump – The New York Times
None of the arguments for the electoral college are true. (Alternative link.)
Tell Me I’m Fat – This American Life
I thought this episode of This American Life was really good. I was especially struck by “act 2,” in which Elna Baker, who lost 110 pounds and kept it off, discusses her experience.
‘Shrill’: A Fat Girl’s Review of Aidy Bryant Show – Variety
I think this review is very accurate, including how painful watching the first few episodes can be (despite the funny). I loved the show. (Show trailer.)
Shrill Accused of Plagiarizing Pool Party Scene. But is it a coincidence? | IndieWire
Yes, it’s a coincidence. One thing I’ve learned from political cartooning is that basic ideas are thought of by different people independently ALL THE TIME. And sometimes those people publicly accuse you of plagiarism. (Also, the pool party scene, in episode 4, is amazing – the best scene of a good series).
How ‘Shrill’ Made Aidy Bryant’s Best Outfits From Scratch
Because they had to, because they couldn’t find the clothing they wanted in Bryant’s size. (Alternative link.)

Posted in Link farms | 131 Comments

Cartoon: Doctor Austerity

Posted on March 13, 2019 by Ampersand

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Austerity – the policy of cutting government social spending in order to appease fiscal hawks (and investors and creditors) – is arguably the most harmful economic policy in the world. The economist Paul Krugman describes what was going on in 2010:

…elites all across the western world were gripped by austerity fever, a strange malady that combined extravagant fear with blithe optimism. Every country running significant budget deficits – as nearly all were in the aftermath of the financial crisis – was deemed at imminent risk of becoming another Greece unless it immediately began cutting spending and raising taxes. Concerns that imposing such austerity in already depressed economies would deepen their depression and delay recovery were airily dismissed; fiscal probity, we were assured, would inspire business-boosting confidence, and all would be well. …

Since the global turn to austerity in 2010, every country that introduced significant austerity has seen its economy suffer, with the depth of the suffering closely related to the harshness of the austerity.

And it’s important to understand that even countries that wouldn’t choose austerity policies for themselves, can have those policies forced on them. (This thought is what inspired my cartoon). Creditors from larger, more powerful economies can insist on austerity policies. Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, regarding the economic disaster in Greece, wrote:

Of course, the economics behind the program that the “troika” (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) foisted on Greece five years ago has been abysmal, resulting in a 25 percent decline in the country’s GDP. I can think of no depression, ever, that has been so deliberate and had such catastrophic consequences: Greece’s rate of youth unemployment, for example, now exceeds 60 percent.

It is startling that the troika has refused to accept responsibility for any of this or admit how bad its forecasts and models have been. But what is even more surprising is that Europe’s leaders have not even learned. The troika is still demanding that Greece achieve a primary budget surplus (excluding interest payments) of 3.5 percent of GDP by 2018.

I think the reason austerity policies have such a hold on certain economic elites (turns and glares at Germany), as well as on many ordinary citizens, is that it tells a story which makes intuitive sense to us. Austerity is a morality play: If a country’s economy is bad, it’s because that country has been spending too much. So the solution is to starve for a while. Tighten your belt, Greece!

But at a country level, belt-tightening is the very worst thing a country can do in a recession. When governments slash spending, that means less people have work; when less people have work, they spend less, and recessions become worse. And if the recession getting worse leads to creditors demanding further cuts, a country can get caught in a vicious cycle.

In the Krugman article I linked to, written in 2015, Krugman wrote that no one believes in austerity anymore. But the idea – or, rather, the ideology – hasn’t gone away, and is currently causing great suffering in the UK.

In the U.S., any time the economy takes a downturn, the austerity ideologues emerge and call for cuts, cuts and more cuts. The more influence they have the next time we’re in a recession, the longer it’ll take us to recover.

In his article “How Austerity Ripped The World Apart,” Umair Haque takes a big-picture view, arguing that austerity is ultimately derived from economic thinking developed in slave-owning America. I don’t agree with everything Haque says, but his definition of austerity really struck me.

Austerity simply means a lack of investment by societies in themselves, in people, in public goods. Things like healthcare, education, transport, energy, retirement, decent jobs, incomes, savings. The problem is that all those things are what underpin the stability of societies, by ensuring that prosperity is something that is realized by all — not just something greedily seized by a tiny few.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. All four panels are set in a doctor’s office. There are three people in each panel. The first is an extremely wealthy looking man – he looks like a stereotypical banker – in a three-piece suit, smoking a pipe. The second man is the patient, a disheveled and emaciated man in boxer shorts and a sleeveless shirt. The third man is Doctor Austerity. Doctor Austerity wears a white doctor’s coat, a stethoscope, and a head mirror. (That’s what they’re called, honest!). Doctor Austerity is a huge, hulking, powerful looking man, with large hands and deep-set eyes.

A caption at the bottom of the cartoon says “DOCTOR AUSTERITY.”

PANEL 1

The Banker and Doctor Austerity talk. Both are patting the Patient on the shoulder. The Patient is sitting on the examination table.

BANKER: Doctor Austerity, my friend’s economy is weak. Could you give him your treatment?

DOCTOR AUSTERITY: Of course! My treatment never fails!

PANEL 2

Doctor Austerity has his hands around the patients neck, squeezing hard, and has lifted the patient right off the examination table. The patient has wide eyes and his tongue is sticking out of his mouth.

PATIENT: Choke! Ack!

DOCTOR AUSTERITY: Soon he’ll be completely better!

PANEL 3

Doctor Austerity has let go of the patient; the patient is bent over, panting and gasping for air. The Banker peers at the patient; Doctor Austerity thinks hard, with one hand on his chin.

BANKER: That’s odd… He’s getting worse.

DOCTOR AUSTERITY: Hmnn!

PANEL 4

Doctor Austerity and the Banker smile at each other, chatting, while the doctor resumes choking the patient to death.

BANKER: Better apply more treatment.

DOCTOR AUSTERITY: Good plan!

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Economics and the like | 16 Comments

On Appropriation: Anders Carlson-Wee’s “How-To”

Posted on March 8, 2019 by Richard Jeffrey Newman

Last summer, The Nation published a poem called “How-To,” by white poet Anders Carlson-Wee, in which the speaker, a homeless person who speaks African American Vernacular English (AAVE), which is also sometimes called Black English, gives advice on how most effectively to beg for money on the street. The poem’s publication unleashed what The New York Times called “a firestorm of criticism on social media.” This criticism focused on two main issues: charges that, in writing “How-To,” Carlson-Wee had engaged in a performance of literary blackface and that, in publishing the poem, The Nation’s poetry editors had supported him in doing so. ((Others were critical of the poem for being ableist—a conversation that is also important to have—but I am going to focus in this post on the racial critique.))

In response, those editors, Stephanie Burt and Carmen Giménez Smith, issued an apology, which then became the focus of its own controversy. Katha Pollitt, who writes for The Nation, tweeted her disappointment, calling the apology “craven.” Grace Schulman, who was The Nation’s poetry editor from 1971-2006 wrote an op ed in the Times, in which she argued that the editors’ apology betrayed “a value that is precious to me and to a free society: the freedom to write and to publish views that may be offensive to some readers.” The editors responded quite thoughtfully to their critics here—you need to scroll to the bottom—but the debate about the role, responsibility, and accountability of literary editors, while crucially important, does not address the question of precisely how, from the point of view of literary craft, Carlson-Wee’s poem fails. That’s what I’m interested in writing about here.

***

Responding to the poem in a Twitter thread—I have strung several tweets together into a single paragraph—Roxane Gay wrote this:

The reality is that when most white writers use AAVE they do so badly. They do so without understanding that it is a language with rules. Instead, they use AAVE to denote that there is a black character in their story because they understand blackness as a monolith. Framing blackness as monolithic is racist. It is lazy. And using AAVE badly is lazy so I am entirely comfortable suggesting that writers stay in their lane when it comes to dialect. The great thing about writing is that you can develop new lanes through research, immersion and…effort. There was none of that in this poem.

So presumably, if Carlson-Wee had gotten it right, if he had indeed developed a “new lane” for himself in which he could write what Gay experienced as an authentic AAVE-speaking Black character, she would not have found the poem objectionable on these particular grounds. In other words, the problem was not the fact that a white poet had chosen to write such a character; it was the failure of craft that Gay saw in what she perceived as Carlson-Wee’s “lazy” use of AAVE that led her to call the poem racist. Here is Carlson-Wee’s poem:

How-To

If you got hiv, say aids. If you a girl, say you’re pregnant––nobody gonna lower themselves to listen for the kick. People passing fast. Splay your legs, cock a knee funny. It’s the littlest shames they’re likely to comprehend. Don’t say homeless, they know you is. What they don’t know is what opens a wallet, what stops em from counting what they drop. If you’re young say younger. Old say older. If you’re crippled don’t flaunt it. Let em think they’re good enough Christians to notice. Don’t say you pray, say you sin. It’s about who they believe they is. You hardly even there.

In a very thoughtful piece in The Atlantic, John McWhorter, a professor of linguistics at Columbia University who has “studied Black English a fair amount over the past 25 years,” disagrees with Gay’s assessment. He argues, providing specific examples, that “the Black English Carlson-Wee uses…is true and ordinary black speech.” I’m going to defer to McWhorter’s linguistic expertise and take him at his word in this respect: that there is nothing syntactically or semantically incorrect, nothing exaggerated, willfully flamboyant or mocking, in Carlson-Wee’s deployment of AAVE in this poem. That does not mean, however, that he was not, as Gay said, “lazy” in writing it. In fact, his apology, which I can now find nowhere except in The New York Times, suggests that he might even agree with that assessment: “Treading anywhere close to blackface is horrifying to me,” Carlson-Wee wrote, “and I am profoundly regretful.”

***

While the wording of that apology at least implies that Carlson-Wee intended his speaker to be Black, when I first read “How-To,” I did not see it that way. Probably because there are no other obvious racial markers and because I have heard white people speak non-standard English in a way that, in my memory at least, bears a strong resemblance to what Carlson-Wee wrote, I defaulted to the unmarked case and assumed the speaker was white. I still thought “How-To” was not a very good poem, though. Continue reading →

Posted in Writing | 4 Comments