Commentary

The mark of (Dean) Cain and other victories   Recently updated !

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged fandom ICE New Hampshire on by

I was pleased to learn that ICE agent Dean Cain is having trouble getting gigs at fan conventions. GalaxyCon, a company that runs commercial fan conventions, has notified him that it won’t work with him because “GalaxyCon’s values don’t align with Dean.” He faulted GalaxyCon for not being more specific, but I can understand their wanting to handle the matter politely. He surely knows what they meant.

In August 2025, I pointed out that having an ICE agent as a guest puts attendees in danger. Cincinnati Comic Expo had him slated as a guest, and I left a comment on their Facebook post expressing my concern. I felt I was fighting a lonely battle, but later on the organization found a reason not to have him appear. GalaxyCon also sees the danger, and Cain’s reference to a “blacklist” suggests that other conventions have similarly rebuffed him.

While I doubt that I had any great influence on the decisions, I can say I was one of the first to point out the concern. Some people in the Cincinnati organization must have seen my comment. Maybe it gave someone encouragement or a better choice of words to address the issue. The effect of what you say isn’t always immediate or obvious.

In other good news, Rockingham County in New Hampshire has “tabled” plans to hold ICE abductees in the county jail. County commissioners Tombarello and Coyle supported this position. In September 2025 I wrote about Commissioner Steven Goddu’s position, which was basically that the county should be morally agnostic and grab the opportunity for federal money: “It is not my position that the county should evaluate the appropriateness of actions ICE is taking.”

Did I have any significant effect on the decision to turn ICE away? Probably not, but it’s possible I made a little difference. This post, if the right people see it, might encourage someone to run against Goddu and replace him.

Speak out when you can, after being as informed as you can. It can make a difference.

Layout note: Up to now, I’ve laid out the blog with ten posts per page, displaying only the start of each post. This is causing problems with email subscriptions, which I just can’t get to show the start of the post and clearly let the recipient know there’s more. Starting with this post, I’m switching to putting full posts in the blog page. Once there are a couple of these, I’ll reduce the posts per page from 10 to 5. I think this will make it easier for people to follow the blog without extra navigation. Let me know what you think.

New Hampshire libraries and free speech   Recently updated !

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged liberty libraries New Hampshire on by

Writing this makes me nervous. It deals with institutions I’m close to, and it’s one of those cases where both sides look bad. But it’s important to say it, and it might have a positive effect just because I’m so close. These events happened a while ago, but I just learned about them while researching something else. (That happens a lot.)

On one side we have Arlene Quaratiello, a minor New Hampshire politician and librarian who takes a restrictive view on what libraries should carry. On the other side we have the Dudley-Tucker Library in Raymond, New Hampshire, which violated her First Amendment rights. Quaratiello, who lives in Atkinson (which is also Karoline Leavitt’s home; what is it about that town?), wrote to a local news site endorsing two candidates for library trustee. She emailed a Republican Party chapter urging them to run conservative candidates for library trustee positions. Her letter advocated “protecting our children from the increasing amount of inappropriate material available … without sacrificing the intellectual freedom that has always characterized public libraries.”

This is at least worrisome, but it’s her right in the United States to express those views. She expressed them on her own time, using her personal resources. In spite of that, the Dudley-Tucker Library, where she was Assistant Director, terminated her. The reason given was “lack of separation of personal/political values and agendas from DTL policies, procedures, and occurrences” and that she supposedly was “not able to maintain the separation between personal and Library tenets.”
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Deceptive Unitil “refund” offer by SmartEnergy 1   Recently updated !

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged New Hampshire scams on by

A few days ago I got an item in the mail supposedly offering me a $100 refund as a Unitil customer. The name on the return address was “SmartEnergy,” not Unitil, so it immediately looked fake. It is.

The text inside says:

“Your order is not automatic.

To get started, you must call:

1-800-485-4839

Your REFUND OPTIONS (choose one):
I. Mail me a $100 Visa Prepaid Card
II. Mail me a $100 refund check

SmartEnergy would like to issue you a $100 refund.

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New Hampshire’s questionable alert system

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged New Hampshire privacy technology on by

The state of New Hampshire has a system where you can sign up to get emergency alerts. In itself, that’s a good thing, but the way it’s run raises red flags. The registration site is on genasys.com, and registering requires providing more personal information than necessary. The probability is close to 1 that Genasys sells this information. It’s also easy to exploit the system to annoy people.
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