Monthly Archives: February 2024

“Too many notes, Mozart”

This entry was posted in Commentary History and tagged history Mozart music on by

Upon hearing Mozart’s Singspiel The Abduction from the Seraglio, Emperor Joseph II is alleged to have said, “Too many notes.” The claim increased in popularity when Peter Schaffer put those words in his mouth in the travesty Amadeus. Quotations are tricky things, though. If I gratuitously claim someone said something, how do you know they didn’t? It’s the old issue of proving a negative.

The quotation, or something like it, has a source that long predates Schaffer. It’s the 1798 biography of Mozart by Franz Xaver Niemetschek. The full title is Leben des K.K. Kapellmeisters Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart nach Originalquellen beschrieben (life of the music director Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, written based on original sources). The attribution given there is:
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Hostility as a tool of persuasion 1

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged education psychology on by

A lot of people act as if mockery and denunciation are effective ways to convince others that they’re wrong. Not many of them, though, come out and endorse this principle. A Liberal Currents article called “Deradicalizing the Center” offers qualified support for it, though, and it’s not just a rant. It contains a lot of good thinking. I’d like to take a look at it to see what the author claims and argues.
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Grammarly is discontinuing desktop apps

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged Grammarly software technology on by

It’s been a bad February for desktop applications. Two that I use a lot are going away. Twilio Authy, used for two-factor authentication, will not be supported on the desktop after March 19, and it may or may not work at all after that. People who don’t plan for it may find themselves temporarily locked out of accounts that use it for 2FA. On Macs with the Apple processor, the iOS version of the application apparently works, though Twilio hasn’t certified it for the Macintosh. I got it running on my Mac without problems, and I’ve used it for a few days. It works, though its user interface is distinctively inferior on a computer with a keyboard and mouse.

Be careful, though. There are fake apps taking advantage of the confusion; as I’m writing this, there’s a app called “Authhy” (with two h’s) on the App store, which I’m effectively certain is a Trojan horse. I can’t find any way to report it to Apple.

More relevant to readers of this blog, Grammarly is discontinuing its desktop application. According to the notice when I run my app, it will stop working on March 18. It suggests that users go to its website to check their writing.
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Samantha Mills repudiates 2023 Hugo

This entry was posted in News and tagged censorship China conventions fandom science fiction on by

Samantha Mills, winner of the 2023 Hugo Award for “best short story,” has repudiated her award in the light of the censorship scandal. She wrote:

Looking at the information we currently have, it’s hard for me to conclude anything other than: I shouldn’t have been on that ballot. …
 
I spent this morning logging into my various accounts and taking “Hugo” out of my bio. There are almost certainly going to be places it was printed that I miss, so my apologies for that. Here’s the most embarrassing one: my novel already went to the printer and it has “Hugo winner” on the cover. Fucking mortifying!

Update, Feb. 23, 2024: Adrian Tchaikovsky has repudiated his Hugo. “I cannot consider myself a Hugo winner and will not be citing the 2023 award result in my biographical details, or on this site.”

The Hugo cover-up

This entry was posted in Commentary News Writing and tagged China conventions fandom science fiction on by

It’s out in the open now: Legitimate Hugo Award candidates were disqualified because of Chinese censorship. A collection of internal email, posted on Document Cloud, shows that the committee reviewed “anything of a sensitive political nature.” Dave McCarty was specific about the reasons:

In addition to the regular technical review, as we are happening in China and the *laws* we operate under are different … we need to highlight anything of a sensitive political nature in the work. [Ellipses in the original]

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Another story of the Chengdu Worldcon 2

This entry was posted in News and tagged China fandom science fiction on by

This weekend, I heard a remarkable account from a science fiction writer who wanted to go to the Chengdu Worldcon. He was talking to a small group of people including me, but I don’t know if he wants it publicized, so I’ll omit his name.

To go to China you need a visa, which requires going through a Chinese embassy. He made his application and, as requested, listed his professional affiliations. One of them, not surprisingly, was SFWA. He was asked what the abbreviation stood for and explained it’s “Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.” (The name has changed once or twice while keeping the abbreviation.) This got some alarmed responses, and he was told they’d have to get back to him. The process dragged on without a decision. Finally, a few weeks before the con, he withdrew his application so he wouldn’t have a denied visa request on is record.
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Book burying under White House pressure 3

This entry was posted in Censorship News and tagged Amazon books censorship on by

According to a New York Post article, the White House successfully pressured Amazon to put some books under a “do not promote” order. The books remained available but presumably are less discoverable than comparable books not under the order. The order was issued “the same day Amazon officials met with the White House.”

The order covers “anti-vax books whose primary purpose is to persuade readers vaccines are unsafe or ineffective.” The article doesn’t mention any titles, so I can’t judge their worth. Would a book that called attention to legitimate risks or exaggerated claims of effectiveness fall under that category? Biden said, “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations,” a claim whose inaccuracy many people have learned firsthand.
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It’s Black History Month, not Black Advertising Month

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged history writing on by

Looking around the Internet and stores, the most obvious signs of Black History Month are ethnically targeted marketing. That’s what advertisers do, I guess. But the original idea was a good one: call attention to people whom older histories tended to ignore.

Writers might get some ideas from looking at black historical figures they admire. Let me just list three:
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The Tianwen project

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged censorship China science fiction on by

File 770 has a fascinating article, “Decoding the Tianwen Project”, about the Chinese government’s aims to achieve a dominant position in the science fiction world. The piece is “posted anonymously to protect the author’s identity, as the author is part of the Chinese diaspora who occasionally travels to China.”

China has already engaged in censorship outside its borders through its print shops. It pressured Disney into killing nearly all the distribution of Kundun, which presents the Dalai Lama favorably and Mao unfavorably. A CNN article says China has “the world’s largest known online disinformation operation.”
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