The Sanity Project

#WritersSupportUyghurs campaign to answer Chengdu Worldcon

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

The World Uyghur Congress has announced an online panel discussion on October 17, 2023. This date was chosen as the day before the 2023 Worldcon opens in Chengdu.

The press release quotes science fiction writer Andrew Gillsmith as saying:

The Chinese government wants to use Worldcon as a sort of Potemkin Village in order to showcase how futuristic and technologically advanced the country has become. Meanwhile, they are interning people in concentration camps, forcibly separating children from their families, conscripting Uyghurs into slave labour schemes, and implementing the most comprehensive and technologically sophisticated surveillance regime in history. Science fiction writers and fans have a longstanding tradition of standing for human rights. This is in the spirit of that tradition.

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ActivityPub access to this blog

This entry was posted in Administrative and tagged mastodon on by

Theoretically, you can now follow this blog on ActivityPub compatible services such as Mastodon. The handle to follow is @gmcgath@garymcgath.com.

So far I can’t follow myself, but a propagation delay may be responsible. Let me know if you can or can’t use it.

Update:The WebFinger URL was returning a 404. I installed the WebFinger plugin. It’s still returning a 404. I’m going to deactivate them both and look into this later. Sorry.

China Worldcon is selling “tickets” and merchandising mascot

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

There isn’t much news I can find about the Chengdu Science Fiction Museum, which is the site of next month’s Worldcon. The Zaha Hadid Architects website describes it as “under construction” and shows only drawings of it. However, my search turned up information on how memberships and related merchandise are being sold. I refer you to this article by Steve Davidson on the Amazing Stories website. It links to a File 770 article which I’d overlooked.

The news is that the Chengdu Worldcon is selling “tickets” through what is described as “a Ticketmaster-style service.” As Davidson notes, fan-run conventions don’t sell tickets; they sell memberships. The difference is that members have the opportunity to participate in large and small ways. Most aren’t listed on the program, but they can help with setup and breakdown, ask questions at panels, talk with pros at kaffeeklatsches, join discussions in the con suite, sing in the filksings, etc. That’s different from conventions such as the big comic cons, where the emphasis is more on hearing speakers in large halls, buying merchandise, getting photos and autographs, and so on. Both are legitimate activities, but trying to mix the models always turns out badly.
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What is a “conspiracy theory”?

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged language usage vocabulary writing on by

A conspiracy theory, according to Merriam-Webster, is “a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators.” Alternatively, it’s “a theory asserting that a secret of great importance is being kept from the public”; the idea presumably is that insiders have conspired to keep the truth hidden.

Dictionary.com takes a similar approach: “a theory that rejects the standard explanation for an event and instead credits a covert group or organization with carrying out a secret plot” or “a belief that a particular unexplained event was caused by such a covert group.” In all these cases, a conspiracy theory requires a conspiracy to make something happen or to keep something hidden. The cabal has to be hidden and the conspirators powerful; an accusation that some people got together to plan a crime doesn’t count as a conspiracy theory unless the perpetrators are extremely rich or powerful.
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A correction on “The Marriage of Figaro”

This entry was posted in My writing and tagged French history translation writing on by

In my Liberty Fund article on Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, I made an error. Relying on what others wrote, I said:

When he [Beaumarchais] wrote The Marriage of Figaro, Louis XVI banned it for three years. The King supposedly said, “For this play not to be a danger, the Bastille would have to be torn down first.” Eight years later, it was, and the French aristocracy came crashing down with it.

It’s a good thing I used the word “supposedly.” I suspected a problem today when I got Lever’s biography of Beaumarchais and found a different version of the remark: “This is detestable and will never be performed; the Bastille would have to be destroyed for the performance of this play not to be of dangerous inconsequence.” “Dangerous inconsequence” is a weird phrase, so I looked up the original French and found it on Wikipedia: “La représentation ne pourrait qu’être une inconséquence fâcheuse, sauf si la Bastille était détruite.”
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Choosing your usage battles

This entry was posted in Writing on by

Words have specific meanings. Words change. These are both true.

If people start using a word in a way that doesn’t match its established meanings, how should you react? You can say it’s wrong, but eventually it could become so well-established that fighting it is senseless. Sometimes people need a word for a new concept and appropriate an existing one because it’s a good analogy. When vehicles pushed through the air by motors were developed, they needed a name, and people called them “airships” even though they aren’t ships in the usual sense. Before the end of the 19th century, “spaceship” was coined by a similar process.

At the other end, words sometimes get new meanings for stupid or dishonest reasons. For instance, people of certain political persuasions call anyone they disagree with a “fascist,” without reference to the word’s actual, historical meaning. That’s just a smear tactic, and anyone who values precise communication should reject it. “Grooming” is another example of a word that should have a definite meaning but has turned into an undefined smear.
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Outrageous raid in Marion, Kansas

This entry was posted in Censorship News and tagged Kansas law liberty on by

I wish I had the time to write a proper article about the outrageous police raid on the offices of the Marion County Record and the home of its owner, Eric Meyer. Currently, though, I’m putting all my efforts into getting the revised edition of Tomorrow’s Songs Today ready for final review. Just as I thought it was ready to go, I discovered some omissions that had me sending out emails yesterday, and I got the first reply this morning.

So I’ll settle for links and short comments.

AP News. The official justification for the raid has not been made public. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation has said it was asked to assist in “allegations of illegal access and dissemination of confidential criminal justice information.” This could be justification for such a raid in some cases, such as breaking into law enforcement databases, but at present there’s no indication any such thing was involved. Most of the news articles I’ve seen follow the theory that the motivation was the Record‘s reporting on a local restaurant owner.

New York Post. The Post reports that Meyer’s mother, aged 98, died shortly after the raid on his home, and Meyer attributes her death to the stress of the raid. It says that the search warrant (which has not been publicly disclosed) “seems to violate federal law” and that normal procedure under the law is to subpoena materials.

Washington Post. The other Post mentions that “the Record had been actively investigating Police Chief Gideon Cody at the time of the raid after receiving tips that he had left his previous job in Kansas City, Mo., to avoid repercussions for alleged sexual misconduct charges.”

Read the articles. Find additional information for yourself. Comment if you think I’m missing something important.

A word that will live in infamy

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged usage vocabulary on by

Today’s post on word misuse is a tricky one to write. The word is “infamous,” and the difficulty is that I can’t tell what people even mean when they misuse it. Merriam-Webster’s main definition is “having a reputation of the worst kind : notoriously evil.” The additional definitions are closely related: “causing or bringing infamy” and “convicted of an offense bringing infamy.” If you call a person infamous, you’re saying that person is rotten, vile, and contemptible. If you call an act infamous, you’re condemning it.

People seem to toss the word around just to add emphasis, with no specific meaning. I just saw a link on YouTube to a short referring to a statement attributed to J. Robert Oppenheimer, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” as “infamous.” I suppose someone might condemn Oppenheimer for saying that, though I don’t know why, but the video doesn’t do that.
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Kafka’s Mastodon

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary and tagged censorship Internet mastodon on by

I run the Filk News account on Mastodon, providing information about concerts, filksings, and other items of interest for the filk music community. Normally I don’t write much about filk here, but the story has relevance to anyone who uses Mastodon to distribute or gather information or just to connect with friends.

The first part of the story is in my earlier post, “The petty tyrants of Mastodon.” You may want to read it first if you haven’t already. Since then I’ve gotten no satisfaction from indieweb.social and found it necessary to move Filk News to liberal.city, which I think will be a better home for it. (Another post which I made, “The impending strangulation of Mastodon,” reflected a user error on my part, so I’ve removed it from public view.)

As I said in “Petty Tyrants,” my personal account is on Liberdon, which is included on a “Tier 0 Blocklist”. It simply lists domains to block without giving reasons. When I noticed trouble interacting with Indieweb from Liberdon, I reported the issue to Indieweb’s admin, Tim Chambers. He said he had changed Liberdon’s status from “blocked” to the less restrictive “silenced” while looking into the issue.
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