Finished reading: Starter Villain by John Scalzi

It has it all: heinous crime, stories of power, cats with character, a supervillain lair in the carribean including a volcano, and lots and lots of sardonic humour. And everybody gets what they deserve, which makes this a work of fiction, but one that will lift your mood in these trying times.

John is mocking not only supervillains as they appear in literature, but their role models, the powerful of this world. He is making fun of their arrogance, not just their ridiculous expectations to stay in place, or that they got there was somehow their birth right, but also their miserable cluelessness of what would be important right now, what would be good for themselves, but also everybody else, and literally the whole planet, which they are burning down out of hubris and lack of understanding.

The only other of John's works I had read before was Old Man's War, also pretty much a fun one, and I've come to really like his laid-back, somewhat laconic style. I suppose I should keep on reading! Thank you, John, for coming up with this stuff!

I enjoyed it in the form of an audiobook read by Wil Wheaton, who is a great choice, as the actor he is, he's got the wingspan to confer the depth and color necessary for this text.

Also a big thank you to Charles Stross for suggesting this nice read!

@scalzi
@cstross

The Trump tax cuts slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.

But with new loopholes and special breaks, it's even worse.

Massive corporations like Netflix, Bank of America, Citigroup, and others have paid an effective rate of less than 5%.

The system is rigged.

I see GamerGate is in the news because it’s coming up to the tenth anniversary. Ten years ago, I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown caused by transphobic harassment from TERfs organised on social media. They were using the same tactics that, months later, would be the hallmark of GamerGate.

And yet the surviving narrative is that this sort of organised, “culture war” harassment originated with GG.

It didn’t. They did it to trans women, and probably others, first, and we raised the alarm, and nobody thought it mattered enough to do anything.

And then they came for the rest of you.

They keep doing this. We keep raising the alarm. We keep being ignored.

Maybe one day people will learn.

Apparently it bears repeating:

PEOPLE

PLEASE, for the Love of All That Is Good & True & Right in This Universe, in This Year of Our RBG 2024,

DO NOT give a book low stars simply because there is something physically wrong with your copy.

The vendor that sold you the copy is not going to read your review. You are not harming the vendor by low-starring the book.

YOU ARE HARMING THE AUTHOR of the book, who has zero control over the physical condition of the book you have received.

1/

“A leading provider of abortion services has received more than 30 demands to hand over medical records of women to police in the past four years, increasing to an average of one a month since October.”

They require a court order before medical records are handed over for use in an investigation, and are only aware of one (1) in that same timeframe.

And that's just one provider;

"Rachael Clarke, the chief of staff at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), said police had also escalated demands on other charities and NHS providers of abortion services in recent years.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/23/police-medical-records-abortion-british-pregnancy-advisory-service-bpas

#DontPayTheGuardian

But don’t you see? You never needed anything else. The weird was within you the whole time.

Welcome... to Night Vale.