1. Betogers uit erg diverse hoeken protesteren tegen coronamaatregelen in Duitsland  VRT NWS
2. Duitsland demonstreert tegen coronamaatregelen  De Standaard
3. Duitse ME grijpt in bij protest tegen coronamaatregelen  Telegraaf.nl
4. Hele verhaal bekijken via Google Nieuws

The Best of Both Worlds S.P. Miskowski Trepidatio Publishing May 1, 2020 Reviewed by Elaine Pascale  The Best of Both Worlds is a sequel to The Worst is Yet to Come in the sense that the plot runs parallel and the characters’ story arcs intersect in subtle yet important ways. The Best of Both Worlds […]

Look what I found!

Some time ago, I posted every page of the Image Notebook I created to help me imagine the world and people of Industrialized Faerie for The Iron Dragon's Mother. What I didn't mention was that it was actually the second such notebook I'd made. The first notebook I lost--forever, I thought. But as it turned out, it had been misfiled in my office.

This is why you should clean your workspace at least once a decade.

The Zero Notebook, as I think of it, was begun all the way back in 2009. I pasted images from magazines and newspapers into it, created collages, some of which I altered, sought inspiration from the uncanny but visualizable. The end result is something very close to (but not identical with) outsider art.

I'll spare you the bulk of the images. But starting today I'll be posting ten images from the notebook. One on each weekday when I don't have any other news to pass along. This is the first one: the notebook's cover.


And what, you ask, does it mean . . . ?

The eye, of course, represents the eye of a dragon. It's slashed across the oval to create a zero.  The dot to the lower right is meant to suggest that the glyph represents the letter Q.,  though, of course, not exactly. That's because I wasn't looking for Answers. Just Questions.

There are a few (not many) words in the notebook. Here's an entry I ran across that begins with (almost) the cover glyph:

Q. What does the Goddess want?
A. Wrong question.

All of the above carried through into the novel and became a major, if close to undetectable, theme. The Iron Dragon's Mother would have been a very different book if I had started it with a different image.

The crinkly stuff is wide transparent tape, used to seal the image onto the cover. If this notebook ever winds up in somebody's collection, that's going to be a major conservation issue. Not my problem.


Above: First image. Nine to go.

Here on the inside cover of the Zero Notebook is a first glimpse of Caitlin. It's a photograph of a young Russian doctor and, although it misrepresents Caitlin's ethnicity entirely, it does capture her innate seriousness. Added to which are birds in flight, because flight is in her nature, and a miniature of a painting by Lucian Freud. This last was included for its lack of glossy magazine glamor but also, with a touch of irony, because I knew that the novel would be going deep into Carl Jung territory.


And what, you ask, does it mean . . .?

It doesn't. The page is a first, fumbling-in-the-darkness attempt to find the heart and soul of the novel.


Above: Second image. Eight to go.

Excerpt 3 from the Zero Notebook for The Iron Dragon's Mother.  Jinx is a pretty neat character. I'm sorry I couldn't find a place for her in the novel. She looks like trouble, doesn't she?


And I have to apologize . . .

I promised to post these on every day I didn't have news and then got so caught up on writing chores I lost track of the blog entirely. My bad. I'll do better, I promise.

For a while, anyway. 


Above: Third image. Seven to go.

Another character that didn't make it into The Iron Dragon's Mother. Industrialized Faerie is a rich world. The three novels I've set in it can only only hint at how rich and strange it is.

This image, for a rarity, was hardly altered at all.


And where, you ask, did I find this. . . ?

The image came from the Body Works show that toured the world some years ago. A large number of corpses were flayed and then carefully preserved, in order to display the wonders of anatomy. The show was controversial at the time because the corpses came from China and there were those who claimed the bodies hadn't been voluntarily donated but those of criminals who had died in prison. The truth of the matter was impossible to ascertain.

The show, however, was extremely popular. My son, Sean Swanwick, worked for a summer as a guide when it was displayed at the Franklin Institute and he told me that they had to watch the people touring it like hawks... Every now and then, someone would try to snap off a finger or other appendage to take home as a souvenir.


Above: Image five. Five more to go.

She never appears in person in The Iron Dragon's Mother, but Mother Eve is central to the entire enterprise. Unsettling, isn't she?

Judith Berman once told me that most of the First People have Trickster tales. But of the hundreds of tribes in North America, only two--and they small tribes--have a female trickster. The female trickster is, apparently, difficult for people to imagine.

So you can imagine my delight when I found one right inside my own culture.


But what, you ask, does it mean . . .?

Trickster is a strange and difficult character, neither a good guy nor an evil one. She exists somewhere in between, a creator of chaos and a provider of a special Something that it seems human beings require. It might be corn and it might be fire. Trickster gets blamed for a lot of the woes of existence, but it seems that without him/her, we're skunked.

I wonder if Pandora was originally a Trickster,  before they allegorized her to hell and back? It bears thinking on.


Above: Image Six. Four to go.

Introducing Helen. There's more to her than meets the eye.

Written upside-down--so they won't necessarily be taken as gospel by any readers are three quick notes scrawled to myself:

Mother as Mind Spider

Storyteller as Spider & Weaver

Chrone as Spider

I apologize for the misspelling of "crone." But I was writing (and thinking) too fast to care much for accuracy.


But what, you ask, does it mean . . . ?

The influence of Louise Bourgeois is pretty obvious here. Late in life, she created those wonderful, terrifyingly realistic giant spiders with long steel needles at the end of their legs and said that they were all about her mother. Who made a living repairing tapestries, using long steel needles. So it's not the slap in her face it might seem.

I liked the spider representing the archetypal woman-as-maker, which fit Helen right down to the ground. I was also fighting a fight all the way through with received archetypal images of women were were almost all pretty or dainty or passive. I wanted to get at that primal fierceness that lurks inside us all.

And, ounce for ounce, you don't get much fiercer than a spider.


And tomorrow and Friday . . .

There will be news.


Above: Seventh image. Three to go.

Originally, this was going to be a character named Frog--one who never materialized in The Iron Dragon's Mother. A wood-fey, obviously, and possibly a marsh-weller.

But look at that wistful, lost expression. I think this guy eventually became Fingolfinrhod. I really do.


Above: Image Eight. Two more to go.

Very few people in the science fiction community ever came face to face with Alice Sheldon, who wrote SF under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr, much less met her tarantulas. One of those very few was Gardner Dozois. When he sold his papers to UC Riverside (the proceeds went to keeping his wife, Susan Casper, alive for several years longer than would otherwise have happened), bookman Henry Wessells became aware of the correspondence between Sheldon and Dozois.

Now, Henry has created a chapbook, She Saved Us from World War Three, containing the two most significant letters from that correspondence. The first is from Sheldon, telling Gardner that the secret of her identity was about to go public and that she was not a man but a woman. The second is her relieved response to Gardner's assurance that they were still friends.

Which understates how Gardner felt about Sheldon/Tiptree. He was in awe of her as a writer and remained so after the murder-suicide that ended her life.

To go with the letters and give them some context, I interviewed Gardner about his friendship with Alice Sheldon and this introduction now forms the bulk of the chapbook.

Today is the publication date for She Saved Us from World War Three and it is currently available for sale. It costs $20, which is not cheap for twenty pages of prose but is cheap for a beautifully made limited edition chapbook with fold-out facsimiles of the letters themselves.

Those of you who need it know who you are. Me, I already have my copy. I'm going to dig up the oversized paperclip which Sheldon gave to Gardner  as a souvenir of their meeting and Gardner gave to me because souvenirs meant nothing to him and keep the two of them together. This is a very meaningful publication for me.

You can find ordering information here.


Above: The chapbook's cover. Photo by John DeChancie and used with his permission. John is a Mensch. I esteem him highly.

Dragons are, as everybody knows, half fighter jet and half fire spirit.

Here's the skull of one.


Above: Image Nine. One more to go.

Our revels now are ended. These our images, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air...

But before we go, one more page, the back inside cover to be specific. It contains two more images of Helen. One is a publicity shot from a period she was going to leave out of the autobiography she never wrote, when she made a brief, ill-fated stab at acting. The other is from a dark period in her middle age.

She was far better-looking than she'd ever admit to being.


And what, you ask, does it mean . . . ?

To find that out, you're just going to have to read The Iron Dragon's Mother, now aren't you?


Above: Tenth image. Tout finis!

Yet again, something astonishing has arrived in my mailbox. This time, it's a chapbook titled Paris ett poem, containing a Swedish translation (surely the first) of Hoope Mirrlees' modernist masterpiece, Paris, a Poem. Mirrlees, you'll recall, is best known in genre circles for her fantasy novel Lud-in-the-Mist, in academic circles for being on the fringes of Bloomsbury, and in poetic circles for this poem.

Ylva Gislén translated the poem, wrote an introduction, provided explanatory notes, and created two collages for inclusion in the chapbook. All of it, clearly, a labor of love.

Quite a lovely  book. Published by Ellerströms.


And Speaking of Good Things . . .

The Temporary Culture chapbook assembled by Henry Wessells, "She Saved Us from World War Three," was reviewed by Michael Dirda in the Washington Post. Here's what he said:

Besides being one of the stars of “The Booksellers,” Henry Wessells is also the proprietor of the micro-publisher, Temporary Culture. His latest booklet, “She Saved Us From World War Three,” brings together an interview, essay and two letters highlighting the friendship between Gardner Dozois, the longtime editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and Alice Sheldon, the former Washington intelligence agent whose intense, sometimes feminist sci-fi — no one ever forgets “The Women Men Don’t See” — was written using the pseudonym James Tiptree Jr. In one letter Sheldon explains that she has pretty much stopped writing because “the stories were getting to hurt too much.”

Which is pretty good coverage for a micro-press.

Keesmaat’s Next Venture, Shitty Architecture Men, Mod Squad, Presto Problemo, Bench Press, and more in this debut edition.

Another Glass Box is a weekly roundup of urban design news in Toronto (and occasionally beyond), in bite-size pieces. It’s curated by Dan Seljak, who’s done marketing and communications work for architecture and construction companies for the last seven years—and who still loves this city enough to line up for brunch.  Content warning: some of the […]

The post Introducing: Another Glass Box, a new weekly architecture feature appeared first on Torontoist.

Food, art, even public space now seems to revolve around aesthetic value as judged by the social network.

Whether it’s a small new restaurant or a major art gallery exhibition, it seems Toronto’s cultural institutions must cater to the “like” seeking set. The price of success today is a sacrifice made at the altar of Instagram. Of course, to some, it’s not viewed as a sacrifice at all, especially when it boosts business […]

The post Has Toronto Become a City of Instagram Photo Ops? appeared first on Torontoist.

Mayoral foibles, Google's urban charm offensive, finalists for George Brown's new wood building, and how many avocado toasts will you need to give up?

1 Please don’t poke the mayor – Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson found himself criticized in light of calling George Bemi’s award-winning Ottawa Library a “Stalin-ist bunker”. Watson’s rebuke wasn’t so elegant, but the following debate explored how contemporary ideas of wellness and accessibility requires real investment in restoration and renovation. Here in Toronto, Mayor John […]

The post Another Glass Box: The Stalinist “Bunker” Edition appeared first on Torontoist.

Becky Lynch has become the Superstar with the most total days as Raw Women’s Champion, surpassing Alexa Bliss.

Unable to stage its big fundraiser because of the pandemic, Figure Skating in Harlem is going from the ice to the internet

Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh penned a two-page open letter advocating flexibility for college athletes looking to enter the NFL Draft.

Путешествие - это ещё и знакомства. В хостелах с незнакомцами ещё и делишь удобства, в в гестах - общее пространство. Как знакомиться, как держаться в международной англоязычной среде путешественников - интересует многих трэвел-ребят, тем более тех из них, для кого английский язык не родной.

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 This time I started earlier in the day while the little chap was watching TV,  rather than nod off, I thought I would activate and tackle those projects that have been waiting to be completed. The ECW regiments were long over due, time to get the Flock box out again.


 As I want these units to be nice and quick and not too taxing, I’m going for a few layers of flock to base them. Dark earth, light earth, 2mm static grass then a longer mix of 4/6mm static grass. Maybe some flower tufts thrown in here and there too. Nice and quick with no painting going on.

 After years of waiting, Dain finally gets to meet Thorin.
 The wolf packs meet up at last.
 A large black Warg snaps commands to his messengers.
 Iron Hills Dwarves battle Gundabad beserkers.
 Gundabad trolls lead the march of the Trolls, tickets now available.
 A throng of trolls. Two Dark Alliance 20mm plastic trolls flank a metal GW war troll.
 Drain and Thorin muster to protect a back gate.
 The great white wolf commands her forces. Her pack is made out of large black wargs, grey wolves and white wolves from the north.
 Two Snow trolls with their animal hide trappings.
These lightning fast wolves will be the terror of the battlefield, moving at incredible speeds to out flank and surround the enemy.

Experimenting with different techniques with this second batch. The strong tone brown is quite dark so is great for clothes but I feel some areas of the mini need a stronger contrast. So with this second group I gave their muskets a wash of black. Also their equipment is very dark too so while I had the ink on the brush I tried on their blue uniforms and a little on their faces. Watching a lot of references and from my own re-enactments, I know the black power gets all over the face with biting cartridges etc, so a bit of black contrast on the face wouldn’t go a miss.

This extra shade on the face did bring out the expressions and characters of the figures a lot more. Again, really quick to do and gave another level of detail to the mini. I will compare the two batches at the end and see which I prefer.

I’m finding that painting them in little strips of five or six minis is actually really fun and gives a much more instant and rewarding experience.

As I paint these guys I try to use the brush in such a way that I leave areas of black undercoat still showing in the recesses. This should help the should help the shading later with the brown tone.

There is one more technique I would like to try on a third batch, using two tones of Army Painter at the same time. A black Dark tone for the equipment/uniform areas and a Strong tone for the trousers etc.

Hot Sauce Aggression In this Pocket-Sized episode #1006, Marc Abrahams shows an unfamiliar research study to Dany Adams. Dramatic readings and reactions ensue. The research mentioned in this episode is featured in the special Ig: the Triumph of Miss Sweetie Poo issue (Vol. 7, #1) of the Annals of Improbable Research Magazine. Remember, our Patreon donors, on most levels, get […]

Bereitschaftspotential In this Pocket-Sized episode #1007, Marc Abrahams shows an unfamiliar research study to Jean Berko Gleason. Dramatic readings and reactions ensue. The research mentioned in this episode is featured in the special Psychology issue (vol. 26, #1) of the Annals of Improbable Research magazine. Remember, our Patreon donors, on most levels, get access to each podcast episode before it is made public. 1. […]

I find myself incredibly frustrated with Adobe products again. I don’t know why it’s so hard to make sorting and tagging software that just works, although I suppose having over 465,000 photos may stretch the limits of any software. But … Continue reading →

[h/t Stephan Hurtubise]  

Ewan Spence, "Apple Leak Reveals Radical New MacBook Pro", Forbes 5/4/2020: Apple may finally be getting round to updating the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Intel's tenth generation processors. The good news is that the MacOS powered laptop going to get a bucketload of extra power.[…] This laptop is loaded to bear in terms of memory […]

Two years on, and still my favourite Chinese mistranslation…. pic.twitter.com/0EHeQjybeB — Antiokhos in the East (@AntiokhosE) May 6, 2020   How did it happen? There's no problem with "xiǎoxīn 小心"; it just means "be careful [of]; pay heed to". The problem comes with the second half of the warning, where luòshí 落石 ("falling rocks") is […]

Something extraordinary happened on May 4, 2020.  Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger delivered an extremely impressive speech in virtually flawless Mandarin.  Here it is: Here's the transcript of Pottinger's speech (pdf), the formal English title of which is "Reflections on China's May Fourth Movement: an American Perspective — Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger to […]

My friends, you did it.  You worked hard and chased the Darkness away.  Special thanks to my friend Denver and Toki who wrote a really good poem/cheer.   He is right, we have to stop the hacking – no more stealing passwords. I will be calling a Celebration Party.  Everyone is welcome.  Watch the What’s New […]

Only in Arkansas... well, no. Maybe a few other places also. Mississippi anyone?

It seems there are literally thousands of sites that promise to promote your website or blog…..but for a price. The best known one is Google Adwords where you pay so many cents per click depending on the competition of the Keywords you want top rankings in. And while this will get your website to the top page in Google not everyone has the budget to fork out hundreds of dollars in advertising. But you can promote your site for free using some of these methods. Most of these are going to take time to build up before you start noticing huge amounts of traffic, but they will work if your willing to put the time in.

Using twitter is a great way to promote your website or blog and increase traffic. If your new to twitter and never used it before it works like this. You get 140 characters to write a short statement or advertisement depending on what you’re using the site for. Most people tweet simple things like there not feeling well or changes in their social life. All that’s fine but you want to use it to promote your website, so here are some simple things to optimize your tweets to get the maximum traffic return.

Backlinks are one of the keys when it comes to how to promote your website. More backlinks equals more traffic to your website, and more traffic to your website equals better search engine results which equal even more traffic to your website….so you can never have enough backlinks.

One of the corner stones of SEO is to get back links from other related sites, talk to anyone who knows even a hint of what search engine optimization is about and they’ll all tell you this. It’s what makes the internet….well the internet. But when it comes to linking to sites one you have to be especially careful of are sites that are considered “bad neighbourhood sites”

One of the ways to get people to notice your site is to comment on other blogs and websites. The benefits of leaving good comments are that you not only get to add your two cents about a topic, you can also gain valuable links pointing to your site. Sounds easy right, and for the most part it is, but when selecting blogs or websites to comment on you need to consider some things. First try to find sites related to your niche, while you can comment on any site you want you stand a better chance of getting traffic from that site if it’s a related site. You also want these sites if possible to be on the number one page of Google for keywords you’re trying to rank for

Just because you created a page on Facebook doesn’t mean it’s going to start magically bringing people to your site. In order for it to be effective you have to promote your page like you would your website. Here is a list of a few things you can do to get your page noticed.

Minecraft or as I prefer to call it “Minecrack” is a game that was recently recommend to my by a friend. At first glance the game looks like a throwback to the original Atari or Nintendo game systems (think Mario Bros type graphics minus having to jump on walking mushrooms) The game essentially has the look of a giant Lego world consisting entirely of blocks, the animals, trees, even the water are all blocks. There’s also no set point system or objective you have to reach in order to beat the game. But despite this the game is exceptionally addictive. I personally found it very easy to spend a few hours on it before I realized how much time had gone by.

Recently a friend of mine who creates fan videos like me had one of his videos copied and re uploaded onto YouTube. The copied version was almost 100 percent identical except for a 2 second picture of a movie poster at the beginning, and a short video about Christian persecution attached to the end. Apart from that it was the same video, music and everything. The reality is this is a very common problem amongst people who upload videos on or other video sharing sites and it’s extremely easy to do. There are countless numbers of sites where you can download videos and easily upload them onto your channel and claim them as your own. So how do you protect your YouTube videos from being copied?

If your currently running or thinking of running ads on Facebook, don’t advertise your Google plus account. It looks like Facebook has a hate on for Google plus, I can’t really blame them considering it’s their biggest competition and I think Facebook is getting more then a little worried about losing their number 1 spot in the social network scene.......

The game Dead Island, a game set on a fictional tropical island where you get to kill zombies hasn’t had very much luck with its recent release. Those who’ve purchased the game on Steam downloaded an incorrect build of the game full of bugs and glitches. On top of that most couldn’t connect online to play multiplayer.............

1. Researchers build the world's fastest 'soft' robot, THREE TIMES faster than the last record holder  Daily Mail
2. Soft robots can now run like cheetahs and swim like marlins  Engadget
3. Inspired by cheetahs, researchers build fastest soft robots yet  Tech Xplore
4. Meet the world's fastest soft Robot!  NEWS9 live
5. Fastest Soft Robots To-Date Developed by Researchers  Unite.AI
6. View Full coverage on Google News

1. Dodging the flu shot doesn't make you an anti-vaxxer, says union  The Age
2. Shop owners in virus-free towns plead to reopen  The Age
3. UFC 249 preview - Ferguson v Gaethje, Cejudo v Cruz and…  BT Sport
4. Why the best team won't win in a year that will be mental as anything  Sydney Morning Herald
5. Wellbeing hit: modelling reveals huge cost of school closures  Sydney Morning Herald
6. View Full coverage on Google News

1. Malaysia's PM to face confidence vote  NEWS.com.au
2. Coronavirus: Mahathir Mohamad lines up third leader Muhyiddin Yassin for the boot  The Australian
3. View Full coverage on Google News

1. The best secret spots to visit in Australia after coronavirus restrictions ease  Daily Mail
2. Coronavirus Australia: World reacts to Scott Morrison’s bold plan  NEWS.com.au
3. How travel will resume around Australia as coronavirus restrictions ease in each state and territory  ABC News
4. Scott Morrison opens the door for international students to return to Australia  SBS News
5. Coronavirus lessons Australia must learn as lockdown restrictions are lifted  NEWS.com.au
6. View Full coverage on Google News

1. Barbaro family makes emotional plea as manhunt continues following death of Melbourne mum  9News
2. Ellie Price’s murder investigation ramps up as police from three states unite in manhunt for Ricardo Barbaro  7NEWS.com.au
3. 'Please come forward': Fugitive's step mum pleads for Ricardo Barbaro to make contact  The Age
4. Ricardo Barbaro’s stepmother pleads ‘please come forward’ as police continue manhunt  NEWS.com.au
5. Fugitive suspected of murdering Ellie Price, 26, in Melbourne had just got out of jail  Daily Mail
6. View Full coverage on Google News

1. Coronavirus restrictions to lift in NSW from Friday, but will not be following all National Cabinet measures  ABC News
2. Berejiklian's roadmap to freedom in NSW  Sydney Morning Herald
3. Mother's Day state by state: What can and can't you do?  The Canberra Times
4. Permission to mingle: NSW will ease lockdown laws on Friday  Daily Telegraph
5. NSW to ease lockdown restrictions from Friday  The Age
6. View Full coverage on Google News