We’re nine days into 2025, and it’s already full of exhausting levels of controversy before we’ve even had a turnover in power in my home country of the United States. We’ve seen resignations of world leaders, wars continuing and getting worse and worse (you know where), the owner of Twitter continuing his tirade of lunacy and demonstrating why the billionaire class is not to be revered, California ablaze with a horrendous and large wildfire, right wing thinktanks developing plans to out and attack Wikipedia editors as any fascist-friendly organization would do, Meta rolling out and rolling back GenAI profiles on its platforms, and, just yesterday, the same Meta announcing sweeping changes to its moderation policies that, in a charitable reading, encourage hate-based harassment and abuse of vulnerable populations, promotion and support for disinformation, and other problems, all of which are so profound that people are talking about a mass exodus from the platform to…somewhere. It’s that last thing that brings me back to the blog today. Since the takeover at Twitter, social networks have been in a state of chaos. Platforms have risen and fallen — or only risen so much — and nothing I would call stability has formed. Years ago, I (and many others far more popular than me) remarked that we’ve ceded the territory of self-owned or small-scale third party spaces for massive third party platforms where we have minimal to no control or say and which can be stripped away in a tech-scale heartbeat. By putting all our ducks into a bin of unstable chaos, we’re also expending our time and energy on something that won’t last, requiring us to expend more time and energy finding alternatives, rebuilding communities, and then repeating the process again. In the present environment, that’s impossible to ignore.1 This is all rather reductive, but this post is not the place to talk about all the ways that social networks have impacted control over our own spaces and narratives. Another time, perhaps. I similarly don’t have space to talk about the fact that some of the platforms we currently have, however functional they may be, have placed many of us in a moral quagmire, as in the case of Meta’s recent moderation changes. Another time… ↩
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Reader Question: Have you ever been squirrel fishing and, if so, how much did you enjoy it?
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Once again someone has asked me a very intriguing question on Formspring, which I intend to answer here.
I must admit that I have not been squirrel fishing before, but I have managed to actively participate in the next best thing. You see, many years ago, I was part of MARTI (that is, Mankind Against the Regional Tamias Invasion). Our purpose was, essentially, to keep at bay the impending enslavement of mankind by chipmunks, something they had been planning for centuries. They were so patient and diligent at making this goal a reality that they had managed to pull most of the rodent population under their command, with the exception of the rats–who were smart enough to realize that humanity had basically made it possible for them to survive the Darvasti Plague of 443 R.C.P. (rodent century prime; roughly 25,000 B.C.E. in human years). But the chipmunks had a lot of power and influence.
You might be shocked to learn that most human wars were actually fought over chipmunks, and not the various other things that have been cited. Unfortunately, chipmunks have so infected the historical database by buying off historians that it is impossible to tell the difference between fiction and reality anymore. On top of this, the chipmunks were excellent stockpilers, having learned just about every trick from their ancestors–and their cousins, the squirrels (even a few tricks were picked up from the marsupials, who, oddly enough, never joined the chipmunks, but did try to wage their own war against the mice over recent invasions of the Australian mainland). The chipmunks knew how to hide a full-sized tank right under your nose and they had mountains and mountains of weapons. They’d even discovered how to manipulate human brains, which resulted in a few dozen human males under the direct authority of Chhtchkttch Grtchtkhk, the then dictator of the Chipmunk Empire. The plan ended in disaster for them, but that’s another story.
That said, when I was active in MARTI, I had the opportunity to go chipmunk fishing, which is a very strange practice where a nut or a piece of very thick break is jammed over a hook, hiding it within, and then dropped down a hole via a line attached to a reeling machine. When the chipmunk bites down and tries to run off with the bait, the machine is turned on, which jams the hook into the chipmunk’s mouth and drags the little beast at about forty-five miles per hour out of the hole. They are typically caught by another person who wears a very large catcher’s mitt. This whole process is then repeated. On a good night, we caught forty-seven.
If anyone intends to go chipmunk fishing in the future, feel free to send me an email asking for some tips. Not many people can do it well and it does take a lot of practice.
Now I’m going to throw the question to you. Have you ever been squirrel fishing?
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If you’d like to ask me a question about science fiction, fantasy, books, writing, or whatever (anonymously, even), feel free to ask on my Formspring page or via email at arconna[at]yahoo[dot]com (or as a comment).
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A Reading List of Dystopian Fiction and Relevant Texts (Apropos of Nothing in Particular)
Why would someone make a list of important and interesting works of dystopian fiction? Or a suggested reading list of works that are relevant to those dystopian works? There is absolutely no reason other than raw interest. There’s nothing going on to compel this. There is nothing in particular one making such a list would hope you’d learn. The lists below are not an exhaustive list. There are bound to be texts I have forgotten or texts you think folks should read that are not listed. Feel free to make your own list and tell me about it OR leave a comment. I’ll add things I’ve missed! Anywhoodles. Here goes:
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Duke’s Best EDM Tracks of 2024
And so it came to pass that I finished up my annual Best of EDM [Insert Year Here] lists. I used to do these on Spotify before switching to Tidal, and I continued doing them on Tidal because I listen to an absurd amount of EDM and like keeping track of the tunes I love the most. Below, you will find a Tidal playlist that should be public. You can listen to the first 50 tracks right here, but the full playlist is available on Tidal proper (which has a free version just like Spotify does). For whatever reason, the embedded playlist breaks the page, and so I’ve opted to link to it here and at the bottom of this post. Embeds are weird. Or you can pull songs into your preferred listening app. It’s up to you. Some caveats before we begin:
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2025: The Year of Something
We’re nine days into 2025, and it’s already full of exhausting levels of controversy before we’ve even had a turnover in power in my home country of the United States. We’ve seen resignations of world leaders, wars continuing and getting worse and worse (you know where), the owner of Twitter continuing his tirade of lunacy and demonstrating why the billionaire class is not to be revered, California ablaze with a horrendous and large wildfire, right wing thinktanks developing plans to out and attack Wikipedia editors as any fascist-friendly organization would do, Meta rolling out and rolling back GenAI profiles on its platforms, and, just yesterday, the same Meta announcing sweeping changes to its moderation policies that, in a charitable reading, encourage hate-based harassment and abuse of vulnerable populations, promotion and support for disinformation, and other problems, all of which are so profound that people are talking about a mass exodus from the platform to…somewhere. It’s that last thing that brings me back to the blog today. Since the takeover at Twitter, social networks have been in a state of chaos. Platforms have risen and fallen — or only risen so much — and nothing I would call stability has formed. Years ago, I (and many others far more popular than me) remarked that we’ve ceded the territory of self-owned or small-scale third party spaces for massive third party platforms where we have minimal to no control or say and which can be stripped away in a tech-scale heartbeat. By putting all our ducks into a bin of unstable chaos, we’re also expending our time and energy on something that won’t last, requiring us to expend more time and energy finding alternatives, rebuilding communities, and then repeating the process again. In the present environment, that’s impossible to ignore.1 This is all rather reductive, but this post is not the place to talk about all the ways that social networks have impacted control over our own spaces and narratives. Another time, perhaps. I similarly don’t have space to talk about the fact that some of the platforms we currently have, however functional they may be, have placed many of us in a moral quagmire, as in the case of Meta’s recent moderation changes. Another time… ↩
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