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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A Few Blog Changes
Reading Time
(Note: There’s a little request for input at the end. I’d really appreciate your thoughts.)
Lately, I’ve found myself wanting to change how things are run on this site. You’ll have noticed that I wasn’t an active blogger for the latter half of 2012, whereas the first month-ish of 2013 has shown the exact opposite. Part of this had to do with a lack of time on my part, but it also stemmed from having nothing to say, or not having the will to put some thought into topics suggested to me.
I don’t want the same thing to happen in 2013, which is why I start this thread on Google+ asking about scheduled columns and other blog-related things. That thread gave me the push I need to make the following changes:
1) For the foreseeable future, the following will be regular, day-specific features on this blog (some will have proper titles; some will not):
Note: Free Days are also days I will post non-weekly stuff, such as my “Adventures in…Cancer” stuff (see below).
2) Occasionally, I post short bits on little videos I’ve found or academic material I think you all might be interested in. Those columns will continue to appear somewhat randomly throughout the year (Videos Found, Academic Spotlight, Promo Bits, Photo Bits, etc.). I may also continue the Science My Science Fiction columns, although with a different thought process behind it. Peggy Kolm already explores the intersections between science and science fiction with the kind of detail you’d expect of someone who focuses on that issue; I, therefore, need to find a very unique direction for that column.
3) I will continue to blog about my cancer experiences, though on a more regular schedule. For now, I am making it an every-other-week feature, starting the week after next.
It is possible I will make more changes to this schedule in the future, either by moving things around, adding new columns, or something else (I’ve considered creating an interview series here, but I already review/interview so much at The Skiffy and Fanty Show that I’m not sure I can really put in the time for such a thing — we’ll see).
So that’s that. The game starts tomorrow (not “the” game, mind — that’s in about 4 hours…).
P.S.: If anyone has better titles for these features, please let me know. I’m terrible with titles… Likewise, if you have any thoughts, opinions, suggestions, etc., send an email to arconna[at]yahoo[dot]com or leave a comment. You can suggest just about anything (posts you’d rather see, etc. etc. etc.).
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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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