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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The Diversity Pledge: Crunching My Numbers for 2013
Reading Time
I think this is the first time I’ve seriously looked at my reading numbers. And now I’m going to share them with the world.
The list only includes novels, collections, and narrative non-fiction. I have not factored in multiple books by the same author.
Here’s the author list:
Gareth L. Powell
Myke Cole
Christopher Barzak
Nir Yaniv
Brian McClellan
Paul Cornell
Michael R. Underwood
Michael J. Martinez
Nick Mamatas
Wes Chu
Doug Lain
Richard Phillips
Mike Resnick
James Anthony Froude
Stephen N. Cobham
Michel Maxwell Philip
C.L.R. James
Edgar Mittelholzer
Roger Mais
George Lamming
V.S. Naipaul
Kim Stanley Robinson
John Scalzi
Saladin Ahmed
Brandon Sanderson
Jay Lake
Max Gladstone
Chuck Wendig
Karen Lord
Merle Hodge
Caryl Phillips
Dionne Brand
Erna Brodber
Mary Seacole
Evie Manieri
Linda Nagata
Nalo Hopkinson
Rhiannon Held
Lauren Beukes
Yoon Ha Lee
Ruth Frances Long
Emma Newman
Cassandra Rose Clarke
Ann Leckie
Cherie Priest
Jean Rhys
Beryl Gilroy
Suzanne Collins
Mira Grant
Lois McMaster Bujold
Nancy Kress
Aliette de Bodard
Zen Cho
Mur Lafferty
Stina Leicht
Here are the percentages w/ commentary:
Gender
Male (50.9%)
Female (49.1%)
I’m actually surprised with this. While I make an effort to maintain gender parity for The Skiffy and Fanty Show, that same effort does not apply to my academic work. There, I’m concerned with a tradition of literature, which is historically male-centric. But apparently even my PhD project is fairly equal in terms of gender.
In any case, I’m happy. I wanted to get close to 50/50, and so I have. A+
Diversity
White (61.82%)
Non-White (38.18%)
I’m uncomfortable with this category for two reasons: 1) I don’t like the idea that there are two groups (white and non-white); 2) I don’t know how to get around that without making completely idiotic assumptions about other people’s race. But this is the only way I have to measure racial diversity, and so I have to use it. If anyone has a better idea, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.
I also wanted to include a note about LGBT authors here, but I realized that I’d have to go digging around to figure who is who. And, well, it’s really none of my business. It wasn’t something I intentionally selected for this year, though I certainly would like to read more works by LGBT authors.
In any case, I’m not dissatisfied with these numbers. They’re not as bad as they could be, and they could certainly be better, but considering that I didn’t actually try, I’m genuinely pleased that nearly 40% of my reading came from people of color.
U.S./U.K. (65.46%)
Elsewhere (34.54%)(includes expatriates)
This doesn’t surprise me at all. Since my field of research is Caribbean literature, a good chunk of what I read this year would have to be from elsewhere on the planet. In 2014, that number is going to look very different indeed thanks to the World SF Tour.
If I had more time, I’d break these numbers down by region (the Caribbean, continental Europe, etc.). For now, I’ll settle for the above.
And that’s that. How about you? Leave your numbers below!
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Recent Posts
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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