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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I’m a Hugo Award Nominee — Holy Moly on a Stick!
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If you didn’t know already, then you’re probably living in a hole, don’t know what a Hugo Award is, or don’t care. Or maybe you’re secretly plotting to keep me forever in obscurity. *glare*
In any case, my podcast, The Skiffy and Fanty Show, is a finalist for the 2014 Hugo Awards in the Best Fancast category. We’re up there with a bunch of other amazing podcasts, too; there’s something really cool about being in a category with Galactic Suburbia, The Writer and the Critic, and The Coode Street Podcast. Heck, even SF Signal, who is the big boy (or girl) in town, is worthy of admiration for being a powerhouse in the sf/f podcast field. Plus, there’s Verity Podcast (Doctor Who FTW!) and Emma Newman’s adorable Tea & Jeopardy. If this isn’t a varied list of cool podcasts, I don’t know what is!
So my name is among a sea of wonderful names. My crew is among a sea of wonderful crews. My podcast is among a sea of wonderful podcasts. It’s a good day.
And, indeed, that’s all this post is about: celebrating the awesomeness that is this whole ordeal. I don’t know if I’ll win, and in a lot of ways, I kind of don’t care. Obviously, I want to win, but I never thought I’d sit here and write this sentence and think “yeah, I really do feel deeply honored that I got nominated and get to see this thing I’ve spent so much time on among a host of amazing shows that have worked hard to be where they are too…and even if I don’t win, I’m still going to feel great.” But I really feel that way right now. It feels amazing. I’ve never been nominated for anything important. Hell, when I played baseball in my youth, I was the kid you’d give that silly participation trophy to because I couldn’t play worth a damn (though I had the lowest strikeout record in my last season because I was so short and hardly anyone could pitch within my strike zone — I wear that with pride).
But now I’m a Hugo nominee! That’s not a participation award. That’s a “people like what you do and voted for you” plaque. I may not win, but I’ll get to wear my little Hugo pin like a badge of friggin honor. And you better believe I’m going to wear that thing everywhere.
Cue transition to new thing….
And that brings me to the very important fact that I’m still trying to raise funds to attend Worldcon. Now, I have a new reason: to attend the Hugo ceremonies! Right now, I need to make enough to pay for the plane ticket this month. The food and (now new) hotel expenses can come later. But it does mean I really really really need help. As of this post, I’m about $600 short of the amount I need for the plane ticket.*
If you’ve got $10 to spare, please consider donating. It would help me out a lot, but it would also help The Skiffy and Fanty Show do a lot of wonderful things at Worldcon, including attending the Hugo Award ceremonies.**
And on that note, I’m going to go for a walk and grin like a fool all day!
*Pretty sure I can get a ticket for between $1250 and $1400 right now, but that will change after April, I imagine.
**Also on the docket: lots of interviews with international authors and a few walk-by sessions!
P.S.: I’ll have another post about the awards later. Right now, I’m riding the happy.
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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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