I certainly hope enough of the world can see through the disinformation to bring about the optimistic end of that metaphor.
(I would be interested to know your thoughts on how much of Starmer's positioning here in the UK is "don't scare the Leave voters, it'll be fine once we're in power" and how much is genuine "don't change too much of the status quo", but that feels somewhat off-topic from the broader points you're making here.)
]]>In her story, the only real vestige of the Tanu and Firvulag's time on Earth (apart from Celtic mythology and possible interference with Australopithicus and Homo evolution) is that their spaceship crash-landing formed the Nördlinger Ries
]]>Latif & Latif’s tests for representation of people of colour are clearly quite analogous to Bechdel’s work but I really liked Raman Mundair’s 10-point expansion, which I think does a really good job at highlighting other problematic tropes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test#Derived_tests
]]>To be fair to the man (which is not something I am often wont to do), he did at least bother learning some Welsh ahead of his investiture in the colonial castle at Caernarfon.
(And did you mean George VII, rather than George IX?)
No objections to the rest, though, obviously. One of the few things I will still credit to Johann Hari is his book “God Save the Queen?”, which also argues how the continued existence of the monarchy is harmful to them, as well as to us.
]]>To quote the Wikipedia lead:
In 1998, John Geddes Lawrence Jr., an older white man, was arrested along with Tyron Garner, a younger black man, at Lawrence's apartment in Harris County, Texas. Garner's former boyfriend had called the police, claiming that there was a man with a weapon in the apartment. Sheriff's deputies said they found the men engaging in sexual intercourse. Lawrence and Garner were charged with a misdemeanor under Texas' anti-sodomy law; both pleaded no contest and received a fine.
The Supreme Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas in a 6–3 decision and, by extension, invalidated sodomy laws in 13 other states, making same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory. The Court, with a five-justice majority, overturned its previous ruling on the same issue in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick, where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutional protection of sexual privacy. It explicitly overruled Bowers, holding that it had viewed the liberty interest too narrowly. The Court held that intimate consensual sexual conduct was part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Lawrence invalidated similar laws throughout the United States that criminalized sodomy between consenting adults acting in private, whatever the sex of the participants.
It's the key law that allows queer people to exist without fear of blackmail or gaol in red-voting states.
Likewise Loving v. Virginia legalised mixed-race marriages and mixed-race sex in 16 states, including everywhere south of Mason–Dixon but also Delaware(!!); it's only in 2000 that Alabama removed the (invalidated) miscegenation text from the state constitution.
]]>Aliette de Bodard's Obsidian and Blood novels feature a protagonist who is the High Priest of the Dead and, in the 3 novels and various shorts, is investigating murders that are suspected to be magic-related.
Good fun reads, if anyone fancies that kind of thing. And she was obsessed with the Mexica as a kid, so lots of interesting ethnographical detail too 😊
]]>Do I detect a fan of Aliette de Bodard? 😄
]]>Good thing there's no signs of anti-PC intolerance and that tech isn't unrepresentative of the general population, then(!) ;o)
]]>I'll add myself to the list of people telling you to start at the beginning — though get the newer Omnibus editions.
Definitely worth it. A lot of fun :)
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