Author: Alex

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movie

[Movie] Heretic

Saw Heretic this morning with my mom. Nothing wrong with a bit of light horror over brunch. If you haven’t seen the trailer, here it is:

I actually want to get into my deeper thoughts about this movie, particularly watching it as an atheist and humanist, but a few generalities first:

Hugh Grant absolutely crushes it. As an actor who is generally boxed into doofy nice guy characters, him getting a turn at horror was either going to be really good or really bad, and he fucking runs the table. But unlike, say, Robin Williams in One Hour Photo, he doesn’t show his acting chops by playing opposite his normal type in a really effective way. Instead he does his usual routine of jocular, avuncular, occasionally pulls very classic Hugh Grant faces, but he’s added in an undercurrent of absolute sociopathy and meneace that really works with the film’s concept. Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East, who play the two hapless Mormon missionaries, are also really good.

It’s not a movie that has a feast of jump scares or gore. Its true currency is dread and tension, which it tries to crank up with long scenes of Hugh Grant doing an impression of everyone’s favorite college philosophy professor lecturing on religion punctuated by a sometimes literally descent into wrongness hidden under a suburban facade. I am a massive weenie, and I watched this with no problems; I feel like at times the Hugh Grant as Socratic lecturer went on a bit longer than necessary before the next turn of the narrative crank, but your mileage may vary on that. I think it could have gone from the 110-minute run time down to 90 without really losing anything, but we seem to be in the era of every movie that could be comfortably an hour and a half reaching for two hours anyway. (Red One, which I saw yesterday and also enjoyed for very different reasons, is 123 minutes and really didn’t need to be that long either.)

So basically, if you’re interested in watching a dread-focused movie and don’t mind listening to people talk about religion for stretches, it’s worth your time. The performances alone are worth it; everyone’s giving their all.

But now, I’m going to get into spoiler territory. I want to talk about what I feel is the true point of Heretic‘s horror.

Continue reading “[Movie] Heretic”
Categories
the joys of being a homeowner

“I have no idea where the water is going.”

Something you never, ever want to hear a plumber say.

I mentioned over the weekend on bsky that I’m on round two of “why is there water in my basement?” which is perhaps one of the worst gameshows you can find yourself on as the co-owner of a house, perhaps only surpassed by “what kind of insects have infested my walls?” and “where did all the grounding wires for my electrical outlets disappear off to?”

The quick summary is that about six months ago, water showed up under the floor of my basement bedroom. No one could figure out where the water was coming from–the walls were totally dry–and we finally had to chalk it up to just one of those things that happens sometimes, have the floor reinstalled with an extra moisture barrier, and continue on. Then in the last several weeks, water randomly showed up in the store room (opposite corner of the house from my bedroom) and then under my bedroom floor again.

As you might imagine, I am not happy about this. Particularly the part where I had to move everything out of my bedroom so the floor could get ripped up again, meaning I’m sleeping on a mattress on the floor in one of the common areas now.

This time I called in some experts. The really frustrating part about this kind of thing is getting someone who can and will actually help you. My insurance guy thought it had to be a problem with the footer drain; he wanted me to try to find someone to scope it. Spoiler: no one wants to scope your footer drain. Plumbers tell you it’s not their problem, it’s a landscaping thing. Landscapers look at you blankly and ask if you’re sure you wouldn’t rather just install a french drain, because when all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a french drain, I guess.

I finally found a company that just does basements. A nice man named Edward showed up with a moisture meter and started looking rather grim once I showed him where the water had showed up. He said he needed to do more tests, but we probably had a moisture buildup in fill around our foundation wall, and it had finally broken through the cold joints between the footer, foundation wall, and slab.1 Apparently this is the most common cause of water showing up in your basement that isn’t from a leaky pipe, and the way to fix it involves installing a gutter. In your basement. Which involves jack hammering out a channel around the entire perimeter and also ripping out the bottom foot or so of all your drywall to accomplish that. (And they don’t reinstall the drywall when they’re done.)

This is me, breathing into a paper bag.

Except… that turned out to not be a problem. We had a much more unusual issue, one that in his experience occurs less than 1% of the time. The moisture meter, you see, showed that the foundation walls were bone dry… and the slab just got wetter and wetter the further from the walls it got. We had…

GROUNDWATER!

First, this made me feel less insane for insisting that there was absolutely no water coming in from the foundation walls. Because there wasn’t. Who doesn’t love being right? And second, something even more rare followed–the way to fix water under the slab was significantly cheaper than if it had been the standard cold joint issue.

First time in my damn life that having the unusual problem is actually a plus.

So instead, in a bit over a week, I get to have a construction crew come in and jackhammer a channel through the middle of my slab so they can put the drain in there and run it to our brand-new-for-reasons-of-the-previous-owner-being-an-idiot sump pump.2 And it’ll hopefully only take a day! So in two weeks, I might even have a floor in my room and get to go back to working at my desk instead of on the dining room table! Huzzah!

1 – A cold joint is the joint/pseudo-joint you get when you pour concrete on top of concrete that has already set. Often these are bad, but they’re actually an expected and necessary thing when you’re talking about your slab, footer, and foundation wall; all three of those come from separate pours of concrete. Which is actually a good thing. If your soil settles (and it inevitably will) the foundation is a lot more likely to crack if it’s all one piece.

2 – So about that sump pump. While I was still trying to find anyone who would look at the damn foundation drain, my plumbers said they didn’t do that kind of drain, but they could check out the sump pump. And I thought sure, the sump pump was original to the house and there was a non-zero possibility that was the problem, in which case getting that fixed would clear things up. It didn’t, by the way. But I’m still happy I had it looked at. Because you see, the utter genius from whom we purchased this house was a bit of a do-it-yourselfer. Our plumber had already had the fun of bringing the hot water heater self-install the guy did up to code, which involved, among other things, six hours redoing all the copper work because there were multiple pipes and valves that had no purpose apparent to any plumber who hadn’t been driven mad by an eldritch being. What our long-suffering plumber discovered was that this genius had buried the sump pump drain line. Where did it go? After twenty minutes of searching, he located a little pit drain 80 feet away that he thought might be the end point. To test this out, he borrowed our hose and put water down the cleanout. The water neither backed up nor went t the pit drain, which was what caused him to say “I have no idea where the water is going.” Cool cool cool. The next day, he called out his buddy the drain guy, who scoped that line and discovered that the sump drain (a 1.5″ pipe) went out 8 feet, took a sharp right turn into a corrugated drain line (a 3″ pipe with no adapter, see the problem here?) that went 80 feet to the pit drain–and to keep the corrugated line in place, the previous owner had helpfully driven metal spikes through it. Because as we all know, there is nothing better for the structural integrity of a pipe. We now have an above-ground drain for the sump pump.3

3 – But that wasn’t even all. Because while the drain guy was dealing with all that, our plumber got the sump pit open (it’s normally sealed for radon mitigation), which first meant he had to call his other friend, our electrician, because the outlet the pump was plugged into was installed so that it was hanging directly over the sump pit.4 Because as we all know, the best place for an electrical outlet is as close as possible to a place known to be, I don’t know, prone to filling with water. At any rate, once he’d extracted the eight-year-old sump pump, he discovered that there’d been some kind of leak, indicated by all of its bolts being rusted and it being so covered with calcite mineralization that it looked like the ghost of a sump pump. Oh, and when it had been installed, the former owner hadn’t bothered to trim the drain line short enough, so had “just kind of jammed the pump in there” such that it was sitting at an angle. For eight years.5

4- An arrangement our electrician called “goofy” because he is a man prone to understatement.

5 – True wisdom in home repair is knowing and accepting that you are not the guy to fix the thing. For fuck’s sake, just call the guy who is.

Categories
climate change people don't suck politics

The Long, Unforgiving Grind of Hope

Unfortunately, you usually have to be old to know that things can change. To know that the hopeless can turn hopeful.

–Lawrence O’Donnell

It’s strange, because I remember so many things changing in a positive way when I was younger. Before I turned 20, the Berlin Wall fell. Apartheid ended in South Africa. HIV went from a terrifying death sentence to something that could at least be managed with medication. CFCs were phased out in an effort to stop massive ozone depletion. The first civil unions for same-sex couples happened in America. The internet went from non-existent to bulletin boards you dialed specific numbers to reach to a single cable that opened up the floodgates.

I know that change can happen, intellectually. I’ve seen it happen for over four decades now.

Yet it can be so easy to convince yourself, even looking at the tumultuous years you’ve already lived, that nothing more is going to change for the better. Because things also change for the worse. The PATRIOT Act happens. Trump gets elected. The internet turns into anxiety-inducing shit. We keep belching endless streams of carbon into the atmosphere. And no matter how hard you try to see something good happen again, the world doesn’t move. It just grinds you down and down and down.

In my childhood, my teens, my twenties, change was a thing that just happened. Suddenly, the Berlin wall toppled and people were dancing in the streets and the USSR was over. Suddenly, we could no longer buy Aquanet hairspray, and that was good, because it meant a lack of ozone wasn’t going to let the sun cook us all like eggs in a frying pan. And now here I am in my forties, venting to one of my fellow regulators, why won’t this group just take their fucking half a cake–yes, it’s not the whole cake they wanted, but it’s half a cake they can hold on to while they keep fighting to get the other half.

Change was once a magic, instantaneous thing because I wasn’t involved in it. I wasn’t in the midst of it. I heard there was a problem, and then somehow, it wasn’t a problem any more because people just all agreed it wouldn’t be. Yet when you become one of the people who actively wants change happen instead of vaguely observing it, any movement at all feels impossible. You make calls and donate money and knock on doors and write letters and protest and give feedback on regulations and nothing changes. You compromise and compromise and compromise and feel like the ground you give gains you nothing in return. Things used to change, and now they don’t. They can’t. They never will again.

But loves, I understand now that this is exactly how the people felt, when they were staring down the Berlin Wall. It’s how they felt sixty, a hundred, a thousand years ago when they faced a mountain of human suffering that seemed immovable, a crushing and endless reality. Nothing changes. Nothing good happens.

Until it suddenly does.

In geology one of the first lessons is: the greatest mountain will one day be worn down to nothing but sand, and all it takes is the gentle fall of rain. The tiniest cracks are wedge open by frost, bit by bit by bit, until suddenly an entire cliff face gives way.

Change is not impossible, it is inevitable. All it takes is pressure and time. So fight for every crumb and then keep fighting. Turn frustration from the fuel of exhaustion and burn it to heat the fire of hope. We are the rain. We are the frost. We are the change happening, one grain of sand at a time.

We will move mountains, and the children who watch us will marvel at how easy it was.

Categories
the human body is made of bullshit worldcon

Heading to Worldcon. I guess.

Yes, I’m going to Worldcon this year. I haven’t really been talking about it much because… well, I’m going to be honest. I’m having a lot of anxiety and while I’m looking forward to doing vacation-y stuff in Scotland, I am dreading the convention more than a little.

I’m a writer, so I guess I’ll write about it.

A large source of my dread is, in all honesty, that I’m on business meeting staff this year. And while I really love the rest of the staff team and am excited to be working with them, there’s also the 100 fucking page long agenda (available from this URL if you want to give yourself sympathetic anxiety: https://glasgow2024.org/whats-on/wsfs-business-meeting/business-meeting-agenda/). I don’t feel like I’m talking out of turn to acknowledge that there are some controversial things on the agenda, thanks in no small part to a previous business meeting I did not participate in, and I’m also well aware of some of the shit that’s being said out there in the community.

I don’t have any programming at Glasgow other than the business meetings. Because they’re going to run so long, and because I had to take a hard look at both my mental and physical health and concluded that there is quite literally no way I could do more programming as an author and guarantee that I’d be even marginally pleasant and energetic for it.

I can’t really blame WSFS entirely, however, and it would be very unfair to do so. The rest of it is of a piece with the physical and adjacent mental health issues that I’ve been struggling with since November 2022. Things are improving (I’m still in remission! I’m finally starting to taper off immunosuppressants!) but I feel like I am not even living in the neighborhood of my old self yet, and who knows if I ever will again.

This is the first large convention I will have gone to since all of this bullshit started. Up until now, I’ve basically been living like a recluse in my own basement, because I’ve been taking my nephrologist very seriously when he’s told me how fucking bad it would be to catch even a cold while I’m on cyclosporine, let alone COVID. (Having had a single cold and a resulting sinus infection during this time has only highlighted how right he is.) So I’m incredibly anxious about the plane flight and the convention, since those are the times when I’m going to be around a lot of people in enclosed spaces. You can bet your ass I’m going to be wearing a mask all the time!

And frankly, I’ve never been really great with crowds, though I do a decent job of pretending when I’m “on” and being an official, friendly author person. But now, it’s been over a year and a half since I’ve been around any kind of sizable group of people that I’d like to actually interact in and that’s kind of freaking me out, too.

There’s one other thing, too, which feels vain and stupid but here we are. I’ve gained a lot of weight in the last year and a half, thanks to long-term high-dose steroids and being at times just very physically unwell. I’ve always taken pride in being a very natty dresser, and I know it’s how people tend to find me in a crowd. All that’s gone out the window; frankly, my old, nice clothes no longer fit me satisfactorily, and I haven’t had time, energy, nor budget to remedy that situation. So approaching this Worldcon now feels like heading for a battle without any armor.

Bonus author anxiety: I haven’t really done any writing (other than some tie-in work that I am proud of!) in a year and a half. Feels bad, man.

So yeah. I wish I could say I was looking forward to Worldcon, but I really can’t at this point. I’m hoping that once I’m there I’ll be able to relax and have some fun and see people I haven’t gotten to see in a while. Please, if you’ll be there and you’d like to hang out, let me know! I’m not really in a place to go to a party or barcon it, but I’d be up for grabbing lunch or sitting outside and having a tea* or going for a walk. Something low key.

On the other hand, if you see me and I look weird or am being unusually quiet or seem really anxious, I promise it’s not you. It’s me, and the fact that my kidneys tried to literally murder me a year and a half ago and I’m still not over it.

Also, please wear a mask at the convention. In all indoor spaces, really. I know I’m not the only immunocompromised person around.

 

* – guess who’s going to Scotland and can’t drink alcohol right now. Me. I’m talking about me.

Categories
site stuff

Quick site note

Apparently my site was down for like two weeks due to a CSS update by my host interacting poorly with the WordPress theme I was using… which had not been updated since 2015. Yikes. Anyway, I have temporarily grabbed a new theme, which is not my favorite but it works. As time allows, I’ve got a different theme I’d like to use, but I’ll need to switch over to using blocks–which thanks to using them over at Book Riot, I no longer loathe like I used to, but it’s also more brain damage than I currently have capacity for on this site.

(Also, I’ll admit it, Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail came out and that’s hoovering up every spare minute I have.)

Feel free to drop me a line if you notice any other issues with the site going down or if there’s something weird in the formatting for the new theme that is making it difficult to read things!

Categories
science fiction this shit is fucked up worldcon wtf

Well, I sure don’t like this (I’m talking about the Hugo stats)

First, go read Jason’s roundup of info, because he is more measured, cogent, and informative than I could hope to be: Genre Grapevine on the Hugo Awards “not eligible” problem (ETA: Cora really digs into the irregularities at her blog.)

(And you really should consider supporting Jason, because he does solid work all around.)

I don’t necessarily have anything new to add, but I have been reminded that, particularly in such a relatively small group, it can be very worth it to speak up even if the response boils down to a rousing hear, hear! It is all too easy for silence to be read as either assent, consent, or disinterest, and I also know I have my own association with WSFS nonsense as a dedicated meeting attendee.

My thoughts, then, are thus:

  1. This is really fucked up and really upsetting. People being marked as “ineligible” for no cogent reason I’ve yet encountered, despite a plethora of nominations and obvious eligibility. While some of the “ineligibles” are pretty easy to read as politically motivated–and that is already not okay in the slightest–others (I specifically mean here my friend Paul Weimer) make absolutely no goddamn sense in that framing. Not that it would be okay either way. Absolute fucking bullshit, top to bottom.
  2. It’s a massive stain on the Hugo Awards themselves, I would argue far worse than the Sad Puppy nonsense because at least there were no questions there about the admin tampering with the Hugos. So I reiterate: what the actual fuck.
    1. Cheryl Morgan makes an interesting point about this, by the way. The thought that releasing stats with problems as a deliberate act to draw attention is certainly a possibility. Though I find myself wondering why, if this was intended as a deliberate act of whistleblowing, one of the American members of the Hugo Admin hasn’t out and said something.
  3. I am pissed, I’m horrified and… I’m honestly also not surprised that there were some kind of bullshit shenanigans. I chose not to participate in Chengdu WorldCon as a panelist or anything else because of the policies and acts of the Chinese government; while I certainly know the people are not their government, I had massive concerns about either top-down political interference or protective self-censorship. I am deeply saddened and disappointed to have that choice vindicated.

You can consider the above 3 points to be squared, as my housemate Corina shares these opinions. (And doesn’t have a blog of her own, because she is wiser than me.)

I’ll admit, after my initial what the actual fuck, this is fucked reaction, my second thought was, oh boy, the Glasgow business meeting is going to be spicy as hell. Which: good. Deservedly so, if it pans out the way I imagine.

With that in mind, I want to draw attention to another post by Cheryl: Decoupling the Hugos. Please give it a thorough read, and take a look at the draft resolution.

I had a similar thought on hearing the news. Making the Hugo Admin independent of WorldCon could prevent uneven application or different interpretations of rules, say, and provide more continuity. Election administration is only as good as the honesty of the people in charge, but as we in America got educated on thoroughly in 2020, if you have officials and administrators who are answerable primarily to the rules themselves and deeply invested in the process regardless of their potential personal feelings about the results, it can shield you from a lot of interference.

I also, for reasons of my current planned participation in the Glasgow 2024 WSFS Business Meeting, don’t feel I can personally push this proposal forward–and I may very well not be able to debate on it. But I can sure say I think it’s a good idea, and Kevin has crafted some solid starting language, and I hope I get a chance to vote on something like this in August whether I’m sitting on a chair out in serpentine territory or at the table.

We already showed once that, for all its required two-year timeline, WSFS can react to deeply troubling occurrences within the Hugos. I have high hopes that we can do so again.

Categories
me the human body is made of bullshit

Hell of a year.

It’s July, Alex.

Hi, it’s me. I’m not dead. Surprisingly. You may have noticed that I started getting pretty quiet in 2022. At the start, this was for a good reason–well, all the reasons have been good ones, this was for a happy reason. I was writing a book for Activision-Blizzard, and also writing an absolute butt-ton of scripts for Marvel Move (yes, that’s right, I am writing Thor and Loki). I just did not have available brain juice for anything else. This website fell by the wayside, and then I pretty much gave up on social media as Elon Musk made Twitter progressively less pleasant to be on.

I will also be frank, I was also having some mental health issues, including a bout of depression and anxiety bad enough that I finally got on SSRIs, which is what had me functional enough to do the aforementioned writing. So at least as I went into autumn of 2022, I was feeling pretty good, I was just… busy. Very busy.

Then everything changed when the fire nation attacked when I was about to get on an airplane for a nearly month-long family vacation with my best friend and niblings in Japan.

I’m about to get into some medical stuff, which always edges the line of oversharing. I think in this case, it’s stuff that’s actually important to share, because I had no fucking idea I was in serious trouble until it was very serious trouble. And as with many health-related things, it started in a way I could shrug off because I’d never heard of other people having issues like this. (For good reason, it turns out.) But I will warn you, what follows is going to involve a lot of stressful medical bullshit, and also a lot of pee.

Cue literally twelve goddamn hours before I get on an international flight. I notice that my ankles are kind of swollen, which is… weird, but not unheard of. For about the previous week, one of my ankles had been kind of puffy off and on. I chalked it up to having shitty joints and having recently eaten some very salty food, with a mental note to bring it up with my doctor post-Japan if it kept randomly happening. Go to bed. Get up. The ankles? Even more swollen. I know enough to realize this is not a great thing to have happening on a long flight, when one’s ankles might swell up to begin with. But twenty minutes from heading to the airport, I wasn’t going to call things off and pay ticket change fees so I could go to the doctor, if I could even get a same-day appointment. I bought a pair of overpriced compression socks at the airport and kept going.

I had an absolutely fucking great time in Japan. I want to be clear about that. Despite everything that was going on with my body, I still had a ton of fun and loved being there with everyone. But even as I was eating my way across Osaka or going for a boat ride in Kobe Bay, I was aware that something was Not Good. My legs kept swelling up. I ended up with what I thought was a rash all over my calves, which was concerning enough that I did a phone visit with a doctor; the best we could come up with was cortisone and time. But it looked gross enough that I didn’t end up going to an onsen at all because I wouldn’t want to share a hot pool with someone whose skin looked like mine.

(This was not a rash, it turned out. This was just my skin reacting to how much it was being stretched by the rapidly building edema.)

And my legs kept swelling. And swelling. My feet looked like balloons. The edema started creeping up, like I was a latex glove being slowly filled at a sink, first all the way to my knees, then over my knees, then halfway up my thighs. It was difficult to bend my knees if my legs had been straight for a while; if I pressed a finger against my skin it formed a deep and persistent pit in the swelling. I could tell I’d also gained a lot of weight elsewhere (which I blamed on being fat initially–it wasn’t). My joints ached. I was glad I’d brought my collapsable cane with me, because I started needing it to get around because I was so creaky. I started developing a cough, mild at first, which was non-productive even though I could feel something crackling in my lungs. The cough got bad enough that I blew out a little blood vessel in one of my eyes, which wasn’t painful, but it looked disgusting. Annoying, I thought, that once again I’d gotten a travel cold despite masking on the plane.

(It wasn’t a cold.)

With all that going on, it’s probably not a surprise that I noticed but utterly dismissed what was actually the most important factor: every time I peed, it was foamy like a fucking beer. Like persistently foamy. Huh, weird, I thought. I don’t think it’s normally like that? Probably something about the cleaning products in a different country.

I’m going to tell you right now that if you have persistently foamy pee, and it’s a weird new thing in your life you’ve just been ignoring, stop reading this blog post and make an appointment with your doctor. Right now.

Through it all, I kept telling myself that I just needed to make it through until I was back home, because I didn’t actually feel bad enough to want to go to a Japanese emergency room, where I’d have to drag my best friend’s husband there with me for who knew how many hours for what was no doubt nothing but would get me told off for being fat. (And this is what medical fatphobia does to us.) And he did offer; I simply didn’t feel bad enough to think it was necessary.

Until I was two days out from leaving for home. I split off from the group in Nagoya because they were going to spend a bit longer doing strictly family stuff in another city, and I was supposed to go spend a day in Kyoto and then my last day in Tokyo. Instead, I got sick. Like massive vomiting, diarrhea, coughing so hard I was constantly in danger of either shitting or pissing or both myself. Another blood vessel in one of my eyes blew out, a much bigger one that had half my sclera bright red like I’d been in a fight. I spent an extra day shut in my hotel room in Nagoya because I couldn’t imagine getting on a train, and just desperately hoped it would pass in 24 hours so I could get on my flight home. I thought about going to the ER; I probably would have asked if I’d still had access to a native Japanese speaker to help me. I tried to figure out if there was a way I could get a COVID test before getting on the plane, because considering the way I’ve reacted to the vaccines, I was terrified I’d finally caught COVID.

(It wasn’t COVID.)

But I did feel better after 24 hours, good enough to make it back to Tokyo and have some fun for my last evening in Japan. The flight home was fucking horrific; the edema in my legs and abdomen was so bad, I had to wedge myself into the seat and almost couldn’t buckle the seatbelt. I couldn’t stop coughing, and I couldn’t catch my breath. I wish I could send a personal apology to everyone who had to sit in the airplane’s cabin with me, along with the good news that hey at least it wasn’t anything contagious.

The minute we landed, I texted my housemate to let her know I was on the ground. And when she picked me up, I told her to take me directly to the ER. Which was the smartest thing I could have done, then.

By the time the ER got a look at me, my systolic blood pressure was over 160–which is not quite a hypertensive crisis, but heading that way, and also deeply worrying for me because I’d never had a blood pressure that high in my life. The 12-lead EKG picked up irregularities in the electrical transmission in my heart. The doctors ordered a ton of labs and then started me on furosemide (a diuretic), because they had no idea what was causing what, but it was very plain that I had a lot of extra water in my system I needed to pee off. They sent me home with strict instructions to see my primary care physician as soon as possible, or to come back to the ER if I started feeling worse.

I’m not going to go into detail about how December went for me. But over the course of a week and a half, after getting bumped up to 40 mg furosemide twice a day (that’s a lot of furosemide), I peed off over 30 pounds of extra water I’d been carrying around. That solved the blood pressure issue and the cough, even if we still had no idea why it had happened. I bounced around specialists, from pulmonary to cardiology, had a real scare with an echocardiogram that, on re-do once I was minus all that fluid turned out to be fine. And then I got referred to the nephrologist, because hoo boy, my pee was spicy**.

**Spicy here does not mean ow; there was no UTI or anything like that. We started calling it spicy because I was pissing out all of my protein in massive amounts, which is Very Bad.

Turns out I had what is called Nephrotic Syndrome, which means my kidneys were not filtering my blood properly. But what was causing it? That became the real question. It wasn’t until January, after a kidney biopsy, that there was finally an answer for what was causing my kidneys to go haywire: focal segmental glomerulosclerosis. (aka FSGS.)

So for my 42nd birthday, my body got me a rare autoimmune condition. Thanks, pal.

The good thing about having a diagnosis is, even if the diagnosis is scary (and I will not claim this one isn’t) at least there is an answer. There’s a course of treatment. There’s ways to track it and ameliorate it. And even the scary things (like the specter of dialysis and kidney failure) still mean you can start mentally preparing yourself for the worst to come to pass. You might not like where you’re going, but at least it’s not a terrifying unknown.

The treatment for FSGS turns out to be: a lot of immunosuppressants. Anyone with a chronic condition that’s autoimmune is no doubt nodding at this point, because you know what’s coming next, and it’s an absolute shitload of prednisone. I’ve been on prednisone before, but this was an amount of prednisone that involved me signing a waiver indicating I understood that it could do fun things like give me diabetes or permanently fuck up my ability to make my own cortisol. But you know what both those things (and everything else on the possible side effects list) are? Less scary than the certainty of my kidneys completely shutting down.

High dose prednisone is a wild fucking ride. I spent the first month unable to sleep for more than about three hours a night; I had energy, but it was all bad, frenetic energy of the kind of that makes it impossible to form useful thoughts. I was always hungry; I put back on most of the weight I’d lost that had been edema, this time because I was just constantly fucking ravenous and also felt so shitty that I couldn’t even try to temper it a little with exercise. And not eating? Not an option. Because it also made me aggressive and cranky and angry, which translated into being hangry all the damn time. I was not fun to deal with.

It’s now July and I’m finally on a low enough dose of prednisone that I’m starting to feel sort of like myself again. Because the prednisone has been replaced with cyclosporine, which is an immunosuppressant normally given to transplant patients, but apparently it’s pretty awesome for getting your body to stop trying to kill your own kidneys. So that means I’m in remission now, yay!

But also… with all that going on, in February, my father died. That… is something I will maybe talk about later, but there’s a lot I’m still working through in my own head before there’s much I’d want to say out loud. Other than it fucking sucks. Grief is hard, and you have to just keep feeling all the feelings until you’re done with them or they’re done with you. I miss my dad. And I love him.

So yeah.

If you tl;dr’ed this post, here are the two things I want you to know, the absolute most important take-homes:

  1. If your pee is repeatedly foamy like a beer, GO TO THE DOCTOR. There are a lot of things that can cause it that aren’t super rare autoimmune diseases, and most of them suck. Don’t wait to feel sick.
  2. 2023 can eat my entire queer ass. Fuck this year.
Categories
worldcon

WSFS Business Meeting – Sunday Liveblog

1003: Meeting is in session. Jared starts off reading a land acknowledgment.

1005: Warren Buff up for report on site selection. This is the first year we’ve had electronic site selection and it was a rousing selection. 323 electronic votes this year, total of 802 ballots expressing a preference. He reads out the write-in candidates; the remaining 776 votes were (unsurprisingly) for Glasgow. There were NO ballots indicating none of the above.

1008: Esther MacCallum Stewart, chair of Glasgow 2024, is up to introduce us to Glasgow WorldCon. She calls up all of her team who is present. A lot of kilts! And people wearing the same tartans. (ETA: It’s called “landing zone” and it’s the Glasgow 2024 tartan.) We start with a video that’s I’m Gonna Be by the Proclaimers. There is a lot of singing and clapping along! Everyone is so excited :)

1013: The name of the con will be Glasgow 2024: A WorldCon for Our Futures.

1013: Esther thanks the previous chairs of Glasgow WorldCons.

1014: Announcement of guests! Artist Chris Baker (Fangorn). Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer.

1016: Ken Macleod. Nnedi Okorafor. Terri Windling.

1019: Prices for WorldCon up. The website should be alive in about 40 minutes. Note that the tartan is going to be available for purchase, either already made into items or just the cloth if you want to make something for yourself!

1022: DisCon III immediately sends $27K in pass-along funds to Glasgow. Dave McCarty gives Esther a ribbon.

1024: In response to a question, Esther notes that Glasgow WorldCon is happening temporally close by to the Edinburgh music festival and Edinburgh Fringe, which is a 45 minute train ride away, and there is a ton of stuff always happening. The Glasgow table will be opened by midday.

https://twitter.com/katsudonburi/status/1566447801122291719?s=20&t=jHnKnVbHdtmhcwFN1lINxw

1026: Warren Buff to report the NASFic votes. 312 votes for Winnipeg. Note Orlando had withdrawn.

1029: For Winnipeg… dang, I missed the names of the ladies who came up to talk about NASFic. I am so sorry. (Someone correct me?) We start with the land acknowledgment for Manitoba; it’s Treaty One (?) territory. Dates for NASFic are July 20-23, 2023. (The Winnipeg NASFic is going to be Pemmi-Con, I love it.)

1032: Question time & presentation for Chengdu 2023. Starting with a presentation regarding the Chengdu facilities.

1045: Questions now. Martin Pyne – when will the dates be set? Ben Yalow – It has been set! It’s on the next PR, but he can tell us now. It’s August 16-20, 2023.

1046: Dave Hook – since Covid is still ongoing, what is the backup plan if Chengdu gets shut down again. Ben Yalow – Boy have things changed a lot over the last several years, and we have another year for things to change further. We can’t really plan on what the restrictions might be. We’re wide open on in person because we don’t know what it’s going to be. We’re also planning a significant virtual programming track for those who cannot attend in person.

1047: Brian Nisbet – Will Chengdu be able to do online site selection considering its success here? Ben Yalow – no decision have yet been made concerning electronic site selection. They’d like to know how things were done here to see what is feasible and if it can be integrated with existing and new platforms. New platform should be rolling out any day now.

1048: Andrew Adams – Visas will be required for many who are regular WorldCon attendees. Will you have information to help people get Visas. Ben Yalow – we’re hoping to get financial government sponsorship of the convention soon, and if that happens we may be able to get some help with getting Visas too.

1049: question about venue. Ben Yalow – Chinese contracting practices are different from what we’re used to. We have an agreement with the venue; there is no contract yet, but there is a general agreement.

1050: Winnton Matthews – What percentage are you expecting to have the programming in Chinese vs Chinese/English. Ben Yalow – A lot of this is going to do with if we get government sponsorship. With the right kind of corporate sponsorship, we have a hope of being able to get simultaneous translation services, but cannot lock that in until we have sponsorship sorted out and see what is feasible.

1052: Mark Richards – For those who are supporting members of Chengdu, what arrangements are being made for Hugo votes etc. Ben Yalow – Correction: everyone who voted or purchased an advance supporting membership for Chengdu has been upgraded free to attending. We are in the process of getting data from DisCon and rolling out a new registration platform.

1054: Terry Ash – What is the timeline on getting the facilities/hotel contract for people who need to do serious advance planning. Ben Yalow – we are still working on this. Right now, travel arrangements between here and Chengdu are quite terrible. Many flight paths have been cancelled. We hope many of the international flights will come back… but that’s out of our control.

1057: End of questions, quick pause to change memory cards in camera.

1059: Now we are back to E.2 30 Days Hath New Business, with Jesi Lipp explaining the committee report on why the rule change is written as it is, which does not actually cause a time loop.

1102: Jared: “Andrew, for what member does the purpose rise? Wait…” Andrew inquiries if this is even a lesser change at all or if it is functionally no change at all. Jared clarifies that it is functionally no change, but we will call it a lesser change to just make it clear why it does not need to be re-ratified next year.

1104: The text of E.2 is amended as written now. No debate requested. E.2 is ratified.

1105: Time for new constitutional amendments! Alan Tupper rises with a motion to suspend the rules and censure the committee of Chengdu WorldCon for not being sufficiently prepared… at a time on Monday morning. There is a second. Martin gets up to say he has heard an objection to consideration. The objection to consideration is out of order as first the body has to vote to suspend the rules in the first place.

1108: Not two thirds in favor of suspending the rules. Moving on.

1109: We are not taking up F.2 To Defuse the Turnout Bomb, Cut the Red Wire, as it has been moved to take up before F.1 The Zero Percent Solution. Kate Secor moves to send F.1 and F.2 to a committee of the whole since F.1 and F.2 are are mutually exclusive so let’s just resolve them into a single motion and vote on that.

1111: We are going into the committee of the whole with Jesi Lipp presiding. No objections to continuing to record. This means we are taking advantage of the looser debate rules; we have been instructed to come out of this with a single motion. We cannot directly change, but we can recommend changes.

1116: Rafe Richards moves that the report of this meeting be to suspend the rules to remove F.2 from the agenda and take up F.1 immediately. Doing one of the two amendments is a very good idea, and he thinks F.1 is a better idea than F.2.

1118: Cliff Dunn against. Adopting F.1 means we could still end up with categories where there are only a couple hundred votes or a handful of people. Feels that there is a point where the community has spoken by broad disinterest. And F.2 speaks to that.

1120: Olav Rokne for. There are already mechanisms for removing categories with insufficient interest; it’s this body. Goes into the history of where the clause in question came from and argues that it has not done the job it was intended to do.

1122: Ben Yalow against. Thinks we should have a safety mechanism for when there is no statistical significance to the result.

1124: Speech for. There are some categories that are more difficult for people to engage with. That does not make those who do engage with them irrelevant.

1128: Committee of the whole disbanded. Jesi Lipp gives the report after Jared called the question (hah). Now voting to suspend the rules. The ayes have it. F.2 is now removed from the agenda and we will take up F.1.

1130: Corina Stark for F.1. Unexpected things happen that can prevent people from nominating and voting in the awards. Those in small categories deserve to be recognized and celebrated no matter how few votes they receive.

1132: Jesi Lipp attempts to call the question. There is no objection. We proceed to the vote on F.1.

1134: Call for division. HOLD ONTO YOUR BUTTS IT’S TIME FOR THE SERPENTINE. Dunno why this is necessary because there’s a lot of ayes… but I guess it’ll get the numbers on record.

1139: 72 in favor, 19 against.

1140: Jesi Lipp calls our attention to paragraph 29 of Roberts Rules of Orders Revised, which states that when the result of a vote is clear, the chair should not allow a call of division by an individual member that will annoy the assembly.

1141: Jared has taken pity on us and given us a 10 minute recess byeeeeeeee.

1155: Back in session. Jesi Lipp is making a few motions. Asking for consent of body to take up F.6 immediately so the maker of the motion can be here. Then moves to refer F.6 and F.5 to committee of the whole. Martin Pyne objects. Andrew Adams for the committee of the whole as F.5 and F.6 are closely linked enough. Martin Pyne brings up that he thinks we can deal with F.6 expeditiously and deal with F.5 tomorrow. Terri Ash points out that F.6 implicates no other category unlike F.5.

1204: Motion to move F.5 and F.6 to committee of the whole fails. Terri Ash comes up to speak for F.6 as the maker of the motion. The artist categories have been so fundamentally bolted to publishing for so long, that it does not actually reflect the way fantasy/scifi is made, put into the public, or sold. Most artists are putting work out there and directly selling it; publishers are not coming to art shows to find cover artists any more.

1207: Lisa Hertel against. Lisa is a professional artist; the problem is that every fan artist eventually offers their work for sale. If nothing else, it lets you eventually get it out of the house. Lisa moves that we strike “for sale” from both sentences it occurs in.

1210: Speeches against. That amendment would effectively continue the status quo. Dave McCarty argues that the difference between fan and professional art is entirely that fan art is available for free.

1212: Diane Castello for. This is not the reality of how fanart works now. Effectively charging for prints, etc, of fanart of other IP to make money…

1213: Ben Yalow manages to put a six second speech against. (“Challenge accepted.”) He at least gets a full independent clause before Jared gavels him.

1220: I brought up the definitional problem of fan vs pro artist. Some understand fan as an artist that just doesn’t charge money, while the newer definition is frankly someone who uses someone else’s IP to make art. And if we’re going to start bringing in professional artists making money off someone else’s IP we are getting into a very sticky place. (I know fanartists do make money in this fashion. I have paid fanartists for such work before, myself. But if we are going to start drawing attention to it via Hugo Award, this could become a massive issue if IP holders start noticing.)

1225: Now we are debating whether to refer to committee.

1231: Voting on the motion to refer to committee and… it is too close to call, so we’re doing a division. SERPENTINE NUMBER TWO. 49 for and 36 against. F.6 is referred to committee. It will be chaired by Sarah Felix and co-chaired by Teri Hertel.

1233: Motion to suspend the rules and take up F.4 Best Game or Interactive Work. The ayes have it, we are doing F.4 next.

1235: Ira Alexandre recognized as maker of the motion. Moves to strike 2026 in the sunset clause to 2028 so it gets the standard five years. It passes to be 2028. Now in favor of F.4 in general. The video game/interactive work category outperformed many other categories in the year it ran and had comparable participation to short form dramatic presentation. This is a golden age of games as art and we should recognize this vital and thriving speculative fiction medium.

1239: Rafe Richards against, bringing the Too Many Hugos argument. He’d rather have a best games hugo than some of the ones we already have, but until we get rid of some of them, he can’t support a new one.

1241: Question is called. Ron objects. The ayes have it, the question is called.

1242: F.4 Best Game or Interactive Work is passed on to Chengdu for ratification next year.

1243: A straw poll is taken up to see if we think we can get through F.3. WE’RE GONNA TRY IT.

1244: Cliff Dunn speaking for F.3, which will have a process for getting rid of unpopular Hugos. He notes that there is a massive social cost for anyone who brings up eliminating a category. Having a mechanism to automatically bring up categories for review means no one has to fall on their sword on the internet.

1247: Andrew Adams moves to make this from a constitutional amendment to a standing rules change. Kate Secor asks how that would effect things. Jared answers: it will take effect at the end of the worldcon and not need to be ratified; could be suspended by a 2/3 majority, which is rather meaningless since it would have to happen before the business meeting; could be amended in a one year process.

1249: Dave McCarty after the explanation of the chair, he feels that it would be better for this to be a two year process rather than at the whim of a single business meeting. Ben Yalow in favor. While he thinks the criteria is too difficult, but either way it remains a two year process, because actually killing a category will require amending the constitution. Kevin Standlee points out that procedurally it is better to make it a standing rule because it is an instruction to the business meeting, not to the convention.

1252: Voting on changing F.3 from amendment to standing rule – it is changed to standing rule. Now voting on putting it in the standing rules – the text of F.3 will be put in the standing rules wherever the secretary deems it appropriate.

1253: Motion to adjourn for the day.

1253: To note, we still have F.5, F.7, and F.8. And… my flight tomorrow is at 1300. So I can *maybe* go to half an hour of tomorrow’s meeting before yeeting to the airport. Yikes.

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Categories
worldcon

WSFS Business Meeting – Saturday Liveblog

Getting started a bit late thanks to a traffic jam at the elevators.

All we’ve missed so far is introductions and a quick reminder on rules. We join this business meeting, already in progress, as we vote for members of the Mark Protection Committee. There are four nominees and three spots.

1016: We are now moving on to the remaining resolutions that were not addressed yesterday. D.5 Solidarity with Ukraine. Chuck Serface, a former Peace Corps volunteer who was in Ukraine, reads a speech asking for our support of the fans in Ukraine. Ben Yalow speaks against the resolution, saying this is not WSFS business as we should not be involved in real world politics.

1020: Perianne Lurie moves to amend the resolution by removing the word “by fascist” due to Godwin’s Law. Debate is extended by one minute for each side. I am not tracking the quick speeches for and against, valid points being made on both sides to be honest. (No one saying what’s happening in Ukraine is okay, it’s more a discussion regarding if calling it fascism is useful or not.)

1028: The removal of “by fascists” is not passed. Debate continues regarding the motion; several of the “against” points were that the business meeting does not have power as a body to make this kind of resolution and it is not within our purview. (I disagree with this point, but it’s a fair one made by Kate.)

1030: Cliff Dunn requests a ruling from the chair on if the resolution is within the purview of the body. Jared rules it is. Cliff appeals the decision of the chair. Jared points out that the word “fans” is in this resolution and WSFS has previously passed a resolution being mad about Pluto no longer being a planet. Time for debate then has expired and no one gets to speak against. The ruling of the chair is then sustained.

1034: The resolution for solidarity with Ukraine as written is passed by the body.

1035: Resolution regarding Sergey Lukianenko is up next. An objection to consideration is raised and does not pass.

1037: Ben Yalow rises with a Point of Order that the WSFS constitution forbids the interference of WSFS is the matter of WorldCon guests, etc. Jared rules is not well taken because the resolution asks and does not direct or otherwise require action.

1039: Ben Yalow against; he agrees that making it mandatory would definitely be across the line. But he feels the line should not be the requirement of unconstitutional action, but rather the attempt to persuade.

1043: After a brief break to change memory cards in the camera. Elspeth points out that we are asking and therefore trying to influence a WorldCon committee and we are not allowed to do that. Time for debate expires.

1045: Cliff Dunn for rises to speak for the chair’s ruling. He points out that a WorldCon removing a GoH is not unconstitutional and we are not asking them to do anything unconstitutional. DisCon removed a GoH and they were allowed to do so.

1046: The chair’s ruling is sustained. We are out of debate time.

1047: Martin Pyne makes the point that per standing rule, there has not been substantive debate so therefore each side should get two minutes. Jared agrees and now each side gets some time to debate the actual resolution.

1049: I’m not going to try to summarize the debate, but I will note in this and the previous resolution, the slippery slope argument got pulled out each time. It is a quirk of mine that I find this line of argument particularly unconvincing.

1053: Resolution D.6 is adopted.

1054: MPC election results: Kevin Standlee, Ben Yalow, Nicholas Whyte

1056: Time for standing rules changes! Up next is C.1 – Making Business Meeting Feedback Possible. Cliff Dunn comes up to speak for. He says that the function of this rules change would be to allow committees–not individuals–to refer matters to the business meeting for debate and direction without actually having to put in amendments that could actually be passed when they aren’t really ready.

1059: Motion to amend to add the word “only” to the motion so that matters may only be referred back to committee. Ben Yalow speaks against the motion, pointing out that this would, for example, yesterday have made the motions be referred back to a committee that no longer exists.

1101: Kate Secor for, noting that this does not specify what committee the motions must be referred back to; new committees could be created.

1104: Vote for the motion to amend. The motion passes but… division is called for. TIME FOR THE FIRST SERPENTINE OF THE WORLDCON there is cheering, see, I’m not the only sicko here.

1107: The standing rules change is NOT amended. Serpentine says NO. Motion to call the question, but there is an objection.

1111: Don Eastlake notes that this standing rules change is not necessary; he is of the opinion that a committee can report back to the business meeting and ask for direction, though it seems the committee in question was unaware of that. A motion to refer this to the Nitpicking and Flyspecking Committee (which is very meta) is made and passed. This standing rules change will (hopefully) be back next year, having been nitpicked.

1113: Next standing rules change, C.2 If You Don’t Have To Print, Neither Do We. Cliff Dunn explains that this year it appeared the concomm was not going to print agendas for the business meeting. And he feels that if there are only electronic copies of the agenda, it should not be required of people with late motions to print out hardcopies; those should be electronically inserted instead into the electronic copy of the agenda.

1116: Elspeth rises to move to amend the motion to insert that a hardcopy should be provided if possible. “Where do you wish that inserted?” “In the appropriate place.” (Kate Secor finds the appropriate place.) It is noted that the availability of hardcopy is an access issue.

1118: Kent Bloom moves to refer to committee to consider the just requiring that harcopy be required,.

1120: Ben Yalow points out that there is obviously confusion as to who is required to do what and that needs to be hammered out first.

1123: The motion to refer to committee passes. Jared tries to make Kent Bloom the chair, but Jesi throws themself on that grenade instead. “Jesi wants it.” “I didn’t say I wanted it, I said put me in charge.”

1124: 15 minute recess!

1139: And we’re back. Starting up with the re-ratification of E Pluribus Hugo.

1140: Dave Wallace rises as one of the originators of EPH to speak for. He feels the overall effect of EPH has been very beneficial; after 5 years, it has worked reasonably well. One question is whether or not it is a black box. He did some analysis of published reports to do spot checking. He did analysis on, for example, the fancast category. I will not try to replicate it here.

1144: David Kaplan against, arguing that the EPH method may push works by marginalized creators down due to a slating effect of members of marginalized communities simply nominating those from their communities. He suggests instead that “no award” voting be used to point toward the existence of slates.

1146: Mr. Richards for EPH, reminding us that EPH came from a crisis point in WorldCon and the valid fear that if EPH falls off, the problem will return.

1147: Lisa Hayes against, calls it a black box.

1149: Kate Secor for, “It’s not that complicated.” To people outside this room, Hugo Nominations are a black box anyway.

1150: Dave McCarty against. Says that bullet voting gets past EPH and people do it both on purpose and inadvertantly. EPH and Five and Six work against each other.

1159: Question is called. We vote, but then… time for another division LET’S GOOOOOOOOO

1201: Question is definitely called. And EPH is RESOUNDINGLY re-ratified.

1203: E.2 30 Days Hath New Business. There is something going on and I’m not sure what. I think there’s an amendment proposed to this thing that’s already passed once? Don Eastlake has the amendment, which would be “this rule may be suspended with a 2/3 vote.” Because he argues this is basically a standing rule.

1208: Sorry for the long pause, having internet problems. Also, we are in the weeds in a serious way.

1210: We vote to take up the amendment to E.2. Then Jared rules that this is a lesser change so it will not need re-ratification.

1210: Kate Secor asks if the amendment will violate the standing rule against creating time loops because it would effectively have the meeting rule on something that occurs before the meeting is convened.

1211: Intense debate happening at the officer table.

1212: “All right, now that we’ve had English 101 here…” A time loop has not been created, per the chair.

1214: I have no idea what is happening any more, please hold.

1214: Don Eastlake moves to refer to committee, to report back tomorrow. Kate Secor argues that we already have so much to do tomorrow.

1217: Committee referral passes. We’ll revisit E.2 tomorrow.

1218: Short pause for memory card change, then E.3 The Statue of Liberty Play. (This is a Nitpicking and Flyspecking Committee thing.) No one stands up for debate, E.3 is ratified.

1222: E.4 A Matter of Days; no one stands for debate. E.4 is ratified.

1223: E.5 Non-Transferability of Voting Rights. Ben Yalow in favor; people who want to be involved can buy a membership. Speech against –

1228: Andrew Adams for – ConZealand got to have a really horrible experience dealing with the membership issue. He doesn’t care which way there’s clarity, but there needs to be clarification on if there is transferability or not. Because they had to make the decisions themselves and it was horrible. It needs to be in the rules one way or another. So if people don’t want this, please clarify it in the other way.

1228: Speech against – feels this is an attack on people with low and fixed income.

1230: Kate Secor for – doing a membership in WSFS and then separating attendance is not so different from professional organizations many people are part of. If memberships in WSFS are transferred there is no one tracking/informing what rights come with it. This would mean WSFS memberships cannot be transferred, but a ticket to the WorldCon can be transferred.

1232: Perianne Lurie against – This effectively makes memberships less valuable. It’s been fine the old way up until now.

1233: Ron Oakes for – fully supports this as a former Hugo database administrator. This does not effect the ability to transfer an attending “upgrade.” The person you sell your upgrade to must simply have a WSFS membership already.

1236: Attempt to call the question, which fails. Debate continues.

1251: Vote on ratification–division is called for. HOLD ONTO YOUR BUTTS FOLKS, THIRD SERPENTINE OF THE MEETING.

1253: Motion is ratified, 46-40.

1254: As we only have a few minutes left, we are going into recess tomorrow. Whoof we have a lot lined up for tomorrow.

Categories
worldcon

WSFS Business Meeting – Friday Liveblog

Business meeting agenda for this year can be downloaded here for those of you playing from home.

Hey everyone, we are up and running. Meeting got going at 1000, we are currently going over procedural information. This liveblog will be updated every 5-10 minutes when something is happening.

1010: Suggested time limits for establishing debate. Old business first. E.1 E Pluribus Hugo, 20 minutes (no objection). E.2 30 Days Hath New Business, 6 minutes. Objection – but Cliff Dunn then points out that the time must be voted on first before we play fill in the blank. 6 minutes passes. E.3 The Statue of Liberty Play (12 minutes). E.4 A Matter of Days (4 minutes). E.5 Non-transferability of voting rights (20 minutes).

1013: New constitutional amendments. F.1 The Zero Percent Solution (20 minutes). Kevin Standlee reminds us via Point of Order that motions to postpone indefinitely, etc, are in order at this time.

1016: F.2 To Defuse the Turnout Bomb, Cut the Red Wire (20 minutes). Nicholas Whyte points out that F.2 (this amendment) is rendered moot by the passage of F.1. Meeting votes to take F.2 up first before F.1.

1017: F.3 If a Tree Falls in the Woods and Nobody is Around (20 minutes). F.4 Best Game or Interactive Work (30 minutes). F.5 Fan vs. Pro (30 minutes). Terry Neill moves to postpone indefinitely. I second. Cliff Dunn against the motion; the committee explicitly wants to bring this up for the purposes of feedback. Dave McCarty for – points out that attempting to perfect a measure within the business meeting is not that useful. Joshua Kronengold against – the committee could not resolve these issues. KJ for – suggests this meeting is not the correct venue for this discussion, particularly due to the limited attendance for the business meeting. Motion to postpone indefinitely fails.

1029: F.6 Clearing Up the Artist Categories Forever (No, Really, We Swear It This Time!) (20 minutes). Motion to postpone definitely until the Sunday session of the meeting. It would be the first order of business on Sunday. Martin then proposes to amend the the motion to propose definitely until Sunday and after F.5 in case F.5 is not finished before Sunday. Kate Secor points out that the person who put F.6 together is observantly Jewish and would prefer F.5 not be debated on Saturday as well. Motion to postpone definitely passes.

1034: F.7 One Rocket Per Customer, Please! (10 minutes). Terry Neil motions to postpone indefinitely. Seconded. Kate Secor against motion to postpone – this needs to be debated because Best Series has moved from the intent of the category. Nicholas Whyte for – feels this burdens Hugo administrators and circumvents the will of the voters and should not have our time wasted. Dave against – also Hugo administrator, disagrees with Nicholas. Ben Yalow against – Feels this solution is too draconian but should be debated and sent back to committee. Cassie Beach for – feels it is against the will of the votes to tie their hands in this manner. Give it more time to shake out, the category is still pretty new. Terry Ash against – again points out we need to have this debate for because the Hugo Study Committee needs the feedback.

1044: Kate Secor points out that the rules change C.1, which would allow items to be debated without passing/failing, would allow us to debate these things if passed. The Chair (Jared) points out that we could suspend the rules if C.1 passes and then allow it to come into effect immediately for this purpose. Andrew Adams moves to refer F.7 to a committee to report back tomorrow. As committee was not specified, the chair says he will call it the Hugo Awards Study Committee and put Cliff in charge of it (“Oh, thanks,” says Cliff from the back, to much laughter). Cliff asks what the committee would be deciding – answer is that since it has not been given specific instructions, the committee can do whatever they want with it. Terry wishes to instruct the committee to discuss striking “nor may any series containing an individual installment which has won a Hugo Award of any type in its nominated format.”

1050: At this point we are in the weeds. We are now discussing amending the motion to refer to committee. Joshua Kronengold against amending the motion because as guidance, it’s terrible. The committee now has the impression that this is too draconian. Let them figure that out and come back.

1055: Motion to refer F.7 to committee fails. And now we still have to set debate time. Ben Yalow moves to amend F.7 by striking “nor may any series containing an individual installment which has won a Hugo Award of any type in its nominated format.” Elspeth against since this debate could happen tomorrow. Rafe Richards for as it will provide a very clear idea of what WSFS wants. Kate Secor against, pointing out that the amendment will effectively render F.7 and F.8 the same. Perianne Lurie against pointing out that it is similar but not the same. Motion to amend fails. Now once more Jared attempts to propose a time limit for debate.

1102: F.8 A Work, By Any Other Name (20 Minutes). Rafe Richards moves to postpone indefinitely for similar reasons that people wanted to postpone F.7, for circumventing the will of the voters. Motion to postpone indefinitely fails.

1106: Onto the standing rules changes… but first we’re having a ten minute recess.

1117: Point of information, which I originally did not hear. At one point Jared thanked Jesi Lipp for keeping him straight, to which their answer was, “I’ve never kept anyone straight in my life.” Bless u, Jesi.

1119: We are back in session and onto the standing rules changes. C.1 Making Business Meeting Feedback Possible (10 minutes). If You Don’t Have to Print, Neither Do We (10 minutes).

1121: Kate Secor with a question regarding C.1; the slide with the standing rules changes notes “These items will be effective this year if passed.” Confusion regarding previous discussion. Jared clarifies that these will take effect at the end of this business meeting and the slide is a mistake. Slide is corrected in real time.

1122: Committee reports.

1123: Debate time for resolutions will be set after committee reports, per Jared, since those will be coming up today.

1123: Kevin Standlee unexpectedly gives the report from the Mark Protection Committee, as his co-chair is absent much to his surprise. Not a lot new this year. They are taking up registering Lodestar as a mark. Opens to questions, but suggests it’s better to approach him individually or come to the meeting on Monday. No questions, he escapes.

1124: Cliff Dunn asks if, though it is the preliminary business meeting, if we can do debate on standing rules changes. We can. Jared exercises his executive privilege to say we will finish out committee business, then we will do standing rules changes, then we will address resolutions.

1126: Nicholas Whyte is nominated to the Mark Protection Committee. Ron Oakes self-nominates for the MPC. They will be put in with the three people whose terms are ending. Perianne Lurie points out that we also need to move to re-nominate those whose terms are ending, which we hastily do. MPC voting will take place tomorrow.

1128: Nitpicking and Flyspecking Committee. Don Eastlake says they combed through the constitution and found a number of places for improvement, but have chosen to not submit any of those this year as the meeting agenda was already quite full. They have documented in their report the changes that will have to be promulgated if E.2 passes this year.

1129: WorldCon Runners Guide Editorial Committee; Mike Willmoth reports that they have made progress. They are working on a new page for North American vs. non-North American WorldCons. Have spoken to many past con chairs to gather information for that.

1131: Jared exercises his executive privilege to re-appoint the members of the previous two committees. FOLLE Committee, Kent Bloom reports. They continue to nitpick away at various minor issues, particularly for the last two years where there has been confusion over who was where and when. Kent asked that the FOLLE committee continues and is re-formed.

1133: Hugo Awards Study Committee, Cliff Dunn reports. C.1 was proposed by members of the committee, but the committee did not have the remit to do so itself. They are working on a more clear process for issuing reports so that there is not a rush at the end. Clarifying subcommittee structure. Have set up Discord so that digests go to email to help email only people. Are taking steps to be more inclusive and transparent. The business meeting is a less than ideal way to deal with these things due to the need to travel; the committee’s accessibility via discord and email solves much of this.

1137: Nicholas Whyte objects to the continuation of the Hugo Study Committee as it has done very little. The amendments of this year are deeply imperfect and he fears it is a feature of the structure, not a bug. The committee had the time and chances to consult more widely with stakeholders and has not. The broad remit of the study committee inevitability of siloing. He suggests leaving the old structures behind and going back to forming committees as needed that will perforce need to structure themselves to be more inclusive of stakeholders.

1142: I am honestly not sure what just happened. The weeds, they are beckoning.

1144: Jared: “Is the member proposing to suggest the committee before reformed with specific instructions?” Joanie: “YES.” Jared: “What specific instructions?” Joanie: “I don’t know! Because you’ve never given us direction.”

1145: Oh god there’s a motion to go to a Committee of the Whole. Martin Pyne asks if there is a time limit. Jared: At this time… no. But we only have 45 minutes left.

1146: The nos have it, there will be no Committee of the Whole. The deputy executive officer’s elation is noted.

1147: Perianne Lurie moves to amend the resolution to reform the committee but have them elect a new chair. Which can be the same chair, but they will be directed to do an election.

1148: Kate moves that the cameras be turned off for this bit?? Seconded. Unsure what’s going on.

1150: This motion is debatable. Kate asks for the cameras to be off because since people are going to come up by name during discussion of successes and failings, we need not capture this for posterity on youtube.

1153: Against, member of the committee who believes these discussions could be useful to future WorldCons. Elspeth also for, the internet is forever.

1155: Olav Rokne against, because all records are important for further information, for historical knowledge of debate. This is important historical record for why decisions were made.

1157: Terry Ash for, on the committee and notes that the discussions at the end got nasty and she does not feel it needs to live on youtube forever.

1158: Perianne Lurie points out that turning off the record further disenfranchises people. Vote is taken, motion to turn off cameras fails.

1159: Now back to the amendment which I don’t even remember what it was… oh wait it’s the vote on the committee leadership. Martin against; rather than voting on a chairman, one should be appointed.

1201: Motion to amend the instructions to the committee fails. Motion to reform the committee also fails. The Hugo Study Committee is disbanded. Kent Bloom moves to thank the committee for its efforts over the last five years. Seconded by many. The committee is thanked for its efforts to applause.

1202: Site Selection Review Committee has no report per Jared, who is the chair. They go bye-bye.

1203: Financial reports. Martin Pyne has a question about DisCon and Chengdu and… I am not sure what this is. John here for DisCon and he apologizes for not being Mary Robinette Kowal for so many reasons. DisCon is holding the funds in trust for Chengdu but they are having a hard time getting the money forwarded. Ben Yallow, co-chair of Chengdu; because of the complexities of transferring money to China, they are in the process of setting up a new 501(2)3 corp in America that will be able to get the funds. The new corp will be located in… Wyoming.

1205: Kate Secor asks if the data for the finance will be transferred to the US or Chinese corporation, RE: data protection laws. Per John, the paper copies of the info have already been given the Chengdu.

1206: Cliff asks if there is a timeline for when Chengdu expects to open back up supporting memberships for those who were unable to participate in site selection last year. Per Ben Yalow, they are basically waiting on the banks so they can get the credit card processing in place and that’s what the holdup is.

1208: Motion to censure committee of Sasquan from Linda Deneroff: the financial reports have been functionally unchanged for years; they claim they will give $500 scholarships for SMOFCon or ConComCon but with no information on how these scholarships will be distributed. They are not contributing meaningfully to greater fandom.

1210: Mike Willmoth, vice-char of Sasquan. They had a lot of excess money due to the controversy we all know about. They sent a lot of money out after the convention. Gives examples of money that was sent out. Feels it is very unfair to censure Sasquan for these things when they have contributed a lot of other things feels like a shot in the foot. Kent Bloom indicates the WorldCon Heritage Association, which received a substantial contribution after Sasquan closed its books. Feels the remaining amount, which is really just failure to finish, does not warrant a censure, maybe just a kick in the “you-know-what.” Ben Yalow feels a resolution of censure is an extreme measure that should be applied very carefully; Sasquan has complied with the constitution.

1213: Motion to censure Sasquan fails. Linda notes that MidAmeriCon has not submitted a financial report and is strongly requested they submit theirs next year.

1215: Question from the elder Mr. Dashoff regarding LoneStarCon’s financial report.

1216: Kevin Standlee moves that we deal with the resolutions since we have only 15 minutes left in the meeting. The chair moves for unanimous consent to take the resolutions up. Asks for unanimous consent for D1-4 to approve the Hugo eligibility extensions. All pass with unanimous consent.

1218: D.5 and D.6 are given 4 minutes of debate each.

1218: Meeting is adjourned.