Monthly Archives: July 2025

a writer of detective fiction has thoughts on rules and magic

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I recently had a semi-long, somewhat convoluted discussion (debate? argument?) with a friend who writes fantasy fiction. This is it (edited for brevity):

Friend: “Magic doesn’t have to have rules.”
Me: “Well, yeah, it does.”
Friend: “No, it doesn’t.”
Me: “Yeah, it does.”
Friend: “You write detective fiction. What do you know about magic?”

Here’s the answer to that question: All fiction is a cosmological event.

That’s it. That’s my answer. When we write a story—any story in any genre—we create a world. Most fictional worlds resemble the one we live in. The operative term there is resemble. This is true across all genres. As writers, we take liberties with the world; we shape our fictional worlds in ways we find useful. A mystery writer might, for example, create a world in which dog trainers routinely discover dead bodies and solve crimes. A horror writer might create a world in which vampires live among us. A fantasy writer might create a world in which people can engage in rituals or behaviors that manipulate natural or supernatural forces.

But when we create these worlds, we also create a set of internal rules for them. Again, MOST of those rules are patterned after OUR real world and we take them for granted. Things like gravity; if an elf drops her sword or a detective drops his gun, it falls to the ground. Unless we’re talking about elves in space.

UNLESS. The Great Unless. That’s where everything gets all slickery. You can slide all manner of things into the UNLESS envelope. Things like magic. But here’s the thing about an envelope: it’s a container. You can stuff all sorts of things inside it, but it still has boundaries. If your magic doesn’t have some sort of boundaries, you don’t have a story. If a Dark Evil threatens the Land and you have limitless unbounded magic at your command, you can just wave a hand and…poof. No more Dark Evil. There’s not much entertainment value in that.

But that doesn’t mean magic has to exist within a spreadsheet. It just means there are things that Can Be Done and things that Cannot Be Done. What Can and Cannot Be Done might be person-specific, or limited by location, or constrained by training, or or or. Those limits don’t have to be articulated for the reader, but they have to exist.

Here’s an example. One of the most delightful novels I’ve read in recent years is Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher. It begins with a woman in a bone pit, constructing a dog out of wire and an assortment of dog bones. When she’s done…hell, even before she’s done…the dog comes to life. How and why the bone dog comes to life isn’t explained. It’s magic. The woman’s ultimate goal in the story is to kill an evil prince, but her access to magic is limited. Building a dog out of a random assortment of bones is a thing that Can Be Done; killing a prince is a thing that Cannot Be Done. At least not by her at this point in time.

That right there? That’s a rule. The reader doesn’t need to know WHY the rule exists. Even the writer doesn’t need to know why it exists. But it HAS to exist for the story to work as a story. She can use magic to bring a bone dog to life, but she can’t use it to kill the prince.

Look, there’s nothing wrong in not knowing why things are the way they are. I mean, we still don’t understand how gravitation works and folks have been studying it for at least 2300 years. We know it works at the Newtonian level, but then things get all weird down at the quantum level. If we’re unable to understand and explain one of the fundamental forces of the natural world, how in the hell are we supposed to understand how things work in the supernatural world?

So yeah, magic has rules. It has to. We just don’t always know what they are. That’s perfectly…well, natural.

a modest ebike proposal

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Okay, first, this is NOT a Jonathan Swift-style modest proposal (see Endnote). This isn’t satire. Second, yes, okay, maybe I’m focusing on this relatively minor problem in an attempt to dodge thinking about the truly massive, cataclysmic problems we’re facing in the US. But hey, it’s my blog and I get to do what I want.

The fact is, there’s a very real problem in the Ebikeverse, and I have thoughts about it. I’ve been thinking about this problem off and on for a few months, in part because I had a minor disagreement with a fellow cyclist/photographer on Bluesky. He’d made a rather broad, disparaging comment about ebike riders. As an ebike rider, I asked for clarification. It turned out he was talking about a specific type of ebike, which he referred to as “not-a-moped” ebikes. These little bastards.

Ride1up Revv 1 FS

I responded to his comments:

It’s a mistake to equate all ebike cyclists with not-a-moped jerks, who I’ll agree are a massive problem.

I can’t quote his reply exactly because…well, he’s blocked me (see the Other Endnote). Basically, he said the people who ride that type of ebike were assholes. I responded that assholes are assholes, regardless of the type of bike they ride. At which point, he blocked me. Perhaps he thought I was calling him an asshole. Who knows?

But he was right about the problem. A sizable chunk of the people who ride this particular style of ebike DO tend to be aggressive jerks who are abusive and a danger to regular cyclists and pedestrians. But he was wrong to call them not-a-moped bikes, because (in my opinion) they actually ARE mopeds, not bicycles. They may have pedals, but they aren’t really designed to be pedaled; they’re designed to be driven using a throttle.

In the US, ebikes are basically categorized by how they’re powered. Class 1 ebikes rely exclusively on pedal assist (they’re technically called ‘pedelecs’).They have a top speed of 20mph and they lack a throttle. Class 2 ebikes are basically Class 1 ebikes, only with a throttle (which is used most often to get the bike moving again after a complete stop). Class 3 ebikes have pedal assist and a throttle, but have a top speed of up to 28 mph.

There are also Class 4 ebikes, which generally have more powerful motors and aren’t limited by a top speed. They’re considered to be motorized vehicles and (in many states) require a license to operate, as well as proof of insurance. They’re generally prohibited on bike paths.

The ebike/mopeds I’m talking about (like the one pictured above) are the bastard children of Class 3 and Class 4 units. They’re marketed as Class 3 ebikes and sold as Class 3 ebikes, but they’re not ridden like ebikes. Everybody knows this. In fact, in a review for the Ride1up Revv 1 FS shown above, it’s openly admitted.

[It] isn’t a bike, at least in conventional terms. The presence of pedals on little crank arms is more incidental and added to skirt existing laws about electric mopeds…nothing about the bike’s weight, geometry, or gearing is built for actual pedaling.

They’re designed to be throttle-driven. While they may be sold with a top speed of 28mph, they’re easily modified to go much faster, and there are lots of videos showing people how to do it (for example, here’s a video showing how to unlock the ‘bike’ in the photo above). And this is why they’re a problem.

So here’s my modest proposal: designate this specific type of ebike as a Class 4 ebike and establish an age limit for purchasing Class 4 ebikes.

That’s it. Don’t allow manufacturers to skirt existing laws by attaching mock pedals to a vehicle designed to be throttle-driven. It won’t stop assholes from riding like assholes, but it would reduce the asshole quotient on bike paths and sidewalks.

Endnote: Back in 1729, Swift wrote a satirical piece called A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick. The proposal was that poor folks should sell their children to the rich for food. So, nothing at all like my proposal.

Other Endnote: Even though I was blocked by this guy, I can’t/won’t complain about it. I’m a huge fan of the way blocking works on Bluesky. It’s incredibly effective and efficient. If somebody is annoying you, you block them and they disappear. You’ll never see anything they post again. They’ll never see anything you post again. If somebody you follow responds to a post by the person you blocked, you’ll see the response but not the post itself. It’s brilliant (even when it’s used against you).

trump, uninterrupted – the difference between a madman and a genius

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Okay, so Comrade President Donald Trump was in Pennsylvania, right? Attending some sort of conference about energy and innovation and AI and all that. It was your basic POTUS meet and greet event. His job is simple: show up, say a few words in support of something or other, then hop back in his plane and get out of Dodge. Anybody could do that.

But Trump, Jesus suffering fuck. His brain is…damaged. He suffers from logorrhea–the inability to stop talking, which is a symptom of any number of personality disorders. He simply can’t just shut the fuck up. In Pennsylvania he started to say something about Lee Zeldin, the current EPA administrator, and how quickly Zeldin was approving permits for electrical plants (which may or may not be true, who knows with Trump?). And suddenly he veers off into the ether and he’s talking about (and I’m NOT making this up) his uncle John and the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski.

Guy’s somewhere off in his own little ugly world.

This is directly from the transcript. Prepare yourself.

They’re building plants already, and they have — they’re building plants, and they have already their permits. And I have to take — I have to brag just for a second because when I first heard about AI — you know, it’s not my thing. Although my uncle was at MIT, one of the great professors, 51 years, whatever, he was the longest serving professor in the history of MIT. Three degrees in nuclear, chemical, and math, that’s a smart man. Kaczynski was one of his students, do you know who Kaczynski was? There’s very little difference between a madman and a genius. But Kaczynski, I said what kind of a student was he, Uncle John, Dr. John Trump, he said what kind of a student? And he said, seriously good. He said he’d go around correcting everybody. But it didn’t work out too well for him, didn’t work out too well, but it’s interesting in life. But I will say this, that we have the greatest brains, we have the greatest power and we are going to have more electric. I said to some of the guys coming in, they wanted to hook up to the grid. I spoke to Mark and Jeff and a lot of people, and they said, well, we want to know about the electric, because I was told we’ll need from David. The first one — you’re the first one that told me that’s why I hired him because I said he told me something I didn’t know. He said you need double the electric of what we have right now and maybe even more than that. Remember that? And I said what, are you kidding? And that’s double the electric that we have.

I don’t even know where to start. I mean, even if we ignore the fact that the whole story about Trump’s uncle and Ted Kaczynski is ENTIRELY DELUSIONAL, this is nuts. Okay, okay, Trump’s uncle John? He really was a smart guy. Got a M.S. in physics and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering (not ‘nuclear, chemical, and math’ but okay). And yeah, he did teach at MIT. But Kaczynski didn’t attend MIT. Also? John Trump died in 1985. Kaczynski wasn’t identified as the Unabomber until 1996.

So this entire conversation Trump describes COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED. Is he just making it up? Is he just bullshitting? Does he believe it did happen? I don’t know, but the fact that he’s in front of a camera telling this story AS POTUS is just completely insane.

But even beyond that, he clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “We are going to have more electric.” What does that even mean? “[W]e want to know about the electric, because I was told we’ll need from David.” What? Told we’ll need what from David? And who the fuck is David? And this: “He said you need double the electric of what we have right now and maybe even more than that….And I said what, are you kidding? And that’s double the electric that we have.” Double the electric? And Trump is somehow surprised that ‘double the electric’ (whatever that means) is “double the electric.”

Trump also, by the way, dismissed wind energy because (and, again, I am NOT making this up) wind is ‘intermittent.’ It doesn’t blow all the time. I guess he thinks if the wind stops blowing, the electricity goes off. I don’t know, maybe nobody told him about batteries. He’s also opposed to wind energy because he believes they’re made in China, and claims China doesn’t have any wind farms.

“I ended Joe Biden’s war on clean, beautiful Pennsylvania coal, totally ended it. Coal has equal if not greater status. It’s a very powerful — it’s a very powerful thing, coal. China — it’s sort of interesting. China makes windmills, but how many wind farms do you see in China? I haven’t seen any lately, it’s sort of crazy. They buy — they build the windmills, sell them into our country, sell them all over the world and they ruin their fields and ruin their valleys. And then you look at China, where’s your wind farm?”

China does make wind turbines (not windmills, for fuck’s sake); Trump is right about that. But China has also been building wind farms since 2005. They have a LOT of wind farms. But Trump’s never seen one, so…they don’t exist?

Personally, I’m inclined to think Trump hates wind because of what it does to his hair.

The entire transcript (which you can read here) is full of this free-floating babbling bullshit. Which is my point, if you can call it that. It’s never clear whether Trump is just lying to the public or if he’s actively delusional. Or both. Probably both.

And he’s the goddamned president. We are so deeply, deeply fucked.

you hear that, mr. trump? that is the sound of inevitability.

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Two people I’d rather not ever think about for the rest of my life? Comrade Donald Trump and the late Jeffrey Epstein. But here we are.

I suppose it was inevitable. I mean, in a lot of ways MAGA is the bastard child of QAnon and the Westboro Baptist Church. We’re talking about people who’ve devoted a seriously big chunk of their daily lives to thinking about sexualized anti-government conspiracies. People who’ve built complex, contradictory theories about political figures (mostly Democrats) and Hollywood elites maintaining a series of subterranean facilities where kidnapped children would be raped and then murdered for their adrenochrome. People who claim to believe trans folks are lined up outside high school bathrooms and locker rooms so they can sexually assault girls. People who spend a LOT of time thinking about forced sex with kids.

So yeah, the ‘suspicious’ death of Jeffrey Epstein is chum in the water for MAGA. When Trump’s pre-election team promised to expose the “truth” about Epstein, MAGA ate it up with a spoon. They absolutely believe Epstein was murdered because he possessed sexually compromising material on powerful figures–a so-called ‘client list’. When asked about that list, Attorney General Pam Bondi said, “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”

Then on Friday evening–the 4th of July holiday weekend–Bondi quietly announced, “Hey gang, guess what, there IS no client list! Oopsie! Also? Epstein killed himself! So case closed! How about those Red Sox, huh?!”

MAGA was not amused. You spend years spreading chum in the water, you expect to catch a shark. Being told there IS no shark doesn’t go over well. And given Trump’s long, close relationship with Epstein, it was inevitable that things would get weird and nasty.

But nasty enough to get MAGA to turn on Mr. MAGA his ownself?

I was curious enough that I looked into one of the MAGA-most corners of the Intertubes. I used to check in on the ‘patriots’ of FreeRepublic on a semi-regular basis, just to have some idea of how their fevered right-wing brains work. Snce the re-election of Comrade Trump, I haven’t had the stomach for it.

Until yesterday. And reader, the MAGAverse is absolutely furious. Furious not just at Bondi for her clumsy bait-and-switch approach, but also at their boy Trump. Here are a few of the comments made on FreeRepublic:

I woke up this morning with the realization that the only explanation for this is that Trump is on the list. Nothing else makes sense. This is like Watergate. It will never go away, and it will lead to Trump’s resignation.
–by E. Pluribus Unum (Democrats are the Party of racism, anger, hate and violence.)

Something very big is being covered up.
–by Highest Authority (DemonRats are pure EVIL)

Let’s face it: Pam Bondi is doing just what Trump wants her to do.
–by hcmama

I think we all need to wake up to the real possibility he’s on that list.
–by Lil Flower (American by birth. Southern by the Grace of God. ROLL TIDE!!)

Looks pretty suspicious to go from “The List is ON My Desk Right Now” to “The List Doesn’t Exist.” Someone intervened that has the power to stop the list from being released by the Attorney General of the United States.
–by Bon of Babble (You Say You Want a Revolutioan?)

This decision is way past bondi’s pay grade. This is Trump. Period.
by USS Alaska (NUKE THE MOOSELIMB TERRORIST SAVAGES)

When you see a Freeper who signs his posts with ‘Nuke the Mooselimb Terrorist Savages’ turn on Trump, you know they’re serious. Not necessarily sane, but serious. The reality that their Golden Boy might be on the List of Epstein Kiddie Diddlers (if one actually exists) has to be massively discouraging for them. One way of dealing with that is to create NEW conspiracy theories to explain it. For example, there’s a contingent of Freepers who’ve decided to blame…guess who? That’s right; the Jews.

Ask Israel. They control The Stable Genius…
by Captainpaintball (America needs a Conservative DICTATOR if it hopes to survive. )

Everybody knows Trump and Bibi Netanyahu are BFFs. Combine that with the suggestion that Epstein was some sort of FBI/CIA/Mossad agent, and you’ve got another tasty conspiracy to dine on. But even better (and by ‘better’ I mean ‘more delusional’) are the Freepers who see all of this as part of Trump’s Super Secret Clever Plan to Thump the Democrats.

I think it’s POSSIBLE that genius Trump is making this too big to go away by showing a coverup. When the truth is released…we will get suicide after suicide with DimWITS and RINOs leading the way.
by politicianslie

My conspiracy theory. The Epstein files contain information that can bring down 0bama, Clinton, Clapper, Comey, Brennan… That is why they have to sit on the Epstein files
by Steven Tyler

Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it. Trump promises to release the Epstein Files to get people excited, then claims the files don’t exists, which gets people even more excited. Eventually all that excitement will reach the boiling point and then Trump will hold a press conference and reveal…Hey Presto! The files DO exist! And they implicate ALL of Trump’s enemies! Genius! Applause and fireworks! A chorus of angels sing as the anti-MAGA deviants are led away to concentration camps in Sudan!

Jesus suffering fuck, dealing with MAGA is exhausting. I need a drink.

murderbot

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I held off on watching Murderbot on AppleTV until last night. Why? For reasons.

I don’t recall what prompted me to buy All Systems Red, the first of the Murderbot diaries. It might have been a recommendation from a friend, maybe I read a review, I really don’t remember. I recall being skeptical, though. The name Murderbot seemed silly, offputting.

But I bought it and damn. Then I had to wait a few months to buy the next one. The first four installments came pretty quickly, as I recall, and each one solidified my feeling for the character. Now, of course, I’ve read (and loved) every Murderbot story that’s been published. And I’ve read them more than once.

And that’s exactly why I avoided the television series. I figured there was at least a 90% chance the series would screw it up. How could it not? I mean, I know what SecUnit looks like. I know the sound of its voice. Any actor chosen to portray SecUnit would almost certainly be wrong. Alexander Skarsgård is an excellent actor, but he’s NOT SecUnit (at least not in my head). Kate Box (from Deadloch) could probably do it. Maybe Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones). But Alexander Skarsgård?

So my expectations of the show were low. I fully expected to dislike it.

Reader, I was wrong.

As I said, last night I decided to watch the first episode. Well, I decided to watch the first ten minutes. And I’ll say this: the first five minutes of Murderbot was somewhat painful. SecUnit’s voice was wrong. Its attitude was SO wrong. In the stories, when SecUnit refers to humans as ‘assholes’ it’s simply making an observation; in Skarsgård’s voice, it sounded judgmental. Early in the series, SecUnit doesn’t care enough about humans to judge them.

But then…damn it, the show began to seduce me. It’s not MY Murderbot, but…I don’t know, that first episode was…good? Good enough that I watched the second episode. Which was better. And yes, now I’m hooked.

Skarsgård is very, very good at evoking SecUnit’s discomfort at being forced to associate with humans. I still think his voice is wrong, but goddamnit he’s SO good at looking at a wall like it’s a comfort blanket. He may not be MY SecUnit, but he’s really effective as A SecUnit.

None of the other characters were quite right (in my head). Except Mensah (played by Noma Dumezweni), who was perfect. Her ability to depict patient compassion without being annoying is wonderful to watch. And, again, the more I watched, the more I enjoyed the crew. They’re not MY PreservationAux survey team, but they’re a damned good and engaging PreservationAux survey team. Allowances must be made when translating the written word to the screen.

By the end of the first episode, I realized I needed to divorce MY SecUnit from AppleTV’s SecUnit and MY PreservationAux survey team from the show’s team to more fully enjoy the series. My SecUnit is still (and always will be) the best, but their version is really watchable and very entertaining.

I’m still a wee bit skeptical. I’m prepared to be disappointed, because so much of SecUnit’s development takes place INSIDE its head–what it’s thinking, what it’s feeling (it is seriously uncomfortable with emotion), and how its behavior is shaped by its thinking and feeling (and yes, it’s an ‘it’ rather than a gendered being).

But it looks like Skarsgård might have the acting chops to pull off SecUnit’s internal struggle to adamantly deny its humanity while still insisting on its personhood. To me, that’s the heart of the Murderbot Diaries. So far, Skarsgård’s ability to mute his facial expressions while still depicting unwelcome emotions has been spot on. It’s just a fraction of an emotion away from deadpan (and yes, I think Kate Box would have done it better).

So tonight I’ll watch another episode. Maybe two (I suck at binge-watching). I can say without any hesitation that it’s the second-best Murderbot ever.