18 Sep 2025 » Definitions
Inspired by a post from @MayInToronto
Tech is a performative game of stock manipulation. Technology is the Haas Three Axis Mill I’m learning how to program and run.
The more you know, the more jokes you get.
Tech is a performative game of stock manipulation. Technology is the Haas Three Axis Mill I’m learning how to program and run.
Cynthia and I cleaned out a storage locker last week, and spent some of the weekend going through the detrius. One box was full of my old photos. I saved a few of a friend’s wedding and teenaged Emma doing model rocketry things. There was also a folder full of zines I wrote over 30 years ago. I decided to shred them, they were for the small readership of an Amateur Press Association (APA) I was in during the late 1980s to mid-1990s (an earlier form of social media.)
But I wanted to read through them one last time, and I came across this gem (pictured above:)
I think that we won’t be free of gender until we render it moot. This is where we, as readers and creators of SF, have the advantage: at least in terms of considering technological gender redundancy. LeGuin, Banks and Varley took the idea of gender redundancy and jam on it. In [T]he Culture, gender swapping is done with a virus.
[John] Varley’s new book, Steel Beach, opens with the zinger: “In five years the penis will be obsolete.” When I cited that at the book discussion Laura Spiess retorted, “it already is.” – From the fanzine Ozone Broadcasting for The Turbo Charged Party Animal APA
I wrote that back in 1991. Reader, my gender stuff has a history, and it wasn’t some “sudden onset contagion,” or whatever it is the centrist Democrats are saying this week.
Orion fully rose just a little before sunrise started when I was out at Black Rock Desert to fly rockets on the first of the month. Dawn in the desert in the summer, in that window before the sun is up and it starts warming up fast, with a cup of coffee at hand, is wonderful.
Harry Lime: Monologs at Martins about the glories of Italy under the Borgias.
Holly Martins: Rolls his eyes as Harry goes on, looks down to see the cat from the start of his film at his ankles. The cat is tired of Harry’s monologing as well. Also the cat is now Jiji from “Kiki’s Delivery Service” (1989).
Harry Lime (oblivious to Holly and the cat’s annoyance): “In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
Holly Martins: “Harry, I’d rather have a quality timepiece than be a fascist.”
Martins shoots Lime, then walks off while whistling Anton Karas’ theme, followed by Jiji. We linger on Lime’s surprised face as he bleeds out.
It’s at least a six hour drive back to Oakland from Black Rock Desert. If you stop to wash the playa off you at the first truck stop on the route, and have something other than drive through to eat, it’s closer to 8 hours.
At that point, accept that you’re taking your time, so pull of the road when you can so you enjoy things like this view of the Emigrant Gap.