Joy Silence

 There was a lot of great content this week but one particularly moved me, and that's Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff's "If Not Us Than Who: The Russian Partisans at War Against Putin." (Part 1, Part 2).

My biggest disagreement with people who I'm otherwise in political lockstep with is Ukraine. Most (North American) leftists are wrong about this. I know this because I have actually been to Ukraine (and Russia), not just in touristy areas, and they for the most part haven't and don't know what they're talking about and are generally basing their opinions on either Cold War nostalgia, residual anti-imperialist trauma, or the appalling behaviour of some diaspora Ukrainian communities. My shitlib position is that you shouldn't invade other people's countries and kill them because you want their land or resources. Even if—and this is critical when we're talking about Palestine or Iran too—you don't like them and some of them are bad people. If that makes me a NATO stooge or CIA asset so be it. 

Margaret and guest Charles McBryde share my opinion and also argue with other leftists about this, so you already know I'm going to agree with them. (Though not totally—we are all leftists here after all.) And you know who else does? A fuck of a lot of Russians. These two episodes focus on the frankly heroic actions of the Russian activists who resist Putin's authoritarianism, including Ruslan Siddiqui, who is genuinely cool not just for his political convictions but with the truly brass balls panache with which he acted. Margaret refers to him as the most cyberpunk guy she's ever heard of and this is true. I should write to him.

Anyway, it's a really wild ride about how to resist authoritarianism when regular political channels are cut off, which is of relevance in Russia and only in Russia, given that it's the only country that disappears people off the streets, murders its dissidents, and cracks down on freedom of expression.

 I mean I have to recommend Wizards & Spaceships' "Amazing Stories 100th Anniversary ft. Steve Davidson, Kermit Woodall and Lloyd Penney." It's in my contract. :) If you're into classic SF, you'll dig this one a lot.

Just finished: Indigenous Ingenuity: A Celebration of Traditional North American Knowledge by Deidre Havrelock and Edward Kay. This is worth a read but also I wanted it to be better than it was. My main issue was the tone of condescension cloaked in breathless wonderment towards its young audience and precolonial Indigenous peoples, which I honestly do not think is intentional on the part of the writers and more a factor of how people think that children ought to be spoken to. My second issue had to do with the ending, which focused on ecological technologies and suddenly jumped forward to present day Indigenous Nations working with governments to create sustainable ecosystems. Very cool, but because of the book's structure and emphasis on precolonial technologies, it made it seem like Indigenous societies today are only working in that field. (This is not remotely true! If the section on communication technology had, for example, included a jump forward to discuss the Skobot, I'd have been fine with this aspect.) But also, it described things like carbon trading fairly uncritically, when in fact while carbon trading is better than carbonmaxxing like our current overlords are doing, it's a fairly useless system that greenwashes the omnicidal criminal corporations turning our world into a burning hellscape. So if the book is inaccurate about this, what else is it inaccurate about?

Beowulf translated by Francis B. Gummere. It's Beowulf. This is the less fun translation, albeit the one I'm more familiar with, because my hold on the Headley one didn't come in on time. We can discuss whether or not it's the most metal of all historical epics.

Currently reading: To Ride a Rising Storm by Moniquill Blackgoose. Speaking of Scandinavian-influenced epics. This is the sequel to To Shape a Dragon's Breath, which as you might recall broke all the way through my general dislike of YA to be one of my favourite books of the year. So far I am binging this and it's excellent. Our heroine, Anequs, wants nothing more than to get through her time at Kuiper's Academy, get licensed to ride her dragon, and return to her people on Masquapaug permanently, preferably with her two love interests, Theod and Liberty. But now the Anglish have set up a presence on the island and she's increasingly being drawn into shitty white-people politics that she wants nothing to do with.

This introduces a whack of new characters and factions. There's a Jewish character, Jadzia (Blackgoose, you fuckin' nerd lol), who I adore, and a secret society called the Disorder of the Grinning Teeth, which is the name of my new black metal band. There's also a new teacher whose name escapes me but who provides an interesting contrast in pedagogy from the first book. I should add that this is very much a magical boarding school story and not a residential school story, so it's very cool to see the idea of colonial educational institutions that could, theoretically, be reformed and democratized rather than needing to be closed and having the people who run them thrown in Forever Jail. 

Also the dragons are cool.