Delightful Inconsistent

Personal Shopper

Ciro and I watched Oliver Assayas's Personal Shopper, a ghost story with a famously ambiguous scene that has led to a plethora of stupid theories (almost all variants of "everybody is dead," the least interesting intepretation of any movie that isn't Defending Your Life). However, we got hung up on a different scene later in the film, during the course of which somebody pours coffee out of a Bialetti moka pot. It occurs in a kitchen in daytime with ample sunlight, and it's obvious that the coffee is watery in a way it should not be.

Could it be an exposure problem, I said.

No, said Ciro, look at the blacks in the cast iron pans.

We have concluded that either the moka pot was majorly overfilled with water (which seems out of character), or - and hear me out - the coffee is a ghost.

SALT deductions

I have not filed my taxes yet this year, but as a consequence of the 2017 Republican tax bill (it's a Paul Ryan baby, not a Trump baby) I know I will not be able to deduct my state income tax. This is the thing the news has talked about as a way to "punish" coastal elites, which come from states that are very likely to have a higher local tax burden (but which are nevertheless more likely to be net contributers to the federal coffers rather than net recipients of federal largess, so it's an interesting situation when you start talking about "fairness," and I could talk about taxes all day but I'm trying to get to a point).

It seems to me as a futurist that this might be something that history books point to in 100 years as one of the early signs that the Senate would become an archaic/ceremonial body like the House of Lords.

The reason I say this is that, well, look at the UN or the EU. They ask for contributions from member nations, but they don't directly levy taxes on individual citizens of those nations - each country decides how to meet its financial contribution. If the UN sent a tax bill to each person in the world, I think it's safe to say people would freak out.

That's the way income taxes were in the US until 1913, basically. States could do them. The federal government didn't, except briefly during the U.S. Civil War, which was considered unusual and temporary (like the draft). There was a real debate over whether the U.S. government was pre-empting powers reserved to the states, to such an extent that there had to be a constitutional amendment (the 16th) to say a federal income tax was ok in peacetime.

The fact that people in the U.S. at large can even have discussions about what's fair taxation on the basis of individuals rather than on the basis of states - and that this would be championed by Republicans from low-population states - shows the degree to which we increasingly agree that political power at the federal level derives from individuals and not from agreements between states.

I think we're moving to a unitary system. I don't think we seriously recognize a philsophical basis for dividing power equally between "states" anymore. They're getting to be more like teams we root for in a sports league, and the debate is whether we'd rather do revenue sharing like the NFL or luxury taxes like MLB. The Senate's obsolete in its current form. We can already see restructuring going on, and a backlash to that restructuring (not to mention the electoral college) but it seems random. It will look less random in retrospect, I suspect.

I don't trust the police. I don't think you should either, based on both anecdotal experience and reams of data. The police are a loaded gun, and although they might have preferences for who they're going to shoot, their overriding preference is that they shoot someone. Even if you're the one who called for help (and it can sometimes be useful to have a loaded gun), the shot person could be you.

Most lawyers would similarly tell you never to talk to police without a lawyer present, even if you're not being accused of anything. As it happens I trust lawyers more than I do police. And I don't trust lawyers. The American judicial system is in need of significant reform. When 90% of cases settle instead of going to trial, when trials are expensive and temporally far-removed from the events under examination, and when the language and processes of the law are increasingly esoteric and impossible for a common citizen to understand, we are clearly in a system that is in violation of about half the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution, and it's only the same unconstitutional parsing of the law that allows the system to define itself otherwise.

Better people than I am are working to fix our judicial processes, many of them from within the system. I am optimistic they will eventually prevail; human beings care too much about justice for it to be otherwise. It's part of our animal monkey-screaming-in-a-cage nature. And the people who want to be judges care about this stuff even more than the general population; it's a profession that self-selects for moral fiber, even though some individuals get myopic after too much time in the system (which, for the reasons stated, does a poor job of reflecting reality).

But to really reform the justice system, you have to start with the police. Technically, police are part of the executive branch and the courts are in the judicial branch, but do you really believe they act to check and balance each other? Let's be straight: It's one branch. The pay stubs might come from different accounts, but it's a rare judge who's going to take the word of a private citizen over the word of a cop. Juries too - juries are presented with officer pomp and circumstance, instructed by the judge and prosecutor to respect rather than doubt the officer. (Have you ever felt when listening to officer testimony that the court wanted you to presume the innocence of the accused?)

There's compulsion, too: I'm intimidated by cops. Are you? They certainly do their best to look scary. They certainly can make your life hell if you go against them, pretty much with impunity. Are you going to doubt the cop who says that guy was tresspassing and find the guy innocent, or are you going to figure the cop will be annoyed with you if you find not guilty and might hassle you later? It's just a small fine. Maybe he was tresspassing. I'm not sure he wasn't. Why are you going to trust the person who got arrested? He got arrested.

This is the opposite of reasonable doubt. For this reason alone, we can't reform the justice system without police reform.

It's not the only reason. It almost goes without saying that you don't enter the criminal justice system without police funneling you there. How and who they do and don't funnel determines, more than anything, who is a criminal, often for behavior that looks downright identical to behavior which is not considered criminal.

Example: You walked across my lawn without asking my permission (criminal tresspassing). You were carrying a walking stick (weapon). A receipt fell out of your pocket (evidence; littering). You messed up the growth pattern of my grass (more evidence; vandalism). You jumped off the low wall at the end of the garden, which the next-door toddler witnessed and may try to repeat (more evidence; child endangerment). My neighbor was worried (disturbing the peace).

If this scenario sounds absurd to you, you are probably white. Not all white people find it absurd. I for instance am white.

If this arrest scenario happens to you, the police will say they are following the letter of the law and trying to enforce it uniformly. Ha ha ha. The courts will repeat this when you bring up how the police acted, and tell you it's in the interest of fairness and caution. Ha ha ha.

This assumes you entered the justice system at all, rather than dying unarmed in an officer-involved shooting. You will be glad to know the officer will not be convicted of murder or even manslaughter. At least someone is getting a reasonable doubt, amIright?

Ciro and I, being science fiction writers, have been kicking around ideas about what an ideal police force would look like, and how we might get there. In theory, the police exist to protect people from predation by the cruel or exploitative, which sometimes includes protecting cruel and exploitative people from predation by other cruel and exploitative people, including cruel and exploitative people who might work their way into the police force.

Some possibilities, varying levels of plausible, no particular order:

1. Drastically redefine how we imagine the role of police officer, and shift our recruiting efforts accordingly. Most police calls are not to stop heavily armed supervillains dangling children off rooftops. Most police calls are to take a report because somebody's car got keyed, or to ask partygoers to keep it down. You know it; I know it. The thin blue line? Is ballpoint ink. Most of the time, we need the kinds of people who are dorm mothers. The police recruiting ads, on the other hand, are full of guns and muscles. These are not attracting peace-loving people.

2. Obliterate SWAT teams at the local level; call in the national guard in SWAT-type, which yes means involving the governor. Higher standard. This is what we always did until the 80s. Local police, even in big cities, do not need paramilitary units. Relatedly, it's downright jarring to see someone standing by a flag as an honor guard, holding an AK-47 for no particular reason. I just don't think people are that determined to get the flag. Appropriate levels of armament, please.

3. In much the way the fire department has retrained to provide emergency medical services, and spends as much or more time working in the healthcare system than fighting fires, the police force needs to cross-skill to offer social and psychiatric services, currently something of a patchwork of underfunded agencies. Considering how often criminal problems overlap with social services and/or psychiatric problems already (both with troubled homelifes spilling over into criminal behavior and with police asking social services to conduct wellness checks), this seems like a no-brainer.

4. Issue google glass to all police while on duty. Require them to provide a copy of the relevant section to anyone they arrest. Pull random sections monthly for departmental review.

5. More radically, stop letting the police force self-select. Use a draft police force at the beat cop level, the same way we serve jury duty, although for longer (paid) terms of service. The supervisors remain professional specialists (detectives, social workers, and the armed guys you have to call in and feel sheepish about calling in).

None of these are perfect solutions, and I'm still thinking. But we can do better. I know we can.

Ciro said yesterday that American politics is no longer about right v. left; it's a battle between people who want to make policies that reflect the world which exists and people who want to craft laws for the world as they think it ought to be. There ought to be no childhood disease, so make laws as if there isn't. Having money shouldn't mean you have outsize political influence, so make judicial decisions as if it doesn't.

Everyone should have the skills and opportunity to get good-paying jobs, so no more unemployment coverage. Parents should be in an uninterrupted state of joy and engagement with their chlidren and have ample resources and no opportunity costs, companies shouldn't pollute, I should never be attracted to anyone inappropriate, roads should be perfect and without cost, everyone should agree my taste in design is the best, nobody online should misuse apostrophes, doctors shouldn't make mistakes, and everyone should have a close relationship with God; therefore. . .

A friend from college shared another of those "disgusting things you don't realize you eat" lists that tells you how various food additives come from coal tar, sand, hair, etc and how some of those chemicals are also used in flame retardants, antifreeze, and so forth. And while everybody is doing the "oh my god gross I only eat organic" dance in the comments, my reaction is. . .

AWESOME.

I already knew about those chemicals, but it's a pleasure every time someone points them out. Any time I start to doubt humanity, I see a list like this, and I think, I am an omnivore and I eat the world. The whole world.

Anybody who tries to tell me other animals are as impressive as human beings doesn't understand how dominant we are. The world for our dominion indeed.

Tomorrow, Mars.

There's a book out called The Geek's Guide to Dating. Geek of course equals male. It has adorable chapter titles like "Escape from the Friendzone" that certainly don't imply that women are only useful as sexual partners. Overall, the way the book uses the framing device of women as goals in a game doesn't remind me at all of the sexual predation of pickup-artist culture; how about you?

Leaving aside whether this particular book is odious rather than cute, it doesn't address the central mating problem of heterosexual geek culture, which is as follows:

1. Geeks of any gender for whom geekdom is a central part of identity would prefer to date other geeks.

2. Straight male geeks are more likely than the general college-educated US male population to believe in firmly steriotyped sex-based categories - to believe that a man is like this and a woman is like this.

3. Female geeks of any orientation are much more likely than the general population to be genderqueer and/or believe that gender is an oppressive social construct.

This is not merely the source of geeky dating woe; it's the driver behind all of the harassment at conventions. Female geeks don't want to be treated as female; they are drawn to geekdom as a safe space in which to be post-gender. Male geeks absolutely want to be treated as masculine, and are drawn to geekdom as a safe space to practice rococo masculinity. These safe spaces don't overlap in their safety.

Obviously, this is a generalization; I know plenty of straight male geeks who aren't like this at all. But they're not the ones who are going to buy a geek's guide to dating. Those guys are pretty much stuck, I'm afraid.

Sent off another Arc essay; writing these makes me nervous in a way other submissions don't, for structural reasons. They start out friendly and jokey, and then stay superficially friendly and jokey but are stealth critical essays that try to run you through a lot of data to support an argument I am making (which I may not have stated directly), and then on the last page I suddenly base jump while screaming "I am a science fiction authorrrrrrrrrrrr." At this point, I propose a radical philosophical shift in how we think about technology, usually with some accompanying shift in public spending priorities, which you are maybe suckered into thinking is not radical because I have given you a lot of data, but which maybe you think is a joke because I have been superficially friendly and jokey.

Contextually, this ending should not be a surprise, since that is why you are reading an essay by me and not somebody else. But out of that context (or in light of the high percentage of works classified as science fiction that do not do this), it has a "wait, what did I just read?" quality. It is perhaps the nonfiction equivalent of a prose poem.

However, this particular essay struck me as odd in an additional, different way, which is as follows: the science is mainly mammalian biology. And it is presented as a wonderous fronteir.

It's odd for that to be odd. But it kind of is. Science fiction, speaking broadly, has a love for shiny surfaces. (Or these days, gritty pitted surfaces.) Bio is squishy. Human bodies are not otherworldly. Of the poetry submissions I receive at Strange Horizons that I would classify as science fiction and not fantasy, ballpark 90% of them are about astrophysics. 9% are about mechanical technology - robots, spaceflight, internet. 1% are chemistry or number theory.

Bio is not so much in there. I am not sure science fiction people think of it as one of the hard sciences, possibly because it is entangled with medicine, which is not science as much as it is a combination of technology and religion. Yet science fiction people are comfortable writing about technology, and about religion. And cell biology, for instance, should be unaffected by this, but only mitochondria are considered SF-worthy.

It reminds me of an attitude I somehow picked up in high school, or maybe even middle school, that bio is for girls and physics is for boys. (Chemistry, which is my favorite, was kind of bisexual and kind of a consolation prize for people who weren't good enough at physics.) I don't know how this was communicated to me, and I don't remember it being stated (except the bit about Chemistry being a physics stepchild), but it was communicated as clearly as math is for boys and English is for girls. Or for that matter Science Fiction is for boys and Fantasy is for girls.

Never mind that my classes in all these things (and the genre readers I knew) were pretty evenly gender divided, and my teachers were similarly not gender segregated. The masculinity of physics/math/scifi and the femininity of bio/English/fantasy simply were, in the same way words in Latinate languages have genders. And in all cases, of course, the male subjects were indefinably superior, indefinably prestigious, and widely accepted as more difficult.

This last part is boggling to me. I know a lot of people struggle with math. But math has one right answer. English does not have one right answer. And in physics, I can derive stuff, but in bio I have to memorize it. Harder.

I don't know whether I defaulted to the "harder" sciences (in both the SF sense and the percieved difficulty sense) because of this perceived prestigious maleness, or because I would have anyway. (I am not big on memorizing, although who knows why, because I'm good at it and for instance learn my lines as an actor without any fuss. But this is a reason piano performance went nowhere for me; I just don't want to memorize the sheet music, out of pure stubbornness. Somebody wrote it down. I respect that.) It took me easily ten years to shake off my feeling that learning about biology was "slumming."

And I am glad I did, because biology is a lot more hackable than physics. Not to mention really, really weird. Much moreso than black holes.

I am pro-drone, by which I mean I like drones. I like the technology, which strikes me as more accurate and more cost-effective than piloted fighter planes. If you ask me whether I like drones, you are asking me whether I like robots - and I love robots.

However, I suspect that some percentage of the people who ask me about drones are actually asking me about drone use policy. (Another percentage is definitely trying to get me to be paranoid about Skynet or the Matrix or something, which no thank you. I robot.)

Our current drone policy rests quite a bit on an official making a determination that the targeted individual presents an "imminent threat," which is an interesting use of "imminent," usually defined as "about to happen," given that the targeted individual who is imminently threatening us is typically halfway across the globe and does not possess a drone. One starts to suspect that "imminent threat" means "I feel threatened," or even "I might imagine feeling threatened," particularly since "imminent threat" is sometimes placed close to the phrase "could conclude." It all gets rather "Stand Your Ground."

I prefer laws that rest on the judgment of "a reasonable person." This strikes me as the only workable standard, the reason one would look to a jury of peers to determine criminality or lack thereof: Was my behavior reasonable? Or was it instead criminal? But it seems that time has not been kind to the reasonable person.

Meanwhile, Ciro has made me chocolate pudding, and so there is some kind of kindness to some kind of person.

In one of those thoughts you have before falling asleep, it occurred to me other other day that if the US mail worked the way webmail does, it would be free, but all letters would be postcards and stamps would be advertisements selected by the postal clerk.

I'm having trouble continuing to watch the Game of Thrones miniseries; the most recent episode has been sitting on my DVR for several days, and not because I don't have time. It's not the boobs; I just roll my eyes at the boobs, which are sometimes given porn-level script justification. ("Ooops, I guess this is the wrong room! And I forgot my shirt!") Instead, what I find unpalatable is the pervasive narrative disempowerment of the female characters, which goes well beyond adding breasts to any scenes where they can be featured.

Obviously, any time you adapt a book for the screen, there are going to be changes, usually in the name of expediency (books are long), streamlining the cast, or externalizing an internal conflict that would otherwise be unexpressed. This . . . is not that. It makes motivations less clear and lowers the dramatic punch of the scenes in question, often while adding to scene length. The only reason you'd do it, as a writer or producer, would be to advance a specific sexual-political agenda, and it's pretty much something you'd have to do consciously. I'll give you some examples.

Danerys, that chick with the white hair who married the horse guy. Raped by her husband in the first episode. In the same scene in the book, she realizes that with this marriage her brother arranged to effectively sell her into slavery, that actually he finally set her free. She rides around on the horse Drogo (her husband) gave her, laughing and jumping over fires, and when she and Drogo have sex, Drogo won't make any move on her if she seems at all upset or recalcitrant, and she's the one who undresses him and decides how the sexual encounter will go, and she has a great time.

In a later episode, there's a scene where one of her handmaidens teaches her to have sex and suggests this will allow her to get what she wants. Unnecessary in the book. She's already taking charge of things and totally empowered and doesn't have to be activated through the classic anti-feminist trope that women have always had power by being seductive. Book Dany gets what she wants when she says she wants it, not because she figures out how to have sex in a way that's more exciting for her male partner. For instance, that order that Viserys (her brother) will have to walk after trying to accost her? In the book, it comes from Dany, not some random guy on a horse while she stands there looking scared. In the book, she also hits Viserys before that guy whips him; in the book, the whip guy is following her lead, not rescuing her.

Cat, Ned Stark's wife (Sean Bean's wife) has been dumbed down a lot too. In the book, she figures out who pushed Bran out of the tower by thinking about who was doing what that day. In the series, she finds a blond hair in a tower. Ok, ok, externalizing a thought process in a way that only happens to make her come to a conclusion based on an emotional reaction to a hair instead of a thinking person's understanding of who might have something to gain or lose. But they continue that "emotional" character idea in other scenes, all of which cast her as family focused to the exclusion of all thought.

Like, did anybody think it was weird in the first episode when Cat's sister sends a sealed message to Cat which she doesn't let anyone read that says various plots are afoot and would Cat look into it, and then Cat freaks out about Ned going to the capital but Ned firmly says he has to? It's weird because in the book it's the reverse; Ned wants to stay in Winterfell, which is his family home that he likes, and not someplace particularly interesting to Cat, and Cat says "you have to go and figure out what is going on for the safety of everyone." None of this "how could you leave the family I'll never forgive you."

By the same token, later when they're talking with Littlefinger (that guy from the Council that hides Cat in the whorehouse), in the series Cat trusts him as a little brother and Ned knows he's bad news the first time he lays eyes on him and has to warn Cat that Littlefinger, who dueled for her and stalked her in the past, might still have some kind of crush on her. (HBO Cat batting eyelashes: "No! I'm sure he's totally over that!") In the book? Cat totally knows Littlefinger's agenda and doesn't trust him except that she thinks he's useful as someone whose biases and drawbacks they at least know.

It extends even to the kids; there's not a lot you can do to write Arya (little girl with sword) as a traditionally feminine character, but they manage to mess with her scenes too, via other characters. That speech Ned gives her in episode three about how Sansa (older sister) lied to protect Joffrey because he's to be her husband and women must stand by their husbands and never contradict their husbands, and so Sansa was doing the right thing? Speech does not exist in the book. Not anywhere in the book from any character, even Sansa. Everybody pretty much agrees that what she did was shit and are only nice about it because she's a kid.

There's no reason to add the speech narratively; the moment doesn't need explaining. It's only useful if that's something you want to be sure to say to the audience, just like you said it by making sure that an unnamed horse guy gives orders instead of main character Dany, and making sure that Ned makes the call to go to the capital instead of bowing to the judgment of his wife. The message is that good, heroic women never tell men what to do, good men never allow themselves to be bossed by women (note how fallen hero Robert is whipped by his wife), and women are irrational emotional people who only care about wanting to be home with family (so that Cat can't dislike Winterfell, Dany can't act out against brother Viserys, and Cat must trust Littlefinger because they grew up in the same house).

To drive the point home further, heroic male characters have been purged of "weak" feminine traits.

Tyrion (the dwarf) - seeks out a room full of hookers the moment he gets to Winterfell (TV) rather than raiding the library (book)

Drogo (horse king guy) - super macho (TV) instead of innocently sweet to Dany (book)

Ned (Sean Bean) - gets to the capitol and stares a dude down for suggesting he might want to do something unmanly like change out of his dirty riding clothes before meeting with the council (TV). In the book, it's Ned who asks for a second to change clothes so he can be appropriately respectful, and who borrows a flash suit from somebody because he hasn't had time to unpack his stuff yet.

As I said, very sinister, often not only unnecessary but counter to the movement of the plot, often requiring extra scenes or characters to explain, when the writers and producers should be trying to reduce both. (Except when it comes to boobs. Extra scenes and characters that add to the boob count are de rigeur.) I find it aggressive and hard to take in passively, especially in an adaptation of a book series notable for its female fan base, perhaps the only major work of epic fantasy that has a female cast almost as large and active as its male cast. The only reason to adapt that series like this is to put women in their proper place, and hope it reprograms the viewer correctly. And that is scary.