Philly is undefeated

HOW DO GUYS KNOW WHAT GREETING TO DO?!

I always guess wrong. There are like 9590543 combinations of slapping hands, hand shakes, fist bumps and bro hugs and y’all just somehow know what to do while I’m over here fist bumping the cashier while he’s low fiving with my change in hand.

How many people are learning today that Not Like Us is not, in fact, the sequel to the hit NBC show “This Is Us”?

be the monkey wrench you want to see in the works

International Robber Barons running the show here

A page featuring a cartoon faced corn dog called scorn dog, who is very mad. The title reads: Scorn Dog feels deep fried contempt for these illegal actions and you should too. Below, five headlines from the day any the illegal actions of the Trump administration.

A meme from the fairly odd parents. In the first panel, a man (Elon) gestures at an empty pedestal in the background. He is saying “This is where I would put my legal authority”. In the next frame, the man is exasperated and screams, “if I had any!”

“Move fast and break things” is great in theory or in a VC presentation. It’s pretty catastrophic in practice, especially when the “thing” is government agencies and services.

The disrupters never turn around to see the carnage left in the wake of their “innovation”.

Who the fuck has midnight calls except vampires?

This is an Order 66 level event, but instead of Jedi, it’s the civil servants who make the government work for the people that are being eradicated.

How did the entire galaxy seemingly forget about the Jedi and see them as a myth in just a generation?

This is how. Totalitarian control over everything. Push nonconformists out of public life. Control the media, the judges, the executive and hunt down those who oppose your control.

Elon Musk will be defeated. And we are on the cusp of a generation of stories with thinly-veiled Elon Musks as the villains who get the absolute 💩 beat out of them.

The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk's Government Takeover Engineers between 19 and 24, most linked to Musk’s companies, are playing a key role as he seizes control of federal infrastructure.

The men carrying out Musk's coup are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran.

Make them famous. And, eventually, when possible, arrest them and charge them with multiple felonies. www.wired.com/story/elon-m...

Inclusive language is only ever a burden if you see inclusivity as a burden.

The right accuses the left of policing language, “forcing” pronouns and other woke terms on them. Making language more inclusive was too uncomfortable for them.

Now, they’re banning words in the federal gov’t to effectively ban those identities from participating in political life.

For those who don’t understand the gravity of what Elon is doing to the federal government, pretend the Lakers are Elon and Dallas is the treasury and all that data he stole is Luka.

The Lakers got one more imported good player in right before the tariffs made it too expensive.

What comes after that, the truly transformative stuff, is science fiction waiting to be written into reality, because we’ve never seen a truly equitable system in practice.

But we can take some solace in the fact that a more just world is not, ultimately, impossible.

Supporting diversity with our voices and our wallets is the first step.

More Black bestsellers means more Black editors and more chances taken on Black stories and more equity in the boardrooms of publishing houses, more movie adaptations, more kids seeing diversity in every facet of media.

Bookstores need to demand, stock, and celebrate diverse books, too. Black sci-fi didn’t start and stop with Octavia Butler.

When booksellers put the energy out there for black stories, publishers feel the pressure to provide support to capitalize on the enthusiasm.

In the short term, the best way to change the ship’s course is to show publishers that diverse books create trade winds strong enough to overcome political headwinds.

Readers must demand, buy, celebrate diverse books. Shopping at indies and getting recs from booksellers, instead of algorithms.

Now, like in 1981, there is a cultural backlash to progress which conservatives have turned into a political scythe, reaping their electoral victory.

So, what is a lover of diverse books to do? Are we doomed to the dark before us?

Despite conservatives shouting that YOU (read: white men) are being victimized by DEI, not much has changed in the 44 years of “progress” between Reagan’s landslide and Trump’s marginal victory: white authors dominate the publishing industry.

That is not the fault of any one author or editor.

Highlighted article text reads: Books by blacks, other minorities and even by women are thought of as little more than fads and curiosities.'

But because white stories are (incorrectly) seen as universal or race-neutral, you’ll never see whiteness (or masculinity) presented as “little more than fads and curiosities.”

Butler’s success is a terrible model for publishers, however, holding non-white authors to an unfair standard of excellence few can reach.

On average, 1 of 4 books breaks even. And since most books are by white authors, the truth is that white authors fail much more than non-white authors.

So, the author of Redlining Culture, notes how Octavia Butler, the author of bestselling speculative fiction novels like Kindred, told race-conscious stories with black protagonists.

But she avoided overt racial wording that might otherwise have kept her work unpublished.

Fewer Black editors meant fewer Black stories by Black writers were being championed and marketed to the public.

How do you escape the vicious cycle of Black authors not being picked up by pubs because people aren’t reading Black stories … because pubs aren’t picking up and promoting them?

Highlighted news article text reads: Only six black senior editors are presently employed by major publishing houses in New York City; in the early 1970's, there were twice that number. Moreover, three of those editors work in the paperback romance divisions of their companies, an area that puts them generally out of touch with black writers.

If we go back to 1981, we can see how anti-diversity stances affected the publishing industry.

At the time, there were only 6 Black editors at major pubs, down from 12 a few years prior. And, as the NYT notes, 3 were working on romance books, which are just trivial stories for womenfolk. 🙄

Zoom out further and you’ll see that 98% of bestseller lists and 91% of novelists winning major awards are white.

Some might point to statistics like these as proof a merit based system is working as intended, a system whose integrity DEI would corrupt.