Weekly Notes: March 31–April 6, 2025

  • 🚀 This weekend was a little bit of convention conflict, as Saturday we had the final Norwescon 47 planning meeting before the con, and Sunday was Seattle Worldcon‘s announcement of this year’s Hugo finalists. Got everything done, but it did make me glad there aren’t many weekends where I’m trying to do stuff for two conventions at the same time.

📸 Photos

Single-panel comic of two men sitting on a park bench, one is about eight inches tall. The small one is saying, "You think you've got problems! Not only am I the incredible shrinking man, but I've also been bitten by a werewolf so every full moon I turn into a gerbil!"

From a conversation with a friend, one of my all-time favorite Bizarro comics, clipped and saved back when I was in high school.

📝 Writing

📚 Reading

🔗 Linking

  • Guillaume Lethuillier: The Myst Graph: A New Perspective on Myst: “Upon reflection, Myst has long been more analogous to a graph than a traditional linear game, owing to the relative freedom it affords players. This is particularly evident in its first release (Macintosh, 1993), which was composed of interconnected HyperCard cards. It is now literally one. Here is Myst as a graph.”

  • Jessica Bennett at The Cut: If Hetero Relationships Are So Bad, Why Do Women Go Back for More? A new straight-studies course treats male-female partnerships as the real deviance.: “‘In this class, we’re going to flip the script,’ she went on. ‘It’s going to be a place where we worry about straight people. Where we feel sympathy for straight people. We are going to be allies to straight people.'”

  • Nilay Patel at The Verge: Best printer 2025: just buy a Brother laser printer, the winner is clear, middle finger in the air: “This is the third year in a row that I’ve published a story recommending you just stop thinking about printers and buy whatever random Brother laser printer is on sale, and nothing has happened in the miserably user-hostile printer industry to change my recommendation in that time.”

  • Sarah Jones at the Intelligencer: Then They Came for People With Disabilities The right-wing effort to roll back civil rights finds a new target.: “Though the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act had bipartisan support and were signed by Republican presidents, it’s hard to imagine Trump signing either piece of legislation. A more ruthless strain of conservatism always percolated within the party, and now it dominates and threatens the protections that Cone, and Lomax, and so many others once fought to win. At risk is the concept of civil rights itself.”

  • Shelly Brisbin at Six Colors: Twenty Thousand Hertz Dives Deep Into Apple Accessibility History: “The latest episode of the Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast takes a stab at telling Apple’s accessibility story through sound—not only the sound of a host and his interview subjects, but the way Macs and iPhones sound when they speak to people who use their accessibility features.”

  • Watts Martin: What makes an app feel “right” on the Mac?: “So it’s possible that the right question—at least for me—isn’t ‘is this app using a native UI toolkit,’ it’s ‘is this app a good Mac citizen.’ In other words, does it embrace long-standing Mac conventions?”

  • Seattle Worldcon 2025: 2025 Hugo Award Finalists: “Seattle Worldcon 2025, the 83rd World Science Fiction Convention, is delighted to announce the finalists for the 2025 Hugo Awards, Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and Astounding Award for Best New Writer.”

“It’s a moral imperative.”

Sad to see the news of Val Kilmer’s death. While he did a lot of good stuff over the years, my personal favorite is and has always been one of his earlier films, Real Genius.

Poster for Real Genius, with Val Kilmer sitting on a desk wearing dealybobbers and a t-shirt that says I Heart Toxic Waste.

As a too-smart-for-my-own-good kid (in many ways, the classic “nerd”: glasses, unruly curly hair, big gap in my teeth, played the violin, read constantly — mostly science fiction, got into computers really early, got beat up and shoved in lockers by bullies, etc.), Real Genius was foundational. It was the first (and is still one of the few) comedies I saw where the nerds were the heroes, and where their quirkiness, oddity, and intelligence was celebrated rather than mocked. (Revenge of the Nerds may purport to have nerds as its heroes, but it mocks, not celebrates.)

While I wasn’t genius level smart, of course, these were characters that I could identify with (in Mitch), aspire to be like (in Chris), see what to avoid (in Kent and Hathaway), and fall for (in Jordan). They saw the world in much the same way I did. Big and scary and intimidating, but also funny and intriguing and mysterious, and something to be explored and enjoyed. They accepted each other in all of their weirdness.

It has one of the most start-to-finish quotable scripts I’ve ever come across, and lines from it regularly pop into my mind. It’s one I never tire of watching, and I think I need to queue it up again sometime soon.

Some other times I’ve mentioned Real Genius here in the past:

Mitch: You know, um, something strange happened to me this morning…
Chris Knight: Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?
Mitch: No…
Chris Knight: Why am I the only one who has that dream?

Mitch: What are you doing?
Chris Knight: Self-realization. I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, “… I drank what?”

Chris Knight: So, if there’s anything I can do for you – or, more to the point, to you – just let me know.
Susan: Can you hammer a six-inch spike through a board with your penis?
Chris Knight: Not right now.
Susan: A girl’s gotta have her standards.

Chris Knight: This? This is ice. This is what happens to water when it gets too cold. This? This is Kent. This is what happens to people when they get too sexually frustrated.
Kent: You’re all a bunch of degenerates.
Chris Knight: We are? What about that time I found you naked with that bowl of Jell-O?
Kent: You did not.
Chris Knight: This is true.
Kent: Look, it was hot and I was hungry, okay?

Professor Hathaway: I want to see more of you around the lab.
Chris Knight: Fine. I’ll gain weight.

Mitch: Did you know there’s a guy living in our closet?
Chris Knight: You’ve seen him too?
Mitch: Who is he?
Chris Knight: Hollyfeld.
Mitch: Why does he keep going into our closet?
Chris Knight: Why do you keep going into our closet?
Mitch: To get my clothes – but that’s not why he goes in there.
Chris Knight: Of course not, he’s twice your size – your clothes would never fit him.
Mitch: Yeah…
Chris Knight: Think before you ask these questions, Mitch. Twenty points higher than me? Thinks a big guy like that can wear his clothes?

Dr. Dodd: Why is that toy on your head?
Chris Knight: Because if I wear it any place else, it chafes.

Professor Hathaway: You still run?
Chris Knight: Only when chased.