Media Wednesday rolls around again. I miss reading fiction.

tv
We happened across Acting Good one night last week—it looks like CTV is filling its schedule rather desultorily while the Olympics are on. Anyway, it's a delightful, surreal sitcom set in a northern Manitoba community and I can't wait to watch the rest of it.

Speaking of Canadian sitcoms I love that no one cares about, Children Ruin Everything is on Netflix Canada. I hope it's on other Netflices.

books
Road to Ruin, Hana Lee (2024). A courier on a magic motorcycle, wearing a saurian skull as a helmet, travels across a post-apocalyptic wasteland to deliver love letters between two people, both of whom she is in love with. That's the pitch, and it got me about a quarter of the way in before I had to stop. I'm mentioning it here because I think it might work very well for other people. I really wanted it to work for me! But two things put me off: First, the narrative style is very flat. The reader is informed of all salient facts about characters, rather than expected (trusted?) to put things together. This is, I think, a little different from 'show don't tell'; it seems to encourage smooth consumption without pause or doubt or subtlety. I've noticed this in a lot of contemporary s/f, most recently Kitasei's Stardust Grail, so it must work for a lot of readers. Just not me.

Secondly, the plot seemed to be developing into something very YA in terms of: "highly stratified (in improbable but thematically significant ways) dystopian society's secrets are about to get exploded by protagonist(s)." That's a valid plot, obviously, but not of much interest at all to me.

online reads
• Wall Street Journal still can’t confirm January story about UNRWA in Gaza. Utterly despicable.
• 'Amid the chaos of far-right protests and violence I saw the best of Bristol': In the face of violence, ordinary people put themselves in harm's way to protect others. I loved this piece on ordinary resistance to surging fascism.
• The Center won't beat Fascism. Will not and, let's be honest, cannot.
• Playing the Victim. Another excellent personal post about this weekend's pogroms.
• From Scientific American, a very important opinion piece that is beautifully well-cited: The U.K.’s Cass Review Badly Fails Trans Children: A politicized review into transgender medicine in the National Health Service has upended lives in the U.K.—and threatens to spread harm across the globe. This passage is especially good: "Instead of helping young people, the review has caused enormous harm to children and their families, to democratic discourse and to wider principles of scientific endeavour. There is an urgent need to critically examine the actual context and findings of the report."
• Historic federal aid addresses discrimination for thousands of Black farmers after years of delay: The U.S. Department of Agriculture has sent out long-awaited payments to minority farmers and others in need of aid. But some say it’s not enough.
• For the Tuscarora, Recognition Has Been A 40-Year Fight: The Tuscarora people of North Carolina want official state recognition as a tribe, but centuries of history and politics stand in their way.
• Willing to Die for MrBeast (and $5 Million): The contestants in the internet star’s “Beast Games” expected outlandish challenges and signed contracts that acknowledged risks of serious injury and death. Still, few were prepared for the conditions on set. (gift link ♥)
• Reuters: We bought everything needed to make $3 million worth of fentanyl: All it took was $3,600 and a web browser. The reporting on this is exquisite.
• A National Tenants Union Has Arrived: Local tenants unions are officially teaming up, to the terror of big landlords.. I've seen what tenants unions can do and I hope this just gets bigger and better.
• Workers’ union, former lightkeepers concerned with Coast Guard’s decision to destaff B.C. lighthouses. Awful, stupid decision! (Responses I've seen are all "they're all automated in other countries!". These are adjacent to/in the midst of parks and often serve as significant aid in emergencies. Also, people shouldn't just randomly lose their homes and the fact that other countries do it differently is immaterial. blargh)
• Four Friends, Two Marriages, One Affair — and a Shelf of Books Dissecting It: A tale of literature and treachery. (Archive link) This story is both weirdly fascinating and deeply annoying. I think the writers' approach to art as autobiographical + careerist, as small stakes as personal interactions among people just like you, simply doesn't make any sense to me any longer. The anecdote wherein Ann Beattie didn't want to read one book because she cared about her friend is so interesting, particularly the guy's baffled reaction.
• How David Weber Orders a Pizza: hilarious, and an excellent vaccine against the temptation to over-explain.
• Short fiction: The Skin Keeper, Jan Stinchcomb. I am usually about the last person you'd want reading a fairy-tale riff or retelling, but this one floored me. I wish I knew how it worked, how to do that.

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battleshipex reveals will happen overnight. Not sure how I feel about things.