A quick reminder: next week is Dystopia Week, in which various authors will offer up their visions of a future gone horribly wrong. Please consider taking a moment and writing up your own fictionalized portrayals of what might go wrong. Then, we can discuss whether what we’ve just read about would actually be bad things, how we might get there, and how we might avoid them.
We’ll be starting January 9, 2017. Thank you!
Image by JoeInSouthernCA 
Burt Likko
Pseudonymous Portlander. Pursuer of happiness. Bon vivant. Homebrewer. Atheist. Recovering Republican. Recovering Catholic. Recovering divorcé. Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Ordinary Times. Relapsed Lawyer, admitted to practice law (under his real name) in California and Oregon. There's a Twitter account at @burtlikko, but not used for posting on the general feed anymore. House Likko's Words: Scite Verum. Colite Iusticia. Vivere Con Gaudium.
Thanks to your generosity, we were able to upgrade our service plan. Hopefully this will help us address some of our performance issues.
on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024The devil is in the details.
on Two attacks on US soil and both involve a car rental appI understand how the Quarter works. My shock isn't that the terrorist was able to get his vehicle on…
on Two attacks on US soil and both involve a car rental appMost of the time those are still streets with cars on them - what with people living and working the…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024I believe I said earlier than the gentrification discourse in this country is broken and counterprod…
on A Man on the InsideOld guy here. Ed Sullivan probably would've said, "A really good shoe!" And I say, "We loved this sh…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024LA's Karen Bass talked about how building low-income housing in single-family neighborhoods would cr… on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024Yeah, most places don't do permanent supportive housing, but use a model that makes it really diffic…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024The conversation inspired me to Google 'halfway houses near me' and 'homeless shelters near me.' The… on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024Yeah, turns out that if there are consequences, people change their behavior. This is a lesson Texas… on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024No idea, man. You keep taking it back to that in response to what I initially said, which was not ab…
January 1, 2025
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December 29, 2024
on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024
on A Man on the Inside on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024 on Joe Biden Agrees that Some People *DO* Deserve the Death Penalty on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024 on Joe Biden Agrees that Some People *DO* Deserve the Death Penalty on Two attacks on US soil and both involve a car rental app on Two attacks on US soil and both involve a car rental app on Two attacks on US soil and both involve a car rental app on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024 on The Immigration Thing
on Open Mic for the week of 12/30/2024 on Two attacks on US soil and both involve a car rental app
on A Man on the Inside on Two attacks on US soil and both involve a car rental app
You’ve got enough of these to go, right? I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to this…Report
We certainly have room for more. Also, check your e-mail later today, I’ve an update on your submission.Report
I’m a horrible writer, so I will leave this virtual certainty for someone better than I.
Cyber security is not yet taken anywhere as seriously as it should be. In the next decade we will see the digital equivalent of the triangle shirt waste fire, but on at least a regional scale if not global. The question is not if but when. That it has not happened yet is a testament to lack of people THAT sadistic, deranged, or just angry.Report
@joe-m
Practice makes perfect, and all that. It’s a generally supportive audience. And myself, I plan on using “Yeah? Did you do any better?” at least once when someone points out that I write dialog like George Lucas…Report
Meesa believe in youReport
Joe,
The internet is porn and cat videos (and Asian boy band demo photos).
There is a lesson in this.Report
According to my friend in the Level 3 network operations center, on Friday evenings the internet is Netflix and the Netflix wanna-bes.Report
Is fiction cool?Report
Fiction is what it’s supposed to be. A factionalized illustration of what you visualize as a possible, though hopefully avoidable, dystopia.Report
I’m with @saul-degraw on this. How are we supposed to come up with something worse than reality?Report
For those of you who have been putting it off, don’t be George R.R. Martin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7lp3RhzfgIReport
@gaelen
This comment is down here for a reason. I started at least six comments attached to yours, and decided that all of them detracted from it. Some things simply speak for themselves. Among the efforts…
There was “I almost strangled trying to avoid spitting wine on my keyboard…” which was true.
There was “Dialect is not dialog…” but that was just whining.
There was “There is no try. There is only write, or not write.” Which, if the point isn’t already obvious, was an appeal to people to submit something. I want Burt to work his fingers down to the bone editing so that I can have a week full of fun reading this stuff.Report