Hearing a bit of hub-bub about the Indian election, I notice all the chatter about religious and economic concerns, corruption, trade, development, etc. still omits politicians' stance on that one tiny detail:

POPULATION CONTROL !!! 

 

 

 

 

 

Twice upon a time, there was a twice upon a time.

"If I had known it was harmless I would have killed it myself"

"I dedicate this song to my boys who are strong

They just don't go along"

 

Kill Hannah - Unwanted

 

 

I tried the NYTimes Wordle last year for about 100 days. The results weren't terrible, 95% success rate before they cut off my stats to force me to create an account, which forced me to quit altogether. Despite losing my patience and throwing the game several times (the only word I honestly tried and couldn't suss was "ninja" (in my defense, they're sneaky)) I could manage most by the fourth line. But leaving aside my recalcitrant nonconformism, I found the experience reminiscent of text adventure games. Your minds are simply too alien for me to read.

Or maybe I'm weird.

Back when playing City of Heroes, I'd set up a pretty nifty hero base and fang shooed the base teleporters according to both general map directions and target zone levels in a way that made intuitive sense to me. Logging in one evening, I was shocked to find my sole remaining active partner in the guild had remodeled and rearranged the tubes in some utterly incomprehensible, meaningless fashion. I was livid! For something like fifteen minutes I wandered the base back and forth struggling in vain to make heads or tails of why and how he'd scrambled my handy pattern, working myself into a fine lather mentally workshopping just how I'd take him to task for his vandalism. I couldn't make heads or tails of the order he'd chosen. It was insane, it was wrong, it was evil, it was... alphabetical.

Oh.

So maybe I'm weird.

Seeing my car low on gas inflicted on me, as it does on occasion, a twinge of guilt at my consumption of this critical resource. Maybe I should take the bus to the supermarket, maybe I should walk to pick up my pizza, maybe I should walk around the block instead of driving to the woods to walk the trails. At the same time the car had developed an odd vibration when I pressed the brakes. Worried my new brake pads might be faulty, I took it in. Diagnosis: rust. Rusted brakes from not driving often enough.

The company from which I ordered this computer started spamming my e-mail with a-may-zing low-low-offers on brand-sparking-new top-quality systems. I wondered why the sudden flux, when I hadn't heard from them since my purchase a couple years prior, then realized: they can't expect you to buy a second one right away, right? So apparently, two years is the accepted timeframe in which to buy a whole new computer! My last one lasted over a decade, and the switch was prompted by Microsoft forcing planned obsolescence with Windows versions. My previous one seven or eight years. I'm planning on making this one live to fifteen, a couple component swaps notwithstanding. Even assuming the company's 2yr estimate is estimated in their interest and doubling it, buying a new system every four years is something I thought a relic of the '90s when crucial technologies like modems and floppy disks were changing from year to year and components were still routinely being damaged by heat.

But maybe I'm weird.

I felt guilty grabbing take-out or fast food instead of supermarket fare until I noticed the restaurant was packed to overflowing as is every other eatery's parking lot every day of the week. Only then did I remember for half of Americans it's a daily routine.

I felt guilty throwing out a sock or shirt every couple of months, or buying a new pair of sneakers when my old one's heels fall apart, until I ran across the jaw-dropping statistic that I'm supposed to be throwing out 37 kilos of clothes a year! How?!? Even allowing for that average to have been, say, doubled by factory overstock that never reaches consumers, how can you manage tossing a suitcase of clothes every year? Guess I could shop for disposable lead undies or something.

I felt guilty about my electric and water bills until utility companies started including usage statistics on the bills, which put me at about 1/2-2/3 of my neighbours' consumption, this being near a college surrounded by single-occupant, one-bedroom apartments. But as I write this amidst a locally chilly April, I can already hear an air conditioner running across the street.

 

So maybe I never realized how weird I am.

I remember some years ago, having gone back to college, voicing some difficulty finishing a professor's exams within the hour. The girl I was talking to helpfully suggested I tell them I'm disabled. What? Yeah, sure, just go to the counseling center and tell 'em you're disabled. They'll let you take the test in private and take however much time you need.

No, I did not do that. I dropped the course. So yeah, I'm a great big waste, I'm a failure, and maybe I'm weird. Because it never occured to me to weaponize my weirdness. At least not against anyone except myself.

 

You want success? You want this world? You can keep it.

Once upon a time, there was a blogger who considered he probably shouldn't keep these going too much longer 'cause they're wearin' a mite thin.

The Mote in God's Eye

"We have wrought upon ourself and others
With a slow and vicious gun
And although pratfalls can be fun
Encores can be fatal

 

And we don't wanna read the signs that you bore
You know, the kind of sign you hang on a door
Saying "we'll be back" what a crack
Now, don't you think we might have heard that before?"

 

Andrew Bird - Heretics

 

 

Guess I'm on a bit of a Niven kick this year. In addition to The Integral Trees I queued up its sequel for later, re-read Protector (which always felt more packed with ideas than Ringworld, absence of big dumb object notwithstanding) and picked up The Mote in God's Eye while I was at it. Often title-dropped but rarely discussed so that I honestly didn't even know what subgenre of SF I'd be reading, it turned out to be one of the finest first contact stories I've ever run across!

 

Most of the book's flaws come from playing up its setting, which even in 1974 would've been readily recognizable as a space opera space empire with a space navy and space marines... and that's about it. (I'd guess Pournelle's CoDominium normally gives politics primacy instead of relegating it to plot-unrelated backstory filler.) Also, had it limited itself to a five-man band or similar roster, the lengthy introductions may have felt less painful, but a full warship's complement took me until mid-novel to even partially distinguish, especially as their personalities rarely diverge from HelloSailors #1-15. More concisely obstructive, the climax gets interrupted so the daring space captain/prince and the plucky princess can marry... and keep getting married for a whole chapter or two... and if you're waiting for that to acquire some relevance to meeting an alien species, no, not unless you count women hailing from Venus. I kept imagining storyboard space allocated to: "a wedding, a wedding, we're going to have a wedding!"

On the flip-side, that weird pause also demarcates the last third of the novel, one third longer than you'd expect it to run. After the space marines battle valiantly against an invasion plus a plucky band of heroes stumble upon the grand reveal, leading to a climactic chase scene and heroic stand, you'd think a story'd just wind down for a few pages to a sappy conclusion. Mote instead uses the wedding breather to launch into the real pay-off: the stand-off. In the end, the two writers did end up complemeting each other well, as human militarism and political infighting reflects on the moties' own quirk recalling pak mental inflexibility and bouts for supremacy.

A fifty year old novel inevitably suffers from some more or less excusable lapses. For one thing it places heavy emphasis on security to prevent spying and invasions. On closer inspection their security measures are laughable, with lots of spottily supervised physical contact and ship boardings. Given what we now know about miniaturization, letting a potentially hostile alien just pack an overnight bag (including housepets!) and hop on over to our boat sounds crazy. Crazy Eddie even. And if the lack of teleoperation, video conferencing, simulations or automation merely reflects how badly Moore's Law blindsided us all, 1970s epidemiology would certainly have raised an eyebrow at the lack of quarantine. The moties' focus on engineering contrasted with an apparently rudimentary understanding of biology would've also been better served by the explicit absence of a doctor caste as plot point.

 

But overall The Mote in God's Eye does an excellent job of presenting an alien species strange enough to be alien but without reaching for nonsense as originality, at once sub- and super-human, initially inscrutable before discovering their driving psychosis, the proverbial beam in their own eyes. It obviously inspired many of the caste-divided aliens I've run across in later decades' scifi. Motie history itself, though not given enough worldbuilding attention for my tastes, recaps several popular scifi scenarios offhandedly. If anything, the writing lingers on the human point of view for too long and would've benefited from a more decisive shift to motie psychology toward the end, recalling Asimov's The Gods Themselves whose third part I can barely remember, a let-down after the highly thoughtful middle section. Nevertheless, the last three chapters deliver solidly on the ambiguity of a well-executed first contact premise. Neither devils nor angels, potentially both beneficial and dangerous, destructive and self-destructive, the extraterrestrials' handling is ultimately ruled by a game theoretical analysis of possibilities, not idealized expectations.

Despite some gratuitous lulls, definitely worth a read.

__________________________________________

 

(Spoiler) P.S.: If you'll permit me to nitpick the evolutionary angle, at one point it's mentioned that tribes with mediators lived longer than tribes without, falling at least verbally into the group selection fallacy. Selection must operate on units of information transfer across generations, which is to say genes. The precept can work, but it's better viewed as kin selection bias, in which mediator mules would favor the propagation of their genetically similar relatives, as genetically similar as possible. Likely each individual master would have to be served exclusively by its own mediator offspring. (If not this may, in fact, work as an alternate explanation for the mediators' tendency to go off the rails.) Also, as mediators are a master/engineer mix, engineers better able to coordinate with their mediator offspring to propagate their own line would be equally favored by the arrangement. Imagine Heinlein's The Roads Must Roll if the villain had benefited from the unshakeable familial loyalty of several media and public relations operatives.

Of course, that doesn't take into consideration that such kin recognition instincts can be hijacked even in humans (that's what uniforms, anthems, hymns, slang, fandoms and other communal badges and rituals are) but still, an interesting idea.

One 'sup on a time, there was a greeting.

Dear Zachary

"Why should I care how many people I have to kill? I can just make more in my tummy!"

The Order of the Stick #587

 

I would encourage you to find and watch the 2008 Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (in fact, don't even read that Wikipedia page if you want to avoid spoilers) despite normally finding true crime stories at once tedious and overly-dramatic. What's more, as it started as a home movie, so much of the documentary gets tied up in rhapsodizing and eulogizing that to a random disinterested asshole on the internet like myself it might drag. Might. If not for the considerable strength of the material itself. You may remember the apparently famous case (I didn't) but if the info's fresh to you it makes for an incredible story, gripping in the sheer absurdity yet perverse coherence of every new detail.

 

If you don't mind spoilers, a quick summary:

Woman reported for attempted suicide and threats of murdering a previous boyfriend, having birthed three children from previous relationships (and caring for none of them) and subject to eight(!) restraining orders against her lures and shoots her boyfriend to death in the U.S. after he tries to break up with her and flees to Canada, there giving birth to her victim's son while delaying her extradition proceedings for months after months. Despite signs of mental instability and violence while jailed, she is released with her shrink posting the bulk of her bail and the judge going so far as to instruct her on how to dodge the system. She is awarded custody of her child. She tries to frame yet another new boyfriend for her impending suicide then jumps into the sea with her offspring, to both their deaths.

The documentary itself focuses on the failings of early-2000s Canadian law, especially when it came to child protection, so instead try to think on how such a case reflects on our social priorities, starting and ending with the F-word.

 

1) Feminism

Among the literally hundreds of phone messages left to her last intended victim (after two dates) crops up the stock phrase "grow up and be a fucking man" at which point you realize she'd been pulling the same act quite likely her entire life on countless men. So reverse the polarity. In itself, letting criminals go free is not a gendered issue. But too many of the case's details sound even more absurd with genders reversed.

A man with eight restraining orders having traveled across the country to see his recently ex girlfriend, not being placed in custody when she turns up dead, shot by a pistol with a defect like the one he owns?

Highly paid and/or respectable shrinks and judges putting their careers (and half the price of a house) on the line to secure his release?

That man being handed an infant to care for???

The film rightly lingers on the judge's wording when releasing an accused murderer without even paying her full bail: "your crime was specific in nature" and therefore not a threat to anyone else. A murderer who merely murdered her boyfriend did not worry a female judge. #KillAllMen, 2003 edition. Reverse the polarity. Take a media circus like the OJ Simpson trial ten years prior. Even in so farcical a context, stating that a man likely having murdered his ex-wife and her friend was "specific in nature" and therefore not indicative of threat would've sounded insane.

Now pile on with "grow up and be a fucking woman" and take care of me, rando' chick I went on two dates with.

You don't get to pretend that decades' worth of political lobbying to frame women as victims of men and entitled to retribution against men did not frame both this murderer's personal sense of entitlement and the knight in shining armor attitude of the professionals and officials charging to her rescue.

And we've had two more decades of intensified such lobbying since.

2) Religion

Specifically theodicy. At one point a family friend states she has not prayed since Zachary died. Well, she's hardly alone in suffering a crisis of faith when something bad happens. First off, the existence of the supernatural is not mediated by personal trauma, but a matter of rational analysis. Hopes of supernatural aid were true or false regardless of my grandparents' Alzheimer's and it will continue to be true or false when my parents or I myself begin to succumb to it.

Did you as a viewer suffer a "there is no god" twinge watching the documentary's events unfold? But remember, babies die constantly, some in far worse circumstances, starving slowly, agonizingly for months on end, or raped, skinned and disemboweled while their parents are forced to watch awaiting the same treatment. Bluntly put, tragedy-mediated crises of faith demonstrate not moral conscience but a lack of object permanence.

This is not a religious matter. Perfectly mundane evidence amenable to cold-blooded rational analysis right down here on Earth could have warned against the handling of the psychopath in question's case.

What's more, religion served both sides, providing the murderer leverage to try to wheedle her way into her victim's family's new circle of friends via their church.

3) Government

Let's face it, nobody would have given a shit if the case had not led to the death of a reproductive female and infant, had not impacted the supply of wage slaves and cannon fodder for the use of the rich. Otherwise, misery is good, misery exhausts you and keeps you servile, interpersonal conflict keeps you too busy to speak out, and lawsuits feed more of your money into the system. All good.

The case, plus the grandparents' subsequent activism, did result in a Canadian law to protect children. Fine as far as that goes but how far does that go? Zachary might've then lived to adolescence when he can be thrown in prison to be tortured to death on some sadistic bitch's rape claim. Or play Bluto to her other Popeye. Or kill himself when he makes the mistake of ejaculating into a woman who then uses the baby as pretext to enslave him for the rest of his life. "Grow up and be a fucking man" indeed.

It also bears mentioning that well-intentioned as they are, laws to protect children in custody disputes are easily abused when paired with the presumption of male guilt and female innocence which pervades our society. All a woman need do is claim her ex was violent, or less, that she felt threatened. No bullet-riddled corpse or smoking gun necessary. And that brings us back to the question of sex.

 

For one thing, it's hard not to see this prize specimen of womanhood as not just cuckoo but a cuckoo, a brood parasite embodying both the habit of leaving her young to be cared for by others and the habit of abusing their protectiveness to be cared for herself as an invasive chick would. For another, multiple witnesses reiterated the same observation in different ways: the murderer had a tendency to over-act. One name for that in biology is supernormal stimulus. If your target reacts to some sight/sound/whatever, then presenting it a flashier or louder version of the same will allow you to control its reactions. The classic example involves giving birds fake eggs painted the same as their species' own, but brighter! flashier! bigger! and watching them actually favor the fakes over the eggs they've just laid. Fascinating as the broader topic may be, let's consider one deliberately ignored aspect of it.

Babies are cute. We are preprogrammed to care for the cute thing. Otherwise we'd throttle the reeking little megaphones after the two-thousandth random fit of crying and our species would die out. But babies lack the manipulative understanding to truly weaponize their cuteness: when to coo and when to cry, when to feign interest with their adorable oversized eyes and exactly when to throw a tantrum for maximum effect. But women, who retain so many more babyish features than men, have had a bit of time to work out advantageous deployment strategies, not to mention centuries and millennia's worth of industries like fashion and cosmetics increasingly adept at maximizing subliminal manipulation. The grandparents in the documentary note at one point their son and grandson's murderer did have a knack for knowing when to play nice. Their recorded phone conversations undeniably show her playing up the wounded doe act, the quavering, choked voice, the drawling neediness, the unspoken yet evident insistence that she's just... not... getting... enough... and if you want infantile tantrums, well, try hundreds of messages on your phone after the second date.

 

Most of Dear Zachary concerns the victimized family's consternation at government's refusal to prioritize the well-being of a baby over the demands of a woman. You can certainly argue economics or the legal system's inertia, etc., but consider also those in power are susceptible to manipulation of their instincts. Femininity in our species is not merely more heavily neotenized than masculinity, but a host of supernormal stimuli demanding care, favoritism and sacrifice with every well-practiced dash of eyeshadow, with every endlessly rehearsed pout or whine and carefully timed fit of manic screeching or crying jags. Women are in many ways more adept in leveraging childlike behavior for sympathy than children themselves are.

More human than human.