White Terror
Updates
Ryan K Lindsay now has copies of The Jam Sessions available at his online store.
"THE JAM SESSIONS are a series of chats between Dan Hill and Ryan K Lindsay about pop culture things they wish to discuss in very personal and deep dive ways. It’s mostly comics, sometimes tv/film, and sometimes even creators."
In this volume we cover projects such as LOST, FURY MAX, HAWKEYE, LOOPER and PAPER GIRLS (and more). Go grab a copy if you're into process chatter or just general gabbing and analysis about all things pop culture.
Comics wise, Andrew will soon be adding a fancy back cover and some extra interior art to Go Home before we relaunch that under a new imprint/publisher. More on that soon.
Christchurch
What can I say that hasn't already been said at this point?
50 people dead due to white nationalist rhetoric, belief and, yes, terrorism, the usual neoliberal thoughts and prayers before the blood has even dried and the outright refusal to label the massacre and the belief systems behind it as what they are. Here in the UK we've already begun to see this, but nothing on the scale of what befell those in Christchurch.
People far cleverer than me have espoused the problems caused by the constant demonisation of Islamic culture and populations by Western media and government so I would direct you to all of the links in this section for an overview.
I would also urge everyone to give Arun Kundani's excellent book ,The Muslims are Coming, a read. The book is fairly UK-centric but engages head on the systems and attitudes that have helped bring about Islamophobic policies and beliefs in the post 9/11 world.
Links
Chris Ready is a perennial in my RSS feed reader and I enjoy his short but thoughtful blog posts on film. At the moment he's running through the Friday the 13th movies and his write up of Part 7 is great (Part 6 remains my favourite of the series, if you're wondering).
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Moving on to politics again, the U.S took the mind boggling decision to withdraw or deny visas to International Criminal Court investigators looking into possible war crimes committed by the U.S forces in Afghanistan. No, seriously.
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I recently finished the first in a huge two volume collection of JG Ballard's short stories (all in chronological order). It was a fascinating read and interesting to see an author's development in a staggered 'real time' mode. You could see Ballard returning or circling certain themes and ideas before improving on them and coming at them from a different angle. Recently, author Tim Maughan did an excellent overview at Tor.com on Ballard's work that's worth a read.
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Atlas Obscura has a fascinating look at an industry I didn't even know was a thing - container ship tourism. This is exactly what it sounds like with people being able to pay for passage on the ships and doing their own thing when in port and socialising with the crew when at sea.
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Tom Clancy's The Division 2 is out, which means we get another Tom Clancy game where the developers swear there are no politics involved. The talented Simon Parkin at The New Yorker has a good look at how games try to sever themselves from politics, not taking into account that this is a political act in itself.
Cass Marshall at Polygon comes at a similar topic from the point of view of the character creation and design, as well as some of the storytelling choices present in the game.
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The Chief Exec. of the Environment Agency here in England has says the country is due to face water shortages in 25 years due to climate change. The rate this country is going though we'll be a hellscape way before then. I joke because, honestly, it's the only way to cope sometimes.
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A short one this week, I know.
I'm off to enjoy the simple pleasure of a glass of water while I can.
See you in two!