ErsatzCulture

ErsatzCulture, 3 months ago

@zdl Well, Facebook I've always tried to avoid, and on the rare occasions I have to go there, I just keep to mundane stuff like local litter picking groups.

Twitter for me has never been too bad, but that's because I aggressively curate who I follow, & also have a couple of different accounts for different hobbies/personas.

Because of the way BS (by default?) puts replies by my follows into my timeline, I see a bunch of posts by the people they reply to that I wouldn't ordinarily care to see.

ErsatzCulture, 3 months ago

@chloroform_tea @zdl Thx - I thought there might be some setting for it, but TBH I'm more inclined just to give up.

BTW, it was actually a BS post by author VC that Ed M reposted that finally pushed me over the edge into posting that initial rant - but there has been a lot of other stuff before that.

I have a few Chinese contacts seeing all the stuff that Anglophones are posting on social media, File 770, etc & wondering what the hell these people are thinking.

e.g. https://twitter.com/FiveFlower2007/status/1758002702603448663

ErsatzCulture, 3 months ago

@cstross I wrote this (and much more WTFery) all up - specifically using a quote from one of the con's co-chairs - for File 770 way back in November, but no-one was paying attention.

https://file770.com/pixel-scroll-11-11-23-thanks-to-his-repellatron-skyway-tom-swift-always-takes-the-high-road/

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ErsatzCulture, 3 months ago

@cstross I'm the person who wrote much (most?) of the Chengdu coverage on File 770 that you link to as a reference. Certainly all the daily updates between late September and early November were written by me.

As it's 00:30, I'm not inclined to write anything long up, but I will say that whilst Chinese fandom might be isolated in many ways (language, visa issues) they are very aware of lots of stuff that goes on in the rest of the world.

ErsatzCulture, 3 months ago

@cstross A major factor in me doing the write-ups was that I felt they deserved reciprocal coverage in the Anglosphere.

I suspect some of my Chinese contacts will have already seen your piece, but I'll check now, and maybe they'll have some comment.

Also, IIRC SF World published some of your stories for the first time last year. Do you have any direct contact with them? At least 3 SF World employees of them were on the Chengdu concom, so maybe they can tell you more?

ErsatzCulture, 3 months ago

@cstross @felix Sorry, this is massively wrong.

"Chengdu Business Daily" is an unlikely name for an organization comprising people working for free, wouldn't you think? They had at least 4 people on the concom, and 2 on the Hugo team.

ErsatzCulture, 3 months ago

@timgatewood @cstross @felix

Not sure if I'm missing your point, or if your question is rhetorical.

Based purely on reported membership count, it would be surprising if none of the Chinese concom were so affiliated.

As I've stated in a few places, I'm far from comfortable that I've been the one researching & documenting this stuff, because I don't have the language skills or cultural knowledge to properly do it justice. But no-one else was stepping up for the job - do you want to take a go?

ErsatzCulture, 3 months ago

@cstross Looks like a bunch of your stuff was published by SF World between late 2022 & summer 2023, plus other stuff a few years earlier.

https://csfdb.cn/people/1235

(CSFDB is the Chinese equivalent of ISFDB; I work on the latter, & I've been in contact with people who work on the former, which is a large part of how I got embroiled in all of this.)

BTW, dunno if you've ever seen this (Time Traveller's Almanac)? I'm long overdue on sending it on to the intended recipient, another contributor...

ErsatzCulture, 3 months ago

@timgatewood @cstross @felix

I think you've got the payer/payee relationship the wrong way round.

Assuming I'm reading these contract summaries correctly, and Google Translate hasn't made errors, CBD are the ones paying for this stuff.

But no-one else (outside China) seemed to be terribly interested in looking into and understanding all this, and now we have endless WSFS Inc and similar discussions taking up the oxygen in the room.

ErsatzCulture, 3 months ago

@cstross @timgatewood @felix

I wrote all the sponsor stuff up in great detail for File 770 last year, but it was yet another thing that no-one else seemed bothered about, including the fact that the sponsor list they submitted for the Business Meeting minutes bears little resemblance to the official sponsors announced a short while later.

https://file770.com/pixel-scroll-10-9-23-scrolls-are-truth-at-24-pixels-a-second/

https://file770.com/pixel-scroll-10-11-23-were-all-the-children-of-pixels-ancient-pixels-who-gave-birth-to-all-intelligence/

I don't think this is formally stated anywhere, but I assume CBD are the ones that negotiated the sponsors

ErsatzCulture, 7 months ago

@llamasoft_ox When I opened it yesterday afternoon, it told me there had been a content update. I had to do the unit I was 9x% through again from scratch, and I noticed no changes.