It all began, researchers are coming to believe, when White Gladis encountered a fishing boat.
[She] suffered a “critical moment of agony” — a collision with a boat or entrapment during illegal fishing — that flipped a behavioral switch. “That traumatized orca is the one that started this behavior of physical contact with the boat,” López Fernandez said.
That “physical contact” suggests that the gospel according to Moby Dick may still resonate in cetacean circles:
Orcas have attacked and sunk a third boat off the Iberian coast of Europe, and experts now believe the behavior is being copied by the rest of the population.
Three orcas (Orcinus orca), also known as killer whales, struck the yacht on the night of May 4 in the Strait of Gibraltar, off the coast of Spain, and pierced the rudder. “There were two smaller and one larger orca,” skipper Werner Schaufelberger told the German publication Yacht. “The little ones shook the rudder at the back while the big one repeatedly backed up and rammed the ship with full force from the side.”
It appears that once White Gladis decided enough was enough, her rage and her response began to diffuse into the local orca society–if not necessarily by formal instruction:
“We do not interpret that the orcas are teaching the young, although the behavior has spread to the young vertically, simply by imitation, and later horizontally among them, because they consider it something important in their lives,” López Fernandez said.
This behavior may pass if and when the whales get bored with the sport. In any event, it’s no joke. The Iberian orca population has dwindled to just 39 known individuals, as of the last census to be taken, more than a decade ago. If and as encounters–whether incited by humans in their boats or by enraged animals–lead to more orca deaths, that will be one more wound in a world burden by so much loss.
But in the meantime, here’s a remote cheer for a bunch of creatures getting mad as hell and not taking it anymore.
While I pat myself on the back for omitting every Melville-inspired joke, this thread is open.
Images: Pieter Lastman, Jonah and the Whale, 1621.
“Extended Warranty” courtesy of Adam Silverman, local memelord.
Baud
RamboOrca: First BloodBetty Cracker
Fuck dem boats!
Tom Levenson
@Betty Cracker: I just wish I could line ’em up for the next, inevitable, Trump boat parade.
Wreak havoc on those M-F’ers.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Don’t fuck with White Gladis.
satby
@Tom Levenson: Wouldn’t that be a wonderful sight!
Oddly, I was Googling “Orcinus” today, but I was looking where Dave Niewert might be writing now since his blog of that name went dark. He was one of the first bloggers I can remember writing about the danger that the right wingers would pose to this country, way back in the oughts.
Edit for typo in blog name.
Jay
@satby:
he posts at Daily Kos now.
satby
@Jay: haven’t been there in years. Thanks, I’ll look for him there.
satby
Back on topic, I’m rooting for the whales. It’s their ocean.
Another Scott
Go Ramming Cetaceans!!
Meanwhile, …. Manchin flees from Justice.
Pithy line!
And not unexpected.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jay
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberian_orca_attacks
Old School
Yes, good job on that.
RevRick
Wednesday brought more grim news on the environmental front when it was announced that October was the hottest ever in recorded history, surpassing the old record by 0.7 degrees. It was the fifth straight month to set record highs for global temperatures, marking it all but certain that 2023 will be the hottest year in recorded history. October’s record was 3.5 degrees above the preindustrial average temperature, before we started burning fossil fuels powering our factories, transportation, producing electricity, heating and cooling our homes.
The question now becomes “Will we remember this as the coldest October for the rest of our lives?”
Ken
I’m glad they clarified that the orcas aren’t teaching one another, and it’s merely a matter of orcas imitating the behavior of other orcas. However I wish the explanation had come with a free magnifying glass, to help me see the difference.
(I hope I’m wrong, but it does have a whiff of “they’re just animals so if we have to slaughter them it’s OK.”)
Baud
@Ken:
It’s the difference between public school and home schooling.
Jay
@Ken:
That’s because there is no multiple choice exam with a long form essay question
Alison Rose
I made this image in honor of the otters around Monterey who decided they had enough of surfers encroaching on their turf. Feels like the orcas share the sentiment.
Bill Arnold
In 1987, Orcas Had A Fashion Of Wearing A Dead Salmon As A Hat – For one summer only, a strange trend spread around several pods. (James Felton, June 27, 2023)
I expect that attacks on boats (a few times larger than Orcas) will persist, though. There is some dislike involved.
sab
I would guess that even in the cold waters of the Pacific Northwest, 5 or 6 weeks is about the limit on the shelf life of a dead salmon.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: There’s got to be some joke in there about “schools of whales” that I’m just not clever enough to catch.
gkoutnik
The nautical reference here would not be to Melville, but to Nathaniel Philbrick
Chip Daniels
I knew a guy who used to talk seriously about the possibility of the various highly intelligent species which live in close proximity with humans- such as coyotes (In North America), monkeys (Asia) or others- becoming belligerent and learning methods of violence.
For example, monkeys in places like India have learned how to use plastic shopping bags to collect more fruit than they could otherwise carry, and some have learned how to beg for valuables from tourists and can discern the difference between high and low value items.
It isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that they could someday learn how to handle a pistol or just form cooperative bands to harrass and intimidate the humans.
Brachiator
@Ken:
Isn’t imitation a form of learning?
Anyway, a fascinating story.
sab
@Alison Rose: I saw a tourist family in San Diego try to pat a baby sea lion in front of its huge, skeptical mother. People are nuts. No one was hurt surprisingly.
sab
Does no one around here read John Scalzi novels?
Cameron
I’ve never read In The Heart of the Sea or seen the movie, but since it’s based on the real-life version of Moby Dick I’ll probably pass. I prefer fictional disasters.
Anoniminous
@RevRick:
Climate is what to expect, weather is what you get. As global air temperature is continuing to rise the odds of a colder October in our future dwindle.
Alison Rose
@sab: Ah yes, another “if not friend, why friend shaped” mistake. People are dumb.
JoyceCB
@sab: My husband DaveCB does; I’ve only read one, Starter Villain. And I’m thinking of the dolphins and attitude and their f-bombs every other word!
Brachiator
@Chip Daniels:
Coyotes and monkeys regularly use violence. They don’t need humans to learn this.
I wonder what high and low value means to the monkeys. Do they do anything with the stuff that they get from tourists? I mean, other than trying to eat things?
I also think that a monkey or ape that got access to a gun might hurt itself or other monkeys or apes long before it could figure out how to use it against humans.
Brachiator
@sab:
Heard the name, never read him.
jonas
@sab: I’ve only been to Yellowstone twice, and both times, despite massive warning signs at the entrance, on all the highways, and at every stop to never, ever, ever, ever, approach the wildlife especially bears fortheloveofgod, I saw some damn idiot trying to get up close to a bison or (the second time) getting out of a car to photograph a grizzly on the side of the road. Again, thankfully no injuries (lots of onlookers yelling “get out of there you stupid motherfucker!!”), but talk about rolling the dice…
sab
@JoyceCB: My husband is getting a hardcover “Starter Villain” for Christmas. To say why would be a major spoiler
ETA : and it’s not the dolphins. I grew up in Florida and have opinions about dolphins. He grew up in NE Ohio far from the north coast, and has no opinions whatever about dolphins. He never even watched Sea Hunt or Flipper.
Geoduck
@Baud: Someone actually made a Jaws-knockoff about Orcas.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chip Daniels:
Monkeys are already belligerent. Humanity and most other primates exist in a state of “I’m watching you, buddy.” When whole populations get hostile, we’re the better tool users.
We are a lot like our fellow primates, good and bad.
sab
@Brachiator: Your loss.
Gin & Tonic
@jonas: A week or two ago, IIRC, they had to close the Blue Ridge Parkway because some morons were getting too close to a bear (as in trying to hug it or something.)
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
Probably would have been quicker to let the bear take care of that problem.
SiubhanDuinne
@RevRick:
I was, and am, beyond furious that none of the moderators of last night’s “debate” saw fit to ask a question about (or even mention) climate change.
Nor guns, for that matter.
And AFAIK (I fell asleep midway through the MSNBC post-“debate” discussion), none of the pundits — all, supposedly, Dems or liberals of progressives or whatever — mentioned the fact that these weren’t topics during the “debate.” Doubly disappointing.
cain
@Frankensteinbeck:
When I was living in Bangalore – our particular neighborhood had monkeys all over the place and you don’t want to piss them off. They are all like battle scarred too. Crazy.
cain
So many GOP politicians I would like them to say the same thing to.
sab
@SiubhanDuinne: Undoubtedly they had a list of forbidden topics if they even wanted to get the debate. Our MSM are not actually news organizations any more.
raven
My friend and former colleague did her dissertation research on whale watching!
Ladyraxterinok
@satby:I discovered him and Tbogg at salons tablet all during Dubya era
Brachiator
@sab:
As I said, I’ve only heard the name John Scalzi. I don’t even know what genre or types of novels he writes. Is there any particular work that is highly recommended? Something preferably short and not a series of novels.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gin & Tonic:
Teddy Roosevelt and A. A. Milne have a lot to answer for.
prostratedragon
“El capitalismo foraneo,” Gotan Project
sab
@cain: I never even thought about monkeys until I read Vikram Seth’s “A Suitable Boy.” They seemed like unusually intelligent and annoying squirrels.
Also told this American that you cannot understand anything about anything in a coutry if all you read is foreigners’ interpretation of it.
sab
@SiubhanDuinne: Teddy Roosevelt shot his bears.
SiubhanDuinne
@sab:
Yeah, I know you’re right. Still pisses me off.
And dammit, didn’t Rachel or Lawrence or Joy or Ari or any of those MSNBC pundits even notice the omission? Such a perfect opportunity and they just whizzed it away. (Proviso: Unless it came up in the final 15 minutes or so. As I said above, I drifted off before the program was over.)
SiubhanDuinne
sab
@Brachiator: Very funny not very scientific sci fi/adventure stuff. Normal people landing in sci fi/adventure.
Ladyraxterinok
@Miss Bianca:
Reminded me of Brecht’s story ‘If Sharks were Men.’
Ken
@Brachiator: I would recommend Redshirts and not just because it won the Hugo. The Kaiju Preservation Society and the new Starter Villain are both also standalone novels. I find him a quick read.
Chip Daniels
@cain:
Absent a gun, a human is no match even a medium sized ape like a baboon or chimp. They can, and occasionally have, torn human’s faces off.
I’m not envisioning Planet of The Apes stuff, but daylight muggings and sporadic violent attacks seem within the realm of possibility.
Brachiator
@sab:
@Ken:
Thanks for the info on Scalzi.
persistentilluion
@gkoutnik: He’s my 4th cousin twice removed. I’m named after an ancestress who was born and died on shipboard. And a splendid author, if you like big fish stories.
Jackie
Off topic, but I just received a text from Joe:
”Jackie, it’s Joe Biden. My team tells me that you’re one of our most active supporters, so it makes this announcement extra special:
We’re offering you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grab coffee with Kamala and me – we’ll even cover your flights and hotel! 🛩️🏙️ That’s right… you’d get to say you had a cup of joe ☕ with Joe and Kamala.
Donate what you can and you’ll be automatically entered in an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, DC: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/p2p-231109-coj?refcode=pj_2
Stop to Quit”
Complete with a photo of Joe, and Siri assuring me it indeed is from Joe
persistentilluion
@Cameron:
It’s a pretty great story and well told.
Brachiator
@Chip Daniels:
Very true about the power of these animals.
Also, note that baboons are monkeys, not apes like our chimp cousins.
smith
Orcas are one of the few mammals other than humans in which females live for years beyond their reproductive capability. Their societies seem to be matriarchal, with older females apparently in leadership positions for their family groups, probably because of their experience in finding food sources, etc. But we’re supposed to believe that they can’t learn from each other?
The Pale Scot
@Brachiator:
Already happened
Chimp With A Gun AK – 47
Cameron
@The Pale Scot: The only thing that will stop a bad chimp with a gun,,,,,,,
billcinsd
@Brachiator: He’s mostly a Science Fiction Writer. I like “Agent to the Stars” and “The Androids Dream” they are both quite funny. “Red Shirts” is Ok, too. He is most famous for the series that started with “Old Man’s War”
Timill
@Cameron: …is a good chimp with a gnu…
Bill Arnold
@billcinsd:
His Being Poor (2005, social commentary) essay on his blog is a classic.
brendancalling
You think orcas are bad? Wait til the trees decide they’ve had enough of humanity’s shit. That’s when it gets real.
sab
@Brachiator: Jeez. Even we as primates have distinctions between great cats and small (often very large) cats. So also too Great apes and monkeys. Which primates are classed where and does it even matter? In our world you are human or not. James Fallows at the Atlantic did a DNA test and turned up as part Neanderthal, quite typical among MacKenzies in the Scottish highlands. Made me laugh a long time. My family are from emigration were Scottish highlanders and mostly MacKenzies.. And my racisrt brother, like me, might be part ape.
Geminid
A friend believes thst the dolphins will take over the world. The gateway will be chess. Human chess players wil teach dolphins to play, and offer them waterproof computer terminals. That’s all the dolphins will need to end human domination of the planet.
Chip Daniels
@Timill:
And so it was, when they looked from chimp to man, from man to chimp, and from chimp to man again, that they realized that the bad chimp with a gun was in fact, the human.
sab
@Geminid: Dolphins and porpoises are quite bright (and do not like each other) but all they have is flippers.
Miss Bianca
@Ladyraxterinok: I’m not familiar with that one, and I thought I knew my Brecht!
TriassicSands
Late to the thread.
I seakayed for years, until my health deteriorated, and I’ve paddled with orcas. I have no problem with them sinking boats. I doubt they would harm a sea kayaker, because a kayaker poses no threat and does no harm to them. I hope they don’t hurt themselves, and I hope that the response isn’t for people to start killing orcas. The solution to me is obvious, let them claim their own sovereign territory. If human beings ever gets “smart” enough to deal responsibly with them, they can send an ambassoror to discuss relations. Until then, humans should stay away.
M31
Monkey ransom economy in Bali:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/video-bali-monkey-steals-a-woman-s-phone-and-then-negotiates-for-food/ar-AA1ineNF
(link to video in the article goes to the Xitter site but it’s pretty funny, first the monkey turns down the grapes until she offers something better)
smith
@sab: Neanderthals were humans, and were apes the same way we are apes. And pretty much all people of European ancestry and many with Asian ancestry are part Neanderthal.
But I hope your racist brother understands that we are all African as well.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chip Daniels:
Yeah, but that’s an “Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln” level qualifier.
Ladyraxterinok
@SiubhanDuinne:
@sab:
Weren’t teddy bears introduced when he was president and given his name ‘Teddy’?
CliosFanboy
Wasn’t there a chump human in Marvel comics?
TriassicSands
@brendancalling:
Relax, climate change is taking care of the trees. I keep wondering how long it will take a Republican to suggest that the way to take care of the wild fires is to cut down all the trees. Naturally, we’d start with the sequoias, redwoods, Douglas firs, spruce trees, and red cedars in this country because they are so big. Before he/she does that however, it would be necessary to buy as much stock in logging companies as possible. Or any related stock that would benefit from a massive increase in logging.
CliosFanboy
@Geoduck:
where Bo Derek had a leg chomped off.
CliosFanboy
@CliosFanboy:
I meant Chimp hitman.
sab
@smith: That might be a stretch for him.
I know we are apes. He will be shocked at the suggestion. And the root of our whiteness is our Neanderthalness. Which is also our apeness.
I am okay ( actually quite gleeful.)
narya
@Brachiator: “Redshirts” or “Locked In” or “Kaiju Preservation Society” will get you started. The series are very quick reads, too, if you do pick them up.
CliosFanboy
@M31:
I remember a story in the 1970s that female chimps in a zoo somewhere had started trading sex for bananas with the male chimps.
“Ten bananas, same as in town.”
Baud
@Geminid:
Jeez, no gratitude for all the fish?
Geminid
@sab: Theyll have specialized waterproof terminals. Once dolphins are taught chess the human chess players won’t be able to resist helping them.
It will all go fine until one day some bank is paralysed by malware. When the ransom note demands 20 tons of mackeral dropped at sea, the government will realize something is up. But by then it will be too late.
CaseyL
I am happy to see our non-human cohabitants rising up. Hope there’s more of it.
(I’ve been telling them for years they need to organize.)
barbequebob
@Alison Rose: I have family in the wildlife mgmt and conservation field and there’s some scuttlebutt that the sea otter going after surfboards was introduced to boogie boards during rehabilitation/captive rearing. Can’t confirm any of this but it seems possible.
TriassicSands
@sab:
I saw you mentioned John Scalzi and asked if anyone “around here” read him. I recently checked to see if “Starter Villains” was avaiable.
The system where I live has about 15 copies and there are well over 100 people on the waiting list.
sab
@Geminid: Chess is great for proving your seriously superior intelligence, but does it have any impact on the outside world? Or just nerds proving they are nerds?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Brachiator: If you’re a Star Trek fan, Redshirts will be fun. I like Old Man’s War.
sab
@TriassicSands: I loved it. I don’t usually give my husband books (tastes differ) but he would love this one, as did I)
Jay
If you take a close look at the 1968 movie, “A Space Odyssey”, one of the scenes shows a meal where humans are eating while constantly watching flat video tablets at the dining table.
Quite the prediction.
Of course, in the next scene, the AI kills everybody.
Brachiator
@sab:
Yeah, it does matter, even with a touch of humor.
Some social scientist wrote a book about baboons and how their society said much about hierarchy and alpha male dominance in human society. Very popular in the 60s until other scientists were able to get in the word that baboons ain’t apes and their evolutionary path was very different than that of apes and humans.
The anti-evolution crowd always have a bug up their butts about man being “descended from monkeys” and just can’t get a grasp of the idea that humans and other primates have a common ancestor.
Neanderthals used to be depicted as brutes that couldn’t talk and were obviously from a lesser branch of the evolutionary tree than homo sapiens. Nowadays it’s chic to have a touch of Neanderthal DNA. Also, Neanderthals are now Neandertals, and are associated with classier caves.
And Denisovans? Don’t get me started.
smith
@Geminid: If mastery of chess is what’s necessary to achieve global domination, why hasn’t Big Blue already taken over the world? Or maybe it has…
JMG
Two coyotes walked through the small wooded area behind our back yard just this afternoon. One thing most mammals, small and dumb to big and smart like coyotes, is that reasonably densely inhabited human areas, suburbs, etc. are safe for them, safer than the deeper woods where hunting is allowed.n
Baud
Africans are the only humams with no neanderthal DNA.
Geoduck
@smith: “Not all missions can be solved with chess…”
Geminid
@sab: Chess will be a means to an end. With their superior intelligence, dolphins will become superhackers. They already understand that humans are ruining the planet. Once dolphins master computer programing they’ll be able to finally do something about it.
Brachiator
@The Pale Scot:
“Chimp with a gun” reminds me of the 60s British movie “Sands of the Kalahari.”
An offbeat action film.
Rob
@Baud: That may not be true. I thought that I had read that (some) African genomes contained Neanderthal DNA, so I did a search in Startpage. I found this article
https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/ancient-dna-and-neanderthals
which says
“However, a study in 2020 demonstrated that there is Neanderthal DNA in all African Homo sapiens (Chen at el., 2020). This is a good indicator of how human migration out of Africa worked: that Homo sapiens did not leave Africa in one or more major dispersals, but that there was gene flow back and forth over time that brough Neanderthal DNA into Africa.”
Chen, L., Wolf, A. B., Fu, W., Li, L., Akey, J. M., 2020. Identifying and interpreting apparent Neanderthal ancestry in African individuals. Cell 180(4): 677-687.
brendancalling
@TriassicSands: The ents are coming and they will fuck shit up. Green wood doesn’t burn.
CaseyL
@Geminid: Once octopuses ditch the genes that force them to die after they reproduce, they’re the ones who’ll take over. I welcome our cephalopod overlords!
thruppence
@Brachiator: If you never read a single John Scalzi novel, at least check his long running blog whatever.scalzi.com. Probably at least as old and thoughtful (and sometimes snarky) as balloon-juice, he also gives space for many other authors and his daughter Athena
mrmoshpotato
@Tom Levenson:
Yes! “Suck a blowhole, Trump trash!”
Kathleen
@satby: He was on Twitter but was banned but I don’t know if he’s also retired. I searched @DaveNeiwert and it brings up tweets he’s mentioned in. It seems like he just liked one of my tweets fairly recently but it looks like he’s not on Twitter. I used to read his blog also.
I wonder if we could get Obama to say Republicans should never ever take their yachts into Orcinus territory….
smith
@mrmoshpotato: Waste of the orcas’ valuable time. The Trump boaters are perfectly capable of sinking the boats themselves.
Uncle Cosmo
@sab: Seconded. The Old Man’s War series is a lot of fun, just for openers.
But I’d guess you’re not a science-fiction fan. Well, you know what they say (or at least used to say a couple of generations back):
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Jackie: Siri identifies the source of some of Joe’s fundraising texts as “Dark Brandon” LOL.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@brendancalling: Yep.
Ents are very strong, and determined when roused.
Don’t get me started on the nightmare on roots known as “Huorns”… Bad news if you’re a tree-chopping human (or Orc).
Rachel Bakes
@Brachiator: Husband reads everything he writes. Laughed out loud repeatedly while reading The Kaiju Preservation Society. Scalzo was on deadline for a different book but this one demanded it be written then.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Jay: Back to the Future 2 has its prescient moments as well. Doesn’t elder Marty get fired over Zoom?
Eyeroller
@sab: I don’t understand this assertion. Neanderthals were not white. Whiteness evolved quite a long time after Neanderthals were gone. It is actually quite recent, a response to migration to high latitudes with low sunlight (rickets is the driving evolutionary force). Europeans may have higher genomic contributions from Neanderthals than others but that’s not too meaningful. Asian populations have a significant contribution from Denisovans, who seem to have been closely related to Neanderthals.
Eyeroller
@Brachiator:
The definition of ape is “monkey without a tail.” That’s about it. Apes are monkeys who lost their tails due to a mutation in one “T-box” gene (one of those that form tails in most mammals). It happens that surviving apes may (possibly) be a little more intelligent than the average monkey, but that’s not all that certain. We belong to the same family as other Old World monkeys such as baboons and macaques.
lowtechcyclist
@CliosFanboy:
More than a few, I’m sure.
E.
@TriassicSands: I thought I was the only person who thought this way! Leave the ocean realm to the ocean.
satby
@Bill Arnold: A classic, and a very accurate recounting of the condition.
bluefoot
@Brachiator:
I can be hit-or-miss with Scalzi but:
The Old Man’s War series is pretty good. (First book is Old Man’s War) Military science fiction, interesting premise, good writing.
I really liked Lock In and its sequel Head On. They take place in a not-too-far future. Essentially science fiction mystery novels.
Kaiju Preservation Society in Scalzi’s words is a pop song of a book. Not deep, bounces along, very fun.
In general, Scalzi’s books are fast reads. He used to write for television, and it shows in how he constructs his books. This isn’t a criticism, just an observation.
I do read his blog, and have picked up quite a few book and author recommendations from his “The Big Idea” feature.
TriassicSands
@sab:
Thank you. (And I know it is Villain singular. No “s.”
sab
@Eyeroller: My point is where does whiteness even come into this? We are all humans. My brother thinks only homo sapiens are human, and then we have to accept Neanderthals as humans because we are also partly them.
My brother is a racist. He is not a white supremacist. Other races are okay with him. Just not black Africans. He is a toxic asshole.
Also too, what even is a race? Nationality? Color? Language group? The whole concept of race is an eightenth century invention to explain the world as they wanted it to be.
Brachiator
@Eyeroller:
It’s not even a meaningful statement. Neanderthals were around long enough and were dispersed widely enough that there could have been many varieties of Neandertals with respect to physical traits. But even a lot of mainstream science likes to fix on a narrow set of features in depicting Neandertals and other prehistoric peoples.
Very true. It’s sad how a lot of lay discussion about evolution often makes a big deal about Europeans becoming white, to the exclusion of other human physical traits.
There’s also a weird assumption that I have seen in some pop science discussion that Neanderthals must have been red heads.
sab
@Eyeroller: You are thinking homo sapiensness is whiteness. That is on you . We could be any color, and frankly I don’t much care.
But I absolutely never ever said any person’ s humanity depended on their color. My idiot brother might have hinted at that, but I never ever agreed with him. He is my baby brother and had always missed the mark.
LiminalOwl
@sab: I’ve read three or four of Scalzi’s novels (and recommend The Kaiju Preservation Society especially), but like his nonfiction better.
LiminalOwl
@Bill Arnold: Likewise Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is.