Category: Life

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Surprising no-one, WonderCon will be online-only again this year. Last year’s event was canceled just as we all started to realize that Covid-19 was spreading in California. And while the winter surge in cases is finally slowing down, the coronavirus is still more prevalent out there now than it was last March.

They’re still hoping to do San Diego in July, but even with multiple vaccines, there are still too many variables (vaccine distribution, mutation speed, mask and distancing practice, etc.) to know whether it’ll be possible to hold a convention by then. I guess we’ll see.

Well, other people will see. Much as I miss going to comic cons, SDCC feels unsafely crowded in normal years. Even in the best-case scenario, my anxiety would go through the roof.

Besides, I’ve already read The Last Stand of the California Browncoats.

No Fair(e)

Anyway, the local Renaissance Faire canceled this season again, too. On one hand, it’s all outdoors, which helps a lot — and you know the Faire folk would be serious about safety — but on the other hand, it’s still a big gathering, and April isn’t that far off.

I could maaaaybe see doing a smaller convention in fall, if things improve by then. Long Beach Comic-Con’s and LA Comic Con still show their September dates. For now. (I was worried about LBCC for a bit since their website was offline when I checked a few days ago, but it’s back now.) But again, way too many variables in the war between public health and the virus to predict whether it’ll even be possible for them to hold it. Though I’m pretty sure LBCC will be more responsible than LA Comic-Con.

Of course, even if someone can hold a convention safely by then…would it actually be fun? Or would it be a day of white-knuckled agoraphobia as we plunge into a crowd after a year and a half of semi-isolation?

Maybe we’re probably better off not trying to hit a convention until next spring anyway. We’ll need time first to re-acclimate to being around people!

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National Geographic reports on a new(ish) theory on the Dyatlov Pass incident [edit: moved from archived original]: a small avalanche with a large chunk of snow could have caused the blunt-force injuries, leading to them evacuating the tent, without leaving the expected (but missing) signs of a full avalanche.

The bizarre deaths of hikers at Russia’s Dyatlov Pass have inspired countless conspiracy theories, but the answer may lie in an elegant computer model based on surprising sources.

An avalanche could explain why they cut their way out of their tent and were found scattered around the campsite, but there was no snowfall and no signs of an avalanche when the bodies were found, and it doesn’t explain the various injuries.

Car crash test data combined with snow simulations developed for Frozen — and the fact that some of the hikers put their bedrolls on top of their skis makes the injuries fit if a slab of snow landed on the tent.

And the team diary recorded strong winds, which most likely would have been blowing downslope, which could have moved enough snow around to trigger a small avalanche.

Not conclusive, of course, but within the realm of possibility.

Of course, a mini avalanche isn’t as exciting as, say, an attack by Yeti or running into an experimental Soviet weapons test!

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November 23: Helicopter pilot finds “strange” monolith in remote part of Utah.

November 25: Using Google Earth to look for the Utah monolith site. One candidate that matches the landscape seems to have something vertical that appeared between the 2015 and 2016 images.

No coordinates in the article. Attempt no landings there.

December 7: After the Utah Monolith was found, everyone was making comments about 2001: A Space Odyssey. But as more have popped up, I’m starting to think about The Chronoliths. It’s a novel by Robert Charles Wilson in which obelisks appear out of nowhere, commemorating future military victories by someone no one has heard of – yet.

The monolith in Atascadero, California, was installed by a group of local artists who, on hearing about the one in Romania, figured, someone’s going to make a third one, so why not us?

It was meant to be something fun, a change of pace from the kind of conversations 2020 has been plagued with

After a group traveled five hours to tear it down on video, the town rallied around rebuilding the obelisk and putting it back up on the mountain.

December 27: I…what????? Gingerbread monolith appears — then collapses — on San Francisco hilltop

In true pop-up-art fashion, a nearly 7-foot-tall monolith made of gingerbread mysteriously appeared on a San Francisco hilltop on Christmas Day and collapsed the next day.

A tower made of gingerbread squares on a patch of dirt on a hill. Boulders and hikers visible in the background.

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Whatever you think of the electoral system, the fact that we have to wait for people to copy down those electoral votes is no longer helpful, and the fact that they can choose (or be pressured) to vote for someone else is a vulnerability in our democracy that should be patched.

You want to keep using electoral votes instead of the national popular vote? We can argue about that later. But we don’t need electors any more. Once each state certifies its election’s results, assigning its electoral votes should be automatic. It’s just math.