[EternalHonoring] David Drake, a renowned author of science fiction and fantasy, has passed away, and the world of speculative fiction is in mourning at the loss of a literary giant. A luminary who had a profound and long-lasting impact on the fields of military science fiction and epic fantasy passed away on [December 10, 2023]. This loss had a significant and lasting effect on the genre. The departure of Drake leaves behind a legacy of inventive narrative, characters that are multifaceted, and a body of work that has enthralled readers for decades.
David Drake’s groundbreaking approach to military science fiction was largely responsible for his meteoric rise to notoriety in the 1970s. The early experiences that Drake had as a Vietnam War veteran imbued his writing with a raw reality that set his writings different from others. Drake was born on September 24, 1945 in Iowa, United States of America. The detailed intricacies of strategy and tactics, as well as the grim reality of battle, that he described in his books were infused with a sense of realism because to his history in the military.
Drake’s “Hammer’s Slammers” series, which was released for the first time in 1979, is widely considered to be his most significant addition to the genre. The lives of a futuristic mercenary tank regiment were investigated in this collection of interwoven stories, which also delved into the psychological and emotional toll that warfare has on individuals. Readers responded positively to Drake’s ability to combine aspects of the human experience with those of the speculative, which helped him establish himself as a prominent character in the field of military science fiction.
In spite of the fact that Drake’s early career was characterised by his military science fiction, he demonstrated his flexibility by venturing into the area of epic fantasy. Over the course of his “Lord of the Isles” series, which began in 1997, he displayed his mastery of the art of constructing huge worlds that are replete with magic, myth, and characters that are extensively developed.
Posted by: Grom the Reflective ||
12/12/2023 00:00 ||
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#1
David Drake's "Lord of the Isles" books were an interesting example of what being a professional writer really entails. This is all from some commentary by David Drake on Baen's Bar the quirky collection of discussion groups hosted by Baen...
In the 90's there was this fad of writing huge, absolute 'door stoppers' fantasy epics. Drake's editors and agents started bugging him to 'expand his offerings' by penning those -- he's a professional writer so write! David Drake confessed that he was much more comfortable writing shorter works so he 'cheated' by writing three novellas centered around three different main characters all happening at the same time ...and then separated the novella chapters and rearranged them to build the 'door stopper' final version.
[CampusReform] While calls for Harvard University President Claudine Gay to resign have only grown since her unwillingness to classify advocating for the genocide against Jews as violating campus policies during a congressional hearing earlier this week, others are calling out the university for allegedly hiring her because of identity politics.
... New Mexico Associate Psychology Professor Geoffrey Miller also took to X on Dec. 6 to express concern over the relatively low total amount of 11 peer-reviewed journal papers that Gay had authored in spite of her being a president at an elite university.
"Well, that’s about the number you’d normally need to get hired as a first-year tenure-track assistant professor at a decent state university," he wrote.
This is truly shocking. Even I, little housewife that I am, had my name on three scientific publications as a mere undergrad — as the most junior author, to be sure, but even so — and they all derived from a single research project. It’s not hard to rack up the count when playing publish or perish games.
Miller went on to acknowledge that today’s university "administrators function more like party political officers in communist Russian or Chinese universities." He added, "I mean ’party’ quite literally: the Democratic party."
"And an increasing proportion of them are fully woke identitarian Leftists: they often launched their careers with a short series of papers on woke topics, using woke ideological frameworks, published in woke journals - before turning to the administrative track that offers much more political power to propagandize, indoctrinate, and control," Miller asserted.
#4
She will be gone before the month is out. A minority hire in the first place, her plagiarisms and lack of production will be used to shoo her out the door.
#10
She's politically correct and that's all that matters. Go ahead. Send your kids to Harvard. They'll get the best brainwashing that money can buy.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/12/2023 12:02 Comments ||
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#11
Harvard scores dead last on free speech on campus.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/12/2023 12:17 Comments ||
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#12
As predicted, Harvard Board is standing by her, even as she admits "inadequate citation" in some academic writings! Only in DEI Woke-World does no mention of actual authorship mean inadequate citation, or in common parlance, academic fraud. But it's OK if you have the special credentials of melanin and chromosomes...
"Harvard University president Claudine Gay plagiarized from numerous academics over the course of her academic career, at times airlifting entire paragraphs and claiming them as her own work, according to reviews by several scholars. In four papers published between 1993 and 2017, including her doctoral dissertation,"
[FoxNews] Netflix's new release 'Leave The World Behind' stars Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali.
Barack and Michelle Obama have produced their first fiction film on Netflix called "Leave The World Behind" about a cyberattack that shuts down all the country's power, crippling the United States.
The Obamas provided movie notes for director Sam Esmail’s latest film starring Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Kevin Bacon and Ethan Hawke. It is the first fictional movie executive produced by the couple through their Higher Ground Productions company, which has a multi-year deal with Netflix.
"A family's getaway to a luxurious rental home takes an ominous turn when a cyberattack knocks out their devices — and two strangers appear at their door," according to a description of the movie provided by Netflix. bill ayers and bernardine dohrn?
Esmail told Vanity Fair that Obama thought the script was fairly close to how a crisis would actually pan out in the world today, which he said signaled "we shouldn’t wait around until the catastrophe happens—the work begins now."
"I think [Obama] would say the same thing," Esmail said. "Again, a trope of the disaster genre is that you’re set up with a few characters who are divided, and then they come together and defeat or overcome or get through what’s occurring. But that is just not true to real life. So the work begins now. It’s not really a message film, it’s more of a reflection on where we’re at as a society. But if there is a message, it’s a warning."
One scene garnered attention for characters criticizing White people in the event the "world falls apart."
"I'm asking for you to remember that if the world falls apart, trust should not be doled out easily to anyone, especially White people," one character in the film tells her partner.
Esmail told Vanity Fair that most of Barack Obama's notes stemmed from what he’d observed about human nature.
"He had a lot of notes about the characters and the empathy we would have for them," Esmail said. "I have to say he is a big movie lover, and he wasn’t just giving notes about things that were from his background. He was giving notes as a fan of the book, and he wanted to see a really good film."
The movie was adapted from a book of the same name written by author Ruman Alam.
"In the original drafts of the script, I definitely pushed things a lot farther than they were in the film, and President Obama, having the experience he does have, was able to ground me a little bit on how things might unfold in reality," Esmail added. "I am writing what I think is fiction, for the most part, I’m trying to keep it as true to life as possible, but I’m exaggerating and dramatizing. And to hear an ex-president say you’re off by a few details…I thought I was off by a lot! The fact that he said that scared the f*** out of me."
Posted by: ed in texas ||
12/12/2023 8:49 Comments ||
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#3
It is the first fictional movie money laundering effort executive produced by the couple through their Higher Ground Productions company, which has a multi-year deal with Netflix.
[YT, Walking Dead s4 spoiler. New to me. Never saw five minutes of the show until me current culcha catch-up, but the clipped scene made watching four seasons seem worthwhile. Must've been a wonderful bonding moment for skeptics everywhere way back when.]
Posted by: Jang Wittlesbach7531 ||
12/12/2023 19:46 Comments ||
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FLOODS IN Somalia have displaced 1.1 million people since the start of heavy rains in November. A further 118 people have been killed, according to the latest Situational Report by the UN agency OCHA. pic.twitter.com/GGjpEL47DO
[Platinum] The cost of freedom. The totality of it is almost too vast to fully comprehend. The red, white and blue has been a shining beacon of liberty, strength and justice for nearly 250 years, with its men and women in uniform dispatched both publicly and quietly around the globe to ensure the continuance of peace, steady the tides of turmoil, compassionately aid those in need and unwaveringly defend the voiceless. It’s those individuals who are left to grapple with the mental weight of what they’ve experienced long after the battle is over.
Patrick Benson, a Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) in the United States Army, has seen combat during multiple deployments and faced the ensuing demons. It was the horse that stood beside him, healed him and awakened his spirit after the darkness. That journey spurred him to create War Horses for Veterans, which has grown since 2014 to serve veterans, first responders and active-duty special forces soldiers at its idyllic farm in Stilwell, Kansas. There, the program’s herd of carefully bred and expertly-trained performance horses takes center stage, acting as catalysts for change for the riders atop them.
Benson, who serves as organization director, is the first to credit the horses and his team, but really, it’s his big thinking and drive that have transformed War Horses for Veterans into the top-tier program that it is. "These are soldiers," says Benson. "They’re wired differently, and they’ll take anything we throw at them and tackle it. Put them on a horse, and they laser focus. They take direction and immediately apply it, adapt on the fly and do it all with no fear. Most of the service members coming through the program have very little to no riding experience, and aside from the mental work we do using the horses, we have them riding with incredible progress in just a few days."
[WashingtonPost] A utility in Hawaii, a West Coast port and a pipeline are among the victims in the past year, officials say.
The Chinese military is ramping up its ability to disrupt key American infrastructure, including power and water utilities as well as communications and transportation systems, according to U.S. officials and industry security officials.
Hackers affiliated with China’s People’s Liberation Army have burrowed into the computer systems of about two dozen critical entities over the past year, these experts said.
The intrusions are part of a broader effort to develop ways to sow panic and chaos or snarl logistics in the event of a U.S.-China conflict in the Pacific, they said.
Among the victims are a water utility in Hawaii, a major West Coast port and at least one oil and gas pipeline, people familiar with the incidents told The Washington Post. The hackers also attempted to break into the operator of Texas’s power grid, which operates independently from electrical systems in the rest of the country.
Several entities outside the United States, including electric utilities, also have been victimized by the hackers, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
None of the intrusions affected industrial control systems that operate pumps, pistons or any critical function, or caused a disruption, U.S. officials said. But they said the attention to Hawaii, which is home to the Pacific Fleet, and to at least one port as well as logistics centers suggests the Chinese military wants the ability to complicate U.S. efforts to ship troops and equipment to the region if a conflict breaks out over Taiwan.
These previously undisclosed details help fill out a picture of a cyber campaign dubbed Volt Typhoon, first detected about a year ago by the U.S. government, as the United States and China struggle to stabilize a relationship more antagonistic now than it has been in decades. Chinese military commanders refused for more than a year to speak to American counterparts even as close-call intercepts by Chinese fighter jets of U.S. spy planes surged in the western Pacific. President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed only last month to restore those communication channels.
“It is very clear that Chinese attempts to compromise critical infrastructure are in part to pre-position themselves to be able to disrupt or destroy that critical infrastructure in the event of a conflict, to either prevent the United States from being able to project power into Asia or to cause societal chaos inside the United States — to affect our decision-making around a crisis,” said Brandon Wales, executive director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). “That is a significant change from Chinese cyber activity from seven to 10 years ago that was focused primarily on political and economic espionage.”
#1
The CCP problems has been developing for decades and was not properly addressed.
eg. Heard a presentation back in 1999 or 2000 at the Techno Security Conference, about how the CCP was already developing a serious cyber threat and needed to be addressed. It pissed off the CCP group attending, and several made a huff and walked out.
#2
Same as the border. These crises didn't just come up at sunrise. Political focus is on re-election, cronyism and cashflow. Security of the Nation falls far behind latest trends of 'national interest'.
[ElPais] The Spanish government has spoken to the U.S. ambassador about its concern regarding the hostile actions, which are not expected between two allies
The discovery that two agents from Spain’s CNI intelligence service
..formally the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, under the Defense Department...
were bribed to provide classified information to the United States has led to an unprecedented situation between Madrid and Washington. Spanish Minister of Defense Margarita Robles, who oversees the CNI, summoned the U.S. ambassador to Spain, Julissa Reynoso, to her office to explain what happened. Such actions are considered hostile and are not expected between two allies. The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, also spoke with Reynoso and expressed the Spanish government’s unease over the revelations, according to government sources. At least two U.S. agents stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, who were directly involved in recruiting the CNI spies, have been discreetly expelled from Spain.
#1
Julissa Reynoso Pantaleón (born January 2, 1975) is a Dominican-American attorney and diplomat who is the United States Ambassador to Spain and Andorra. Most recently, she was the chief of staff to First Lady Jill Biden.
#5
"Do you even know where you are going?"
"Of course I do"
"You sure. Circled Iceland three times now."
"Quiet, trying to concentrate..."
"We should pull over and ask directions."
"Fine....you can guide."
"No, don't pull over here..."
#3
^Sickle cell is ubiquitous in Mediterranean because of heterozygous advantage. Because having two desease alleles, ss, gives sickle cell but sn (n for normal) makes you resistant to malaria.
Of course, it only works this way for species with two genders 😒
DUBAI, Dec 10 (Reuters) - A fire at a small refinery in eastern Iran's Birjand special economic zone caused two explosions on Sunday and remains out of control, Iran's state media said.
No casualties were reported but the damage has yet to be assessed, state media said, adding that all 18 reservoirs at the refinery have caught fire.
"The initial stages of the fire consumed 1.5 million litres of fuel," Iran's semi-official Fars news agency said.
Posted by: Besoeker ||
12/12/2023 01:38 ||
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#2
It's been a while since there's been a noteworthy fire in Iran, but I guess when you have train derailments along with chicken farms and chemical plants and oil refineries catching fire in the US, perhaps focus had shifted.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[CampusReform] While calls for Harvard University President 
