The mug

2025-Jul-09, Wednesday 07:06
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Posted by Chris Bertram

I’ve owned this mug for twenty-five years now. Bought in the gift shop of the Metropolitan Opera in New York on my first ever trip to America, which I doubt I shall ever visit again. The mug, in art nouveau style, celebrates Pucchini’s La Bohème, which we might have seen there. I forget what we saw from the cheap seats, high up. The colours are badly faded after a quarter-century of machine washing, which suggests that its manufacture was cheap, though it has served me well through different places. Sometimes it disappeared for weeks on end into other people’s offices and I had to mark “property of Chris Bertram” in indelible marker on the base. But all sign of that writing has now gone.

Clinton was President then, and the Twin Towers still standing. We went to the top. Terrible things had already happened in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, but we didn’t think they might happen to us too, as now we do.

I was surprised by America, how cheerful people were and large the food portions. It all seemed to work and the buildings went upwards forever. We stood in the street and looked up, up, up. That journey made me see America as human and not just an abstraction of ideas and power. When 9/11 happened I got angry at my British friends who said they got what they deserved. Those were actual people in a place that really existed.

My youngest child got sick there on that trip. Appendicitis. Luckily we had insurance, which paid. We resisted their demand that one parent should fly back with the other child, not knowing if the operation had succeeded, or not. Lenox Hill Hospital was nice once you got past the ER with people shouting about gunshot wounds and others behind transparent screens demanding that you show that insurance. The nurses, mostly black, were friendly and made conversation with us about the NHS.

The mug is not all that remains. I have some amber cuff-links from the New York Public Library gift shop, a tie bought at Macy’s, photos (one with a banner behind us “CAPITALISM MADE FRESH DAILY”),the drawings our children made of the skyline and a cartoon book about the appendicitis. But the mug I see daily.

I’ve been back many times, visited many US cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Providence, Boston, Chicago, Madison, Tucson. But nothing quite matches that first glimpse of Manhattan out of a plane window, the immediate raucousness of the airport, the taxi ride from JFK, the first multi-decker sandwich with pastrami, the cacophony of different voices, colours, accents, possibilities. So much gone, and I will not return. But I still drink my morning coffee from that mug.

(Inspired by Jenny Erpenbeck’s “The Pressure Cooker” in her Not a Novel.)

Whatever happened to Romney Republicans?

2025-Jul-08, Tuesday 04:16
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Posted by John Q

Have they changed, or just become their worst selves

While Trump is unpopular with a majority of Americans, his support among Republicans remains solid. That’s despite blatant corruption, fascist policies and a failure to deliver any of the economic benefits he promised. Faced with this depressing fact, the standard New York Times response has been to send an intrepid reporter to “Trump Country” (rural Kentucky or Midwestern diners) to find out what is going on.

But it would be far more instructive to send them to Long Island, where Trump won both counties in 2024. Long Island voters have given solid support to Republicans at all levels. Even as he was crushingly defeated in New York as a whole, Mitt Romney got close to half the vote in Suffolk and Nassau counties. Trump did a few percentage points better in 2024, winning both. But he would have gone nowhere if not for the solid support of Romney voters

This doesn’t fit at all with the usual stories about Trump voters. The residents of Long Island are not the “left-behinds” routinely described in explanations of Trump’s appeal. The average income is over $100 000 and unemployment rates have long been around 3 per cent. Like most New Yorkers, Long Islanders have been beneficiaries of the globalised economy of which Romney was a symbol. And, if you were to believe Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind they did so because they valued honor, loyalty and purity, qualities Trump routinely trashes.

Democrats from Hillary Clinton on assumed that these contradictions would lead suburban Republicans to abandon Trump in numbers large enough to offset any losses of Democrats attracted by Trump’s racism and misogyny. Evidently this is not the case. Not only have the Republicans who once voted for Romney maintained their support for Trump but they have preferred him to any Republican alternative. And, with few exceptions, they have embraced Trump’s racist and fascist policies, even as he approaches outright Nazism.

What has happened here? Has Trump, as Walter Olson suggests, radicalised his followers leading them to support positions they would once have rejected? Or has he simply allowed them to reveal themselves (or at least their worst selves) as the racists and fascists they always were?

The answers to these questions are academic, in the pejorative sense of the term, as regards the US. Romney-Trump voters have made their choice, and there is no going back to old-style Republicanism. Perhaps, if enough of them realise that their choices have been both evil and disastrous for the US as a whole, the regime might collapse relatively quickly. But there is no sign of that.

The big question for those of us living outside the US is whether it could happen here. As long as the far-right remains essentially a protest party for low-education voters who are mostly disengaged and disaffected, like Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in Australia, its occasional flare-ups can be expected to fade, as appears to have happened with Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. But if the middle class and business base of the mainstream conservative parties goes the same way, democracy is in trouble.

In Australia, at least, the opposite has happened. As the main conservative party (confusingly called the Liberal Party for historical reasons) has embraced Trumpism, it has been driven almost entirely from the major cities, falling back on a rural and peri-urban base which is, in an urbanised country Australia, not sufficient to provide a credible chance of winning an elections. Most notably, liberal-minded independents, mostly women, have won a string of seats that were formerly considered safely conservative.

I don’t claim to understand all this. As regards political strategy, the crucial need is to prevent the far-right from taking over mainstream conservative parties and their supporters. There is not too much we on the left can do about this, except to encourage centre-right supporters to punish conservative parties when they line up with fascists. Any other suggestions are welcome.

I don’t plan to write anything more about the end of US democracy. Further descent into fascism is already locked in, and nothing I can foresee is going to change it. The question for Australians, Europeans and others who want to defend what is left of democracy is how to achieve this in a world dominated by brutal autocracies and the evil dictators who rule them.

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Posted by John Scalzi

It’s 1987 and my friend Tommy Kim has an idea to make his college applications stand out from the crowd: In addition to the usual essays, grades and test scores, he’s going to include a cassette of songs he’s written, performed by a band he put together, and professionally produced in an actual studio. The band he put together included a bunch of friends and schoolmates, including me on drums and my pal Kevin Stampfl on bass. Our name: Dead Rats Don’t Fly, or “DRDF” for short. Why did we call ourselves that? Look, pal, it was the 80s, okay. Lots of things didn’t make sense. The four-song EP we cranked out in two days of studio time was called 327, named after Tommy’s room number in the Holt dormitory at Webb.

So, how was 327 as musical statement? Well, it is exactly the music that you’d expect from a bunch of rock-loving 80s teenage dudes of varying musical abilities hastily tossed together into a band with only two days of studio time at their disposal. Are the songs… good? With all love: No. In the performances, can you sense primordial musical talent waiting for its moment to arrive? Also no. Could the drummer keep a beat without speeding up? I mean, sometimes? Tommy did get into college at least one place, so it did what it was supposed to do. Otherwise, it’s a kind of a mess.

But I think it’s an endearing mess, and at the time, waaaaay back in 1987, when we got our band copies of the EP (on cassette! It was the 80s!), we thought it was pretty damn cool. Kevin and I drove around in his Mustang, listening to the thing, kind of dazed that we had actually been in a studio, and that music we made had been committed to a permanent medium. 327 isn’t exactly good, but 17-year-old me was still proud of it, and I had a blast playing songs with my friends. And that was a good thing.

(It also allowed me to play a great prank: when Steve Shenbaum, one of the singers — yes, we had two — arrived at Northwestern for his freshman orientation and met his dorm’s resident assistant, the RA said “Steve Shenbaum? Of DRDF? Dude, that’s my favorite band!” and all the upperclassmen in the dorm were able to recite the EP’s lyrics to him. He was amazed, as he recounted to me a couple days later when I called him to see how his college experience was shaping up, and eventually it was my giggling into the phone as he told me about it that revealed that I had called his RA a day before he showed up to set the bait for him. It was delightful. I believe Steve has forgiven me. Probably.)

I misplaced my 327 tape years ago, and of course these days I don’t have a cassette player anyway, and for years the EP passed into myth, and then into legend (for, like, the extremely limited number of people who know the band members and/or ever heard the cassette or heard DRDF play live at our single concert). Then a few years ago Steve sent me an MP3 rip of his cassette of 327 (see? I told you he’s forgiven me!) and I had it again. I listened to it! It was still terrible! Nevertheless I took one of the songs from it, called “It’s a New Reality” (I wrote the lyrics for it, you see), cleaned it up slightly with Logic Pro, and put it up on YouTube. A fun, or at least nostalgic, time was had by the 1.6k people who listened to it since I posted it.

But what of the rest of 327? Well, it’s a few years later now, I’m somewhat more proficient at musical production, and music recovery tools are better these days, so you know what? Fuck it, I’ve gone back and rehabbed the entire EP now. I went in, stemmed out the vocals, drums and other instruments, cleaned and brightened them, moved around some of the bum notes to get them (mostly) on key, sonically painted over the clicks where I hit my drumsticks together, and in one place patched a place in the recording where a tape head clearly jammed up, leaving a blank space in a song, pasting in the keyboards and adding a bridge vocal.

The cleanup has reveal 327 as a minor classi — no, actually it hasn’t, it’s still a bunch of 80s kids bashing together tunes on a tight schedule with more enthusiasm than actual talent (well, the guitarist, a ringer Tommy brought in named George Huang, was actually talented; he was our age but had clearly been playing for years. The rest of us? Hey, we tried!). Also, it wouldn’t have done to try to erase every artifact of its 80s amateurishness, and I’m not that good an engineer anyway, so there’s still tape hiss (and lossy MP3 simmerwarble), compressed dynamics, variable tempos and other evidence that what you’re hearing was hauled up from the subterranean depths of four decades ago. Don’t kid yourself. If you’re listening to this, it’s out of curiosity more than anything else.

Which is fine! And better than fine! 327 (now named 327/38 to note that it’s been 38 years since we got together to make this — actually maybe 39, since I’m a little fuzzy on the exact dates, but it hardly matters now, so I’m sticking with 38) is an artifact of another time and place, when hair bands ruled the earth and teenagers made their music fast and dirty in studios rather than on their laptops. It wasn’t a better time (I like making music on my laptop, thank you!), but it was a different time, and it shows. We had fun, and that was its own excuse. Plus Tommy got into college!

Enough with the liner notes, here are tunes. Note that on the original 327 some of these songs may have had different titles, but I can’t remember what they were. It’s been a while, okay?

One Hit (To the Body): If memory serves correctly, this is a song Tommy wrote about being nostalgic for a bunch of friends at… summer camp, I think? There’s a tape warble in the middle of the song that I left in because I don’t how to fix it, and also it adds a sort of verisimilitude to the 80s experience, that horrifying moment when you wonder if your tape player is going to eat your cassette. 80s kids know this pain.

It’s a New Reality: Our hit single! I wrote the lyrics imagining David Lee Roth singing it (the arrangement in my brain was different than it is here). Tommy wrote the bridge about rock and roll being in our blood, because we needed a bridge. There are some very 80s guitar solos in here. Thank you George, wherever you are! You’re probably a doctor now or something. But you could rock back in the day.

Tears Go Rolling: The album’s “epic,” with two lead singers, different parts in entirely different tempos and soaring guitar solos designed to wrench the lighters out your pocket to wave in the air. Yeah, the 80s were all about the epic. This is the song where there was blank spot in file and I had to patch it. I nailed the instrumental patch but you’ll probably be able to tell where I dubbed in my voice. Which is okay! It doesn’t have to be seamless! I do enjoy the idea that 56-year-old me is collaborating with 17-year-old me. Hello, 17-year-old me! Enjoy your hair!

Pauline: The opening guitar riff feels kind of Red Hot Chili Peppers (in contemplative mode), and then the middle the guitars go a little Johnny Marr. However, don’t actually expect either RHCP or Smiths! The guitar is leading down you a path! The song itself is going somewhere else entirely!

There, I hope this musical experience has been everything you’ve hoped for and more. Also, surprise! 327/38 is also available on streaming. The long-lost EP absolutely no one was asking for is now everywhere! So now you never have to be without it. Ever. And thank goodness for that.

Now, for the sake of completeness: Credits!

327/38
Originally produced by Tommy Kim, additional engineering by John Scalzi
All songs Tommy Kim except “It’s a New Reality” by Tommy Kim and John Scalzi

Chris Godfrey: Keyboards
John Herpel: Guitar
George Huang: Guitar
Scott Moore: Vocals
John Scalzi: Drums
Steve Shenbaum: Vocals
Kevin Stampfl: Bass

You may ask: Will we ever get the band back together? Well, if Spinal Tap can do it after 41 years, it’s not out of the question. Maybe Tommy needs tenure.

— JS

New Cover: “Everyday”

2025-Jul-05, Saturday 22:16
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Posted by John Scalzi

It’s a short and sweet oldy but a goody this time out, from Buddy Holly. Why this one? Why not? It’s been covered by just about everyone, from James Taylor to Erasure, and I really like the song, and I had free time this weekend, so here we are. If you like it, fabulous, if you don’t, well, it’s two minutes long, it’ll be over quickly enough.

And for those of you who have somehow never heard the original, here you go:

— JS

Meanwhile

2025-Jul-03, Thursday 22:59

The Big Idea: E. L. Starling

2025-Jul-03, Thursday 15:57
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Posted by Athena Scalzi

We do so love the big blue marble we call home, don’t we? But what if humans had another home, and what if it was our red and dusty space neighbor? Author E.L. Starling poses this question in the Big Idea for newest novel, Bound By Stars, thinking up possibilities about the future that are certainly dystopian, but also realistic. Follow along on a journey through the stars, and try to keep afloat as the (space)ship goes down.

E. L. STARLING:

My family rewatches Interstellar together every year, which sometimes (read: always) devolves into a heated debate about complex theories, space time, and whether “they” really were aliens or just an unfathomable combination of future human technology and a natural anomaly splicing through the multiverse. (Probably the aliens, right?)

In spring of 2022, as the credits rolled, my oldest veered off our usual set of topics and brought up a certain billionaire’s desire to terraform Mars. We all responded with eye rolls and a version of the same sentiment, “How about putting that effort into combating climate change on this planet where we already have oxygen, water, and atmosphere?”

Plus, if I’m being completely honest, even if Mars was a viable option for everyone, you can still leave me here. Reading in a car going 25 mph flips my stomach inside out. And, the vastness of the unknown is a fear I would rather not face.

But, what would that be like? What if the wealthy abandoned Earth to create a utopia 140 million miles away and left the rest of the world’s population behind? Would they really leave Earth for good? Terraforming is a long game. They would still need resources. Would they use Earth like their new planet’s remote farm and factory? There was so much to consider.

This discussion sparked an idea. Two worlds. Separated by space and socioeconomic classes. 

As my family members scattered, I was building the dystopia in my mind: After the Earth is ravaged by climate change, the population decimated, and society reshaped, the wealthy still control the resources, but they’ve drilled for water, built infrastructure, and established a safe haven in luxurious habitat cities on Mars. 

The dynamics of the world set up the perfect main characters: two people from different classes and different planets. And what if they were teenagers in this world— still required to manage school, bullies, love, homework, and their impending futures? What if I upped the stakes further and put them on a doomed starliner between their two worlds? There was The Big Idea: YA Titanic-in-space.

Enter Jupiter Dalloway and Weslie Fleet. Jupiter is from Mars. Born at the top of society. The heir to a multi-trillion-dollar company. Unsatisfied with his predetermined future. Weslie’s from Earth. Hardened by a life of struggle and injustice. Full of confidence and armed with the attitude to call out Jupiter’s alarming privilege. Both of them seventeen, on the tailend of adolescence. Two people who learn to appreciate and celebrate each other’s differences despite the backdrop of a complex and oppressive world.

Choosing to write Bound by Stars as a YA novel was a conscious endeavor for me. At that age, you’re near adulthood, but still not fully in control of your own life. There are people who dictate the basics of your day to day, but you’re the one expected to make decisions about your future. High school graduation, college, the rest of your life is just around the bend in the road ahead. You’re shaped by every heartbreak, moment of triumph, cruel word, and act of kindness. And all the emotions inside you are bigger, stronger, more passionate. The future feels open. Possible. Big. Scary.

I love celebrating this multitude for joy, hope, injustice, and even sadness. In my opinion, this is great insight into why we often throw teenager characters into dystopian stories. While sometimes labeled as “overly emotional” or “out of control,” that “too much-ness” of adolescence is human emotion at its absolute fullest capacity. I can’t help but respect someone who can experience heartbreak like a life-ending blow and still care about their friends, show up for band practice, sing their heart out in a theater production, and write that 5-page essay due at the end of the week. 

And on top of it all—today’s youth are growing up with a true fear of climate change and developing an understanding of the dangers of unfettered capitalism in real time, while being asked “What do you want to do with your life after high school?” 

Of course, the compelling lightbulb of “Titanic-in-space” was fun and romantic: a chance to create parallels to an epic love story in a high-stake situation. But there was a level deeper. Underneath the outrageous opulence of the ship headed for Mars, sharp banter between characters from different worlds, slow-burn romance, and an action-packed, “there aren’t enough lifeboats (or escape pods in this case)” climax, Bound by Stars is a story about relatable, young characters navigating life in bleak future landscape. After all, dystopian novels can reflect the complexities of existing in this stage of life, while—hopefully—offering a bit of hope and inspiration.


Bound By Stars: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop

Author socials: Website|Facebook|Instagram

Your Wednesday Watermelon Report

2025-Jul-02, Wednesday 19:50
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Posted by Athena Scalzi

Whilst I was perusing the produce section at Kroger last week, I came across a watermelon. Not just any watermelon, though. Private Selection’s “Black Diamond” watermelons. I figured since y’all seemed to enjoy my orange review, you might want the skinny on this here watermelon, as well:

A watermelon with a big label sticker on it that reads

Unlike the Sugar Gem oranges, this watermelon was sweeter than a regular ol’ watermelon. Not only that, but the label boasts a rich, red flesh. I thought it may have been all talk, but lo and behold it was indeed very red! I bought this one for six dollars, which is pretty much the exact same cost as a regular watermelon, and it’s roughly the same size, so I’d say you should go ahead and buy this one over the regular ones if you are someone who prefers a juicier, sweeter watermelon.

I served this watermelon to my parents, both of whom do not particularly care for watermelon, and they made a point of telling me how good this particular watermelon was and ended up eating a good bit of it when normally they probably wouldn’t have opted for any watermelon at all.

With the 4th approaching this weekend, I assume many of y’all will want to pick up a watermelon, and I think if your Kroger has these ones lying around you should give it a try! I’ve been meaning to buy another one because it’s the perfect refreshing snack during this recent heat wave.

It’s nice to try something new and actually have a good experience with it. Those Sugar Gem oranges may have been a bust, but this Black Diamond Watermelon is definitely a winner in my book.

Do you like watermelon? If you don’t, would you be willing to give this one a try based on my parents’ reaction to it? Do you have fun plans for the 4th? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!

-AMS

Study: ChatGPT is Bad for Your Brain

2025-Jul-01, Tuesday 15:00
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Posted by Rebecca Watson

There’s a new preprint out about how tools like ChatGPT might be affecting human cognition. It comes courtesy of MIT Media Lab titled “Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task.”  As I mention every time I talk about a preprint, I’d like to remind you …

The Big Idea: Matthew Kressel

2025-Jul-01, Tuesday 13:50
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Posted by Athena Scalzi

Hop on board for author Matthew Kressel’s newest ride through the galaxy, Space Trucker Jess. In this Big Idea as he takes you through not only his writing process for this particular story, but on a journey through a high-concept sci-fi world viewed through the eyes of a teenage girl.

MATTHEW KRESSEL:

I was a feral kid. Both my parents worked full-time jobs, and I’d come home to an empty house. I had no supervision. I went off with friends and we, ahem, did things. Stupid things. Really fucking stupid things. And when I look back on those days I’m like, How the hell did I make it out alive?

But that freedom was glorious. You could do whatever you wanted. Go anywhere. You had the feeling that anything could happen. And it often did. The good and the bad.

That’s the kind of feeling I hope to evoke in Space Trucker Jess. The joy and spontaneity of discovery. In my childhood, we got into trouble all around the neighborhood. In my novel, Jess gets into hijinx across the galaxy. 

Like Jess herself, I began the book with a simple premise: Screw the “rules.” 

In my past stories and novels, I labored over every paragraph, sentence, word, and punctuation mark until I’d wound myself into a Gordian knot a million words long. In Jess, I felt the need to loosen the bridles, to let my idea run wild, like that feral kid who got into trouble around the neighborhood. What emerged was Jess, a take-no-shit foul-mouthed kick-ass teenaged girl who’s smart as hell, caring and empathetic, who solves problems not with violence but with brains and determination. Though too often for her own good, Jess’s curiosity gets her into trouble. Big trouble.

Think Natasha Lyonne narrating 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There’s lots of high-concept SF, and, yeah, Space Trucker Jess has all the tropes: starships and FTL travel, alien gods, missing planets, galactic secrets. But I wanted to tell the story a different way. Not from an omniscient or a dry and distant third person, but from deep in the point of view of a sensitive and expressive girl who’s journeyed across the Milk and back a thousand times and who knows more about starships than most people know their own nose. 

And so you get high philosophy and fart jokes. Orthodox religion and irreverent sacrilege. Weird inscrutable aliens and deadbeat dads. All told from a foul-mouthed over-confident, wicked-smart and sometimes willfully naive girl who just wants, at the end of the day, to be left the hell alone.

Space Trucker Jess is also about identity. I wrote a good chunk of the book during the first Covid lockdowns. Cut off from friends and family, from work and all the many inter-personal relationships I took for granted, I felt my sense of self drifting. Without those external interactions reflecting my identity back to me, I didn’t know who I was anymore. It was very disconcerting. 

A lot of that experience makes its way into the book. Jess’s worldview expands enormously throughout the novel, sometimes suddenly and violently, and she is forced to reckon with a new sense of self and a greater awareness. 

Also, Space Trucker Jess is about family. Jess loves her deadbeat dad, and she and him have been grifting their way across the galaxy for years. But she knows he’s an asshole, he knows he’s an asshole, but she just can’t let him go. The relationship is, from the start, highly dysfunctional. Jess just wants stability, away from him. But getting away is harder than it sounds. Without getting too personal, I had a lot of turbulence in my childhood home, and I wanted to explore the contrasts between the family we’re born with and the family we choose, and how those dynamics can alter the course of our entire lives, for better or worse. 

So if you want to go on a fun adventure alongside a bad-ass genius girl head-firsting her way through the galaxy who’s just looking for some peace in an uncaring universe, while encountering alien gods, missing planets, galactic secrets, and more, well then, Space Trucker Jess might just be your ride.


Space Trucker Jess: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s

Author socials: Website|Facebook|Instagram|Bluesky

Close To Home: Grist

2025-Jun-30, Monday 20:47
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Posted by Athena Scalzi

Have you ever had one of those places you want to go to, but never get around to checking out, and suddenly a year has passed and you’ve still never been? That’s how it was for me and Grist, a restaurant in downtown Dayton that I had heard about from so many people and had been meaning to get out to for literal months. Well, I finally made it happen, and I’m so glad I did.

Bryant and I were going out to dinner, and I asked him what kind of food he wanted. He picked Italian, which, in my opinion, is the hardest cuisine to get around this area. At least, good Italian, that is. There’s always Fazoli’s, and TripAdvisor has the audacity to label Marion’s Pizza as the number one Italian spot in the area, so pickings are slim for Italian ’round these parts. But I wanted something nicer than Spaghetti Warehouse.

Eventually my searching led me to Grist, which was labeled as Italian, and looked pretty dang amazing from the photos provided. Plus, I’d heard from numerous Daytonians in the past that they liked Grist, and I trust my sources. So, I made us a reservation for that evening, excited to try somewhere new.

Located on Fifth Street, it’s just down the street from the Oregon District, and close to the Dayton Convention Center. There’s a parking garage right across the street from it, and some street parking, too.

Upon walking in, the first thing I noticed was how bright and open it is. The large wall of windows let in so much natural light, and you immediately get to see all the baked goods in their glass display case.

A shot of the display case holding the desserts and baked goods. You can also see wine glasses and stacks of dishes in the background, and in the very back is a huge bookshelf type wall.

I immediately loved the decor and vibe in Grist. It was like sort of rustic but nice at the same time. Like fancy Italian farmhouse vibes? It was really cute.

A huge bookshelf/cabinet set up that takes up an entire wall, and is painted a really pretty sea salt blue. The bookshelf looking portion is filled with jars of pasta, bottles of olive oils and some t-shirts for sale. There's also a really nice stand/shelving thingy on the other wall with wine bottles on it.

And there was even a selection of wine for purchase:

A rack and cooler of wine bottles.

I didn’t get a shot of their other indoor dining area or their little patio, but it does have a super cute patio.

Grist has casual service, so you can either place your order at the counter or order at your table using your phone, and they bring the food out to your table. I chose to use my phone because there was a pretty steady flow of people ordering to-go stuff from the register.

Here’s what they were offering on their dinner menu:

A paper menu, with two sections. One for starters and one for entrees. In the starters section there's rosemary and parmesan focaccia, mushroom pate, meatballs, shrimp melange, roasted carrots, apricot and hazelnut burrata, and spring chopped salad. For the entrees there's tagliatelle alla bolognese, squash blossom halibut, pork raviolini, sweet corn agnolotti, risotto cacio e pepe, and squid ink orecchiette.

It’s basically a law that you have to try a restaurant’s bread. The bread a restaurant offers is a window into all the rest of their food, and also into their soul. So we split the half loaf of rosemary and parmesan focaccia:

A beautiful loaf of focaccia cut in half long ways, and sliced into shareable slices. A round puck of butter sits beside it. It is served on a wood serving platter.

Bryant and I both loved the focaccia, and there was more than enough for both of us. The outside was just a little bit crispy and the bread inside was soft and chewy. It wasn’t overwhelmingly herbaceous, and was definitely worth the six dollars in my opinion. The only acceptable reason to not try this bread if you visit is if you’re gluten intolerant.

We also shared the house-made meatballs:

A small black bowl with five sizeable meatballs, all covered in red sauce and parmesan cheese grated on top.

I can’t say I’m like, a huge meatball fan. I don’t really eat them that often and they’re not something I crave regularly or think about all that much. However, these meatballs were really yummy! I was impressed that there were five of them, and they were quite sizeable. I think the portion size is honestly pretty good. They definitely tasted like they were made fresh in-house, and had just the right amount of sauce on them. I would be more than happy to have a meatball marinara sub made with these meatballs.

And our final appetizer was the mushroom pate:

Three slices of toasted bread served alongside a small white bowl filled with the mushroom pate, which is topped with pickled shallot and sesame seeds.

First off, I love how toasty the ciabatta was, it’s like the perfect shade for toast. The mushroom pate was packed to the brim with mushroomy, umami flavor. Total flavor bomb, and a little goes a long way. The pickled shallots added a wild contrast, and there was a lot of interesting textures. It was seriously delish.

To accompany the starters, I decided to try their sweet wine flight, which came with three wines for fourteen dollars:

A slim wooden flight board with three small glasses of wine. One red and two white.

I can’t remember what the red one was, but the two whites are a Riesling and a sparkling Moscato. I did not care for the red at all, in my opinion it wasn’t even remotely sweet, but I generally prefer white anyway so maybe it just wasn’t my cup of tea (or wine, I suppose). Normally I like Rieslings but this one was kind of a miss for me, too. The Moscato was the bomb dot com though. I loved the bubbles and the sweetness level was perfect. It was so smooth and delish, I ended up polishing that one off but didn’t really drink the other two.

Choosing an entree was pretty dang tough, but Bryant ended up picking the Cacio e Pepe Orecchiette:

A large white bowl/plate type of dish with a large portion of risotto, drizzled with some sort of cream sauce and with chunks of baked parmesan and pepper on top.

I absolutely loved the presentation of this dish, and I’m a huge risotto fan, but I honestly didn’t care for this dish. It just really didn’t taste like much to me, but then again I only had one bite and Bryant said he really liked it, so maybe it was a me issue. I’m glad he enjoyed it!

I opted for the Sweet Corn Agnolotti:

A black bowl containing about thirteen pieces of Agnolotti. Fresh parmesan is shaved on top.

I actually wasn’t sure what type of pasta agnolotti was, but it’s basically just a stuffed pasta, kind of like a ravioli. These little dudes were stuffed with a delicious, creamy filling that I totally burned the frick frack out of my tongue on. They had a great corn flavor, you could definitely tell it was sweet corn. I noticed on the menu it also said it had black truffle in it but I actually didn’t notice any truffle flavor at all, so that’s kind of odd. I really enjoyed my entree, and I think next time I’d like to try the squid ink pasta since I still have yet to try squid ink.

Of course, we had to save room for dessert, and you can’t eat an Italian dinner without ending it with tiramisu:

A small white plate with a big ol cube of tiramisu on it. It is a heck of a solid block of creamy white goodness and cocoa powder.

Funny enough, Bryant’s favorite dessert is tiramisu, so he definitely wasn’t gonna pass this up. He was kind enough to let me try a bite, and I feel confident saying it’s a pretty good tiramisu! It was creamy and rich, and honestly didn’t have any sort of alcohol-y boozy type flavor. No complaints, solid tiramisu.

I went with the apricot and passionfruit tart with pepita crust:

A long and narrow slice of a tart, the filling of which is bright orange and topped with dollops of toasted meringue (at least I think that's what it is?).

Oh my DAYS! This bloody thing was loaded with flavor. Holy cannoli this thing literally punched my tastebuds into next week! The passionfruit flavor is absolutely bonkers on this sucker. Don’t get me wrong, it was delicious. It was sweet and tart and the crust was awesome and the meringue on top was fantastic and wow. Seriously wow. It took me three separate tries to eat this after I took it home, because I would take one bite and be like, okay that’s plenty for now. But don’t misunderstand me, it is very good!

Before leaving, I simply had to get one of their incredible looking cookies to take home, and I picked the white chocolate pineapple one:

A big cookie with flaky sea salt on top, being held up by me in front of a light purple wall.

This cookie was dense, chewy, perfectly sweet with pieces of pineapple throughout, and the flaky sea salt on top really was the cherry on top, or I guess it was the flaky sea salt on top (I know, it’s not a funny joke). Definitely pick up a cookie on your way out, you won’t regret it!

Grist is open Tuesday-Saturday for lunch and dinner, with a break in between the two. You can make reservations for dinner but not for lunch, and you can order online for lunch but not for dinner. While I was there I learned that Grist also hosts cooking classes on Sundays, so that’s neat! I’d love to check one out sometime.

All in all, Grist was a great experience. Though we didn’t have waiters and whatnot, the service we got from the people at the counter and from the chefs that brought our plates out was extremely friendly, and also the food came out really quickly. We both really loved the food and the vibes, and I also like the prices. I definitely want to come back and try pretty much everything I didn’t get to this first time around.

Have you tried Grist before? Which dish looks the best to you? Do you have any recommendations for nice Italian places in Dayton? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day! And be sure to follow Grist on Instagram.

-AMS

RFK is Going to Murder a Million Babies

2025-Jun-30, Monday 18:13
[syndicated profile] skepchick_feed

Posted by Rebecca Watson

This post contains a video, which you can also view here. To support more videos like this, head to patreon.com/rebecca! Transcript: When I was a kid, people were allowed to smoke inside restaurants. Prior to the ‘80s they would just smoke anywhere, but by the time I was old enough to not be a little …
[syndicated profile] scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

July 4 is most of a week away, so I was not anticipating that outside my hotel window last night would be a full-fledged professional fireworks display. But it turns out the hotel I was at, was next door to a Masonic Temple compound, and I guess they had some premature patriotic fervor. Inasmuch as I got a free fireworks show I didn’t even need to leave my hotel room for (and it ended early enough that I didn’t lose any sleep over it), I suppose I can’t complain.

Back at home now. Not anticipating a fireworks display tonight. We’ll see if that prediction holds.

— JS

The end of US democracy

2025-Jun-29, Sunday 22:34
[syndicated profile] crooked_timber_feed

Posted by John Q

I’ve held off posting this in the hope of coming up with some kind of positive response, but I haven’t got one.

When I wrote back in November 2024 that Trump’s dictatorship was a fait accompi there was still plenty of room for people to disagree. But (with the exception of an announced state of emergency) it’s turned out far worse than I thought possible.

Opposition politicians and judges have been arrested for doing their jobs, and many more have been threatened. The limited resistance of the courts has been effectively halted by the Supreme Court’s decision ending nationwide injunctions. University leaders have been forced to comply or quit. The press has been cowed into submission by the threat of litigation or harm to corporate owners. Political assassinations are laughed about and will soon become routine. With the use of troops to suppress peaceful protests, and the open support of Trump and his followers, more deaths are inevitable, quite possibly on a scale not seen since the Civil War.

The idea that this process might be stopped by a free and fair election in 2026 or 2028 is absurdly optimistic. Unless age catches up with him, Trump will appoint himself as President for life, just as Xi and Putin have done.

None of this is, or at least ought to be, news. Yet the political implications are still being discussed in the familiar terms of US party politics: swing voters, the centre ground, mobilisation versus moderation, rehashes of the 2024 election and so on. Having given up hope, I have no interest in these debates. Instead, I want to consider the implications for the idea of democracy.

The starting point is the observation that around half of all US voters at the last three elections have supported a corrupt, incompetent, criminal racist and rapist, while another third or more of US citizens have failed to vote at all. And Trump’s support has not been diminished to any significant extent (if at all) by his actions since returning to power.

Any claims that might be made to exonerate Trump’s voters or mitigate the crime they have committed don’t stand up to scrutiny. The US did not face any kind of crisis that might justify such an extreme outcome (as, for example, Germany did in 1933). Unemployment was at historically low levels. The short-lived inflation resulting from the pandemic was well below the rates of the late 20th century, crime was far below those rates. And so on. The only real driving factor was the resentment and hatred felt by Trump’s voters for large groups of their compatriots.

One part of this is fear of immigrants, particularly but not exclusively, asylum seekers and other undocumented immigrants. But this fear has long been a winning issue for the political right, in many countries including Australia. It has not produced anything like the turn to dictatorship we have now seen in the US.

In this context what matters is not the marginal groups of swinging voters who have absorbed so much attention: the “left behind”, the “manosphere” and so on. It’s the fact that comfortably off, self-described “conservative”, white suburbanites, historically the core of the Republican base, have overwhelmingly voted for, and welcomed, the end of American democracy.

This is something that, as far as I can tell, is unprecedented in the history of modern democracy, and threatens the basic assumptions on which democracy is built. While the last 200 years of modern (partial or complete) democracy have seen plenty of demagoguery, authoritarian populism and so on, these have invariably been temporary eruptions rejected, relatively quickly, by an enduring democratic majority. The idea that a party that has been part of the constitutional fabric of a major democracy for more than 150 years, would abandon democracy and keep the support of its voters was inconceivable. That’s why so many have refused to admit it, even to themselves.

Nothing lasts forever, but there is no obvious way back from dictatorship for the US. Viewed in retrospect, the the Republican party was a deadly threat to US democracy from the moment of Trump’s nomination in 2016 and certainly after the 2021 insurrection.

With the benefit of hindsight, Biden might have declared a state of emergency immediately after the insurrection, arrested Trump, and expelled all the congressional Republicans who had voted to overturn the election. But this would itself have represented an admission that democratic norms had failed. It was far more comfortable to suppose that Trump had been an aberration and that those norms would prevail as they had done at previous moments of crisis. That is no longer possible.

As I siad, I’ve held off posting this in the hope of coming up with some kind of positive response, but I haven’t got one. The best I can put forward is that the US, founded on slavery, has never been able to escape its original sin, and is unique in that respect. Every country has its original sin and a dominant group with its racist core. But only in the US (so far) has that core secured unqualified majority support. The downfall of American democracy should serve as a warning. For conservative parties, flirting with fascism is a deal with the devil that must be avoided. For the left, the nostalgic appeal of the “white working class” (implicitly male and mostly old) should not tempt us into pandering to racist and misogynist reaction.

I don’t know whether that will be enough to save us. At least in Australia, Trumpism is political poison. But until we understand that Trumpism is not an aberration but the course Americans have chosen, we will not be able to free ourselves from our past allegiance to an idea which is now an illusion.

[syndicated profile] charlie_stross_diary_feed

(This is an old/paused blog entry I planned to release in April while I was at Eastercon, but forgot about. Here it is, late and a bit tired as real world events appear to be out-stripping it ...)

(With my eyesight/cognitive issues I can't watch movies or TV made this century.)

But in light of current events, my Muse is screaming at me to sit down and write my script for an updated re-make of Doctor Strangelove:

POTUS GOLDPANTS, in middling dementia, decides to evade the 25th amendment by barricading himself in the Oval Office and launching stealth bombers at Latveria. Etc.

The USAF has a problem finding Latveria on a map (because Doctor Doom infiltrated the Defense Mapping Agency) so they end up targeting the Duchy of Grand Fenwick by mistake, which is in Transnistria ... which they are also having problems finding on Google Maps, because it has the string "trans" in its name.

While the USAF is trying to bomb Grand Fenwick (in Transnistria), Russian tanks are commencing a special military operation in Moldova ... of which Transnistria is a breakaway autonomous region.

Russia is unaware that Grand Fenwick has the Q-bomb (because they haven't told the UN yet). Meanwhile, the USAF bombers blundering overhead have stealth coatings bought from a President Goldfarts crony that even antiquated Russian radar can spot.

And it's up to one trepidatious officer to stop them ...

[syndicated profile] andrew_rilstone_feed

Posted by Unknown

In June, Andrew threw open the floor to his Patreon supporters: ask him anything — and he promised to answer.

Each reply was written in a single sitting, with only the lightest of edits. 

The questions ranged far and wide. The answers? Surprising, revelatory — and sometimes much longer than anyone expected.

Now collected as a digital "box set", the full series is available to non-Patreons for just $12.

But if you'd like to support Andrew’s writing — and throw your own questions into the ring next time — consider becoming a Patreon supporter today.


1: Your old pre-blog site contained much that is worthy of preservation, including your thoughts on the LotR films. Do you have any plans to restore these posts?





7: Your Doctor Who blog posts have been very interesting, although they've mostly focused on the Tom Baker era and the new series. Will you ever post about, e.g. the Pertwee or McCoy era?

8: In the 19th century both the pro- and anti- slavery forces used biblical arguments to make their cases. What are the biblical arguments for and against slavery?

9: Alan Moore's Jerusalem -- discuss.






Epilogue



[syndicated profile] scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

Very different from the last View From a Hotel Window I posted, seeing that one was from Venice, Italy. This one is greener, though. And has a parking lot! Very few of those in Venice, I have to say.

Why am I here? Because of the Big Ohio Book Con, where Tochi Onyebuchi and I are in conversation tomorrow at 12:30, followed by us both signing books. If you are in the vicinity of Medina, OH tomorrow, come down and see us (the book festival is also happening today! Right now! As I write this!). If you’re not in the vicinity of Medina, Ohio today or tomorrow, well, try to have a good time anyway.

— JS

New Books and ARCs, 6/27/25

2025-Jun-27, Friday 20:18
[syndicated profile] scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

I was traveling much of June, and as a result we have an extra-large collection of new books and ARCs to consider here at the end of the month. What in this double stack of reading goodness would you like to take on in this final weekend of the first half of the year? Share in the comments!

[syndicated profile] skepchick_feed

Posted by Rebecca Watson

This post contains a video, which you can also view here. To support more videos like this, head to patreon.com/rebecca! Transcript: Fifty years ago, a seminal film hit the theaters to rave reviews and massive crowds. It would go on to become a classic, but in doing so it would stoke a fear so great …

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