Why Fascism is Rising Again (And What You Can Learn From It)
by umair haque
Here’s a tiny thought. If I’d told you last Christmas that the leading contender for President of the richest and most powerful country on the globe had openly said that he was OK with armbands, internment camps, extra-judicial bans, and blood rights, unless you were a card-carrying member of Conspiracy Theorists International, you probably would have laughed at me.

And yet. Here we are, in precisely that reality. And it’s not just Trump. The darkest spectre of global politics, the one that we thought exorcised, has somehow been summoned and reborn: fascism is resurgent. What I’ll call in this short series of essays New Fascism is a global phenomenon. Marine Le Pen, the most openly extreme politician contesting national leadership since Hitler…triumphed, winning a third of the vote, in recent French elections. The world stands poised on the precipice of a Dark Age of New Fascism — it is rising, Cerberus-like, from Scandinavia to Europe to Turkey to Australia.

I believe New Fascism is the single most important political development in our lifetimes. It is a critical moment for global society — a turning point. Like every turning point, it is a test. A test of the best of us: whether or not civilized societies can in fact stay civilized, in the most essential sense of the word — or whether we risk plunging once again into an era of world war and genocide.

SEX ROBOTS ARE BEING MADE TO REPLACE MEN BY 2025

Sex with a humanoid robot will become common practice by 2025, even overtaking sex between humans, says futurologist Ian Pearson. His report on the future of sex has been published in partnership with Bondara, one of UK’s leading sex toy shops.

By 2030 virtual sex will become as casual as browsing porn websites and by 2035 many will have toys that interact with virtual reality, according to the report. In fact, high-income groups could begin to use some forms of robot sex as early as 2025, before the practice overtakes sex between humans fully by 2050.

Why Charles M. Schulz Gave Peanuts A Black Character (1968)
People I like can be divided into two groups: a) those who enjoy and get Charles M. Schulz’s wonderful Peanuts comic strip; b) those fools who don’t. All of human life is in the artist and writer’s 17,897 comic strips.

In 1968 Schulz noticed the Civil Rights movement, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and read a letter from Los Angeles schoolteacher Harriet Glickman. She had a question for Schulz: would he include a black child in the Peanuts gang?

Eight Underrated Skills That’ll Make You a Rockstar in the Book Industry
1.) Time Management Skills: If you’re an author or author-to-be, you know the battle well: sit down to write, have absolutely nothing to write about, dig deep into your soul for inspiration, give up and spend four hours on Buzzfeed and Netflix, return to work and write three crap sentences, call it a day. It’s rough. That’s why developing an author routine is so important. If you don’t plan out time to write, to respond to fans, to post on social media, etc., you just won’t do it. Time management is a pain, but it’s a necessary pain, and even simple things like downloading apps to keep you on track or buying a planner can help immensely.



2.) Listening Skills: You’re going to have people critiquing your work nonstop, from friends and family members to editors to readers of the final work. This can be extremely frustrating, but it can also be extremely helpful—especially the feedback that comes from fans of your work once it does get published. Don’t be too proud to listen to what your readers want. These small insights via email or letter or social media could be the key to your next character or plot. And the best way you can create meaningful connections with people is to listen to them and to respond. If people feel like you care, they’ll stay loyal to you and to your books.



3.) Fearlessness: Also known as your ability to take the plunge. How many potential authors could be knocking it out of the park right now if they could only build up the courage to send their work out? Too many. That’s the answer. Sending out something so personal can be terrifying, but it’s the only way to show it to the world.



4.) Ability to Take Criticism: As stated above, you will constantly get feedback about your work. This can be difficult, because this work is your life: you’ve put hours of love and hard work into each and every page. Your editor and publisher know this. They aren’t trying to tear you down by making suggestions about your characters and plot and title—they’re trying to make your wonderful book even better. This could have to do with best-selling trends or gaps in the story; it could have to do with marketing or cohesiveness. Either way, trust that the experts to whom you’ve entrusted your book will take care of your book. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t veto a decision you really don’t agree with; but make sure you have the conversation about why it was brought up before you do so. There’s a reason they’re in the business.

Writer Unboxed: The Current
What about a novel sweeps us up into its world? What carries us along even when the imperatives of plot are on hold or absent? What makes us ache for something without knowing what it is? What makes us impatient for a story’s resolution at the same time that we want the tale to go on forever? What is it that causes us to feel that a story has touched our souls?
It’s not plot, scene dynamics or micro-tension. It’s not the inner journey. It’s not setting, voice or theme, although those things undeniably affect us. What I’m talking about is a deeper, seemingly mystical force that engages readers in a way they can’t explain and holds them rapt. It’s nothing overtly stated in your pages.
That irresistible, invisible current is a feeling. It’s a feeling that springs from what you wrote (how could it be otherwise) but which readers can only sense. It’s a feeling to which readers do not assign a name. What causes them to feel this feeling is not so much anything that you put into your story as the spirit that underlies it.
That spirit is hope.

Exotic Paths To The Stars JOHN CRAMER
Everyone knows from pop science fiction such as Star Wars and Star Trek that ideas of how to cross immense distances in a twinkling of time do emerge from the odd and sometimes extravagant realms of theoretical physics. How plausible are such notions?

The truthful answer is that no one knows. Progress in the furthest realms of General Relativity and quantum mechanics must proceed from experiment, and there are few lab experiments that can touch on such issues. To survey the current landscape of such thinking, the 100 Year Starship Symposium held an Exotic Technologies Session chaired by John Cramer. Here he reports on the major ideas treated there, with some insightful criticisms of his own, and much background material useful to the interested but non-specialist observer. One recalls the Mark Twain observation, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”