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Featured Essays queer SFF An Interview With Three Finalists for the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction By Leah Schnelbach | Published on June 11, 2024 Left to right: Aubrey Wood, Mac Crane, and Chana Porter Comment 0 Share New Share Left to right: Aubrey Wood, Mac Crane, and Chana Porter A fractured, delicate story of parenting and family in a surveillance state; a comic cyberpunk noir adventure; a picaresque fantasy about forbidden desire and colonialism; a mecha adventure about collapsing faith and collapsing culture. All of them are queer as hell, and have their queerness woven into their worlds and voices, and all of them are finalists for 2024’s Lambda Literary Award for Speculative Fiction, which will be announced tonight. We’re so excited to share this interview with Mac Crane, author of I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, Aubrey Wood, author of Bang Bang Bodhisattva, and Chana Porter, author of The Thick and the Lean. The other two finalists—Emma Mieko Candon for The Archive Undying and Vajra Chandrasekera for The Saint of Bright Doors—did not participate in the interview—Their books are fabulous and you should check them out. We want to note that many of the finalists have chosen to add their names to a statement on what they see as the Lambda Awards organization’s inadequate response to ongoing violence in Palestine​—particularly calling attention to the practice of “pinkwashing”; you can read their full statement here. Now on with the interview. Leah Schnelbach: When you first start a new work, does it begin with a voice, an image, a scent, an idea, a plot outline—or some other element entirely? Marisa (Mac) Crane: For me, it really depends on the piece, what it demands, and where the idea comes from. I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself came from two different elements: a poem fragment I’d written years before and a first line that randomly came to me that wouldn’t leave me alone: “The kid is born with two shadows.” My forthcoming novel, A Sharp Endless Need, began with a combination of voice/character and themes I wanted to interrogate—queer desire, sports as sex, the violence of self-denial, and beyond. Aubrey Wood: I have more story ideas than I have energy budget to pump them out so a lot of them sit up there percolating for a long time before I start, and they will gradually collect scenes I want to do, vibes, story elements I want to hit–I write a lot of things down as loose notes which I think of as the concept stage–and I usually get started on something when a really good opener comes to me because I like to write in sequence. Bang Bang started because I got on ritalin and suddenly a bunch of extremely loose vibes I had had floating around for years for a cyberpunk story came together at about 2-3k words a day over like four months; conversely right now I find myself with a backed up queue, taking notes and taking things down from the shelf as I have time to get to them. Chana Porter: All my writing impulses are different but The Thick and The Lean began with a pretty classic SF trope of the taboo switch: What if there was a culture where sexual pleasure was public and mundane and food pleasure was highly taboo? I thought I was writing a pithy short story or novella, but I keep pulling the thread of body autonomy, particularly around desire and societal expectation for teenage girls and women, and the world grew and grew.  LS: In each of your books you’ve created intricate alternate societies that comment on our world–in some cases homophobia is very much a part of your fictional society, in other cases taboos around sexuality have been replaced with taboos around food. I think each book grapples with issues of class and climate destruction. How did you begin creating these worlds? How did you decide what to keep from our own world, and how to tweak certain things to create your commentary? MC: I’ve always been really interested in shame, guilt, and the punitive impulses of our society, so those elements were what I wanted to highlight and explore in I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself. At its core, it’s a prison abolitionist book, a book about how shame and punishment are the very antithesis of healing and growth, and a book condemning our society’s obsession with surveillance, punishment, and the labeling of “criminals.” This book was partially inspired by a self-directed, self-shaming poem I wrote when I was very young and trying to figure out how to be a person who didn’t hurt people. It said something like “If the shadows of everyone you’ve ever hurt followed you around, day in and day out, would you still be so reckless with people’s hearts?” And thus, the world of my book was born: a society in which prisons have been abolished but “criminals” are punished with a permanent extra shadow for each crime they commit—a mark of shame and a warning to others.  AW: In creating a queer and in particular transgender-driven cyberpunk near-future narrative I wanted to make a world where exploring the canvas of gender was far more normalized, but not a piece of escapism where bigotry didn’t still exist. The world in Bang Bang is intended as an accelerated mirror of our own, born of the anxieties of a society falling into fascism and the fear of a soon-unlivable planet. It turns out that in much the same way as Neuromancer was William Gibson’s optimistic prediction of a world that had not been destroyed by nuclear war, the arc of the years between when I wrote Bang Bang and its publication have outpaced even my 2019 cynicism. CP: As I kept following the food/sex taboo switch, I discovered how it impacted every layer of society, to what people watched on television, advertising, church dogma, even architecture. The bizarro mirror world of The Thick and The Lean became a lens to contemplate our own reality’s relationship to not only body image and eating disorders, but how often cults/organized religion use perfection/mastery of the body as a form of social control.  Then the book begged the question: how did it become this way? The worldbuilding centered around colonialism, indigenous land rights, governments vested in corporate interests, Big Agriculture. It asked—who grows our food? What does food deprivation look like for a wealthy person (juice cleanses, enemas, supplements) versus someone who is actually food insecure? The book follows 3 main characters, with a braided narrative—big structure, big ideas!  LS: What was the element of worldbuilding you found most difficult? MC: I’m not naturally great at worldbuilding—I’m more of a voice-driven and psychology-driven writer—so the entire notion of creating an alternate world was a bit daunting for me. But I was committed to doing it, to fighting my, at times, self-defeating attitude to craft a book that felt true, in every sense of the word. True as in reflective of our society and its horrors. True as in having an honest, unflinching heart. True as in unafraid of tackling difficult, traumatic themes. AW: Writing cyberpunk in a world where we elected a game show host president and all happily carry a mass surveillance device around in our pockets may seem utterly redundant. Going back and reading classics of the genre I find myself still being taken to school and catching up to their fierce and acerbic predictions. What I was trying to do, I realized, was not necessarily predict the future but shine a harsh light on the present; while I do imagine a near-future scenario, I think my intent is to interrogate people to look at our present and ask if they find it acceptable. CP: I really love world building. Harrowing, but difficult in a fun way, like climbing a mountain. The Thick and The Lean was essentially built backwards. It began with Beatrice’s narrative which closely explores body image and eating disorders through the lens of a restrictive cult. This was extremely personal to me, a way to talk about growing up in ‘90s diet culture in suburbia, where I felt like the most important thing I could contribute to society was my beauty, and I felt alienated from my own desire as a queer person. What did I even want? It took me years to figure that out. Then I zoomed out: How did this religion come to be? How is it similar and different to the larger world? Structurally braiding the three narratives, two in the present timeline and one 1000 years in the past, in the form of a banned cookbook/memoir—that was most difficult.  LS: These are four very thoughtful, idea-driven books. How did working in speculative fiction shape how you tackled your ideas? MC: I really love speculative fiction for the ways in which it allows us to create enough of a remove or distance from our society so as to actually allow us to get closer to the heart of the issues. I think this is especially true for readers who may be resistant to acknowledging or admitting the full scope of the oppressive nature of our society. Or rather, they’re unable to imagine a world in which things are different, better, because they’re so committed to the way things have always been—such as with incarceration. So often, I speak to people who are like, “Yeah, I see how the prison industrial complex is violent and not the best solution, but what else are we supposed to do with criminals?” And they think this way because it’s all they’ve ever known and because perhaps the PIC hasn’t affected them or touched their lives in a very real way. But when a speculative novel holds a mirror up to the cycle of recidivism and the violence perpetuated by the state using a different conceit? You just might get some more people to pay attention. And that’s what’s so dope about this genre. AW: As Marisa says above, spec fic is wonderful for its predisposition for social commentary; but it is also often criticized for defaulting to allegory instead of more closely depicting oppressive structures. I wanted a cyberpunk story that said “this is already happening”. These are real trans people, this is real police violence, this is real racism. I feel you can have androids fighting for personhood as a loose allegory for minorities and also depict real minorities still facing those problems. CP: I keep returning to speculative fiction because I think the frame of What If helps us see our own world more clearly. Capitalism isn’t natural—it’s a frame, it’s a choice. Inhabiting an SFF world where different choices were made helps us see the seams, the bricks, of our own world. We made these choices, we can choose something different.  LS: Are there any specific speculative works that you looked to for inspiration as you wrote?  MC: Oh, yeah, so many: 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale (with the understanding that it is flawed), The Giver, Parable of the Sower, Never Let Me Go, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Though it’s not speculative, The Scarlet Letter and its exploration of shame, ostracization, isolation, and justice had a huge influence on this novel. AW: Shout out to Trouble and Her Friends, a previous Lambda winner; Virtual Light (my favorite Gibson, for my money); Pat Cadigan’s Synners; A Scanner Darkly, one of my favorite books ever and the movie which informed a lot of my aesthetic; Terminator 2: Judgment Day; and Samuel Delany’s Dhalgren which will basically always play the role of the Whiplash music teacher in the back of my brain. CP: I love a lot of the books mentioned above! And some I’ll have to go out and read. Le Guin and Butler are always important to me, especially when thinking about anthropological/political world building. In terms of writing on the body, I devoured Melisa Broder’s Milk Fed, Sarah Rose Etter’s The Book of X, Dietland by Sarai Walker. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer was influential for thinking about indigenous farming practices. I also loved reading this book on English gardening from the ‘90s— A Gentle Plea For Chaos by Mirabel Osler. Her words begin The Thick and The Lean. I read these years into writing The Thick and The Lean. My two cents: If you hear of a book exploring similar themes, I think it’s best to save it until you’re well into your project. I don’t actually read much fiction when I’m drafting, only when I’m editing. Don’t want too many cooks in the kitchen.  LS: What was the book that first made you a reader, and the book that first inspired you to be a writer? (Assuming those are different books, maybe they’re not!) MC: I can’t remember a first book specifically that made me a reader but my first obsession was Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. I wouldn’t put those books down for anything. My mom used to bring me lunch in my room because I’d spend an entire Sunday locked away reading them and forget to eat. I can’t pinpoint a book that made me want to be a writer because as long as I can remember, the desire was always there. I know when I was six years old, I told my parents I was going to be a WNBA player and an author—and thankfully, the latter isn’t affected by my being a short king (can I do that, call myself a short king? Ah well…). AW: This is a tough one because I have written basically my entire life–I made picture books as a kid, I wrote fanfic as a teenager–but starting the manuscript that eventually launched my serious attempt to become a writer was kind of an accident and it preceded the decision to seriously get back into reading (the rationale being if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right). As a kid I loved Animorphs and typical young adult fare, and had a fixation on newspaper comic strips; I was extremely good at English class but wasn’t much better read than the average kid despite my propensity for writing. A Scanner Darkly, when I was in my late teens, was the first adult book I really remember seeking out for myself. Once I decided I was going to make a serious attempt at writing again in my early twenties, there was a one-two punch of reading Light by M. John Harrison and American Gods by Neil Gaiman; I especially remember the former, with its dense prose, feeling like a thick porterhouse steak for my undeveloped brain. The intellectual and emotional experiences of those two books one after the other set a bar for me in those early days that struck me with a reinvigorated passion for the craft.  CP: I found Octavia Butler’s Dawn in a public library as a teenager, and it changed my life. I was a big SFF reader then, but Butler showed me that I might be a writer, too.  LS: What was the first queer media you found—or maybe the first that you felt saw you or loved you? (For example, for me I think it was Angels in America, which set a certain template for how to talk about BIG QUESTIONS with queerness built into them. It also made me really longwinded.) MC: I remember not even realizing that there were books about queer people until I got to college. My education left much to be desired in the form of exposure to different types of books, books that might have saved me a lot of depression and despair. And I think I was too busy typing “Am I gay quiz” into Ask Jeeves or something in order to realize I could use the internet for things like gay books. But I made a habit out of subconsciously queering anything I watched throughout my childhood and adolescence: Boy Meets World (I wanted to be Shawn Hunter), Rocket Power (I wanted to be Reggie and Otto at the same time), She’s the Man, and Disney Channel Original movies like Motocrossed, Brink, and The Thirteenth Year (trans allegory if I ever saw one). I suppose that doesn’t answer your question. I think the first queer media I ever encountered was The Miseducation of Cameron Post when I was 18, followed by Annie on My Mind, which a lesbian lent me. I was like—what? You can write and read books about lesbians?  AW: The first Life is Strange game turned me gay. There’s a scene where high-school age Chloe and Max are hanging out in a bedroom listening to music and doing teenager shit and they get on the bed and take a polaroid selfie together and I was blasted with an atomic-force blast of yearning for a youth that I didn’t have and I remember thinking “Fuck. I want to be a girl, don’t I?” I still didn’t do anything about it for three more years but a lot of things–my fascination with The L Word, why I only seemed to date bisexual women and closeted trans men, why I always leapt at any excuse to dress in drag–began to make sense.  CP: What a great question. I would wander around my town’s public library and just pull books off the shelves, so the first queer book I remember reading was something by Edmund White, who I remember like a rather fancy older white gay guy from some bygone era. I didn’t really relate to him, but he was showing me that another kind of life was possible. Then I sat on the floor in Borders and read all of Dykes To Watch Out For (I couldn’t buy it until later), which felt like a life I could relate to. Both experiences were formative. LS: This is a very nebulous question, but I can’t think of a more elegant way to ask it: how do you think queerness informs your writing? Did your artistic work change as you embraced your queerness, if that wasn’t something you could embrace all your life? MC: My work changed drastically as I embraced my queerness and transness and the ways in which these two things are endlessly expansive, creative, and refuse categorization. My work became far more experimental and playful the more I leaned into my queerness and the more I began to view my queerness as a strength and gift, not as a burden. My writing began to refuse categorization and expectations in the same way that my queerness does, and I think that’s really exciting and beautiful—it’s opened up something for me that no formal education ever could. AW: Even as an ‘ally’ I tried to incorporate lots of queer characters into my early self-published work. My first big attempt to go traditional–right before I realized I was a woman and came out–was a doorstop coming of age novel about a girl growing up in a cult and her fraught lifelong romance with another girl on the compound. In retrospect some part of me was screaming on the inside.  CP: All of my work deals with queerness and the sheer weirdness of having a body, in some way or another. The world of The Thick and The Lean is distinct because it’s such a sex-forward culture, being queer there isn’t marginalized at all. In it, people have to come out as straight. Being ace, however, is very taboo. So it was interesting to think about how different power structures are still at play.  LS: More specifically, how do you think queerness has shaped these three books?   MC: Because my queerness and transness have helped me to embrace experimentation and play, my novel prioritizes those elements despite, or because of, the heavier and more traumatic themes like grief, shame, oppression, and surveillance. My novel is fragmented and includes pop quizzes, a word search, board game instructions, and more, all of which are used intentionally and mindfully to interrogate the protagonist’s state of mind, biases, and beliefs—about herself, her child, her late partner, and society at large. AW: Bang Bang Bodhisattva is loudly and explicitly transgender from the first page and that’s largely been my philosophy since coming out. I am not interested in relegating queerness to subtext or headcanons. It informs the humor, politics and personality of everything and everyone in my work.  CP: I think as queerness becomes more mainstream, it’s perhaps helpful to reexamine the original implications of a more radical politic. Not gay as in marriage equality, queer as in Free Palestine. What does it mean to be free?  LS: If you could go back and give Teen You one book to read, what would it be? MC: We the Animals by Justin Torres AW: Stone Butch Blues. CP: The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez!   LS: What are you all reading now? MC: The Lauras by Sara Taylor, it’s a perfect coming-of-age, nostalgia, road trip, queer and nonbinary/genderqueer, family dysfunction and secrets novel.  AW: I just finished Becoming Abolitionists and Who’s Afraid of Gender? (please read both of those) so I’m rereading Gibson’s Bridge trilogy and then probably Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy. CP: I’m reading Brenda Iijima’s beautifully bizarre and tender SF poem as prose Presence from Georgia Press.  LS: Does anyone have an upcoming work, or a project-in-progress they want to talk about?  MC: My second novel, A Sharp Endless Need, comes out in March 2025 through Dial. That’s a ways away, but hey, these things sneak up on you. It’s a big departure from I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself is that it is a coming-of-age queer literary novel about basketball, the eroticism of playing with someone you love, legacy, grief (okay, yeah, there is that crossover), and a lot of other stuff. AW: We are currently shopping around my “lesbian cyberpunk No Country for Old Men” which is set in the same universe as Bang Bang but is a standalone between-quel and intended to be a lot less humorous. Currently working on a secret third thing.  CP: I’m working on two very different novels and I really can’t tell which will be finished first. One is a sprawling multiverse novel: Doubles; the other is a claustrophobic obsessive first person thriller: Maidens. A race to the finish line, we’ll see.  [end-mark] Marisa Crane is a writer, basketball player, and sweatpants enthusiast. Their debut novel, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, was an Indie Next Pick and NYT Editors’ Choice. Their second novel, A Sharp Endless Need, is forthcoming from Dial Press in March 2025.  Buy the Book I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself Marisa Crane A lyrical, speculative debut about a queer mother raising her daughter in an unjust surveillance state Buy Book I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself Marisa Crane A lyrical, speculative debut about a queer mother raising her daughter in an unjust surveillance state A lyrical, speculative debut about a queer mother raising her daughter in an unjust surveillance state Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Heralded as “the new Philip K. Dick,” (The Times) Chana Porter is an author, playwright, teacher, MacDowell fellow, and cofounder of The Octavia Project, a STEM and writing program for girls, trans, and nonbinary youth that uses speculative fiction to envision greater possibilities for our world. She lives in Los Angeles, California, and is the author of the highly acclaimed novel The Seep. Buy the Book The Thick and the Lean Chana Porter In the quaint religious town of Seagate, abstaining from food brings one closer to God. Buy Book The Thick and the Lean Chana Porter In the quaint religious town of Seagate, abstaining from food brings one closer to God. In the quaint religious town of Seagate, abstaining from food brings one closer to God. Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Aubrey Wood was born in California to a mixed-race couple and spent much of her childhood jumping back and forth between there and New Zealand until finally being trapped in a rural New Zealand hamlet at the age of ten. She has since spent most of her life in Auckland and on the internet. As a child Aubrey made picture books, as a teenager she furiously churned out fanfiction, and started trying to write professionally in 2011 after a brief and unsuccessful bid to become Trent Reznor. Bang Bang Bodhisattva is her debut novel. Buy the Book Bang Bang Bodhisattva Aubrey Wood Someone wants trans girl hacker-for-hire Kiera Umehara in prison or dead—but for what? Failing to fix their smart toilet? Buy Book Bang Bang Bodhisattva Aubrey Wood Someone wants trans girl hacker-for-hire Kiera Umehara in prison or dead—but for what? Failing to fix their smart toilet? Someone wants trans girl hacker-for-hire Kiera Umehara in prison or dead—but for what? Failing to fix their smart toilet? Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The post An Interview With Three Finalists for the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction appeared first on Reactor.

In the midst of the infamous “Pride Month,” with rainbow flags seemingly in every store window and on every company logo, we got an inside look at how two federal agencies celebrate Pride Month—especially their inclusion of the criminals they supervise by providing them resource guides for LGBTQ-friendly housing, employment, mental health groups, and more. Pride Month banner on the homepage of the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency website as of June 11, 2024. (Source: Screenshot from www.csosa.gov) The Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency is the probation and parole system for convicted criminals in the District of Columbia. Currently on its homepage, the agency has a banner celebrating June as “LGBTQI+ Pride Month.” The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, through emails recently obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request, got some insight as to how the agency celebrates Pride Month, or at least how it has in the past. In an email thread from June 1, 2022, Gzneé Jones, the agency’s community supervision officer and Special Observance Committee program manager, declared, “Good Morning CSOSA and PSA its June Pride Month 2022!!” PSA is the acronym for the Pretrial Services Agency. It is an independent federal agency within the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency that provides supervision and services to defendants awaiting trial. Jones wrote, This June, our Agencies will embark on the SECOND year recognition and observance of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. The Special Observance Committee is excited to bring educational and fun facts to our agencies on the observance of Pride Month. All month long we will bring you Videos, Weekly Themes, Educational information, Reading Materials, and of course the infamous “Riddle Me This” game. “This is our Agencies’ Second year commemorating Pride Month, but as you know this will not be our last!” Jones emphasized. Jones also encouraged employees to view a recording of the agency’s equal employment opportunity director, Denise Clark, reading President Joe Biden’s Proclamation on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Pride Month. In another email sent on June 21, Jones wrote, “This week is ‘Pride Resource Week for the Offenders’!” The email continues: Every week this month, the Special Observance Committee will focus on a different topic for June Pride Month. This week we will be providing resources for the offenders! Please see the attached Pride LGBTQA+ Resource Book and print it out so you can have a list of LGBTQA+ resources in the community for offenders to better assist them. Also, if you have more resources that were not listed in this book, please email CSO Jennifer Burwell so she can update the resource book. The attached resource book contained information for LGBTQ-friendly housing, employment, resident resources, mental health groups and hotlines, hospitals, and food banks. A page from the “LGBTQA Resource Book.” (Source: Digital document from The DC Center for the LGBT Community) In an earlier email, Jones wrote, “This week is ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex (LGBTI+) Pronoun’ Week! Every week this month, the Special Observance Committee will focus on a different topic for June Pride Month. This week we will be providing information about the importance of using LGBTQI+ Preferred Gender Pronouns!” The email includes links to two videos that discuss calling people by their preferred pronouns that have since been removed from YouTube. It also includes a link to the National Institute of Corrections’ glossary of terms from its “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex Initiative.” (Source: National Institute of Corrections’ glossary of terms from “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex Initiative.”) For further reading, Jones suggests the booklet “A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns.” The publisher’s description of the booklet states: “Archie, a snarky genderqueer artist, is tired of people not understanding gender neutral pronouns. Tristan, a cisgender dude, is looking for an easy way to introduce gender neutral pronouns to his increasingly diverse workplace.” (Source: “A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns”) In another email that month, the agency’s equal employment opportunity Specialist, Kristena Jenkins invites employees to a presentation by Laya Monarez, a “transgender bisexual Latinx artist, musician, and transgender rights activist.” A quick Google search reveals that Monarez was formerly a prostitute before joining the radical LGBTQ group Human Rights Campaign as an operations coordinator. During her time with the Human Rights Campaign, Monarez advocated for the decriminalization of “sex work” in the District of Columbia. (Source: Screenshot, The Washington Post, Oct. 13, 2017) This is who the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency is uplifting as a champion of human rights and a model for its employees. Maybe if the agency prioritized safety over radical LGBTQ ideologies, the streets of Washington would be safer. The post Taxpayers Ensure Criminals Can Celebrate Pride Month, Too appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Head of Elite Collegiate School Resigns Over Slamming Antisemitism Task Force

Poll: Biden's Student Loan Relief is Not Popular

It was a typical serene afternoon when Bailey Jacobson, enjoying the calm of her front yard, suddenly found herself in a scene straight out of a wildlife documentary. Her six-year-old German Shepherd, Zeus, was sniffing around when the unexpected happened. Out of nowhere, three bears emerged from the nearby woods, wandering into Bailey’s yard. The... The post Woman flies into ‘mom mode’ seeing bear chase her dog and bravely dashes after them appeared first on Animal Channel.

It was a typical serene afternoon when Bailey Jacobson, enjoying the calm of her front yard, suddenly found herself in a scene straight out of a wildlife documentary. Her six-year-old German Shepherd, Zeus, was sniffing around when the unexpected happened. Out of nowhere, three bears emerged from the nearby woods, wandering into Bailey’s yard. The... The post Camera films heart-pumping moment woman tries to save her dog from mama bear appeared first on Animal Channel.

When the news came down on Tuesday that Hunter Biden had been found guilty of the gun-related charges against him, the cast of Jose Diaz-Balart Reports only did what comes naturally to MSNBC: hype his father as the “embodiment of the rule of law” and promote his re-election campaign. Donald Trump did not fire legal analyst Andrew Weissmann or his boss, Robert Mueller, when he was president, but that did not stop him from oozing, “One, the son of the sitting president was pretty quickly tried. He was given due process and he was found guilty. And you have the current president, the father of the defendant, making it absolutely clear that he is not pardoning him, that he could have ordered at any time his Justice Department to get rid of this case, he did not do that.”     Speaking of Trump, Weissmann added: What is the big picture here? It's not a drug addict who possessed a gun for two weeks. It is that you have a president of the United States who is living embodiment of the rule of law, even with respect to his only living son and you can really contrast that to the former president's denigration of the rule of law, every single time he's found guilty in a criminal case or found liable in a civil case, including sexual assault and fraud, he says the system's rigged against him. I think that that, to me, is the really strong contrast between the two views of the institution of the justice system, whether it's civil justice or criminal justice that I think it's speaking to me very loudly about the impact and the import of this case. Former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill concurred, “Yeah, you know, contrast is everywhere and I hope that those voters that will make a difference, particularly in the swing states, are paying attention to the contrast. You had Donald Trump giving a speech over the weekend that was bizarre, a rant about sharks and nonsense and then you had President Biden at a cemetery in France celebrating those heroes that gave their lives to fight tyranny and support freedom of the world.” She added, “And now here's another contrast and as Andrew pointed out, and others have pointed out, you have a president who doesn't interfere, doesn't pardon his friends, doesn't lambast the rule of law even though he had the power to stop this prosecution against his own son.”     McCaskill also took the opportunity to accuse Republicans of hypocrisy: There is another irony about the prosecution, and that's the law itself that he was prosecuted under. It's certainly true that people generally are not prosecuted under this statute unless it's in connection with other wrongdoing, but it's also true that many of the Republicans, and one could argue that most of the most rabid Trump supporters don't even think this law should exist. They do not believe anybody should have to tell the federal government anything when they buy a gun. They think it's none of the government's business who they are or what they're doing if they want to purchase the gun under the Second Amendment. Chief political analyst Chuck Todd also got in on the Biden 2024 promotion, “I think it is possible that there's a contrast here that the public may see how Trump and his partisans handle the rule of law versus how Biden and how his partisans handle the rule of law and I’ll be honest, I am-- this is one of those cases where I don't think it's brought if Biden is not president of the United States.”     Would Trump’s business records case have been brought if he wasn’t running? MSNBC wasn’t interested in finding out. Instead, Todd continued, “In some ways, we may look back on this and say he was held more accountable because of who he is, and not less accountable because of who he is, not less accountable because of who he is.” Towards the end of the program, McCaskill returned to throw Melania Trump and Jill Biden into the conversation, “People that they purport to love, members of their family, were accused of crimes that did involve moral failings and in one trial, the sitting first lady showed up for her son, her loved one. The other trial, Melania was AWOL... So, I think that's another contrast that probably will sit with America in a way that will remind people the stark differences between the way these two men view the world and view their responsibilities as president.” Throughout MSNBC’s initial coverage, Diaz-Balart was the only one to reference the original sweetheart deal and that was only when he read Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer’s statement. Nobody thought that angle was worthy of further discussion. Here is a transcript for the June 11 show: MSNBC Jose Diaz-Balart Reports 6/11/2024 11:24 AM ET ANDREW WEISSMANN: You know, I'm less interested in the particulars of the case. This is a gun charge. The proof was overwhelming. I agree with your other panelists that it is rarely charged, in my experience: over 21 years at the Department, I never saw a case like this brought. It would normally be somebody who was a felon in possession of a gun that would be charged. I’m more interested in what it tells us about the rule of law in this country in two ways.  One, the son of the sitting president was pretty quickly tried. He was given due process and he was found guilty. And you have the current president, the father of the defendant, making it absolutely clear that he is not pardoning him, that he could have ordered at any time his Justice Department to get rid of this case, he did not do that.  He said he's not planning on pardoning him as well and I really think that if you look at the case, what is the big picture here? It's not a drug addict who possessed a gun for two weeks. It is that you have a president of the United States who is living embodiment of the rule of law, even with respect to his only living son and you can really contrast that to the former president’s denigration of the rule of law, every single time he's found guilty in a criminal case or found liable in a civil case, including sexual assault and fraud, he says the system's rigged against him. I think that that, to me, is the really strong contrast between the two views of the institution of the justice system, whether it's civil justice or criminal justice that I think it's speaking to me very loudly about the impact and the import of this case. … CLAIRE MCCASKILL: Yeah, you know, contrast is everywhere and I hope that those voters that will make a difference, particularly in the swing states, are paying attention to the contrast. You had Donald Trump giving a speech over the weekend that was bizarre, a rant about sharks and nonsense and then you had President Biden at a cemetery in France celebrating those heroes that gave their lives to fight tyranny and support freedom of the world. And now here's another contrast and as Andrew pointed out, and others have pointed out, you have a president who doesn't interfere, doesn't pardon his friends, doesn't lambast the rule of law even though he had the power to stop this prosecution against his own son and I have to tell you, I understand the heartbreak that Joe Biden and his entire family must be feeling.  This is an addict who has admitted his addiction in the most public ways and to go through what he went through over the last week, to have it so painfully brought out on the stand, but once again, Joe Biden sat quietly and let the rule of law operate and, of course, there will be no pardon here, which Joe Biden could do. He could pardon his son.  So, it is a real contrast between these two men and how they view what many would argue, and I would certainly argue, is that the most important institution in our country, and that's that the law applies to everybody and it's fair and it is done by jurors from the community who weigh the evidence, the facts that aren't political, just facts.  I want to make one other point. There is another irony about the prosecution, and that's the law itself that he was prosecuted under. It's certainly true that people generally are not prosecuted under this statute unless it's in connection with other wrongdoing, but it's also true that many of the Republicans, and one could argue that most of the most rabid Trump supporters don't even think this law should exist.  They do not believe anybody should have to tell the federal government anything when they buy a gun. They think it's none of the government's business who they are or what they're doing if they want to purchase the gun under the Second Amendment, so there's that on top of that and I have noticed the Republicans have not spent a lot of time on this trial over the last week. In fact, some Republicans, including Trey Gowdy who works for Fox News came out and said this is a case that should not have been brought, and even Lindsay Graham said this is not a case that should have been brought, so I feel bad for the family, but the facts were the facts and the evidence is the evidence and he was convicted as he should have been.  … CHUCK TODD: I think it is possible that there's a contrast here that the public may see how Trump and his partisans handle the rule of law versus how Biden and how his partisans handle the rule of law and I’ll be honest, I am-- this is one of those cases where I don't think it's brought if Biden is not president of the United States. You know, this is one of those things where if Biden had chosen not to run in 2018, I doubt Hunter Biden's ever prosecuted for something like this. In some ways, we may look back on this and say he was held more accountable because of who he is, and not less accountable because of who he is, not less accountable because of who he is. … MCCASKILL: Well, there's a reason why Jill Biden probably had sunglasses on. She was probably crying and there's another contrast for you. We have two first ladies, a former first lady and a current first lady. People that they purport to love, members of their family, were accused of crimes that did involve moral failings and in one trial, the sitting first lady showed up for her son, her loved one. The other trial, Melania was AWOL. She was not there to support Donald Trump in connection with his moral failings in terms of his affair with a porn star just after she had given birth to their only child. So, I think that's another contrast that probably will sit with America in a way that will remind people the stark differences between the way these two men view the world and view their responsibilities as president.

During Apple’s messy and fast-paced WWDC 2024 keynote, the company announced its big move into AI — short for Apple Intelligence. Props to the clever marketers at Apple for hijacking an already well-established abbreviation. And, as rumored, Apple is officially partnering with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into the iPhone and iPad, but the vast majority of Apple’s new AI smarts are from Apple itself. Unfortunately, Apple did a poor job of communicating this fact during the keynote, which it clarified during its State of the Union. While the keynote is aimed at a general audience, the State of the Union is when Apple addresses developers directly. The vast majority of Apple’s AI tasks will be handled by its own 3B parameter SLM that processes as much as possible on the device itself for speed and privacy. If it can’t be handled on-device, it’s farmed out to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, and if that can’t handle the job, it will (with your permission), hand it off to ChatGPT or, at some point in the future, a model of your choice. — (@) Not everyone appreciates Apple’s foray into AI or its partnership with OpenAI. Elon Musk was quick to post on X: “If Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level, then Apple devices will be banned at my companies. That is an unacceptable security violation.” Of course, there is bad blood between Musk and OpenAI. — (@) Before you get too spooked about AI-powered iPhones, realize that this is going to be a slow rollout. When launched (not necessarily at the same time as iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia), it will still be in beta, and it’s limited to the following devices: iPhone 15 Pro iPhone 15 Pro Max iPads with an M1 or later processor Macs with an M1 or later processor So many of us will be waiting a while to experience Apple Intelligence. But what exactly is Apple Intelligence? Like many of Apple’s big initiatives, such as Continuity or iCloud, Apple Intelligence is an umbrella branding term that encompasses many smaller but related features. Let’s explore them individually to explain what Apple Intelligence really is. Supercharged Siri Apple had an early lead on voice assistants with Siri, but Siri has fallen woefully behind in the last decade, and that’s apparent if you’ve spent any time with ChatGPT’s Voice Mode. Siri can barely understand simple commands, while ChatGPT can hold a full conversation with you. Apple’s new operating systems will introduce a new, supercharged Siri. Apple was unclear about how much of it is built on Apple’s tech and how much is being borrowed from ChatGPT, so it’s unclear just how many of these features will be available to all users: Type to Siri: With iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, you can double-tap the bottom of the screen to bring up a text prompt where you can type requests to Siri instead of speaking them out loud. Product knowledge: In an attempt to put tech writers out of business, you’ll be able to directly ask Siri questions about your device and how to use it. Better handling of ambiguity: Voice assistants can be especially frustrating when we fumble in our speech, and the new Siri will be able to better handle that. An example Apple provides is, “Siri, set an alarm for — oh wait no, set a timer for 10 minutes. Actually, make that 5.” Context awareness: Siri will remember previous points in the conversation. For instance, if you ask for directions to a location, you can then follow up with “What is the weather there?” Screen awareness: Siri will be able to read what’s on your screen and act upon it. For instance, if a friend texts you his address, you can ask Siri to add it to his contact card. Personal context: The new Siri will collect data on your device and use it to better understand your intent. For instance, you can ask Siri to “Play that podcast my wife sent me the other day,” or you could ask it for your passport number, assuming it’s stored on your device. Action across apps: You’ll be able to give Siri commands like “Make this photo pop” and tell it to put that photo into a specific note in the Notes app. Of course, with Siri knowing so much of your personal information from your devices, there are some serious privacy concerns that we’ll discuss below. AI writing tools Writing Tools are a set of new features coming to macOS, iOS, and iPadOS that let you select a block of text and take certain AI actions, such as: Proofread the text; Rewrite text to be more concise, friendly, or professional; Create a summary of the text; Break the text down into bullet points; Create a table or list from the text. You can also enter a custom prompt to direct how you want the text to be rewritten. Images Courtesy of Apple NewsroomImage generation Apple also introduced several new features to generate images. The one that seems most poised to be a hit is Genmoji, which lets you create a new, custom emoji based on a text description. You can also create a Genmoji that resembles a person from your photo library. Maybe the creepiest of the new features is the built-in image generator, called Image Playground, which will be available for use in apps and will have an app of its own. It’s very much akin to MidJourney or DALLE-3. One of the most unique features for the iPad is called Image Wand, where you draw a circle in the Notes app and it will generate an image based on the content of the note. I’ll be curious to find out how well it works. Finally, AI is coming to the Photos app to help create Memories based on a text description, remove unwanted objects from photos, and improve photo search. Ephemeral AI features Apple is integrating AI throughout its operating systems in all sorts of little ways that will change your user experience. Apple’s AI will be able to: Prioritize emails and notifications it thinks are the most important; Summarize long emails; Help you automatically reply to emails; Transcribe voice notes; Use AI insights for a new Focus mode that eliminates distractions while elevating notifications that require your attention. How the ChatGPT integration works The built-in ChatGPT integration will be free for everyone, will not require an account, and will be completely opt-in: You’ll be prompted before Apple phones ChatGPT for help. If you have a paid subscription to ChatGPT Plus, you can log into your account and tap into those additional features. Images Courtesy of Apple Newsroom Unfortunately, we don’t yet know much more than that, and many think Apple is being gullible. “It’s patently absurd that Apple isn’t smart enough to make their own AI, yet is somehow capable of ensuring that OpenAI will protect your security & privacy! Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river,” Musk posted. Musk also pointed out that OpenAI had asked Scarlett Johansson to license her voice for ChatGPT, and did it anyway even after she refused. There are many devils yet in the details, and more is sure to be revealed as this White Boy Summer progresses.