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Friday, June 24, 2016

A Few Post-Brexit Links and Thoughts


The right-wing xenophobic sentiments in the UK and the US are hugely worrisome to me, because of my fear that right after the hate directed at immigrants and Muslims lurks hatred of Jews. And you know how well that worked out last time around.

The EU is a troubled organization (Paul Krugman spelled out why the other day) and yet its unifying capabilities have been a bulwark against a repeat of the disasters of World Wars I and II. People of the UK, did you bother to review that history before you voted, narrowly, to leave the EU? All you need to do is look around at the war memorials in every church and village in the land.




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4 comments:

  1. Civic CenterJune 24, 2016 at 3:00:00 PM PDT

    Thanks for that link to Charles Stross's blog. It made me want to read some of his sci-fi fiction. Do you have a recommendation for a starter book/series?

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  2. Lisa HirschJune 24, 2016 at 3:43:00 PM PDT

    I've liked everything of his that I have read, or better. The two Halting States books (Scotland, future dystopia) are excellent and I'm sorry there won't be a third. These might be good to start with. They are very smart and tightly plotted.

    I've read the second of the Saturn's Children books without having read the first (groan).

    His current ongoing series:

    The Merchant Princes, where a doctor-turned-science-reporter stumbles into an alternate time line where several Mafia-like families are the bosses of a low-tech feudal society. She turns out to be a long-lost heiress. Complications ensue, political, economic, and romantic.

    The Laundry Files, a sort of espionage-cum-spy-fiction-cum-Lovecraft series, actually sort of indescribable but a whole lot of fun. I read the first couple, thought them okay, then last I picked up the next in the series and tore through everything that had been published to date.

    I love the Laundry Files, which come with a heavy dose of pastiche in the early books.

    I have read one of his other books BUT I CAN NEVER REMEMBER WHICH ONE, even though I SAW it the other day.

    Pro tip: Stross will be at Borderlands Books in SF next month for an event related to the publication of the next Laundry Files book.

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  3. Henry HollandJune 24, 2016 at 9:12:00 PM PDT

    One of the many side-effects of the Brexit will be Scotland leaving the Union and Northern Ireland being re-integrated in to its Southern part. Wales, ?

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  4. Lisa HirschJune 25, 2016 at 10:37:00 AM PDT

    I'm not so sure about that. See the latest about certain requirements concerning Scotland and Northern Ireland - Stross's blog has a post about this.

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