This person doesn’t strike me as particularly clever or admirable – note the moment late in this article where she, a white woman, Has Opinions about what jokes black men ought to laugh at. But in this article she touches on legitimate concerns about the way internet advertisers seem to get access to everything a smart phone+social media can tell them about specific individuals. Her language is at times almost superstitious, but that too is interesting as an insight into how superstition arises, from attempts to create mental models explaining what one does not understand.

My own advice to anyone trying to outfox the advertisers is to go wide with the number of your interests and narrow with the focus of them. For instance, I’ve watched at least excerpts of every surviving Jane Austen adaptation not set in contemporary times, plus read all seven books (if Northanger Abbey counts, then so does Lady Susan) at least once and 80% of Georgette Heyer; but I’m not super interested in a). Downton Abbey, b). The Crown, c). steamy Regency romances, or d). Charles Dickens, so a lot of ads that are aimed at me because the advertisers think interest A means interest B ends up being way off target.

If this sound like the best way to confuse online advertisers is to be an annoying, finicky hipster, well, here’s some humbler advice. Avoid social media as much as possible and avoid clicking on internet ads at all costs. Watch foreign language programming as much as you stand, from as many cultures/languages as you can stand, because few things are funnier than being served Spanish language ads right after you were watching the Italian language series Don Matteo. Engage with real life people about things that don’t particularly interest you and bring your phone along; the resulting confusion in the ads is hilarious.

Let’s move to Bray Studios, they said. That way if Sir Christopher Lee decides to lodge a protest from the afterlife, he’ll show up in Victorian evening wear instead of wizard’s robes, they said.

Incidentally, I get really tired of Lee’s fans going all CHOSEN BY TOLKIEN HIMSELF about Lee’s involvement in the LOTR movies. According to Lee, he sent Tolkien a fan letter mentioning that he was an actor who would like to play Gandalf someday. Tolkien wrote back “giving him permission” to play Gandalf. This sounds consistent with Tolkien’s somewhat stiff and unenthusiastic tone in published letters dealing with LOTR adaptation attempts.

Tolkien was not a big movie goer. There is a story about him chatting up Ava Gardner at a party without having the faintest idea who she was. It’s unlikely that he recognized Lee’s name or had seen enough of his work to have an opinion about said work.

Sir Christopher made a good Saruman. He would have made a better Saruman if the filmmakers had leaned into the Saruman traits he could identify with: the gifted man who’s confident in his abilities but feels like he’s not getting a fair shake from the people around him. He would also have been an excellent Gandalf. But enough with CHOSEN BY TOLKIEN HIMSELF.

This is the internet’s most absurd Cyber Monday Sale, wherein I remind you that my space opera Shadow Captain is $0.99 and my romantic fantasies, Slaying a Tyrant and Marrying a Monster, are free. Happy Shopping!

A number of people all across the political spectrum in the USA have a weird fetish for the French Revolution. I confess, I am not a fan. Yes, the Bourbon regime was overbearing, corrupt, bankrupt, and a trainwreck looking for a place to happen. But all the Jacobins and their political allies brought France in 1789 was bloodshed and chaos, which led to the dictator Napoleon, which led to more bloodshed and chaos. Even after Napoleon, the country would be racked with periodic upheavals for almost a hundred years. So much for the Goddess Liberty, whom the Jacobins called Marianne.

Sometimes there are cases where it seems like the only thing anyone can do is storm the palaces, drive out the people in charge, and try to start over again. We seem to be seeing something like that in Sri Lanka right now. To people in that situation, all I can say is: “Good luck, and God protect you,” and hope they can learn from the past mistakes of people driven to similar desperation.

To the people who seem to be think being in that situation would be cool or fun or even cathartic, Alan Rickman’s fifth most famous movie character has a suitable reply.

Two pieces of news related to Shadow Captain:

-It will be free for five days, starting today, so if you don’t have a Kindle Unlimited account, this is a great time to check it out!

-Like a lot of authors, I have a love-hate relationship with Amazon and its dominant place in the ebook marketplace at the best of times, and certain developments at Amazon have led to me deciding not to renew Shadow Captain’s participation in the Kindle Unlimited program. If you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription, you will have until June 18, 2022, to download the book for free. After that, Kindle Unlimited subscribers will not be able to download the book for free, but if you have already downloaded it by June 18, 2022, you should be able to read it at your convenience.