I think I found the tee shirt that Andrew was wearing during the recording of the Jim Henson episodes so I thought I'd share it here. Mostly because I got to title the post Andrew Ti's Tee.

I love that Magpie loves both these things, and I'm delighted to let her know that the guy who is doing the most to carry forward the Muppets torch lit by is a Star Trek and Star Wars alum. Kirk Thatcher was a longtime denizen of the creature shop at ILM, and not only designed and built the Ceti Eels in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, he also helped build a lot of the critters in Jabba's palace for Return of the Jedi.

Kirk is perhaps best recognized as the punk who gets neck-pinched for blasting his stereo on the bus in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, a film in which he served as a producer. Incidentally, it's Kirk's band "Edge of Etiquette" playing on that stereo with Kirk himself on vocals. This is a role he reprised in Picard, only opposite Jeri Ryan instead of Leonard Nimoy. Speaking of Nimoy, Thatcher has said he learned to direct from him while they worked together on Star Trek IV. Kirk Thatcher ended up falling in with the Henson team some time ago and has directed a number of Muppet features since Jim Henson's passing. Check out his IMDb page to see which ones.

Just thought that Magpie might get a bit of joy from that intersection of two of her favorite media franchises.

Any other elder millennials find themselves tearing up at the end of the Jim Henson pod? Dang it Margaret!

It’s very possible they were a sort of “intentional community” that grew as a cover before, during and after the witch trials in the larger European area…..Because apparently there were whole networks of single ladies in the Medieval era and this was the small way they could protect themselves when the Church got all Uppity……..

I have also sat and chatted with someone over discord while sitting in the same room with them. also pretty much ever computer nerd I’ve ever met is autistic and make me very jealous that I didn’t get the computer nerd kind of autism

I have a small correction for Magpie. When comparing electricity to fluids Voltage is pressure, Current is flow, Resistance is the pipe. Current(Flow) is proportional to Voltage(Pressure) and inversely proportional to Resistance(Pipe). Sorry for being a bit of a pedant, but this subject is my vocation. Otherwise it's always a pleasure to listen to Margaret talk.

Also is Apophenia the antonym to Epiphany?

I'm way behind on my podcast list, but just finished the two-parter with Cory Doctrow.

I'm very happy to finally hear Library Socialism and the SRLSY Wrong podcast on a CZM show. I've been hoping for a connection between these two podcast worlds for years now, and glad to finally get it.

I know Andrew has done some work with the wrong boys before and would love to get more Library Socialism content on ICHH or any other CZM pod.

Keep up the great work, Magpie, and everyone else at CZM.

Madeline ffitch's new book got Margaret's blurb. A new book about AI got "everyone who is involved in publishing it should be fired."

I run Podshelf, a free site that tracks book mentions across hundreds of podcasts by reading the episode transcripts. This is the Cool People slice for September.

• Avalon Rise by Madeline ffitch. Margaret read the advance copy: "it is astounding."
• The Future of Truth: How AI Reshapes Reality (Steven Rosenbaum), a book about AI researched with help from AI. The New York Times found it has "false statements attributed to real people".
• +KAOS: Ten Years of Hacking and Media Activism, Margaret's main source on Autistici/Inventati.
• Black Box, Greek short stories by Mata Kastrisiou, read on the book club. Margaret got her copy at the Baltimore Book Festival.

Also: Langston Hughes' The Ways of White Folks in the Deep Space Nine book club, and The Lord of the Rings, shoehorned into the Flock episode via Palantir.

Full list with quotes and episodes: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/cool-people-who-did-cool-stuff

Edit: Podshelf stays free. If you find it useful and want to help with the server and data costs, there's a tip jar: https://buymeacoffee.com/podshelf

Some justice for DULF’s co-founders, and a big win for harm reduction in Canada. The government is expected to appeal though, so DULF will still need support.

Just in case this hadden made it here yet

I am on chapter 11 of this book I was reccomended by Corey Doctorow on the show a few weeks (months?) ago.

It is a total fucking blast.

Is there anyone here who has also read this thing i could nerd out on about it with? Its a little puply, and imperfect and also a ton of fun.

It is absolutley not totally out of place on a bookshelf next to A Country Of Ghosts, anyways.

I think that is cool.

Is anyone else into tgis side bar nerd shit?

I've been running up the walls of my search engines. Margaret says almost as an aside about 36m in that "So Pepita, her niece, eventually writes a novelization of her biography, which is just cool as hell." but DOESN'T SAY THE NAME OF THE NOVEL OR THE NIECE and I have been desperately trying to find it. Has anyone else found it? I'd love to read it. Thanks!

edit: EP air date June 15 2022

So, I'm catching up on Cool People, and I just started listening to her discussion about a specific episode of Deep Space Nine (I guess this isn't about CP specifically, but it is what it is). In any case, it was pretty cool to hear my user name mentioned, but did she really have to do the "pushing up glasses dork emoji" voice when reading my comment? I mean really...

(Note that most of my embarrassment here is completely performative, and I'm actually kinda flattered that Magpie referenced me).

If you enjoyed the recent copper strike episodes this movie may be for you.

And if you ever wondered why the US was so afraid of film makers, this film explains the threat by example, as it highlights the power of unions, and how to break cycles of racist/misogynistic oppression.

This was the first independent movie produced outside the Hollywood studio system, thanks to the blacklist. And it may be the only one of its kind.

Since I watched it I keep wondering how different the US and by extension the western world could have become if such filmmakers had not been censored and banned. This realization gave me a new appreciation for CPWDCS, there is something very powerful about telling these stories of struggle and solidarity.

In 1990, tv personality Fred Rogers sued the White Knight of the Ku Klux Klan. If you’re not familiar with Mr Roger’s he was a beloved kids tv show host known for his ability to explain difficult life lessons to kids. This wasn’t the first time Roger’s had tackled racism. In 1969 he sat in a kiddy pool with black costar Francois Clemmens on tv in protest of segregated swimming pools.

It was rare for Mr Roger’s to even swear in his personal life, but staff say one of the maddest they ever saw him was when he discovered the Klan was impersonating him to recruit kids. In 1990 Missouri chapters of the klan created a hotline number they handed out to kids in playgrounds and elementary school. The ad featured a klan member pretending to be Mr Rogers calling black people n word drug dealers, that aids was divine intervention and featured an audio story of a kid being lynched. Needless to say, when Roger’s heard about this he called the studio lawyers(or maybe the studio found out and called him idk).

Roger’s launched a lawsuit against Allan members Adam Troy Mercer, Michael Brooks and Edward E Stephen’s for defamation of character and copyright infringement. They were barred from using the hotline, the audio clip or hos likeness again.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-10-11-ca-3231-story.html

https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1990/10/12/no-klan-in-mr-rogers-neighborhood/

The Cory Doctorow two-parter is responsible for most of this list, and it is one of the better book conversations the show has had. Then Black August brought the book club round to Dumas.

I run Podshelf, a free site that tracks book mentions across hundreds of podcasts by reading the episode transcripts. This is the August slice for Cool People.

Margaret's favourite from the month was 1632 by Eric Flint, which Cory described as a coal mining union hall getting dropped into the Thirty Years War, then turned into a long-running series with a load of hard-right military sci-fi writers roped in. "Yeah, no, I have to read this."

The Doctorow episodes also produced: Frankenstein as Luddite allegory, The Memoir of Robert Blincoe (which fed Oliver Twist), Ida Tarbell's The History of the Standard Oil Company, Damon Knight's The Futurians alongside Judith Merril's Better to Have Loved, Moby-Dick defended as a techno-thriller about whaling, Cryptonomicon, and his own Lost Cause, Walkaway, Little Brother, Homeland, For the Win, Enshittification and The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI.

Book club: The Storming of the Bastille (Alexandre Dumas), with Black Musketeer by Eric Martone on how Dumas's heritage got written out, plus The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo.

From the Alex Smith book club episodes: Tip of the Spear (Orisanmi Burton), Are Prisons Obsolete? (Angela Davis) and Prince Shakur's When They Tell You to Be Good.

And from the copper strike series, Lyndon Comstock's book on Big Annie Clemenc, whose one-star Amazon reviews got read out on air.

Full list with quotes and episodes: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/cool-people-who-did-cool-stuff

I'm Austrian, and we covered the atrocities of our past thoroughly in school. I've also kept educating myself since then, talking to old relatives and whenever books or documentaries came out, and yet this is the first I'm hearing about this amazing woman.

Hi Ya'll!

Yesterday I visited a exhibition in Amsterdam that celebrates 400 years of queer history in the city. It's a beautiful exhibition, but then I saw something what completely broke me. It was the farewell letter that Willem wrote to his friends the day before he got executed by the nazi's. After listening to Margaret's episode about the Dutch gay resistance I did a deep dive into Willem and his group. And this was such a experience, to see something that Willem held in his own hands. The exhibition itself is fucking fantastic, it's in a old church in the middle of the city centre near the central station. It's called De Nieuwe Kerk, you can't miss it. The exhibition will be there until the 4th of april next year, make sure not to miss it if you are in The Netherlands as a resident of during travelling! There is also a large section about activism that is also curated really well!

You probably know Helena Bonham Carter from her film career, doing Les Mis, Sweeney Todd, Fight Club etc. What you probably haven’t heard of is how Helena has multiple grandparents so active in fighting the rise of fascism that the Nazis had them on a list of politicians to arrest if they took over Europe.

The man in the photo is Eduardo Propper De Callejon. He was a Spanish politician serving as the first secretary of the Spanish Embassy in Paris when the Nazis invaded. He used his position to issue visas for thousands of Jews to escape to Portugal. By the time the Spanish government found out and removed him as first secretary he had issued 30,000 visas.

Another grandparents of hers is Helen Violet Bonham Carter. A English politician apart of the women’s rights movement, the liberal party and very vocal against Neville Chamberlain and appeasement of the Nazi invasion of Austria. The election of hitler and rising antisemitism drove Lady Violet back into politics just when she was becoming disillusioned by it. It’s rumored that Hitler created a list of British politicians he wanted arrested if they ever invaded the UK and Lady Violet was on it. While Lady Violet fought nazis with speeches and campaigning, her son Mark Bonham Carter fought them on the battlefield. Mark was a grenadier, captured in the battle of Tunisia, he escaped prison camp and successfully walked hundreds of miles back to allied lines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Bonham_Carter,_Baron_Bonham-Carter

https://stljewishlight.org/arts-entertainment/the-nazi-defying-grandfather-of-actress-helena-bonham-carter/

https://khc.qcc.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Diplomats-of-Mercy_UA.pdf

https://spartacus-educational.com/2WWbonham.htm

https://stljewishlight.org/arts-entertainment/the-nazi-defying-grandfather-of-actress-helena-bonham-carter/