   Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
Tomorrow, April 1st 2025, we have a massively important State Supreme Court election here in the state of Wisconsin. It will decide the balance of the state supreme court, and it's vitally important that we get Susan Crawford elected. Elon Musk has literally poured millions of dollars into Brad Schimel's campaign, and we are fighting for our lives here. I've already voted, and if you haven't yet and you live here... make sure you do.
But no matter what happens tomorrow, no matter what the result is, the fight is far from over. ICE agents are grabbing people off the streets, our public institutions are being systematically destroyed, and our international and diplomatic relations with historically close allies are just, honestly, fucked right now. Today is Trans Day of Visibility, and trans and queer rights have been under steady attack by the right. As a nonbinary person and member of the trans community, I'm genuinely scared for a lot of my friends right now.
But we fight. We stand up. We survive.
If we accept defeat, we are handing victory to those who want us dead. By living and fighting, we carry on to the next day and then the day after that. I know I posted it right after the election last November, but there's a pretty famous Joe Hill quote everyone should keep in mind: "Don't waste any time mourning. Organize!"
Go out, hug your friends. Build a local community if you can, and get involved in your local politics. Make sure you call your Reps and Senators every day if you can, and for pete's sake fucking vote.
We can make it as long as we don't stop fighting.
Remember that on April 5th at 11AM Eastern/10AM Central you can join me for the Critical Thinking Witches' Collective's April Brew virtual event! Attendance is free, and you can register here!
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Story of my life. “Wait, what am I doing here? When did I become staff?”
Yeah, that happened to me too XD
Mine is more something i signed up for years and years ago and they’ve never removed me from the list… I got birthday cards from McDonalds for something like 20 years.
As someone who a) just got a smartphone, b) knows tons of people without smartphones, and c) uses paper schedules anyway, I want to punch Roy.
I hated the thought of cons not printing out programs… until I finally got myself a smartphone. Now I get all weirded out any time I’m at a con that DOESN’T use Guidebook or some other online thing.
One of the things that cheeses me off about RI Comiccon is that while they PROVIDE a program book, it doesn’t have a schedule of events in it. You have to go to the lobby and copy down whatever it is you want to see that they’ve put up on a whiteboard!
Isn’t that the same con that had to have fire marshals step in because they oversold the event?
Paragons of effective management, really. 😛
Yep, that’s them. I went to lunch early enough that I got back into the con before the hammer came down. A friend I met the next day told me HE’D been locked out because they were over crowded. It’s a thing. I remember Phil Foglio did a strip about a NY Star Trek con where Ticketron oversold the con and something like 14,000 people showed up. Last year they had to make refunds for the people who paid extra for the “Batman” section of the con. Yvonne Craig cancelled months before the event and Julie Newmar (who I’D been looking forward to seeing) had her flight cancelled because some one shot up LAX! Adam West and Burt Ward did the best they could, but they were bored and it showed.
I keep every program book from every con I have attended. Not having one at Otakon just felt weird… I wanted something physical I could bring back to show the staff here, but they were pretty much electronic-only (I heard later there WERE program books, but there were very few printed.)
Oh, we’ve had this debate many a time, but it comes down to this:
Everyone wants one. But most folks leave their pocket program guide in their hotel and asks for another one. We go through 500 extra every convention.
We made Conbooks an optional grab and cut printing of them by 20-30%, but people want the printed program guide, even if it’s online.
Live with it – you print up a batch of schedules (one or two sheets generally does the trick), put them out for people to take as needed, and put up a big one as a poster behind the information desk for when you run out. Yes it’s a good idea to have an on-line schedule – be sure you can update it on the fly. But don’t dare Murphy by depending on it solely. The number of things that can go wrong is scary…