Category Archives: Uncategorized

Minneapolis Mayoral Race, 2017

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Here’s the list of everyone running for Mayor of Minneapolis, broken up into convenient chunks of four because I’m thinking I’ll do four people per post.

Troy Benjegerdes FARMER LABOR
Raymond Dehn DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR
Jacob Frey DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR
Al Flowers DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR

Charlie Gers LIBERTARIAN PARTY
Tom Hoch DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR
Betsy Hodges DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR
Gregg A. Iverson DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR

Nekima Levy-Pounds DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR
Ronald Lischeid PEOPLE OVER POLITICS
L.A. Nik INDEPENDENT
Aswar Rahman DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR

David Rosenfeld SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY
Ian Simpson THE IDEA PARTY
Captain Jack Sparrow BASIC INCOME GUARANTEE
David John Wilson RAINBOWS BUTTERFLIES UNICORNS

Some of these people have web pages that are linked from the MyBallot site. Of those, some of them also work. (John David Wilson’s site has not yet loaded for me, which is very disappointing as I’d like to know what the principals of the Rainbows Butterflies Unicorns party are.)

 

Caucuses are terrible.

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Of all the weird things I would have predicted for 2017, “caucuses are awesome and we should switch to them!” as a national movement would not have been on the list. I feel pretty confident in asserting that the bulk of the people currently agitating for caucuses are doing so 100% because their preferred candidate did better in caucus states, and not because they live in a caucus state.

Minnesota has caucuses. I’ve been going to them for years. THEY ARE TERRIBLE.

Let’s assume just as a baseline that you love going to meetings. (Because that’s what caucuses are: meetings.) Do you love enormous, overcrowded meetings where you can’t hear and have only a vague idea of what’s going on? What if the room is too warm because there are about five times as many people in it as are supposed to be in it?

Do you like having to park a mile away and walk the rest of the way to your meeting? Do you like having to stand outside in a long line just to get into the building, which turns out to be people just trying to look at maps to determine which meeting they’re supposed to go to, and once you’ve done that, would you like to stand in yet ANOTHER line to get into your specific room, where you’ll then have to stand because they ran out of chairs?

Do you love it when the people running things are inexperienced volunteers who have held meetings before, but they were the sort of meeting that only 15 people came to, and now there are people spilling out of every doorway? (No one ever gets good at running these because presidential caucuses happen every 4 years. And if there’s a Democratic incumbent they’re pretty much a formality.)

Because, I mean, if you’re a fan of all this — even if your state doesn’t hold caucuses for the presidential race, they probably do hold party meetings of some kind and you could still go. (The horrible traffic snarls and parking hassles might be harder to arrange, but you could simulate them by driving very slowly to your destination and parking a mile away and walking, if that’s an important part of the experience for you.)

Minnesotans have done caucuses basically forever and we are so fed up with them that we passed a law this spring switching to a primary for 2020. It passed with overwhelming majorities in both houses of the legislature, because after the 2016 caucuses, legislators were inundated with irate phone calls and e-mails from constituents saying, “THIS SYSTEM IS TERRIBLE. WE WANT A PRIMARY.”

In 2016, Minnesota had 204,000 Democrats show up to caucus, and 114,245 Republicans. In Wisconsin, which has a similar population and general voting turnout, they held a primary a month later. 1,000,000 people cast a Democratic ballot, and 1,000,000 cast a Republican ballot.

Caucuses suppress turnout. (That’s obvious to everyone, I hope?)

But more than that: caucuses rely on suppressed turnout.

Because two million Minnesotan cannot caucus.

As it was, on March 1, 2016, traffic backed up more than a mile on Snelling Ave an hour before the caucus was convened because people were trying to get to the site. A bunch of my friends in Minneapolis stood in line for an hour before they were even able to get into the building. If you multiplied the number of people attending by five, it would completely shut down Minneapolis and St. Paul.

When your system relies on people not showing up, it’s not a functional system.

(Finally, regarding the claim that they’re cheaper: in Minnesota, the parties had to cover the cost of the caucuses, so yes, they were cheaper for the state. You know what? If you put every precinct in a ward in one location, and reduce voting hours from 13 hours to 1.5, that’ll be cheaper. You know what we call it when it happens in a general election? VOTER SUPPRESSION.)

For more on caucuses, please see the series of posts I wrote last year, doing my part to explain this somewhat mysterious system to novice users:

Do you want to be in the room where it happens?
How to find your caucus location.

Minnesota Caucuses: The Basics
Location and time, who can caucus, how the presidential preference ballot works (new in 2016: it was actually binding on both parties), accessibility, obstacles.

Minnesota Caucuses: What Actually Happens
Signing in, parliamentary procedure, resolutions, guest speakers, recruitment, delegates, counting the ballots.

Minnesota Caucuses: FAQ
How to minimize the time spent at your caucus if all you want to do is cast a goddamn ballot; just how does the whole “party” thing work anyway; what does it mean if it’s a mess and everything goes wrong; CAUCUSES ARE TERRIBLE, HOW DO I DEMAND A PRIMARY LIKE NORMAL STATES HAVE?

 

Election 2017: City Races in Minneapolis and St. Paul

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I really need to get going on election blogging, but I have a novel that’s due in November, and I wanted to get a first draft done before I dived into this.

The draft is done! Done-ish. (I need to do a first pass before I send it to beta readers.) It is a YA novel based on my short story Cat Pictures Please, to be published by Tor YA. Anyway, I’ll be getting to this soon, and I took a peek at the city ballots to see just what I was in for.

Both Minneapolis and St. Paul have city races this year. St. Paul’s mayor, Chris Coleman, is not running again, so it’s an open seat. Minneapolis’s mayor, Betsy Hodges, is completing her first term and a number of people are dissatisfied with her, so she’s viewed as vulnerable. Minneapolis also has races for Park Board, City Council, and There are also races for Park Board, City Council, and Board of Estimate and Taxation. (That one’s not a competitive race; if I’m reading it right, there are two seats up for election, and exactly two people running for those seats, both of them incumbents.) In St. Paul, there’s also a School Board race.

Last time, Minneapolis had thirty-five candidates running for Mayor. In the intervening four years, they raised the cost of filing to run from $20 to $500, which has significantly cut down on the number of people doing it — it’s now only 16, so a little under half the number who ran last time. Of those 16, there are 5 or 6 with a reasonable shot at actually winning; 2-3 more who are treating their own candidacy seriously even if no one else is; and a couple of weirdos. I’m really curious whether David John Wilson of the Rainbows Butterflies Unicorns party is John Charles Wilson the Laurist Communist but with a new name and political party? His website isn’t loading for me.

There are three people running for City Council in my old ward; not sure about other wards, and I need an address to plug in to get the Secretary of State site to cough up a sample ballot.

Nine people are running for three Park Board At Large seats. There’s also three people running for the District 5 Park Board Seat. (Again, I’ll need to go hunting for the info on who’s running in the other districts.)

Minneapolis residents can rank three candidates in each race.

In St. Paul, we have ten people running for mayor. There are three I’d describe as front-runners, a couple more who are serious candidates, and one person who I think gets messages from space aliens through her dental fillings. We also have six people running for three School Board seats. In St. Paul, we get to rank up to six candidates for mayor. We get to vote for three school board candidates (because there are three open seats) but we don’t get to rank them, because the method of choosing school board candidates is determined by the State Legislature. (Don’t you envy the people who get to hand over ballots and explain that to people? If you do, you can sign up to do it! They are ALWAYS looking for election judges.)

Anyway! I will be back to start work on this soon. If you live in Minneapolis and want to be sure I cover your City Council race and/or your Park Board race, please leave an address in your precinct in my comments so I can plug that in to the SoS site. (And if you want to just pull up your own sample ballot, you can get it here: http://myballotmn.sos.state.mn.us. This site will also tell you where you go to vote.)

I’m in a Fringe Show about motivational speaking

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So hey, everyone, I AM IN A FRINGE SHOW. It’s called “Your Motivational Power Hour” and we are spending an hour making fun of motivational speeches.

I’m satirizing “Who Moved My Cheese,” and if you like my science fiction, you’ll probably like my bit in this show. Also in the show: Haddayr Copley-Woods, satirizing the HEROICALLY INSPIRATIONAL DISABLED PERSON school of motivational speaking, and Ed, who will be making fun of Covey’s time-management techniques and that video about people having fun at work by hurling fish at each other.

I think it’s going to be a lot of fun to watch, and the great thing about Fringe is, even if I’m lying and it’s actually terrible, you’ll only be there for an hour, and then you can use your day pass to go see something else right afterward! (I really think it’s going to be awesome, though.)

I wrote about the Minnesota Fringe a lot back on my old LiveJournal, because I’ve been going for years, and I really love it. There are groups / individuals who I’ll seek out because they are consistently awesome, but part of the magic of the Fringe is that they make it really easy to just check out the next show at that same venue (or right nearby) and I’ve seen some pretty awesome stuff largely on impulse.

Here’s how Fringe (currently) works: you buy a day pass from any venue box office ($16/weekdays, $22/weekends, $5/kids under 12) and you can see as many shows as you want with that pass. There are four shows a day on weekdays, seven shows a day on weekends, and you can see as many as you want. If there’s a show you’re worried will sell out, you can reserve a seat for an extra fee; otherwise, it’s first-come, first-served.

Our show is at the Phoenix Theater, at 2605 Hennepin Ave. Performances are Thursday, 8/3 at 8:30 p.m.; Sunday, 8/6 at 7:00pm; Tuesday, 8/8 at 5:30 p.m.; Friday, 8/11 at 10:00 p.m.; and Sunday, 8/13 at 4:00pm.

Please come! (And please leave a review! Reviews are a big part of how Fringe-goers decide what to see next.)

If you look at the schedule, you’ll note that there’s a half-hour break between shows. If you book it, you can switch neighborhoods in that half-hour, but what we usually do is just to plan an evening or an afternoon in some specific neighborhood. Phoenix Theater is in Uptown, within a 20-minute walk of Intermedia Arts, Bryant-Lake Bowl, HUGE Improv, and Jungle Theater. So if you’re coming to see us, you’ll be near those other theaters; check out the shows at those venues as well. (The “20 minute walk” is based on Google Maps thinking you can walk 1 mile in 20 minutes; if you’re a slow walker, plan accordingly.)

If you’re a regular Fringe attendee, I hope you’ll check out our show! If you’ve never been to a Fringe show but are going to come see our show because you know one of us, I hope you’ll check out some other shows with your day pass, and discover just how much fun the Fringe is.

 

Cat Pictures Please & Other Stories is out today!

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My short story collection (published by Fairwood Press) is OUT TODAY!

Cat pictures cover Signage.indd

It includes “Cat Pictures Please” (of course) but also a number of stories that are not online:

“Isabella’s Garden,” about a preschooler with supernatural gardening powers. Originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy. (Almost the very last issue.)

“The Wall,” my Berlin Wall time travel story, which appeared in Asimov’s and won the Asimov’s Reader’s Choice Award.

“Artifice,” which is a story about robots and board game parties and what makes us human. It appeared in Analog.

“Cleanout,” which is my story about the emotional difficulty of cleaning out the extremely cluttered home of a dead or dying relative. This is one of those incredibly common difficult experiences, and I wanted to write about it. It’s also about family secrets. Published in F&SF.

AND ALSO:

“Perfection” and “Ace of Spades,” two stories that have not been previously published and are not available anywhere else.

As well as “Cat Pictures Please,” “Bits,” “So Much Cooking,” “Wind,” and other stories that have appeared online, gathered together here for your convenience (or so you can give it to your friend or family member who doesn’t much Internet.)

(Not included in this volume: the Seastead stories. Those fit together into a novel, which my agent is trying to sell.)

If you would like a SIGNED copy of Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories, my two local SF/F bookstores can set you up. Uncle Hugo’s. Dreamhaven. You can also, of course, order it from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.  It is available in both print and e-book versions.

 

 

A note on political posting

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I’ve had a couple of friends ask me if I’m going to do any political blogging ahead of the City DFL Conventions.

The answer: no. I look at the DFL Conventions and the endorsement process as a useful winnowing process that cuts down on the amount of work I have to do. If you volunteer as a delegate or alternate, you actually have access to a lot of information, or you should — campaigns should be calling you up. Candidates themselves should be talking to you and trying to win your support. You know what your own priorities are, right? You (hopefully) have the opportunity, as a delegate, to say directly to the person running for mayor, “please tell me what you’re going to do to increase the supply of affordable housing” or “Tell me about your philosophy of how a mayor should work with a police department” or “how much money do you hope to spend on bike paths?”

I am not a delegate to any conventions this year — the St. Paul convention happened while I was out of town (they didn’t endorse anyone — so much for winnowing) and obviously I’m not a Minneapolis delegate (but I wouldn’t have been anyway as I’m going to be a GoH at CONvergence that weekend).

Anyway. Regardless of the Minneapolis outcome, both Minneapolis and St. Paul will have multiple candidates on a ranked-choice ballot this fall. (Even if there’s an endorsement in Minneapolis, someone’s going to ignore it. Plus a few of the flakes will be on there.) So you’ll get plenty of analysis from me, just not yet. Sorry!

 

Election 2017: Caucusing & City Races

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So there’s a declared candidate for the St. Paul School Board who’s (a) a TERF (trans-exclusive radical feminist), (b) apparently also an anti-vaxxer, (c) this is apparently just the tip of the iceberg of her overall awfulness, according to people who know her from Facebook neighborhood groups and so on.

I do not normally start blogging in March for a race that’s going to happen in November, but she’s upsetting enough to have already attracted a bunch of attention. And in fact, there is something worth bringing to the attention of my St. Paul readers that they can participate in if they’re concerned about making sure that TERFs (and other potential assholes) don’t slip by and onto the St. Paul School Board: the DFL Caucuses and City Convention are both still upcoming.

 

https://stpauldfl.wordpress.com/

Caucuses are being held next month: which day depends on your ward (if you live in St. Paul). It’s possible that you went to the caucuses a year ago and are already cringing. Just put that thought right ouf of your mind. Caucuses that are not trying to be a presidential primary are completely different events. They are calm, pleasant, celebratory little meetings, and you will be able to drive right over, find a place to park, stroll in, and chat casually with people who are running for School Board and Mayor and who want to earn your support. (And you can ask them things like, “so. Trans kids. Any thoughts?” and see what they say.)

At a lot of caucuses, you basically just raise your hand and sign up if you want to go to the convention to Be a Big Powerful Decider of Endorsements. This is not guaranteed, however. If you have more people who want to go than you have slots, you figure it out with Walking Subcaucuses. But you can, among other things, propose your own Walking Subcaucus for Undecided St. Paul Citizens Who Support Trans Kids and round up a bunch of likeminded people and send some of you on to the City Convention to focus on this particular issue. (Also, if you don’t get to be a delegate, you can easily sign up to be an alternate, and with a City Convention, odds are extremely high that if you show up on the day of the convention, you’ll get upgraded. I mean, for one thing, it’s June 17th. There will always be committed delegates who get up on a nice day in June and think, “fuck spending an entire day stuck inside the Washington Tech high school cafeteria. It is June in Minnesota and I am going to spend the day in my garden.“)

The City Convention is on June 17th, at Washington Tech High School, and will likely be a fairly long day, as they will be endorsing both School Board people and a Mayoral candidate. (Or possibly they’ll fail to endorse a mayoral candidate! That can happen, too. I expect they’ll settle on some school board candidates, though.)

But you can go to your caucus, and you can either sign up to be a delegate, or you can go to a walking subcaucus to send delegates who pledge not to support a transphobic asshole, and you can make absolutely damn sure that this woman doesn’t wind up with DFL endorsement.

(I think she’s very unliikely to get it. VERY VERY VERY. For a whole lot of reasons, including the very basic one of, “when neighbors who barely know you dislike you so strongly that they are actively out there warning people against you, your odds of finding diligent, helpful volunteers who will help you get through the endorsement process are really quite low.” But also, most of the people who show up at the DFL City Convention are quite progressive, and this woman’s views are not going to be a selling point that will impress many people. Note, I have no idea whether she’s even going for DFL endorsement; I don’t get the vibe that she actually knows what the hell she’s even doing politically. She could, I suppose, ask for Republican endorsement, instead, but most St. Paul residents consider that endorsement to be a big old warning label, so that certainly won’t get her any closer to the school board.)

DFL endorsement is extremely important in St. Paul for down-ticket races like school board, because the list of DFL-endorsed candidates get printed on ALL THE THINGS that come from the DFL, and lots of people just use those brochures as a checklist. There’s money that comes from the DFL, and volunteers who drop lit for everyone, and lots of other stuff.

Here’s a post I wrote last year about how a caucus runs:
https://naomikritzer.com/2016/02/28/minnesota-caucuses-what-actually-happens/ Ignore the stuff about (a) crowds and (b) counting presidential preference ballots, that’s no longer current.

And here’s a post I wrote about political conventions, and why you might want to go:

Political Conventions, and why you might want to go


This includes a detailed explanation of Walking Subcaucuses, but one additional note I’ll make: if you’re at your Senate District Convention picking delegates for the State Convention, you’re trying to divide up like 30 seats between 500 eager volunteers. Whereas if your precinct caucus DOES have to run a walking subcaucus to sort out delegates to the City Convention, it’ll be something more like, “50 people want to go and we only have 40 slots.” Very different dynamic.

If you become a City Convention delegate, you can expect a lot of phone calls and visits from people who’d like to serve on the School Board or be the next Mayor of St. Paul. Candidates will likely call you personally and ask to discuss your personal concerns. So among other things, if there’s an issue you feel strongly about, this is a GREAT opportunity to make sure that school board people and possible future mayors hear about it. (Note that these are not fundraising calls: what they want is your physical presence and votes at the City Convention, and hitting you up for money will just encourage you to dodge their calls. Although possibly you’ll get super excited about someone, and if that happens, they will be ecstatic if you want to volunteer, particularly at the City Convention — they need people to come in super early and stake out table space and hand out t-shirts and tell everyone who asks why you are thrilled to be supporting so-and-so… A lot of smaller candidates rely heavily on family members and personal friends to do this particular work, but when they can get convention delegates who are excited about supporting them, that is great news.)

AND ONE FINAL NOTE:

Everyone in Minnesota has caucuses upcoming! And Minneapolis ALSO has very interesting city elections coming up, so if you are a Minneapolis resident, by all means go to your Caucus, Ward Convention, and City Convention. (The Minneapolis DFL page has a list of who’s running for endorsement — not just for Mayor, but for the City Council, Park Board, and BET positions as well. Lots of excitement upcoming!)

 

I am writing a new novel

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So hey, fans of pushy, nosy, cat-loving AIs: I am writing a YA novel for Tor Books based on “Cat Pictures Please.”

It features the AI, a social network that revolves around cat pictures, and a teenager with an unstable home life, an obsession with bats, and a night-photography hobby.

It’s going to be AWESOME and I’m super excited. Here’s the announcement from Tor (and yes, the picture in the article is a picture of one of my cats, Balto): http://www.tor.com/2017/02/27/naomi-kritzer-cat-pictures-please-novel/

Gifts for People You Hate, 2016

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This has been quite a year, hasn’t it? It’s been the sort of shit year that leaves a lot of people dreading the holidays. So although I started this series years ago as a nod toward the idea that most of us heave a sigh and do whatever dance of holiday obligation has been laid out for us, I’m going to start by making a case for self-care. Make the plans that feel right to you, see the people whose company you enjoy, eat foods you like, give gifts only if you want to.

For some people out there, though, self-care can involve conflict avoidance, and that may mean buying a gift for someone they loathe because presenting a festively-wrapped box with a present inside is just easier than opting out.

As always, I tried to adhere to certain basic principles. The gifts should be cheap, but they shouldn’t be obviously cheap. They should be easy to find/purchase (which is why I provide so many Amazon links). And they should be the sort of gift you can present as if it’s an honest attempt to give them something they’ll like, even as it’s totally, totally wrong.

(And the usual disclaimer: I don’t give gifts to anyone I don’t like, so if I give you something horrible, it was accidental.)

Occupational Novelties

One of my college friends had a box of mugs, all of which said something like “world’s best teacher” or “I (HEART) MY TEACHER” or “check it out, it’s a picture of an apple, on a mug, for a teacher!” on them. His mom, of course, was a teacher, and she was inundated with teacher-themed mugs as gifts.

There are occupations that seem to attract related tchotchkes: doctors, lawyers, cops, teachers, nurses, and military service people are solidly on that list. You can present a themed mug, t-shirts, decorative wall plaque, or throw pillow, and cheerfully assure them that this made you think of them. They’ll thank you with feigned enthusiasm and add it to their collection of mugs, t-shirts, plaques, and pillows.

If it’s some profession that you almost never see stuff for (garbage collector, IRS auditor, agricultural extension agent…) then either this will be exciting and novel, or they’ll have twelve iterations of that item. Use your best judgment. (A lot depends on the rest of the family.) (Honestly, even if they’ve never seen an IRS auditor Christmas ornament before…this may be a suitably terrible gift.)

Terrible Gifts for Animal Lovers

There is an entire universe of bad animal tchotchkes out there. For example, this cat, which is holding a salt and pepper shaker and which just looks weirdly wrong. Cats don’t sit like that, they don’t hold their arms like that, and that is a seriously weird facial expression. Or there’s this clock, which comes in a wide variety of dog breeds. Normally, if you’re trying to buy a bad gift for a dog lover, one easy approach is to buy the wrong breed. Like, if the person owns golden retrievers, buy them something with pugs all over it. In this case, each dog is sufficiently off kilter that you should definitely buy the RIGHT breed.

Apparently there are now dog-breed-specific Monopoly variants. You’ll want to use your best judgment here, though: don’t give one of these if you’re going to get roped into a game of Monopoly. And from the department of “WHY? WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT THIS?” is a toaster that toasts a dog onto your bread. (One of the irritated reviewers notes that in order for the dog shape to show up properly, you’d better be using white bread. There’s also just the fact that when I make toast, it’s because I want toast, not because I want bread with a tiny design branded into the center of the slice.)

In the category of “bad gifts I have personally given with the best of intentions” would be a Siberian husky angel Christmas ornament (it wasn’t this one, but same basic idea) I once gave my mother-in-law. My in-laws raised and trained sled dogs and they were, in fact, amused by husky tchotchkes. But my mother-in-law looked at the husky angel with deep and obvious skepticism and said, “I have never yet met a husky that deserved that halo.” (Sadly, there are no husky-as-devil ornaments for people to hang on their tree. I think that would’ve made a good foll0wup the next year.)

There are quite a few people who have some animal they like a lot, and a collection. Giving them something for their collection tends to be a good gift. To make it a bad gift, find something that’s way too big; that’s supposed to be useful but definitely isn’t (like it’s supposed to hold umbrellas, but it only holds the sort of long, skinny, non-collapsible umbrellas that almost no one carries these days); that’s ugly and weird looking; that’s identical to some item they already have, or that’s the wrong category. People who want little elephants to put on a shelf probably do not actually want a giant elephant afghan blanket. People who love unicorns may not actually want photorealistic unicorn leggings. Etc.

Terrible Gifts for Drinkers

***I’m going to preface this section by stating for the record that I am not suggesting that anything on this list would be an appropriate gift to a person with an actual drinking problem. (In particular, don’t gift a booze-related gift to someone who’s been going to AA.)***

So let’s talk about wine. I like wine. I drink wine with my dinner quite regularly, mostly fairly cheap (like $10/bottle) red wines. (We used to drink a lot of Malbec. Then in the last year everyone else discovered Malbec and now the prices are going up.) You don’t actually need anything all that fancy to drink wine. I do think actual wine glasses are worth keeping around, and you need something to open bottles with. If you want to get a little bit fancy, some sort of vacuum-style plug you can shove in to an unfinished bottle will ensure it keeps longer. (You can, in fact, just shove the cork partway back in, and 99% of the time it’ll taste fine for a couple of days.)

There are all sorts of wine accessories you can buy someone that are pointless and bulky. For instance, all the weird items that will hold a single bottle of wine for you, including one that looks like a sparkly pink stilleto shoe, a some novelty gadgets that defy gravity, and this caddy that lets you dress your wine up as Santa for some reason.

You could also buy a decanter. Decanters are not pointless; they do let you decant wine, which I know some people like to do. (I have been enthusiastically enjoying wine for years without a decanter, and I don’t feel like I’m doing it wrong. Feel free to make your case for decanters in the comments if you want.) The obnoxious thing about decanters is that they tend to be large and weirdly proportioned and glass, i.e., super annoying to store. Here’s a reasonably cheap one. Or if you think they might already have a decanter, you could get them one that’s larger and weirder looking and thus, presumably, better.

There are also fancy-ass wine bottle openers, like this cordless electric wine bottle opener. Some of the best bad gifts try to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist, and super-fancy wine bottle openers are a good example of this. (There are people who need a fancy wine bottle opener due to arthritis, but most people can use a standard-issue corkscrew and probably already own a couple.) Since it’s rechargeable, the recipient will have to leave it set up on their counter, with the charger plugged into an outlet, in order to ever use it.

The vacuum-type wine bottle stoppers serve a purpose, but a decorative wine stopper is really no more useful than a cork, and if it’s made of decorative blown glass will have to be carefully stored between uses so it doesn’t break all over the place.

Finally, here is a set of stemless silicone wine glasses with a dorky “his & hers” design. The idea is that with these nice unbreakable glasses, you can bring your wine with you on picnics and drink it out of something classier than a Solo cup. Several reviews note that these cups smell weird and plasticky and the smell never goes away, and also the flexible silicon sort of collapses in on itself while you’re trying to hold your cup. (Bonus points if you give this to someone who lives in a state like Minnesota where drinking is actually illegal in all the parks, and you’re going to want to drink your wine out of something non-wine-looking anyway just to avoid potential hassles.)

For the beer drinker, there’s a wide variety of novelty bottle openers out there, including mermaids, the Milennium Falcon, and a bunch of openers that look like weaponry. Pick something that looks uncomfortable. You can also go the overly bulky route with this complicated magnetic thingie (this one’s actually desirable if you want un-bent bottle caps, but otherwise is a large and complex alternative to one of the simplest mechanical devices in existence), a countertop style that will take up space in their kitchen, one that has to be mounted on a wall, and one that mounts to the fridge with a very strong magnet but apparently doesn’t work for crap.

The beer equivalent of a decanter is probably a beer glass set. There are totally people who use them, but the vast majority of beer drinkers just drink their beer out of the bottle (or can). For extra irritation value, though, here is a set of 10oz beer glasses, since they’re probably drinking 12oz bottles.

Deplorable Gifts for Trump Supporters

I was going to suggest this mug (which accurately portrays Trump as both hideous and empty-headed) or this t-shirt (which is a parody of itself that most Trump supporters probably won’t really recognize) but I’ll be honest with you: I think Trump supporters, more than any others, need a charitable gift this year.

Charitable Gifts

For the person who voted for Donald Trump because ABORTION:
The Ali Forney Center
Lost-n-Found Youth
(Both organizations are shelters for homeless LGBT teenagers. You may also have a similar charity in your town.)
I know the lives of children are precious to you, so I have donated in your honor to a charity that cherishes and protects lives that have been thrown away.

For the person who voted for Donald Trump because GUNS.
ACLU
Freedom is important to both of us, so I’ve donated in your honor to an organization committed to defending our constitutional rights. 

For the person who voted for Donald Trump because BUILD A WALL.
#NODAPL
I’ve donated in your honor to support Americans who are working together to defend themselves against violent outsiders. 

For the person who voted for Donald Trump because LAW AND ORDER.
RAINN
National Resource Center on Domestic Violence
I know you care deeply about crime and crime victims, so I’ve donated in your honor to an organization that supports, protects, and assists victims of serious crimes.  

For the person who voted for Donald Trump because BLUE LIVES MATTER.
Everytown for Gun Safety
I’ve donated in your honor to support an organization committed to providing safer streets for police officers (and everyone else). 

For the Donald Trump voter who is sincerely outraged at the idea that Donald Trump supporters are a bunch of racists:
SPLC 
I know you don’t condone hate groups or hate crimes, so I thought you would appreciate a donation in your honor to a group that is working to make racism socially unacceptable again.

For the person who voted for Trump because they were convinced Obama and then Hillary were going to impose Sharia on them:
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
I donated in your honor to a vigilant watchdog group protecting us from religious tyranny.

For the person who proudly refers to themself as “deplorable”:
At this point I’m in favor of an open declaration of war.
The Clinton Foundation
I donated in your honor to the Clinton Foundation. MERRY CHRISTMAS, MOTHERFUCKER.

Happy holidays to all my readers!

Passive-Aggressive Gift Giving Guides from Previous Years:

2010: Beyond Fruitcake: Gifts for People You Hate
2011: Gifts that say, “I had to get you a gift. So look, a gift!”
2012: Holiday shopping for people you hate
2013: Gift Shopping for People You Hate: the Passive-Aggressive Shopping Guide
Gifts for People You Hate 2014: The Almost-Generic Edition
Whimsical Gifts (for people you hate), 2015

Also, if you’re amused by my writing, check out my essays at Bitter Empire: http://bitterempire.com/author/naomi-kritzer/

My Twitter feed: @naomikritzer

And my fiction that was published online this year:

Zombies in Winter

or last year:

Cat Pictures Please (Clarkesworld, January 2015.)
Wind (Apex, April 2015.)
So Much Cooking (Clarkesworld, November 2015.)
The Good Son (Lightspeed, March 2015 — reprint. Originally appeared in Jim Baen’s Universe, 2009.)

And if you just can’t get enough of my writing, you could consider buying:
Comrade Grandmother and Other Stories (short story collection)
Gift of the Winter King and Other Stories (short story collection)
My novels (there are five of them)

(I also have a short story collection coming next year from Fairwood Press! Which will be available in PRINT as well as e-book format! No “buy” link for that one yet, though.)

 

 

Fight with facts, not with rumors

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So, I deeply sympathize with the impulse to signal-boost when you hear about something horrible. In some cases it’s a really good idea. But it’s only helpful when you’re signal boosting stuff that’s real and current. 
This is particularly important when there’s a ton of stuff flying around.
Add to the signal, not to the noise.

If you’re reading a personal story a stranger has shared, I would suggest the following steps.

1. Find the original version. 
If you’re looking at a screencap of a Facebook post, go see if you can find the original Facebook post. If you’re looking at a screencap of a Tweet, go see if you can find the original Tweet. See if there’s more to the story in a Tweet thread or in the comments or subsequent posts. I’ll note that five minutes ago, I saw a post on Imgur that was a screen cap of a Tweet that was a real Tweet, but had been positioned to make it look like a response to something it wasn’t, completely changing the meaning. Context matters.
If you’re seeing a horrifying story from a person you don’t know at all, see if there’s anything else you can easily find out about them. Do you have mutual friends on Facebook? If you look at their FB and it’s wall-to-wall conspiracy theories, that matters. If they registered their Twitter account 15 minutes before they posted the horror story, that matters.
Take a few seconds to see if they seem like someone you’d believe if they walked up to you on the street and told you something important. Sometimes you can tell just from their broader social media that this person is not reliable. If that’s the case, don’t re-share. This doesn’t mean you should challenge their credibility (that’s generally a dick move. Not surprisingly, it’s been embraced by Trump supporters who want to believe that the surge in hate crimes is somehow being faked) but don’t re-share if you don’t trust the source.

2. Beware of the best story in the room.

Remember the Rolling Stone rape story that they had to retract? The journalist actually interviewed a number of women who’d been raped, but focused on the woman with the best story, the one with a wealth of horrifying details. Unfortunately, she was lying about many of the details.
The inherent problem is that the person who’s fabricating can always have the best story.
There are some amazing stories that are also true. But if all the details are practically cinematic, that’s a red flag.
3. If there’s something that sends up a red flag for you, trust your gut.
Or at least re-read the piece and think it through a second time before you re-share. Again, I’m not saying you should call someone a liar liar pants on fire because something in their story struck you as off! Just don’t forward it if you feel that sense of distrust.
Again, there is so much out there right now that is happening. You don’t need to signal-boost the stuff you have any doubts about. There is enough.
4. If someone is telling you a story about a thing that happened in their city, but they weren’t there and they weren’t a personal friend of the victim, the odds are super high that some of what they’re telling you is wrong. 
I’m saying this based on my personal knowledge of an incident in my town, and watching the stories about it shift and change before my eyes. The people telling the story are not lying, they’re participating in a large-scale version of the game of Telephone, and the results are about what you’d expect.
You don’t have to call anyone out, just don’t add to this problem by re-telling a story that was already third-hand or fourth-hand when it got to you.

If you are reading a news article that strikes you as important:

1. Check the date. OH MY GOD, PEOPLE. CHECK THE GODDAMN DATE.
If you’re looking at a source that doesn’t include any way to see if you’re looking at new news, or something from 2007, that’s actually a bad sign anyway, but try googling some of the details in the article to see what else pops up.
2. Check the source. 
Here is a list of left-leaning incredibly unreliable sites:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2016/09/18/please-stop-sharing-links-to-these-sites/
DO NOT SHARE NEWS STORIES FROM THESE SITES. If it’s a legit news story, you’ll be able to find it somewhere else. If they’re the only ones talking about it, do not trust the story. Needless to say there’s a huge list of similarly unreliable right-leaning sites and you shouldn’t share from those, either.
And there’s also a ton of full-on fake news sites. Some are supposedly “satire,” others are just fakey fake fake. If you’re reading something alarming and you don’t immediately recognize the source, Google the name of the site and see what turns up, or see if you can find the story other places.
3. Remember all the things that are easy to fake.
Newspaper sites can be fake. Twitter accounts can be fake. The blue checkmark is supposed to help you spot the real deal, but if you’re looking at an image-capture, both the little blue checkmark and the whole damn Tweet can be faked.
Have you seen that clickbait article saying that the next Star Wars movie is going to be filmed in a suburb of the nearest big city to you? It always has a URL that looks like the URL for one of your local TV stations (at least at first glance). Fake!
Photos can be faked. Or, quite often, it’s a real photo but it doesn’t actually show what the caption claims it shows. The huge crowd you’re seeing turns out to be sports fans, or people at an environmentalist march in Paris in 2012, or religious pilgrims. If you see an article with a photo, it’s frequently a stock photo and not a picture of the person in the article.
Videos can be faked. They can be edited to show things that look bad but have been taken wildly out of context. Or they can be clips from a movie, or from shows like “What Would You Do” where it’s real reactions but a staged situation. Or they’re from years ago and, like the photos, don’t show what the caption claims.
When we’re already on edge, when we’re angry and scared and uncertain, it’s that much easier for bullshit to bypass our usual mental security systems. This is much like how we are more likely to catch colds when we’re sleep-deprived, stressed out, and not eating right — our defenses are weak. Be aware of this tendency. 
4. Read things before you share them. 
Ideally, read all the way to the bottom. (If you’re sharing it so you won’t lose track of it — well, first of all, Facebook actually has a “save” feature for links that will do this for you, but if you’d rather share to save, just note that when you share.)
5. Signal-boost legit stories from legit sources. 
Find reliable but clickable sources when possible — a lot of people ration their NYT clicks and WaPo clicks because they don’t want to deal with the paywall. One of my favorite sources to share is NPR: reliable, trustworthy, free. If you want to share a NYT or WaPo story, sum it up in your share so your friends can assess whether it’s worth the click.
If one of your friends writes something you want to boost, be sure to note that this person is someone you personally know and trust. If you heard it verbally or they put it in a friends-locked post, and want to write about it publicly, make sure you have the details correct, and make sure your friend is OK with you sharing their story. 

If you actually witness or experience a hate crime:

Your first priority should always be protecting the victim. (Including yourself, if you’re the victim.) Don’t mess around with your camera if what you need to do is call 911.
If it’s over, and you’re a witness, tell the targeted person or people that you saw what happened. Tell them that if they want to report it to the police, you’ll be their witness and back them up. If they say they don’t want to call the police, give them your contact info in case they change their mind. (If you’re the victim and you’re surrounded by witnesses, hopefully they’ll approach you. It shouldn’t be on you to say “hey! please stick around so you can vouch for me that this happened!” But you should also feel free to make that request / demand.)
If you have the presence of mind to take a video, then do it. I can tell you right now that the odds of me ever shooting a video of anything in an emergency are close to zero. If you’re in a public place like a parking lot, you can check nearby businesses to see if they have a surveillance camera running that might have caught it. If you can spot a license plate, write down the number.
Nothing signal-boosts like media coverage. I asked a friend of mine who’s a journalist how to get a reporter to cover something that’s happened to you. She said that a police report is key; it’s a big part of how journalists sift out the bullshit. Even if it’s not something the cops are going to do much about, the fact that you made a report gives you credibility, since making a false report is a crime.
(When I say “not something the cops are going to do much about” I’m not saying that I think the police will ignore hate crimes. But if your report is, “someone pulled up in a car, jumped out, punched a woman in the hijab while screaming epithets, and then they jumped back in their car and drove away, and all I remember about the car is that it was grey or maybe black and I didn’t get a license plate,” they’re not going to do much with this because there’s just not enough info there to work with, unless the perpetrator gets caught later a block away doing the same shit to someone else.)
If you want press coverage of an incident, news websites generally have a “contact us” area. If you know a specific reporter who covers crime in your city, call that specific reporter. You can call a newsroom and ask for an editor. You will absolutely need to provide your name and contact information. If you want to be anonymous in the story, the editor may be okay with that, but the reporter will always, always need to know who you are if what you’re offering is your personal story. If you have witnesses, video, or anything like that, that will help.