Agents of the Law

A regular program of welfare checks to people with children is now called a tax cut.

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Fourteen of the world’s twenty largest tech companies are based in the United States – including the top six. American-based tech companies’ market valuation (at least as of December) comprises 90.5 percent of the total market valuation of these twenty tech companies.

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Agents of the Law  

The arts community has always seen itself above the fray, a social commentator, a moral referee. So, a refuge. A sanctuary of the greater good that stores man's higher nature and aspirations, often in conflict with the shallow, coarse, and degrading motives of the everyday.

Well, maybe they're just like us.

Organizers of the Hugo Awards, one of the most prominent literary awards in science fiction, excluded multiple authors from shortlists last year over concerns their work or public comments could be offensive to China, leaked emails show.

Questions had been raised as to why writers including Neil Gaiman, R.F. Kuang, Xiran Jay Zhao and Paul Weimer had been deemed ineligible as finalists despite earning enough votes according to information published last month by awards organizers. Emails released this week revealed that they were concerned about how some authors might be perceived in China, where the Hugo Awards were held last year for the first time.

Any work focusing on China, Taiwan, Tibet, or other sensitive issues, he added, “needs to be highlighted so that we can determine if it is safe to put it on the ballot.”

"Safe."

Some books, like Kuang’s “Babel” — which won the 2023 British Book Award for Fiction — appear to have been excluded simply for taking place in China. Zhao’s novel “Iron Widow” was flagged as being a “reimagining of the rise of the Chinese Empress Wu Zetian.”

Organizers also flagged comments that authors made on social media.

It's important to note this is the arts indulging in self-censorship, anticipating state censorship. This obliterates the freedom and truth that is the essential artistic nature.

Cancelling your brand in most pursuits would be an extinction event.