Haul away, you rolling king

[sovay]

So the first pieces of news that greeted me when I woke up were the death of Jeffrey Epstein and the punishment of Arisia for supporting a strike, neither of which was a great chaser to the realization that yesterday's excruciating headache did not have the decency to buzz off overnight, but I also saw via spatch this wonderful production still of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984):



It is so effectively in character and outside the plot that it looks like fanfic. Have some links.

1. Elie Mystal and Ken White, "Should the North Carolina Gun Store Billboard Targeting 'The Squad' Be Unconstitutional?"

2. Ethan Siegel, "Astronomy Faces a Field-Defining Choice in Choosing the Next Steps for the TMT."

3. Philip Miller, "Biennale." The magazine is dedicated to islands, which I love.

I was supposed to spend the day with my niece, but the current circumstances are looking like spending the evening with her. She wants to watch Ponyo (2008), which I haven't seen in almost a decade. I think I can manage to do that.

Comments

[sholio]

That photo is delightful and reminds me how much I enjoy that weird, trippy movie.

[sovay]

That photo is delightful and reminds me how much I enjoy that weird, trippy movie.

I was first shown it by my parents at a relatively impressionable age and it has honestly only improved on rewatch; in that respect it reminds me of The Muppet Show, except instead of becoming able to recognize Vincent Price, I learned about Dada.

(I don't know that Vincent Price was my favorite guest on The Muppet Show, but he is the one where I think I will never get over the fact that I was introduced to him singing, with a pile of Muppet monsters, "You've Got a Friend.")

[cmcmck]

Epstein dies in a prison supposedly the safest of all for 'suicide watch' prisoners.

Epstein has the dirt on lot of rich, well connected and privileged white male people.

Not rocket science, is it? :o/

[sovay]

Not rocket science, is it?

That is the sort of thing one worries about, yes. spatch just forwarded me this announcement, which is better to hear than not and I hope held to.

[cmcmck]

Interesting.

Apparently, it gets worse.

I've since learned that he WASN'T on suicide watch even after one attempt in custody.

That sounds exceedingly dodgy.

[gwynnega]

I'm sorry to hear that about Arisia.

I hope your headache lets up soon.

[sovay]

I hope your headache lets up soon.

Thank you. I'm not sure where it actually came from and I'm a little unsettled by that.

[imagine_that]

I was just talking yesterday about possibly watching Ponyo with my littles. They haven't seen it yet (or maybe my big one saw it when she was tiny, but neither of us remember). We went to Ghibli-fest at the children's museum yesterday, and they were very pleased to meet Totoro and Kiki (movies they adore). So, I was thinking Ponyo was a good next one they could watch together.

[sovay]

We went to Ghibli-fest at the children's museum yesterday, and they were very pleased to meet Totoro and Kiki (movies they adore).

I didn't know there was a Ghibli-fest at the museum! That's great.

So, I was thinking Ponyo was a good next one they could watch together.

I think I'd have loved it as a child (I loved Splash (1984) instead). I hope it works out!

[pameladean]

Wow, to hell wotj the Marriott and the horse they rode in on.

That photo is just pure gold.

I love Ponyo. In addition to its other beauties, it has the best weather. I hope you and your niece have a lovely evening.

P.

[sovay]

That photo is just pure gold.

Really everything about it makes me happy, including that I can't tell from Dr. Lizardo's expression if he hates photo ops or if he's trying to smolder. It's beautiful.

I love Ponyo. In addition to its other beauties, it has the best weather. I hope you and your niece have a lovely evening.

Thank you! We have un-thematically eaten Chinese takeout and are about to head TV-ward, although at the moment some Playmobil vultures are in play.

[pameladean]

I can't tell either, about the photo, which makes it seem to exist in two worlds simultaneously. You said it was like fanfic, and that's a quality of some fanfic.

I didn't know Playmobil had vultures! That's awesome.

P.

[pameladean]

Also, I regret my extraneous opinion, which was based on an only partly rational loathing of all things Marriot, but I don't seem to be able to edit it. My apologies.

P.

[sovay]

Also, I regret my extraneous opinion, which was based on an only partly rational loathing of all things Marriot, but I don't seem to be able to edit it. My apologies.

It's not possible to edit comments to which people have replied. It is all right. I got food poisoning at a Marriott this year, so in general I am in sympathy.

[sovay]

I didn't know Playmobil had vultures! That's awesome.

They're from my childhood! I think they belonged originally to a Western set, but I loved them in their own right (they were vultures) and it delights me that my niece seems to feel the same way.

[rosefox]

The decisions against Arisia seem pretty clear-cut based on the terms of their contract: the force majeure clause applied if the Westin and Aloft were unable to provide services (they were open, with non-union workers) and had to be invoked within 5 days (Westin) or 10 days (Aloft) of Arisia learning of the strike (Arisia sent notice 44 days later). Arisia claims that the use of non-union labor made it impossible or impracticable to provide attendees with the event they expected, but there's no evidence to support that (such as a petition signed by a large number of attendees saying they'd cancel their Arisia memberships in the event of Arisia crossing picket lines, or a mass cancellation of reservations). So Arisia's on the hook for cancellation fees as set out in the contract.

I think Arisia tried to minimize the risk of having to cancel the convention altogether by waiting to cancel the contract until there was a backup plan with the Park Plaza in place, but they could not then minimize the risk of paying cancellation fees, and they chose the lesser evil.

IANAL, but it looks to me like the lessons here for conventions that care about not crossing picket lines is that they should negotiate non-liability cancellation clauses regarding strikes that have longer lead times, because strikes are rarely resolved within 10 days, and stating that the use of non-union labor will constitute making the hotel unusable for the convention's purposes.

[rosefox]

(Also, reading the Westin decision, it helps if you don't have emails from board members saying "Whew, the hotel going on strike gives us a great opportunity to cancel our convention for what looks like a noble reason rather than have everyone flee the sinking ship while we deal with our massive scandal around harassment!".)

[sovay]

it helps if you don't have emails from board members saying "Whew, the hotel going on strike gives us a great opportunity to cancel our convention for what looks like a noble reason rather than have everyone flee the sinking ship while we deal with our massive scandal around harassment!"

I agree that that seems like a sub-optimal thing to put in writing, no matter who's thinking it.

Thank you for the additional read on the situation.

[sara]

it helps if you don't have emails from board members saying "Whew, the hotel going on strike gives us a great opportunity to cancel our convention for what looks like a noble reason rather than have everyone flee the sinking ship while we deal with our massive scandal around harassment!"

*facepalm* Wow that's MAGICAL. People just can't get their heads around not writing things down.

(At work, everyone thinks it's kind of hilarious that my emails are perfectly civil when I have no qualms about wandering around offering frank opinions about various situations and the people who create them. That's because my conversation around the office isn't publicly disclosable and my email is, tyvm....)

[rosefox]

I've been screaming "CONVENTIONS NEED TO BE RUN LIKE BUSINESSES" for something like ten years now, but alas, they are not.

[lemon_badgeress]

which seems reasonable enough but the price tag, to my uneducated eyes, appears WTFedly large?

[rosefox]

When a convention reserves conference space at a hotel, the convention and the hotel agree on expectations for how many room-nights the hotel will sell and how much revenue the hotel will get. If the convention fails to bring in enough people to sell that many room-nights, it's liable for some amount of the shortfall.

Arisia is a very large convention and it runs over a long weekend in an expensive city. That adds up fast. According to the arbitration decisions, the contract with Aloft set out expected minimum revenue of $88,835 from rooms costing $163/night plus other anticipated sales (room service, bar tabs, paid wi-fi, those $8 bottles of water in the mini-fridge) to the people booking those rooms, while the Westin charged between $172 and $350 a night (I assume the higher numbers are for suites) and expected room revenue of $442,566.

The contract with the Aloft specified Arisia would pay half the expected minimum revenue, so, $44,417.50. If there was any such expectation in the Westin contract, the arbitration decision doesn't say; it just says the arbitrator awarded $50,000 in damages, which looks like Arisia getting off real easy given the expected revenue! Imagine if they'd been contracted to pay 50% at the Westin like they were at the Aloft. The total damages of $95k are about 18% of the revenue the hotels collectively anticipated from doing business with Arisia. I'm not well enough versed in these sorts of things to know whether 18% would generally be considered a reasonable penalty for breach of contract, but it doesn't look outlandish to me.

As the loser, Arisia also covers attorney fees, arbitration costs, and interest, which is how we get from $95k in damages to $125k total.

The snag is that volunteer-run nonprofit SF conventions charge so little that Arisia doesn't have anything like that kind of money in the bank. So in the context of Arisia's finances, it's a whole lot of money. But in the context of how much a couple of Boston hotels expect to make over a holiday weekend, it's not all that much.

[sara]

*googles things* Hunh. Looks like the directors may be personally liable since it's breach of contract and there aren't any limits on liability in that situation. There are some other categories in which you're limited to $20k, which in the grand scheme of things is relatively minor.

I mean, personally, I carry a million dollar umbrella liability policy because I do a lot of nonprofit work and I don't want to lose my damn house over something like this, so if I were an Arisia director I'd call my lawyer and my insurance company and assume I was going to have to eat it (and have a bear of a time renewing my umbrella next year). But I think I'm relatively unusual in that, and it's 100% an artifact of me having gotten sued over stupid shit during my years in nonprofitland. I hope someone on the board has something like that kind of coverage.

[sara]

As context for those of you reading this and wondering what a million dollars worth of extra liability coverage costs me, the answer is, $12 a month including the extra personal injury coverage I had to tack on to my homeowner's policy...the actual liability is $9/month. This is one of those where it's so cheap to do it and the downside risk is so massive (I am a regular volunteer with an organization with which I regularly put people in my personal car, drive them into wilderness areas, and take them hiking; my potential liability here really doesn't bear thinking about, but I think it's probably smaller than the potential liability of being on the concom for a large event) that even my extremely cheap self just pays the bill.

Mind you, I live a basically dull life, so I'm cheap to insure.

[rosefox]

Hm, I wonder whether I could add that to my renters insurance. Thanks for the info!

[sara]

Yeah, I started doing it because between the nonprofit work and the big dogs (and now the single parenthood and being the sole household income) My Uncle The Lawyer told me I would be very stupid not to.

[rosefox]

That would certainly be a convenient thing for someone on the board to have!

[sara]

I would also hope that the corporation itself is carrying some kind of directors' and officers' liability coverage. Like, this judgment should not be getting paid out of assets or the operating budget. It should be getting paid out of someone's insurance. Unless there's something I don't understand (quite possible, none of my nonprofits have ever fucked it to the tune of 125k), it seems to me like it should be an insurance problem at this point.

[rosefox]

That was my first thought too, but I have no clue what Arisia Inc. does behind the scenes.

[sara]

Nope. I just thought the FB discussion was pretty weird given that my first take would not be that we might need to fundraise, it would be that we were going to need to find a VERY good insurance broker if we didn't want to get the claim paid out and then have to dissolve the corporation because we were subsequently uninsurable.

[lemon_badgeress]

...i think this might be the first time i’ve ever COMPREHENDED how large arisia is.

thank you for the explanations!

[rosefox]

I didn't fully grasp it myself until my partner and I ran the staff den and green room there for a few years. I've been to smaller Worldcons. It's BIG.

Glad to help!

[kaffy_r]

Oh, my goodness, that wonderful Buckaroo Banzai picture! Just what I needed! Thank you - and now I should probably read about the North Caroline gun store billboard, little as I'd like to. Sigh.

[sovay]

Oh, my goodness, that wonderful Buckaroo Banzai picture! Just what I needed! Thank you

You're welcome! It was the highlight of my afternoon.

- and now I should probably read about the North Caroline gun store billboard, little as I'd like to. Sigh.

It is useful information, intelligently discussed.

[kaffy_r]

I just read it, and you're right. Also, I need to pay attention to that blog.

[sara]

I once taught Buckaroo Banzai as an example of a utopia. Good times.

I have a lot of questions about the Epstein thing. I notice he's dead the morning after the night before, e.g. after the disclosure of all those affidavits. It looks pretty sketchy.

Or he's a narcissist who couldn't resist the urge to stir the pot one last time, which...is certainly a thing I've seen people accomplish via suicide in the past.

[rachelmanija]

It's also possible that he genuinely did suicide, but people knew he would if given the opportunity and they deliberately gave him the opportunity.

[lauradi7dw]

There have been a number of informative posts on twitter that include (without specific instructions) how easy it is for an institutionalized person to commit suicide in the fifteen minutes between safety checks, even if the place took him to be seriously at risk. And it has been pointed out that he has a long history of lying very well, so might have been convincingly "better" since the previous incident.
And it's not like people haven't killed themselves in NYC jails in the past.

[rachelmanija]

Oh, of course. But in this particular case, it's extremely convenient for a lot of extraordinarily rich and powerful people that he never go to trial, strings had already been pulled at the highest levels to give them immunity and secrecy, and now that it looked like it all might be coming out, he dies. I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories but this case already involves massive, high-level conspiracies. I find it fishy.

[sara]

Oh, I think that's exactly what happened.

It's certainly a traditional way for someone who was a pimp to royalty to go out.

[kore]

It does seem awfully reminiscent of "Caesar would appreciate it if you fell on your sword to preserve his reputation," doesn't it?

[sara]

Like, history offers us some guidance on how things often end for this kind of dude.

[kore]

That's what T thinks. I think it might have been a little more pointed than that, given all the dirt that was clearly about to come out, maybe/probably involving Trump. I just hope the investigations aren't conveniently over now that he's dead.

[sovay]

I just hope the investigations aren't conveniently over now that he's dead.

I've been linking this, because I hope they mean it.

[alexxkay]

"Hey, hey, hey. Don't be mean. You don't have to be mean. 'Cause remember: no matter where you go, there you are."

In a semi-recent deep-dive cleaning, I found my old newsletters from the Blue Blaze Irregulars (official fan club). Don't recall at the moment whether I kept or purged them. But I will never give up my official headband, no matter how old and stained :-)

[sovay]

But I will never give up my official headband, no matter how old and stained

I think that's excellent.