Warning! This blog contains unsubstantiated opinions and unbridled speculation.
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Author: Andrea
A few of Andrea's passions: Aviation; Esperanto; archery; swords; recumbent bicycles; juggling; skepticism; bocce; wilderness hiking; astronomy; alternate realities; SCA; beer (and not just any beer, mind you, it has to be good stuff. Don't even try to talk to me about Bud, Coors and Michelob.) long, spirited discussions about cosmology, time travel, LGBT issues, science fiction and martial arts; chocolate, full moons, and fresh fruit. Currently learning German.
When an angry MAGA Republican screams in the comments, “I have to pay taxes just to see it squandered on the homeless, drug addicts, and education programs that don’t work!”
Assuming you’re not a troll-bot, I ask you to look at the numbers. The federal FY2025 budget is about $7 trillion. More than a trillion dollars goes just to interest on the national debt. We can argue about defense spending, tax breaks, corporate subsidies, and all the big-ticket items another time. Let’s look at the numbers you’re interested in:
Federal spending on education is about half a percent of the budget, and federal homelessness assistance is around five-hundredths of one percent (0.05%). Combined, that’s roughly 55 cents out of every $100 in federal spending.
If you’re angry about taxes, at least aim at the part of the budget that actually exists at scale. You can argue about whether programs work, but blaming your tax bill on homeless people and schools is scapegoating, not budgeting.
I spent two lovely months in Bamberg, Germany, in 2025, and it became one of my favorite cities in the world. I count myself lucky to have experienced this World Heritage city and the inhabitants who welcomed me into their homes and lives.
The world was a different place in 1926, though. This is the date of the Bamberg Conference, held at the Gasthaus zum Goldenen Anker, where the leader of the Nazi party made it explicit that the party had very little to do with socialism, keeping the word in its name as bait primarily as a marketing ploy to attract working-class voters away from the Social Democrats and Communists. While a faction in the party did take socialism seriously, the party leader explicitly crushed it, speaking for several hours and dismantling the faction’s arguments.
At the end of the day, the Leader had won over the hearts and minds of several faction members, including Joseph Goebbels.
The Night of the Long Knives came 8 years later. The party’s leader spent the 1920s defeating the socialists and the 1930s killing them.
If you still believe that the Nazis were socialists because “it’s right there in the name,” I recommend The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic by Benjamin Carter Hett.
He explains the “Strasserite” (socialist) wing’s defeat very clearly. It reads almost like a warning manual on how democracies get subverted from within.
The water in Bamberg tastes like chalk, and this is not an exaggeration. See the image with the hardness chart. The soil around here is rich in Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) and magnesium carbonate (MgCO3). As the water filters through, it dissolves these minerals and delivers them to unhappy visitors from the U.S. who are unaccustomed to water that sticks to your teeth. There’s nothing unhealthy about it, but it’s unhealthy if you avoid drinking water that has the distinctive aftertaste of concrete.
Most people in the city have water softeners in their homes, but not my hosts. They serve water with every meal and sometimes beer. If the beer wasn’t available, I gritted my teeth and drank maybe four or five ounces. It tastes so bad that I had started to avoid drinking it, relying on coffee and cola to get my H2O intake. This wasn’t a good idea, and I started feeling cranky, lethargic, constipated, and moody, but I didn’t realize what was going on. My stupid self finally caught on that I was straddling the line on dehydration. I may have crossed the line entirely. In retrospect, I’m not sure I could even see the line anymore
I started buying bottled water. I dislike buying plastic bottles, but they have an excellent recycling system here, and it may have saved my life.
I explained the situation to my hosts, and they don’t seem to be insulted by me bringing bottled water to the meals. I was worried I would about that.
Feeling better. Studying isn’t so difficult anymore. I don’t feel lethargic or constipated. Take it from the experts (of which I’m not) that hydration makes your life more fluid and comfortable.
I’ve posted about these before, but I think they bear repeating. These are stumble stones, or Stolpersteine, that commemorate victims of the Nazi regime. They are placed at the last known address of the victims, and act as a decentralized reminder. Though I suspect many in the current administration will claim that they’re part of some elaborate hoax. They are not just Jewish victims, but other victims of the regime.
They are not without controversy, obviously. The city of Munich has banned them on public property following criticism from the President of the Jewish Community there, who considers it disrespectful for the names of murdered Jews to be on the ground where people can walk over them.
Culture shocks of the Day:
My hosts serve dinner at about 8 in the evening. This has advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that by the time we sit down for dinner, I’m so hungry I’m willing to eat most anything. It also allows for a later lunch, which is typical for me.
Also, they are enthusiastic consumers of vinegar — French for “sour wine.” It goes into most every dish, even dishes I would never consider pairing with acid. I’ve never been a fan of adding household cleaners to my meals. I suppose after eight weeks, though, I’ll grow to either enjoy it or really hate it.
There are free-standing cigarette machines throughout the city. The weirdest thing is that their distribution seems to be random, and not associated with any retail outlet, although I’m unsure if they’re also present in residential areas.
The buyer’s age is checked by inserting a debit card. Not sure how valid that is.
I googled some data (take that for what it’s worth) and discovered that the teen smoking rate in Germany (14 to 17-year-olds, 2024) is 14.9% and shows signs of increasing. The rate in the U.S. is 1.7%, though the rate for vaping is much higher at 5.9%.
There are about 300,000 of these machines nationwide, mostly in areas of high pedestrian traffic. They started requiring age verification in 2007, usually with a debit card or national ID, but really, how hard is it to get your older sibling or cousin to cooperate?
Does the ease of purchasing tobacco have anything to do with these disparate rates? No idea. I suspect there are other variables that have a greater effect, like lower prices (tobacco prices in the U.S. are among the highest globally) and greater social acceptance of smoking.
It rained all day, and it wasn’t very tourist-friendly. I spent much of the day learning how to shop for groceries. There are as many differences as similarities between shopping in the U.S. and Germany, but one thing remains constant: Shopping for only one person is a pain in the patootie. Tomorrow I’ll move in with the host family, and meals will become both more complicated and easier.
I have two pieces of news to share with you. The first: I recently took an exam for a license from the Federal Communications Commission. This license allows me to press the “Push-To-Talk” button on an amateur radio and actually transmit in the amateur radio spectrum.
The test itself had all the drama of a tortoise race, but the results nearly caused my death.
I missed a question.
A single question! After all that time and effort studying the material, how could I miss one stupid, ridiculous question on the test? What gives? The test must be rigged! If it had cost me a dime, I would have demanded a refund!
I took a deep breath, centered myself, and decided that missing a single question on a 35-question test was not a valid reason for committing seppuku. I reminded myself of the old joke: “What do you call the person who gets the lowest passing grade in medical school?” The answer, of course, is “doctor.” For the record, the FCC doesn’t care if you barely pass or ace the test. It was the same when I took the tests by the Federal Aviation Authority. The passing grade is 70%, and our instructors went to great lengths to assure us, repeatedly, that acing a test won’t get you any more job offers than getting exactly 70%. Did that stop me from obsessing over every question? Take a guess. And if anybody received a better grade than I did, I was sure they cheated.
In case you’re wondering: yes, I’m always like this. I was impossible to live with during my university days.
“What do you mean I got one of Maxwell’s equations wrong? Who are you to decide if I got it wrong—I mean, besides the physics professor?” I’d then wander the halls of the dormitory, beating my chest and lamenting that I would never, ever graduate.
I’m sure there’s some psycho-argot label for people like me, and I’m equally sure it’s not flattering. While I understand the compulsion to categorize everything from quarks to quasars, in my entirely unqualified opinion, human behavior is far too complex to go around sticking reductio ad absurdum labels on people. Then again, I’m probably wrong. Just ask the people who write the tests. I’m sure they’d be happy to tell you exactly how wrong I am.
The second piece of news is that I’ll be leaving for Germany on October 2, 2025. I’ve enrolled in a German Language Immersion Course, and I’ll be there for eight and a half weeks, counting travel time. I’ll be staying with a host family who’ll look at me sternly every time I use English. I’m sure I’ll enjoy this adventure as long as I don’t have to take any stupid, ridiculous, infuriating, humiliating tests!
Why do our lives revolve around taking humiliating tests?! Tests, tests, tests! Every time I turn around, somebody is evaluating my performance on something. Jeez, give a gal a break!
Fortunately, I don’t need any language proficiency certificates. I don’t know what I’d do with one other than use it as a coffee filter. The only test will be when I order something from the grocer and they don’t break into giggles at my American accent, confirming their suspicions that all Americans are idiots.
You might be asking, “Andrea, why are you doing this? Radio electronics is hard! Physics is hard! German is hard!”
Aside from the non-committal, “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I don’t have an answer for you, and, fortunately, my psychiatrist is forbidden by her oath to reveal my secrets. Besides, it’s not a question anyone has asked me. I’m just preparing for the day when someone might ask me on a test.
Sitting in the dealers’ room at the 2025 World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) in Seattle. Wearing my replica TNG-era com badge and Starfleet delta earrings. I didn’t wear my Manticoran Navy officer’s uniform because my involvement in the TRMN has waned significantly. A gentleman sitting at the same table is wearing his uniform, and I said, “Go Manticore!”, but he ignored me.
My publisher threatened to take away my author card if I didn’t autograph copies of my books at his table. So, if you want some autographed books, you can head over to Water Dragon Publishing, or, better yet, send me an email and I’ll be happy to address an autograph to you personally.
The first ribbon I attached to my member badge says, “No Kings.” I picked it up at the registration desk before I even obtained my dealer badge (ribbon). Dozens of people have asked me where I got it, and when I tell them, they respond, “There weren’t any there when I went through registration.”
Sorry, dude. Can’t help you with that. I haven’t seen many No Kings ribbons, so I’m thinking they may have been a limited run.
I’m not seeing many panels on today’s schedule that I want to attend, but there is one at 19:30 tonight that looks interesting:
Why Does the Alt-Right Love Science Fiction?
The description: Over the past few decades, there have been attempts to co-opt science fiction in support of racist, sexist, and classist political movements. Even works such as Star Trek, Neuromancer, and The Dispossessed have been claimed by alt-right leaders as foundational texts for their awful worldviews. Why does the alt-right love science fiction, and what problematic assumptions are coded into the genre that cause it to be open to these interpretations?
First off, anyone who wonders, “When did Star Trek become so woke?” has had their head up their butt since 1966.
Second, I’m well aware that embracing science fiction fandom has placed me solidly in a progressive echo chamber. If the bulk of Sci-Fi fans had their druthers, The Felon and his cronies, along with all the White Christian Nationalists, would have been launched into a parallel universe long ago, where they can play out their Project 2025-basedmasturbatory fantasies without bothering other people.
That’s not to say that there aren’t any Republicans at the Con today, but they tend to keep their political opinions to themselves and quietly back out of conversations that turn political. And they tend to be the kind of Republican who’d vote for Eisenhower or Nixon, but not The Felon.
Thirdly, I have a dinner engagement tonight, but if I can get back to the Con before 19:30, I’ll attend this panel.
What do I do about the echo chamber? Truthfully, not much. I remind myself that the loudest progressives are just as guilty of not fact-checking their talking points as Fox News is. I mean, really, people just don’t google it when it supports their agenda.
Illustration by Henrique Alvim Corrêa, from the 1906 Belgium (French language) edition of H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds”, 1906. License: Public Domain
In H. G. Wells’ classic War of the Worlds, the invading Martians are defeated by microbes, to which the Martians have no immunity. When the book was written in 1898, the readers thought this was a clever turn of events. Wells needed a way to defeat the Martians without relying on conventional military victory, and used germs as a deus ex machina that relied on science and not gods, and showed how the hubris of the Martians was brought low by the humblest of life forms.
“And so the Martians fell… slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared.” — H.G. Wells
However, 127 years later, it’s hard not to squint at this plot twist. I doubt my thoughts here are original, but they’ve been festering in my brain long enough that I feel compelled to write them down.
Plot Hole #1: Advanced Civilizations Should Know About Germs
First, the advanced Martian race should have known about germs and how to deal with them. After all, the existence of megafauna, such as the Martians, implies the existence of microorganisms, just as the existence of planets implies the existence of atoms. This is a humungous plot hole.
On Earth, microbes are ubiquitous, filling every possible environmental niche from the bottom of the ocean to the lint in your belly button. They are fundamental to every ecosystem, including the digestive systems of larger animals. It’s nearly impossible to conceive of a complex biological system capable of supporting megafauna, like the Martians or any other large creature on Mars, that does not also involve a vast microbial landscape.
Let’s ignore the realities of what we know about Mars and assume for a moment that the fourth planet has its own long evolutionary history. The Martians would have co-evolved with Martian pathogens and would have developed their own immune systems to deal with their native germs. The Martians would have almost certainly developed an understanding of disease, hygiene, and germ theory. They would have had their own plagues and epidemics throughout their history.
At some point before the invasion, some Martian scientists working for the Martian Space Agency would have said, “Y’know, we really should send a robotic probe to check out the air and water to make sure it’s safe for us.” Had they not considered this, then, shit. The universe has little patience for civilizations that skip the basic biohazard protocols.
Plot Hole #2: Why Would Earth Germs Recognize Martians as food?
The Martians evolved in a world completely isolated from Earth. What are the odds that Earth-based germs would find the Martians tasty? Or would even be able to find a way to infect them?
Our microbes on Earth have evolved over billions of years to exploit the organic molecules and metabolic pathways that we depend on: breathing, eating, and drinking. The micro-beasties have evolved enzymes and receptors to interact with Earth-based proteins, sugars, and lipids. We are in a biological arms race with germs — we develop immunity, and the germs find novel ways to infect us.
The converse is true with Mars. Earth-based microorganisms would probably not recognize Martians as food or a host.
Science Fiction, Not Science Fact — And That’s Okay
None of this is meant to disrespect Wells or the book. The War of the Worlds is a foundational work of science fiction, and its denouement is memorable, iconic, and metaphorically powerful. Wells used the science available to him in 1898 to craft a compelling narrative, even if it doesn’t stand up to 21st-century astrobiological scrutiny.
That said, the bigger question is this: Why does Hollywood keep falling back on such a well-trodden trope?
I know — the answer to that question is always “money.”
Every time we watch another remake of War of the Worlds, we already know how it ends. Spielberg used it less as science fiction and more as a mirror for Americans’ post-9/11 insecurities. But let’s be honest: if he hadn’t signed Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Tim Robbins, and Morgan Freeman, I doubt it would’ve had the same impact.
And speaking of casting calls
One moment in Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2005) that I genuinely appeciated was the cameo of Gene Barry and Ann Robinson — the stars of the 1953 adaptation — as the grandparents in the final scene. It was a graceful nod to the film’s lineage, acknowledging the cultural staying power of Wells’ story and the generations of audiences it has haunted (and inspired). For all my criticisms, I have to give Spielberg credit for honoring the franchise’s legacy.
We had beautiful Spring weather in Oregon today. Clear, warm skies that invited tee-shirts and broad-brimmed hats. Thousands of people could have spent the day at the beach, or skiing, or kayaking on the Willamette River, or fishing. Instead, they chose to spend the afternoon showing solidarity against the gross man-child who spent the day watching a golf tournament in Florida while the country figuratively burned.
Americans want to know: Does this president make our country look stupid?
Indivisible Oregon sent me a message on March 25, asking me if I’d help organize an event for the Transgender Day of Visibility in Salem, Oregon. Oh, boy! Six whole days to plan it! But, how could I say no?
Together with Heidi B., we pulled it off! I called the office of Andrea Salinas, the Congresswoman from Oregon’s 6th Congressional District, inviting her or a spokesperson to join us. They sent Mr. Brandon Jordan, who read a letter from Congresswoman Salinas.
Transgender individuals are under threat of erasure as one anti-trans law after another are introduced and passed in Republican controlled states, like this bill in Texas. Transpeople face unsafe conditions in about half the country. Imagine being out and about, and you have to hold your pee until you get home because using a public bathroom might get you arrested. I don’t like using clichés like “clear and present danger” or “unprecedented,” but this clearly is. The threat is clear enough that even cis-women are paying the price. Unless someone looks like a stereotypical woman, there is a chance that they’ll be targeted by the anti-trans militia. For instance, see this article. Any short-haired woman wearing baggy clothes could be targeted. As we saw at the 2024 Paris Olympics, any woman of color who outperforms white women could be accused of being secretly male.
It’s important to understand the flawed logic behind these attacks. If transgender women have such an unfair advantage in sports, why aren’t they dominating the competitions they’re entering?
Now I have three days until the “Hands Off” protest. The organizers did it right and gave us a month to get our act together, and I hope there’ll be sizable crowds in Corvallis, Davis, and Salem.
It’s against this backdrop of increasing legislative attacks and the very real dangers they pose that the ‘Hands Off!’ protests take on even greater significance. While the Hands Off protest isn’t specifically about Trans Rights, the core message of the Hands Off! protest is to tell Trump and Musk, “Hands off our lives! Hands off our Social Security! Hands off our bodies! Hands off our religion! Hands off our pensions!” If you’re able to join us this weekend at any of the hundreds of locations where protests are planned, your presence and voice will make a difference.
And, for those who might be questioning the impact of showing up, I offer this compelling video by the one and only Rebecca Watson, who details studies showing that protests actually do work.
Memoirs of an Earthling 