Stories found circulating around Facebook, backed up by more reliable sources.

• Costumers & the US Supreme Court
• Gender discrimination ( and Cathy’s rant)
• Tributes to David Hartwell

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• Cosplay Goes to the Supreme Court : The Supreme Court of the United States may get to decide the legal status of all those Jedi robes you’ve got squirreled away. The Supreme Court is considering a case that will set the standard for when clothing and costume designs can be covered by copyright—and when people who mimic them (such as costumers) can be sued for potentially enormous damages.
  

This article gives a really good explanation of the issues involved. Running a Google search on cosplay and the Supreme Court called up quite a few interesting links, esp from costumers. I read an article I thought gave a really good explanation of the problems, more in-depth understanding of the laws, but also another twist:

We’ve devoted a lot of time to copyright owners, but what about the cosplayers themselves? Even though cosplay is about the characters, there are still normal people behind the armor (for a given value of normal), and these people all have their own right of publicity. The right of publicity is an individual’s right to control the commercial use of their identity; however, unlike copyright, the right of publicity is a state law action.

• Gender Discrimination: Lack of diversity in the arts is making headlines, especially with the “Lily-white” Oscar nominations. SF/F fans are well aware of how hard it is for “minorities” to have a voice in the genre.  I put minorities in quotes because I don’t consider the female half of the human population to be a minority. But we all know of authors who have had to hide their gender, and we all know about the Puppies (both the Sad and the Rabid–yes, they are still out to mess with the Hugos again this year.)  And we know about GamerGate–and the threats on the lives of women involved in the gaming industry.

Guess who doesn’t rate an action figure?

The big brouhaha of this winter of our discontent is the toy industry, Disney in particular.

“One or more individuals raised concerns about the presence of female characters in the Star Wars products,” Boehm reports. “Eventually, the product vendors were specifically directed to exclude the Rey character from all Star Wars-related merchandise.” Allegedly, the industry insider was told, “No boy wants to be given a product with a female character on it.”

When I was a kid, I KNEW all the good toys were in the boys’ aisles, the good books had titles the started with, “The Boy’s Big Book of….” That was  50-some years ago, and nothing has changed.

For a look at gender discrimination in the comics/graphic novels department of the genre, look here. 

• David Hartwell, respected editor, who died recently after a fall, is being remembered by friends, colleagues, authors, and readers.

Click here to view tributes on his facebook page

Click here to view Kathyrn Cramer’s post on fb. Apparently, a nurse spent 5 hours compressing a blue rubber bulb that substituted for the action of David’s diaphragm. It didn’t matter to his survival, but the fact that the nurse had to do this is really awful.

Rather, if you are thinking of David tonight and wish you could have done something, please follow THIS LINK http://www.ech.org/make-a-contribution.html and make a donation earmarked to buy ECH its own mechanical respirator. 

From Mary Robinette Kowal, an explanation of the unusual fashions he embraced. It wasn’t because they were tacky.

http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/david-hartwells-sartorial-splendour-1941-2016/