I may have opinions (oh baby I got opinions) on which previous works of comicdom nominated for the National Book Award should have received the honor without doing so.

But it hard to hold the contrary opinion that the March trilogy — the story of the civil rights movement as recollected by Representative John Lewis and realized in comics form by Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell — is anything other than a towering achievement of remembering our history lest we repeat it. And it is equally impossible to say that March: Book Three is anything other than a wholly deserving nominee for the National Book Award.

So it’s pretty fitting that it won last night in the category of Young Peoples Literature.

In the words of Congressman Lewis:

This book is for all of America. It is for all people, but especially young people, to understand the essence of the civil rights movement, to walk through the pages of history to learn about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence, to be inspired to stand up to speak out and to find a way to get in the way when they see something that is not right, not fair, not just.

It’s been five decades since the years that John Lewis put his body and his life on the line to ensure that all Americans would be recognized before the law as equal. It’s been 35 years since he ascended into political office in Atlanta as a city councilor, and this year marks the 30th since he was first elected to the House of Representatives. I’m certain he had hopes that some fundamental questions about the nature of our democracy were settled. I’m pretty sure that he’s got a close eye on current events and keeps a well broken-in pair of shoes ready for the next march he needs to make.

Congratulations to Congressman Lewis, Aydin, and Powell; I wish that we had learned your lessons better.

Spam of the day:

From: Gliceria Tyrrell
Your message is ready to be sent with the following file or link attachments: 20160831_104911
Note: To protect against computer viruses, e-mail programs may prevent sending or receiving certain types of file attachments. Check your e-mail security settings to determine how attachments are handled.

You’re going to send me an email from a fake relative with a Harry Potter first name and I’m just going to click on your virus-laden attachment because you put in a sentence about being safe around viruses and implying I should disable safety measures? That’s just insulting.

So the questions have been coming, and I’m getting ready to announce the structure of my matching-gifts against totalitarianism (better name needed), but in the meantime literally more people than I can count are doing similar things. Let’s do a rundown:

• Ursula Vernon¹ has been through a couple of rounds of commissioned pendants and prints, benefiting the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. Keep an eye out for what she does next.
• Rosemary Valero-O’Connell is running proceeds of her prints and shirts to CAIR, the SLRP, and MuslimARC.
• TopatoCo, where you were gonna do all your holiday shopping anyway, will be directing a portion of profits from all sales to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. Reminder: TopatoCo is a powerhouse that has spent an estimated seven figures on postage in its history.
• This one’s great: Gumroad wants you to know if you’re doing a benefit for PP, ALCU, the NAACP or the like and using their platform to distribute the merch? Let them know and they’ll donate their fees as well.
• Sophie Goldstein and Jenn Jordan have declared that all profits from sales of the Darwin Carmichael Is Going To Hell print collection will go to the ACLU from now until 15 December; since the print run was paid for by a long-concluded Kickstarter campaign, they’re only keeping enough of the US$20 purchase price to pay for shipping.

There are more, more than I can keep up with. It’s trying times, but we’re holding the line and will continue to do so. These organizations are established, scrappy fighters, and are going to shove a full dose of be a goddamn human and not a monster, you dicks where it’ll do the most good. I am proud of our weird little community.

Spam of the day:

[not in English]

I’m certain that it’s completely a coincidence that the amount of Russian-language spam I’ve received since the election has exploded.

_____________
¹ Obligatory disclaimer: I loves me some Digger. You just know that wombats don’t put up with any fascist nonsense; they meet oppression with pragmatism and pickaxes. Remember Tunnel Seventeen!

Actually, I have to give it to my power company; browsing to their website on my phone and zooming in, there were little triangles around my neighborhood, and within half an hour they’d coalesced into one at the center of disruption (about 50 meters from my front door), which listed the number of affected customers (117), the cause of the outage (tree), and the estimated restore time (12:00 noon). The fact that they got power back hours ahead of schedule indicates that either they were on the ball, or they follow Montgomery Scott’s rule of estimated repair times.

Still: my job requires computing. Computing (and networking) require power. So it’s been a rough day; had to have a colleague start my class for me, and I’ve been running to catch up ever since. How much running? It’s past 3:00pm (EST) as I write this and I have yet to put on pants. Then again, I do work from home about half of the time, meaning that the tyranny of pants is entirely optional for me on a frequent basis. So let’s look at something that involves, in large measure, only half pants¹.

Evan Dahm did a beautiful illustrated edition of The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, and not long after announced that his follow-up would be an illustrated edition of Moby-Dick. He’s done more than three dozen gorgeous, woodcut-looking illustrations (most recently noted here over the summer), and the long prep has now finished — the requisite Kickstarter to print handsome hardcovers of Moby-Dick, or, The Whale is now up.

It’s going to be an object of beauty and heft; as noted before, I have not ever desired to read Moby-Dick, but now I want to. The early bird discounted book are snapped up, but even at US$45 this is bargain and a the epitome of craft and care. Grab one, put it on your shelf, pass it down to your children.

Spam of the day:

Get New Cloud Computing Listings

Hey, know when cloud computing don’t work? When my power goes out!

______________
¹ Because Ahab only has one leg, see.

It’s been a shit week, but at least one thing happened as expected … even if it’s a bit bittersweet.

Unshelved, written by actual (if pseudonymous) librarian Gene Ambaum, drawn originally by Bill Barnes and more recently by Chris Hallbeck, has finished. The concurrent Kickstart to print the remainder of the very long running strip (nearly 15 years!) wrapped up a week ago, sitting at roughly five times goal. Barnes (who stepped back from cartooning to return to the exciting world of software industry project management) returned to draw the final week in which the question is asked What if you try to rage-quit and nobody cares?

A patron is trying his damndest to indicate that he’ll never come back to the Mallville Library, never I tell you! Don’t try to beg me to stay (totally beg me to stay)! the staff and library-goers are unperturbed. Today it all comes to a head — he announces he’s going elsewhere, branch manager Mel recites a litany of challenges faced by the library, but it’s no stirring call to action; it’s just facts. Dewey gets in the final word: See you all tomorrow!

The challenges never end. The work never ends. The lives go forward without us getting to peek in any longer. Ambaum and Barnes and Hallbeck likewise move on, to be seen other places, launch other projects (creative and not), some of which we’ll be privy to, others not. Ambaum, at least, will continue to speak and appear at library conferences, where he’s a rock star

And somewhere, it’s always the middle of the afternoon and a library-loving kid is assembling a stack of books, looking forward to the chance to read them. There’s worse places to be.

Spam of the day:

MAINTENANCE-FREE TO FULL-CARE LIVING OPTIONS

I thought this meant maintenance in terms of maintenance fees, but nope — turns out it’s another spam that thinks I’m old and need to live someplace where they’ll take care of me. Still in my 40s, spammers!

First it was chiming in on the Chocolate Milk Cuties vs Spaghetti Sweeties debate. Then I, shamed by a young member of my EMS crew who has turned the quiet times of Duty Night into Boardgame Funtimes, finally got on the Bears vs Babies bandwagon. And in the past little while, for the first time in my Kickstarter career, I managed to be Supporter Number One for a campaign that both delights and saddens me.

Jam vs Not Wanting To Do A Weekly, Hand Drawn, Hand Colored Comic Anymore¹ has gone live, wherein we learn that Angela Melick — mechanical engineer and webcomicker par excellence — is funding both books four and five of her long-running diary comic (today’s update is #787, minus a few guest strips while getting married/going on her honeymoon), and simultaneously announcing the Wasted Talent will wrap in four weeks. There will be two updates this week (check back on Wednesday) and each week between now and then that’ll be it. Strip #795 (if I have my count right) will be the last one in book five, and Melick will retire from this phase of her cartooning career.

She’s got more stories in her — she’s shared work on them in the past — and we’ll see her create more in the future, but it won’t be on a weekly schedule. We’ll miss Jam and Trevor, psycho squirrels and psycho engineers, bikes and corgis and swords and Vancouver, but we’ll still get the humanity and humo[u]r that infuse her work, no matter what those stories are.

It’s been two years since her last book released, covering the strip up until the 2009-2010 timeframe, which is about the last time I saw her), so there’s pent-up demand and six years of strips to print; this probably explains why before her Kickstarter launch announcement was cold people were rushing to pledge. As of this writing she has 43 backers and US$4094 in pledges, which is easily explained when you realize all but seven of them have pledged high enough to get a limited reward². I’ve not seen a per-backer pledge average of US$95 in … actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before. And it’s not for doo-dads and fancy bits, it’s for books (signed or personalized) and art (prints, and for up to five lucky people, originals); okay, yeah, there’s a cloisonne pin and a magnet, but I think the other backers are thinking as I am — that’s nice, but give me the pictures and words.

To what degree? How about this — just before I started writing this post I realized that I’d pledged for both new books signed, but not personalized like my earlier WT books, so I upped my pledge. And just before writing this sentence I realized that the top tier featured three original WT pages in the bundle and upped it again. There is no further upping possible, that is how much I love Melick’s work (and Jam, if you’re reading and will allow requests for original pages, the moustache–themed strips are pretty cool).

If you aren’t convinced, check out what I’ve said about Melick’s comicking previously; her comics are that good, and if that’s not enough to impress you, she can both build a robot to kick your ass, and teach the robot enough longsword fighting to kick your ass even more effectively. She and her comics are a delight, and you should check them out.

Oh, and in the time it took me to write and edit the last few paragraphs, she’s up to 53 backers, US$5452 pledges, US$102.87 backer average, and the top tier is gone. As well, last night the Cloudscape Comics Collective of British Columbia (of which Melick is a member) was recognized with a Joe Shuster Award last night (the Gene Day Award for self-publishers) Jam, you can’t see it from three time zones away, but I’m generally facing in the direction of Vancouver and tossing a snappy right-hand rule salute in your direction. You rock.

Spam of the day:
None. Melick’s engineering prowess has scared the spammers off.

_______________
¹ Not its actual name, but come on! Things come in threes, and we’d already established the vs theme.

² Which starts at CDN$65/US$48, and goes to CDN$350/US$261.

This post must surely set the record for the longest header image alt-text in Fleen history.

• Ever wonder how the universe really works? What the answers to the big, mysterious questions really are? Ever want a book that would — once and for all — provide clear and concise details about the inner workings of everything? Well, too bad, because what you’re getting is a book about everything that we don’t know:
  

  Announcing WE HAVE NO IDEA! A book about the big mysteries of the Universe: http://bit.ly/WeHaveNoIdea @DanielWhiteson @riverheadbooks

  That would be courtesy of Jorge Cham, actual PhD smart guy and explainer of science to the masses, teamed up with particle physicist Daniel Whiteson, to look at the stuff that we know we don’t know¹, due in May, and with a forthcoming book tour to spread the word. You can get more details from the book’s site, which will hopefully contain recipes and hints for particles you can cook up at home on a lazy weekend afternoon.

• Ever wonder what we can definitively say? Well, when it comes to the state of French [web]comics/bande desinée [-web], we can always relay on Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin, who has some knowledge to drop:
  

  • Pénélope Bagieu (La Page Blanche, Cadavre Exquis, California Dreamin’) has wrapped up Les Culottées.
  • Comme Convenu has come full circle, with page 389-390 showing her drawing page 1.
  • Maliki’s Ulule campaign has wrapped up, funded at 8527 books with a nice last-day surge; FFF mkII predicted between 7312-10968 books. This is also allegedly more books than any Ulule campaign so far, e.g. by my count Comme Convenu ended up totaling 8342 books.

  Reminders and Cultural Context:

  • Pénélope Bagieu was a guest at MoCCA 2015, and has seen her Cadavre Exquis translated by :01 Books as Exquisite Corpse (a personal favorite of mine last year), with California Dreamin’ (a bio of Mama Cass) due in March.
  • Laurel [Duermael] and Maliki’s adventures in Eurocrowdfunding and the model of books (instead of currency) forming a goal was discussed on this page a few weeks back.
  • Also previously discussed: the phenomenon of how French-language webcomics are almost always autobio in nature (albeit a bit magical; cf: Maliki, Bouletcorp). Les Culotées was an outlier, being a collection bio/historical portraits of prominent women. Recent subjects [French] including Mae Jemison, Hedy Lamarr, and The Shaggs.

  Thanks as always to Lebeaupin for keeping us informed of the comings and goings in BD-web.

Spam of the day:

VIEW NEW SLIDING DOOR OPTIONS

Gotta confess, sliding doors is not an area of my life where I felt as if I lacked for options.

_______________
¹ A book containing all of the stuff that we didn’t know we don’t know would be much, much larger.

I thought momentarily that I was possibly quoting some Zappa lyrics, but Wiki Jawaka says no; I think most likely I conflated multiple different lyrics (odds are, from Joe’s Garage or Thing-Fish) and with three links in close proximity, I should be tripping all kinds of SEO right about now. Let’s talk webcomics.

• For those who’ll be in Portland next week and will be looking to either celebrate the salvation of our republic or alternately to grab one last bit of joy before the Apocalypse, Wednesday night should fit the bill nicely. The very sexy, very smart, very educational Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan will be hosting a launch party for the third volume of Oh Joy, Sex Toy, which will be the first place to get a copy if you weren’t part of the recent Kickstart.

  There will be raffle and door prizes of an appropriate nature, as well as the opportunity to rub elbows¹ with people that appreciate the fact that sex really resides a couple of centimeters behind your eyeballs and is best appreciated with plentiful use of that particular organ. Fun starts at 6:00pm, runs until 9:00pm², at Portland’s newest (pretty sure, but you never know in Stumptown) comics shop, ,Books With Pictures, 1100 SE Division Street. Tell Erika and Matt I said hi.

• For those that believe that the launch party will be in celebration mode and not Happy End Of The World Mode, and are looking hopefully towards the future (or perhaps just looking to get out of the country), next May (the 27th & 28th) marks the return of VanCAF. It’s been a bright spot in the Comic Arts Fest circuit of shows inspired by TCAF, attracting an eclectic mix of creators (big names, indie, and a healthy intersection), readers, and food trucks. Showrunner Shannon Campbell has done a bang-up job shepherding VanCAF into existence and a steady upwards trend in both size and quality.

  But everybody needs to step back and try new things from time to time. Ordinarily, I’d be concerned about a drop-off in quality, had I heard only that Campbell was giving up her position as the festival director. Fortunately, I heard a good deal more than that, as it was announced today that several changes are afoot, all of them positive:

  • While Campbell is stepping down as director, she is joining a new advisory board for VanCAF
  • The new director will be Andrea Demonakos, formerly of Emerald City Comicon³
  • The entire shebang will be under the organizational umbrella of TCAF
  • Other members of the VanCAF board will include TCAF’s Miles Baker and Andrew Woodrow-Butcher, Vancouver-based comic creator Nathan Fairbairn, and musician/visual artist Jarrett Samson

  The sheer amount of talent and experience on display is mind-boggling, and given that TCAF just finished a delegation to Tokyo to exhibit at Kaigai Manga Fest (and has likewise been to various European festivals), I can only imagine that VanCAF’s overseas reputation (and ability to invite guests) is about to take a step up.

  The only possible downside right now is that the two CAFs presently retain their scheduling two weeks apart; while not impacting either show’s ability to attract guests or audience in the past, it may prove to be a logistical challenge for one organization to coordinate two shows on opposite ends of a continent in such a narrow timeframe. I’m going to place even odds on one show (more likely VanCAF) shifting to a different part of the calendar in future years.

• But in the meantime, if you should want to be in Vancouver at the end of May, applications for 2017 opened today.

Spam of the day:

3 Habits To Fight Off Dementia.

There’s a picture of what looks like a French Onion SunChip attached to the inside of a forearm with packing tape⁴, which leads me to believe that they want me to do this to stave off dementia. Given that they have not provided any dosing information for the chip shown — duration, weight or age restrictions, effectiveness of French Onion vs Garden Salsa, viability of TransPore easy-removing tape — this is highly irresponsible. I’m not sure if I should report them to the FDA, the USDA, or the Snack Food Association.

_______________
¹ Or whatever else you are into and can politely arrange in a consensual fashion.

² Or until whenever you and your partner(s) decide, but you gotta find someplace else to be by nine.

³ When ReedPOP bought EmCity a couple years back, speculation ran rampant that it was less about buying the show and more about acquiring the expertise of Demonakos and husband Jim, EmCity’s founder. Jim’s still with ReedPOP, Andrea was until today-ish.

Given the inclination that ReedPOP has towards less comic-centric shows, Andrea heading over to VanCAF is probably a both a better fit for her, and an indication that VanCAF will get even larger while retaining its reputation for excellent administration.

⁴ That is not the original photo from the email, it’s a screenshot. I ain’t stupid enough to click on or distribute that thing.

Where to start? With the hotel that didn’t supply all of the lightbulbs it should have, more than one towel, and a working phone? With the gig assignment that sent me to the wrong office? With my laptop, which decided that it’s still the ’90s and wifi is not a thing? With my voice, which is rapidly decreasing? I think that KB “Otter” Spangler hit the nail on the head re: today earlier this morning. So despite some genuinely encouraging news, I’ve only got enough bandwidth (mental and TCP/IP) to go brief. As it so happens, we’re heading to Kickstarter and staying there today.

• Firstly, followup on Letters From Lucardo (cf: here), which hit goal in half a day and is now sitting at 150% about two days in. Not bad for a largely-unknown Scandinavian creator making a first book, but then again Iron Circus has a reputation of delivering quality smut on time. so there’s that. The Fleen Funding Factor (Mark II) predicts Lucardo will finish up at US$45K +/- $9K, with a personal expectation that it’ll go up in subsequent volumes.
• Secondly, Tessa Stone (who partnered with Ananth Hirsch on Buzz! and Is This What You Wanted, has launched a Kickstarter for the first volume of her own webcomic, Not Drunk Enough. The semimythical George is shepherding the project, so full confidence that things will run properly. It’s not quite old enough for the FFF mk2, but it is at 58% of its US$17.5K goal, so that’s okay.
• Lastly, a dream (?) team of creators/professional reprobates is seeking to raise US$69,420¹ to release a pay-what-you-can Full Motion Video game based on the work of Dr Chuck Tingle. All buckaroos and others opposed to demonic forces are encouraged to investigate >deep breath< Kickstarted In The Butt: A Chuck Tingle Digital Adventure for the opportunity to spread a little joy to people whose lives are sorely lacking in (quoting now) Unicorn Butt Cops, the unexpected juxtaposition of disparate concepts (for instance: pirate, ghost, and bigfoot), and the absurd treated as the mundane. With hot, hot, butts (butts technically optional):
  

  The very nature of the Tingleverse is The Rawest of Graphic Sensualities, but players who aren’t down with visual depictions of sexual content needn’t fear. While we’re working with video and real actors (the cast will most certainly SURPRISE and AMAZE you), there won’t be explicit footage of people taking a trip to bonetown. Our salacious scenes are literary in nature and read aloud by talented performers, intended to pound the most sexual of your organs … Your imagination.

  We’re also including a Kitten Mode, where sexual situations will be replaced by footage of kittens playing. If you wish, you may also engage Kitten Mode on its own, just to watch some kittens playing, because why not.

  Or, in case you are called to explain the project in an elevator pitch-style quick sentence, the developers have provided one for you: Our exquisitely handcrafted smut puts the anal in artisanal.

  No stretch goals (overfunding will just result in a prettier game), but higher reward tiers will allow the backer to be involved in the game². Go, give, and may whatever spiritual or supernatural power you believe in recognize your virtue and buckaroo nature³.

Spam of the day:

D? you care about dental hygiene?

Yes. That’s why I go to the dentist, who takes care of my teeth. Oh, sorry, was this not a rhetorical question?

______________
¹ An amount also known as one sexweed.

² Obligatory disclaimer: this may involve visual or verbal depictions of the backer being subjected to literary poundings in heart, brain, AND butt.

³ Buckarooness? Buckarooality?

The news broke as I started to figure out what to write about today — Jack Chick has died, which news will prompt one of two possible reaction paths:

• Jack who?
• The guy behind the crazy evangelical tract comics that hated everybody that wasn’t just like him? Wasn’t he dead already?

I honestly can’t think of anybody in comics that’s been seen as widely and yet been so unknown at the same time. There are places where Chick Tracts are ubiquitous — and where the worldview he espoused is celebrated uncritically — and yet the people who were probably most aware of the depth and breadth of his work are probably about as diametrically opposed to everything he believed in. Every cartoonist knew about Chick.

I never wound up on the harmful end of Chick’s message¹ but I’m still glad that he’s no longer cranking out more of it. Others will fill his place, but I doubt anybody else will be as good at it as he was, which I’m going to count as a rare tickmark in the GOOD column for 2016.

So he’s gone, and I never want to be the sort of person that rejoices in another’s death, so let’s look at things that are positive in life today. Things that should make just about anybody smile. At least one of which probably would have enraged ol’ Jack Chick for some reason or other. After all, if the world weren’t sinful and lacking morality (in his eyes, at least), what purpose would he have had?

• Dogs! Dogs are the best and now I need to go act this one out with my cold-nosed waggy guy.
• New Hark! A Vagrant update (Wuthering Heights, no less!), including links to comics about Kate Beaton’s King Baby tour of schools and bookstores.
• New erotica Kickstarter from Iron Circus, this one being Letters For Lucardo, the first of a planned four books from Finnish creator Noora Heikkilä. It’s about an old man and an immortally young vampire, setting the stage for the series theme of the dangers of love between human and superhuman. Did I mention that the vampire is also a dude? You’re welcome, Jack.

Oh, and on a logistical note, I’m going to be on a reasonably strict client site later this week. My apologies in advance if any updates are late or skipped.

Spam of the day:

► HOW TO MANAGE DIABETES

My best management technique is to not have diabetes. Works great.

______________
¹ As a straight white male, I was on his good side; my atheism makes me lost but I always got the impression that my failure to believe as he did was somehow less bad in his eyes than people who actively believed differently than he did (Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Mormons, Hindus, Wiccans, Christian Scientists, Jehovah’s Witnesses … let’s just say almost everybody).

What I’m saying is that his ministry — such as it was — was probably more of the cajoling type when addressed at me, and less of the bludgeoning condemnation that so many other people received.

So an interesting thing happened today. The five top-funded Kickstarter comics projects prior to about an hour ago were:

1. The Order of The Stick Reprint Drive (2012; US$1.1254 million, 14.9K backers, 2171% of goal)
2. The Ctrl-Alt-Del Box Set (2015; US$666K, 5.6K backers, 443% of goal)
3. Dresden Codak Volume 1 (2013; US$535K, 7.6K backers, 1783% of goal)
4. Penny Arcade’s ad-kill campaign (2012; US$528K, 9.1K backers, 211% of goal)
5. Girl Genius Volume 12 & back catalogue reprint (2013; US$389K, 4.4K backers, 707% of goal)

All long-running projects with zillions of readers, deep archives, and well-established creators. All the hallmarks of success under the general rules of engagement that we’ve been working under for the past decade or so. Yeah, those rules just got re-written because as of now, the new number five goes to a Tumblr-hosted, irregularly-running comic about gay college hockey players that’s only been around a couple of years:

5. Check, Please Year Two (2016; US$399K, 5.1K backers, 1226% of goal)

Which prompts one to consider what lessons may be learned.

Lesson: Much in the way that New York is not a city (it’s a collection of 900 different neighborhoods that happen to have a common political structure and very little else in common), captial-w Webcomics is not a medium, it’s not a delivery mechanism, it’s a collection of niches. Whatever your niche, there’s people out there that will respond to it.

Lesson: The more underserved the niche (or niches that intersect in non-obvious ways), the bigger the pent-up demand for the story you’re telling.

Lesson: The necessity of regular scheduling (even in a potentially post-RSS world) may be dead; a compelling story and characters that you care about will carry your readership over irregular updates.

Lesson: The US$75K that Ngozi Ukazu raised a year and a half ago for her first reprint wasn’t a fluke; it was a warmup.

Reminder: Webcomics has always been defined by what’s next; what delivery channel, what payment mechanism, what project. Smart creators are thinking two or three steps down the line at all times.

Reminder: Check, Please! is presently part-way through the third year of a story that will cover four academic years; the ending is closer than the beginning.

Conclusion: Ukazu is likely already planning for whatever will fill her time after Bitty, Shitty, Jack, Ransom, Holster, Lardo, and the rest hang up their skates. Smart publishers should be making offers to her now. She managed to raise nearly half a million damn dollars¹ on her first two projects with very little infrastructure behind her the first time out². If she’s forward-looking and ambitious (and has a decent lawyer), there’s no limit to how far she can go.

Spam of the day:

Getting help is easy with Tech Support Pro

You want me to subscribe to a support service from Verizon? That’s hilarious. No, wait, what’s the other thing?

Fiction.

_______________
¹ At just under US$400K for Year Two, the FFF mk2 overestimated the funding (prediction: US$600-900K), as the big first-day surge was likely to. The McDonald Ratio would have pegged funding at US$620K, at the low end of the FFF mk2. This isn’t the first project where a huge Day One response skewed the prediction up by 50% or so, but still not enough data to predict what the limits of a Day One response to trigger the reduction would be. Data, man. It’s weird.

² She coordinated the production of Year One while still a student, with Amplifier handling the fulfillment. Year Two, she’s brought in Breadpig for logistical support, along with a designer and production specialist.