A Triple-Plus, list perfectly underexplained, would read again.

You forgot about America's forced relocation and internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans, America and Britain's firebombing of Dresden (25,000 civilians killed) and Tokyo (105,000 civilians killed), the mass rape and execution of 270,000-635,000 civilians by the Red Army, and America's atomic bombings of Hiroshima…

I heard some casino magnate out in California blocked it for some reason? He seemed like kind of a sketchy dude, though – I read somewhere he might've killed his wife's first husband and made all his money through questionable insider sports bets.

I have spent a few years writing a book. Hopefully I can make a little money from it, but I see putting it under strict copyright as the equivalent of locking it in a glass case in a back room forever. If my creative work is any good, I want people to actively engage with it, and part of that is allowing derivative…

I'll try not to beleaguer this then, but my point is that, in the absence of government intervention, nobody has any property rights, intellectual or otherwise – it's a free-for-all. I'm not saying that if you create something it isn't yours, I'm saying that the concept that the public doesn't own ideas is a novel…

You've got it backwards. Take a look at the history of copyright law – it's not about the state taking away creator's rights, it's about the state enforcing them for a period of time. Before the state stepped in during the 18th century, all intellectual property was public domain by default. The expiration terms…

I don't think this is a reasonable analogy. A house is a physical space, therefore there are a limited number of people who can make use of it at any one time. Intellectual property, being a collection of ideas, can be used by any number of people at the same time without repercussions.

Fair enough, but we've got to apply the law of averages here. The majority of any kind of creative work will be of mediocre quality, with some pieces falling into the extremes of very poor and very good. I don't think it's reasonable to deny culture the good quality works just because the bulk of works will be…

Ugh, this is so dumb. They're probably going to make a bunch of crummy modern-day adaptations where Holmes runs around London with a cellphone or Watson is a woman. Or maybe they'll just set it in the future or make him a mouse or something. Just awful.

Serious question: what are the cons? Public domain is specifically set up so that it doesn't kick in until 50 or 70 years after the death of the author, so there's no harm done to him/her (or his/her heirs in the short-term). And then anybody can make new and interesting creative work with the IP. I really can't think…

I thought this was the Michelangelo Diet:

Clearly, this is a coded rebus indicating the hidden location of King David's secret tomb. Get ready for a call from the Illuminati, Lauren!

Sounds like the perfect solution to me. Heck, if you can get enough fuel and air up there, and you've got enough delta-v to push the mass, you could link up two or three of these suckers into a dang space train. And then maybe we save weight on Orion launches by resupplying the parked modules in smaller, unmanned…

Not bad, but you can make it punchier. Try to condense the entire pitch into a single, present-tense sentence. Emphasize conflict, character agency, unique ideas, and relationships if possible. Dial the genre indicators up or down depending on your audience. Try "When a [main character] [experiences an inciting…

Jason Chan is an utter badass. Follow the link under the art – you will love everything he's ever done.

These are all great points! The nuances of genre – and especially subgenre taxonomy – matter so much to hardcore fans and academics, but don't really register with mainstream readers. However, I will say that I've met a lot of mainstream readers who will reject anything that smacks of any genre. For them, it's all one…

Can't argue with you there. I know a whole bunch of Texans, and none of them use "coke" to mean "any soda." Maybe it varies by county?

Neither do all them vidjatapes I done jacked from the checkout line at Kroger by jammin' 'em all down my sweatpants when the cashier weren't lookin'.

Here is my reaction to Troll 2 being removed:

Watch Brick IMMEDIATELY.