Brian Dyer, known in furry fandom as Athus Nadorian, was reportedly killed in a car accident.

Athus, 29, was an artist, and co-owner and lead designer for Bad Dragon, a company which specializes in toys of a sexual nature. He was mated to Narse.

Athus died on October 11. The vehicle he was a passenger in was believed to have failed to yield to oncoming traffic when making a turn, resulting in a collision with another car. In response to his death, Athus's friends and family have set up a memorial website.

(How's that for trying to put a positive spin on bad news?)

According to an article posted to alt.fan.furry on Wednesday by Uncle Kage, the good news is that out of the bank of four elevators at the Adam's Mark Hotel, the one elevator that was supposed to be revamped and made much faster by Anthrocon will in fact be operational by that time, but because it won't be inspected until the following week it will not be available for use during the convention. See below for Kage's post, where he also mentions a bit of good news and makes a request of con attendees.

(Man, I hope my room is on the second or third floor...)

Late last year, Nightf0x, an individual who I have done furry panels about journalism and non-fiction writing, had his first furry piece published by DogPatchPress. Prior to his publication he had spoken with me about doing a review and offering advice on it. In this piece he discussed his feelings of a furry’s class and how that weighed more at a larger convention like Anthrocon where he didn’t feel such a thing at his more local gathering of Anthro Weekend Utah which has an attendance around 10% the size of the Pittsburgh gathering.

My main critique with this piece was that I had noted while he was speaking from his experience between the environments of smaller conventions against larger ones, it did not highlight, nor go into depth, why he felt that the larger one had more classism in it. There weren’t any major examples on classist behavior observed which would have sold the concept better, but instead all the article did in the end is note that it existed.

Little could have anyone suspected that in the last weekend of July, a convention from Syndey, Australia would provide us with a new neologism that would elicit more groans and eyerolls than even the infamous words of “yiff” or “popufur”. This word would become known as the highlighting of elitism, particularly that of fiscal abundance. More ironic is that the convention that coined this phrase was even smaller than the Utah convention at an attendance cap of 300.

This word is “fursuite”. A word put forth to the press by the chair of Harbour City Fur Con. It was defined as meaning “a fursuit that is cheaply made”; giving the example of a costume that is being worth less than $5,000. What followed in its wake was a stark look at classist behaviors at the small Syndey gathering, and the fandom at large.

DenFur has announced that furry musician, Pepper Coyote, will not be attending, or performing at their 2022 convention. This is in response to videos, and tweets made by the musician himself, that showed him in attendance at a Center for Political Innovation assembly in Chicago over the weekend of August 6th.

While describing itself as an anti-imperialist organization, the CPI led the meet by flying flags which included the infamous Z insignia that is being used by the Russian forces occupying the country of Ukraine in the current war there. The CPI Twitter account retweets regularly from sources that Twitter has denoted as Russian state-affiliated media.

Update (Aug 12): Eurofurence has also removed Pepper Coyote from their performance schedule.

Update (Aug 21): The CPI has dissolved following accusation of sexual misconduct around leader Caleb Maupin. In response, PepperCoyote has simply stated he's no longer a member of the CPI.