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So, I have been basically nowhere, mostly commenting, and lacking a proper amount of time to post the cool stuff that I come across. This is because I haven't really been at a computer to blog. Which means I have to sum up. A lot. So let's get to it, shall we? Prepare for Linkspam... of DOOM! (DOOm! DOom! Doom! doom! doom...)
The Dead Pool Miles High Club inducts Neil Armstrong, astronaut, into its hallowed ranks at 82 years of age.
The LEGO Group has been steadily deciding that LEGO toys are for men in their marketing. And then they wonder why their sales have been declining...even with a LEGO for Girls line that was supposed to alleviate the problem of LEGO being a boy's toy. Quelle Suprise.
Out in the world today, Saudia Arabia is planning an entirely-female city so that the country's strict segregation rules can be maintained, but so that there's an entire city of women. Which is sort of working within the Patriarchy to subvert the Patriarchy. Yay, maybe, depending on how it turns out?
A book reviewing the history of gay and lesbian comics, which is itself awesome because of the hidden history and pushback that still exists about comics that talk about any sort of sexuality that might be outside the realm of Jack Chick's tracts.
The IMF must admit that Iceland's method of staving off economic collapse worked - the welfare system survived and the abnks, who were responsible for the problems, took the hits. Huh. We could have potentially done something like that, instead of just saying "Here's a trough, feed all you like." - although I think that money was supposed to be paid back with interest when all was said and done...
In politics, those who want to legalize marijuana in Washington and Colorado have raised significant amounts of money...but even if the state legalizes, the federal government will raid...
But then there's the judge that believes the President is going to hand over the country to the United Nations if re-elected, which is sort of the tip of the iceberg if you dig into the Republican Party this year.
Both major parties had their conventions in the last couple weeks - you've probably read most of what happened at both of those conventions, including Republican covnentioneers throwing peanuts at a media employee, calling her an animal, because she was black. The convention dismissed the attackers. Elsewhere, conventioneers tried to drown out Ron Paul supporters, and in doing so, ended up creating a very unfortunate juxtaposition. Still, the fact that they were trying to drown out other voices is pretty awful when the convention is supposed to bring those differences together, right? The platform committee decided they weren't going to support civil unions as the alternative to marriage, because the GOP's Christian-right backers were against even an inkling of support for QUILTBAG people.
Well, then there were the continued manufacturing and outright lying when it comes to railing against the President, the people who indulge in casual racism every time they entertain the idea that black people only get ahead because of white guilt and affirmative action, and then also decide that too many minorities are voting for the Democratic candidate and must be stopped.
And there's the war on women, too - where myths that should be debunked still have life. And where the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate believes that rape is just another way for women to conceive. It's almost like someone has decided that being female is somehow inferior and different in everything to being male [/Sarcasm Mode].
Did we mention the secretive nature of the fortunes of the Republican candidate and their offshore accounts? Which become even more nefarious when you point out that Willard "Mitt" Romney made a lot of money with government assistance, and has yet decided to re-raise the spectre of minority "welfare queens" that supposedly make a comfortable living on the dole? And that his running mate also benefited greatly from government assistance? (And that we all benefit from it in the form of infrastructure, student loans, and the like, not just TANF, SNAP, WIC, and other obvious social programs?)
It's like you got to see all four types of conservatives, from the ones that are numerous but seemingly harmless, to the ones that are subtle and not always easy to spot, but will do the most damage if left unchecked, and then the occasional Sober Adult somewhere.
It sort of sums up in the letter to all the people who can't get over their own hate of people not like them to exercise the love they profess for their country. As opposed to the letter that claims both sides are hyperbolic in their rhetoric and there's no reason to believe that one side is truly wrong. You can get a representative example of this at work - when confronted with a scathing letter about all the ways the Republican Party has turned itself into a group that should be shunned as wingnuts and sociopaths, at least one responder chose to downplay the person and accuse them of making stuff up, while wrapping it in an attempt to refute the actual content. One can, in fact, compare Mitt Romney to Dracula from Castlevania and find that Mitt Romney comes out the worser.
There's also the major Proposition 8 donor accused of sexually assaulting young boys
There is some progress, though - the all-men Augusta National golf club finally accepts women as members, Dragon*Con Marvel Cosplayers were able to recreate the cover of a comic featuring the marriage of two of the cast, including the two getting married actually have been married for twenty years. Whoo!
And then we step it up again, with the kicker for the Minnesota Vikings engaging in a few precision F-Strikes and a whole lot of shaming against a state representative (orig: governor) of Maryland's threats that a Baltimore Ravens player shouldn't talk about being pro-gay and lesbian marriage. Told that "the swearing dilutes the message" (bullshit, and he says as much), the refactored version without the cursing, which ups the comedy and memeage. We can't decide which version is better - both definitely need to be sent. Repeatedly.
(In case you think the Democrats are totally blameless, they too will kowtow to the interests of the Abrahamic religions when pressured.)
And some other interesting things - three outs on one batted ball, for example. As well as the United States Anti-Doping Agency stripping Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles after Mr. Armstrong refused to contest their charges of blood doping. For as long as things have gone on, it can seem more like the USADA didn't believe Lance could do what he did and kept pressing charges until they could find one that stuck.
Remember, dear readers, that there are layers to everything...pretty much, anyway. Anyway, if your hobby or kink or identity only offers one type of experience for people new and established in it, it's pretty safe to say something's not being done correctly. Even in the places that pride themselves on contradiction and playing with things that would be harmful in other contexts. Or in a seemingly innocuous phrase, there is quite a bit of exclusion.
There are also attempts to make something more complex than it is, as a school witholds a diploma for the use of the word hell in a valedictory address. If you believe that word is unacceptable, then I worry what happens when you get out into the real world and find that there are worse things. Give the diploma, school, and move on.
Out in the world today, bad effects of good intentions - zeal in trying to prevent the trafficking of people has put on a lot of pressure on people who do sex work knowingly. Which is an effect that the government and its backers in the US are probably not all that worried about. Much like how several important rights in accusations - like the anonymity of the victims and the presumption of innocence to the accused - have been run roughshod over in the Julian Assange matter.
One of many reminders that the United States routinely props up Bad People and does Very Bad Things in your name, and neither mainstream party really wants to talk about those kinds of things. Then again, they do it to people inside the country, too, and nobody in politics really wants to talk about it, either. Although if you can make it into a proper media spectacle, then people can satisfy themselves as favoring the underdog while not having to look at whether they really do favor the underdog.
Elsewhere, the use of psylocibin reduces certain brain activities, which allows for noticing things that would otherwise be ignored or filtered out. I seem to recall some time ago an article that scanned proficient meditators and found that regions of the brain that were involved in the ego were suppressed during the meditation, which allowed for a similar expanded-mind feeling. (Shrooms can do this, as well.)
The Transportation Security Administration asserts the right to inspect your coffee bought within the supposedly secure zone. Theater, theater, theater.
In technology, the implantation of a technological eye to replace a lot biological one.
Then, a device that folds like a utility knife, but instead creates animales to play with, the question of whether blueprints for fabbable guns would be an unacceptable proliferation of weapons, making it more than just too easy to get functioning weapons, the development of technology that helped in the Second Great War...whose base idea was significantly different, systems that can detect the complex states of protons, investments in using three-dimensional printing to produce meat, and a reminder that soil, plant-growing, and botany necessitates the use of chemistry, and thus the idea of "chemical-free" things is more than a bit ludicrous.
And more about the parasite the cats carry and that apparently can cause bad behavior in humans, albeit only with a subtle link. (Which is still enough for an article, of course.)
Also, disproving the idea of junk DNA by finding most DNA does have a purpose - regulating the genes that do produce things, and a method to cool the body by taking advantage of the natural places where heat is radiated and cooling them. Which apparently has an interesting knock-on effect of helping dispel exercise fatigue.
Out of this section, the latest Mars rover landing site for Curiosity is now known as Bradbury Landing. And that makes me want to re-read the Martian Chronicles.
Oh, and hacking un-salted, unhardened passwords has become almost trivially easy now that enough data is out in the world to allow machines with programmable GPUs to refine their techniques and try billions of combinations per second. Which is a very brrrr sort of thing.
In opinions, seeing bad narratives from the media regarding trans* people, agender people, genderqueer people, and others who don't fit into nice boxes, because they aren't deliberately seeking out all the kinds of people, just the ones that fit the already-prevailing narratives, trying to box in the not-boxable.
The problem of Amy Pond and River Song in the Moffat Era, at least to the end of Series Six - instead of having their Crowning Moment of Awesome to save the world, they are relegated to saving The Doctor, which is quite different. We're hoping that in this series, they take a page out of the playbook of the Avatar creators, because the Avatar creators really have figured out how to make female characters without then subjugating them to the men. (Most of the time. Asami and Korra have some Issues here and there.)
An interesting commentary on the use of katakana as a signififer for importance or focus in informal discourse, even when hiragana and kanji of the same word exist. Duuuuuude.
Finally, a request for game journalists to start being journalists, instead of just slaving away praising the latest thing they apparently hate in private.
And the virtues of subjectivity, because without that, we wouldn't be exposed to all of the really great ways to experience media.
The Dead Pool Miles High Club inducts Neil Armstrong, astronaut, into its hallowed ranks at 82 years of age.
The LEGO Group has been steadily deciding that LEGO toys are for men in their marketing. And then they wonder why their sales have been declining...even with a LEGO for Girls line that was supposed to alleviate the problem of LEGO being a boy's toy. Quelle Suprise.
Out in the world today, Saudia Arabia is planning an entirely-female city so that the country's strict segregation rules can be maintained, but so that there's an entire city of women. Which is sort of working within the Patriarchy to subvert the Patriarchy. Yay, maybe, depending on how it turns out?
A book reviewing the history of gay and lesbian comics, which is itself awesome because of the hidden history and pushback that still exists about comics that talk about any sort of sexuality that might be outside the realm of Jack Chick's tracts.
The IMF must admit that Iceland's method of staving off economic collapse worked - the welfare system survived and the abnks, who were responsible for the problems, took the hits. Huh. We could have potentially done something like that, instead of just saying "Here's a trough, feed all you like." - although I think that money was supposed to be paid back with interest when all was said and done...
In politics, those who want to legalize marijuana in Washington and Colorado have raised significant amounts of money...but even if the state legalizes, the federal government will raid...
But then there's the judge that believes the President is going to hand over the country to the United Nations if re-elected, which is sort of the tip of the iceberg if you dig into the Republican Party this year.
Both major parties had their conventions in the last couple weeks - you've probably read most of what happened at both of those conventions, including Republican covnentioneers throwing peanuts at a media employee, calling her an animal, because she was black. The convention dismissed the attackers. Elsewhere, conventioneers tried to drown out Ron Paul supporters, and in doing so, ended up creating a very unfortunate juxtaposition. Still, the fact that they were trying to drown out other voices is pretty awful when the convention is supposed to bring those differences together, right? The platform committee decided they weren't going to support civil unions as the alternative to marriage, because the GOP's Christian-right backers were against even an inkling of support for QUILTBAG people.
Well, then there were the continued manufacturing and outright lying when it comes to railing against the President, the people who indulge in casual racism every time they entertain the idea that black people only get ahead because of white guilt and affirmative action, and then also decide that too many minorities are voting for the Democratic candidate and must be stopped.
And there's the war on women, too - where myths that should be debunked still have life. And where the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate believes that rape is just another way for women to conceive. It's almost like someone has decided that being female is somehow inferior and different in everything to being male [/Sarcasm Mode].
Did we mention the secretive nature of the fortunes of the Republican candidate and their offshore accounts? Which become even more nefarious when you point out that Willard "Mitt" Romney made a lot of money with government assistance, and has yet decided to re-raise the spectre of minority "welfare queens" that supposedly make a comfortable living on the dole? And that his running mate also benefited greatly from government assistance? (And that we all benefit from it in the form of infrastructure, student loans, and the like, not just TANF, SNAP, WIC, and other obvious social programs?)
It's like you got to see all four types of conservatives, from the ones that are numerous but seemingly harmless, to the ones that are subtle and not always easy to spot, but will do the most damage if left unchecked, and then the occasional Sober Adult somewhere.
It sort of sums up in the letter to all the people who can't get over their own hate of people not like them to exercise the love they profess for their country. As opposed to the letter that claims both sides are hyperbolic in their rhetoric and there's no reason to believe that one side is truly wrong. You can get a representative example of this at work - when confronted with a scathing letter about all the ways the Republican Party has turned itself into a group that should be shunned as wingnuts and sociopaths, at least one responder chose to downplay the person and accuse them of making stuff up, while wrapping it in an attempt to refute the actual content. One can, in fact, compare Mitt Romney to Dracula from Castlevania and find that Mitt Romney comes out the worser.
There's also the major Proposition 8 donor accused of sexually assaulting young boys
There is some progress, though - the all-men Augusta National golf club finally accepts women as members, Dragon*Con Marvel Cosplayers were able to recreate the cover of a comic featuring the marriage of two of the cast, including the two getting married actually have been married for twenty years. Whoo!
And then we step it up again, with the kicker for the Minnesota Vikings engaging in a few precision F-Strikes and a whole lot of shaming against a state representative (orig: governor) of Maryland's threats that a Baltimore Ravens player shouldn't talk about being pro-gay and lesbian marriage. Told that "the swearing dilutes the message" (bullshit, and he says as much), the refactored version without the cursing, which ups the comedy and memeage. We can't decide which version is better - both definitely need to be sent. Repeatedly.
(In case you think the Democrats are totally blameless, they too will kowtow to the interests of the Abrahamic religions when pressured.)
And some other interesting things - three outs on one batted ball, for example. As well as the United States Anti-Doping Agency stripping Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles after Mr. Armstrong refused to contest their charges of blood doping. For as long as things have gone on, it can seem more like the USADA didn't believe Lance could do what he did and kept pressing charges until they could find one that stuck.
Remember, dear readers, that there are layers to everything...pretty much, anyway. Anyway, if your hobby or kink or identity only offers one type of experience for people new and established in it, it's pretty safe to say something's not being done correctly. Even in the places that pride themselves on contradiction and playing with things that would be harmful in other contexts. Or in a seemingly innocuous phrase, there is quite a bit of exclusion.
There are also attempts to make something more complex than it is, as a school witholds a diploma for the use of the word hell in a valedictory address. If you believe that word is unacceptable, then I worry what happens when you get out into the real world and find that there are worse things. Give the diploma, school, and move on.
Out in the world today, bad effects of good intentions - zeal in trying to prevent the trafficking of people has put on a lot of pressure on people who do sex work knowingly. Which is an effect that the government and its backers in the US are probably not all that worried about. Much like how several important rights in accusations - like the anonymity of the victims and the presumption of innocence to the accused - have been run roughshod over in the Julian Assange matter.
One of many reminders that the United States routinely props up Bad People and does Very Bad Things in your name, and neither mainstream party really wants to talk about those kinds of things. Then again, they do it to people inside the country, too, and nobody in politics really wants to talk about it, either. Although if you can make it into a proper media spectacle, then people can satisfy themselves as favoring the underdog while not having to look at whether they really do favor the underdog.
Elsewhere, the use of psylocibin reduces certain brain activities, which allows for noticing things that would otherwise be ignored or filtered out. I seem to recall some time ago an article that scanned proficient meditators and found that regions of the brain that were involved in the ego were suppressed during the meditation, which allowed for a similar expanded-mind feeling. (Shrooms can do this, as well.)
The Transportation Security Administration asserts the right to inspect your coffee bought within the supposedly secure zone. Theater, theater, theater.
In technology, the implantation of a technological eye to replace a lot biological one.
Then, a device that folds like a utility knife, but instead creates animales to play with, the question of whether blueprints for fabbable guns would be an unacceptable proliferation of weapons, making it more than just too easy to get functioning weapons, the development of technology that helped in the Second Great War...whose base idea was significantly different, systems that can detect the complex states of protons, investments in using three-dimensional printing to produce meat, and a reminder that soil, plant-growing, and botany necessitates the use of chemistry, and thus the idea of "chemical-free" things is more than a bit ludicrous.
And more about the parasite the cats carry and that apparently can cause bad behavior in humans, albeit only with a subtle link. (Which is still enough for an article, of course.)
Also, disproving the idea of junk DNA by finding most DNA does have a purpose - regulating the genes that do produce things, and a method to cool the body by taking advantage of the natural places where heat is radiated and cooling them. Which apparently has an interesting knock-on effect of helping dispel exercise fatigue.
Out of this section, the latest Mars rover landing site for Curiosity is now known as Bradbury Landing. And that makes me want to re-read the Martian Chronicles.
Oh, and hacking un-salted, unhardened passwords has become almost trivially easy now that enough data is out in the world to allow machines with programmable GPUs to refine their techniques and try billions of combinations per second. Which is a very brrrr sort of thing.
In opinions, seeing bad narratives from the media regarding trans* people, agender people, genderqueer people, and others who don't fit into nice boxes, because they aren't deliberately seeking out all the kinds of people, just the ones that fit the already-prevailing narratives, trying to box in the not-boxable.
The problem of Amy Pond and River Song in the Moffat Era, at least to the end of Series Six - instead of having their Crowning Moment of Awesome to save the world, they are relegated to saving The Doctor, which is quite different. We're hoping that in this series, they take a page out of the playbook of the Avatar creators, because the Avatar creators really have figured out how to make female characters without then subjugating them to the men. (Most of the time. Asami and Korra have some Issues here and there.)
An interesting commentary on the use of katakana as a signififer for importance or focus in informal discourse, even when hiragana and kanji of the same word exist. Duuuuuude.
Finally, a request for game journalists to start being journalists, instead of just slaving away praising the latest thing they apparently hate in private.
And the virtues of subjectivity, because without that, we wouldn't be exposed to all of the really great ways to experience media.
