Great linklists happen...maybe somewhere else? - 6 March - 21 March 02014

[silveradept]

We start with Libba Bray, published author, talking about the depths of depression. And, for juxtaposition, The story of the Dalai Lama going to a ski resort, and the experiences gained there, and how an author about sexuality ended up not doing a whole lot with it after they'd achieved a state that threatened to overwhelm them.

If you were looking for where the Workers of the World Wide Web are going to come from, Amazon's Mechanical Turk would be a really good place to look - most of its work pays far too little, offers no employee anything, and allows people posting tasks to keep the result regardless of whether they pay up or not.

Even in a contest that nominally professes a free press, censorship is easy - whatever the advertisers say, goes. Because they're the only ones with the money the newspaper needs to survive. Because media had been conglomerated to the degree that it requires that kind of money to survive. And yet, those same conglomerates will find new ways to make money off fannish expressions.

danah boyd talks about how to be a well-read author, you often have to be a well-sold author, and that means going against your instincts to give things away on day zero. This is in relation to her new book, It's Complimented, about the social lives of today's teenagers, which is available for download as will as purchase. On the other side of that, writing appears to be the only discipline of the arts where people complain that someone is building their skill by emulating successful artists. Even Kurt Vonnegut points out that you have to start somewhere.

There are also old problems that require dealing with - like how science occupations have a culture that is completely toxic to keeping diversity, starting with the educational institutions that are supposed to be training them.

And an attempted compliment that chooses to do a whole lot of fat-shaming instead. If you haven't figured out all the reasons why that would not be as complimentary as someone apparently thought, then there's a lot of reading to do. Also, it is unlikely your corporate wellness program is going to be any help for whatever outcomes you want, despite how they tout the program.

The manufacturers of the Samuel Adams brand of beer are withdrawing their participation in the St. Patrick's Day parade in Boston because the parade excludes openly LGBT individuals from participation.

Shifting from maximizing happiness to satisficing changes some things, but it draws snark from the columnist as well because they can't necessarily satisfice without trying to maximize the satisficing.

If you're in San Fransisco and need a ride, especially if you're someome the cabbies aren't going to take, going somewhere they don't want to go, consider Homobiles, a donation-run car service that exists because people can't always afford a car, or because some cabbies don't want customers.

Unsurprisingly, if you want to end poverty and homelessness, you have to be able to address issues like mental health care, to find people jobs, and to get them into housing that works with their needs and opportunities.

Conceptions of sexuality that place people in a binary that only moves in one direction (e.g. virginity) leave out the language and importance of consent and are instrumental in perpetuating ideas that reduce women to property or things to be used. As a perfect example of this, check out this "game" that shows the failings of the virginity concept, as well as being highly sexist.

The inability of a school to recognize a disability led to the accusation of a first-grader of sexual behaviors, their eventual suspension, and the investigation of the family by a social services organization. All while the family of the child was providing proof of what the behavior was stemming from (anxiety) and trying to work with the school.

The FDA approved a hydrocodone pill whose dose is sufficiently strong that two pills is an overdose. Because we need more pills like that on the market.

If you are a politician, the words you choose had better mean what they actually mean. Otherwise, expect to be made fun of and not taken seriously.

Computer and technology terminology are not always universally known, even in high-tech societies, which speaks to the need for all people to have instruction available to them, should they need it. Most people, if they don't have relatives who will walk them through it, will get their instruction from the public library. Think about that for a moment.

Then contemplate the ease in which someone was able to access personally identifying information for the purposes of fraud by posing as a private investigator and purchasing access to the data brokers who keep that information warehoused.

Additionally, both Sally Beauty and Target corporation did not act on alerts that would have allowed them to stop credit card number theft.

And then go play the updated version of the Hitchhiker's Guide Interactive Fiction, still as difficult as ever.

Last for tonight, Louis Armstrong cultivated a personality that made it seem like he didn't care about politics or racial equality. The opposite is the truth.

And if you want a more diverse crowd of fans for your sport, sell the sport, not stereotypes you think will attract the minority.

Comments

[marahmarie]

Giving things away on Day Zero, I've learned the hard way since the E-book was published, is apparently par for the course. Contradictorily enough (and by that what I mean is you might as well tell me the sky's green and expect me to believe that, too) everyone's told its author that giving it away freely, just to get himself started, to improve his word of mouth, to get more and better reviews, is indeed the only way to fly, and allegedly there are credible online sources to back these folks up. I'm too jaded to bother reading them. It doesn't matter whether I believe any of it or not. The point is the same, and the point is insane. At which point, upon realizing that, I will just shut down, anyway.

Don't get me wrong: if free, say, four page long samples were a thing I'd distribute them myself, if I could, to everyone who wants one in the world: there's nothing wrong with enticing the masses with a little peek. But to demand - for our society, I guess - to demand the whole thing be given away for free (oh, and it's almost 50 pages of hard, hard work there) in order to hope to get even one measly little $5 sale is beyond my comprehension or what I can stand to watch anyone have to take (and this is where I won't go into my budding rant about how BitTorrent has finally ruined everything; if I start that rant, I'll go over the 16k character limit twice and still not get all my bile out over that). All I can say is I'm glad I'm not the author, but I've never had any interest in writing easily stolen books (unless they come with a print version, in which case yes, steal away) and I never will.

Also, thanks for the link about the rent-a-rides; we might need something like that soon, so yes, I needed the reminder, badly.

[silveradept]

Publishing houses give away copies of things all the time. Admittedly, it's in the order of hundreds to sell thousands, but buzz generation usually involves having to give away the product to a select few. In our connected world, though, now the people who get the freebies can give away freebies of their own. Social currency is still important for getting sales, but the ability to make perfect copies does change things a lot.

[lliira]

I am so appalled by the Zohydro thing. Opiate overdose is the most common cause of accidental death in the U.S. and getting worse. Pill companies have done a good job of making people believe only people who abuse drugs and obtain them illegally could ever overdose, but that's a blatant lie (not that it's okay if those people die either.) I was addicted to Percocet after taking less than the prescribed dose for two weeks. Pain does not somehow magically make one immune to addiction. And opiates fog the mind; it is incredibly easy to forget you've already taken a pill. Or to get frustrated that the pain is not better and, without really thinking because you're in too much pain to think, take another pill hoping it will help.

I don't like to ascribe conspiracies when incompetence is usually the answer, but in this case I seriously think a couple people at the FDA were bribed.

[silveradept]

Since a lot of money changes hands in drug trials, some indirect bribes were probably going on.

[marahmarie]

I blame it (without launching into my BitTorrent rant) on the culture of free. The culture of free states you must never pay for anything, that if you can't afford to buy it, it's always easy enough to steal. If you don't give stuff away for free (and often, even if you do) people will find a way to steal it via the Bit programs, so there's no use.

The nice thing about it is the people who buy from you now truly want to help so it's almost personal every time you make a sale (update: since I last replied we have made a sale...go us). The bad thing is, you cannot make a living off the few who truly want to help.

The only two ways to get around it without selling a hard copy version of his book are a) use economies of scale to our advantage; the more books he writes, the more money he can make, so make up lost profit on sheer volume alone or 2) for him to become a big name in his chosen field of written expertise: problem solved.

We are nowhere near having the ability to indulge in either option, of course.

[silveradept]

Fair dinkum. These days, it's apparently about building a support network of those people who do care enough to buy.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I have come to appreciate hydrocodone. I've had it before for my carpal tunnel surgery and such, and it was effective, but about a month ago I got some massive chest pain. If it had been on the left side of my chest instead of my right, and had my BP/pulse numbers been off, I'd've been calling 911. I had costochondritis, an inflammation of the muscles/tissue between your ribs. It was a whole new definition of pain, and this from a guy who's had surgery 11 times. This was the first time where I could take a pain pill and the pain went away.

I can now really appreciate effective pain meds, and I know people who live their life in pain. But I don't understand why some corp feels the need to release double-strength hydrocodone. There are specialists who only do pain management, it's one of the biggest changes in medicine: it's easier to prevent pain through regular dosing than to stop the pain once you have a breakthrough. Double-strength, if it's released, will result in a lot of people dying. I suppose it's too hard to research a new approach to pain medication rather than just creating a double-strength pill. If you need a double-strength hydrocodone, then I would suspect either something more severe has happened or your doctor is not taking the correct approach to pain management. If you're lucky, maybe you're in Colorado or a state that allows medical marijuana and you can try that approach, which has been demonstrated as very effective, but because of federal laws, can't be researched.

How long until someone releases a triple- or quadruple-strength pill.

[silveradept]

Effective pain management that includes pills makes more sense than approving stronger versions of those same pills, precisely because people will probably take them when it hurts, and then take too many, because it hurts. Or pharmaceutical companies are staying to be bought into by distribution cartels that want summer drugs on the black market. Either seems plausible at this point.