stoopid ← Alex Acks: Sound and Nerdery

And we’re back.

Apr

4

2016

We’re back! As in my website is back up, after being down all weekend. Thank you so much to my wonderful hosting company, ElectricKitten, for resetting my bandwidth (and giving me a bit extra) with no extra charge. I love my host so much. Of course, this shouldn’t have needed to happen at all, in ...

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. 3

Dec

20

2015

I already went off on this on Twitter, so I will be brief. Mary Sue. Go read the TV Tropes essay, which is a good history of the term and its rather fuzzy meaning. But note some of the common factors. Special powers. Implausibly talented in an incredibly wide variety of areas. Remarkable physical traits. Everyone ...

If JK Rowling stopped writing, people would totally buy my books, right? 4

Feb

26

2014

If JK Rowling Cares About Writing, She Should Stop Doing It Okay, it’s 7 in the morning and I haven’t even had a cup of tea yet, but someone said a dumb thing on the internet so I can’t even look away. Really, I’d normally just bitch about this on Twitter, but my thoughts are ...

You only hate boobs because you hate freedom. 4

Feb

10

2014

Or: the most hilarisad thing I heard this weekend. So, this ties back into the SFWA thing from last year. You know, the bulletin cover that made me sigh profoundly and roll my eyes? And then the wanksplosion that caused me to write a post to specifically say “Fuck you” to Malzberg and Resnick? It ...

Italy in Geological News

Jun

28

2010

First a volcano-related item: How did the victims of the Plinean Eruption of Vesuvius die – a summary from io9, of an article assessing how the victims of the Vesuvius eruption died. It will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with how freaking scary pyroclastic flows are that they died from being flash-cooked by ...

More HAARP conspiracy nuttiness

Jan

21

2010

Chavez says US ‘weapon’ caused Haiti quake Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez Wednesday accused the United States of causing the destruction in Haiti by testing a ‘tectonic weapon’ to induce the catastrophic earthquake that hit the country last week. And: Venezuelan media have reported that the earthquake “may be associated with the project called HAARP, a ...

Science fiction makes you godless and evil

Jan

6

2010

Well, I guess if you have a fundamental problem with science in general, science fiction becomes a sort of terrifying, wordy mass of horror. I’m waiting for this guy’s next installment, when he attacks the fantasy genre for being polytheistic and glorifying witchcraft. And elves. Because everyone knows that elves are really just thinly disguised ...

Even real Mayans think the 2012 Apocalypse is BS

Oct

13

2009

2012 isn’t the end of the world, Mayans insist It also sounds like the Mayans who aren’t too busy trying not to starve to death are also getting very annoyed about the whole thing. Considering this is basically the white people stealing a bit of their culture and then shellacking it with the Christian idea ...

Within the heart of every mountain, there slumbers a pyramid.

Aug

5

2009

I’ve still got a cold, so I’m going to keep this pretty short and sweet. I’m having a hard time writing anything even vaguely coherent. But here we go. From the people who brought us pyramids in Bosnia: Pyramids in Romania? No. That was easy. Okay, not quite that short and sweet. Looking at the ...

Monkeywrenching geology

Jul

30

2009

Monkeywrenching the Batholiths I saw this item on Pharyngula, and it just kind of blew me away. I mean, you hear about animal rights groups going after biologists all the time, but I’d always thought at least academic geologists were safe from this kind of interference with their experiments. There were several things about the ...