Categories
science fiction this shit is fucked up worldcon wtf

Well, I sure don’t like this (I’m talking about the Hugo stats)

First, go read Jason’s roundup of info, because he is more measured, cogent, and informative than I could hope to be: Genre Grapevine on the Hugo Awards “not eligible” problem (ETA: Cora really digs into the irregularities at her blog.)

(And you really should consider supporting Jason, because he does solid work all around.)

I don’t necessarily have anything new to add, but I have been reminded that, particularly in such a relatively small group, it can be very worth it to speak up even if the response boils down to a rousing hear, hear! It is all too easy for silence to be read as either assent, consent, or disinterest, and I also know I have my own association with WSFS nonsense as a dedicated meeting attendee.

My thoughts, then, are thus:

  1. This is really fucked up and really upsetting. People being marked as “ineligible” for no cogent reason I’ve yet encountered, despite a plethora of nominations and obvious eligibility. While some of the “ineligibles” are pretty easy to read as politically motivated–and that is already not okay in the slightest–others (I specifically mean here my friend Paul Weimer) make absolutely no goddamn sense in that framing. Not that it would be okay either way. Absolute fucking bullshit, top to bottom.
  2. It’s a massive stain on the Hugo Awards themselves, I would argue far worse than the Sad Puppy nonsense because at least there were no questions there about the admin tampering with the Hugos. So I reiterate: what the actual fuck.
    1. Cheryl Morgan makes an interesting point about this, by the way. The thought that releasing stats with problems as a deliberate act to draw attention is certainly a possibility. Though I find myself wondering why, if this was intended as a deliberate act of whistleblowing, one of the American members of the Hugo Admin hasn’t out and said something.
  3. I am pissed, I’m horrified and… I’m honestly also not surprised that there were some kind of bullshit shenanigans. I chose not to participate in Chengdu WorldCon as a panelist or anything else because of the policies and acts of the Chinese government; while I certainly know the people are not their government, I had massive concerns about either top-down political interference or protective self-censorship. I am deeply saddened and disappointed to have that choice vindicated.

You can consider the above 3 points to be squared, as my housemate Corina shares these opinions. (And doesn’t have a blog of her own, because she is wiser than me.)

I’ll admit, after my initial what the actual fuck, this is fucked reaction, my second thought was, oh boy, the Glasgow business meeting is going to be spicy as hell. Which: good. Deservedly so, if it pans out the way I imagine.

With that in mind, I want to draw attention to another post by Cheryl: Decoupling the Hugos. Please give it a thorough read, and take a look at the draft resolution.

I had a similar thought on hearing the news. Making the Hugo Admin independent of WorldCon could prevent uneven application or different interpretations of rules, say, and provide more continuity. Election administration is only as good as the honesty of the people in charge, but as we in America got educated on thoroughly in 2020, if you have officials and administrators who are answerable primarily to the rules themselves and deeply invested in the process regardless of their potential personal feelings about the results, it can shield you from a lot of interference.

I also, for reasons of my current planned participation in the Glasgow 2024 WSFS Business Meeting, don’t feel I can personally push this proposal forward–and I may very well not be able to debate on it. But I can sure say I think it’s a good idea, and Kevin has crafted some solid starting language, and I hope I get a chance to vote on something like this in August whether I’m sitting on a chair out in serpentine territory or at the table.

We already showed once that, for all its required two-year timeline, WSFS can react to deeply troubling occurrences within the Hugos. I have high hopes that we can do so again.

Categories
rants wtf

I have no witty comeback for this racism.

So I’m biking along a mostly-deserted stretch of road north of Longmont and it’s hot as the Devil’s ballsack out there. I’m two-thirds of the way through my three liter camelback, and I’ve looped around to go back into town before I turn into a crispy strip of people leather on a bike. Another cyclists goes past me. Yells to ask if I’m going back toward Lyons, because he’s lost. Sure. I can point him in the right direction, since there are detours and things are a little confusing. We ride side by side for a while and talk about the things boring-ass adults do:

Training for something in particular? Nah, just riding for fun. You do triathlons, dude? Good for you.

What do you do for a job? I’m unemployed.

Oh, well, ever think about teaching? I’m not really looking to be a full-time teacher, but I’m thinking maybe I could get in as a substitute to help make ends meet.

Look at private schools, my new friend says. You could teach science or math. Yeah, teach one of those AP math classes. They’re full of fucking Asians. 

My brain is one giant record scratch. WHAT?

And my fellow cyclist, who until this moment had just been ye olde average slightly egotistical white dude, pedals away. I let him.

I wish I’d had the wherewithal to just ask him what the fuck he even meant, saying that. I’m not even asking for a witty comeback here. I’ve managed to kick myself into motion before, in a situation where someone in a conversation dropped a pointed comment about “oh you know, those people” and I looked him in the eye and said, actually I don’t know, why don’t you tell me what you mean by that. Funny how quickly the topic changed. But now? I am still kicking myself over the fact that I pedaled slowly along, sweat dripping in my eyes, and tried to wrap my brain around the fact that someone had just fucking said that, and thought it was an all right thing to drop in a conversation with a random stranger.

I know none of this is a surprise to anyone who isn’t so pale they glow in the dark. But I’m writing this out is for my best friend, who has two mixed-race daughters and keeps running across people who believe shit like this doesn’t happen in their happy city. Well, it does. This isn’t just your embarrassing relative that you can’t unfriend on Facebook because it would cause a stink. This is a total stranger thinking that this is a welcoming environment in which to be casually racist.

I went on a wild tear on Twitter a while ago about one of the effects of bi-erasure that I really hated when I was married to a man–that random people would feel free to voice some very homophobic/transphobic stuff to me, because they assumed I was a straight woman and therefore on their “team.” I hated it in that context because then I had to make a snap decision over if I should out myself, or if I should let an asshole think that my stunned silence meant I agreed with them. I guess this is another thing like that, where certain people see that I’m a pasty motherfucker and assume that therefore I’m on the team. The only difference is instead of punching at me, they’re insulting my nieces and my friends and a whole enormous population of people who have never done anything to deserve this bullshittery.

I hate it. I hate that this guy on the road probably pedaled off thinking I was totally amused by his fucked-up “joke” because I couldn’t manage more than a strangled, disbelieving, “WHAT?” before he was out of earshot. But I’m also at a loss as to what I should do. It’s like walking into a glass door. Oh look, a random stranger just assumed I’d be okay with this and I have no good response because I’m still trying to process what the fuck even did you just say. At least if it had been at a bar, I could have poured my drink on him.

I still have no witty comeback. If I had that moment to do over again, I would have yelled, “No. That is not okay.” And then he would have fucked off, probably, or I would have spent god knows how long arguing with some random guy about how he’s Totally Not Racist It Was Just A Joke What’s My Problem Anyway. I don’t really think the latter makes anyone reassess their viewpoint, but I’d settle for getting him to shut the fuck up so my nieces don’t ever have to hear it.

Categories
Loki wtf

Apparently Loki + Waffles = A Thing (and it’s my fault?)

Well, this was sure a surreal way to top off my time at Worldcon.

I don’t see a point in being coy about the fact that I still write a bit of fanfiction now and then for fun, and lately it’s been Thor/The Avengers fanfic with Loki as the main character because hey, he’s my favorite, and he’s fun to write. I wrote this novella-length thing called The Calculator last year and included a sort of cute side “character” that was the Waffle Iron1.

Last night a very nice person who read that fanfic in an archive and left some comments and informed me that apparently the Waffle Iron has become A Thing, which even has its own tumblr. And has spawned other fanfics (I think that’s really cool) and porn2. The latter I find a bit disturbing, but I guess I’m not surprised. Rule 34 and all that. And waffles have now made a guest appearance in the Loki and the Loon comic, which as far as I can tell has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the terrifying internet porn.

I had no idea about any of this. Most probably because I don’t have a tumblr3. I knew people thought the little Waffle Iron in The Calculator was cute, but no one even mentioned to me that fanfics spawned from it. I didn’t even realize that people had actually, you know, read the story to that extent.

I’m not upset or anything. I’m just deeply puzzled4. I really wish I’d known this was going on because it’s kind of cool and perhaps not something best left to drop on my head sometime after midnight and my third beer5.

So yeah.

Short version: …bzuh?

1 – A sort of weird shout-out to The Brave Little Toaster, actually.

2 – No, I am not linking to this because like I needed any more proof that we live in a godless universe of pain. If you want to know that badly I’m sure you can find it so long as you don’t mind things like “loki waffle iron porn” showing up in your Google search history.

3 – I’m not on tumblr because I would rather use the time to write. Twitter sucks away enough of my life. No, I’m not getting an account. Fuck off.

4 – Well, and a little weirded out by the porn thing. I’ve never really bought into the idea of people climbing mountains just because they’re there, and I feel similarly ambivalent toward people writing porn that seems to have no purpose other than to make others snort Borax just because they can. Then again, I did just link to that website of the Roy Orbison in cling-film stories so maybe I should shut up but goddamnit those are funny and involve no actual weird sex.

5 – I also kind of want to say hi to the non-porn bits of things, but since I have no tumblr that seems a tad impossible. It does seem cool in some kind of bizarre, WTF-internet kind of way.

Categories
wtf

At which point a complete stranger felt compelled to show me his wang.

For the most part, this has been a very uneventful weekend. I’ve been driving, driving, driving, and then driving some more in my slammin’ ride, by which I mean a ten foot U-haul truck that contains approximately twelve boxes and two bicycles. And I’ve been driving through northern Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, which are not known to be the most exciting states in the Union.

So to be honest, the most exciting thing that’s happened all trip was a random guy in Kansas flashing his cock at me.

I would have much preferred to be bored.

This is how it happened – the U-haul trucks have a governor in them so you can’t go over 74 miles per hour. The speed limit is 75 in Kansas so I pretty much have been running on the governor the whole way. I passed a guy in a gray pickup truck. Then there was a semi, so I got in the left lane to pass that as well and the guy in the pickup followed me. He was right on my tail, which meant he must have sped up, but whatever.

He stayed on my tail as I got over to the right lane. Which seemed weird, since I expected him to pass me. It happens. Then he went over into the exit lane and sped up even more so he pulled even with the truck’s cab.

At that point I was wondering if maybe there was something wrong with the back of the truck. People will sometimes do that, speed up to let you know there’s a problem, just to be nice. I turned to look out the passenger window at him.

The man looked me in the eye, then arched back to give me a nice view of his exposed penis, which he gave a couple of emphatic rubs before he was gone down the exit. My mother was in the passenger seat and missed the entire thing, because it happened in just a few seconds and she was focused on reading an article in the New Yorker.

I’m not upset about this so much as deeply puzzled and creeped out. I could have gone my entire life happily without seeing a perfect stranger’s wang while going 74 mph on I-135. Or on any highway for that matter. Or in any situation. I know this sort of thing happens, but it’s always seemed the stuff of legend. No one’s ever messed with me like that; I’ve been told it’s because I look like the sort of person who would just as soon tear said appendage off.

So I guess that makes flashing it at me while separated by two windows and a healthy amount of space on a highway the safe prospect. I will say, relative to the penises I’ve seen in my life, it wasn’t at all interesting. I guess presentation is everything.

My mom caught the shocked look on my face right after the guy had sped off down the exit ramp. I explained the situation to her and laughed, because at that point what else can you do? It is incredibly ridiculous, when you think about it. But I also kept asking, who the hell does this? Who the hell even thinks this kind of behavior is in any way acceptable?

What really creeps me out isn’t seeing someone’s dick or possibly being an unwilling participant in some random stranger’s weird sexual fantasy. What creeps me out is the flasher looked like he could easily have been someone’s husband, someone’s dad. (I’d put him in his fifties, probably.) I find it disturbing that, after exposing himself to a startled woman on the highway, he quite possibly drove home to get a kiss on the cheek from his wife and hug his daughter.

Presumably said wife and daughter don’t know how deeply pathetic he is.

Categories
colorado conspiracy theory wtf

Cycling our way to a New World Order

This is why I love state/local politics. It’s also why I occasionally feel the need to drink cough syrup until I put myself in an uncaring stupor so that the unceasing bombardment of stupid will just stop for a moment.

Maes said in a later interview that he once thought the mayor’s efforts to promote cycling and other environmental initiatives were harmless and well-meaning. Now he realizes “that’s exactly the attitude they want you to have.”

The ominous they of course are the United Nations, no relation to the giant radioactive ants of Them. (Or ARE they?)

I’m not sure what I find funniest about Maes’ position – that he’s attempting to make the UN some sort of boogeyman for Colorado, or that the UN’s supposed nefarious plot is to (THE HORROR!) get people to whiz around on cute little red bicycles in downtown Denver. Those bastards! Driving an enormous, gas-guzzling car between any two points that are more than ten feet apart is the American way, you know. Curse you Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, you won’t get away with this twisted plot no matter how adorable the little dingly bells on those bicycles are. We’re Americans, damnit!

“At first, I thought, ‘Gosh, public transportation, what’s wrong with that, and what’s wrong with people parking their cars and riding their bikes? And what’s wrong with incentives for green cars?’ But if you do your homework and research, you realize ICLEI is part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty,” Maes said.

Imagine me doing this in my best Glen Beck Voice:
First they came for our SUVs, and I said nothing because I didn’t own an SUV. Then they gave me a bicycle, and I still said nothing, because I thought they were kind of cute. Then they established the new world order in our city and started exterminating anyone that didn’t believe in their twisted socialist agenda and…

I can’t do it. I just can’t. I threw up in my mouth a little just then.

Needless to say, Maes is the “Tea Party” favorite, which I’m starting to think translates out to “we think a strait jacket is a perfectly valid fashion statement.” I find myself actually hoping that he gets the Republican nomination. First off, because I like Hickenlooper, and I think this level of crazy is just the boost his campaign needs. And secondly, there’s something wrong in my brain which means I actually enjoy trying to laugh and cry at the same time, so this man’s campaign literature (which I’ll no doubt be bombarded with since I’m unaffiliated with a political party) would be an amazing resource for me.

Categories
wtf

He’s a very naughty boy

You know, I’ve read this article several times and I really just can’t come up with anything clever to say about it. Because it really just leaves me feeling like I’ve just bee hit in the back of the head with a small antelope, sort of flummoxed and confused and wondering why is there a dik-dik in my house anyway?

So, I can’t even imagine how poor Mr. Patel feels about the whole thing. At all. Particularly this bit:

The influx was so heavy, in fact, that he put up a statement on his website referencing Monty Python’s Life of Brian and categorically stating that he was not Maitreya.

Instead of settling the issue, however, his denial merely fanned the flames for some believers. In a twist ripped straight from the script of the comedy classic, they said that this disavowal, too, had been prophesied.

He must be a very, very patient man. I think by now I would have progressed from the hysterical, angry screaming phase of frustration to the sobbing disconsolately in the corner phase.

Categories
fearmongering wtf

Big Brother is watching students (II)

BoingBoing is doing a fantastic job adding more and more to this already horrifically creepy story about school issues laptops being used to spy on students. I’m glad to know that the EFF and ACLU have gotten in on this now.

Anyway, a couple highlights, about the district policy:

* Possession of a monitored Macbook was required for classes

* Possession of an unmonitored personal computer was forbidden and would be confiscated

* Jailbreaking a school laptop in order to secure it or monitor it against intrusion was an offense which merited expulsion

Honestly, it’s got to be pretty cool if your school district has so much spare money that it can afford to get laptops for its students and loan them out1. If nothing else, making sure kids are up with the technology from the start gives them a good advantage, I think. But when it tips over in to requiring that students use these laptops and punishing students that have a different laptop they want to use, that’s creepy, and I really makes it sound like the intent from the start was to tightly monitor the kids. I could even maybe understand it if they were focusing on in-school use, since letting kids have laptops in class is a recipe for not getting anything done unless there are some real restrictions on what they can do with those laptops2. But that this overbearing monitoring extended so obviously outside of school makes it impossible for me to see it as anything other than intrusive and just… creepy.

And they sure were. A little more detail on the kid who was punished for something he did at home:

However, the lawyer for the Robbins family says that their son was called into the vice-principal’s office and confronted with a photo secretly snapped by his laptop’s webcam while he was eating Mike & Ike’s candy, and he was accused of taking drugs.

Way to go, Lower Merion School District. Way to go. Even if the kid were actually taking drugs, doesn’t that become a law enforcement issue if it takes place off of school grounds? Oh yeah, except the police can’t do that sort of thing without a warrant. Thank you Fourth Amendment.

From an article about the response of the EFF and ACLU:

Even if the school district had gotten students or parents to agree to the monitoring as a condition of receiving the notebooks, the spying would have still be unconstitutional, according to Bankston. He told us that private schools or employers can ask you to sign away your right to privacy, but not a government entity like a public school. “To condition one’s receipt of government benefits on your surrendering a constitutional right is itself unconstitutional,” he said.

Of all things, this is making me think of one of my favorite movies, Enemy of the State; toward the end, one of the shadowy bad guys, Tom Reynolds, is trying to justify how important it is for the government to spy on people:

We won the war. Now we’re fighting the peace. It’s a lot more volatile. Now we’ve got ten million crackpots out there with sniper scopes, sarin gas and C-4. Ten-year-olds go on the Net, downloading encryption we can barely break, not to mention instructions on how to make a low-yield nuclear device. Privacy’s been dead for years because we can’t risk it. The only privacy that’s left is the inside of your head. Maybe that’s enough. You think we’re the enemy of democracy, you and I? I think we’re democracy’s last hope.

The idea of course being that privacy (and in many ways, personal freedom) should take the back seat to the illusion of safety. If my earlier rantings didn’t make it obvious enough, this is not something I agree with. And while I understand not wanting kids to use school issued laptops to surf porn during class, the entire concept of the web nanny is famously flawed. And I also tend to think (admittedly, it may be easy for me since I’m not a mom of a kid of that age) that treating a kid like he or she lives in a police state isn’t going to do them any favors when they turn 18.

These are big issues that get bigger each day with the march of technology. David Brin has an interesting take on the issue of surveillance, transparency, and privacy in the Transparent Society. I don’t agree with what Brin says in a lot of ways3 (I tend to agree more with Bruce Schneier) but one point he does make well is that a major problem in surveillance is that it only goes one way. The government (in this case the school) is able to spy on you without your knowledge, and there’s very little that can be done to hold them accountable unless they do something phenomenally stupid, such as trying to suspend you for eating candy in your own home. The students are not allowed to monitor the school to make sure that the school is acting with the same responsibility that it is demanding of its students.

Larry King got the last word in Enemy of the State, and I think he deserves to have it here as well.

How do we draw the line – draw the line between protection of national security, obviously the government’s need to obtain intelligence data, and the protection of civil liberties, particularly the sanctity of my home? You’ve got no right to come into my home!

1 – Though also knowing of many a district that can’t even afford to get its kids new books while others can do this kind of extravagant spending tarnishes the shiny.

2 – I’ve been in a lot of lecture halls and watched a lot of supposedly more mature and restrained university students use laptops. I can count on the fingers of one hand the times that said laptop usage involved actual note-taking rather than Facebook and Youtube.

3 – Another of Brin’s ideas is that in a truly transparent society, everyone would be familiar with everyone else’s secrets, which leads to a sort of mutually assured destruction if we don’t respect each other’s illusion of privacy. Interesting, but not a place I’d personally like to live in.

Categories
fearmongering wtf

Big brother is watching students

School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home – via BoingBoing. This is absolutely ludicrous. A school issues laptops to its kids, then proceeds to use those laptops to spy on them while they’re at home. And apparently in one instance, even disciplined a kid for something that they did at home.

This is beyond horrifying. You can argue that personal privacy is a changing landscape right now, as society adjusts to the realities of new social media and the basic fact that on the internet, nothing is ever truly dead. That’s why you get messes where commentary on Facebook causes trouble or stupid use of social media gets you fired. There are arguments that can be made on either side for that kind of thing1. But using a laptop to spy on someone – anyone – in their own home is something I’d hope anyone that’s not on a fascist big brother-esque power trip can agree is beyond the pale.

“We noticed you checking out some stoner sites, so we’ve informed your parents that you’re doing pot and will be suspending you. Oh, and those were some cute panties you had on yesterday.”

I’d be calling myself paranoid, except that it’s actually happened. It’s apparently time to take the tinfoil off of your head and put it on your laptop instead.

1 – I am solidly on the side of “it’s none of your damn business what I do outside of work/school as long as I’m in no way representing the company/school.”

Categories
geeky stuff wtf

The i…WHAT?

Okay, seriously. Was there no one in the Apple offices to let them know that their new device sounds like it was named after a feminine hygiene product?

I’m sure it’s cool and stuff, but really. I feel like I should be sticking it in my underpants to hold the red menace at bay, not be reading books off of it.

On the other hand, I’m sure there are plenty of male geeks that want to stick it in their underpants, and for an entirely different reason.