Changes to Yahoo

If anyone else is still a member of one or more Yahoo groups, you probably got some e-mails recently about how they're changing in a few days. One from this morning starts like this:

Last month we notified you of the changes coming to Yahoo Groups that better align with user habits, and today we are providing an update to guide you through the next steps of the transition. Yahoo Groups is not going away - but we are making adjustments to ultimately serve you better.

Seriously? Yahoo's full of so much shit, it's leaking out their ears.

They're deleting all stored content -- anything that was in the file libraries is being erased, and it sounds like they're also deleting all the stored conversations, although I'm not sure about that. I'd bet a stack of cookies on it, though. Yahoo Groups are becoming e-mail only groups, with none of the other features they've had for years.

And they're not allowing public groups anymore. Any public group is being automatically turned private. You won't be able to just join a group anymore, or even browse through groups looking for anything interesting. You need an invitation from a moderator to join.

Now, I don't know how many people are still active on Yahoo Groups. I'm still a member of a romance review group that's transitioned over to another site in the last week. And the workshops I take with Kris Rusch and Dean Smith were all coordinated through Yahoo Groups, and we're transitioning those too, although I think we're keeping the e-mail. Other than that, I haven't done anything with Yahoo Groups in years.

But still, don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining. When you delete files and hide all the groups and generally reduce usefulness down to some bare skeleton of what your service was before, don't try to pretend you're doing it to "better align with user habits." You're doing it to save money, period, and everyone knows it. Trying to pretend you're improving service is pure bullshit, and gives me the impression that not only is your company turning cheap and lazy, but you think I'm stupid.

Show some respect. If you're slashing services to save money, at least fucking own it.

Bleeping Music....

This is why I don't generally listen to music. :P If anyone asks, or if a comment seems contextually appropriate, I'll usually say I'm not that into music. The truth is, I'm into it too much.

I can't listen to music as background noise. If I like a song then it's distracting, and if I don't then it's annoying. I generally just avoid it because it sucks me in if I'm not careful.

This morning, I wasn't careful.

So I got a Facebook notice that a friend of mine posted a link. I went to check it out, and it was Queen's Live Aid set. I haven't seen that in a long time, so I clicked through and watched it. Awesome stuff -- Queen rules.

But I glanced at that column of links to the right on the YouTube page, and saw that there are... holy crap, there are reaction videos with people who've never heard Queen before, and sometimes the younger ones have never heard OF Queen. O_O

There were a few other things too -- one video analyzed Bohemian Rhapsody (the structure, not the lyrics) and it was really good. And I watched a video analyzing how Disney makes the songs in their movies feel nostalgic, which was actually sort of a history of Disney movie music, and how the music is one of the major factors in bringing about the Disney Renaissance, starting with Little Mermaid, which had completely awesome music. (I nagged my then-boyfriend, Jim, into renting it on my first or second visit (to see him in realspace -- we met online) and when we finished "Under the Sea" he had to rewind and watch it again right away. :D )

But mostly it was Queen reaction videos.

I got up a bit before midnight last night, Jim went to bed a little after two, and I started watching videos between four and five in the morning. I just finished. So... yeah, I lost like eleven hours of what was going to be productive time to watching a bunch of ridiculously fun music videos. :P I watched the Live Aid set like... seven times? Maybe eight, counting the original non-reaction video link that set me off. (Or maybe nine...?) I watched people watching the official video of Bohemian Rhapsody like eight times, maybe nine, including one guy who actually tried to break down and analyze the lyrics and figure out how it all made sense. [giggling facepalm] He paused after the first chunk and started talking about how the singer had just killed someone and was talking to his mother (he was watching a live-recorded video, without the intro :P ) and I was sitting here going, "Oh, dude, do not go there!" LOL!

I found a young man who'd grown up exposed to only hip hop, but someone had suggested he watch Bohemian Rhapsody and do a reaction video. His head exploded two or three times, he called out his parents for only playing hip hop when he was a kid and not introducing him to Queen, and he went on to do eighteen more Queen response videos, every one of which I watched. [hides under keyboard] Seriously, he was fun -- his reactions were more analyses, not incredibly technical, but with enough specific commentary and grounded opinion to make them interesting to listen to.

And just, watching people who've never heard Queen before watching for the first time (especially Bohemian Rhapsody, but a few other songs too) and going all O_O and then rocking out on it? That'll (unfortunately) never get old. :D It's like, introducing your favorite music to someone who's never heard it, and getting to enjoy both the music and their joyful reaction to it, which is massively awesome and fun.

So yeah, that's what I spent the morning and most of the afternoon doing. Thanks, Lyn. [wry smile]

Angie, who was finally able to break away and is going to do her best to forget that response videos exist because otherwise she'll get nothing else done for the rest of the year

Dragged Kicking and Screaming into Social Media

So, I've finally succumbed to the Dread Lord Zuckerberg, and joined Facebook. :P An anthology project I'm in is organizing on Facebook. I'm not going to be precious about it, so I signed up. If you want to friend me, I'm here.

I have no idea how much time I'll spend on Facebook. I don't need another timesink, but I'll probably browse through periodically. We'll see how it goes.

There's a whole lot of stuff here, and I'm sure my page or wall or whatever it is looks pretty bare. I refrained from dumping my entire contact list from Gmail into the system. If I've ever e-mailed you, you're welcome. :) I still need to go digging through the privacy settings and figure out how to turn off as much of that stuff as I can. I've heard it's a pretty horrific experience, requiring a machete and several maps, so I'm not looking forward to it. :/

With any luck, it'll be fun too, though. I might even run into some folks I've lost track of over the yars; that'd be cool.

Angie, looking over her shoulder

Barry Deutsch Cartoon

Barry Deutsch is one of my favorite political cartoonists. I support him on Patreon, and enjoy his work very much.

He just posted a timely cartoon, and encouraged us to share it. I think it's pretty on point, so I'm doing so.

The Legalities of Fanfic

I went to a panel at a convention recently on the legalities of fanfic. I've written fanfic in the past, and will probably read more in the future. And I look forward to the day when fans of my own writing like it enough to write fanfic based on it. So I was looking forward to the panel discussion.

Unfortunately, it seems none of the people on the panel knew anything about the actual legalities of fanfic. The discussion was mostly, "Well, I like fanfic, so I think it's legal," and "I think fanfic is stealing, so I think it's illegal," and back and forth from there, based on what the panelists thought and felt about it.

In the real world, what any individual thinks or feels about fanfic is completely irrelevant to the question. The moderator made it clear that contributions from the audience had to be 1) only questions, and 2) tweet-length or less, so I didn't bother trying to throw any actual facts into the mix at that time.

In actuality, 1) nobody knows for sure whether fanfic is legal or illegal because it's never been litigated, and 2) if it is, most likely only some of it is, and the rest is not.

The fact is, the Fair Use rules are purposely ambiguous.

Whether you're making money with your derivative work is one factor, and the fanfic that gets written and posted to people’s journals, tumblrs, on Facebook, on personal web sites, and on archives like AO3 and fanfiction dot net for anyone to read for free satisfy that particular factor. That's not the only point, however.

Another point is whether the work is used as criticism or parody, and some fanfic clearly is. I know a popular fanfic writer who thinks Dumbledore is an evil, sociopathic villain, and a dark lord himself if you look at what he did and what he allowed to happen over the course of the books. She also thinks Ron Weasley is a selfish, lazy, jealous git who turned against Harry at the drop of a hat, multiple times, generally an asshole. Pretty much all her HP fanfic reflects these two beliefs, in how she writes these characters. You could make a good argument that all of her HP fanfic is criticism of Rowling's books. And a lot of fics are clearly parodies of the original works, and therefore would be no more infringement than Bored of the Rings was an infringement on Lord of the Rings. (Believe me, if the Tolkien estate could've sued National Lampoon for that, they would've; they’re notoriously litigious.) Many other fics don't satisfy the criticism or parody points, so it's possible that the critical/parody fics are completely legal while the others are not.

Another factor is whether the work is transformative. Did the fan writer clearly change a significant part of the IP to create something new? In this case, people who write further-adventures type stories, where Kirk and Spock beam down to a planet and stop two peoples from going to war against each other, are more likely to be in legal peril, while the people who write alternate universe stories where, for example, Kirk and Spock are each members of a different species of dragon, and their dragon clans have been feuding for a thousand years, but the guys meet and get together and bring peace to their clans, Romeo-and-Juliet style but without the tragic ending, are more likely to be in the legal clear.

And another factor is whether the derivative work is likely to negatively impact the earning potential of the original IP. If someone is writing My Little Pony fanfic that's just so wonderful and awesome that Pony fans stop watching the show (and buying the merch) and only read that fanfic, then the MLP IP holder would have a reason to sue, and might win. Although I don't know of many IP holders, either of books/stories or TV/movies, who'd be willing to stand up in court and say that the fanfic of their work is so much better than the work itself that it's cutting into their revenue. :)

And in actuality, if anything it's the opposite. Rabid fans of a property (and you have to be a fairly rabid fan to put in the work and effort of writing fanfic) drag their friends into the fandom by the ear, shoving books or boxed-set DVDs into their hands and practically forcing them to get into the original so that they'll understand the fanfic.

And some people read the fanfic first, then go looking for the original. I've done that a couple of times, in fact. I watched the first couple of episodes of Stargate: Atlantis, went "Meh," and wandered away. A couple of years later, a fanfic writer I like a lot started writing Atlantis fic, and I read it. I enjoyed it quite a bit, went back to the show, and (reading it through slash goggles that I won't apologize for, plus with the extra world- and character-building the fan writers had done in my mind) I enjoyed the show much more. I ended up buying all five seasons on DVD. I also read a really great fic based on the movie Blackhawk Down, then watched the movie, which wasn't my usual thing; I'd never have watched it if I hadn't read the fic first. This isn't the normal way people get into a fandom, but I'm not the only one who's come in through the side door this way. Fanfic and its writers/fans increase engagement with the canon IP, rather than decrease it. Creators who object to fanfic are, IMO, shooting themselves in the foot, and then refusing even a bandage out of sheer cussedness.

The fact is, nobody knows whether "fanfic" is illegal or not. There've been people, usually IP owners of one sort or another, who've very firmly insisted for a long time that it definitely IS, and who've gotten very nasty with their fans who write fanfic. This is stupid, but hey, if someone wants to piss in their own soup pot, that's their choice. For myself, I'd be delighted to find fanfic written about any of my published work.

Some Really Stupid People and a Really Smart Dog

A Publix grocery store in South Carolina made a graduation cake for Cara Koscinski's son Jacob, who was graduating from high school summa cum laude. His mom was understandably proud of him, and ordered the cake for his graduation party.

Usually when we laugh at graduation cakes, it's because the bakers got hilariously creative in their spelling of "congratulations." This time, it's because whoever decorated the cake, and whoever approved it, are both flaming idiots.

This is what Jakob's cake looked like:

Note the "---" in the middle of the writing. That's because Publix's employees, in all their boggling dumbassery, decided that the "cum" in "cum laude" was a naughty word, and censored it.

Clearly no one who works at that Publix has ever graduated summa cum laude from any institution of learning.

Poor Jacob was humiliated at his own party, and his mom had to explain to confused family members what the bleep was up with the cake.

At least, when she complained, Publix refunded her the $70 they'd charged her for the cake. Hopefully they'll send some employee training downstream about Latin versus cussing. [eyeroll]

But if there are some humans who are too dumb to walk and breathe at the same time, at least there are some incredibly smart dogs to balance things out.

A Columbian dog named Negro (that's pretty much the Spanish equivalent to naming a dog "Blackie" in English) has lived for the last five years on the campus of the Diversified Technical Education Institute of Monterrey Casanare. He belongs to everyone, or no one; the people there make sure he has food and water, and a safe place to sleep, and they play with him and care for him. He's basically the school's dog.

There's a campus shop where students go to buy themselves snacks, and sometimes they'll buy Negro a cookie. He's apparently been watching them do this for a while, and figured out how this whole "commerce" thing works. No kidding, he's figured out that if he picks up a leaf outside, takes it in and stands up to put the leaf on the counter, the clerk will give him a cookie. :D

If he actually did figure this out on his own, just by watching the students use money to buy things, this dog is seriously, like, the Stephen Hawking of canines.

The Dodo, linked above, says:

As you might expect, after the dog realized his money literally grows on trees, it's been a regular thing.

"He comes for cookies every day," Gladys Barreto, a longtime store attendant, told The Dodo. "He always pays with a leaf. It is his daily purchase."

She said they make sure he can only buy a cookie once or twice a day, since more wouldn't be good for him. Which is probably just as well. :)

Click through to watch a video of Negro buying a cookie.

This kind of restores my faith in the universe. If we humans eventually wipe ourselves out, it's nice to think that in a few million more years, the dogs might figure all this civilization out, and do a better job of it than we do.

I'll bet they wouldn't censor the graduation cake of a student who graduated with highest honors, at least.

Angie

Apparently Girls Shouldn't Say No

So the Kanesville Elementary School in Utah thought it was an awesome idea to make a rule for their 6th grade dance saying that if someone asks you to dance with them, you have to say yes.

Because teaching kids that if a boy makes a romantic offer, a girl has to say yes is such a good idea. For both the boys and the girls -- teaching girls that they have to say yes, and teaching boys that girls can't say no. Yeah, that's not going to cause any problems in the future. [headdesk]

A number of parents objected, because they have functional brains, and the school is backpedalling. But I'd really like to know what rock the school authorities -- whoever it was who came up with this -- have been living under for the last year. Or actually, the last few decades.

They framed the original policy in terms of being kind to one another, and okay, I can get behind that. But surely it's much better to teach kids how to say "No thank you" kindly, without making the person who asked you feel bad. That also gives the asker practice in accepting a "No thank you" with civility, rather than turning agressive out of humiliation or anger. Yes, being turned down hurts (ask any writer [cough]) but learning to handle a rejection without melting down is part of becoming a functional adult.

At least this got nipped in the bud, but if my kid went to this school, I'd be doubly vigilant to make sure they didn't make similarly horrible decisions in the future. Best of luck to the kids.

Angie

Have You Signed Up For Health Care Yet?

Comic by Keith Knight, shared with permission.

Spread the word! Keith says:

I did a week of dailies informing folks to sign up for health care by Dec. 15th. Our Dotard-in-Chief has cut the ad budget by 99% (and the time to sign-up in half) in an effort to destroy Obamacare. Spread this comic around the interwebs as an eff-you to King Cheeto!

Fleeing Into November

So, October sucked and I'm very glad it's over.

About a week and a half into the month, my gastroparesis flared up, and off to the ER we went. This is bad enough -- having your stomach working at turning itself inside-out with enough determination as to require intravenous meds is pretty sucktastic. We got that straightened out, I came home and collapsed, and then took most of a week to recover. My stomach was mostly fine as of the next day, but being that sick sucks the energy right out of me, and it usually takes five or six days to get back to my old activity level, with enough energy to actually spend most of each day conscious.

[The upside of this is that it was my first ER visit in about eleven months. Two or three years ago, my husband worked out that we had to run to the ER on the average of every four weeks, for the whole year. Yeah, I'll take an eleven-month gap and be pretty happy about it.]

Then about a week before Halloween, I snapped an incisor. :/ I was chewing on something, then felt this SNAP! and one of my (thankfully root-canalled and crowned) incisors was just sort of sitting in its socket, not actually attached any more. Crap.

This happened to me before, a few years ago. (The other large incisor, the one right next to the one that broke off this time.) I just went to the dentist on Wednesday, because we'd cancelled our dental insurance (this has been a tight year financially) and had to sign back up again. The renewed insurance didn't kick in till the first of the month, so holding pattern until then.

Even if everything goes perfectly, this is going to take months to resolve. I'm getting another implant, which is fine, but it comes in several steps, with months between each step for thorough healing before progressing on. So I've got this hole in my face (again) and I'm going to be dealing with it until, probably, some time this coming summer. Late spring at the earliest.

I decided to skip the temporary, cosmetic not-really-replacement thing this time. Last time, I got an ultra-temporary fake tooth cemented in, because I was two days from dashing off to a workshop, and there was no time to do the long-term temporary replacement at that point. The ultra-temporary was so fragile, my dentist told me not even to brush while I had it. When your dentist says not to brush, that's Fragile with a capital F. :P And it fell out three days later anyway, so that was $800 wasted.

The long-term temporary thing was what's called a "flipper," which is basically a denture-y thing with only one tooth on it. You have to remove it to eat, and although they told me I'd get used to talking with it in, I never did. And after I got my implant post put in, the periodontist did some drilling at the base of the fake tooth in my flipper so it'd fit over the cap at the top of the post, but it never did fit right, so it was even more annoying to wear and I hardly ever did. I don't remember what the flipper cost, but it was somewhere in the $$$$ range. I've decided to bail on that one too. Way too much expense for a purely cosmetic deal that's non-functional and uncomfortable. Nah, I'll skip it. If people want to stare at the hole in my face, they're welcome to do so.

At least this time when I went to the dentist for the preliminary look-around (which was basically for the purpose of saying, "Yep, you need an implant,") she mentioned that I have a very deep bite, which means when I close my jaw, my upper teeth overlap my lower teeth almost completely. That apparently puts a lot of pressure on those upper teeth, which is why I've had the breakage problem. Okay, well, there's nothing I can do about it, but I guess it's good to know why this keeps happening. :/

So, that was October. Good riddance.

Now it's November, and I'm doing NaNoWriMo. I'm AngiePen on the site, if you're playing too and want to Buddy me. I'm working on a romance novel, and things are going well so far. I've had about 46K words of this one sitting on my hard drive for a couple of years now, so I've pulled it out to work on. I'm pretty sure I have 50K words of it left. If not, but I finish at some lesser wordcount, that's fine; I consider finished novels a win no matter what the wordcount. :)

If I wrap the current book with, like, 30K words or so, and still have at least a week left in the month, I'll probably pull out another partial project (yeah, I have a lot of 'em [cough]) and work on that, and lump the wordcount together for purposes of NaNo. No biggie.

I've been having a sucktastic writing year, though, so doing a couple thousand words a day for multiple days in a row has felt awesome. Now if I can only keep it going.... [crossed fingers]

Who else is doing NaNo this year...?

Angie

Delousing the Computer

Or, Explaining How I Was Recently An Idiot

So, I'm going along, minding my own online business, when I get a pop-up saying that Firefox urgently needs to update. Sure, whatever. I hate updating -- too often, something I like breaks, or crap I hate appears, or occasionally they'll reset everything to default which means I have to waste however much time trying to remember which options and customizations and whatever-the-bleep-else I need to go digging into to get things back the way I like them. So I blew it off.

It appeared again a while later, though. I wasn't as busy and figured they'd keep bugging me (as they always do) so I figured, bleep it, and let it update.

Except this "update" opened a DOS window and code started scrolling up.

I've never seen a Firefox update that looked like that. Not being completely stupid (although clearly I'm at least a little stupid, since I let this happen) I CTRL-ALT-DELed it's ass and stopped the process. Enough had installed, though, that I started to get the occasional credit card commercial playing on my computer. Audio only. There was no credit card commercial running in any of my browser windows, so clearly I'd let something nasty onto my computer. [sigh]

I Googled the "urgent Firefox update" thing, and saw that something had infected my computer earlier to make that appear. Which is weird. This is a new laptop, I haven't loaded much stuff onto it, or done much random browsing -- mostly I go to the same batch of websites on a regular basis. But I caught a bug somewhere.

Okay, so a web site that talked about the Firefox update malware gave instructions on how to deal with it. Go here, look there, search for these files or anything else that looks squirrely and delete them. Except there wasn't anything at all on my computer that looked weird. Like I said, not much there at all at this point. I sorted the file list by install date, and nothing -- everything looked legit.

Next advice was to install something called Malwarebytes. I Googled Malwarebytes just in case, and it had good comments and reviews on various industry sites, so okay, I grabbed the free copy, downloaded, installed... except it didn't seem to be completely there. :/ The web site giving instructions said it'd do this, do that, download, open up and ask you to do X and confirm Y and then it'd ask if you wanted it to do a scan and you should say yes... but it didn't do any of that. It seemed to download and install okay, but it never opened. Doubleclicking on it didn't open it. There was a Malwarebytes icon in my systray, and doubleclicking on that didn't open it either.

I finally figured out I could have it do a scan by right-clicking on the desktop icon. Nothing seemed to happen, but a few minutes later, a box popped up to say everything was fine.

:/

From that point on, Malwarebytes would periodically open a window (sometimes two or three or six in a row) to tell me that it'd blocked my OS from sending data to a website.

So much for Nothing Bad On Your System. :P

At this point, I got my husband, a retired IT pro, involved. He confirmed that Malwarebytes is well known and highly regarded. Okay, good. He/we worked on my laptop for the rest of the day, but he couldn't find anything either. He said the next step was doing a complete reset -- basically reformatting the hard drive, reinstalling software and starting over.

[headdesk]

I really hate doing that. I just got this damn machine set up the way I want it, figuring out which options and customizations and whatever-the-bleep-else I need to go digging into, in every freaking program I use, plus the OS, to get things back the way I like them. Sorry, I griped about that before. :( But you know? So I let it go for the rest of the evening, just closing the Malwarebytes notification windows whenever they popped up.

Until, late last night, I got a message saying that Malwarebytes couldn't run anymore, and Windows would let me know when that changed, closing now bye.

O_O

Ever since I installed Malwarebytes and couldn't get it to open, I'd been wondering whether the virus was defending itself. I had that happen before, when the laptop I was using some years back caught a bug after I spent a couple of hours on the free wifi at B&N. That particular bug wouldn't let us go to the Microsoft web site where my husband wanted to download a patch or whatever to solve the problem; no matter what browser he tried -- and I have three of them on each computer -- it just would not let him go to microsoft.com. My Googling had shown me that this Urgent Firefox Update thing has been around for about a year and a half, so I was wondering whether the version I got was designed to block Malwarebytes. And maybe they'd been battling all evening :P and the virus had finally won?

Whatever was going on, my only shield was gone. I did a quick backup of my Firefox bookmarks, and my writing folder -- everything else was still as it was on the backup I'd made when I moved to this laptop less than a month ago.

My husband spent the rest of the night reformatting my hard drive and reinstalling the OS and basic programs. I've spent several hours up to basically now re-customizing and -optioning everything [mutter] and getting backups replaced, hanging curtains and making sure the furniture is where I want it and all the books and files on on shelves and in cabinets. I'm sure I'll be stomping spiders and discovering missing nicknacks for weeks or months, but for right now I'm basically moved back in.

Major suck. On the one hand, having to do the re-install, re-customize, re-copy thing twice in less than a month is seriously aggravating. On the other hand, it would've been worse if it'd happened a year from now, after I had a bunch more stuff downloaded and installed and messed with to be replaced.

Be careful out there! :P

Angie

Nice to Know It's Not Just Us?

It seems Norwegian racists are just as idiotic as their American counterparts.

A Norwegian troll named Johan Slåttavik posted a pic of a bunch of empty bus seats to an anti-immigrant web site called "Fedrelandet viktigst" which means "Fatherland First." The geniuses on the group interpreted the tall, padded bus seats as burqas, and the comments were pretty much what you'd expect from that kind of person. Check it out.

Not only is this racist and Islamophobic, it's yet another case of a bunch of dudes trying to police what women wear. If there are Islamic women who don't want to wear a burqa, or a hijab, or whatever, then sure, support them. But plenty of Islamic women are perfectly happy covering up, and in fact feel uncomfortable in public without their traditional garments. They should be able to wear what they want, just like everyone else.

Angie

On Ghostwriting

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff posted on Bookview Cafe on when to break up with your ghostwriting client, which also applies to editing clients and writer-writer collaborations.

I've never done a ghostwriting job, but I've collaborated on writing projects and I absolutely agree with her that you have to be able to trust your partner. If your collaborator or client starts going squirrely on you, it's time to bail.

Note that Maya was getting paid for her work regardless of whether the books got published, but bailed because she didn't want to deal with the squirrely client, money or no money. Sounds like she made the right choice.

Check it out..

Angie

Six Month Check-In -- Can't Believe It's July

Seriously, half the year is gone already??

The only reason I have a half decent (seriously, half decent -- just short of 95K) wordcount so far is because of the two workshops I attended, one in late February and early March, and the other in April. They both required writing, and I work best (unfortunately) with an external deadline. I need to learn to work to my own deadlines, which is proving to be kind of tough.

I had so much enthusiasm and such great hopes at the beginning of the year. My weight-loss-and-fitness thing was and is under control, and I was pretty sure I had enough spare focus to turn some of it back to writing. Guess not. Or maybe I do but I've been spending that resource improperly.

So, its July 1st. Right now, I'm renewing my determination to do more writing this year. I can still make my goal for the year if I buckle down and do the work, and I'm declaring, here in public, that I'm going to do it. I have a book about building habits and writing every day (which I'll review here after I've put it to use and seen how it works for me) and hope to get back to being productive.

It's not all bad -- I have accomplished some things, like starting up my Patreon, and my writing/publishing review series. The most important thing to a writer is writing, though, and I need to get back to that. So I'm going to stop blathering and do so.

How's everyone else doing, half way through the year?

Angie

Model Deals with Dirtbags Online

So Emily Sears is a model, and like many models, she posts pics of herself online regularly. It's part of the job, building her reputation and brand, all that good stuff.

But there are dudes online who think it's just neato-kewl to send her pics of their penises, just... because? I don't even know. Do these guys really think some woman they've never met is going to look at a crappy phone-pic of their junk and think, "OMG I wanna this guy to bang me hard!!" Really? [eyeroll]

Eventually Ms. Sears got sick of this crap, and decided to start doing something about it. She looked at the guy's online profile, and found his wife or girlfriend, and sent her a screenshot of what the guy sent, with a note saying she thought the woman should be aware of what her husband/boyfriend was doing online.

I think this is an awesome solution. :) A friend of Ms. Sears, a DJ named Laura, who also gets dick pics on a regular basis, has started doing the same thing.

Good stuff, click through and read about it. The comments are actually worth reading too. I particularly like the one where a woman tells about how, when she was fourteen, some dude sent her a dick pic and she sent him a picture of cutting a banana. [smirk] I hope that had him crossing his legs for a while.

Angie

Why Amazon Is Taking Over the World

So I finished my first square for the World's Biggest Christmas Stocking. It was fun, and when I finished I wanted to make another one. So I picked a new pattern and ordered yarn for it from Yarnspirations, the company that's donating some money to a charity whenever you buy a skein of yarn from them. That was the seventeenth.

It's now the twenty-second and my package still hasn't arrived.

I got a note from the company with a tracking number. Okay, cool, let's see where my box is.

I poke around a bit, and first thing I see is that it takes them at least two business days to just pack your box and get it out of the warehouse. Umm, okay. Two days after I order something from Amazon, it shows up at my doorstep about 90% of the time, and that's without expedited shipping. (And that's just two days, not two business days, unless the second day is a Sunday, and sometimes even then.) But okay, I live in Seattle; I'll bet not everyone gets service that fast from Amazon, and I don't know where Yarnspirations is shipping from.

I go looking for their tracking system. Clicking on the tracking number in the e-mail takes me to a general page where they're trying to sell me a bunch of stuff. Down in a lower corner is a big red button that says "View Order History." Okay, would've been nice to go there straight from the tracking number, but whatever. I click on the big red button.

I've ordered from them twice, and there's a line item for each one. The order from the seventeenth is on top, and... it says "Complete."

Funny, I don't consider that order complete, seeing as how I don't have it in my hands yet.

I click on "View" to, presumably, get more info about this order. I get my name and address, and what I ordered, what it cost, payment method, that sort of thing. Under "Shipping Method" it says "Shipping Option - US Standard Shipping." Wow, that's incredibly generic. USPS? UPS? FedEx? Ralph's Tricycle Fleet...? Anything? No clue. There's a tracking number with no-kidding twenty-two digits in it, but it's not clickable. And since I don't know which company they gave my box to, I can't try plugging that huge number into anyone else's tracking system either.

Oh, but there's a button to one side that says "Track This Shipment." Cool, that must be what I want, so I click on it.

It says:

Shipment #100024731
GM-SPE: 9261293250801316909589

and nothing else, with two "Close Window" buttons, one above and one below. That's the order number, which was on my e-mail, and the tracking number I got on the previous page, which makes this tracking page perfectly un-helpful.

And that's about it. Short of putting in some kind of help ticket, I have no way of getting any more info. I'm hoping that by the time they'd have gotten back to me, I'll have my package. [crossed fingers] Tomorrow, maybe? The seventeenth and twentieth are two business days during which they hopefully got my yarn packed, and tomorrow is the twenty-third, which would give three days for actual transit. I don't remember how long the first one took to arrive, so I can't make a comparison there.

Maybe it's my fault. I haven't done any knitting in at least half a dozen years or so, and starting up again has re-kindled my enthusiasm for it. I did most of my knitting while sitting here watching Netflix on my computer. It took me about ten days to knit my square, and apparently it only takes ten days to burn in that habit; it now feels weird sitting here watching TV online without something to do with my hands. That makes me a little more eager than I was before.

But still, seriously, if it gets here tomorrow, it will have been almost a week. And their order tracking system doesn't deserve the name; it just ticked me off. If Amazon does end up taking over the retail world, as so many hysterics keep screaming will happen, this will be why -- faster, superior service.

I for one will welcome our Amazonian overlords. I wish they'd take over this yarn vendor and whip them into shape.

Angie, listening with annoyed impatience for a knock on the door

Cover Design

Chip Kidd has been doing book cover design for Knopf for about twenty-five years, and has done some awesome work. He discusses it, with illustrations, in this TED talk, which is well worth a watch, whether you do your own covers or hire other people to do them for you. Knowing what a good cover looks like, and what the possibilities are, is massively helpful when it's time to decide whether or not the person you're paying is doing a good job for you.

Note that Mr. Kidd has the unfortunately common Major Attitude toward e-books. [sigh] I wish people would just get over the whole, "But-but-but the smell of a book!!!" thing already. :P As someone who prefers paper books, it's embarassing how some folks who (unfortunately) share my preference get all sneering and snarky about it. Dude, it's a format. You're allowed to prefer whichever one you like. No reason to insult the other format, and by extension, all the customers who like it. I mean, seriously, do these people really think that if they just slather on the snark thick enough, often enough, the rest of the world will eventually smack its collective forehead and exclaim, "Wow, you're right! This whole e-book thing was a horrible idea! Let's just stop making them and go back to good old (smelly) paper!"

That one annoying quirk aside, Mr. Kidd is a incredibly talented designer. If you have anything to do with making book covers, whether putting them together yourself, or approving and paying for the work of others, give this a watch.

Angie

What Are We Paying For Again...?

From ABC News:

An internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials, ABC News has learned.

Wow. So we get lined up, barked at, irradiated and/or groped, little tin dictators in spiffy blue shirts with official looking epaulettes and shiny fake badges[1] treat us like cattle or prisoners, and... for what again?

According to officials briefed on the results of a recent Homeland Security Inspector General’s report, TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints.

Gee, I'm so glad we have TSA making us feel so much safer than we were before 9/11. Oh, wait....

Security experts have said before that all the security rules put into place at the airport at the security checkpoints can be defeated without too much trouble, and I've discussed that here before. It's common knowledge; I'm sure all the terrorists know.

Or maybe this is a one-time thing?

This is not the first time the TSA has had trouble spotting Red Team agents. A similar episode played out in 2013, when an undercover investigator with a fake bomb hidden on his body passed through a metal detector, went through a pat-down at New Jersey's Newark Liberty Airport, and was never caught.

...

[T]he review determined that despite spending $540 million for checked baggage screening equipment and another $11 million for training since a previous review in 2009, the TSA failed to make any noticeable improvements in that time.

And according to a USA Today story in 2007, about failure rate of screener tests:

Howe said the increased difficulty explains why screeners at Los Angeles and Chicago O'Hare airports failed to find more than 60% of fake explosives that TSA agents tried to get through checkpoints last year.

The failure rates — about 75% at Los Angeles and 60% at O'Hare — are higher than some tests of screeners a few years ago and equivalent to other previous tests.

So I guess that's a "nope" on the one-time failure thing.

And of course, part of the problem is that so much of the effort is focused at airports. It's as if Homeland Security thinks terrorists have some kind of a compulsion to attack airports and airplanes. News flash: terrorists want to cause terror. They'll do that anywhere they think will be effective. Other places will do just as well, places like sports stadiums, shopping malls, theme parks and other tourist attractions -- anywhere large groups of people gather. There's no way to guard every possible target against terrorist activity without turning the US into the ultimate police state. Money wasted on TSA would be much better spent on intelligence, stopping terrorists before they ever get near their targets.

David Burge, on Twitter, has it right IMO:

@iowahawkblog

At $8 billion per year, the TSA is the most expensive theatrical production in history.

Yeah, that's just about right. [sigh]

Thanks to Bruce Schneier for posting about this.

[1] Yes, fake badges. The TSA screener uniforms and badges are designed to make travellers assume that the screeners are law enforcement officers, for purposes of intimidation and compliance. They are not law enforcement, and have no arrest powers. If a TSA screener thinks you should be arrested, they have to call a real cop like everyone else.

Angie

Yay Noise :/

Sometimes I wish I lived in a town with suckier sports teams.

There are explosions going off in my neighborhood, and a few minutes after it started, Jim called up the stairs to let me know it's because the Seahawks are winning (won?) an important football game. Okay, that's great for the fans. But do they have to make that much noise?

Aside from the general distraction, when I hear that kind of noise, my first thought is, gunshots. Because that happens around here sometimes too. And sometimes when there are celebratory fireworks going off, there are gunshots in the mix too (like there were last weekend) because there are gun owners around who think that a yay-celebration is a great time to fire their gun into the air. Which is damn stupid, because as anyone who's had high school physics knows, a bullet fired into the air will come down somewhere with the same speed, and doing that even one time should disqualify you from ever owning a gun again in your life. Unfortunately I'm not making the laws, and so there are idiots who own guns around. [Obligatory statement that I have no problem with intelligent people owning guns.]

So whenever this happens, I'm sitting here wondering whether a stray bullet is going to come through the window, or maybe through the roof. I have a story due tonight, and that sort of wondering is damn distracting.

I can only hope the Seahawks start sucking one of these years. Or that a few particular gun owners in my neighborhood grow some brains. I wonder which will happen first?

Angie

Homophobia Taken to Ridiculous Extremes

So Tim Torkildson was hired to do social media for the Nomen Global Language Center, a school that serves primarily people learning English as a foreign language. Part of his job was writing the school's language blog. He did a post about homophones, and was fired.

Seriously.

Torkildson's boss, Clarke Woodger, who owns the school, called him in and fired him.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune:

When the social-media specialist for a private Provo-based English language learning center wrote a blog explaining homophones, he was let go for creating the perception that the school promoted a gay agenda.

...

As Torkildson tells it, Woodger said he could not trust him and that the blog about homophones was the last straw.

"Now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality," Woodger complained, according to Torkildson, who posted the exchange on his Facebook page.

I have to ask, how ignorant does someone have to be to think homophones have anything at all to do with homosexuality? And how ignorant about language can you be and still own a language school? I think the answer to both questions is, pretty darned ignorant.

Techdirt says:

Torkildson's account includes some eyebrow-raising quotes of Woodger claiming not to know what homophones were, claiming that they don't teach that kind of "advanced" language study to their English language students, and worrying that the post would associate the school with homosexuality for reasons uknown to this writer.

So the difference between "there" and "their," or "to," "too" and "two" is an advanced concept? Umm, sure. 'Cause I totally didn't get that in first grade. Since a lot of simple, basic words are homophones, I would expect this to be taught to foreign students very early in their English studies, because it's going to be darned confusing if it's not explained.

About the only positive thing I can say here is that this isn't a public school -- they get enough bad press, and usually deserve it. But the private side apparently isn't immune to idiocy either.

Hopefully Mr. Torkildson will find another job soon, working for someone who has a functional brain. Best of luck, Mr. Torkildson.

Angie

Because Telling Teenagers "No" Always Works

The principal of Booker T Washington High has stepped in to cancel one of their school's summer reading programs rather than let the students read Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, which is all about teenagers challenging wrongheaded authority. (Seriously, read it -- it rocks.) An English teacher and a librarian had set up the One-Book-One-School program, which exists side-by-side with a more standard Summer Reading program, developing a study guide/brochure for students and parents. It explains the program, and gives questions the students should answer after they read. Notice that it also encourages the parents to read the book so they can discuss it with their kids, and allows parents who object to the book to contact the coordinating English teacher to get an alternate book for their kid to read.

Apparently giving the parents final authority over what their kids read isn't enough for the BTW principal, though. When the program coordinators refused to choose a different book, the principal cancelled the whole program.

It was pointed out in comments to the Techdirt article, multiple times, that the principal could've done nothing to more effectively encourage all the students to eagerly read this book. [wry smile] A few people suggested that this might've been the hidden purpose behind the cancellation, but I think that's giving too much credit where it's probably not due.

In response, Cory Doctorow and his publisher, Tor, have donated 200 copies of the book to the school. I'd be interested in hearing what the school does with them, considering the principal's actions so far.

Oh, and note that the school's more standard summer reading program already includes Little Brother. o_O So apparently the principal is okay with the eleventh graders reading the book, but thinks it would be harmful for the ninth, tenth and twelfth graders...?

If you're interested in reading Little Brother, which I highly recommend, Cory offers the e-book on his site for free, in pretty much any file format you might want. Check it out.

Angie