The UK Prime Minister has doubled down on this Great Firewall of Cameron, which is an arrangement whereby the UK ISPs "voluntarily" agreed to block websites that had been secretly ruled to be pornographic, unless customers specifically asked them not tp. (more…)
New comic!
‘It’s just a word’ is a fairly common protest when I point out problematic language. It’s frustrating, because the truth is that language, power, society, and structural discrimination are deeply entwined. As someone who has studied linguistics and social information practices, I can absolutely speak to the fact that language is a powerful and insidious tool for keeping people down, whether it’s hissed at you by a passerby on the street, or spray-painted on your house, or used jokingly by your peers, or used to describe you in legislation, the language that describes and defines us has consequences that ripple through our lives, right down to our bones.
The flip side of this is that when you’re aware of the power of words, it becomes important to be able to take control of that power by self defining and reclaiming language. People get weirdly upset at ‘made up words’ for gender and sexual orientation without understanding the history of criminalizaing, pathologizing, misinterpretation, and discrimination that the ‘normal’ words carry. We are aware of this power, and we’re using the power of language to self-identify. Apparently that’s very threatening.
“it’s only a word” – so, it won’t be a big deal for you to stop using it, right? Right?
I want them all, and so you do. (more…)
This is just Koranophobia, pure and simple.
Hovertext: I see junkies everywhere now!
We now go into week two of our most surprisingly successful book launch ever. At this point, just about every damn thing gets signed. The signing process will actually kill me, so please enjoy the upcoming final few months of SMBC.
(Seriously though, thanks geeks!)
Cute tiny owl with mushrooms by Tanja Brandt
This bird species is literally called, Little Owl (Athene noctua).
"For great art, you have to perceive the object, the situation, and watch the everyday lighting," 3D painter Stefan Pabst told Booooooom. "You have to see something like you did the very first time you saw it, with a complete open mind, like a child."
More on Pabst's Facebook page.
CISA won't make you and I any more secure, and it threatens what's left of our online privacy. The very helpful sounding “Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act” will definitely help the government, though: it'll make it a lot easier for technology companies to share your personal data with the government, and everyone knows that this data never ends up in the wrong hands, so you're fine.
The gaping privacy flaws in CISA didn't stop the Senate from passing it by a wide margin today: 74 to 21. CISA now goes to a conference committee between House and Senate.
Here are the names of the Senators who voted against your rights on #CISA. Is yours on the list? Share their names. https://t.co/0gjiHRj231
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 27, 2015
Here's the EFF's take, by Mark Jaycox:
CISA passed the Senate today in a 74-21 vote. The bill is fundamentally flawed due to its broad immunity clauses, vague definitions, and aggressive spying authorities. The bill now moves to a conference committee despite its inability to address problems that caused recent highly publicized computer data breaches, like unencrypted files, poor computer architecture, un-updated servers, and employees (or contractors) clicking malware links.
The conference committee between the House of Representatives and the Senate will determine the bill's final language. But no amount of changes in conference could fix the fact that CISA doesn't address the real cybersecurity problems that caused computer data breaches like Target and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
The passage of CISA reflects the misunderstanding many lawmakers have about technology and security. Computer security engineers were against it. Academics were against it. Technology companies, including some of Silicon Valley’s biggest like Twitter and Salesforce, were against it. Civil society organizations were against it. And constituents sent over 1 million faxes opposing CISA to Senators.
With security breaches like T-mobile, Target, and OPM becoming the norm, Congress knows it needs to do something about cybersecurity. It chose to do the wrong thing. EFF will continue to fight against the bill by urging the conference committee to incorporate pro-privacy language. And we will never stop fighting for lawmakers to either understand technology or understand when they need to listen to the people who do.
Wired's analysis today is worth reading, too.
This is not over. #CISA still has to go through a conference committee. We won't stop fighting. Join us: https://t.co/5ziRqwK6U3 #StopCISA
— Fight for the Future (@fightfortheftr) October 27, 2015
It is thus, complete with shoddy copy editing (which I learned about via this tweet by Natalie Luhrs, and subsequently confirmed via two WFC members emailing me copies of the program they had been sent):
As a compare and contrast, here’s the New York City Comic Con policy on harassment, which for the last two years has been visibly and prominently featured on six foot-tall banners at the entrances of the Javits Center, among other places. Note well that NYCC exists in the same state as this year’s World Fantasy Convention, and is subject to the same state laws:
I am not a lawyer, but I expect that ReedPOP, the company that runs NYCC (among many other conventions around the US) has maybe a few lawyers on its staff. If NYCC is utterly and absolutely unafraid to promulgate a harassment policy even though there is a legal statute defining what harassment means in the state of New York, I expect it might have been possible for World Fantasy to have done likewise, if they chose to do so.
Now, over on the 2015 World Fantasy Convention Facebook page, there’s an argument that WFC calling something harassment that is not exactly in line with the legal statute exposes the convention to the risk of libel. One, see the NYCC policy above — either all these things are covered under the NY harassment statute, or NYCC/ReedPOP’s phalanx of lawyers determined that it’s actually okay for a private entity to state that for the purposes of their own private event, the definitions of harassment for that event are thus, and that those found violating those definitions would be tossed from the event, even if the legal standard of harassment was not met.
Two, if you’re absolutely paranoid that calling harassment harassment is libel if it does not meet a certain statutory bar? Then fucking call it something else. And indeed in its statement the WFC already does: “incorrect/uncivil behavior.” Dear World Fantasy Convention: if you cannot or will not create a harassment policy, why won’t you create an “incorrect/uncivil behavior policy?” That almost certainly will not leave you open to a libel lawsuit! And as a template, please see the NYCC policy above.
This also, incidentally, solves the appalling and utterly pathetic rationale the 2015 World Fantasy Convention gives for punting on having an actual and useful harassment policy, i.e., that the staff isn’t trained on recognizing the legal definition of harassment in the state of New York. Leaving aside the cogent point that the staff had most of a year to get up to speed on the matter, if they so chose, especially considering that they were apparently already consulting with the county district attorney and the local police on the harassment policy, if instead there’s an “incorrect/uncivil behavior” policy, the convention can define that behavior however it likes. It’s a private event which can define what it deems incorrect and/or uncivil behavior without referent to the legal statute on harassment. And it can very easily train its staff to recognize and act upon those examples of bad behavior, and it can likewise very easily communicate to convention goers what that inappropriate and uncivil behavior is.
Let’s call the World Fantasy Convention’s decision to hide behind the legal statute of harassment for what it is: Cowardly bullshit. The convention is abdicating its responsibility to provide a safe environment for convention-goers by asserting that it can’t do anything to deal with harassment unless and until it reaches a specific legal definition of harassment — which the convention doesn’t even bother to fucking cite in its material.
When your convention harassment policy boils down to “don’t bother us until you have to call the cops,” you have completely failed. The World Fantasy Convention should be embarrassed and ashamed to have let down its members this way. I’m not a member this year, but if I were, I would cancel my membership. I’d have no interest in attending a convention that decides the best course of action when it comes to the safety of its members is to punt.
(Update: Natalie Luhrs, whose tweet was the means by which I found about this, has thoughts on the matter here. She’s not happy either.)
(Update, 10/28: Via Jon Meltzer in the comments, WFC is attempting to improve its policy. Let’s see what it says when it’s finally published.)
Say it with me, kids: I've got a baaaaad feeling about this.
Have you been watching all the previews, twittered sneak-peeks, and snazzy promo pics coming out for the new Star Wars movie?
GOOD!
Because I'm going to recap the best stuff for you.
First of all... NEW MILLENIUM FAAAAAALCOOOOON!
I hear it's more aerodynamic this way.
("She may not look like much... but we also have ice cream.")
You've probably seen the new Storm Trooper helmets. So sleek and modern!
Not to mention happy-looking.
There's a lot of buzz around the new "fun-size" light sabers. Here's one turned on:
It's got a real "Jedi Master" vibe.
Aaand after its cooled off:
Actually, I hear they don't perform too well in the cold.
(Take note, padawans.)
The good news is Disney has spared no expense on special effects:
...and they're bringing in some awesome new lady characters!
Musical numbers to include:
A Whole New World (To Replace Alderaan)
Beauty and the BB-8
Vader Knows Best
Do You Want To Build An Intergalactic Senate
and
Some Day My Midi-Chlorians Will Come
The trailers haven't told us much about the new movie's story line, but I DID learn a beloved old friend will be making an appearance... as a new enemy.
That's right, my friends.
Get ready...
To face...
Darth Wicket.
"YUB YUB, B*TCHES"
Thanks to our own scruffy-looking nerf-herders Mad G., Carri C., Melanie V., Jennifer V., Anony M., Angela H., Elissa D., & Monica G. And remember:
(You can read the story behind this one here.)
*****
Thank you for using our Amazon links to shop! USA, UK, Canada.
As part of the launch of Youtube Red, the company's new porny-sounding ad-free pay TV service, top creators are being told that they must allow their work into the paywalled/ad free zone, or be excluded from Youtube altogether. Noncommercial Youtube creators get a choice (for now). Apparently, the punishment for making Youtube into a success is losing the right to choose how to make money off your stuff. (more…)
Mitch Martinez licensed a stock footage clip to a Sony music label to use in a video; when the company proceeded to file a Youtube copyright complaint against him and refused to take his calls, he filed a copyright claim against them, told them he was cancelling their license to his footage, and threatened to make them re-edit the music video, removing his footage from it. (more…)
TW: Sexual Assault
A friend of mine was sexually assaulted out to dinner with a professor. When she told her story to her adviser, a dear friend of ours, she told him she wore a turtleneck and long pants and described her outfit. He cut her off and told her, “I don’t care if you were wearing a fucking bikini—nobody has the right to touch you.”
I think that was the first time in the whole process of talking to cops and administrators about what happened where someone actually told her it wasn’t her fault.
They make it about the clothes, the situation—“Why did you agree to dinner? Why didn’t you take your own car? Did you lead him on? For once, someone made it about her and her rights. I think this helped her most of all in the process. Everyone needs to respond like this to survivors, in my opinion.
You see, something special happens when a holy spirit loves an engaged woman very much...
Richard Dawkins opened his foot-shaped mouth again this weekend, suggesting that advocates for trigger warnings treat victims of rape and assault like children who need their teddy bears:
A university is not a "safe space". If you need a safe space, leave, go home, hug your teddy & suck your thumb until ready for university.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) October 24, 2015
Rightfully, feminists like Jason Thibeault pointed out some of Dawkins inconsistencies:
How is atheists' annoyance at Christian propaganda in courses different from giving prior warning about rape discussion? @RichardDawkins
— Jason Thibeault (@lousycanuck) October 25, 2015
Why is it bad for Christians to propagandize in college courses without warning, but also bad to warn about rape discussion? @RichardDawkins
— Jason Thibeault (@lousycanuck) October 25, 2015
Given Dawkins’ history of support for projects like the Secular Safezone, his continued distaste for the syllabus equivalent of a TV discretionary warning is baffling. It’s important to note that Dawkins did not pen the Secular Safezone articles on his site, as Dawkins rarely posts original content there (most of the site’s content reads like the RSS feed version of a circle jerk). Maybe the Dawkins content-aggregation algorithm has posted some pro-trigger warning articles in the past! Let’s go take a look. Hrrm… a quick search of his site for “trigger warning” returns not one, not two, but NINE articles by Jerry Coyne on the first results page.
Five of Coyne’s pieces are expressly anti-trigger warning (two of them indicate trigger warnings will be the downfall of free speech), three of them glibly offer trigger warnings for “Long and detailed discussion of a genetics paper,” “snakes,” and “Greensleeves,” while another conflates GMO labels with trigger warnings. That Jerry Coyne is a real joker. Mental health is such a riot!
Dawkins is right about one thing: Secular Safezones have an important place, especially in areas where being non-religious (or not belonging to the majority religion) can lead to marginalization. But if he acknowledges that, how can he argue that same care isn’t warranted for those coping with PTSD from rape, assault, or other trauma? Does Richard Dawkins think there isn’t enough oppression to go around? That if he shows compassion for victims of assault or rape, his pet cause won’t get enough recognition? Or is the reality more damning? Maybe Richard Dawkins truly doesn’t think rape is common or traumatic enough to necessitate a change in our education system. If that’s the case, then this is nothing more than oppression olympics.
Many feminists acknowledge that we can’t write off certain types of oppression, simply because they are less prevalent. Feminists like Stephanie Zvan have acknowledged that even white male atheists face some level of marginalization because of their lack of religion. Last year she wrote, “Mild forms of oppression are not the same as a lack of oppression. We know what microaggressions are. We understand how they affect access to spaces. That doesn’t change when we’re talking about atheists, even atheists who annoy us.”
Even if we accept Dawkins’ premise that rape isn’t common or traumatic enough to necessitate trigger warnings (and I don’t), his argument falls apart when viewed in the context of his support for secular safe spaces. Dawkins claims to value intellectual rigor, and part of that rigor means demanding intellectual consistency. It is breathtakingly illogical to advocate for secular safe spaces while simultaneously demeaning safe spaces for those who don’t fit your ideological narrative. In a society that constantly demeans people who push against the predominant cultural narrative, we should be focused on eliminating all types of marginalization – not just those that affect us personally.
Featured image by Dave Fayram.
*know
I think we all know that already, but his latest interview clinches it. He wants Roe v. Wade overturned, and he compares abortion to slavery.
Think about this. During slavery — and I know that one of those words you’re not supposed to say — but I’m saying it. During slavery, a lot of the slave owners thought they had the right to do whatever they wanted to that slave, anything that they chose to do. And what if the abolitionists had said, ‘You know, I don’t believe in slavery, I think it’s wrong. But you guys do whatever you want to do.’ Where would we be?
You know, you could talk to the slaves, they could express themselves, they could speak about their anger and pain. A blastula or a fetus are not comparable to Frederick Douglass. And more, slaves were forced against their will to live in shackles — if you’re going to compare slavery to anything, it ought to be the women who are compelled to bear children against their will.
Rape or incest, I would not be for killing a baby because the baby came about in that way. And all you have to do is go and look up the many stories of people who have led very useful lives who are the result of rape or incest.
Shouldn’t the women have a voice here? All you have to do is go and look up the many stories of women who had abortions and lived useful, happy, productive lives afterwards, in careers that would have been cut short if they’d been forced into motherhood.
But oh, right, the women don’t matter in Ben Carson’s head.
He’s such a horrible person, without a thought in his head.
A 14-year-old girl who chucked a 1.75" baby carrot at a teacher has been suspended from school and told that she faces charges of battery, according to reports from Henrico County, Va.
Local newsman Jon Burkett writes that Aliya Kay says she meant it as a joke and didn't expect it to actually make contact.
"I don't even know how to combat the stupidity," her mother, Karrie May, told Burkett. "I can see a couple of days in school detention or even a couple days out-of-school suspension. But this goes way beyond that. We have to go to court, and her charges aren't small: assault and battery with a weapon."
Here's a CBS legal expert on critical issues such as the softness of baby carrots.
If it's a soft carrot, it may not be as offensive,” said CBS 6 legal expert Todd Stone. “But if it's a raw carrot, you don't have to have an injury or show you were hurt to prove a battery. It just has to be an offensive, vindictive touch. That's what the law says."
Henrico Schools declined to comment on the carrot case.
The National Root Vegetable Association, however, has released a statement saying that while it does not think this is the time for a political debate, the question would not present itself if teachers were themselves armed and trained in the use of small taproots and rhizomes.
Photo courtesy Shutterstock
Mimic implements a sick, sick idea floated on Twitter by Peter Ritchie: "Replace a semicolon (;) with a greek question mark (;) in your friend's C# code and watch them pull their hair out over the syntax error."
mimic provokes:
• fun
• frustration
• curiosity
• murderous rageThere are many more characters in the Unicode character set that look, to some extent or another, like others – homoglyphs. Mimic substitutes common ASCII characters for obscure homoglyphs.
Fun games to play with mimic:
• Pipe some source code through and see if you can find all of the problems
• Pipe someone else's source code through without telling them
• Be fired, and then killed
What arseholes. What magnificent arseholes.
The $150 Smarter Ikettle lets you start your water boiling from anywhere in the world over the Internet -- and it also contains long-term serious security vulnerabilities that allow attackers to extract your wifi passwords from it. (more…)
The largely unregulated supplement industry sells a variety of weird and sometimes dangerous stuff that it wink-nudge promises will cure what ails you, but even the most accurately labeled, evidence-based supplements can make sick people much, much sicker. (more…)
Founded in 2006 by Rick Falkvinge, the Pirate party movement has scored some significant victories over the years.
The greatest success is the continuing presence in the European Parliament, but in Iceland the local Pirate Party is writing history as well.
The Pirates have a great track record in Iceland already, with three members in the national Parliament. However, many more may join in the future as the Pirates have become the largest political party in the polls.
Earlier this year we already reported on this remarkable achievement. At the time the Pirate Party had 23.9% of the polled votes, a number that has now grown to 34.2% in the last MMR survey.
According to the most recent polls the Pirate Party now has more support than the local coalition Government, which consists of the Independence Party (21.7%) and Progressive Party (10.4%).
Pirates leading the polls
The continued rise is quite a success for a party that was founded just three years ago, and for now the upward trend continues.
TF spoke with Ásta Helgadóttir, Member of Parliament for the Icelandic Pirate Party, who believes that many people are fed up with the current state of politics.
“I believe people are tired of the old fashioned politics the old parties are practicing,” she says.
“We have been focusing on making decisions based on evidence, being honest when we make mistakes and ready to change our minds if that is needed. We have also been working on changing the system from within and demanding that the people in position of power are responsible for their actions.”
Unlike some outsiders believe, the Pirates are not a one issue party. The party is known to fight against increased censorship and protect freedom of speech, but also encourages transparency and involvement of citizens in political issues.
“We are working on taking our democratic system into the 21st century,” Ásta says. “The division between the executive and legislative should be much clearer than it is today, as ministers can and most often are also members of parliament now.”
This is just one of the many ideas the party is working on. While the current poll results are promising, it has to hold these for a while as the next elections are scheduled in 2017.
While the Pirate Party may be more popular than the current government at the moment, it doesn’t mean that governing is a main goal. The Pirates just want to make sure that the status quo changes.
“We don’t really want to govern, but rather have the system working as a whole where everyone in it has responsibility for their actions.”
“I don’t know how realistic it is that we’ll form a government, only time will tell,” she concludes.
Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.
"...bedbugs have discovered a new way to hitchhike in and out of beds: library books. It turns out that tiny bedbugs and their eggs can hide in the spines of hardcover books. The bugs crawl out at night to feed, find a new home in a headboard, and soon readers are enjoying not only plot twists but post-bite welts.As libraries are scrambling to deal with the problem, so are some book borrowers. Not wanting to spread the misery, considerate patrons sometimes call ahead to discuss with librarians how best to return lent materials from their bedbug-infested homes. Usually, a meeting is arranged so the patron can hand off the offending books or DVDs in Ziploc bags to an employee outside the library.John Furman, the owner of Boot-a-Pest [ed: clever name], a team of bedbug exterminators based on Long Island, said he has had hundreds of clients buy a portable heater called PackTite to kill bedbug life, baking any used or borrowed book as a preventive measure before taking it to bed...To reassure skittish patrons like Mrs. McAdoo, libraries are training circulation staff members to look for carcasses and live insects... Others vacuum the crevices of couches, and some furniture is being reupholstered with vinyl or leatherette to make it less hospitable to insects...
