Sophianotloren

Note: This entry will have spoilers about my book Old Man’s War – which, inasmuch as the book has been published for nearly ten years now probably shouldn’t been seen as spoilers anymore but never mind that now — so if you haven’t read Old Man’s War and don’t want a relatively important aspect of it spoiled for you, here’s the takeaway: Yes, there are trans people in the OMW universe; no, it’s not a problem for the CDF/Colonial Union that they are trans. There, now you can go ahead and skip the rest of this entry.

Now, then, for everyone else:

I have been asked several times (and just yesterday, in fact, via e-mail), what happens to trans people who become part of the Colonial Defense Force in the Old Man’s War books. To recap, the CDF gets its soldiers by recruiting 75-year-olds from Earth and giving them new, super-awesome bodies that are based on — but not created solely out of — their own DNA. Because the creation of the bodies is only partly based on the recruit’s original genetic information, would it be possible to for transfolk to specify which gender they would like their new body to be?

This is a really interesting question. Let me try to answer it.

Let me note that with respect to Old Man’s War the book, I did not at all think about what would happen with trans people who join the CDF as I was writing it. Why? Short answer: Straight white male who didn’t know any trans people at the time, so it was not something in my consciousness. So everything from here on out is me adding commentary to the original text — but since it’s from me, the author, we can consider it canonical.

(Also, note: I am not 100% up on trans-related terms, so if I use terms incorrectly, it’s ignorance and not malice; please let me know in the comments and I’ll edit.)

1. First off, and to be clear, there would be no bar to trans people joining the CDF, because why would there be? The entrance requirements are a) you’ve signed up, b) you come from what are in the book rich, developed countries (which mostly align with the current slate of rich, developed countries). So yes, there would be trans people among the recruits.

2. By default, CDF bodies come in classically male and classically female forms. Note that thanks to genetic engineering, etc, the performance capabilities of both male and female forms are equal, so the gender presentation is strictly for the psychological comfort of the recruit, i.e., you’re (usually) used to being male or female, so you get to stay that way when you transfer into your new body.

3. Because the body sorting is a matter of psychological comfort, to the extent that the CDF knows about a trans person’s gender identity, it’ll sort them that way. So, for example, a post-op trans person will be sorted into their post-op gender identity, regardless of DNA profile, because that’s the clear preference for that person.

4. What about non-op, genderfluid, intersex or trans people who have not made their preferred gender public knowledge? The CDF initially sorts into male/female by best appoximation and then after transfer follows up for additional modification. The CDF is an organization that can grow back limbs and organs with minimal effort (for them; it’s slightly more traumatic to the person growing them back), so modifying bodies for the psychological comfort of the person inside is a relatively trivial matter. Most of this can be handled before the recruits get to basic training, although particular in the case of trans people who are not public, much would be contingent on them telling the CDF doctors and technicians.

5. And no, the CDF wouldn’t care about the gender presentation of the recruits. What it would care about is them being willing to fight. You’ll fight? Great, here’s your Empee. Go kill an alien. Thanks.

6. Would there be some other recruits who would have a problem with trans people? It’s possible; the CDF lets anyone in. The basic training drill sergeants will be happy to tell them to get over it. If they did not (indeed if they did not get over any general bigotry) the results for them would be grim.

7. Could a CDF soldier decide to change their gender identity and presentation during the term of service? Sure, why not? All CDF bodies have the same baseline capabilities and personal identity can be verfied via BrainPal, so there would be no penalty or confusion on either score. Are you following orders? Killing aliens? Great — change your presentation however you like.

8. Likewise, when a CDF soldier leaves service, they can specify the gender identity and presentation of the body they’ll be transfered into. Because, again, why wouldn’t they?

Short form: The CDF is happy to let trans people be who they are because it makes them comfortable with themselves — and that makes them better soldiers, which is ultimately what the CDF cares about.

With regard to the Old Man’s War series, I have not intentionally written about trans people in it (some of my characters may have been trans but did not tell me about it), but there’s no reason why I could not. So maybe I will at some point, if there’s a way to do so that doesn’t look like me transparently trying to gather cookies to myself. But regardless of whether I’ve written trans people into my books, there are, canonically speaking, trans people in the OMW universe. Because why wouldn’t there be.

(Update, 8:30pm: Making a few tweaks on language thanks to feedback from some trans and trans-knowledgeable readers)

Some time back, I used to spend time at a pagan website known as the Cauldron.  It was there I first encountered the Kirks, or as I first knew them, “Lark” and “Brock”.  Both were what I considered the best of the best.  Brock/Blake could discuss any hot subject with civility and  scholarly knowledge.  Lark, or Carol, was a Viet Nam veteran nurse with a marvelous sense of humanity and a luminous spirituality.

So, imagine me finding them embroiled in the task of making pagan religion as free to speak in public at meetings opened with prayer as the dominant paradigm faiths have always been?  Yes, in Huntsville, Alabama — a positive bastion of genteel liberality for a Southern city — Blake was to give an opening prayer.  And then NOT.

So, once more into the breech, dear friends — Carol’s article is in Time Online.

Tagged: freedom of religion

Good news: the Marina Abramović Institute is hiring! Bad news: all four positions listed in this fresh New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) ad are unpaid — ahem, volunteer. They’re probably great “opportunities,” though, right?

Let’s take a look.

1. Administrative Volunteer

• Work: “general administrative duties, planning art-based special events, and development.”
• Skills required: “excellent writing skills, the ability to multi-task, proficiency in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, and prior experience working in a fast-paced arts non-profit or other administrative position.”
• (Nonmonetary, intangible) benefits: “the opportunity to grow within the organization and expand professional networks.”

2. Tech and Production Volunteer

• Work: “development and maintenance of IMMATERIAL, MAI’s digital journal.”
• Skills required: Unclear, but they are looking for people “who would like to expand their knowledge of Javascript / JSON / Jquery, HTML5, CSS, Video streaming via Vimeo and/or Youtube Live,” which implies that you should already have some knowledge of these things.
• (Nonmonetary, intangible) benefits: “a unique opportunity to hone technology skills on a highly visible, emerging arts platform.”
• Bonus job volunteer position: “We also have volunteer opportunities for assistance with video and audio production, photo editing, and print layout.” Awesome, because I was wondering about that.

3. Special Projects Volunteer

• Work: “preparing and working on collaborative in-person and digital projects.”
• Skills required: “excellent organization and communication skills, proficiency in Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite and basic HTML / CSS coding, familiarity with non-profit administration, comfort collaborating with partners in and outside of the arts and strong passion for the expanding the role of arts and sciences in various communities”
• (Nonmonetary, intangible) benefits: none, but “artists are encouraged to apply”!

4. Research Volunteer

• Work: “researching for the content of IMMATERIAL”
• Skills required: “based in New York City and have a college-level background in art history, performance art, and/or performance art studies. Strong writing skills required. Additional background in at least two of the following: the sciences, research assistance, curatorial practice, performing arts, fine arts, photography / video.”
• (Nonmonetary, intangible) benefits: none, unless you are “a critical thinker who wants to apply their skills to a large-scale collaborative project” and find that this fits the bill.

All of these positions have at least two-day-a-week commitments — which, amazingly, makes them sound even more like part-time work than they already do.

Abramović raised over $660,000 for her institute on Kickstarter in June and recently “collaborated” with Adidas. Yet somehow she cannot afford to pay people to work for MAI. (In the process she makes Jeff Koons, who boasted on Charlie Rose this week about how many people he employs, look like a saint.) We can only hope that, one day, someone who toils without compensation within the MAI apparatus will grab hold of their social media and give us something as good as this:

Addendum: There have been some great, strong reactions on Twitter to the job posting, including:

Today is National Orgasm Day, so of course I took this opportunity to TMI at you people, because TMI is my middle name. I’ve been having orgasms for more than half my life, and here are a few things I learned along the way.

1. I am my own best lover

Look, it’s nice having other people around. It enhances sex a lot. But I’ve been fucking myself for about 15 years, and so I think I’m best positioned for knowing exactly what works best. Only I know the full details, despite the fact that people over the years (usually, but not exclusively men) have taken it upon themselves to give me some sort of Entirely New Experience because they Know Best and pretty much every time that’s happened it’s ended in mutual disappointment. Even now, when I have two partners and a host of less regular lovers, I still make time for a date with myself. Nobody’s quite as good as me at making me come.

2. Having the same genitals as me doesn’t automatically make you better at sex

There’s a common myth flying round that cis lesbians are automatically better at sex with cis women, because they have the same equipment. That is categorically untrue. Having a cunt does not grant you a PhD in Cuntology. Everyone likes different things, and sometimes it’s easy to fall into the trap of egocentrism. I’ve been on both the giving and receiving end of the assumption that having a fanny means knowing how every fanny works. Communication is key, rather than anatomy.

3. Squirting doesn’t mean you’ve wanked yourself incontinent

I was about fifteen, and having the sort of epic wanking session one tends to lose the stamina for once one is out of one’s teens. I brought myself to shuddering orgasm after shuddering orgasm, and then one felt… different. There was wet stuff everywhere. I panicked slightly. I sprayed Febreeze all over the wet patch. I was convinced I had managed to come so hard I’d peed myself, and I laid off the masturbatory marathons for a while after to make sure I didn’t develop some sort of bladder problem. I was quiet about this horrifying thing that had happened to me, the gross piss-pariah. Oddly enough, I only learned this was a perfectly ordinary thing to happen a few years later, while watching porn. Yep. Porn saved me.

4. Porn gives people hella weird assumptions about squirting

So, I squirt. This is apparently a little uncommon, although pretty popular in porn. The thing is, in porn, this seems to happen on demand (I imagine, in fact, it requires multiple takes and a whole bunch of fluffing and it’s probably a little easier to happen knowing nobody’s going to have to sleep in the expansive wet patch). This is pretty much not how it happens for me. There is no magical formula for ensuring ejaculation occurs. It just sometimes does. Or, more frequently, doesn’t. The thing is, once it’s happened once, there’s usually this assumption that it’ll happen reliably, which leads to crushing disappointment, because it’s not like in the movies. Going off like a geyser is something which is fetishised, and I can’t live up to it. Luckily, most people will get this once it’s been explained to them.

5. My orgasms make men sad

Once upon a time, I used to fuck cis, straight men. I gave up on this, because politically they’re rubbish, and I have successfully arranged my life so I just don’t even meet them any more. As an additional fact about me, I have super-powerful Kegels. This is always brilliantly fun for me, but not so much for the cis, straight men who think penis-in-vagina is the be-all and end-all to sex. You see, my Kegels can easily eject a penis at the moment of my orgasm. And after that, I’m usually kind of done, and might roll over, fart and fall asleep. This makes cis, straight men sad, because sex is traditionally centred around their orgasms: they’re the ones who get to roll over, fart and fall asleep. For some reason, when the roles are reversed, it makes them feel sad.

6. Orgasms really aren’t the be-all and end-all

I’ve had phenomenal sex without an orgasm. There’s something incredibly nice about focusing yourself on someone else having a good time. I can have spectacular sex without the need for the other person to even touch me. For the most part, sex is a pleasant way of passing the time between two or more people, and an orgasm isn’t a requirement for that to be fun. They’re like the marzipan on top of an otherwise-delicious cake: it’s awesome if it’s there, but it’s not necessary at all. And if you want it, later you can get a whole block of marzipan and eat it to yourself.

 

Krugman draws some conclusions from California, where the ACA was permitted to work as intended:

So it now appears that most of California’s uninsured — 58 percent of the total, or well over 60 percent of those eligible (because undocumented immigrants aren’t covered) have gained insurance in the first year. Considering the complexity of the scheme, that’s really impressive, and it strongly suggests that next year, once those who missed out have had a chance to learn via word of mouth, California will have gotten much of the way toward universal coverage for legal residents.

But there’s something else the Kaiser report drives home: most of those gaining coverage are doing so not via the exchanges (although those are important too) but via Medicaid. And that’s important as an answer to critics of Obamacare from the left.

There have always been critics complaining that what we really should have is single-payer, and angry that subsidies were being funneled through the insurance companies. And in principle they’re right; the trouble was that cutting the insurers out of the loop would have made the plan politically impossible, both because of the industry’s power and because of the unwillingness of people with good coverage to take a leap into a completely new system. So we got this awkward public-private hybrid, which I supported because it was what we could get and despite its impurity it dramatically improves many people’s lives.

But it turns out that many of the newly insured are in fact being covered under a single-payer system — Medicaid.

All of which functions as a good intro to this shorter verbatim Lambert Strether:

I believe there should be equal access to health care for all, and so the fact that ObamaCare helps some people is just proof that it doesn’t help all, equally. Why is the random delivery of government services considered praiseworthy?

If a government policy cannot provide everything, we should not care if it helps anyone. Got it.

At this point, it’s probably superfluous to note that Lambert also refuses to criticize the irrational and immoral Halbig decision, while implicitly defending it with idiotic Republican talking points. Why shouldn’t he? His critique is for all intents and purposes incidental to the Republican one. Both would happily strip millions of people of health coverage to demonstrate their obsessive opposition to Obama. To both, no legal argument that could damage the ACA and strip people of insurance could possibly be too specious. Both would rather have a Republican in the White House (Obama, says Lambert, is the “more effective evil” because some people will purchase private insurance, and of course the whole industry would have spontaneously combusted without the ACA, and better millions of people go uninsured than any rentier make a profit.) That one side tries to cover up their cruelty by theoretically supporting bad alternatives they have no intention of enacting and the other tries to cover up their cruelty by theoretically supporting good alternatives that have no chance of being enacted is a distinction without a difference.

The gods in antiquity often came under fire for their human-like behaviour. Jealousy, lust, revenge—these are just a few of the traits that were criticized as being less than divine. Xenophanes famously said that if horses could depict their gods, they would look like horses. Of course, this speaks to the question of which came first: the human or the god. The argument here is that when gods do human things, it’s because humans are projecting themselves upon the divine.

Case in point: Apollo.

Despite the obviousness of Xenophanes’ observation, once in a while, I am struck by how the gods do very human things. You know, how they act all normal when they’re not turning into mythical animals or smiting their enemies with lightning bolts. Recently, I found a discussion of the relationship of Dionysus and Apollo which seemed particularly indicative of this humanizing of the gods. In a commentary to the Orphic “Hymn to Dionysos Liknites,” Apostolos N. Athanassakis observes how the epithet Liknites was particular to the worship of Dionysus at Delphi (153-154).

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t Delphi the home of Apollo? And, yes. Yes, it is. But sometimes Apollo goes on vacation, and when that happens, Dionysos watches the house. Gods—they’re just like us!

Like the Canadian snowbirds who head to Florida when the weather turns cold, or those who skedaddle to the Bahamas during Spring Break, Apollo similarly takes a winter vacay. Giving his keys to Dionysus, the god of divination puts his mail on hold and absconds for three months of R&R, presumably to do whatever it is gods do. I assume it involves a sandy beach, a frosty margarita, and being fanned by palm fronds—but perhaps I am reading a bit much into it here.

Actually, I am. Apollo just went north to Thrace to hang out with the Hyperboreans. Which I’m sure is fun in its own way.

Why was Dionysus looking after Delphi in Apollo’s absence? Athanassakis observes that there is a pre-Apollonian link between Dionysus and Delphi, and perhaps a link between Dionysus and the snake, or Python, which Apollo slayed when he took up residence there. Furthermore, it is said by Plutarch that Dionysus was buried at Delphi:

The people of Delphi believe that the remains of Dionysus rest with them close beside the oracle; and the Holy Ones offer a secret sacrifice in the shrine of Apollo whenever the devotees of Dionysus wake the God of the Mystic Basket. (Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 201-202)

Perhaps this is a reference to the belief that Dionysus was ripped apart by the Titans. Or perhaps it refers to the half-god, half-human status of Dionysus (Born to Zeus and the mortal Semele). Either way, there was a belief that Apollo shared his space with Dionysus, either while he was alive or after his death. But most definitely while he was on vacation.

In much of the ancient literature, we often find associations between gods that deviate from the standard stories we know from “mythology.” New genealogies are created and strange alliances formed based on regional peculiarities or how the god is interpreted by his worshipers. The Orphic Hymns certainly fall into this category, and the “Hymn to Dionysos Liknites” underscores the atypical relationships the gods may have with each other. In this case, we meet Dionysus, not as the god of wine, but as the god of house-sitting.

Sources:

• Athanassakis, Apostolos, and Benjamin M. Wolkow. 2013. The Orphic Hymns. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Plutarch. Isis and Osiris. Full text can be found online here.

Photo by xymox.

Filed under: Ancient

One album I recommend very highly is Lydia Loveless’ Somewhere Else. This young, talented singer from Ohio is definitely someone to check out if you haven’t yet. If you haven’t heard her, this NPR performance is a good place to start, although quite a bit more subdued than her album. I read somewhere that her dad was in the band for awhile, but too many of her songs were about sex so it was too weird. Another excellent musician from southern Ohio as well, which seems to generate a whole lot of underrated music.

Another day, another volley in the Amazon-Hachette battle, this time from Amazon, in which it explains what it wants (all ebooks to be $9.99 or less, for starters) and lays out some math that it alleges shows that everyone wins when Amazon gets its way.

Some thoughts:

1. I think Amazon’s math checks out quite well, as long as you have the ground assumption that Amazon is the only distributor of books that publishers or authors (or consumers, for that matter) should ever have to consider. If you entertain the notion that Amazon is just 30% of the market and that publishers have other retailers to consider — and that authors have other income streams than Amazon — then the math falls apart. Amazon’s assumptions don’t include, for example, that publishers and authors might have a legitimate reason for not wanting the gulf between eBook and physical hardcover pricing to be so large that brick and mortar retailers suffer, narrowing the number of venues into which books can sell. Killing off Amazon’s competitors is good for Amazon; there’s rather less of an argument that it’s good for anyone else.

2. Amazon’s math of “you will sell 1.74 times as many books at $9.99 than at $14.99″ is also suspect, because it appears to come with the ground assumption that books are interchangable units of entertainment, each equally as salable as the next, and that pricing is the only thing consumers react to. They’re not, and it’s not. Someone who wants the latest John Ringo novel on the day of release will not likely find the latest Jodi Picoult book a satisfactory replacement, or vice versa; likewise, someone who wants a eBook now may be perfectly happy to pay $14.99 to get it now, in which case the publisher and author should be able to charge what the market will bear, and adjust the prices down (or up! But most likely down) as demand moves about.

(This is where many people decide to opine that the cost of eBooks should reflect the cost of production in some way that allows them to say that whatever price point they prefer is the naturally correct one. This is where I say: You know what, if you’ve ever paid more than twenty cents for a soda at a fast food restaurant, or have ever bought bottled water at a store, then I feel perfectly justified in considering your cost of production position vis a vis publishing as entirely hypocritical. Please stop making the cost of production argument for books and apparently nothing else in your daily consumer life. I think less of you when you do.)

Bear in mind it’s entirely possible that Amazon sells 1.74 times as many books at $9.99 than at $14.99, but then Amazon deals with gross numbers of product, while publishers deal with somewhat smaller numbers, and the author, of course, deals with only her own list of books. As the focus tightens, the general rules stop being as applicable. What’s good for Amazon isn’t necessarily good for publishers, or authors.

3. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I think it’s very likely that if $9.99 becomes the upper bound for pricing on eBooks, then you are going to find $9.99 becomes the standard price for eBooks, period, because publishers who lose money up at the top of the pricing scale will need to recoup that money somewhere else, and the bottom of the pricing scale is a fine place to do it. Yes, the mass of self-published authors out there will create a tier of value-priced books (this has already been done), and I’m sure in a couple of years Amazon will release another spate of numbers that will show how much more profitable $6.99 eBooks are as compared to $9.99 eBooks, and so on. But at the end of the day there will be authors and publishers who can charge $9.99, forever, and they will. If you destroy the top end of the market, the chances you destroy the bottom end go up, fast.

4. I think Amazon taking a moment to opine that authors should get 35% of revenues for their eBooks is a nice bit of trying to rally authors to their point of view by drawing their attention away from Amazon’s attempt to standardize all eBook pricing at a price point that benefits Amazon’s business goals first and authors secondarily, if at all. The translation here is “Look, if only your publisher would do this thing that we have absolutely no control over, then your own income wouldn’t suffer in the slightest!” Which again, is not necessarily true in the long run.

To be clear, I think authors should get more of the revenue of each electronic sale, although I’m not necessarily sanguine about letting Amazon also attempt to set what that percentage should be. Increasing authors’ percentages of revenue on electronic sales is an exciting new frontier in contract negotiations, he said, having walked to that frontier himself several times now. That said, I also think I should be able to get more of the revenue of each sale and have the ability to have my work priced at whatever the market will bear, without a multibillion-dollar company artifically capping the price I or my publisher can set on my work for its own business goals, which may or may not be in line with my own.

5. While this is not going to happen because this is not the way PR works, I really really really wish Amazon would stop pretending that anything it does it does for the benefit of authors. It does not. It does it for the benefit of Amazon, and then finds a way to spin it to authors, with the help of a coterie of supporters to carry that message forward, more or less uncritically.

Look: As Walter Jon Williams recently pointed out, if Amazon is on the side of authors, why does their Kindle Direct boilerplate have language in it that says that Amazon may unilaterally change the parameters of their agreement with authors? I don’t consider my publishers “on my side” any more than I consider Amazon “on my side” — they’re both entities I do business with — but at least my publisher cannot change my deal without my consent. Which is to say that between my publisher and Amazon, one of them gets to utter the immortal Darth Vader line “I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it further” to authors doing business with it and one does not.

(I notice in the WJW comment thread someone opines along the lines of “Oh, that’s like EULA boilerplate and it would probably not be enforceable in court,” which I think is a really charming example of naivete, not in the least because, as I suspected, the boilerplate also specifies (in section 10.1) that disputes between Kindle Direct users and Amazon will be settled through arbitration rather than the courts.)

Authors: Amazon is not your friend. Neither is any other publisher or retailer. They are all business entities with their own goals, only some of which may benefit you. When any of them starts invoking your own interest, while promoting their own, look to your wallet.

New York housewares store Fishs Eddy has run afoul of the Port Authority’s apparent rights to the Manhattan skyline, the New York Times reported. On July 24, the popular retail operation received a cease-and-desist letter from the Port authority citing two of their best-selling patterns as “bearing unauthorized reproductions and names of exclusive assets of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.”

Patterns “212 Skyline” and “Bridge and Tunnel,” featured on products that range from dinner plates to tote bags — and even a 212 Everything Bagel Salt Tin — both allegedly bear representations of Port Authority “assets”: the iconic Twin Towers appear in the skyline print and the Holland Tunnel is similarly depicted in “Bridge and Tunnel.” The New York landmarks are visually rendered and named in the prints, both supposed rights violations with which the Port Authority has taken issue.

Fishs Eddy representative Julie Gaines expressed what she believed to be the motivation behind the Port Authority’s targeting of Fishs Eddy: consistency. “We’ve been producing the same pattern[s] for 27 years,” she told Hyperallergic over the phone. Gaines continued to explain that it’s easier for the Port Authority to use the store as an example rather than chasing down every “I Love New York” shopfront that turns over merchandise bearing their assets at a much quicker rate.

According to Gaines, the store’s lawyers have stated that they don’t plan to comply with the order to cease and desist production and sale of the home goods bearing the two patterns in question. Gaines further explained to Hyperallergic that the depictions are artistic renderings that don’t “erode the distinctive significance of the Twin Towers,” adding “it drives me crazy that people are calling it cartoonish, they’re artful silhouettes of the New York skyline.”

Gaines said that Fishs Eddy has received countless emails and phone calls from customers voicing their support for the store: “the support has been overwhelming … I thought, people really love Fishs Eddy, but I think [the reality is] people really hate the Port Authority.”

A representative from the Port Authority declined to comment.

Are very shy women fit to be prostitutes?  Also, does semen always smell bad or does it depend on the man?

If by “shy” you mean “painfully introverted” or “extremely  modest”, sex work is definitely not for you.  Though a whore needn’t necessarily be gregarious (and in fact many are somewhat introverted), she needs to at least be able to meet and smoothly interact with new people in order to carry out the basic activities of her trade.  Likewise, she need not be so comfortable with nudity that she can flash crowds on Bourbon Street in broad daylight, but she can’t be so averse to it that she’s paralyzed by the prospect of getting undressed in front of strange men.  If, on the other hand, you simply mean the shyness that comes of inexperience and uncertainty, my previous column “Inexperience”  may provide an answer.

In answer to your second question: the smell and taste of a man’s semen varies with his body chemistry, health and diet.  The semen of two different men living in the same environment, or of the same man under different health conditions or diets, can vary to a surprisingly wide degree; however, some factors (such as muskiness) may be relatively constant in an individual no matter what his diet.  In other words, if you find the taste or odor of a particular man’s semen intolerable, it may be something he’s eating, or it may be due to a health condition, but it could also just be the way he’s put together (or the way you’re put together).

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)

We can finally talk about our secret moon base (plans).

Sorry to link to the Huffington Post, but we’ve got to talk about these Siberian holes.

Maybe you’d like some early 20th Century Japanese graphic design?

Rogue waves are the scariest things in the world.

Now let’s all explore some Russian movie studios.

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Madeline, the smallest of the “twelve little girls in two straight lines” who lived in “an old house in Paris that was covered in vines,” was born in Manhattan. In Pete’s Tavern on Irving Place in 1938, Ludwig Bemelmans scrawled those first rhyming lines that would introduce his petite heroine of the Madeline books.

Bemelmans, born of a German mother and Belgian father, arrived in New York City in 1914, passing his first night stranded on Ellis Island after his dad forgot to meet him. To mark the centenary of the children’s book author and illustrator stepping into Gotham, the New-York Historical Society opened Madeline in New York: The Art of Ludwig Bemelmans earlier this month. In conjunction with the exhibition, illustrator Adrienne Ottenberg created a map of “Bemelmans’ New York.”

Paris and its ornate environs may be Madeline’s home, but New York was Bemelmans’ base. He started in 1915 as a busboy at the old Ritz Hotel, working his way up into the upper echelons of society. Ottenberg’s map charts the places where he lived and died (the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park in October of 1962). There’s also the Museum of the City of New York, where in 1959 he had his first solo show, and the Carlyle Hotel bar on 76th Street, where you can still drink alongside his whimsical Central Park mural from 1947. Madeline in New York also holds relics of his New York wanders, including drawings of frenetic life in the Ritz and lampshades from the Carlyle, one showing the Statue of Liberty in his playful, impressionistic style.

The map of “Bemelmans’ New York” by Ottenberg is below, and can be found larger on the New-York Historical Society site.

Madeline in New York: The Art of Ludwig Bemelmans continues at the New-York Historical Society (170 Central Park West, Upper West Side, Manhattan) through October 19. 

Denali Winter, the brains behind Petplay Palace, a new local petplay website, posted on their social media last night that their hope to shoot some hot content at the Up Your Alley fair (also known as Dore Alley) was shattered yesterday, much to their surprise.  Volunteers and cops alike informed Denali that “no touch that might provoke ejaculation” was allowed, but that they could kick or punch their submissive in the balls as much as they liked.

…

I mean I know we culturally feel that violence is far more acceptable than sex, but REALLY?? There’s something seriously messed up when violent touch is fine but sensual touch is Forbidden with a capital F.

I have my own post coming about this situation, among other situations in San Francisco that makes me feel like sexy is being slowly, systematically picked off by the local and state governments.  But in the meantime, please read this account by Denali Winter about their experience this Sunday, and, if you feel so inclined,  check out Petplay Palace and Alice in Bondageland!

My friend and mentor Mistress Alice of Alice in Bondageland, roommate Mistress Claire, her submissive Beau, and myself were planning a shoot today at Dore Alley. Public sex and kink have always been permissable (at least, in our experiences) at Dore Alley, Folsom, and Pride. Alice has been shooting hardcore content at pretty much every public even allowed for years and years here in the bay area.

It was Claire’s and my first Dore, but I have 3 years of experience doing public bondage and kink. Among my many stunts with Alice was our 2012 human pride flag shoot on Solstice in the middle of the Castro. At that shoot we were not only never harassed, but encouraged and applauded by members of the gay community for our “performance art piece.”

Claire’s sub specifically came to San Francisco to shoot porn and party it up, SF style. Last year he went to Dore Alley ​and sucked tons of cock in the street, with no questions asked and nobody stepping in to interrupt. Alice, myself, and many other people use the kinky street fairs as opportunities to shoot crazy, artsy, only-in-San-Francisco videos and photos.

 

Last week, for three days, Andrew William Smith, aka @presbyhippy, aka Teacher Preacher, aka Teacher on the Radio, took over this here blog thingy while the Rude Pundit indulged in a mucho-needed time away from political fucknuttery.

Now, some of you may wonder, "Huh. I thought this here blog thingy was stone cold atheistic. What gives with this Christian bullshit?"

The easy, dickish answer is "Umm, my blog, fuckers." But the Rude Pundit specifically wanted Andrew to write because he thinks we do a disservice to our causes by separating ourselves into worshipers and heathens. As Andrew demonstrated repeatedly, and it's something that religious people everywhere would do well to remember, the seeds of much of modern liberalism have been sown in houses of worship by the churchgoing left.

Let's not belabor the point. Instead, scroll down and read his stuff. Sometimes the rudest thing in this sad world is unabashed love.

The media blog Fishbowl New York is reporting that the lead paragraph of a July 25 New York Times article by Carol Vogel bears a striking similarity to the Wikipedia entry for its subject, the Renaissance painter Piero di Cosimo. The two passages in question are below, with the especially egregious second sentence appearing in bold.

First paragraph of “A Renaissance Master Finally Gets a Showcase” by Carol Vogel, published 7/25 on page C18 (and online the day before):

Artists can be eccentric, but the quirks of the Italian Renaissance master Piero di Cosimo are legendary. He is said to have been terrified of thunderstorms and so pyrophobic that he rarely cooked his food, subsisting mostly on hard-boiled eggs that he prepared 50 at a time while heating glue for his art. He didn’t clean his studio. He didn’t trim the trees in his orchard. Giorgio Vasari, the Renaissance biographer, described Piero as living “more like a beast than a man.”

Fourth paragraph of Wikipedia entry for Piero di Cosimo:

During his lifetime, Cosimo acquired a reputation for eccentricity — a reputation enhanced and exaggerated by later commentators such as Giorgio Vasari, who included a biography of Piero di Cosimo in his Lives of the Artists. Reportedly, he was frightened of thunderstorms, and so pyrophobic that he rarely cooked his food; he lived largely on hard-boiled eggs, which he prepared 50 at a time while boiling glue for his artworks. He also resisted any cleaning of his studio, or trimming of the fruit trees of his orchard; he lived, wrote Vasari, “more like a beast than a man.”

A spokesperson for the Times could not be immediately reached for comment, but poet Kenneth Goldsmith is on the case:

Update, 7/29 1:21pm ET: Gawker has published an article on the Vogel imbroglio, drawing parallels to the recent firing of BuzzFeed’s Benny Johnson and quoting Times spokewoman Eileen Murphy, who says the paper is “aware of the situation and … looking into it.”

Update 2, 7/31 2:45pm ET: The New York Times has appended an “Editor’s Note” (below) acknowledging the Wikipedia duplication in the article, which has since been revised. Both Times public editor Margaret Sullivan and media reporter Ravi Somaiya have covered the issue in the paper, with the latter writing that a spokesperson “declined to discuss any disciplinary measures, beyond saying that ‘editors have dealt with Carol on the issue.’”

The Inside Art column on July 25, about a planned exhibition of the works of the Renaissance painter Piero di Cosimo, started with a description of the artist’s life and eccentricities. That passage improperly used specific language and details from a Wikipedia article without attribution; it should not have been published in that form. (Editors learned of the problem after publication from a post on FishbowlNY.)

From inhumanly buff, tribally vague warriors in combat games to targets in cowboys-versus-Indians epics, video game representations of indigenous people have been spotty at best. This October’s release Never Alone — based on Inupiat culture — is planned to be the first of a series of game collaborations that give indigenous people a platform.

Colin Campbell at Polygon reported that Never Alone from E-Line Media, Upper One Games, and the Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC) is paving the way for the “World Games” initiative, which “will release games based on cultures that have hitherto struggled to find a voice.” A continued collaboration between E-Line and CITC, World Games has reportedly already attracted interest from groups in Hawaii, Azerbaijan, and Siberia.

Never Alone features a girl named Nuna who, with her arctic fox friend, navigates a landscape of puzzles, all while a blizzard pummels the way, and threatens to destroy her homeland. Upper One Games was launched last June by the CITC as the first games company in the United States indigenously owned, with CITC President and CEO Gloria O’Neill saying:

“As an organization we want to be able to chart our own destiny. This isn’t about the status quo; this is about pioneering a new approach to sustainability, as well as meaningful and scalable impact by creating a global video game brand infused with our values and culture.”

The representation of indigenous people in video games has long been more stereotype than sensitivity (you can get a rather dire summary from Elizabeth LaPensée’s 2011 compilation of them here). Even a recent title like Prey (2006) has a Cherokee named Tommy battling aliens with his mystical powers that allow him to detach his spirit, and Assassin’s Creed III (2012) reportedly had a scalping scene removed that featured its half-Mohawk protagonist. The characters are almost always some sort of spell-conjuring shaman — Nightwolf in Mortal Kombat— or tomahawk-wielding behemoth — Chief Thunder in Killer Instinct. Yet video games offer an immersive narrative able to embrace the complexities of diverse cultures and its stories, such as with 2013′s Year Walk that turned Swedish folklore into an eerie experience exploring traditional stories through the intimacy of mobile gaming. There’s also the educational Mission 3: A Cheyenne Odyssey that won Most Significant Impact from this year’s Games for Change festival, centering on relocation and loss of traditions, told in a choose-your-own-adventure structure.

Never Alone and World Games are promising to counter appropriation with collaborative games inspired by the rich art, legends, and history of indigenous cultures, and by showing that an engaging gaming experience can give indigenous stories a voice.

Never Alone from Upper One Games is available on Xbox, PlayStation 4, and Windows PC this October.

Talk about big mistakes! The National Review has decided to pick a fight with, of all people, Neil DeGrasse Tyson:




First of all, if you are a National Review reader, then it is safe to say that Dr Neil Degrasse Tyson (BA: Physics, Harvard University; MA: Astronomy, UT Austin; MPhil: Astrophysics, Columbia University; PhD: Astrophysics, Columbia University) is smarter than you. He's smarter than me. He's pretty much smarter than anybody (antipodeans not counted) you'll meet.

That out of the way, Dr Tyson always seems to be very diplomatic when it comes to political issues, and even praised Republicans when it came to funding science- I'll note that funding projects in astrophysics funnels money into the Military Industrial Complex, due to all of the hardware involved. By dragging Dr Tyson, who is a popular, charismatic figure, into a political brawl, conservatives can only lose. Bill Maher offered up Tyson's combination of race, intelligence, and charisma as a reason for the conservative hate-on for Dr Tyson, while D.R. Tucker opined that it is Dr Tyson's belief in anthropogenic climate change.

Sadly, only the opening of Chucky Cooke's article is available on the web for free, and I absolutely refuse to pay money to kill my brain cells unless alcohol is involved. The smart Charles, Mr Pierce, took the dumb one to the woodshed.

I've met Dr Tyson on two occasions, and he is as nice a gentleman as he is a brilliant populizer of science. I don't think he'd want to be dragged into a pointless Left/Right "battle", but if the Conservative establishment wants to pick this fight, all I can say is, "Please proceed, conservatives!"


Edit: Special thanks to Buddy McCue, who not only clued me in to this article, but linked to a thread in which the article was cut-and-pasted. Yeah, it's even worse than you think. My favorite part was this:


"Science and 'geeky' subjects," the pop-culture writer Maddox observes, "are perceived as being hip, cool and intellectual." And so people who are, or wish to be, hip, cool, and intellectual "glom onto these labels and call themselves 'geeks' or 'nerds' every chance they get."

Which is to say that the nerds of MSNBC and beyond are not actually nerds but the popular kids indulging in a fad. To a person, they are attractive, accomplished, well paid, and loved, listened to, and cited by a good portion of the general public.


It's a funny juxtaposition, especially since people like Rachel Maddow are actual scholars. The real news is that the actual nerds won the culture war- we're living in Gary's world now. Chuckie Cooke goes on to whine:


In this manner has a word with a formerly useful meaning been turned into a transparent humblebrag: Look at me, I'm smart. Or, more important, perhaps, Look at me and let me tell you who I am not, which is southern, politically conservative, culturally traditional, religious in some sense, patriotic, driven by principle rather than the pivot tables of Microsoft Excel, and in any way attached to the past.


To that I say, there's nothing that says that a person who is "southern, politically conservative, culturally traditional, religious in some sense, patriotic, driven by principle rather than the pivot tables of Microsoft Excel, and in any way attached to the past" needs to be stupid, but conservatives like Representative Paul Broun choose stupidity. The whole article is merely a whine that the Movement Conservative base chooses to let the stupid people not only speak to them, but to set the policy goals for political conservatives. If Cooke has a beef, it should be with the knuckle-draggers, not the "smart set" that ridicules them.

Hobby Lobby puts its pro-life, pro-child policies into practice:

When a very pregnant Felicia Allen applied for medical leave from her job at Hobby Lobby three years ago, one might think that the company best known for denying its employees insurance coverage of certain contraceptives—on the false grounds that they cause abortions—would show equal concern for helping one of its employees when she learned she was pregnant.

Instead, Allen says the self-professed evangelical Christian arts-and-crafts chain fired her and then tried to prevent her from accessing unemployment benefits.

“They didn’t even want me to come back after having my baby, to provide for it,” she says.

And here I thought Hobby Lobby was acting out of very strong principle for life and not because it hates women and wants to punish them for having sex.

There’s also this gem:

When Allen applied for unemployment benefits, she says Hobby Lobby’s corporate office gave the unemployment agency a false version of events, claiming she could have taken off personal leave but chose not to. In the end, Allen says she won her claim for unemployment benefits, but she felt she had been wrongly discriminated based on the fact that she was pregnant. In February 2012 she sued Hobby Lobby, but her lawsuit was swiftly dropped because, like most—if not all—Hobby Lobby employees, Allen had signed away her rights to sue the company.

Though the multibillion-dollar, nearly 600-store chain took its legal claim against the federal government all the way to the Supreme Court when it didn’t want to honor the health insurance requirements of the Affordable Care Act, the company forbids its employees from seeking justice in the court of law.

Allen had signed a binding arbitration agreement upon taking the job, though she says she doesn’t remember doing so. The agreement, which all Hobby Lobby employees are required to sign, forces employees to resolve legal disputes outside of court through a process known as arbitration.

Lying so she couldn’t get unemployment is very special, but forcing employees to sign documents waiving their right to sue the company in order to be hired should be as illegal as the yellow-dog contract. I would ask how something like that is even legal in this nation, but of course I already know why–because corporations control our lives in ways they have not in a century.

The move-in is almost done, the real back-breaking stuff is almost all complete.  And yet, as exhausted as I have been for almost two weeks of solid work?  I cannot sleep.  Right before we began the big push, the moon came full.

I lit up my Haven altar… not then realizing it would be the last full moon lights lit there.  I had planned a long slow re-entry to my marital home, something gradual and peaceful in contrast to my harried emotionally painful withdrawal to the second dwelling on our property when my husband of over three decades had his belated PTSD meltdown in 2011.  But, as with all plans?  They are great on paper.  When the thing itself begins, it has its own plans.  My husband was suddenly fed up with my absence from our home!

He took last week OFF work using vacation to stay home and help.  He wanted me in the house in quicktime-march.  Damn.  It was really hard, frantic, and nearly as traumatic as my exit!  The study was restored first, and then my bedroom.  I have a public “front room” sort of altar, but my more personal shrine is now a seven foot shelf on my bedroom wall.  It is what I see last going to bed, and first upon rising.  It has my favorite things, and some whimsical things; things that smell nice and things that make flames glow at night.  It has a lampshade older than some readers!  That lampshade hanging  there was bought used for $3 in about 1990.  It has been painted three different colors.  I still love it.

The items that remain to move inside are minor, though exhaustion makes them loom larger.  The Manchild has a lot more work to do, the garage and part of the living room are filled with his things.  He painted the Haven ceiling today, and can start moving things soon. By September, I hope it is all complete.  In the meanwhile, I’ve learned NOT to refinish furniture non-stop for six weeks without wearing a painter’s mask.  I got seriously ill towards the end, even mild indoor paint smell makes me ill again now.  I had thought working outside in the open air would be safe enough.  I was wrong.

And every project needs a surprise, right?  When I painted my bedroom-to-be, there was an odd dark spot in one ceiling corner — since I had not used the room in sometime, I wondered if I had simply not noticed it before.  It wasn’t wet, gave no sign of having been wet, either.  Today, lying down there, I kept hearing that buzzy trapped insect in a jar sound and a horrid suspicion came to me.  I jumped up and ran outdoors and around the house.  And there, exiting the soffit?  Buzzing black and yellow — some sort of wasp has a next above my bedroom in the attic!  Well, we can’t have THAT at all.  So MORE to do, deciding how to eliminate the wasps, it isn’t a walk-around storage attic….but the horrid no clearance low sort with insulation and darkness.

Better to know now than a week from now when I send a handy man up there to replace a leaking roof vent, right?  Tomorrow, I’m calling Orkin, I believe.  And then switching food in fridges and freezers between the two households.  Life goes on….and the ‘beat’ that goes with it is going to do it without a buzzing section!

 

Tagged: altars, marriage, pagan life, renovation

<Phantom_Hoover> You know what annoys me about Deep Space 9.
<Phantom_Hoover> It wasn't in deep space.
<Phantom_Hoover> It was orbiting Bajor.

<kmc> the other day I bought a recycling can from amazon
<kmc> it came in a cardboard box
<kmc> i took the can out of the box, broke down the box, and put it in the can
<kmc> it was amazing

You’ve probably heard about the latest horribly botched execution:

Wood’s execution dragged on for so long that at the midpoint, his lawyers filed an emergency appeal to stop the procedure and called on Justice Anthony M. Kennedy to intervene. Wood died before the federal court could respond, and Kennedy turned down the lawyers’ request. After Wood was pronounced dead, the Arizona Supreme Court ordered that the state “preserve any drug labels and unused drugs pertaining to the execution of Mr. Wood.”

The two-hour execution was just the latest debacle made possible by an ever more familiar combination of state secrecy, untried protocols being tested for the first time on live human beings, and a judicial system that can’t quite make up its mind about how much gasping and coughing is reasonable in a state-sanctioned killing. The new wrinkle is that this time we must endure the spectacle of witnesses to the execution fighting over how much suffering they saw.

Another exhibit Kozinski can use in his campaign to bring back the firing squad.

The optimistic take is that given the choice between a more visibly brutal death penalty and abolition, the public will choose the latter. I’m not sure. Most states have either abolished the death penalty or almost never use it. In the relatively small minority of states that are responsible for the vast majority of executions…I’m not sure that explicit brutality or botched executions will matter. I hope I’m wrong.

The Wood botched execution in Arizona and others elsewhere have shocked many and rightly so. But it’s also opened up an interesting debate in the legal world. On the one hand, you have academics arguing the academia and the technicalities of the law and the meaning of words and on the other, you have former lawyers turned professors who are arguing that, really, what we should do is avoid torturous executions. The latter is a post at the ACS blog which I’d recommend that you read in its entirety. It is long and technical, but it really is worth reading to understand why the secrecy surrounding the lethal injection protocol is dangerous and cannot be tolerated.

H/T: Nancy Leong

Liverpool was a proud city once. Rightfully so.

King John founded Liverpool when the Magna Carta was still just a twinkle in the Baron’s eyes. 1207, if you are interested. The Wirral was a Viking stronghold – even today, 50% of the men of the Wirral have Viking DNA. There is something to be said for inbreeding after all.

Liverpool raised tough men. They built ships, they dug canals, they manhandled stone to form the Docks, and some truly extraordinary buildings. Herman Melville wrote:

“Previous to this, having only seen the miserable wooden wharves and shambling piers of New York… in Liverpool I beheld long China walls of masonry; vast piers of stone; and a succession of granite-rimmed docks, completely enclosed. The extent and solidity of these structures seemed equal to what I had read of the old pyramids of Egypt. In magnitude, cost and durability the docks of Liverpool surpass all others in the world… for miles you may walk along that riverside, passing dock after dock, like a chain of immense fortresses.”

By the time of the First World War, 40% of the world’s shipping trade went through Liverpool. 

When Europe exploded into War in 1914, at a time when German bombers couldn’t reach Liverpool, Liverpool men proudly joined the ‘King’s Liverpool Regiment’ to help to protect the womenfolk and children of other cities.

They prayed on the beaches of northern France before entering the trenches. 13,000 of them never returned. The Bishop of Liverpool’s son was one of those. Noel Chavasse. The only man in the entire British Isles to win not one, but two, Victoria Crosses for his extraordinary bravery during that conflict.

The womenfolk were scarcely idle. They raised money, and staffed, entirely with volunteers, the ‘Liverpool Merchants’ Hospital’ at Etaples in northern France, immortalised in C.S. Lewis’ book ‘Spirits in Bondage’.

So Liverpool has much to be proud of as a city, that should be remembered during this centenary of World War 1.

On Saturday, they mounted their ‘remembrance’ of all this bravery and ‘told the story’ of World War One as it was experienced in Liverpool.

100,000 people lined the streets to learn of their ‘proud heritage’.

A 25′ high marionette of a grandmother walked the docks in search of her granddaughter. Much hilarity followed ‘when her head came loose whilst breaking wind’ according to the BBC. With her head fixed back on, she was put in a wheelchair (What! No mobility scooter?) and taken through the Chinese Quarter (inclusivity!) to Newsham Park, where she was reunited with her 25′ high marionette daughter and the mechanical dog Xolo (a great hit with the children, the BBC reports).

There, the little girl sat beside grandmother to listen to her tell a story involving meteors and killing dinosaurs.

There were complaints about all this, naturally. The Anarchists were beside themselves.

They were offended by the capitalist running-dog lackeys appearing in their city offering ‘official merchandise’.

Stock up on Giant goodies at World Museum. We have a selection of merchandise for sale which commemorates this magical weekend including mugs, books. official programme and gorgeous prints. Gifts are also available online including this amazing little girl giant coaster.

The people of Liverpool seemed to enjoy this spectacle:

Eileen Schofield, from Leek, said it was “so lovely to see the people of Liverpool embrace the Giants”.

“The highlight for us will be the grandmother spitting, farting and drinking.“

I can’t follow that. Raise a glass to the memory of Noel Chevasse. Victoria Cross holder, twice over.

He gave his life for the freedom to be remembered via a French puppet ‘spitting, farting, and drinking’.

Lest we forget indeed.

My friend Elise Matthesen last year filed a report at the WisCon science fiction and fantasy covention, because she believed that (then) Tor editor Jim Frenkel had sexually harassed her. Harassment policies are not only about what those policies say, but how those policies are administered and those reports handled. Here’s Elise telling you how WisCon, which identifies as the world’s leading feminist science fiction convention, handled her report. The short version: It did so very poorly.

—-

Last year at WisCon 37, I told a Safety staffer that I had been treated by another attendee in a way that made me uncomfortable and that I believed to be sexual harassment.  One big reason I did was that I understood from another source that he had reportedly harassed at least one other person at a convention. I learned that she didn’t report him formally, for a lot of reasons that aren’t mine to say. I was in a position where I felt confident I could take the hit from standing up and telling the truth. So I did.

I didn’t expect, fourteen months later, to have to stand up and tell the truth about WisCon’s leadership as well.

More than a year after I reported, following an outcry when WisCon revealed that they had lost other reports of misconduct — and after the person in question had not only attended WisCon 38 but had been one of the volunteer hosts in the public convention hospitality suite —  WisCon appointed a subcommittee to investigate my report, along with others they had received about the same person, and to determine what action would best benefit WisCon.

That subcommittee made their statement on Friday, July 18.  Their decision seemed to focus on the rehabilitation of the person, and to understate the seriousness of the conduct. I found their decision inadequate and troubling, and could not understand how they had arrived at it. A week later, on Friday, July 24, I compared notes with Jacquelyn Gill, a member of that subcommittee. (I am incredibly grateful that she made a public statement about her experience on the committee, which allowed me to reach out to her.) We discovered to our mutual dismay that WisCon leadership never gave her all the details I had reported as evidence upon which she could make her decision. Instead, WisCon leadership gave her a version that watered down my account of the harassment, including downplaying the physical contact significantly enough to make the account grossly misleading.

I don’t know whether the relevant details were removed or summarized away from the report I made, or were never written down in the first place. As yet I have seen no evidence that the safety logbook itself contains them. I wonder whether the chairs at WisCon 37 were ever even given the details.

When the subcommittee was formed this year after WisCon 38, Debbie Notkin chaired it. While I can see the sense of having the Member Advocate – which was also Debbie — participating in the subcommittee, I was shocked to learn after the decision that the Member Advocate was also the chair of the subcommittee.  To my way of thinking, that was a clear conflict of interest which I would have balked at, had I been informed. Still, since she was present when I reported in detail, I can’t imagine why she didn’t see that the watered-down summarized version presented to the subcommittee was materially different than what I reported. Despite that knowledge, she allowed the subcommittee to base their decision on inadequate and frankly misleading information. And the subcommittee cooperated with that. The subcommittee performed no follow-up with me or the witnesses, or with other reporters and their witnesses.

What has happened here is beyond my comprehension.  People other than me will have to figure it out and do whatever needs to be done. I hear Ariel Franklin-Hudson has built improved systems for collecting information on incidents, and that’s needed, but what went wrong here is deeper than that.

A proper harassment investigation takes some thought and training, but it is well within the abilities of a good-faith WisCon committee to conduct one.  Experts who train people on harassment investigations emphasize the essential elements of an investigation:

(1) act promptly,

(2) gather all existing written information and reports,

(3) based on those, thoroughly interview the complaining witness, the accused, and any witnesses to the complained-of conduct,

(4) ask those witnesses for other witnesses or evidence (like documents) that might help illuminate the situation;

(5) document what you learn and maintain control and privacy of the documents, and

(6) make a decision based on all of the information that you’ve gathered in a methodical and effective way.

WisCon, instead, lost reports of complaints, selectively interviewed only the accused, failed to conduct follow-up interviews with complainants and other witnesses, and failed to probe whether the reports on which they relied were complete or accurate.  In other words, in addition to disputing the result, I think that the process was haphazard.

I will not blame Debbie for everything that went horribly wrong, because this isn’t just one person. Debbie made a grave error of proper investigation and decision-making, but this is not just Debbie. This is the safety chairs who didn’t investigate further. This is the con-chairs who didn’t follow up and didn’t ever interview me and Lauren. This is the subcommittee members who didn’t push further and contact me and Lauren and Mikki. This is lots of people, some unwitting, some just preferring not to look at the ugly stuff, not to learn something that would require that they confront someone — or confront their principles.

This is a system. And it is fucking powerful and it is fucking broken. I’m not the only one who’s said so. I don’t like putting these details out here. But this is all I have left to do, at this point: stand up and tell the truth.

I would prefer that what this has cost all of us not be wasted. If you care about WisCon, rebuild it. I wish I knew how. I’m at my limits. But as Kameron Hurley said,

“There’s a future that needs building, but somebody who’s actually courageous and principled needs to take up the fucking spade and build it.

“Is it you?”

That up there is a canal that is used "for routing flood water" through the farms of Merced County, California. In 2006, it was full of water and the ground around it was green. It's dry now, in case the dust devil in the back there didn't indicate it. But it's not just dry. It's also sinking.

"The ground is sinking because farmers and water agencies throughout the Central Valley are pumping groundwater heavily from far beneath the Earth's surface to make up for the lack of rain...And if the sinking isn't stopped, everything from house foundations to railroad lines - such as the high-speed rail planned for the valley - could suffer." Oh, and it might undermine a dam.

Californians gets between 40-60% of their water from underground aquifers. When they dry up, there is no gushing rainstorm that'll fill them up as the state goes through its worst drought ever, one that has no end in sight.

The people of the state are getting fucked without any lube, a dehydrated, uncomfortable fucking, by a nation and a world that has refused to do anything significant about climate change. And if California is fucked dry, then the rest of us will get fucked by produce prices and more.

(Note: The Rude Pundit is just back from a fine, fine part of a week in the mountains, hiking to waterfalls and riding rapids. He's still a little fuzzy from too much nature, but water is definitely on his mind.)

The $65 million redesign of the plazas in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has stanched the rising tide of food carts that typically congregate at the foot of the institution’s sweeping entrance, the New York Times reported. Barricades installed last Monday have reduced the number of trucks permitted on the site to eight, from up to 20 in the period preceding the renovations. The arrangement is set to remain in place until September 9, when the plaza is scheduled to reopen.

With the highly coveted vending spots greatly diminished, vendors have been manning the carts around the clock, sleeping in the structures to avoid penalties for unattended carts. Still, the Times report includes an account of a recent 5am raid that saw all present have their health permits pried off by inspectors (the carts were promptly replaced by properly licensed backups brought in by the attendants’ associates).

Given the visitor volume to the museum (6 million last year) and the relative paucity of food options nearby, the location is a prime spot for the city’s food carts. Though some of the spots are leased from the city for mid-six-figures annually, other carts take advantage of a 19th-century law allowing military veterans to sell without a permit. In some cases the carts are owned and operated by veterans, but “most of the other veterans are paid by cart owners — often as much as $200 a day — to simply be present while the cart is operating to provide legal vending status,” the Times writes.

Before the construction barriers went up last week, the glut of food carts had alarmed neighbors and the museum itself — a Met spokesman described the vendors’ “unprecedented numbers” to the Times.

“It’s not unusual to see the vendors handling flammable materials, including open containers of gasoline for their generators — not to mention the waste that is pouring out of their stands … The people who live in our neighborhood are very concerned,” Carol Kalikow, a president of the co-op board at an apartment building across the street, said.

The unfortunate state of affairs was not lost on one disabled veteran. “This is the closest a working-class guy like me will ever get to living on Fifth Avenue,” he told the Times.