So… a friend of a friend was in Spain recently, and visited Barcelona.
One of my favorite cities. In Spain, in Europe, or, well… anywhere. It has been way too long since I was there. Many cool things to see in Barcelona. Including, it would seem, a Chocolate Museum. I’ve never been there myself, but… well… my friend’s friend DID go to the Chocolate Museum, where they found..
…A chocolate me.
I find myself at a loss for words, but full of questions.
Am I made of dark chocolate or milk chocolate? No idea. Am I solid chocolate, or do I have a filling? Nougat? Peanut butter? Nuts? Does the museum have a display of chocolate writers, where I am to be found between chocolate Tolkien and chocolate Cervantes? Or other sorts of chocolate celebrities? Singers, actors, politicians? (Avoid the chocolate Trump, he’s poisonous).
Or is this item to be found in the gift shop, available for purchase? That fills me with dread. So many people are cross with me because of how long it is taking me to finish THE WINDS OF WINTER? Will they be buying chocolate me by the thousands and biting off my chocolate head in their wroth?
But maybe it’s not me after all. The guy in the picture is using an Apple laptop. I use a DOS desktop, so…
Schweiziska Proton har introducerat ett alternativ till Google Docs. Ordbehandlaren har fokus på integritet och erbjuder end-to-end-kryptering. Till och med tangentbordstryckningarna och musrörelserna krypteras.
Proton Docs stödjer samarbete med andra i realtid, så att två kan jobba i samma dokument samtidigt. Användare kan exempelvis lämna kommentarer och lägga bilder till dokument. Företaget anser att Proton Docs erbjuder högre integritet och säkerhet än motsvarande produkter från Google och Microsoft, bland annat tack vare krypteringen och ”Schweiz strikta integritetslagar”.
Användare kan importera dokument i docx-formatet och exportera dokument till olika format likt docx, md, txt och HTML. Proton Drive kan användas gratis med 5GB lagring. En prenumeration kallad Drive Plus för fyra euro i månaden ger bonusar likt VPN, 200GB lagring och en mejladress.
Vissa som har en Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro eller Pixel 6a har råkat ut för att telefonerna blivit obrukbara efter fabriksåterställning. De som har drabbats kan inte längre komma in i Android eftersom systemet säger: ”Cannot load Android system. Your data may be corrupt”.
Användaren har då alternativet att försöka igen eller utföra ännu en fabriksåterställning, vilket enligt utsago bara leder till ett nytt felmeddelande. En ”produktexpert” i Googles supportforum har svarat att Google känner till problemet och undersöker saken.
För de som har en modell i Pixel 6-serien är det bäst att inte fabriksåterställa telefonen förrän Google uttalat sig om vad felet beror på.
Can @neil-gaiman make a young author like me feel better about typos on my already published back cover…
👉🏻👈🏻😖💛
The book itself only has 8 mistakes apparently in 326 pages…
P.S. thanks for writing Good Omens because without it I’d have never met my Fiancé! The Crowley to my Aziraphale…Congrats on season 3!!
Well, I can explain the concept of Gaiman’s Law, which is to say that when as an author you get a brand new beautiful copy of your brand new book and you randomly open it… wherever you look (no matter how thoroughly you’ve checked it before) you will immediately spot an appalling, egregious and obvious typo. (My suspicion is you looked at the back cover first.)
(Gaiman’s Second Law of Typos is an exception: if you pick up a book and find a bad typo in the first sentence it means nobody ever bothered to read the book you are holding even to copy edit it. And it probably won’t get any better.)
Google Wallet stödjer nu hotellnycklar – och ett hotell i Göteborg har hoppat på tåget allra först. Enligt en supportsida läggs digitala hotellnycklar till Wallet från hotellens hemsidor, appar eller utskickade mejl.
Hotellet behöver dock specifikt stödja nycklar i Wallet för att det ska fungera. Clarion Hotel Post i Göteborg skriver att de digitala nycklarna fungerar i Wallet i ”alla Androidtelefoner”.
In Google Wallet, you can safely and securely use your hotel keys to access your Hotels, guestrooms and key card-protected common areas like gyms, pools, and elevators throughout the duration of your stay.
Meddelandetjänsten Signal kommer lämna EU om det kritiserade lagförslaget ”chat control” börjar gälla. Uppgiften kommer från Meredith Whittaker – chef för Signal Foundation – i inlägg på Mastodon.
Whittaker säger att det inte ska finnas tvivel om att Signal hellre lämnar EU än att tumma på användarnas integritet. I ett separat inlägg menar Whittaker att vare sig ”chat control” kallas för en bakdörr eller ytterdörr eller ”upload moderation” så undergräver lagen krypteringen och skapar allvarliga sårbarheter.
Let there be no doubt: we will leave the EU market rather than undermine our privacy guarantees.
Whatsapp har så vitt vi vet ännu inte uttalat sig om lagförslaget men företagets vd Will Cathcart sa för ett år sedan att Whatsapp hellre blockeras i Storbritannien än att inkräkta på krypteringen, apropå en liknande lokal lag där. Frågan är om Cathcart är lika beredd att lämna den betydligt större EU-marknaden.
Sverige gav grönt ljus till lagförslaget under gårdagen, men ”chat control” har fortfarande långt kvar till att bli klubbad lag och kan hinna stoppas längs vägen. Om lagen går igenom kommer utvecklare av digitala kommunikationstjänster behöva låta meddelanden och allt skickat innehåll skannas innan krypteringen. Med andra ord; massövervakning.
If we were going to be photographed together, Terry always tried to be wearing white. This was, he said, so that people would think he was the good one, and if anyone was going to get a brick through their window, it would be me, the one in black.
Many people, especially people who didn’t know Terry well, thought he was joking.
9. Plaintiff Alexander Morris is an African American man and is the lead singer of the famous Motown group the "Four Tops.” At the time of the incident the Four Tops were on a national music tour with the Temptations and had recently performed at the Grammy Awards.
10. On or about April 7, 2023; Plaintiff was transported to the Ascension Macomb Oakland Hospital emergency room via ambulance, and he presented to the emergency room with difficulty breathing and chest pain, he was on oxygen, and he had a significant known history of cardiac disease including the placement of stints and defibrillator. During his hospitalization, Plaintiff was ultimately diagnosed with a heart infraction that may require a heart transplant, pneumonia, and he suffered three seizures during his stay.
11. When he presented to the emergency room Plaintiff informed a nurse and a security guard that he was a member of the famous Motown group the “Four Tops,” and that he had current security concerns due to stalkers and fans.
12. Shortly after check-in a nurse Holly Jackson, a White male security guard Greg Ciesielski, and a White male emergency room doctor Brandon Harris Fishman, DO racially profiled him and/or profiled him based upon a perceived disability and placed an order for a psychological evaluation for Plaintiff because they did not believe he was a singer or member of the “Four Tops.” Doctor Brandon Harris Fishman, DO, the emergency room doctor who was on staff met with Plaintiff and interviewed him, Plaintiff informed him of his medical history, and informed him that he was having difficulty breathing and chest pain. Defendants and Brandon Harris Fishman, DO wrongfully assumed he was mentally ill when he revealed his identity as a celebrity figure. Defendants and/or Brandon Harris Fishman, DO made the decision to remove him from oxygen and pursue a psychiatric evaluation instead despite his clear symptoms of cardiac distress and significant medical history.
13. Plaintiff had a valid identification on his person and could easily have been identified as a singer in the Four Tops group.
14. Brandon Harris Fishman, DO ordered a psychological evaluation for Plaintiff instead of ordering the emergency medical treatment he needed. Plaintiff was denied the emergency medical care he needed due to his heart condition and pneumonia, and instead a security guard was instructed to ensure he was placed into a restraining jacket and/or a four-point restraint mechanism, removed his belongings, and Plaintiff was told he was going to have a “psych eval” or psychological evaluation. Plaintiff was referred to Virjaya Gopal Kotha, MD for the psychological evaluation.
15. Plaintiff asked if he could prove his identity by showing his identification card, and the White male security guard ordered him to “sit his Black ass down.” None of the nursing staff intervened to stop the racial discrimination and mistreatment of Plaintiff. Upon information and belief none of the nursing staff reported the mistreatment or use of the racial slur to a supervisor. Moreover, none of the nursing staff thought to simply ask for Plaintif’s identification.
16. Plaintiff told medical staff he was having difficulty breathing and asked for the oxygen back but was ignored. Plaintiff asked to have the restraint device removed and asked for his personal belongings back so he could leave and seek treatment at another hospital, and he was told he was not free to leave; thus, he was falsely imprisoned and deprived of his personal property. During this time his medical condition continuously declined and he was denied the medical treatment he desperately needed.
17. Several security guards were called to surround the nursing station to ensure Plaintiff could not leave. During this entire incident Plaintiff was not being treated for his medical emergency, namely a severe heart condition and pneumonia. Defendant Hospital and Defendant Jackson blatantly refused to provide Plaintiff with medical treatment due to his race and/or perceived mental disability. Instead, Plaintiff received a deliberate misdiagnosis and received a lower standard of medical care based on his race that amounted to racial discrimination and delayed his actual diagnosis.
18. Finally, Plaintiff’s wife came to the nursing station to collect his belongings and she saw what was transpiring and Plaintiff informed his wife that the doctors thought he was delusional. Plaintiff’s wife informed one of the security officers that he was actually a member of the Four Tops, but he took no action on Plaintiff’s behalf, and he was left in the restraints and denied medical treatment. A nurse came to Plaintiff’s side, and Plaintiff asked to show the nurse the video of him performing at the Grammys. The nurse realized Plaintiff was a member of the Four Tops, and the nurse went and got the emergency room doctor to inform him. The emergency room doctor returned and said he was cancelling the psychological evaluation.
19. The restraint jacket was finally removed, and he was placed back on oxygen. Plaintiff was restrained for approximately an hour and a half or 90 minutes. As aforementioned, during his hospitalization, Plaintiff was ultimately diagnosed with a heart infraction that may require a heart transplant, pneumonia, and he suffered three seizures during his stay.
20. Plaintiff was offered a $25.00 gift card to Meijers as an apology for the dehumanization and discrimination he faced at the hands of the hospital. He refused to accept the gift card.
21. Subsequent to the incident, a security guard that worked at the hospital contacted Plaintiff and informed him that Greg Ciesielski the security guard that restrained Plaintiff and made the racist comment, made racist comments and jokes to him and other coworkers about African Americans, and that he frequently used excessive force with patients.
22. The security guard who called Plaintiff also reported that he witnessed employees tampering with the internal incident report made on the incident involving Plaintiff, and he believed the use of racial slur was removed from the internal incident report, and he stated that employees were instructed not to discuss the incident. The security guard also stated that Greg Ciesielski was not disciplined or suspended because of the incident.
23. As a result of the above actions and inactions of Defendants as described above and below, Plaintiff suffered injuries and damages. Defendants are sued jointly and severally.“
i don’t normally do this but jesus christ, if none of those workers were fired or even fucking SUSPENDED by the hospital, that is not only cruel and bigoted, but actively dangerous to any potential black patients and patients of color who may come there for treatment
I worked for a pizza place that was near a very large software company. Deliveries to the neighborhoods or offices where all the tech workers lived was usually pretty awesome because they’d tip rather well. But there was one apartment that started to become a concern for us drivers. The man ordering was always polite, always paid, always tipped $4, and he would have been a perfect customer. He’d order breadsticks and a salad twice a week, and sometimes he’d include a bottle of root beer.
Except when he opened his door, you could see an alarming amount of our breadsticks boxes stacked everywhere inside. Not like a few on the counter and a couple by the trash, stacks and stacks of them. Even worse, it was only our boxes in there. He wasn’t just ordering from us often, we were the only place he was getting food outside of work. Now, I’ve worked in some of those tech offices myself, I know that there’s enough decent food options just hanging out in the break rooms that this guy was probably not malnourished, but the way his living space was a shrine of greasy cardboard was a clear sign that this guy didn’t have a healthy relationship with our food.
Our manager was a really cool dude though, and he heard the drivers joking about the boxes and asked a couple of us “Is this like a messy guy or a guy who needs help?” We agreed it was probably the latter. So on his day off, the manager went to the guys apartment with an envelope that had gift cards for several other restaurants that delivered in that area and chatted with him. Manager found out that the guy was an immigrant on a Visa who was struggling to find American food he liked, and too socially awkward to ask anyone. So he talked with him through a few menus and helped him with some recommendations. Then he helped the guy load all the old boxes into his truck to take to the dump, in exchange for a promise not to order from us more than once a week.
For a little while, the manager had a note on the calendar showing the last time the guy had ordered, and a couple times he had to hold his ground and refuse the guy’s order. But after that chat, I never saw the stacks of boxes again, and the guy would boast about the different meals he’d had.
“I’m really excited to embrace this character because Moana is one of my favorites,” said Catherine Laga‘aia, a 17-year-old from Sydney, Australia, in a statement shared by Variety. “My grandfather comes from Fa‘aala, Palauli, in Savai‘i. And my grandmother is from Leulumoega Tuai on the main island of ‘Upolu in Samoa. I’m honored to have an opportunity to celebrate Samoa and all Pacific Island peoples, and to represent young girls who look like me.”
Laga‘aia wasn’t the only casting announcement. We also found out that Frankie Adams (a.k.a. Bobbie Draper on The Expanse) will play Moana’s mother, Sina; John Tui will take on the role of Moana’s father, Chief Tui; and Rena Owen will play Gramma Tala. The actors join Dwayne Johnson on the call sheet, who will reprise his role as the god Maui.
“I am thrilled to have met Catherine, Rena, Frankie and John through this casting process,” director Thomas Kail said. “I am humbled by this opportunity, and I cannot wait to all be on set together. And there’s no better pair to be in a canoe with than Catherine and Dwayne—actually, trio: Heihei is ready, too.”
Auli‘i Cravalho voices Moana in the original animated feature as well as its upcoming sequel, and is executive producer on the live-action project, where, according to Variety, she will mentor Laga’aia.
The live-action film is set to begin production this summer and currently has a release date of July 10, 2026. The animated sequel, Moana 2, comes out on November 27, 2024. [end-mark]
Samsung kommer släppa sin första smartring i sommar. Nu har Samsung stämt den ledande smartringtillverkaren Oura i förebyggande syfte inför lanseringen. Teknikjätten är inte ute efter att hämma Oura utan vill bara lagligt fastställa att Galaxy Ring inte inkräktar på fem av Ouras patent.
Enligt stämningen har Oura en tendens att stämma konkurrenter baserat på funktioner som finns i nästan samtliga smartringar. Samsung påpekar att företag likt Ringconn, Circular och Ultrahuman tidigare stämts av Oura och att Samsung därför själv räknar med att bli stämt på grund av påstått patentintrång.
Stämningen nämner att Oura underströk sin patentportfölj i ett meddelande som skickades ut till bloggar och tidskrifter strax efter att Galaxy Ring tillkännagavs. Samsung tar även upp att Ouras vd Tom Hale sagt i en intervju att företaget noga kommer följa Samsungs smartring och ”vidta lämpliga åtgärder”.
I och med stämningen har det bekräftats att Galaxy Ring kommer släppas ”i eller kring augusti” (i alla fall i USA). Samsungs stora evenemang förväntas gå av stapeln 10 juli.
Mixing your long plane ride with alcohol could be a dangerous cocktail for your heart, new research out Monday suggests. The small trial found that healthy volunteers experienced a greater drop in their blood oxygen level and corresponding rise in heart rate after drinking alcohol while sleeping in high-altitude…
Trigger warning: Stalking, graphic death and rape threats, doxxing, threats of swatting, impersonation
I’ve been putting off writing this for a while now, because it involves dredging deep into some incredibly ugly stuff.
Most of you know that I’ve been stalked for years by a stalker (or stalkers) who has created fake social media profiles in my name to harass other people, and sent explicit, violent rape and death threats to me, my family, my friends, and those who follow me on social media.
This person, or these people, have made repeated rape and death threats directed at me, my wife, my father, and people who have expressed support for me or been rumored to be connected somehow with me online. They’ve sent death threats containing photographs of my partners. They’ve doxxed my family and partners.
The harassment has escalated over the past three years, as the rape and death threats have become more frequent, more violent, and more graphic. The stalker has escalated to threats of swatting (phoning fake tips to the police to have SWAT teams sent to the homes of the target). My websites have been DDoSed.
Last December, as I was leaving for Florida to help care for my mom, who was in the final stages of terminal cancer, I had an unexpected and rather uncomfortable conversation with Portland PD about an email I’d supposedly sent them saying I was stockpiling guns and the voices were telling me to murder my wife.
Fortunately, I have been documenting and reporting the stalking, rape and death threats, and harassment as it’s happened. The nature of the conversation changed once they pulled up the previous police reports and realized this was part of an ongoing pattern of harassment.
So how did we get here? And what does this have to do with polyamory?
Propaganda and the Poly Scene
So how did we get here? And what does this have to do with polyamory?
My first inkling something weird was going on came when a number of different people, some of whom I hadn’t spoken to in years, all messaged me to say “Do you know someone named Louisa Leontiades? She says she’s a journalist and she’s asking questions about you.” A few of those people sent me screenshots of messages or emails they’d received:
Louisa is a client of a former partner. After the relationship with that former partner ended, Louisa started messaging pretty much every female-presenting person who’d ever interacted with me online, going back through this very blog for decades, looking for women willing to dish dirt.
Next thing I know, somehow there are more “exes” that are accusing me of having “abused” them than the total number of people I’ve ever dated. Few forms of gaslighting are more head-twisty than someone you’ve never dated, never talked about dating, never wanted to date, never had sex with, never talked about having sex with, and never wanted to have sex with telling all and sundry about how you abused her when you were “together.” For a while, I quite literally thought I was going insane.
These “survivor stories,” as Louisa calls them, tended to the bizarre (like the woman who I’ve never been sexually or romantically connected with and never been in the same room with except in passing at a party claiming I abused her by flirting with someone else in front of her), toward the utterly untrue (a former partner claiming I “got her into” BDSM and that a 25-year-old is “too young to consent” to BDSM, when in fact she was interested in BDSM long before we ever met, and the fact her ex-husband wasn’t interested in BDSM was one of the reasons she divorced him), and the technically kind of true if you squint hard enough (my ex-wife claiming she was an “abuse victim” because I yelled at her on the phone once—which did happen—but declining to mention that it happened after we’d separated, when she broke into my house one night while I was out of town, stole a bunch of stuff like consumer electronics, then sold it to buy a new laptop).
As a side note, there’s a lesson here in how to spot the difference between journalism and a smear campaign. If a journalist hears “he yelled at me once on the phone,” he or she will ask followup questions: “Did this sort of thing happen often? What happened?” Ethical journalists also disclose personal or financial connections with the stories they cover.
My goal is not to go through all the rather strange “survivor stories” here. I may end up doing that at some future point, but that’s not the point of this blog post.
Right now, I’m here about the aftermath of these weird, wordy-but-vague accusations, what it says about the way many people see “social justice” as a tool of bullying and control, and how the poly scene’s support for “social justice” led directly to a barrage of rape and death threats against a whole bunch of other people beyond just me.
Louisa published these “survivor stories” from exes and non-exes with results you might predict: the Internet Hate Machine cranked up into full gear, I had to lock down comments on my blog because random strangers started posting death threats, I lost friends.
With all the various contradictory stories (“Franklin dated someone ten years younger than he was, he’s obviously an abuser,” “Franklin refused to date me because I’m younger than he is, he’s obviously ageist”), they became a sort of Rorschach test, with different people seeing different things in them. It’s kind of a Gish gallop of accusations.
One dude on social media wrote that I was clearly a bad person, because it was plain to him that I’d written the stories myself as a sort of humblebragging, since the theme to a lot of them is “I knew when I dated Franklin that he was polyamorous but he’s so awesome I wanted him all to myself and he said no.”
Seriously. Someone over on Quora actually said that.
Dr. Elisabeth Sheff, a sociologist and author who serves as an expert witness in court for abuse cases, published an analysis of the “survivor stories” that concluded the stories don’t actually describe abuse.
The poly community as a whole thought about her analysis, set aside their first knee-jerk emotional response, said “huh, I wonder if there’s a reason she might have reached those conclusions,” went back, and re-evaluated the survivor tales with a more considered eye…
Hahahahaha, I’m kidding, that didn’t happen. Instead, the Internet piled on to Dr. Sheff. She was threatened personally and professionally, and received so much harassment and abuse she was forced to back away from the whole situation. You know, classic straight-up bullying.
And it wasn’t just threats. A lot of folks sent her emails that they probably wouldn’t think of as problematic—messages like “don’t you realize you’re just hurting women who have been abused?” and “I’m so disgusted that an academic would support an abuser” and “I used to be such a fan of yours, but this has really made me rethink that,” because they couldn’t even consider the possibility that she might, you know, be right.
After that, things got even weirder.
“I want a just, fair, and equitable society, and I don’t care how many rape threats it takes to get there.”
Now let’s fast forward a bit, to a nonprofit polyamory convention run by a registered nonprofit in London, called “PolyDay.”
COVID interrupted the convention for a couple of years. During the COVID lockdown, a team not previously involved with PolyDay announced they would be taking over the PolyDay name and launching a new for-profit convention under that name.
The organization that owns the PolyDay convention informed these people firmly that it owns a trademark on the name, and they would not be permitted to use it.
Lockdown ends. The organizers of PolyDay announce the convention was on once more. I don’t know if the person who tried to steal the name started the rumor or merely amplified it, but anyway, someone starts a rumor that I own PolyDay, or run it, or somehow profit from it, depending on which version you believe. (For the record, I have absolutely nothing to do with it—I live in Portland, and it is owned and operated by a nonprofit in London.)
As the rumor spread through the North American polyamory scene, people said “Hey, we can look up the history and organization of PolyDay and figure out if this rumor is true.”
Hahahahaha, I’m kidding, that didn’t happen. Instead, a large number of people determined to make a more just and equitable society and stand up for women raced to their keyboards to send a flood of rape and death threats to the scheduled speakers at PolyDay. So many threats of serious violence poured in, the conference organizers canceled the event.
Apparently, threats of rape and murder are how some people think we create a more peaceful, more enlightened Utopia.
And it just kept going. Once this kind of harassment and bullying gets going, it takes on a life of its own. A former BBC and Guardian journalist named Jonathan Kent published a book on polyamory. Someone started a rumor that I profit from the book somehow, or (depending on which version you believe) that I secretly wrote it under his name, or something.
By now, I’m sure you can predict what happened next:
People looked up Jonathan online and realized he’s actually a person, a reporter with a long documented history, and not an alter ego for me? Hahaha no. Of course not.
People harassed him, called for a boycott of his (I mean “my”) book, threatened and harassed his podcasting co-host…because in this brave new world of empathy, compassion, and social justice, that’s what you do. You harass and intimidate anyone you don’t like, or anyone associated with anyone you don’t like, or anyone rumored to be connected to anyone you don’t like, so that one glorious day, if you harass and threaten enough people, you’ll wake to a world of perfect social justice.
Meanwhile, of course, the rape and death threats aimed at me and those close to me kept rolling in. My co-author Eunice and I released a science fiction novel; a bookstore that planned to host a book event got harassed into dropping the event. Some random stranger I’ve never met made a YouTube video about what a terrible person I am, repeating the “survivor stories,” insisted she wasn’t making the video for money, then used it to beg for Patreon donations.
So it goes.
And is still going. People are still following me around on social media, doxxing and threatening my partners, friends, and folks who follow me.
Just like with the “survivor stories” themselves, the stalking and threats have become a Rorschach test of their own. A random woman on Facebook told me, with what seemed like perfect sincerity, I must be making it all up, because men never get stalked, only women have stalkers.
So here’s the thing: The North American polyamory community has a problem.
I want to be clear this is not a problem everywhere. Poly folks elsewhere largely seem to roll their eyes at all this.
But the poly scene in North America is overrun with folks who are okay with using rape and death threats as a way to express themselves, who don’t do even the barest minimum of fact-checking, who are so caught up in righteous fury that sending women anonymous messages saying “I am going to rape you to death, here’s a photo of your house” seems like a perfectly reasonable way to support social justice for women.
Now, if this is you, if you’re one of the people who sat down at your computer to type out threats to Dr. Sheff or to the people scheduled to speak at a conference because you heard a rumor that it was somehow connected to me and couldn’t be arsed to fact-check, this essay is not for you. You are irredeemable and I don’t care what you think of me. I don’t quite understand the mentality of someone who says “I’m going to stand up for women and justice by sending a bunch of people I’ve never met anonymous emails saying I’m going to murder them if they present at this conference,” and honestly I don’t want to. If this is you, fuck off.
If this isn’t you, and you’re on the sidelines saying things like “I don’t know what the hell is going on but I don’t want to get involved,” well, I get it, I really do. I’ve been there myself. I’ve unquestioningly accepted stories because they fit a narrative I believed in, and discovered later that the things I’d been told didn’t actually happen, at least not the way they were presented to me. (I may write about that at some point as well.)
And I’m not saying the fact that a bunch of bullies and Internet trolls have taken it on themselves to send rape and death threats all over the Internet because, you know, that’s how you support women and fight for social justice automatically proves that what I’m saying is true and what they’re saying is false. Only that mmmmaybe it might be worthwhile to look a little closer, you know? After all, if people are wrong about basic things that can easily be checked, like who runs a nonprofit conference or who wrote a book, perhaps it might possibly be worth considering whether or not they’re trustworthy about things you can’t easily verify.
Moving the Overton window
I’d like to believe this is a fairly new thing—that twenty years ago, communities dedicated to egalitarianism and self-determination wouldn’t so quickly embrace this kind of toxic behavior. That’s probably wrong—the same thing was common in the 1970s feminist circles—but I do believe that events like GamerGate brought a new level of toxicity into acceptability.
If you don’t believe bullying and threats are okay, but you really don’t want to (or don’t care enough to!) get involved in other people’s drama (or you really don’t care enough to get involved), so you stay out of it, or you “don’t take sides”, or you choose a default rubric like “believe all women” because investigation is too much effort, well, that’s kind of how we ended up here, in a world where harass and threaten in the name of social justice, because they feel safe in their communities who appear to support them, or at least don’t oppose them.
Just a thought.
Brandolini’s Law, or the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle, tells us it takes longer to refute bullshit than it does to put it out there, and if there isn’t a corollary that tells us this is especially true when people have been told that it’s morally wrong to question the bullshit, there ought to be.
Few subcommunities have figured out how to deal with vague claims of mistreatment that kinda follow common narratives, and anyway few people really have the inclination to try to sort through it all. It’s easier to just assume that where there’s stuff that kinda looks like smoke, there must be fire, and accept a generalized “so-and-so is a bad person even if I’m not exactly clear on what he or she did.” Kinda the way people who still say the 2020 election was stolen say “there are thousands of affadavits about election fraud, it must be true.”
I mean, hell, I’ve done this myself. When you want to do right by the people around you, and you know enough about social justice to understand the uphill struggle people have faced for years getting anyone to take abuse they’ve faced seriously, you default to believing whatever you’re told by anyone who presents as an abuse survivor—a noble inclination, but one that is also easy to exploit.
Abuse is about power and control. When the poly scene went after Dr. Sheff, everyone else got the message loud and clear: Do as we say, or you’re next. Believe what we tell you to believe, or you’re next. Don’t ask questions. Keep your head down. Hate who we tell you to hate, or you’re next.
So perhaps this might be a good guideline: When you see people facing off against each other, with both sides claiming they’ve been mistreated, it might be helpful to ask yourself, “which of these two sides is sending rape and death threats, punishing anyone who steps out of line, and controlling the narrative through intimidation and threats of violence?” Because it’s hard to champion social justice and also think those things are okay.
I know the people sending the rape and death threats are a small minority, whose noise and zealotry make this seem more common than it is. That’s the thing, though: if you want your community to be a good space, sometimes you need to stand up to the bullies.
It’s okay to ask questions and look for more information. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
Note: Any comments containing abuse apologism, denialism, threats, rationalization, whataboutism, sealioning, or victim-blaming will be deleted.
OpenAI asked Scarlett Johansson to provide voice acting that would be used in the company’s new AI voice assistant, but the actress declined, according to a statement obtained by NPR on Monday. And after last week’s demo, Johansson says she was shocked to hear a voice that was identical to her own. Especially since…
It’s been over a decade since we last caught up with Vin Diesel’s sci-fi antihero Richard B. Riddick—Diesel’s been spending most of his time voicing Marvel’s Groot and doing Fast & Furious movies—but it’s time to dig those goggles out of storage. The fourth film in the series, titled Riddick: Furya, is officially on…
Har du någon gång pratat i telefon och känt ”jag önskar jag kunde spela upp en ljudeffekt just nu?”. Någon på Google måste ha gjort det för telefonappen är på väg att få ljudeffekter, vilka kallas ”ljud-emojis”.
Snart kan du spela upp en sorgsen trombon, applåder, festskrål eller skratt vid lämpliga (eller olämpliga) tillfällen. Dessa ljud spelas tillsammans med en animation när uppringaren trycker på en emoji under samtalet. Ljudeffekten spelas upp för båda parterna. Nyheten är redan tillgänglig för vissa som kör betaversionen av telefonappen.
Express emotions and moods with sounds like applause, laughter, sad trombone, and more with tappable emoji while you’re in a call.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) killed net neutralityback in 2017 under former president Donald Trump, but on Thursday, it brought it back from the dead.
Announcing the theme for Terry Pratchett Day 2024: START IN THE WRONG PLACE.
You’ll hear people say time and time again that you can start anywhere with Terry Pratchett’s work, but don’t start in the right place*, so let’s truly embrace the joy and chaos to be found in the many routes through Discworld and beyond.
We will be making Sunday 28th April, Sir Terry Pratchett’s birthday, one brimming with bookish delight, celebrating the many ways we love and travel through his work, and we’re inviting you to join us.
Follow along with The Terry Pratchett Estateto stay up to date. We will be sharing more ahead of the weekend on how to get involved.
*A lot of people say the right place is anything but the right place, which in turn, may make it an equally wrong place…
We were at the farmer’s market on Saturday morning where I spotted a rare sight: grass-fed beef ribs! I snatched up the last rack (much to the disappointment of the woman shopping after me) and headed home, formulating my culinary game plan. That night, I salted the meat, let it sit for an hour, then seared it off in a heavy skillet to get that nice mahogany crust. Then, after letting it rest for half an hour, I seasoned generously with more salt, pepper, garlic powder, smoked paprika, thyme, and oregano. I elected to go slow cooker over oven-roasted so, when the time came, I set the the rack in my crock pot and covered it with a bottle of cooked-off red wine, olive oil, honey, apple cider vinegar, and one can of DOP San Marzano tomatoes. Everything was set up. All I had to do was press START before I went to bed and the ribs would be fall-off-the-bone done in the morning, slow simmering until lunch.
The next morning, Akemi woke up first and headed into the kitchen where I heard her utter a “Oh no.”. I assumed it had snowed. It was only while I was brushing my teeth, thinking about those delicious ribs, that I realized the “Oh no” had not been a reaction to the weather. It had been a response to the discovery I had forgotten to press START!
The beef ribs had sat out all night in the marinade, roughly 12 hours. What was I to do? On the one hand, the FDA advises people NOT to consume raw meat that has been left unrefrigerated for more than two hours. On the other hand, I was REALLY looking forward to those beef ribs.
A quick internet search yielded conflicting advice. There was the very real danger that the meat was, by now, covered in dangerous pathogens that would make us very, very ill. And yet, I was somewhat comforted by seemingly knowledgeable experts posting in foodie forums who pointed out the FDA was just covering their asses with those guidelines and, besides, people in countries without refrigeration leave their meat out for days. So, who was I to believe? In the end, my twitter followers…
Yes, I put it to a vote. And received a lot of interesting opinions. I left my fate (and lunch plans) in the hands of roughly 1,100 mostly strangers. The results…
And so, 4+ hours later after cooking on high, I deemed the beef ribs “done” and put them under the broiler for 2 minutes each side (in the hopes that would kill off any toxins), then brushed them with a glaze comprised of amaro (reasoning the alcohol would also sterilize the ribs), honey, a mango-based hot sauce, and olive oil and seared them off one last time.
I mean, they looked pretty tasty.
Despite the confidence of two-thirds of the random twitter users who voted, I remained cautious and only had a single rib. Akemi, for her part, only hazarded a bite. Delicious! Sweet and savory, slightly spicy, with nary hint of bacterial infection. To be on the safe side, I chased it down with a shot of amaro figuring the booze would kill any potential bacteria and, after all, who ever heard of anyone getting sick after drinking alcohol?
Most food poisoning takes effect within an hour or two after consumption, so I anxiously awaited the results. Three hours later, I posted an update:
Feeling no ill effects, I had another rib for dinner. Akemi, for her part, went all in, consuming three (!). We slept on it/them. And the following morning…
I guess that’s it. Unless it turns out to be one of those rare cases where food poisoning kicks in days, sometimes weeks later, I think we’re all good.
In the end, not only did I enjoy some delicious ribs, but I was provided much-needed material for this blog! All the same, next time around, I’ll definitely be hitting “ENTER” on that slow-cooker.
There’s good news and bad news, Witcher fans: The Netflix adaptation has been renewed for a fifth season, but that’s the last you’re going to get. And if you’re keeping Witcher-score, that means three seasons for Henry Cavill, and two for Liam Hemsworth, who steps into Geralt’s shoes for the currently-in-production fourth season.
The last two seasons will, according to Netflix, be filmed back-to-back, so presumably you won’t have to wait a number of years for the grand finale. And they will cover three of Andrzej Sapkowski’s books: Baptism of Fire, The Tower of the Swallow, and Lady of the Lake.
At this point, season four has a typically vague summary:
After the shocking, Continent-altering events that close out Season 3, the new season follows Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri, who are separated and traversing the war-ravaged Continent and its many demons. If they can embrace and lead the groups of misfits they find themselves in, they have a chance of surviving the baptism of fire — and finding one another again.
Are there ever events in this show that aren’t shocking and Continent-altering? Creator and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich gave a few clues about what to expect, pointing at Vilgefortz and his betrayal. She told Tudum, “We want people to go back and start looking at all of the clues and breadcrumbs that we have laid out to see how these two people align. Because, clearly, there’s a lot more going on with Emhyr, Vilgefortz, and their past—and their future.”
Quite a few new faces are set for the upcoming season, including Sharlto Copley as Leo Bonhart and Laurence Fishburne as Regis, “a world-wise barber-surgeon with a mysterious past.” No premiere date has been announced just yet.[end-mark]
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cranked up into full gear, I had to lock down comments on my blog because random strangers started posting death threats, I lost friends.
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