Open Thread and Link Farm, Mini Moon Edition

Posted on July 5, 2016 by Ampersand

Marianne_Breslauer1

Beautiful Tomboys of the 1930s

  1. What it’s like to be that fat person sitting next to you on the plane. — Medium
    It’s not like this for me, happily, but I’ve heard several fat friends express similar feelings about flying.
  2. Why the CDC still isn’t researching gun violence, despite the ban being lifted two years ago – The Washington Post
  3. Are Left-Populists Wrong About Political Campaigns? – Lawyers, Guns & Money
    Eric Loomis considers the lessons lefties can learn from Bernie Sanders’ campaign.
  4. Radical feminism: hermeneutically sealed – Sweet Talk
    Although this critique of radical feminism doesn’t mention trans women’s rights, it’s interesting to consider that conflict – which, for me, is the biggest exhibit in the case against (much of) modern radical feminism – in the light of the view of radical feminism as “hermeneutically sealed.”
  5. Chattanooga Mayor Says City’s Gigabit Network (Which Comcast Tried To Kill) To Thank For City’s Revival
    “… letting AT&T and Comcast lawyers literally writing bad state telecom law has resulted in Tennessee being one of the least connected states in the nation.”
  6. The Complete Calendar Plug-In of the World’s Fictional Holidays | Atlas Obscura
  7. Court Says Free Speech Rights For Prisoners Not ‘Clearly Established,’ Gives Pass To Retaliatory Actions By Officials
    “… appeals court decision finding a federal prisoner’s rights weren’t violated when he was removed from a halfway house and placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for publishing an article about his prison experience.”
  8. Scottish people insulting Donald Trump
  9. “Ashley Carol I will not have drugs in my house! Come home right now!”
  10. To Keep The Blood Supply Safe, Screening Blood Is More Important Than Banning Donors
  11. U.S. citizen sues feds over border body cavity search | Arizona Capitol Times
    There was no warrant, and no apparent probable cause. They didn’t find any drugs, but they did send the teenager’s parents a bill for $575 for the search. Isn’t this essentially rape?
  12. Citigroup trademarks “THANKYOU” and sues AT&T for thanking clients | Ars Technica
  13. A professor at the United States Naval War College illustrates the merits of US strategy against ISIS by imagining a meeting of the Islamic State National Security Council. (Thanks to Nobody.)
  14. Quotes From Feminists That Will Make You Rethink Trusting Men’s Rights Activists
    Ozy contextualizes many of the “horrible things feminists have said!” quotes that MRAs pass around.
  15. Fantastic short documentary on movie sound effect artists / Boing Boing
    Somehow this nearly wordless short film, showing two foley artists creating everyday sounds for a film about fishermen, is fascinating. They’re concentrating so hard.
  16. Donald Trump Will Be Buried in an Electoral Avalanche | New Republic
    Jeet Heer argues for the optimistic view. I hope he’s right.
  17. Thinking About Hillary — A Plea for Reason — Medium
    “…the public view of Hillary Clinton does not seem to be correlated to “scandals” or issues of character or whether she murdered Vince Foster. No, the one thing that seems to most negatively and consistently affect public perception of Hillary is any attempt by her to seek power.”
  18. Brock Turner sentence: Why sex offender registries don’t work — Quartz
  19. The ultimate trolley problem.
  20. BERNIE SANDERS: 7,000 supporters signed up to run for office – Business Insider
    Probably this will fizzle out – I say that because let’s face it, most things do – but if it doesn’t fizzle, this has the potential to matter.
  21. When the Bank Robs You: Wells Fargo Contractors Allegedly Stole Family Heirlooms Rescued From Nazis
  22. Congresswoman Who Used To Receive Welfare Wants To Drug Test Rich People Who Get Tax Breaks | ThinkProgress
  23. Gun control’s racist reality: The liberal argument against giving police more power – Salon.com
  24. Rape culture, a new definition for a contentious idea – Sweet Talk
  25. The Party Left Me And Other Complaints of the Voter-As-Atomistic-Consumer – Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money
  26. USDA ERS – Recent Evidence on the Effects of Food Store Access on Food Choice and Diet Quality
    This USDA study shows that the “food desert” theory doesn’t actually seem to have much impact on how people eat. The best way to convince poor people to eat more veggies seems to be to subsidize veggies.
  27. Donald Trump’s invisible campaign.
  28. That time the Devil returned to Georgia and got in a Tuba duel….
  29. Sonia Sotomayor dissent in Utah v. Strieff takes on police misconduct.
  30. New Star Trek Fan Film Guidelines Have a Chilling Effect on Star Trek Fans | Tor.com
  31. Vine: “When they charge you 25 cents for some extra sauce”
    If this isn’t fake, then these people are stunningly assholish. And committing a felony, as Grace pointed out to me.
  32. Policy Approaches to Decreasing Unemployment that neither the Democrats or Republicans seem willing to consider. (Pdf)
  33. The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems.
    What’s wrong with westerners focusing on improving the developing world. Interesting responses in the comments, too.
  34. A case study of Playpumps International.
    Another failed “magic bullet” approach to solving developing world problems. (Pdf)
  35. Embattled whiteness gave us Brexit. It won’t give us President Trump.
  36. Low-cut dresses boost women’s job application chances, says researcher
  37. Model legislation for improving campus rape investigations.
    This is coming from an MRA group, which makes me automatically skeptical of it, and I’d really like to see some skeptical lawyers reading it. But at first glance it seems reasonable and balanced. (Pdf).
  38. People Actually Live In These Beautifully Insane Houses – ALLDAY Via Mandolin.
  39. Ambiguous Cylinder Illusion – YouTube
    You’ve probably already seen this wonderfully mind-twisting illusion, but if you haven’t, take 60 seconds and look at it; it’s stunning.
  40. NRA Complaint Takes Down 38,000 Websites | Motherboard
    Once again, intellectual property law is a useful tool of censorship. I guess defending the 2nd amendment means acting with contempt towards the first?
  41. Judge Orders Macy’s to Quit Fining, Detaining Suspected Shoplifters in In-Store Jail
    Basically, they’d lock people up and not let them go until they paid cash and signed a “confession.” I don’t know why I was shocked that Macy’s does this. I’m glad the judge ordered Macy’s too stop, but in a better world some Macy’s folks would be arrested.
  42. Don’t Look At Us, We Didn’t Do It! – Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money
    Trump’s rise is the logical outcome of where the Republicans have been heading for years.
  43. The Story Behind the Most Bizarre Strike Photo Ever Taken | Atlas Obscura
  44. Watch Anna Kendrick and James Corden Nail Adele in “Soundtrack to a Love Story” Performance | InStyle.com
    A super fun mini-musical from Corden’s show.
  45. NASA Just Confirmed That Earth Has A New “Mini-Moon”

This character is named Sailor Mini Moon.

Posted in Link farms | 24 Comments

Should We Regret The American Revolution?

Posted on July 4, 2016 by Ampersand

Happy 4th of July!

Dylan Matthews brings us 3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake. In a nutshell (although click through for the longer arguments):

1) The Southern States would have had much less power as part of the British Empire than as half the USA, making it likely that American slavery would have ended sooner. (It’s notable that many slaves wanted the British to win.)

2) As horrible as the British were, they wouldn’t have been as horrible to Native Americans as the US government was. (It’s notable that many Native Americans wanted the British to win.)

3) It would have made it more likely that the US (whatever it would have eventually been called) would have wound up with a parliamentary democracy, which is more stable and less subject to paralyzing gridlock, rather than a system which was designed, to a significant degree, to give outsized power to slaveholding states.

Over at the Daily Kos, there are a number of people in this comments thread who do a fairly persuasive job refuting Matthews, especially on his second point. If the United States hadn’t formed and committed genocide on American Indians, it seems all too likely that one of the European powers would have. (Trying to forecast European history without the American revolution is difficult; would there have been a French Revolution at all, for example, if the French hadn’t taken on so much debt to support the American revolution?)

To the first point – slavery – I’ve seen many people point out that if the British were profiting from Southern cotton, grown by slaves, that might have meant that rather than slavery ending sooner in America, slavery ended later in the British empire. That seems possible – but on the whole, it seems unlikely that the British upper-class, even if they were getting part of their fortunes from slavery, could have been as virulently pro-slavery as wealthy Southerners, whose wealth was virtually all wrapped up in slavery.

Because Southern leaders were so passionately pro-slavery, if the British had outlawed American slavery in 1833, the result might have been Southern secession and civil war, about three decades earlier than the Civil War in reality. But the South would have had less of a chance of winning if they were facing the northern states and Britain; perhaps the war would have been shorter and less bloody. And all else held equal, it would be better to have a civil war, and an end to slavery, a generation earlier.

It would be really great to have parallel universes in which the course of history went along different channels, so that we could resolve questions like this (and also, so we could import and binge their better TV shows).

Friends are coming over to our house today; we will barbecue meat and set off fireworks (well, fountains, anyhow) in the street. I hope you folks all have a great day, stuck in the history that we actually have.

Posted in International issues, Mind-blowing Miscellania and other Neat Stuff | 20 Comments

Friday Read! Eugie Foster’s “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast”

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Mandolin

Before Eugie Foster was taken from us last year, she gave the world hundreds of short stories. We are lucky that she was so prolific, and it’s our loss she died so young when she could have written so many more.

I’ll take the opportunity while I’m linking this story to link to a few others. “Beautiful Winter,” a retelling that appeared in last year’s IGMS sampler, has the very beautiful imagery I associate with her writing. Retellings were often her ouvre. “The Tanuki-Kettle,” a folk-tale-style story set in Japan, was one of my first acquisitions for PodCastle for its warmth and humor. Finally, for those who didn’t see it last year, one of her stories was posthumously nominated for the Nebula Award, and particularly wrenching in context — “When It Ends, He Catches Her.”

Eugie and I were part of the same “Nebula class” (which is only something I call it in my mind, it’s not a real thing). We were both nominated for the first time in the same year and in the same category, and we got to know each other and a bunch of the other first time nominees at the convention that year.

“Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest” won that Nebula Award. Its mix of high concept and colorful images that disarmed readers.

“Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” by Eugie Foster:

Lightning mask

Each morning is a decision. Should I put on the brown mask or the blue? Should I be a tradesman or an assassin today?

Whatever the queen demands, of course, I am. But so often she ignores me, and I am left to figure out for myself who to be.

Dozens upon dozens of faces to choose from.

1. Marigold is for murder.

The yellow mask draws me, the one made from the pelt of a mute animal with neither fangs nor claws—better for the workers to collect its skin. It can only glare at its keepers through the wires of its cage, and when the knives cut and the harvesters rip away its skin, no one is troubled by its screams.

I tie the tawny ribbons under my chin. The mask is so light, almost weightless. But when I inhale, a charnel stench redolent of outhouses, opened intestines, and dried blood floods my nose.

Read here.

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Friday Read! “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” by Ted Chiang

Posted on June 17, 2016 by Mandolin

Ted Chiang, as they say, needs no introduction — if you follow the contemporary science fiction and fantasy short story scene. In case you don’t, Chiang is a powerhouse, not only one of the masters of the short form, but also someone whose work can always be relied on to be strong. Is some better than others? Sure. But it all shows his characteristic attention to detail and deep consideration and analysis.

My favorite of his is actually “The Short Story of Your Life and Others,” but alas, it’s not online. Instead I give you this one, to which it was my honor to lose the Hugo.

“The Lifecycle of Software Objects” by Ted Chiang:

The Life Cycle of Software Objects

Ana’s half expecting to see a fantastical landscape when the window refreshes, but instead her avatar shows up in what looks at first glance to be a daycare center. On second glance, it looks like a scene from a children’s book: there’s a little anthropomorphic tiger cub sliding colored beads along a frame of wires; a panda bear examining a toy car; a cartoon version of a chimpanzee rolling a foam rubber ball.

The onscreen annotations identify them as digients, digital organisms that live in environments like Data Earth, but they don’t look like any that Ana’s seen before. These aren’t the idealized pets marketed to people who can’t commit to a real animal; they lack the picture-perfect cuteness, and their movements are too awkward.

Read here.

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Help Send Voting Systems Nerd Jameson Quinn to Worldcon

Posted on June 16, 2016 by Ampersand
Pug puppies look out from a kennel at the Animal Foundation Campus, 655 N. Mojave Road, Tuesday, March 4, 2014. The puppies, which were rescued during a fire at the Prince and Princess Pet Shop on Jan. 27, will be raffled off under a plan disclosed at the Clark County Commission meeting Tuesday.

Pug puppies look out from a kennel at the Animal Foundation Campus, 655 N. Mojave Road, Tuesday, March 4, 2014. The puppies, which were rescued during a fire at the Prince and Princess Pet Shop on Jan. 27, will be raffled off under a plan disclosed at the Clark County Commission meeting Tuesday.

I’ve been remiss in not pointing to this post on File 770, in which Jameson Quinn thoroughly outlines the various options people are mulling over for saving the Hugo Awards from voting slates and harassment.

If this is an issue you care about, please consider throwing a few bucks at Jameson’s YouCaring campaign, to enable him to attend Worldcon this year:.

I believe that there will be at least two new proposals on the table this year, and I think that, as with last year, my voting systems expertise could be valuable in helping the Business Meeting understand the implications of these options and decide what to do.

He’s about halfway to his goal, so every bit can help.

Posted in Hugo Awards | 2 Comments

Edition Day Backwards, Farm Link and Thread Open

Posted on June 15, 2016 by Ampersand

susanbanthony-ivoted

  1. On Taste
    “Having taste tends to make you dislike popular things and to dislike more things. This is, I think, because taste does not so much change the things you care about as give you more things to care about.”
  2. Six Women Say a Seattle Man Posed as a Female Porn Recruiter in Order to Lure Them to His Apartment for Sex. What Can the Law Do About It?
  3. Angry Trump fans call for ‘Muslim social justice warrior’ Paul Ryan to resign
    This makes it official: “SJW” literally means “anyone to the speaker’s left who criticizes bigotry.”
  4. Why you should be legally required to vote
    I also think that a government that is voted on by more of the population has more moral legitimacy (all else held equal).
  5. Feminism Proving Popular With Men After Being Re-Released In Tactical Matte Black – Point & Clickbait
    Thanks to Grace for the link.
  6. Vote Prohibition Party
    “The Prohibition Party, a part of our nation’s history, is endangered! With your vote, you can help strengthen America’s oldest third party.”
  7. Taming the Global Supply Chain: A Statement of Principles – Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money
    And further comment here by Brian O’Neil.
  8. Thiel and Speech
    “If a billionaire can come up with enough cases that are plausible enough to not get thrown out, any media company can be bankrupted defending themselves. Unlike with 1st Amendment cases, there is no legal or constitutional recourse.”
  9. The Scientist Who Talks to ISIS – The Chronicle of Higher Education
  10. At Profiles Theatre the drama—and abuse—is real | Feature | Chicago Reader
  11. Don’t Overthink It: Donald Trump Will Probably Lose | New Republic
  12. Story time. So back in my youth I was this little nerd…
  13. United States of Paranoia: They See Gangs of Stalkers – The New York Times
    “The group was organized around the conviction that its members are victims of a sprawling conspiracy to harass thousands of everyday Americans with mind-control weapons and armies of so-called gang stalkers.” (Indirect link.)
  14. Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City – The New York Times Magazine
    Interesting longform article about the ongoing problem of segregated schools in Brooklyn. (Indirect link.)
  15. Confession Booth | Amber A’Lee Frost
    A critical look at We Believe You, a book collecting survivors’ stories of campus rape. I don’t agree with all of it, but it makes good points.
  16. Trump vs. Clinton on Orlando attack – Business Insider
    “The speeches Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump gave on Monday in response to the Orlando, Florida, terrorist attack laid out the key distinction in visions between the two candidates.”
  17. Our Worst Presidents Came In With A Lot Of Experience | FiveThirtyEight
    There doesn’t seem to be any significant correlation between a President having past governmental experience, and how highly historians rank their administration.
  18. Harvard Study Confirms Media’s Role In Trump’s Political Rise
  19. Stop. Using. Periods. Period. – The Washington Post
    Apparently in text messages, among some people, using a period at the end of a sentence is considered rude. Live and learn
  20. Deadliest Mass Shootings – Lawyers, Guns & Money : Lawyers, Guns & Money
    It takes nothing away from the tragedy in Florida to realize that there have been even deadlier shootings, usually perpetrated against Native Americans.
  21. Apartment Building Attempts To Coerce Tenants Into Crazy Social Media Policy Post-Lease | Techdirt
    And I’m sure some of the attempts were successful. This isn’t the government, but it is an example of how private actors threaten free speech.
  22. The zombie wildfires have awakened in Alaska | Grist
  23. The IMF says neoliberalism was oversold.
  24. How Venezuela’s socialist dream collapsed into a nightmare – Vox
  25. The Trucker, His Downfall, and the US Economy – Sociological Images
  26. Extreme Close-Ups of the Human Eye | Bored Panda
    I just find it so cool that eyes in close-up look lacey.

altered-book

Posted in Link farms | 2 Comments

Journalists Can’t Be Bothered To Fact-Check Their Stories About College

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Ampersand

In The Atlantic, Columbia professor Jon Cole writes:

Today, nearly half of a random sample of roughly 3,000 college students surveyed by Gallup earlier this year are supportive of restrictions on certain forms of free speech on campus, and 69 percent support disciplinary action against either students or faculty members who use intentionally offensive language or commit “microagressions”—speech they deem racist, sexist, or homophobic.

Noah Smith, a professor and Bloomberg View writer, tweeted:

69% of U.S. college kids think colleges should punish students and faculty for “microaggressions”

I saw this, in turn, because Cathy Young retweeted Noah’s tweet. I was suspicious of the claim – it’s difficult to believe that 69% of college students even know the word “microaggressions” – so I went and checked the survey (pdf link). In fact, students were never asked about “microaggressions.” Here’s what the relevant part of the survey says:

gallup-college-survey

What the students were asked about – deliberately offensive slurs – is the opposite of microaggressions. (As Cathy said when I pointed this out to her.) And conflating “establish policies that restrict” with “punish” or even “disciplinary action” seems dubious.

(For a much more detailed response to Cole’s article, read Don’t Blame the Students on Academe Blog.)

This misleading reporting reminded me of last week, when Miles Goslett, editor of Heatstreet, tweeted:

.@clreid9 on the latest ‘safe spaces’ farce: straight white men are banned from an equality conference.

The link was to an article with the unambiguous headline Straight White Men Banned From Equality Conference; the story was just what you’d expect from its headline. ((A followup article published days later did a slightly better job getting the facts straight, without admitting that they’d screwed it up previously.))

And, again, the reporting is extremely misleading. The conference itself included four breakout sessions for (respectively) female, black. disabled, and lgbt members – but also included workshops, training sessions, and meals that were open to all members. ((That’s last year’s schedule, but the reporting at Indy100 indicates that this year’s conference is much the same.)) The first sentence of the article ((The first sentence reads: “News that a university lecturers’ union has banned straight, white men from attending their equality conferences in a bid to create ‘safe spaces’ is deeply depressing.”)) gave the impression that conference had used the term “safe spaces” to explain the policy; I was unable to find any official conference statement or materials using that phrase.

The story was misreported in the same way in The Evening Standard and Drudge.

Which in turn reminded me of March, when lots of conservative publications – including major outlets like The National Review, The Daily Caller, Foxnews, and Campus Reform – reported that Southwestern University in Texas was cancelling its annual production of The Vagina Monologues because TVM is too white.

All these articles about the canceled show used the same source, an article in the Southwestern student newspaper ((Their website is currently offline, otherwise I’d link the article.)) – but that article didn’t say anything about a scheduled production being cancelled, nor did it mention an annual production. I contacted the author of the original article, who confirmed that there had never been an annual production of The Vagina Monologues at Southwestern, nor was there a production that had been cancelled.

It’s as if all these journalists uncritically repeat anything they hear which fits in with their pre-existing biases.

That’s hardly a problem that’s unique to this issue, unfortunately – just think of Rolling Stone and the Jackie story. Journalists would be well advised to start fact-checking campus horror stories rather than just repeating them.

Posted in Conservative zaniness, right-wingers, etc., Media criticism | 13 Comments

Friday read! “This Is a Ghost Story” by Keffy Kehrli

Posted on June 10, 2016 by Mandolin

Keffy Kehrli is a too-often-overlooked writer. This is my favorite of his short stories.

My parents raised me on a diet of jazz, big bands, musicals, and classical music. I’ve never spent much time listening to more recent popular music. “This Is a Ghost Story” is about Kurt Cobain — but even for me, who has no connection to the source material, it was still intense and affecting.

(By the by, if you like listening to short stories, you might be interested in Keffy Kehrli’s LGBTQ podcast, Glittership.)

“This Is a Ghost Story” by Keffy Kerhli

Bench in Viretta Park, tribute to Cobain, wikipedia

On a muted television:

He smirks like he’s found the way out of an impossible maze, like he hasn’t a care in the world. Except that if you look in his eyes, you’ll see the breadcrumbs leading right back to the labyrinth. You’ll feel a memory of unrelenting stone walls and know that it wasn’t necessarily a bad feeling, being held. Suffocating.

Turn up the sound too late for the question.

He runs cigarette–stained fingers over the stubble on his chin and leans on the arm of the leather couch. He crosses his legs, skinny jeans worn and ragged. He’s still wearing old Chucks with the tread half–gone, even though he could buy a thousand new pairs. He doesn’t wear the Mister Rogers sweaters anymore. Sometimes he still wears dresses for the fuck of it, but today he’s wearing a white t–shirt that looks like his kid doodled on it with four colors of Sharpie. A bloodied stick man holds a shotgun.

He licks his lips, and he doesn’t look at the camera, or at the floor, or at the interviewer’s face. He’s focused on the space between, like it’s a gulf or a fence or a wall. He says, “Yeah, it was pretty rough for a while, you know. I kept saying things were getting better, but really they weren’t. Eventually it was clean up or die, so…

“I started thinking about doing music for other shit, not because I needed the money, but to fuck with people. Then I thought maybe I’d do a Disney soundtrack, but it’d probably end up like in Fight Club where the guy’s splicing porn into kid movies.”

Then the interviewer asks about his kid, and he grins. “She’s great,” he says. “I know that’s not very ‘punk rock’ of me, but whatever.”

What are you looking at? This interview never fucking happened.

Read here.

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A Gay Iranian Mullah Who is a Refugee in Turkey

Posted on June 10, 2016 by Richard Jeffrey Newman

This is a pretty remarkable story.

Posted in Iran, Islam, Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer issues | Comments Off on A Gay Iranian Mullah Who is a Refugee in Turkey

My Mom Is So Cool

Posted on June 9, 2016 by Ampersand

Just sayin’.

toby-deutsch-is-cool

Posted in About the Bloggers | Comments Off on My Mom Is So Cool