aerinc's Friends

1:20PM - Score one for science

Scientists at the University of Cincinnati have successfully created artificial photosynthesis, apparently far more efficiently than plants manage it.

( First article under cut. )

10:05PM - Encyclopedia Dramatica's owner could face charges in Australia.

Link.

The US-based owner of a satirical Wikipedia-style website may be charged under Australian law over a deliberately offensive article about Aborigines.

The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC) contacted Encyclopedia Dramatica owner Joseph Evers, after 20 indigenous Australians complained about the article's content.

Earlier this year the same article — which includes numerous offensive depictions of Aborigines — was removed from Google's search listings after a request from the Human Rights Commission.

Joseph Evers' blog.

For those unaware, Encyclopedia Dramatica has been in a lot of trouble in Australia lately. First ED was placed on the ACMA blacklist, a “secret” list of websites to be censored throughout Australia in their upcoming internet filter. After this list was leaked to the public, we all laughed about how we were put on a blacklist with “Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions, Christian sites, and even the websites of a tour operator and a Queensland dentist“. Meanwhile, Australia Communications Minister Stephen Conroy called for the arrests of Australians publishing the list.


My take on this:

ED is a pit of scum and villainy. I haven't read the article in question, but I do occasionally view ED, and if it's like the rest of the site I'm sure it is as offensive as possible. That's what happens when a bunch of trolls make a wiki. That doesn't mean that it should be censored, or that the main 'owner' (who didn't ever write that article) should be brought up on charges. If you are going to protect Free Speech then you have to protect speech you don't like. Don't like it? Fine. You are allowed to set up your own site to say why it is wrong. You are allowed to protest. You should not criminally charge someone for it!

As for censoring the Internet... I don't even know where to start with that. Totalitarian states do that. China, Iran, North Korea etc. What does that make Australia? Hell, Australia is making porn of flat chested women illegal because they think it might encourage pedophilia. I really feel sorry for any man in Australia who likes small boobs on adult women, they might end up being labeled as pedophiles.

I better stop before I start ranting. I'm just glad that I live in a country where Freedom of Speech is encoded into our constitution.

2:44PM - serious news about Racebending is automatically unfunny, right?

Facebook removes the Racebending group for being "hateful, threatening, or obscene". Meanwhile, actual hate groups like WBC are untouched.

ETA 3/17: The group's back up now, with no elaboration on why it was deleted or explanation for why it's back. Hooray FB, you're adequate instead of faily!

12:12PM - MOD POST: Email problems and an interruption in the wank

Dear people of the wank communities,

Please allow us a moment for wank business.

Your mods are not receiving any emails from JF letting us know that there are posts in the mod queues, awaiting approval. This leads to wank back up, something none of us want.

Until JF's email issue is resolved, if you submit a post, please also submit an email to the Modsquad (mods @ thefannish.org), so we will know it's waiting for approval.

Thank you kindly,

Your loving Modsquad

3:55PM - Tiny literary agent wank

Not quite big enough for otf_wank at the moment, but it's a good side dish to all the entitled authorwank on F_W proper lately.

It started off as a fairly typical agent-searching story: aspiring writer e-mails a query letter to a Big Time literary agent. The project piques the agent's interest, and she asks for the manuscript. Writer sends manuscript... and then hears nothing for seven months. Writer asks the agent what's going on, and still hears nothing.

The writer, in an ill-advised move, decides to go over the agent's head and inform her boss that she's taking too long, and in the ensuing e-mails, withdraws his manuscript from consideration.

How does Big Time agent react? By posting the entire chain of correspondence, including enough of the query letter that another agent would be able to identify the writer, on her blog to teach him a lesson.

Tiny kerfuffles have broken out in the comments of her post, in which the agent argues with dissenters, and the Absolute Write Bewares and Background Checks forum, where one of the agent's clients shows up to defend her. (Discussion of the post starts halfway down page 14, and the client shows up on page 15.)

EDIT: ... is it just me, or did we travel back to March 15th just now? (Okay, yes, apparently so. Carry on!)

9:55AM - I'M THE GODDAMN ADMIN

Direct from the pages of wank report:
"Sheezyart's (http://sheezyart.com) admins troll members who use Adblock by forcing a flashing red and yellow background and music to appear for anyone who uses Adblock on their site."

"Comments with a star are Sheezyart staff/admins, who have been the epitome of class throughout...

The flashing background and music have since been removed and replaced with a text banner, but not before someone actually had a seizure from it."

720+ comments, including an appearance on page two by the Goddamn Batman. Yes, that one.

4:57PM

Yesterday over at rvb_slash (a community for Red vs. Blue slash) one of the mods makes a post saying, basically, I know I don't do much active modding, so are there any suggestions you all have for improving the community?

It should have been clear this wasn't going to go well when the first comment is from somebody saying how they've left the community because it's gotten so awful, and then snarking at the next commenter when she says she's happy with it.

Other people show up agreeing that it's gone downhill and there's a decent amount of wank in the first post, but it really takes off when the mod makes a second post addressing some of the concerns that came up.

So, what's made the community become so awful that it's apparently driven off a bunch of old-timers and made one of the biggest wanker in the posts "[decide] the fandom needed saving" and feel like he's been holding the fort until things improve? Have oodles of trolls shown up while the mod wasn't paying attention? Has the community been flooded with off-topic posts?

No, it's because everyone who's joined since October '08's fanfiction is bad and they should feel bad. They don't say exactly why October '08 (mid-October '08 to get even more specific) is so clearly the start of it's downfall, but they're very certain that's it.

While there's wank scattered all over the place in the two posts, my personal favorite part would have to be lvsinsanity insisting that fanwork about Freelancers shouldn't be allowed in the community unless those Freelancers have been seen interacting with the Red or Blue team, because clearly "Red vs. Blue Slash" refers to the teams instead of the name of the series. When people point out that it is named after the series, and any character that appears in it is fair game, lvsinsanity's response is that they're interrogating the text from the wrong perspective her way of viewing things makes perfect logical sense and Freelancers still don't belong there.

Another thing to keep an eye out for is primalreligion insisting all over the place that a certain character (York) should never be in slash fic because even though it never came up in canon there was an interview somewhere, he can not remember where, that says he was married.

1:42PM - The terrifying story of Remus Lupin, cannibal and pedophile, and matricidal werewolf fetus

Snapefen at Snapedom are engaging in their favorite pastime - abusing everybody who isn't Snape or at least a Slytherin. This time their designated target is Remus Lupin. Note that this wank started 21 day ago and is still going on.

It all began when terri_testing posted an essay Remus (and other Lycanthropes) as Parents, where she depicts Remus as bad and irresponsible teacher, husband and father. Some excerpts:

( Read more )

The essay ends with a horror-novel scenario:

But if my reasoning is correct, human mothers, in general, can only carry a human child to term. So Remus should have been angsting over the possibility that Tonks would miscarry her much-wanted child, not that it would be born a lycanthrope. But he wasn’t.

Unless the only precedents Remus knew of involved werewolf mothers, who must always produce werewolf children if any. In which case Remus got Tonks pregnant while believing that any child he fathered MUST be born a lycanthrope.

*

But there’s a wrinkle thrown into all this by the fact that Tonks is a Metamorphmagus.

She can alter her body—including, we have seen, taking on superficial bestial characteristics (a pig’s snout). Can she alter other organs to be bestial? Specifically, can she alter her uterus and the mother’s portion of the placenta, perhaps subconsciously, to be more lupine to save her changing child?

If she can, that opens a truly chilling possibility. The metamorphmagus alters her uterus at the first full moon after conception, and manages to carry her lycanthrope fetus past the first full moon. And past the second, and the third….

Over time her fetus’s nervous system develops, and with it its normal instincts. Human, for almost all of the month. Except for those few hours when the full moon is above the horizon.

Her fetus will have no teeth, not before birth, unless that might be another point in which werewolves are unlike other canids, but it will eventually grow claws.

And then will come another full moon, the last one, and the werewolf-fetus’s instincts will urge it overwhelmingly to rend, to tear, the nearest human.

The one surrounding it.

terri_testing also posted a drabble Teddy’s Sister to go with her essay. I guess the name of Teddy's sister is Renesmee Lupin.

sailorlum, a sane Snape fan and Lupin fan, decided to argue, that Remus didn't completely suck. That caused a huge wankfest, where terri_testing, oryx_leucoryx, 00sevvie, duj and oneadthetruth argued that Remus was a bad guy, that it was cruel of him to make Snape!boggart look funny and not to drink Wolfsbaine Snape brought immediately ("HOW ON EARTH is that scene supposed to be FUNNY to anyone in a way that does not deny the validity of Severus' pain? HOW?", wondered terri_testing), that Remus was hunting human prey with his friends the animals, that terri_testing is Lizzie Bennett and Lupin is Wickham, that Remus was only kind to Molly because she cooked for the Order and that werewolf!Lupin was probably more aggressive than werewolf!Greyback. Several Snapefen were also pretty rude to sailorlum. My favorite exchange is this one:

( Read more )

After all that 00sevvie made a new Snapedom post, where she bemoaned supposed whitewashing of Lupin's flaws and lack of validation of Snape's pain and trauma from other HP characters, JKR and sailorlum. marionros/smallpotato appeared in the comments to this post and proved how logical and reasonable she is by claiming that lycanthropy symbolizes pedophilia and that Remus metaphorically almost raped Snape while at school:

( Read more )

7:08PM - In France they call it a Royale with Wank....

An afternoon snack in miniwank form from customers_suck, courtesy of a mousie from wank_report , from whom the writeup is copypasta'd because journalfen ate the writeup I was working on. There's pedantry here to rival the Buttercream wank from awhile back. Thanks, mousie!

Over at Customers_Suck, haine_otomiya86 posts about a particularly irate customer who - among other things - was unclear about whether he needed a "McDouble," which costs $1.00, and a "Double Cheese Burger," which costs $1.19. The story goes on to describe how the poster had to double check which one the customer actually wanted, as well as a quick mention as to what the difference between these two sandwiches are. Answer: the $1.00 one contains two patties and one slice of cheese, and the $1.19 contains two patties and two slices of cheese.

However, for one magickcat, bothering a customer for clarification is apparently unacceptable.

Okay, seriously?
The customer was a jackass, I will give you that.
HOWEVER, your fussiness here about the McDouble/Double Cheeseburger thing is beyond ridiculous.
I don't mean in dealing with this guy- you did the best you could with an idiot like that, but for YEARS there was a dollar menu double cheeseburger.
Just because they took out one slice of cheese last year and decided to call it a "McDouble" doesn't mean that you shouldn't know what the heck someone is talking about when they specifty the "dollar menu double cheeseburger" which is EXACTLY WHAT A MCDOUBLE IS. There is a bun, there are two burgers, and there is cheese. I don't care how much you charge for it, its a freaking double cheeseburger. When someone specifies the "dollar menu double cheeseburger", if you don't know what they are talking about, well.... yeah.

As the thread unfolds, the reason for such an outburst is soon explained... magickcat is in fact a Cheeseburger Master!

I understand the math of the cheese, I really do.
What I am saying in that it is still a double cheeseburger, because it is...get this... two burgers.. WITH CHEESE.
I don't eat at fast food restaurants, as a general rule, and we don't have In & Outs here, so your reference means nothing to me. It certainly isn't rocket science. I know a few rocket scientists, and they know that a sandwich with 2 burgers and cheese is a double cheeseburger. ;)

"I understand the math of the cheese" may be my new favorite phrase.

Cue rabid dogpiling and unsuccessful attempts to reason with Earth Logic and first grade math. Unfortunately it is all for naught as even magickcat does not seem to know what exactly the point of the argument is. Depending on which thread you visit, it waffles from "they're both cheeseburgers; it's all the same" "Oh, you misunderstood: I wasn't talking about this customer at all, only a theoretical situation where everything was described perfectly," to the cost difference is all a conspiracy by McDonalds":

NO, it costs more because McDonalds saw a way to make more money by adding another burger. They are all "meat"burgers, if you can legally call whatever they put in those things "meat"... I know damn well what is in each one because it was in the news and whatnot about what the change would be. My case is correct, and it stands.

And the arguments just keep coming...

4:20PM - TV.com picks TV's "craziest fanbases"...

For those who enjoy "mainstream-meets-fandom" type of events.

Quote/link: It's difficult to say why, but some shows simply attract a different breed of supporters. Creepy, scary, insane supporters. And so we present TV's craziest fans, who've taken their love of TV to the next, sick level.

..this article is seriously stupid.

Highlights include "omg somebody made a Hurley fanvid, how bizarre" (awesome fanvid, and I'm not even a Lost fan!), fanfiction trailers (I admit these are weird to me but only because the fics I've seen have such are usually unbearably shitty), Supernatural fanfic (Wincest & Dean/Castiel) and "Mad Men fans aren't crazy because they're pretentious and that show's overrated, wahhh".

Looks like the guy writing this googled and youtube searched a few shows and found some pretty average fandom-created materials and decided to label them sick and insane and gross and weird. Yaaaawn.

3:12PM - Help me, Fandom_Lounge!

You're my only hope!

All right, so I have a vague recollection of a wank about EarthBound (Mother 2) some years back.  Someone got real offended about the secret to beating Giygas and decided he had to let all of us know about it.

I've just spent the last few hours looking through Fandom Wank, Clairvoyant Wank, and I Wank, but I can't find it at all!  Anyone know where or when it was?

11:51PM - I can't even begin to make shiz like this up.

The man who called for the death of Elton John has been arrested.

( Text beneath the cut. )

And in a really bizarro world twist to this story (as if it wasn't already completely bugnuts), this is the same man said to have had consensual-- you read that right- sex with a mule.

8:15PM - Twicon Final Fail!

Awww, the Twihards had their first total failcon...

Not that it is that surprising, but Twicon has canceled both it's shows. With a big announcement on it's website:

In hind sight, it was pretty obvious things were going downhill for these guys. In February, they had to move their Toronto show to Ottawa due to the G20 Conference happening that weekend. This set off a flurry of cancellations and some grumblings on the message board about the Partners dragging their feet on refunds

The announcement is only a few hours old, and right now there is lots of confusion on the forum, especially about how they get refunds since the announcement didn't bother to mention how you go about this.

ETA: Becky Scoggins has posted a personal apology that specifically states it's not an official statement from Twicon. It's obvious she's distancing herself from the Twicon partners, trying to shift blame.

ETA 2: Noneya calls bullshit on Becky's apology pointing out the discrepancies in her statements At first, TwiCon 09 was premised on the idea of a charitable donation to Autism research but that apparently went to the wayside without any explanation to ticket holders either. Then you threw a TERRIBLE convention and had your spokesperson saying that "you did your best" and "I still think it went pretty well..." Lies. And it looks like the post has been deleted! Thankfully I have screencaps! (the offending post will be at the bottom :)

ETA 3.5: And the thread about refunds has now disappeared! You think the forum will last the week? But Becky is claiming the threads were deleted by the users!

ETA 4: Now we have other Twicon Partner Bailey Gauthier responding. And she's saying she doesn't know what's happened either!

5:18PM - Teacher!fail in N.C.

Video and article here

 Why the hell would anyone even think it was ok to do that?

3:48PM - Don't ask, don't tell... until the police tell...

Lesbian sgt. discharged after police tell military

As usual, beware the comments.

( Text of article under cut... )

1:51PM - Pokemon Party!

With Heart Gold and Soul Silver coming out tomorrow, Cartoon Network had a mini-marathon of Orange Island episodes ending in the second movie. So let's have a big ol' Pokemon discussion-fest! Which generation/side game/movie/episode/etc. is your favorite? Are you getting HG or SS? Any choice bits of fanfic or shipping nostalgia you wanna impart?

I'm getting Soul Silver because it has Vulpix, Meowth and Skarmory. :D And movie 2 is my favorite probably because deep down I'm still 16 years old when it comes to this fandom and I can't say no to Ash/Misty.

9:53AM - Looking for Novel Recommendations

I have a paper to write about Dark Fantasy -- doing a thematic analysis across a period of time. I need to pick 6-8 works published in a range of dates spanning at least two decades.

So far, I'm looking at starting with Interview with the Vampire/The Vampire Lestat and ending with Twilight and teasing at the twin strands that spin off of Rice's novels of the hero who's tortured by his identity and the hero who revels in it (ie, Edward vs. Bella in Eclipse.)

So far, I'm really just looking at the two Vampire Chronicles novels, the Black Jewels Trilogy (so! much! reveling!) and Twilight. So I could use a hand coming up with more works of Dark Fantasy (needs to be books, or I'd be all over Buffy so fast you wouldn't believe it).

Thanks!

ETA:Further clarification on what I'm looking for: Since dark fanstay is still too broad a sub-genre to write about in full, I'm trying to look at novels where protagonists have the aesthetic that was, in classic horror, reserved for the villains.

10:19PM - Something I think many of you would be interested in.

There's a new community called coc_m_madness that is just like f_march_madness (game where people nominate and vote for which fictional characters get to compete and win in each round until someone wins) but is specifically for characters of color and those coded as CoCs.

Nominations are open until Sunday 12:00 PM EST. Remember, daylight saving time starts on Sunday morning at 2:00.

You can nominate characters here.

4:51PM - Utah outlaws miscarriage

Read it and weep

6:46PM - The verdict: Gaylanta 1, police homophobes 0

Georgia NPR just ran the welcome update on this friendly neighborhood civil rights violation case I've been following. Short version: Atlanta police raid a verable local gay leather bar, the Eagle, for alleged drugs (which are never found). The cops harass/physically restrain/verbally assault the bar's staff and patrons and eventually file some weakass charges against bargoers for dancing without a license and running an adult establishment and other things deeply stupid. Today, all charges against the Eagle patrons and staff were dropped. It's my happy Take THAT against homophobia for the day, even though I'm still pissed that it ever happened in the first place.


From the Atlanta-Journal Constitution:

Judge: Atlanta Eagle defendants ‘not guilty'

An Atlanta judge found three defendants in the Atlanta Eagle gay bar case not guilty Thursday, and the prosecutor agreed to dismiss the charges against the other five defendants.

Municipal Judge Crystal Gaines said city police failed to produce evidence proving that men danced naked without permits or that the bar operators were running an unlicensed adult establishment.

Not in this article but in the radio report was a tidbit about how the police case depended heavily on one police eyewitness, who at one point his testimony got "confused" and identified a bartender as one of the evil nekkid dancers. Maybe he wasn't looking the guy in the face?

From what I've seen Atlantans have been universally calling BULLSHIT from the beginning on the dubious justifications of the police raid. Because as you know, the biggest cause violent drug crime is big hairy leather guys macking on each other. America's gayest city = Gayngster's Paradise! Oh man, that tasty pending civil rights federal lawsuit is gonna be SWEET.

For the curious/amused, the statements on the Eagle's website about what a nice neighbor the bar is are well worth reading.  And the Eagle is still selling T-shirts for legal expenses.