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lots of links:
-Do Better from Hey, Author, which is an actuallygood thing on tumblr.
The 5 Stages Of Graduation Grief may be familiar to some of us; see also Scholastic Snake Oil, Why Does School Suck?:
In other posts, I've talked about all of the contrived situations and narratives schools present to us. Almost no one ever has to explore a question, or create something, that has actual consequences while he or she is in school.
Brad Hicks on militarism:
And those that served in Korea, preventing the Korean people from voting for the government they wanted to elect? Those who served in Vietnam, doing the same thing? Those who served up and down Latin America, defending a tiny rich white minority in those countries and their right to own the rest of the country as slaves? Those who went to the Balkans to put Islamists in power in Kosovo and neo-Nazis in power in Croatia? Those who screwed up the mission in Somalia, thus teaching bin Laden that Americans were pushovers? Those who went into Iraq to install what was supposed to be a pro-American regime, and ended up handing that country to Hezbollah? And all of that at the cost of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of civilian lives in those countries over the last sixty years? I don't think that makes them heroes. I think it makes them dupes at best, and willing accomplices to war crimes at worst. No, I'm not even vaguely proud of your service. No, I'm not even vaguely grateful for it. I am, depending on which atrocity you served in, to varying degrees ashamed of your service. I'm just generally too polite to say so to your face.
Come and get me.
Old now, but I only just found Julian Dibbell's Wired article on griefing, which is something of a followup to A Rape In Cyberspace (though not on the same level of must-read awesome). It does, however, make a point I keep on making about the pearlclutchy bullshit-mongering that is 'internet death threats':
Kyanka went on to review the long and bloodless history of death threats among Internet commenters, then revealed his own impressive credentials as a target: "I've been getting death threats for years now. I'm the king of online dying," he wrote. "Furries hate me, Juggalos hate me, script kiddies hate me, people banned from our forums hate me, people not banned from our forums hate me, people who hate people banned from our forums hate me ... everybody hates me."
But almost as an afterthought, Kyanka appended the text of a death threat sent from a banned ex-Goon, aimed not at him but at his infant daughter: "Collateral damage. Remember those words when I kick in your door, duct tape Lauren Seoul's mouth, fuck her in the ass, and toss her over a bridge."
Next to that text, Kyanka posted a photo of himself holding the smiling little girl. His evident confidence in his own safety, and that of the child in his arms, was strangely moving — in an unnerving sort of way.
...I guess I have to place that as a lead-in to a new contribution to one of the great wanks of long ago, which, yes, now features actual non-internet murders; VB/Jordan Wood/Thanfiction/Andy Blake/as someone on LJ called him, VBSaffBridge's ex has been blogging about her life in the hobbitelfcult and how she eventually got out of it. Here are all her cult-related blog entries; the two at the turn of the page, "Operation Catch And Release", come most highly recommended but fancult TWS sufferers may be required to read all of them. I only just heard about the murder-suicide part of the wank; a family member of one of the victims left a more direct note about VBSaffBridge's role in the extortion that proceeded the murders in a comment to Turimel's blog post about it.
...Yeah, I don't even. I swear sociopathic behaviour is fascinating mostly because of its horrifying purposelessness.
Also in life on the internet, Larry Sanger: What should we do about Wikipedia's porn problem?
From CalculatedRisk, Fed Survey: From 2007 to 2010, Median Family income declined 7.7%, Median Net Worth declined 38.8%. Oh, and "The only group (by income) with an increase in the median net worth was the top 10%." Oh, and "median income had also fallen slightly in the preceding three-year period." Obviously this continual descent of median income between 2004 and 2010 was Obama's fault.
For fans of anti-immigrant policymaking, Theresa May is trying to make the UK actually worse than the US; dunno if she'll succeed. It's likely to affect my future as a British citizen who doesn't live there; if they want to turn me into a British citizen who can't live there, they can and they will. For other classy shit happening in the UK right now, Coachloads of jobless people brought in to work unpaid on river pageant as part of Work Programme (this is even worse than the byline makes it sound. Much worse).
For fans of the tax code; I mentioned this in a linklist about a year ago - Edith Windsor just won her DOMA tax case. Do not mess with rich old lesbians.
OKAY ONE MORE PICTURE (from Daisy's Tuesday Funnies, which includes a lot of other awesome stuff):
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I checked out Hey Author and loled for a while. Before I got depressed at all the pictures of homeless people. And then brightened up because my!life was the last one on page ten ahaha.
Brad Hicks: DA
I understand what he's getting at, but he's conflating the job of the soldiers with the underlying motives and shit from policymakers and whatever. So I think he's misaimed, and taking it out on guys that honestly don't deserve it.
Internet cults: I love reading stuff about these! It's fun. Check out the FFVII house, if you haven't yet.
>>Coachloads of jobless people brought in to work unpaid on river pageant as part of Work Programme
WHAT
WHAT
seriously what
Also about taxes, thank you so much for your help again. Can I repay you in a return fic, or an actualfax care package?
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I love writing and writers but I think it's worth calling out the hypocrisy of those who big themselves up for writing without living. It's not like I'm doing a lot right now, or like I have much to do with my neighbourhood yet other than saying hi to people while I'm walking my dogs. I'm not very good at belonging places. But it's always worth making things complicated.
heh, I thought you'd have something to say about the Brad Hicks thing...fwiw, he and Daisy Deadhead are the two writers who've taught me most about the history and culture of working-class America and I think you'd really like most of Hicks' writing; like this, which is (ironically) about why 1930s workfare was so effective. Just personally I can't bring myself to thank American military for anything right now, because their recent activities have made my country a measurably more dangerous place and even though that wasn't their individual choice, it certainly means I can't thank them. And I didn't care how awkward that seemed in Southern culture. I was happy for them to write it up to my foreign ingratitude.
Oh my god, fandom cults. The FFVII House are very special. I had a tangential run-in with them myself in 2003; I had this one IM-plus-LJ acquaintance with a tendency to latch on to people hard, and he claimed Jenova Sagan was his 'best friend'. She pseuicided on him. As in, actually had Renee/Hojo call the dude and tell him she'd shot herself. I didn't even hear about the cult until about six or seven years after that. I once wrote about it and a few of my other favourite fancults, here - at the time I didn't know that the VB trainwreck involved cult activity, because it was mostly talked about as a financial scam.
Seriously, np, I really like getting more experience at dealing with the weird shit that does not come along every day. If you want to do something in return I wouldn't refuse it - I am up for either option. XD Also under fun bonus experience, I also still need to do your tarot reading /terminally distracted. If you do decide to go the fic route, I think you know what I like in MGS - Fox and Naomi, reflections on technology, everyone is bisexual (thank you canon), deadly serious crack, nuke meta, cyborgs, those weird one-on-one intimacies between combatants that MGS builds.
I need to finish reading all your Homestuck fics (fuck my to-do list), but I think we share a lot of interests there too; I have this deep tendency to go for Derse over Prospit -the only Prospitian I really like much is Terezi, who is my favourite troll; my other favourite characters are Dave, Dirk, Roxy, and Aradia, who I swear is the girl Gray Fox. I don't do a lot of shipping in Homestuck, I'm more into meta stuff, but quadrants are fascinating whatever is going on in them (and Dave/Terezi is like my favourite canon het in a very long time). Time travel and world ontology are also loved; I've read very little Homestuck fic but if someone out there was unpacking the meaning of its gameworlds I would be all over that shit.
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Yeah, I get what you mean about the military, but even then I squirm a bit. It's like looking down on WalMart workers because their corporation has factory labor in China. (Not a good direct metaphor, but you get what I mean.) I'm way more angry about dumbfuck politicians pushing these absolutely horrendous foreign policy pieces through a.) just because they can, b.) it goes with whatever ideological belief they espouse, or c.) they're starting a resource war. I am in no way supportive of some of the truly awful crap that gets pushed through that my military has to enact. But ultimately I do understand what you mean.
You know, I actually wrote something like 16-20 pages about working/underclass meta in Supernatural, if you want a fandom look into things.
Yesssss checking out your cult experiences nowwwww (all I can share is that when I was 14 and, ironically, in the Tomb Raider fandom, I had a pedo creeping on me. Then my parents permabanned me from the site).
I may end up doing the fic route, since I'm saving up for gradschool. But I will see what I can do! ♥
Holy crap I had no idea you were into Homestuck, much less that you read my fics! They're almost literally all about the pre-Scratch Striders, because for some reason I find them insanely easy to write. Bro is simply the best there is. But I totally follow you with the Derse > Prospit, and one of my first fics was about the Midnight Crew (HHHHNNGH I LOVE THE NOIR BITS).
Gosh, a few of the writers I knew, when I was active in HS, actually were tackling the meta-level gameworlds stuff. I have a chatlog fic with the Guardians all discussing on how to essentially cheat the game to save their kids, somewhere. I don't think that one made it to my journal here. If you're interested, I'll throw it up.
/belated
I've had very little to do with SPN and all I know about it I learned from reading zarla's badfic excerpts (this is the most NSFW thing that exists). I hope the fandom appreciated your work, though? Not enough people do fannish meta about class.
aaah I didn't even mention the Midnight Crew! They have all the best music (The Felt is a godtier album), and I've been making a (pretty bad) cosplay of Sn0wman. I just love her, and Slick♠Sn0wman tickles me so much. I should really get myself some Homestuck icons. I'd be interested in that Guardian fic, but I'm still short on reading time rn. >
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From my links:
- this article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/13/tomb-raider-lara-croft-rape-attempt) says exactly everything that needs to be said about Lara Craft being raped. Brilliant.
- It also turns out that workfare doesn't (work). (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/13/mandatory-work-scheme-government-research) But HMG are going to ignore their own research... (Some of their arguments could be legitimate, but they should commission more research to prove they are correct, not blithely assert it.)
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I heard about the Lara thing from Fly yesterday. :/ She wrote up our discussion of it, here (or here; not sure which mirror you'd find more readable).
I am so not surprised to hear that about the current UK workfare regime; I think workfare is a fascinating economic concept but in most cases paying people is considered a vital part of it; government as the employer of last resort, as in 1930s America (and I believe Reagan tried to revive the idea but got shot down from both sides because OMG THAT'S COMMUNISM). I think it's apparent at this point that the Tories are hell-bent on an ideological crusade irrespective of real-life results and that everyone in the UK is going to suffer for it; I feel a little betrayed by anyone who ever promised economic rationality. :/