Pixel Scroll 4/10/16 Filers, Scrollers, Pixelmen, Lend Me Your Ears; I Come To Bury Hugo, Not To Praise Him

(1) HARRY AND THE PIRATES. Your average author can only wish they got this level of service. Reuters has the story — “Defense Against the Dark Arts: UK spies guarded against Harry Potter leak”.

Usually concerned with top secret matters affecting national security, Britain’s eavesdropping spy agency GCHQ was also on the lookout for leaks of a yet-to-be-published Harry Potter book, its publisher has revealed.

Shortly before the publication of one of the volumes in J.K. Rowling’s seven-part wizarding saga, with millions of fans worldwide at a fever pitch of anticipation, publisher Nigel Newton received an unexpected phone call.

“I remember the British spy eavesdropping station GCHQ rang me up and said ‘we’ve detected an early copy of this book on the Internet’,” Newton told Australia’s ABC Radio in an interview last week that gained attention in Britain on Sunday.

“I got him to read a page to our editor and she said ‘no, that’s a fake’,” said Newton, founder and chief executive of Potter publishing house Bloomsbury, describing the spies as “good guys”.

A spokesman for GCHQ said: “We do not comment on our defense against the dark arts.”

(2) MORE EAVESDROPPING. R. A. MacAvoy lets us listen in on her “Conversations with People Who Aren’t There”.

The reason I was convinced my imaginary conversations were universal to the human condition was simply my embarrassment knowing that, since I had constructed my verbal respondents, when we had a difference of opinion – a necessarily frequent happening – I always won the debate.  This, in itself, was so much a stacking of the deck, or loading of the dice of the disagreement, I would hate for anyone to know I was doing it.  It was so much like playing chess with one’s self and cheating.  And I assumed everyone else on the planet felt as I did about it, and so, from an attempt not to appear the scoundrel I was, I kept my mouth shut (for once) about the existence of this wild and crazy inner life.  I was certain any other person would do the same.  So I have continued, for approximately sixty years, to live this way, mumbling to myself or to the non-human creatures about me, or even the furniture. And thinking every other soul did also.

It was only perhaps a week ago I asked Ron whether he did not spend his hours as I did.  I expected him to answer “Of course,” or simply smile knowingly and shrug.  Instead he looked at me intently and said “No. Not so often.”

This was quite a surprise.  It was, in fact, a re-set of my expectations.  The human condition was not entirely as I had thought it was.  Not for all these years.

So I must re-evaluate my life of inner debate.  I have not just been rigging the game of internal conversation.  It seems I invented the game before I rigged it.  My ego-centricity is far more overwhelming than I thought.  I am not proud of myself.

Nonetheless, there have been some interesting conversations over the years.  If I must take the blame for doing the thing, I can at least describe how I have done it.

The most common repeated dialogue I have is with any film or television actor who pronounces words in a way I disagree with.  Of course I am arguing with the character, not the real actor, but as no one is there, it doesn’t matter.

(3) CAPCLAVE 2017. WSFA has announced that Ken Liu will be a Capclave GoH in 2017.

(4) LOVELY ROOM, SLIGHT DRAFT. Supposedly this happened — “Tim Peake Leaves TripAdvisor Review For The International Space Statuion’s New ‘Space Hotel’” — although neither Steven H Silver nor I have been able to find it on the actual TripAdvisor site.

Bigelow Aerospace is trialling a new “space hotel” this week, attaching their new inflatable hotel room to the side of the International Space Station to test the possibility of having a holiday resort in Earth’s orbit.

The inflatable “BEAM” module is made of a top secret material that may make holidaying in space a reality, but first it’s being tested aboard the ISS.

Not one to ignore a chance at giving his two cents to the people on terra firma, British astronaut Tim Peake has left a review for the “space hotel” on TripAdvisor.

(5) KEPLER IN TROUBLE? From NASA — “Mission Manager Update: Kepler Spacecraft in Emergency Mode”.

During a scheduled contact on Thursday, April 7, mission operations engineers discovered that the Kepler spacecraft was in Emergency Mode (EM). EM is the lowest operational mode and is fuel intensive. Recovering from EM is the team’s priority at this time.

The mission has declared a spacecraft emergency, which provides priority access to ground-based communications at the agency’s Deep Space Network.

Initial indications are that Kepler entered EM approximately 36 hours ago, before mission operations began the maneuver to orient the spacecraft to point toward the center of the Milky Way for the K2 mission’s microlensing observing campaign.

The spacecraft is nearly 75 million miles from Earth, making the communication slow. Even at the speed of light, it takes 13 minutes for a signal to travel to the spacecraft and back.

The last regular contact with the spacecraft was on April. 4.  The spacecraft was in good health and operating as expected.

(6) HOW MUCH IS THAT NOVEL IN THE WINDOW? Fynbospress has an intriguing post about indie book pricing at Mad Genius Club – “Know your reader demographics: Pricing”

2. The discount crowd ($0.99 – $5.99) Believe it or not, this is a different group from the Free Crowd. There’s plenty of overlap, but it’s a different crowd. Unlike the hardcore free-only, the 99 cent crowd will buy books cheap. If they’re long-term broke, they’re likely to use some of the tools to track your sales and only buy when the price drops. These are the people who keep all the used bookstores in business. At this price point, you’re competing with used paperbacks from McKay’s Powell’s, Amazon… you are NOT competing with new books from B&N or Book a Million.

How big is this market? I don’t know if there’s a way to tell – certainly it hasn’t been measured. But it’s been large enough to support thousands of used book stores across the US alone (much less the charity shops in the UK), and to propel low-pricing indie authors into millions sold.

You can develop fans here. If you stay in this price range, they’ll buy everything you put out the moment they discover it. (Not the same thing as the moment you release it, and that’s why a mailing list / social media presence / targeted advertising is a good thing.) You can also use this range to tempt people into impulse buying your works, in conjunction with targeted advertising.

(7) TO THE FINNISH. Today’s book review on NPR: “Frodo, Bilbo, Kullervo: Tolkien’s Finnish Adventure”.

In 1913, the 21-year-old Ronald Tolkien should have been studying for his exams. He was halfway through his Classics degree — the subject all the best students did at Oxford in those days. Getting admitted to Oxford on a scholarship was a great opportunity for young Ronald, an orphan who had always struggled to stay out of poverty. A Classics degree would have set him up for almost any career he chose. But he wasn’t studying. Instead, he was trying to teach himself Finnish.

Why would a brilliant student with so much at stake let himself go astray at such a crucial time? There were two reasons: love and the Kalevala.

Tolkien’s twin obsessions at the time were his future wife, Edith Bratt, and the Kalevala, the national epic of Finland.

(8) CLASSIC ZINE BIDS FAREWELL. Steven H Silver is retiring his fanzine Argentus, a three-time Hugo nominee.

I’ve decided that Argentus is no longer being published.  I had planned on doing an issue last year (and didn’t) and then wrapping it up this year, but with chairing three conventions in 11 months, Worldcon programming, surgery, and life in general, I don’t see it happening this year either.  If I do another fanzine, it will be a different creature.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • April 10, 1953: Feature length, full color, 3-D movie premiered in NYC:  House of Wax starring Vincent Price.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS

  • April 10, 1929: One of the all-time greats, Max von Sydow, is born in Sweden.
  • Born April 10, 19?? — James H. Burns, prolific File 770 columnist.
  • Born April 10, 1953 — David Langford, Ansible editor.

(12) DISTILLED WRITING ADVICE. Lit Reactor has compiled “22 of the Best Single Sentences on Writing”. The most contrarian comes from G. K. Chesterton: “I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.”

(13) FESTIVAL OF BOOKS. The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books wrapped up on Sunday.

Mercedes Lackey was on hand.

Not sf, but I’m a fan!

A Sabaa Tahir quote —

(14) AWESOME ANIMATION. Official music video for Jane Bordeaux’s ‘Ma’agalim’. In a forgotten old penny arcade, a wooden doll is stuck in place and time.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Steven H Silver, JJ, Will R., and Michael J. Walsh for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]

141 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 4/10/16 Filers, Scrollers, Pixelmen, Lend Me Your Ears; I Come To Bury Hugo, Not To Praise Him

  1. But they could have a whole line of Kindle Spice Girls:

    Kindle Posh Spice (Most expensive)
    Kindle Sporty Spice (Waterproof and shock resistant)
    Kindle Baby Spice (Designed for children)
    Kindle Scary Spice (In goth black*. Discount on Stephen King ebooks)
    Kindle Ginger Spice (um…no longer available)

    * ETA: I was going for the scary color black here. D’oh!

  2. I’m price sensitive. I also buy books just to support authors I like but know I probably won’t get to their books. I buy ebooks in the free-4.99 range. I use ereaderiq to track sales for hundreds of books and hundreds of authors. In the last 6 months I started paying full price for a handful of authors whose books I pre-order. All but one are some combination of the following: women, LGBTI, PoC. As I’ve discovered their books are less likely to be discounted and they need more support in general.

    On the opposite side I pay way more for books and comics through Kickstarter where I’m not nearly as price sensitive. This is where I get most of my paper copies. I frequently buy the ebooks later from Amazon or Comixology to further support the creator.

    My typical ereaderiq price points are free, $0.99, and $1.99. Although there are a number of indies I buy in the $2.99 range.

    I’ve been getting a kick out of watching trad published book discounts lately. Increase book by $2-4 2-6 weeks before sale. Sale price is $3-5 less than new price making it $1 less than the price it was before they raised the price. Or they are doing $0.50 discounts on fiction books over $12.99. The other two sale prices I see are for UF/PNR $1.99 or $4.99. Occasionally some SFF of other subgenre will show up in the $1.99. Open Road Media regularly puts backlist of something at $1.99.

    It’s amazing what you can learn about an industry with all the new tools available to us.

    I wish there was a paper tracker version of ereaderiq for paperbacks and hardcovers. As much for what I’d learn as a purchasing tool.

    ETA: for authors using ereaderiq to track similar authors/books is a great tool for helping with pricing. As are checking out Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch blogs. Also Author Earings reports may be useful.

  3. RevBob

    Due to exchange differences* the UK Amazon price of 99p is significantly dearer than the U.S. Amazon price of $1.17 per episode.

    Multiply that at least 20 times and I end up paying a lot more for the privilege of reading Two of Swords, which really doesn’t encourage me to get involved.

    Of course, not everybody automatically factors in exchange rates, but I think it’s fair to say that KJ Parker wants the sort of success in the US that his alter ego never quite managed to achieve. If the price for that is fewer UK readers then he may be happy to pay it…

    *£1=$1.42

  4. @Stevie: “Due to exchange differences* the UK Amazon price of 99p is significantly dearer than the U.S. Amazon price of $1.17 per episode.”

    Did you factor VAT into your calculations? Some publishers build that into their price, but others treat it as a surcharge that gets reflected on Amazon as a higher price. The US equivalent, sales tax, varies so widely that it’s tacked on at time of purchase; a US$0.99 book usually costs me US$1.08 on the receipt.

    Also, that doesn’t change the fact that Amazon – like every other e-tailer – sets a price floor to make sure transaction fees are covered. That author I regularly edit has two short stories up at US$0.99, which become £0.99 on Amazon UK… because that’s their pricing floor. The author can’t set it lower. (In fact, with higher-priced ebooks, the prices do adjust for exchange rate; US$4.99 becomes £3.60.)

    So don’t blame the author – and in this case, it’s not fair to blame the publisher. It may not even be fair to blame the vendor. You’re looking at pricing based on transaction fees, VAT, and exchange rates. Ignoring one or more of those factors is a bad idea.

  5. @ Darren Garrison

    I’ve often found that, when you like a foreign language song, it is better to not understand the lyrics. The songs often turn out to be insipid, shallow pop.

    Oh man, I got stung by that one. One of my favorite Welsh folk-rock bands, known for performing some great rousing political songs inspired by Welsh history, did a song featuring a place name that was involved in an interesting “what if” turning point of late medieval history. What I could make out of the lyrics (I’m not very good at deciphering rock lyrics even in my native tongue!) talked about ships, which also fit that historic event. And then I tracked down a copy and discovered it was a rousing, high-energy song about a lovely seaside holiday. Alas.

  6. @Rev Bob So don’t blame the author – and in this case, it’s not fair to blame the publisher. It may not even be fair to blame the vendor. You’re looking at pricing based on transaction fees, VAT, and exchange rates. Ignoring one or more of those factors is a bad idea.

    It’s funny how as consumers we don’t think about things which in our professional life we might deal with all the time. I’ve worked in sales and marketing for international companies but when buying books I never took into consideration any of the factors I did in my regular job. One of the things I love about Kickstarter is its made me much more aware of what it takes to get something in my hands from start to finish. I’ve learned about Vat, customs problems on both the manufacturers side and consumers side, all the hundreds of little details to make and sell anything.

    Through looking into publishing and becoming friends with authors across the spectrum of publishing options I’ve also learned a lot. But still when I go to buy a book I don’t always think about what I know I just see the price. It’s like someone shuts my brain down from knowledgeable person to consumer unless I actively force myself to be on. If I start ranting I’m able to recognize I may be off. But it’s not automatic yet – to pull all my publishing pricing knowledge to me when looking at books – including a particular publishers or retailers quirks.

  7. RevBob

    Strange as it may seem, as a retired Inspector of Taxes I do take taxes into account, just as I take exchange rates into account; suffice it to say that the way Amazon describes the operation of VAT bears very little resemblance to the reality thereof. It also helps if you understand that VAT is not a sales tax, for the simple reason that it isn’t.

    Strangely enough, Tax Inspectors also know a lot about transaction fees; they are, after all, ubiquitous, both in the financial markets, and just about everywhere else. They do raise some interesting questions of the right taxation treatment thereof, but I doubt that you are interested.

    Of course, one would have to be somewhat naive to believe anything that Amazon says about its tax affairs, given its penchant for not paying any, but I appreciate that those unfamiliar with its track record may not grasp this.

    On the other hand, if you are going to lecture someone who spent her working life dealing with the tax affairs of multinational corporations, then it does help if you have some expertise* before embarking on said lecture.

    *[hint: VAT is not a sales tax]

  8. An ebook price above $5 is generally enough to make me wait to get the book from a library. I had a story in an anthology that was initially priced at $5.99 for the ebook, and felt weird tweeting about it because I knew I‘d never spend that much, so how could I ask it of others?

    I’ve often found that, when you like a foreign language song, it is better to not understand the lyrics. The songs often turn out to be insipid, shallow pop.

    Alas, this is so very often true for songs I like in English, written by native English speakers. It’s been enough to turn me off a band’s entire output in the past (lookin’ at you, Interpol*) and I intentionally try to ignore lyrics now because of it**. On the plus side, this means I almost never sing along with anything anymore and my husband’s ears are much happier.

    *”her stories are boring and stuff / she’s always calling my bluff” –hearing this, I knew the singer was either an idiot or did not care much about lyrics. In either case their music was forever tainted in my mind–it all sounds stupid and apathetic to me now. Too bad, really–they did have a cool guitar sound.

    **Oh, Beach House, how I love you, I will pretend you didn’t just use the phrase “go boom”; and even if I can’t help noticing, I will forgive you because you are writing in your second language and maybe don’t realize you sound like a toddler.

  9. @Hampus

    Now, now. Moskau has great lyrics. No need to make something up there.

    And their previous song, “Dschingis Khan”, Germany’s entry for the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest, is even better and its lyrics were rather raucous (including a bit about Genghis Khan fathering seven children in one night – which made my very young self exclaim, “But that’s all wrong. There are no septuplets.”) for the time.

  10. For the longest time, I adored the .hack//Sign theme music and wondered what the English translation of the lyrics might be. Then I looked up the lyrics, which turned out to be in English already, and I felt terribly embarrassed. They struck me as a strange mix of bad poetry, English-as-second-language miscues, and very unfortunate turns of phrase. The music itself still rocks, though.

  11. @Stevie: “I do take taxes into account, just as I take exchange rates into account”

    Not in the comment I responded to. All you talked about there was the exchange rate. The US doesn’t have a VAT, the UK does, and since you didn’t say a word about that, it was completely reasonable to suspect that you hadn’t factored it into your calculations… and while US sales tax isn’t the exact same thing as a VAT, it’s as close as this country gets to having one.

    Strange as it may seem, as a retired Inspector of Taxes…

    Strangely enough, Tax Inspectors also know a lot about transaction fees…

    Of course, one would have to be somewhat naive…

    On the other hand, if you are going to lecture someone…

    You know what? Go fuck yourself. Your snide, condescending tone is not only rude, but completely uncalled for. I couldn’t give two shits what your old job was; I didn’t know and do not care. Furthermore, it doesn’t magically render you immune to forgetting things. I’ve had to deal with Amazon’s international pricing recently; I don’t have the luxury of being retired.

    Jesus. What an asshole. I hope being a smug twit made you feel warm and superior for a few precious moments, but I pity you if you indeed lead such an empty life that you have to resort to that for entertainment.

  12. I’m currently reading A Criminal Magic, which has been reasonably pleasant, but the 1920s don’t feel very well established as an era.

    However, I just learned that my hold came in at the library for Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend and I’m ridiculously happy. I hope it’s fabulously horrible!

  13. k8: I just learned that my hold came in at the library for Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend

    Wait, what?

  14. k8

    on April 11, 2016 at 6:07 pm said:

    I’m currently reading A Criminal Magic, which has been reasonably pleasant, but the 1920s don’t feel very well established as an era.

    However, I just learned that my hold came in at the library for Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend and I’m ridiculously happy. I hope it’s fabulously horrible!

    You should try Hatoful Boyfriend instead as it’s horribly fabulous.

  15. Matt Y – That looks potentially fun!

    I do like a bit of ridiculousness now and then. My last reading venture in this area, Dungeons & Drag Queens was ultimately disappointing after a promising start.

  16. @Rev Bob
    I know Stevie is both English and in pain suffering from a (number of?) chronic illness(es). I’m never sure if she intends to come off condescending and obnoxious or if it’s a combination of differences in how we speak combined with pain tone bleeding through. I walked away and read a book so I didn’t respond. I don’t know if she’d directly responded to me if I’d have done the same. A long way of saying: I agree with your sentiments.

  17. The shape of the new Kindle reminds me of the Ectaco Jetbook Lite.

    However, I just learned that my hold came in at the library for Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend and I’m ridiculously happy. I hope it’s fabulously horrible!

    Okay, that reminds me of a short video clip circulating around the internet in the primitive pre-Youtube (and the adult equivalent) days involving a woman and three guys dressed as pterodactyls. (Oh, come on, some of you remember it!)

  18. Rightswrecker

    Swedish word (“Rättshaverist”) for someone who knows they are right and can never stop. They have to continue and get more and more frustrated and angry when people tell them to please give up. Mostly used with regards to courts where people demand that decision shall be ruled in their favour. They create enormous amounts of documents, visits and phones all instances, all newspapers, everyone they think will listen. Often ruining themselves by pouring their economy into their project of showing everyone they are right.

    —————————–

    I do think nerds/fans/geeks often have a bit of rightswrecker in them that they can never stop when they know they are right. It pops up in every 3-4 threads or so here.

    I chose this thread on random to say this in.

  19. @Rev Bob.

    [VAT] and since you didn’t say a word about that, it was completely reasonable to suspect that you hadn’t factored it into your calculations

    Actually that’s an unreasonable expectation. in the UK VAT is always included in the quoted price, so people don’t notice it. It’s part of what you way, end of story.
    That’s only semi-true of a few places, like builder’s merchants and trade electronics, where the price with and without gets listed, as many customers will be able to claim the tax back, but as a rule, with UK prices, if VAT is applicable, it will be invisible.
    Not like your weird American arrangements where there’s a quoted price and the shop demands more,

  20. @NickPheas: That annoyed me about Japan, too. I should be able to go to a 100en shop and pay 100en for something, not 108en!

  21. No* VAT,or customs duty, on physical books either. Information, like food and clothing for children, is considered essential.

    It gets very murcky when the “book” is “printed” on a C? or downloadable. I suspect that no one thought digital books were going to be important enough to push for a distinction from music/spoken word/data CDs, which were VATable, at the time, and then it was too late -they all carried VAT.

    *Might actually be zero-rated rather than no VAT, but that affects the book keeping not the final customer.

  22. That annoyed me about Japan, too.

    I remember a second-hand manga store with thousands of individually-priced items where they had to just throw up their hands and say that most of the stickered prices were for sales tax at 5%, and it was 8% now.

  23. I suspect that no one thought digital books were going to be important enough to push for a distinction from music/spoken word/data CDs, which were VATable, at the time, and then it was too late -they all carried VAT.

    It’s an EU harmonisation thing. New categories of stuff get the same equivalent of VAT (not the same rate, but the VAT-free/Zero rate/full rate band) applied across the market, only historical categories can continue at a previous level nationally. Other EU nations do have VAT on printed books and newspapers so electric versions followed that.

  24. Extending sympathy to RevBob for having to jump through irritating hoops to set up Amazon’s international pricing. That sounds like a pain in the neck.

  25. @Cat:

    Actually, Amazon makes international pricing pretty easy if you go with defaults – but it does show you the gears and allow you to tinker if you wish.

    @Tasha:

    I certainly know about contributing factors, but at the end of the day, they’re explanations, not excuses. You, me, Stevie, everyone else – we all get judged by what we say and how we say it, regardless of what personal situations may have contributed to that. We all have circumstances that influence our moods, but that doesn’t excuse bad behavior. It can serve as the foundation for an apology (“Sorry about that, I was having a horrible day and I took it out on you.”), but we shouldn’t get into the habit of proactively making excuses for others when they do such things. In the absence of contrition, we can – and should – understand without forgiving or accommodating. The admission of error is still an essential step.

  26. @Rev Bob
    I was ruminating on why her posts come off as condescending and obnoxious to me so frequently. Not excusing behavior. I have found in a few cases it has had to do with the different way people around the world speak English (or even generalizing men & women socialization in different cultures). Usually once we figure that out we work together to help each other out. Those are people I find it worthwhile to make an effort with – they also usually apologize.

    I’ve not yet overcome my socialization training to be able to tell others to fuck off.

  27. Around these parts sales taxes have gotten quite complex. Used to be a flat rate for the whole state, but different cities have start adding their own fraction of a percent so you never know what the exact rate is until you look at the receipt.

    Also what is and isn’t food is a mystery. Food should be tax free unless you eat it at a restaurant, but some junk food is taxable while other equally junky food isn’t. For example, those fruit snacks that come in little packets are taxable, but Little Debbie snack cakes are not.

    Don’t get me started on US custom duties. That way leads to madness.

  28. There is a lot to be said for a simple system. We have a GST (Goods & Services Tax) flat rate of 15%. No other taxes apply (no state taxes), and tipping is not customary either.

    So when you go out to eat, the price on the menu is the price you actually pay. No having to calculate how state taxes affect the actual bill, or agonising how much to tip. You can just sit back and enjoy the meal.

    (You can still tip, and I do but only if I feel the service has been excellent. But you don’t have to feel guilty about not tipping because our hospitality staff get a decent wage.)

  29. @Jack Lint:
    Here in Canada (at least in Ontario, but I believe everywhere thanks to the way the GST was set up), the general rule is an attempt to distinguish between restaurant/food items, which get taxed, and grocery items, which don’t.

    One of the particular cases of this rule is based on the idea that grocery items are expected to be bought in bulk. For example, if you buy five muffins, you pay GST on them. If you buy six muffins, you don’t. That applies whether you buy the muffins in a restaurant or a store: the rule is based on the number bought, not the place they were bought in.

    This is complicated in Ontario by the fact that we have what we call ‘Harmonized Sales Tax’ here. There used to be separate provincial and federal taxes, but now the federal government collects both and hands the province’s share back to it, which makes it cheaper for the province to handle. But the old rules and exceptions are still mostly in place, which means that while the HST is normally effectively 13% or 0%, it can under some circumstances be 5% (GST only) or 8% (PST only).

    For example, Ontario for years had a specific exemption to PST for cheap meals: if it cost less than $4.00, there was no PST. (Poverty advocates make a big noise whenever anybody talks about removing this, obviously, though that number is so low that it’s less useful now than it was originally.) That exemption got baked into the Harmonized Sales Tax, so HST for a total food bill under $4.00 should be only 5%, not 13%.

  30. I suspect that no one thought digital books were going to be important enough to push for a distinction from music/spoken word/data CDs, which were VATable, at the time, and then it was too late -they all carried VAT.

    I think there’s an element of how do you define these things? Computer software is VAT-able. Never had anyone complain about that. An eBook is a collection of data which causes a (specialised, at least some of the imte) computer to do a particular thing. So it’s computer software? But the thing the software is doing is simulating another thing which has a different set of rules? So is the VAT based on the function or the form?

  31. Darren Garrison: Okay, now I’m reminded of this

    Tsundoku: The act of leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piling it up together with other such unread books.

    Okay, now we’ll have to start calling Mount File770 “Mount Tsundoku”.

  32. Learning to say “fuck off” or even just “no” is immensely liberating. I think we need to teach it to girls before and after puberty.

  33. @lurkertype:

    Funny you should say that. One of the story elements I’m currently working with involves forbidding someone to say “no” in any context, as a specific means of denying them agency and breaking their will.

  34. I’m not bad at saying no depending on the circumstances. I was jokingly known as Auntie no-no for a few years. Swearing in my family and around my husband are not acceptable behaviors. I’ve never had friends who swear a lot. I mostly see swearing in books and online.

    What can I say, white, middle class, white collar, going on 50, was always a good girl. Guys have always been more careful in my presence although I could care less as long as it’s not slurs. I’d say I grew up in a different time but I think sex, drugs, rock & roll, and swearing were all pretty normal years before I was a teen (1980s) from my reading and friends that age.

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