Pixel Scroll 4/21/17 Pass The Pixel On The Left Hand Side

(1) MYSTERY SOLVED. Yesterday’s Scroll reported the episode of Fargo where someone picked up a rocket-shaped trophy as a weapon, which several people identified (incorrectly) as a Hugo. Today Movie Pilot ran a story about the episode’s Easter eggs and repeated the Hugo Award identification – illustrated with photos for comparison — in item #5.

When the sheriff drives back to her step-dad’s house to get the statue he’d made for her son, Nathan, she discovers the door ajar and the place a mess. Before heading up the stairs to investigate, she grabs something that looks very much like a Hugo Award, in case she needs to defend herself.

A Hugo trophy is awarded to the best sci-fi and fantasy writer of the year, meaning Ennis Stussy might have at one point won the award. Could he have been a witness to the alien encounter all the way back in 1979, inspiring him to write sci-fi?

The Fargo award is not a physical Hugo (whatever may be intended). Movie Pilot’s comparative Hugo photo is, and I was vain enough to hope it was one of mine (several have been photographed for archival purposes). After searching I found they used Michael Benveniste’s photo of a 1987 Hugo, and I definitely did not win in Brighton (although I won the year before and after), and the 1990 Worldcon bid I chaired was also annihilated in the voting…..

Whose Hugo is it? The plaque in the photo is hard to make out, but the phrase “edited by” is there, which narrows it the Hugo for Best Semiprozine or Best Fanzine, and there being an initial in the middle of the person’s name, it must be the 1987 Hugo given to Locus, edited by Charles N. Brown.

(2) NOTICING A TREND. JJ says at some point “Hugo award” entered the popular lexicon as “that’s some far-fetched confabulation you’ve got going on there.”

(3) ROAD WARRIOR. John Scalzi did a LA Times Q&A in which he shared “10 things you don’t know about authors on book tour”

  1. You have to be “on”

When people show up to your event, they expect to be entertained — yes, even at an author event, when technically all you’re doing is reading from your book and maybe answering some questions. As the author, you have to be up and appear happy and be glad people showed up, and you have to do that from the moment you enter the event space to the moment you get in a car to go back to the hotel, which can be several hours. It’s tiring even for extroverts and, well, most authors aren’t extroverts. Being “on” for several hours a day, several days in a row, is one of the hardest things you’ll ask an introverted author used to working alone to do. And speaking of work …

(4) IF I HAD A HAMMER. An advance ruling from @AskTSA.

(5) A VISIT FROM THE TARDIS. The Register claims “Doctor Who-inspired proxy transmogrifies politically sensitive web to avoid gov censorship” – a headline almost as badly in need of deciphering as HIX NIX STIX PIX.

Computer boffins in Canada are working on anti-censorship software called Slitheen that disguises disallowed web content as government-sanctioned pablum. They intend for it to be used in countries where network connections get scrutinized for forbidden thought.

Slitheen – named after Doctor Who aliens capable of mimicking humans to avoid detection – could thus make reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights look like a lengthy refresher course in North Korean juche ideology or a politically acceptable celebration of cats.

In a presentation last October, Cecylia Bocovich, a University of Waterloo PhD student developing the technology in conjunction with computer science professor Ian Goldberg, said that governments in countries such as China, Iran, and Pakistan have used a variety of techniques to censor internet access, including filtering by IP address, filtering by hostname, protocol-specific throttling, URL keyword filtering, active probing, and application layer deep packet inspection.

(6) NAFF WINNER. Fe Waters has been voted the 2017 National Australian Fan Fund (NAFF) delegate and will attend Natcon at Continuum in Melbourne in June.

Waters got into fandom in 1990, started attending Swancon in 1995, and after being inspired by the kids’ programming at AussieCon IV took on organizing the Family Programme for Swancon 2011–2013. For her Family Programme work she was awarded the Mumfan (Marge Hughes) Award in 2013. In 2016 she was the Fan Guest of Honour at Swancon.

The National Australian Fan Fund (NAFF) was founded in 2001 to assist fans to travel across Australia to attend the Australian National Convention (Natcon).

(7) NEIL GAIMAN, BOX CHECKER. Superversive SF’s Anthony M, who liked Neil Gaiman’s 17th-century vision of the Marvel universe — Marvel: 1602 (published in 2012) – nevertheless was displeased by its revelation of a gay character: “Marvel: 1602” and the Wet Fish Slap.

….Or even, if you are really, really incapable of not virtue signaling, if it’s truly so very important to you that people know you’re Totally Not Homophobic, why on earth would you have this character tell Cyclops he’s gay?

It was stupid, it was pointless, and it was insulting that Gaiman decided to make his story worse in order to tell the world that he was Totally Cool With Being Gay. It was a way of telling the reader that he cared less about them than about making himself look good to the right people….

(7-1/2) SEVEN DEADLY WORDS. Paul Weimer watched Mazes and Monsters for his Skiffy and Fanty podcast. You can listen to what he thought about it here, but wear your asbestos earbuds because Paul warned, “That episode is most definitely not safe for work, because I ranted rather hard, and with language not suitable for children….”

(8) AROUND THE SUBWAY IN 25 HOURS. “50 Years Ago, a Computer Pioneer Got a New York Subway Race Rolling” is a fascinating article about a Vernian proposition, and may even involve a couple of fans from M.I.T. in supporting roles, if those named (Mitchell, Anderson) are the same people.

A six-man party (Mr. Samson, George Mitchell, Andy Jennings, Jeff Dwork, Dave Anderson and Dick Gruen) began at 6:30 a.m. from the Pacific Street station in Brooklyn. But when they finally pulled into the platform at Pelham Bay Park after a little more than 25 hours and 57 minutes, reporters confronted them with an unexpected question: How come they hadn’t done as well as Geoffrey Arnold had?

They had never heard of Mr. Arnold, but apparently in 1963 he completed his version of the circuit faster (variously reported as 24 or 25 hours and 56 minutes). Worse, he was from Harvard.

“I decided to take it on a little more seriously,” Mr. Samson recalled.

With his competitive juices fired up, he got serious. He collaborated with Mr. Arnold on official rules and prepared for a full-fledged computer-driven record-breaking attempt with 15 volunteers on April 19, 1967.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • April 21, 1989 — Mary Lambert’s Stephen King adaptation Pet Cemetery opens

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY CITY

  • April 21, 753 BC – Rome is founded.

(11) SAD ANNIVERSARY. An interview by his local paper — “Pine Mountain author Michael Bishop to release book of short stories” – notes it’s been 10 years since his son was killed is a mass shooting at Virginia Tech.

Q: What led you to write “Other Arms Reach Out to Me: Georgia Stories” as a collection?

A: First, this book gathers almost (but not quite) all my mainstream stories set in Georgia or featuring characters from Georgia in foreign settings (see “Andalusia Triptych, 1962” and “Baby Love”) in a single volume. So, in that regard, it represents the culmination of a career-long project that I did not fully realize that I had embarked upon, but that I did always have in the back of my mind as an important project.

You will notice that “Other Arms” opens with a hommage to and an affectionate parody of the short fiction of Georgia’s own Flannery O’Connor (called “The Road Leads Back”) and that it concludes with a controversially satirical take on gun politics in Georgia set in an alternate time line (“Rattlesnakes and Men”).

I might add that this last story grows out of our lifelong desire to see the United States adopt sensible nationwide gun legislation that mandates background checks in every setting. We also are advocates for the banning of sales to private citizens of military-style weapons, high-capacity magazines, and certain excessive kinds of body-maiming ammunition without extremely good reasons for them to own such armament, which is totally unnecessary for protecting one’s home and hunting.

(12) MERGE WITH TV. The Into The Unknown exhibit at The Barbican in London runs June 3 to September 1. Visitors will be able to “Step Into A Black Mirror Episode”.

Walking into a Black Mirror.

Is that something you can see yourself doing?

Because if so, we have some good news for you: as part of their new show exploring the history of sci-fi, Into The Unknown, The Barbican are going to turn their huge Silk Screen entrance hall into an immersive take on the oh-so-gloriously bleak episode 15 Million Merits.

Quite how they’re doing this is still under wraps, but we do know that moments from the episode will be re-edited, mashed-up, and displayed on huge six-foot video installations surrounding you. We’re assuming that there will also be exercise bikes….

(13) ALWAYS NEWS TO SOMEONE. How did I miss this Klingon parody of Psy’s “Gangnam Style” at the height of the craze in 2012?

(14) WOZ SPEAKS. Steve Wozniak’s convention starts today. CNET made it the occasion for an interview — “Woz on Comic Con, iPhones and the Galaxy S8”.

Wozniak, commonly known as “Woz,” sat down with CNET a week before the second annual Silicon Valley Comic Con to talk about the geek conference he helped start in San Jose, California; what superhero he’d like to be; what features he’d like to see in the next iPhone; and why he’s excited to get his Galaxy S8.

Even though California already has a Comic Con — the massive event in San Diego — Wozniak said there’s plenty of room for more. “We’re going to have a big announcement at the end of this one,” he said. “We’re different and better, and we don’t want to be linked in with just being another.”

Last year marked the first time Silicon Valley hosted its own Comic Con, and this year it expands into areas like virtual reality and a science fair. The show kicks off Friday and ends Sunday.

“We’ll have the popular culture side of Comic Con, but we’ll mix in a lot of the science and technology that’s local here in Silicon Valley,” he said. “It seems like [tech and geek culture are] made for each other in a lot of ways.”

(15) THE TRUTH WILL BE OUT THERE AGAIN. Another season of X-Files is on the way says ScienceFiction.com.

You can’t keep a good TV series down – well, unless you’re Fox with ‘Firefly,’ I guess.  But hey, maybe Fox feels some remorse over this too-soon axing, so they are making up for it by giving 1990s hit sci-fi/conspiracy show ‘The X-Files‘ another go!

Originally, ‘The X-Files’ ran from 1993-2002 on TV, with two theatrical films in the mix as well.  Off the air but never truly forgotten, the show reached a sort of “cult status,” enough so that Fox made the call to bring the show back for a limited 6-episode revival in early 2016.  Based on the success of that experiment, Fox has rewarded series creator Chris Carter with a 10-episode order for this new season to debut either this Fall or early 2018 on the network.

(16) CELL DIVISION. A news item on Vox, “The new Oprah movie about Henrietta Lacks reopens a big scientific debate”, reminds Cat Eldridge of an sf novel: “There’s a scene in Mona Lisa Overdrive where Gibson hints strongly that one of the characters is a runaway cancer that’s contained within a number of shipping containers…”

This practice went on for decades without much controversy — until the bestselling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot came along in 2010. The story sparked a debate among the public, researchers, and bioethicists about whether this practice is ethical — and whether the benefits to science truly outweigh the potential harms to individuals whose donations may come back to haunt them.

On Saturday, a new HBO movie starring Oprah based on the book will surely reignite that debate. The movie strongly suggests the practice of using anonymous tissues in research can be nefarious and deeply disturbing for families — while at the same time great for science. And so the research community is bracing for a backlash once again….

(17) WORKING. “Analogue Loaders” by Rafael Vangelis explains what would happen if real-life objects had to “load” the way computers do when we boot them up.

[Thanks to JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Hampus Eckerman, Mark-kitteh, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Clack.]

204 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 4/21/17 Pass The Pixel On The Left Hand Side

  1. During a visit to the library today, I found an interesting Dover anthology called “Scientific Romance: An International Anthology of Pioneering Science Fiction” (edited and with an introduction by Brian Stableford). It focuses on Verne’s and Wells’ immediate predecessors, spanning from 1835 through 1924.

    I checked it out and will let you all know how it goes.

  2. @Peer Sylvester – Thank you for summing up most of my thoughts on the HeLa issue.

    When my school was using them, it was mentioned in passing that these cells came from an “immortal” sample. It was not until the book came out that I made the connection (I have not worked in that field since the early ’90s).

    As to the moral issues of using HeLa and other such samples, I find it gets muddled when we take modern ideas\practices and apply them to the past. Much of the early Industrial Revolution was made possible by completely inhumane practices. It does not excuse them, but I am still thankful that I live in a world where it happened.

  3. 7) I’ve seen this sort of attitude at work before (well, who hasn’t), and came to the following conclusion:-

    If you are saying, “I don’t have a problem with gay characters, provided that they don’t appear when I’m not expecting them, that they have a cast-iron reason for appearing as gay which is relevant to the plot, and that they’re not characters whom I’d previously assumed were straight”,…

    … then you can at least save some time by saying “I have a problem with gay characters”, instead.

  4. The term virtue signaling is mostly a form of asshole signaling, in that the person using is seriously has signaled that they are an asshole. I find it a useful indicator.

    Use of the term “virtue signaling” is a dead giveaway that the person using the term is, in fact, signaling their own “virtue” by using it.

  5. Question for the gallery regarding Hugo voting:

    The Worldcon 75 website says, We expect to open online voting in the week following the announcement of the finalists, and voting will close on 15 July 2017.

    It’s several weeks following the announcement of the finalists, and I haven’t seen any updates. (And a voting packet maybe? *hopes*) Maybe I missed something. Anyone know an ETA?

  6. The series is UF, and the initial MC can negate the supernatural within a ten-foot circle. Weres and vampires become human while they’re in range, spells don’t work, and so on.

    One would think vampires would become dead when they’re in range, if their supernatural side was negated…

  7. Hi all. Might pop in occasionally. Life is crazy with an divorce and moves and my ongoing health issues so I’m offline more than on.

    Heavy discussions lately.

    I agree most of the time I stop taking someone seriously when they use box-checking or virtue-signaling seriously. Characters attributes be it an accent, hair color, favorite phrase, gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation doesn’t need to be pertinent to the plot.

    If one is used to reading books with mostly straight characters then it’s likely one will find casual references to LGBT characters to throw one out of the story. The best way to get past this problem is read more stories where LGBT characters are just part of the story and not a plot point. Same thing with women and diverse characters be it race, religion, disabled, etc – the more books one reads with diverse characters who are simply part of the cast the sooner it will become normal and stop throwing one out of the story. Same with reading books based on different cultures and mythologies.

    Anytime one finds themselves saying “I’m not x but… ” chances are subconsciously one is x. By purposefully expanding ones reading one can make progress on not being x subconsciously as long as one is reading from the right perspective and that’s why it’s important to seek out diverse authors and not just read stories written by SWM. Want to truly not be x then read books by x authors. Keep track of number of books & how many are SWM versus the authors one is trying to increase because we all tend to increase in our heads how many women, LGBT, non-white, disabled, etc authors we’re reading. Use shelves in Goodreads or create a spreadsheet. Take note if reading lots of books by a single author or spreading the reading out over multiple authors.

    Most of us could improve our ratios.

    Again hi everyone. It’s been a while.

  8. Anytime one finds themselves saying “I’m not x but… ” chances are subconsciously one is x.

    Well, I’m not perfect, but…

    (Hi, Tasha!)

  9. @Dawn Incognito

    I think the last couple of packets were in May, albeit with finalists announced later in April than they were this time around, so I’m not concerned. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen W75 tweet that a packet is being assembled. An ETA would be nice though.

  10. Two bits:

    1. The RIVERS OF LONDON comics aren’t written by Aaronovitch, or at least aren’t solo-written by him. They’re credited to Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel, so Aaronovitch is doing something somewhere in the range from co-plotting them to overseeing and approving.

    But he clearly approves of them, since the latest novel refers back to them as canonical adventures. They’re fun — I have my gripes with the art, in which the bulk of the characters seem to be the same age, much the same build and favor the same kind of skinny, snug suits. The stories are enjoyable and have the right flavor, so it’s nice to have them filling the gap while waiting for the next novel, but they’re very much side-adventures and aren’t necessary to reading and enjoying the novel series.

    There is a novella in the series, THE FURTHEST STATION, coming from Subterranean in June. I haven’t seen an e-book edition offered yet, but I’ll be waiting for that.

    2. It’s been so long since I read MARVEL 1602, and now I’m not even sure I ever finished it, but it seems to me the idea that 1602 Angel is gay isn’t meant as out-of-nowhere twist or revelation, but rather something that stems from a previous change: That Jean is disguised as a boy. Making that change, which is a logical and appropriate build from the altered setting, seems to set up Chekhov’s Crossdresser, for lack of a better term.

    If Jean’s disguised as a boy, how does that affect story & character? Well, Neil may have thought, what if that alters the old triangle over Jean’s affections by having someone attracted to her as a boy? Viewed that way, it becomes not twist-from-nowhere, not revelation, but denouement — it gives you a different understanding of what has gone before, in a way that’s logically set up from it.

    Beyond that, and leaving aside the points others have made about the social status of homosexuality in 1602, the idea that an X-Man wouldn’t tell Scott Summers something because Scott might use it to destroy them over a rivalry now sadly pointless strikes me as a bigger change to the character of Scott than the idea of the Angel being gay. Scott Summers, at least classically, may be stolid and mulish and prone to self-pitying brooding, but he’s responsible and trustworthy. He wouldn’t seek to destroy someone’s life over their sexuality just because he didn’t like them — he wouldn’t do something like that to an enemy, much less a comrade.

  11. @Kendal

    given how often you’ve been called out in the past for ‘splaining to folks how/why they react to stories, speaking for the group in this regard, etc.

    No, I’ve never done anything like that. I simply state my opinions. Repeating a lie never makes it true.

    I vehemently disagree with calling @JJ homophobic! It’s an easy term to throw out, but inapplicable here, IMNSHO.

    You’re not the victim, and it is not your place to tell someone whether he/she was offended or not. You wouldn’t tolerate this for a second under other circumstances.

    I doubt I’m the only one who’s weary of the periodic sniping back and forth.

    Odd that I’ve never seen you give that advice to JJ. And I’m far from the only person JJ has trouble with.

  12. Enviable Complexion and the Smallish Group of Other-Cultured Forest-Dwelling Manual Laborers?

  13. @Tasha Turner
    Hello, Tasha. Welcome back!

    If one is used to reading books with mostly straight characters then it’s likely one will find casual references to LGBT characters to throw one out of the story.

    One angle I haven’t seen anyone mention yet is that male gay characters with romantic issues are extremely rare in SFF these days. That is, a gay guy who’s in love with someone who cannot return the feeling. This is a problem that will survive the end of homophobia, so it would be suitable even for a story set 1000 years from now, but you almost never see it. (I think I’ve seen two in the last 1500 stories I’ve read, and the gay guy was a villain in one of them.)

  14. @Tasha – sorry you are going through a tough time. I hope better days are ahead.

  15. @Aaron – “It doesn’t make you look like an amoral slimeball at all.”

    You win bully points today!

  16. In the US, now and for a few decades, every time you give blood or tissue samples, you sign a form giving consent to it being used in research. It’s so routine you may not even notice you’re doing it, but if you read before you sign, you will know.

    There have been questions raised about whether this is really adequate, given that the standard boilerplate is that if you don’t want your tissue used in research, your only alternative is to not give the tissue–not really a choice if you’re doing it to get a diagnosis or treatment. Nevertheless, you do now sign a consent form when you give that blood or tissue.

    In Henrietta Lacks’ day, that wasnt the case. There was pretty much no asking for consent from anyone for what happened to their blood or tissue was taken for purposes of medical treatment. So, yes, it could have happened to anyone, rich or poor. It just happened by chance that this particular sample was taken from a poor woman, who for reasons of both poverty and race didn’t have any other options for where to get treatment.

    And a great deal of money has been made off that cell line in the decades since.

    The doctor had no idea the cell line was going to turn out to be that valuable, but he did know he was going to be using it in research. Lacks had no way of knowing that, her husband had no way of knowing that, and the doctor if he ever stopped to think about it, which he may not have, would have known they had no way to know.

    And most people look at those events and are a little creeped out by it now.

    The rules changed, and you are given a consent form to sign now, because much worse abuses happened due to practices that didn’t include getting consent. The ethical issues are still worth looking at.

  17. you sign a form giving consent to it being used in research
    One of the local walk-in clinics has a consent form that’s about a 5-page PDF file. Some parts of it I have strong objections to. So I don’t go there. The places I do go haven’t asked for that kind of consent. Yet.

  18. One of the local walk-in clinics has a consent form that’s about a 5-page PDF file. Some parts of it I have strong objections to. So I don’t go there. The places I do go haven’t asked for that kind of consent. Yet.

    That five-page form I’m sure covers a great deal more than what happens to what would otherwise be medical waste. If you have blood or tissue taken anywhere that has connections to instructions doing research, which includes most hospitals, you do get the consent form that covers using your tissues for research. And we do all benefit enormously from that research being done, with as broad a sample base as possible.

    Those samples are also anonimized as much as possible, now, to protect patient privacy. The HeLa cell line would never be named HeLa today.

    But informed consent really does mean telling the patient if their samples might wind up being used in research, not just assuming you have the right to do anything you want with it without their knowledge or consent.

  19. Lis Carey says There have been questions raised about whether this is really adequate, given that the standard boilerplate is that if you don’t want your tissue used in research, your only alternative is to not give the tissue–not really a choice if you’re doing it to get a diagnosis or treatment. Nevertheless, you do now sign a consent form when you give that blood or tissue.

    Errr no. Due to various health conditions that I have, I give blood for testing at least a half dozen times a year. Neither of the institutions where I give it ever ask me for permission for that to be used in research. Indeed neither requires me to sign anything. And the paperwork for my surgery several years back didn’t either.

    Now it’s possible that being white, older, male of a non-Hispanic background meant they didn’t need my tissue. Indeed the only time I was ever asked for permission to use my tissues was when I returned from overseas, ran out my course of anti-malarial drugs and promptly got the disease. So this being the first case ever in Maine they wanted to discuss it at the hospital that diagnosed it and show the MDs and lab workers what it looked like while live in the blood.

  20. Liz Carey:

    In the US, now and for a few decades, every time you give blood or tissue samples, you sign a form giving consent to it being used in research. It’s so routine you may not even notice you’re doing it, but if you read before you sign, you will know.

    I haven’t been asked to sign consent forms the 2-6 times a year I have my blood drawn that mentions anything other than consent to send results to 2-3 doctors. It’s a very basic fill-in form authorizing them to take my blood, send it to their lab to be analyzed, and has a fill-in space for my doctor & under that space I add 1-2 other doctors who need the test results also. The form is about 1/4 page.

    It’s possible that because I have top level health insurance and am a SWW who was in the middle class my privilege makes me outside the target population. Or maybe the hospitals and Quest Diagnostics don’t collect for research. Seems strange since the hospitals have all been teaching hospitals.

  21. Tasha Turner notes that It’s possible that because I have top level health insurance and am a SWW who was in the middle class my privilege makes me outside the target population. Or maybe the hospitals and Quest Diagnostics don’t collect for research. Seems strange since the hospitals have all been teaching hospitals.

    Quest Diagnostics operates one of the labs I’ve used regularly and they’ve never had me fill out any consent; Nordx runs the other and I can’t recall the last time that I signed any forms for them either. The latter location is embedded in a teaching hospital.

  22. @Kurt Busiek- Young Female and miner(s).

    Ages ago, I found a three step guide for reading Lovecraft:
    1) Replace all the adjectives with the word spooky.
    2) Condense down consecutive spooky into a single spooky.
    3) Omit all adjectives.

  23. Now it’s possible that being white, older, male of a non-Hispanic meant they didn’t need my tissue. Indeed the only time I was ever asked for permission to use my tissues was when I returned from overseas, ran out my course of anti-malarial drugs and promptly got the disease. So this being the first case ever in Maine they wanted to discuss it at the hospital that diagnosed it and show the MDs and lab workers what it looked like while live in the blood.

    Or it’s possible there are any number of reasons your blood is not wanted for the purpose. But no, they can’t send your blood or tissue on for research use without getting a signed consent form.

  24. First, @Tasha: Hello again! Nice to see you, but sorry to hear about your recent difficulties.

    @Greg: You appear to have completely overlooked that Kendall called on both you and JJ to cut out the sniping. Yes, the post was @-addressed to you – but that paragraph was plainly intended as a message to both of you.

    For the record, although I hope you and JJ (to make it explicit that I’m talking to both of you now) realize that I have no beef with either of you, I do agree with what Kendall said in that paragraph. The constant sniping back and forth does not reflect well on either of you, and I second the opinion that it’s time for the two of you to find some way to cut it out. Whether that means ignoring each other, whiting each other’s comments out to avoid temptation, finding a way to bury the hatchet, or something else – whatever it takes, the current state of affairs is making both of you look petty, and I hope that’s not true of either of you. You both bring valuable insights to this community, and I for one would like to see that continue.

    That said, Greg, I would be remiss in not pointing out that calling someone’s comments homophobic goes beyond simply being offended. Consider the distinction between “I was offended by that statement,” “That was a homophobic statement,” and “The person who said that is a homophobe.”

    You totally get to decide which/how many (if any) of those opinions you hold – but other people also totally get to disagree with the latter two. For that matter, they even get to decide whether they feel the offense you took was warranted, is the symptom of excessively thin skin, or was less than expected. In short, you cannot simultaneously claim the inviolable right to hold an opinion and deny others the right to disagree with it. (Well, it is technically possible, but only through hypocrisy.)

    Oh, and to quote Kendall, you have:

    been called out in the past for ‘splaining to folks how/why they react to stories, speaking for the group in this regard, etc.

    That’s true. I was here. I saw it. You have indeed been accused of doing precisely that, and on more than one occasion. That is a provable fact, and if I remember correctly, JJ at one point took the time to put together the references to prove it.

    Now, you may disagree with the opinion that was expressed, but denying that it has been expressed at all is untrue at best and gaslighting at worst. It goes back to what you said earlier:

    You’re not the victim, and it is not your place to tell someone whether he/she was offended or not.

    In this case, it’s not your place to tell people what they did or didn’t perceive or what opinions they are allowed to hold about you. At best, you can say what you intended – and having to explain this gap between intent and perception reminds me of the recent discussions of convention harassment policies. Ugh.

  25. Greg Hullender: I’ll just point out the hypocrisy of JJ calling anyone out on homophobia. Last year she posted a link to a song with homophobic lyrics and, when I called her on it, “explained” to me why it wasn’t offensive. There’s nothing like explaining to a gay man why your homophobic crap isn’t really offensive to show what you really are.

    That isn’t what I did at all. I posted a filk to Money to Nothing, and you pointed out its homophobic lyrics. I agreed with you that they were homophobic and made me uncomfortable, but that my own interpretation was that the song was making fun of homophobic people.

    I did not “explain to you why it wasn’t offensive”.

    At which point you accused me of posting the song specifically as an attack targeted at you — which is some serious paranoia and persecution complex.

    You’re right — I really, really don’t like you. But the reason I don’t like you has nothing to do with your sexual orientation and everything to do with the fact that I think you’re a smart person who believes themselves to be much more of an expert on everything than they actually are, who continually mansplains to Filers and arrogantly presumes to speak for all Filers, and who keeps accusing me of being a bully for calling you out on your many, many incidents of bad behavior (like this one) on File770.

  26. Re: lab testing and consent forms

    I suspect the question of whether a particular lab has people sign consent forms regarding the use of their samples depends on whether the lab has contracts with research facilities to provide research samples. When I worked in a private clinical lab back in the ’80s (i.e., a place contracted mostly by private medical offices or small clinics to take and test blood, urine, and microbial samples) there never would have been a reason to have such a waiver because we didn’t have any professional connections with the sort of lab that would have use for biological material. We took samples, we did tests, we reported the test results to the physician who had ordered the test. That was it.

    As a different example, when I worked in a biotech research facility that had a need for specific types of frozen human tissue samples, we had a contract with one of the major public teaching hospitals in our part of the state. As I understand it, it wasn’t a “direct sale” sort of contract, but more along the lines of “we will make a regular donation of $$$ to your facility and in return we may request specific samples as they are available. Many of the samples were the sort you could only get when someone had donated their body to science. But one of the tissue types with had the greatest need for was lymphatic tissue, very ably supplied by tonsil tissue. So I assume that anyone in that facility who had a tonsilectomy would have been offered a waiver to donate the removed tissue for scientific research.

    My current job involves drugs produced from gene-spliced cell lines, but the cells are from hamsters. To the best of my knowledge, the hamsters were not asked to sign consent waivers.

  27. @Heather Rose Jones:

    To the best of my knowledge, the hamsters were not asked to sign consent waivers.

    Someone’s mother got treated shabbily, probably by the elderberry lobby.

  28. @JJ
    You have kept up a non-stop campaign of harassment against me for over two years now, and I’ve done nothing to deserve it. Here is a case where you were 100% in the wrong, and yet you continue to respond by attacking me for protesting how you’ve treated me. A decent person would at a minimum apologize for causing pain. You don’t because causing pain is your goal. Even a faux “I’m sorry you took it that way” apology would be a step up.

    It’s an object lesson in why people are reluctant to complain about being harassed. They correctly predict that everyone who knows the harasser will come to his/her aid and join in attacking the victim.

    My #1 preference would be that you don’t respond to anything I post. God knows I try hard to ignore anything you post.

  29. @Rev Bob
    I didn’t mean it to sound like I denied anyone said it; I just denied the accusations were true.
    Nor do I remember calling JJ a homophobe. I called her a hypocrite. I’m usually pretty careful about that.
    If JJ wants to end her harassment campaign against me, I’d be very happy to ignore everything she posts. But she is the one driving this; I have no control over it.

  30. @OGH: As I’ve told other people in these comments: don’t put words in my mouth — it’s unsanitary.

    @kathodus: the terms homosexual and heterosexual weren’t even invented until the 1800s. I’d forgotten that — shamefully both because of a major recent article (NPR or BBC, I forget which) discussing how definitions used not to be so rigorous (cf @HRJ’s comments), but also because I saw The Invention of Lovebefore it hit the mainstage and remember the wonderful exchange (paraphrased): “I’ve just come up with a name for us!” “That’s terrible! You’re mixing Latin and Greek!”

  31. Greg Hullender on April 22, 2017 at 7:56 pm said:

    If JJ wants to end her harassment campaign against me, I’d be very happy to ignore everything she posts. But she is the one driving this; I have no control over it.

    You posted a comment on this thread about JJ specifically so you could bring up an old argument from months ago!

  32. @Greg

    I suggest whiting out or ignoring JJ. There are a number of filers I try to scan past because I know there posting style pushes my buttons.

    I’ve been back a couple of days and I’m quickly remembering “oh yeah skip HIM” because “the way HE words things makes me want to scream and hit something” or “HIS opinions always tick me off and responding leads to me having to apologize”. For some reason it’s rare for it to be a her.

    As point of fact I can remember a number of times when you’ve spoken “for the filers” and we’ve asked you not to do so. At no time have you apologized or during my time here stopped doing so.

  33. @JJ – does your complaints of Greg’s “bad behavior” include regular cursing? Or perhaps regular arguments with so many most every day? Or perhaps Greg does not agree with every JJ opinion?

    Just curious exactly how you define “bad behavior.”

    As for me, off on another 900+ mile 48hrs trip to help my wife.

  34. Greg Hullender: You have kept up a non-stop campaign of harassment against me for over two years now, and I’ve done nothing to deserve it.

    What I have done is call you out on your frequent bad behavior here on File770. Of course you consider it “harassment” and try to paint yourself as a victim — because you’d prefer to be able to engage in your continual bad behavior without anyone calling you out on it.

    Of course you try to comfort yourself by telling yourself the lie that I dislike you because you are gay — because you can’t deal with the truth: that the reason I dislike you is that I think you are an egotistical, mansplaining asshole who is utterly incapable of recognizing and acknowledging his repeated incidents of bad behavior — never mind ever actually being capable of apologizing for any of it.

    Your completely unwarranted, unprovoked attack on me in this thread is just one of many incidents in your lengthy history of “never behaving badly” on File770.

  35. @Greg: “I didn’t mean it to sound like I denied anyone said it; I just denied the accusations were true.”

    You have just crossed over from “I was misunderstood” into straight-up “that post doesn’t exist” gaslighting. Care to try again?

  36. Chip Hitchcock: @OGH: As I’ve told other people in these comments: don’t put words in my mouth — it’s unsanitary.

    Your remark was uncalled for.

  37. @Greg

    I’ll just point out the hypocrisy of JJ calling anyone out on homophobia. Last year she posted a link to a song with homophobic lyrics and, when I called her on it, “explained” to me why it wasn’t offensive. There’s nothing like explaining to a gay man why your homophobic crap isn’t really offensive to show what you really are.

    I’m sorry but every time I read this paragraph it reads as you calling JJ homophobic. Do you directly state it? No. It’s clearly the takeaway we are supposed to get from the first sentence and it’s pounded home by the rest of the paragraph.

  38. This is why I whited out Greg a couple of months ago.
    ( dfee69bca4cd1e0d4e72fd881096ceb5 )

  39. JJ & Greg: I allow a lot of leeway in comments. But this go-round between you is never going to sort itself out through a frank exchange of comments here, and I’m concerned that it scares people off the place. Please do whatever you need to do to stop tangling with each other, whether it’s one of Tasha’s ideas, or your own.

  40. @kathodus: “Gaiman’s LGBTQ-friendly stance comes through even in the Sandman series of (oh mercyful fate) a generation ago. I don’t see why he would have felt the need to let people know he’s down with The Gays in 2012.”

    ROFL, yeah, as another long-time Gaiman reader (mostly comics, granted), this is so true. 🙂

    “Oh, her book covers! So bad. Almost Baenian.”

    I like McGrath’s art a lot, but these aren’t super-inspired and there’s very much a saminess to them. They seem (from my limited exposure) fairy run-of-the-mill Urban Fantasy, though.

    Speaking of which, I explained UF to my mom an hour or two ago (the way it tends to be used these days, I mean; not just “fantasy in a city”). I’m not sure I did a great job, but I believe she got it. She reads cozy mysteries and some general fiction and maybe a little lit fic – not SFF (though she read the Harry Potter novels), so she’s not familiar with SFF subgenres and marketing categories.

    @Heather Rose Jones, et al.: Interesting info/comments re. homosexuality in that period of history, thanks.

    @Matt Y: “The term virtue signaling is mostly a form of asshole signaling” – LOL, nice summary and so true.

    @Tasha Turner: Hi and welcome sorta-back.

  41. Speaking of which, I explained UF to my mom an hour or two ago (the way it tends to be used these days, I mean; not just “fantasy in a city”). I’m not sure I did a great job, but I believe she got it. She reads cozy mysteries and some general fiction and maybe a little lit fic – not SFF (though she read the Harry Potter novels), so she’s not familiar with SFF subgenres and marketing categories.

    In general, I find that UF is a good gateway drug for people who are mystery fans, since there often isn’t too much worldbuilding to absorb and many UF series have mystery plots.

  42. @Greg Hullender: “No, I’ve never done anything like that. I simply state my opinions. Repeating a lie never makes it true.”

    Disagreeing that you’ve done it doesn’t magically make various people calling you out on it a bunch of liars. They’re stating their opinions as well. You can’t have it both ways. Regardless, I stand by what I said, which was that you were being hypocritical in pointing out @JJ’s supposed hypocrisy.

    You’re not the victim, and it is not your place to tell someone whether he/she was offended or not.

    I did not tell you whether you were offended or not. Don’t put words in my mouth. You never learn, do you.

    You wouldn’t tolerate this for a second under other circumstances.

    Don’t tell me what I would or wouldn’t do. You really never do learn, do you. In these circumstances, I would not put words into your mouth and would not try to speak for you, after having it pointed out that this is why your gratuitous snipe at @JJ was hypocritical!

    Occasionally I felt like people were a little hard on your about this sort of thing, or that not all of the instances were you speaking for someone or for the group. Not always – but occasionally. Being directly on the receiving end feels very different, and what sympathy I may have had for you in those instances just evaporated.

    Anyway, as @Rev. Bob pointed out, I was disagreeing with @JJ being homophobic. Perhaps I should’ve written “disagree that @JJ…” instead of “disagree with calling @JJ…” but was that actually unclear? (Rev. Bob got the point.) If so, now it should be crystal clear. (Still not sure how you get from me disagreeing with calling someone X, to telling you whether you were offended – wildly, wildly different things. Very much pisses me off.)

    Odd that I’ve never seen you give that advice to JJ. And I’m far from the only person JJ has trouble with.

    Again as the Reverend said, I gave that advice to both of you. Read more carefully! But FYI your out-of-nowhere gratuitous snipe referring to something from months ago (and mischaracterizing it, IMHO) was like the straw that broke the camel’s back. I usually try to stay out of y’all’s stuff.

    BTW these are not accurate descriptions of your comment upthread I originally replied to: “God knows I try hard to ignore anything you post.” and “I have no control over it” (a bald-faced lie; obviously you control what you post).

  43. kathodus: Oh, her book covers! So bad. Almost Baenian.

    Kendall: I like McGrath’s art a lot, but these aren’t super-inspired and there’s very much a saminess to them. They seem (from my limited exposure) fairy run-of-the-mill Urban Fantasy, though.

    There’s no question that McGrath is talented, but most of his book covers really don’t do much for me (although I would say that they’re still far better than “Baenian”). I really enjoy the October Daye books, but I’m not keen on the covers. But since I’m usually reading them on e-book, I don’t have to look at them much.

  44. @Mike: “I’m concerned that it scares people off the place”

    For whatever it’s worth, speaking for myself as an infrequent commenter, I think your concern is totally justified. Both Greg and JJ have individually said stuff that I find pretty annoying, but not enough to bother setting up a killfile. But whenever they’re talking at each other it’s incredibly unpleasant and makes me want to avoid this place… and I don’t care who started it.

  45. @Cora: “In general, I find that UF is a good gateway drug for people who are mystery fans, since there often isn’t too much worldbuilding to absorb and many UF series have mystery plots.”

    Interesting point! I’m not sure she’s looking to expand her horizons, but also, I wonder if I could find suitable UF. She likes the world building & descriptions in Harry Potter better than the plots, heh, but she’s in her 80s and would not like the adult content in most UF. I don’t mean just sex, but for example, I believe the casual nudity in Midnight Riot/Rivers of London in one place would turn her off the book. Hmm, is there G-rated UF out there, like a cozy mystery UF? (G is the General Audiences movie rating in the U.S.; it means all ages – no minimum age recommendation.) 😉

    Heck, she doesn’t like cussing, even. (Though I figure even a cozy mystery must have the occasional “bad word”???)

  46. @JJ: Heh, silly typo on my part – “fairy run-of-the-mill” by which I meant “fairly” with an L.

    I should’ve mentioned, I was just skimming over the covers online, so they were small images and may look more interesting/varied if I zoom in. Also, I’m probably being a little unfair, since I believe publishers want covers in a series to go together/look somewhat similar for branding purposes.

  47. Kendall: is there G-rated UF out there, like a cozy mystery UF?

    I just finished the 5 books in Emma Newman’s Split Worlds series, and really enjoyed it. There’s one long plot arc with its own mystery through the series, but each book has its own subplot, usually with one or two mysteries to be solved — which is probably why I liked it so much. I used to read lots of mundane mysteries, but I don’t much any more, because not having SFFnal elements makes them seem bland to me these days.

    And I would say that it’s “G-rated” — but as I don’t consciously gauge for that, I might be forgetting R-rated details, so anyone else who’s aware of it, please chime in.

  48. If JJ wants to end her harassment campaign against me, I’d be very happy to ignore everything she posts. But she is the one driving this; I have no control over it.

    That’s complete bullshit.

    JJ didn’t even mention you here; she’d been talking about something else, and you chose to make a drive-by attack so you could bring up an old argument for the repetition value of it.

    You were the one driving this one.

    Ordinarily, I try to stay out of this squabble, and I’ll go back to trying to stay out of it, but I don’t want you to get the impression that this particular piece of bullshit is credible.

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