118 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 6/8/18 Near A File By A Pixel There’s A Scroll In The Ground”

1. First up!

   10) Hunh, neat. Given his collection of figurines and the like, it is fitting that Del Toro would BECOME an action figure in his own right.

2. (9): We’ve got movie sign!

3. [click]

4. (1) Geez, they charged for the book (after first lying by omission about how they were going to do that, then firing the person who told the truth), and it STILL took a year to get those out? I continue to be massively unimpressed, as I suspect are other people outwith North America who are bidding and have to hope the stank doesn’t get all over them too. New Orleans has never gotten another Worldcon after their lackluster 1988 showing, and it took Baltimore 15 years after their budgeting problems (the con itself was swell, except the odor of stale seafood lingering during the Hugos) to land another one.

   (10) Action figure GdT looks to have been poleaxed. Or pithed. Or something else horrific, which I guess is appropriate?

5. (3) Ranked choice voting isn’t that hard. Science fiction fans have been doing it for decades.

   This is a test. It is only a test. ?

   Here in 3512, we are required to take these tests from time to time.

   Oh, dear. Looks like I failed the test.

6. (3) VOTING.

   Just a point of order here, in that EPH affected only the method for Hugo nominations, and did not effect the method of Hugo voting, which has been in place for decades.

7. (12) GALLOWAY SETTLEMENT. an arbitrator on the case said that some communications by the school contravened Galloway’s privacy rights and caused harm to his reputation

   If Galloway was concerned about his reputation, he shouldn’t have had an affair with a student. He, not the school, was the one who caused harm to his own reputation. 🙄

8. Lurkertype: Geez, they charged for the book (after first lying by omission about how they were going to do that, then firing the person who told the truth), and it STILL took a year to get those out?

   They’re not charging for either of these books. They’re using the massive surplus from membership fees (which was accumulated by not spending on adequate programming facilities) to print and ship the books to all Supporting Members.

9. JJ on June 8, 2018 at 8:15 pm said:

   Just a point of order here, in that EPH affected only the method for Hugo nominations, and did not effect the method of Hugo voting, which has been in place for decades.

   It didn’t even affect the method for Hugo Nominations. It’s precisely the same as before–eligible nominators list their five favorite/best/most outstanding works/people on the nominating ballot.

   It affected the calculation of the nominations. Instead of first six past the post, we have the new EPH calculations.

10. (4) MANITOBA BOOK AWARDS.

    I really enjoyed Fragment; my mini-review:
    This short novel posits a realistic future scenario when climate change has accelerated the current damage to Earth’s ecosystem, illustrating the conflicts among differing vested interests which have a stake in what preventive and corrective measures are — or are not — taken. There’s an additional speculative element of a research scientist figuring out how to communicate with a cetacean species, and the potential for that species to help humans. A fast and enjoyable read.

11. 3) Your summary of the Wired article is slightly misleading on the last point. The delay in counting mail-in ballots is what’s slowing down the results; that has nothing to do with ranked-choice voting. A traditional runoff election that was this close would still have the same problem with last-minute ballots.

    As for the article itself, the author didn’t really make any effort to explain why ranked-choice/IRV is “insane.” The closest he gets is a quote about “monotonicity,” which he also didn’t bother to explain. When someone deploys a term of art in quotes like that, I tend to assume that the author doesn’t know its meaning any more than I do.

    The SF Chronicle had an unsurprisingly shoddy editorial along the same lines; it basically assumed that the reader had never heard of a runoff. But at least it didn’t claim to be about “math” and then fail to provide any math.

12. @JJ: Woo hoo, stiffing the attendees to give the supporting members a perk, a year late. Yet another example of swell con-running by Helsinki. Can I borrow your little eye-rolling guy?

13. Here’s how to invoke the eye-rolling guy:

    :roll:

14. (3) The SF mayoral ballot was not unlike Hugo voting, I hope No Award doesn’t win. The guy who scolded his enthusiastic volunteer for trying to engage me in conversation when I was in a pre-coffee state is leading, I hope he gets it.

    (14) I just returned from a terrific mini-vacation in Denver, where I stayed in a B&B with each room named for a different composer, and mine was Debussy. That video is very compatible with a Colorado state of mind. The concert was at Red Rocks, a place I’ve always wanted to visit, and on the second night there was an outrageous thunderstorm that postponed the music by an hour and provided terrific background lightning effects as it retreated toward the city. I’m still aglow.

15. 3). As of this evening, SF is on it’s NINTH pass to try to determine a winner. And there are still absentee and provisional ballots to be counted. It hasn’t helped that they’ve decided that the deadline for mailed-in absentee ballots was that they could be mailed on Tuesday so they were given until Friday to get to City Hall.
    Whoever loses will probably contest it.
    I voted for a candidate that had no chance to win and refused to list a 2nd and 3rd. Because I really didn’t see any difference between the main three.

16. 12) We have a policy at work to never disclose why anyone was fired, we can only give the dates of employment. Cause of fear of being sued if we say anything negative about the person to the prospective new employer- apparently this sort of thing has been happening for a while.

17. For those who are interested, I have a post up at Galactic Journey about (West) German science fiction in the 1950s and early 1960s today. This is the first in a three part series.

18. @bookworm1398–

    12) We have a policy at work to never disclose why anyone was fired, we can only give the dates of employment. Cause of fear of being sued if we say anything negative about the person to the prospective new employer- apparently this sort of thing has been happening for a while.

    Decades.

19. There’s a Scroll in the Pixel, dear Michael, dear Michael –
    There’s a Scroll in the Pixel, dear Michael, a Scroll!

20. 14) Can anyone ID the music for that video? My aging eyes simply cannot read teeny grey print on a black background. Debussy is rather later than my usual taste in classical, but I like that one.

21. With regard to the discussion of Imposter Syndrome and The Smartest Person In The Room in yesterday’s scroll, here are two more good threads from authors

    Seanan McGuire and Jean Johnson

22. Lee: Can anyone ID the music for that video? My aging eyes simply cannot read teeny grey print on a black background. Debussy is rather later than my usual taste in classical, but I like that one.

    Lee: The credits say “Musique d’après Claude DeBussy”, which according to my (admittedly rusty) French means “in the style of” rather than “by”.

23. @JJ:

    If Galloway was concerned about his reputation, he shouldn’t have had an affair with a student. He, not the school, was the one who caused harm to his own reputation. ?

    Victim blaming. But the right sort of victim. Very discriminating of you.

24. John A Arkansawyer: Victim blaming.

    Inasmuch as he was the “victim” of the consquences of his own bad behavior, sure.

    It’s funny how the things people do will end up affecting their reputation with others. Who would have expected that?

25. I’m delighted albeit not surprised that the late Anthony Bourdain was, along with his other protean qualities, One of Us. Excellent!

    That gets added to the many reasons I mourn his loss and celebrate his life, which also include the fact that every time he ran a telly episode set in one of my several haunts, he totally got it. E.g., his ‘The Layover’ episode in my home town (Hong Kong) absolutely was the authentic feel of Hong Kong. And he nailed it, every time. (Curiously, his ‘The Layover’ episode about San Francisco, near where I now live, was mostly about bars, so I can’t speak to its authenticity, but assume it’s Someone Else’s Authentic San Francisco.)

    For a farewell look at this magnificent fellow, I can recommend his book forward for octogenarian author Marilyn Hagerty, and an obligatory photo with 80s hair.

26. @JJ: From the article:

    On Friday, an arbitrator on the case said that some communications by the school contravened Galloway’s privacy rights and caused harm to his reputation.

    You are defending an employer who violated an employee’s privacy rights and attacking the employee whose rights were violated. Fuck that shit.

    (Sentence removed by me, John A, for going further than intended)

27. John A Arkansawyer: You are defending an employer who violated an employee’s privacy rights and attacking the employee whose rights were violated.

    His firing was justified.

    In February 2018, during the arbitration proceedings, the Faculty Association withdrew its claim on behalf of Galloway for reinstatement, as well as the claims for compensation for lost income and benefits. That meant the arbitrator did not have to deal with the issue of whether the university had cause to dismiss Galloway.

    Yes, the arbitrator’s ruling was that the University should have handled communications more appropriately, and they were fined for not doing so. But the withdrawal of the other claims are the result of his firing being justified due to his misconduct.

    He was never going to be able to keep quiet the reason why he was fired. While the University’s communications might have hastened that reason becoming public, the fact remains that it would have become public at some point anyway, and he was the cause for his own reputation being damaged.

    You are defending someone who did something wrong and was appropriately sanctioned for it.

    You may believe that people should be able to break laws and rules and avoid having to face consequences — including loss of reputation — for that. I don’t agree.

28. @Harold Osler: Gosh, I so envy you having municipal, i.e., San Francisco, operatic politics, which I remember cherishing as part of the joy of being a San Franciscan over the decades I lived there. Other, lesser places might think they had politics, but they didn’t have the Sheriff’s Department (this being the one & only City and County in California) having a long-running operation against the Board of Supervisors. Nor did you other benighted citizens have a Board of Supervisors passing international policy directives (well, unless your city was Berkeley or Madison).

    Alas, since my wife and I moved back to the suburbs (pastoral unincorporated San Mateo County), we’ve had to rely on SFF for our implausible fantasy plots. The politics just lacks the same ghostwritten-by-Samuel-Beckett spirit that pervades my old town.

29. Rick Moen on June 9, 2018 at 3:29 am said:
    I’m delighted albeit not surprised that the late Anthony Bourdain was, along with his other protean qualities, One of Us. Excellent!

    That gets added to the many reasons I mourn his loss and celebrate his life, which also include the fact that every time he ran a telly episode set in one of my several haunts, he totally got it. E.g., his ‘The Layover’ episode in my home town (Hong Kong) absolutely was the authentic feel of Hong Kong. And he nailed it, every time. (Curiously, his ‘The Layover’ episode about San Francisco, near where I now live, was mostly about bars, so I can’t speak to its authenticity, but assume it’s Someone Else’s Authentic San Francisco.)

    His No Reservations episode in Istanbul was definitely authentic in all the right ways.

30. @JJ: Your argument is an inversion of “If you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be afraid of losing your privacy.”

    You are instead claming, “If you had something to hide, it was okay to violate your privacy.”

    I believe employers who violate their employees’ rights or contract agreements should be held accountable, and that schadengasms over such privacy violations serve the employing class against the rest of us. I’m glad the university got hit with a civil judgement for violation of privacy. I hope it hurt enough to change their behavior.

    For those interested in the arbitrator’s decision, Maclean’s has it in PDF format. As you’ll see, it’s strictly about privacy violations.

    I will add this from the Canadian Press: “The faculty association that represented Galloway says the amount ($167,000) is well above the typical award of $500 to $10,000 in similar cases.” Quite a privacy violation!

    One could speculate that the size of the award had something to do with dropping the unfair firing claim, but then one would have to suppose that the university wasn’t confident in its case, and then one would have to consider that the firing (the details of which are still sealed) might not have been so justified as one might have thought.

    But that’s all speculation. Everyone seems happy with the outcome. Who am I to mess up a good thing? I’ll just be glad someone whose privacy got violated got paid.

31. John A Arkansawyer: Your argument is an inversion of “If you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be afraid of losing your privacy.” You are instead claming, “If you had something to hide, it was okay to violate your privacy.”

    You are attributing to me something I neither said nor believe.

    Read closely, please:

    The University was wrong to violate his privacy. Blaming the University for violating his privacy is correct.

    However, had they not done so, his reputation would have been damaged anyway because of his own actions.

    Blaming the University for damaging his reputation is incorrect. His own actions are what caused the damage to his reputation.

32. @John A. Arkansawyer–

    For those interested in the arbitrator’s decision, Maclean’s has it in PDF format. As you’ll see, it’s strictly about privacy violations.

    Yes. It is.

    Because the claims for wrongful dismissal, loss of benefits, and loss of wages were withdrawn, due to the awkward fact that those actions weren’t wrongful.

    So there was nothing left but the privacy violation, on which the University was in the wrong, and the ex-professor prevailed, and got substantial compensation.

    The University’s failure to properly guard privacy caused the reputation-damaging information to come out well before they should have, when the ex-professor was still mostly just accused. That shouldn’t have happened. At least in theory, he could have produced evidence clearing himself, and the process should have been allowed to proceed to its proper conclusion.

    But given that the end result was that he was properly dismissed, the reasons why would have eventually come out, in their proper time. And in the end, it’s those reasons that damaged his reputation.

    I would suspect that the reason for the large award is that the University probably had really bad procedures around communications privacy in these kinds of cases, and really, really needed to be slapped hard in that respect.

    It doesn’t change the fact that, fundamentally, what damaged the guy’s reputation was his own actions. It just happened too soon, when he had not yet had the proper chance to prove his innocence to which he was entitled.

    In the end, he wasn’t innocent, the firing was justified, and his reputation would still have been in the toilet in the long run, due to his own actions.

33. @JJ: Let’s get at what was actually said and when. The sequence of events is this:

    1) An allegation was made about an employee
    2) The university issued this statement
    3) The next month, the university began an investigation into the allegation

    Can you see why having your name linked like this excerpt highlights might be a tad problematic?

    Please keep in mind that the investigation has not yet commenced and no findings have been made about any wrongdoing by Prof. Galloway.

    Our priority is attending to the safety, health and wellbeing of all members of our community. If you ever have information that is concerning to your safety and wellbeing, we encourage you to seek the support available through Counselling Services and your program as well as the Dean’s Office.

    That’s a nice job of administrative undercutting there. It gives the impression your safety is endangered by that guy we have to say is technically innocent.

    I’d originally mixed this case up with a different one in my mind. I’d forgotten this is the one where the guy is getting fired for an age-appropriate affair with a student. The other allegations were either found to be unsubstantiated (her other allegations among them) or were stimulated by people going out to dig up dirt.

    And what dirt they found! Drinking with students. “Sexualized”* remarks. All sorts of stuff that either didn’t matter or wasn’t substantiated.

    Based on the record of this case, the guy is getting screwed over way out of proportion to anything wrong he did.

    *Sexualization gets a bad rap, but I digress

34. John A Arkansawyer: Let’s get at what was actually said and when

    If you wish to perseverate on this, you’ll have to do it without me.

    Lis has somehow managed to completely understand what I said, while you have managed to completely read something else I never said. Ultimately, she has hit the crux of the matter, and the point which I have made repeatedly in this thread:

    the firing was justified, and his reputation would still have been in the toilet in the long run, due to his own actions.

    Whether you think the firing is justified is your concern, and I am not interested in debating that with you.

35. @JJ: I understand you loud and clear. You are saying “I like the result and therefore I am not concerned about the process. In particular, if the process helped bias the question of what really happened? We still got the guilty man. The man we found guilty with our process.” Once again, fuck that shit.

36. John A Arkansawyer: I understand you loud and clear.

    While your original failure of reading comprehension might — might — have been inadvertent, your continuing attempts to put words in my mouth which I have never said is deliberate and malicious.

    Since you (belatedly) showed enough sense to delete the spittle-flecked invective you posted to your straw version of me, I was kind enough to not mention it.

    Go pick a fight with someone else. Or better yet, just quit making shit up in an effort to try to pick fights with people. Maybe go listen to some music instead. 🙄

37. @JJ: I appreciate you not quoting it. It was far too mean and I wasn’t sure it was well-supported by the facts. I was embarrassed by it quickly enough to beat the edit window deleting it, yet I don’t mind you mentioning it, since I said it. I marked its absence, right? So there you have it–I overreacted.

    I would hope no one believes those were your actual words you say I put in your mouth. But I also hope no one believes that handing out a statement like UBC handed out about Galloway doesn’t bias the investigation, and the public perception, of what he did and did not do. It does. That is bad process.

    That matters to me, a lot. It seems to matter less to you. I doubt you have contempt for the ideas of fair process or rule of law. I think the likeliest reason you (or anyone, including me) has who does respect them makes exceptions is that we like the results. We may even be right to do so. But even if it’s right, it still may not be fair.

38. I’d originally mixed this case up with a different one in my mind. I’d forgotten this is the one where the guy is getting fired for an age-appropriate affair with a student.

    If one is a professor, there is no such thing as an age-appropriate affair with a student.

39. Stop what you’re doin’, ’cause I’m about to ruin the pixel and the file that you’re used to.

40. John A Arkansawyer: It seems to matter less to you.

    I think that you’re still trying to address imaginary things which I did not say.

    There’s a reason why I did not say that he deserved to have his suspension announced before an investigation was undertaken and completed. I don’t think he deserved that, and I have no problem that he asked for damages from the University for that violation of his privacy. I am sure that their procedures will be stiffened up now so that it (hopefully) won’t happen again, and that is a good thing.

    There’s a reason why the only thing I addressed was his claim that the University had caused damage to his reputation: because this is very obviously an attempt on his part to place the blame for his reputation damage on something other than his own actions. He has not accepted accountability for his actions.

    I was not privy to the details of the investigation, which is why I chose not to comment on it. I think that the fact that the unjustified dismissal and claim for wages and benefits was dropped indicates that his counsel advised him that he could not win on it. Therefore, I suspect that the facts support his dismissal. And I note that ultimately the University never did reveal the specific reason for the dismissal; he himself did that.

    I frankly think that the hue-and-cry of the people who were attempting to defend him, loudly criticisizing the University, demanding a public “due process”, and attempting to stir up public condemnation of the University, did his reputation far more damage than the suspension announcement. It caused the whole thing to become extremely visible internationally, and hotly discussed. If they had just STFU and let the investigation run its course, I think that the profile of the whole incident would have remained much lower, and that possibly it would have only been something of which people in Canada were aware. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

    Whether the University’s policies which were violated are “just” policies is another discussion. I think that any discussion of a relationship between two “consenting” adults must take into account the power dynamics of the working relationship between those two people. I have seen people close to me who were ostensibly “consenting adults”, yet were being taken advantage of anyway, because their emotions impaired their judgment. In such cases, it is incumbent upon the person in the position of power to recognize that they are likely exerting an undue or unfair influence, even if they have no intention of doing so. And that is why businesses and institutions have regulations against relationships with subordinates.

    You say “I think the likeliest reason you… makes exceptions is that we like the results”. I haven’t made any “exceptions” here, and I have no idea what “exceptions” you are talking about. I endorse the University’s decision to fire him for justifiable reasons. If the reasons were not justifiable, I would feel differently. But the guy came out and admitted that he violated regulations.

41. Am having a nice heavy metal festival. Have sacrificed an emu to Heimdahl. Or at least some kinf of emu jerky.

42. @ Hampus

    Any favorite acts? From what I’ve heard, Europe has a ton of metal festivals.

43. @Lee
    The video at the beginning has a credit: After Debussy’s “Les fees sont d’exquises danseuses.” (all missing accents my responisibility).

44. @John A Arkansawyer
    @JJ

    I didn’t want to have to do it, you’ve both forced my hand. This is for your own good.

45. @Iphinome–Thank you. I don’t know if that did JJ or John any good, but it was a positive addition to my day.

46. @Iphinome: iz DED from teh CUTE baby wombat……thank you!

47. @ John A: A nice example of RVO there — Reverse Victim and Offender. Funny how often this comes up in cases involving sexual misconduct.

    @ Jayn: Thanks, that gives me a place to look for something that’s at least similar.

48. Meredith Moment:

    Provenance by Ann Leckie is part of Amazon US’s Daily Deal today for $2.99. I figured that there might be some people here who might be interested. I don’t know if it’s on sale anywhere else.

    Here in 7212, our feline overlords run our elections, with an amused disdain. In other news, water is wet.

49. Provenance is also $2.99 at Kobo. (I already have it.)

50. Please note that this is not actually directed at anyone. It’s abstract art, like the Cursing Polka:

    “File you and the pixel you scrolled in on!”

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