(1) NUKED THE FRIDGE. Yahoo! News says there may be a good reason why Indy survived the atomic blast, in “Fan Theory Explains That Much-Maligned Indiana Jones Scene”.
Much like ‘jumping the shark’ from ‘Happy Days’, the Indiana Jones movie series has a similar phrase to encompass the moment it all went a little bit too far.
And it’s ‘nuked the fridge’.
Many ardent fans of Harrison Ford’s swashbuckling archeologist very much drew the line at the moment in ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ where Indy jumps into a conveniently situated fridge to protect himself from a nuclear blast.
Walking away unscathed, it did seem a trifle unfeasible….
(2) POWERLESS LEAD ACTRESS. The name of the show, Powerless, makes punning inevitable. “Vanessa Hudgens Is Far From ‘Powerless’ – ‘Grease’ Star Will Headline NBC’s New DC Comics Sitcom” reports ScienceFiction.com.
Vanessa Hudgens is on a roll after starring in FOX’s smash hit version of ‘Grease Live!’ She’s just landed the lead role in NBC’s upcoming DC Comics-inspired sitcom ‘Powerless’. Hudgens will play Emily Locke, an insurance claims adjuster, working for “the worst insurance company in the DC Universe” which covers victims caught in the crossfire of super hero/villain battles. This workplace comedy has been compared to ‘The Office’ but set within the DC Universe.
(3) DECLAN FINN’S FELINE FAN. At Camestros Felapton’s blog, a hilarious faux interview “Timothy the Talking Cat Reads Honor at Stake”.
[Camestros] Noted. So what book do you have today?
[Timothy] Well, today I have with me Honor at Stake by Declan Finn. A tale of love and vampires in modern New York.[Camestros] And why this book in particular?
[Timothy] Well I was reading twitter and there was this tweet with a graph that showed it was really doing well in the Sad Puppy 4 lists.
[Camestros] The graph from my blog?
[Timothy] Your blog? I don’t think so, this was some sort of SadPuppy4 twitter account.
[Camestros] They tweeted my graph. Do you not even read this blog?
[Timothy] Good grief, no. I mean your very name offends me.…[Camestros] So the sexy love interest vampire – she is conflicted about this? A bit of a Romeo & Vamp-Juliet thing going on?
[Timothy] No, no. She is a good vampire and a good Catholic girl. She goes to mass and everything.
[Camestros] So crucifix don’t work on vampires then?
[Timothy] No, you see the book has this all worked out. Vampires can be good or bad and the more good you are the nicer you look and the less things like holy water and sunlight affect you. The more bad you are the more hideous you become and the more holy water hurts,
[Camestros] OK so the bad vampires are like regular vampires.
[Timothy] Yup – a bit like the ones in Buffy.
[Camestros] Let me guess – the author explains this by comparing them to the vampires in Buffy?
[Timothy] Exactly! Quality writing – explains things up front so you know what is going on.
(4) MEMORIAL CUISINE. Frequent File 770 contributor James H. Burns has found yet another way to time travel… See “Recipe For the Dead” at Brooklyn Discovery.
Perhaps this is unusual. I have no way of knowing. But when I’m missing a loved one who has passed, or wishing to commemorate someone who is no longer with us… Sometimes, I’ll cook a meal that they loved. Not that I necessarily ever cooked for the departed. But sharing a repast that they favored, having those aromas in the air as the food is cooking, seems a very real way of honoring a memory.
(5) OSHIRO STORY FOLLOWUP. Here are some items of interest related to the Mark Oshiro story.
- K. Tempest Bradford on Robin Wayne Bailey
https://twitter.com/tinytempest/status/701465208200495104
- Tiffany Robbins on the drama of ConQuesT 46.
3) I am and remain a big fan of Ms. Rosen. I’ve only read one of her novels, but I fell in love with her personality from the two times I’ve been to ConQuesT. She is lively, articulate on her strong opinions, and she is a strong woman. No, I do not always agree with her. In fact, I often greatly disagree with her and her methods of dealing with situations. It in no way changes my respect for her. She doesn’t need me to agree with her for her to be comfortable in her skin. We can disagree, and it in no way takes away from her person. That’s the biggest reason I like the woman. So, in my opinion, she can pull her pants down whenever she wants. Her white legged exposure at ConQuesT 45 was in no way indecent, and no one was assaulted by anything more than her wit, charm, and strong opinions. And honestly, if that’s not what you’re looking for, then you probably shouldn’t go to a convention filled with writers. If the writers at a convention are going to be overtly nice and congenial, I’m not going to pay a hefty entry fee to go listen to their polite little opinions. I go to conventions because of the lively discussion of various opinions from very opinionate writers. If I leave feeling strongly about something, even if that feeling is offense, then in my opinion, the panelists have done their jobs and done them well.
4) I was not present at ConQuesT 46 and cannot speak to the events that happened there.
(6) THE LEVERAGE CONCEPT. Elizabeth Bear offers help in “We provide…Leverage”.
If I am a guest at a convention you are attending, or simply a fellow attendee, and you feel that you have been harassed, intimidated, or that your boundaries have been trampled or ignored, please feel free to ask me for support, help, intervention, or just an escort to a safer area or backup on the way to talk to convention or hotel security.
If you do not feel that you can stick up for yourself, I will help. I will be a buffer or a bulwark if necessary or requested.
Just walk up to me and ask for Leverage, and I promise that I will take you seriously and I’ll try to make things better.
- Sigrid Ellis makes the same offer for those at CONvergence and WisCon in “Convention Safety: We Provide Leverage”.
- L.A. Gilman will provide Leverage at Anachrocon.
(This is not an exhaustive list.)
(7) BOSKONE COMPLETE. Steve Davidson finishes his Boskone report at Amazing Stories.
Final thoughts? There were lots of smiles walking out the door on Sunday. The David Hartwell memorial was touching, much-needed and well-handled. From what I was able to see, everything went very smoothly (except for perhaps a few hiccups with pre-registration that I understand are already being addressed).
(8) SLOCOMBE OBIT. Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe has died at the age of 103 reports the BBC.
Slocombe shot 80 films, from classic Ealing comedies such as The Lavender Hill Mob and Kind Hearts and Coronets, to three Indiana Jones adventures.
In 1939 he filmed some of the earliest fighting of World War Two in Poland.
Indiana Jones director Steven Spielberg said Slocombe – who won Baftas for the Great Gatsby, The Servant, and Julia – “loved the action of filmmaking”.
(9) NOW YOU KNOW. Some believe Carrie Fisher revealed the working title of Star Wars: Episode VIII when she tweeted this photo of her dog. It’s on the sweatshirt back of the director’s chair.
Y?????????????????????????®???????????????? pic.twitter.com/Y3eyMSb48z
— Carrie Fisher (@carrieffisher) February 19, 2016
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY
- February 22, 1957 — When Scott Carey begins to shrink because of exposure to a combination of radiation and insecticide, medical science is powerless to help him in The Incredible Shrinking Man, seen for the first time on this day in 1957. Did you know: special effects technicians were able to create giant drops of water by filling up condoms and dropping them.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRLS
- Born February 22, 1968 – Jeri Ryan
- Born February 22, 1975 – Drew Barrymore
(12) CORREIA ISN’T LEAVING TWITTER. Well, what else do you say when somebody announces “I’ll leave the account open to post blog links back to here and book ads, but other than that I’m not going to use it for any sort of conversation,” as Larry Correia did on Monster Hunter Nation today?
Recently they created a Trust and Safety Council, to protect people from being triggered with hurtful dissenting ideas. Of course the council is made up of people like Anita Sarkesian, so you know how it is going to swing.
They’ve been unverifying conservatives, and outright banning conservative journalists. Then there were rumors of “shadow banning” where people would post, but their followers wouldn’t see it in their timelines. So it’s like you’re talking to a room that you think has 9,000 people in it, but when the lights come on you’ve been wasting time talking to an empty room.
For the record, I don’t know if that’s what happened to me or not. Some of my posts have just disappeared from my timeline entirely. Other tweets seem to show up for some followers, but not others, and it wasn’t just replies. Beats me. Either something weird was going on and I’ve violated the unwritten rules of the Ministry of Public Truth, or their technical interface is just getting worse (never attribute to malice what could just be stupidity). Either way it is enough of a pain that it was getting to be not worth the hassle.
Then today they disappeared all of my friend Adam Baldwin’s tweets. Ironically, his only visible post (out of 8,000) was a link to an article about how Twitter is banning conservatives. That was the last straw.
(13) THAT DARNED JOURNALISM THING. Actually, Adam Baldwin deleted himself.
….Baldwin, who has nearly a quarter of a million followers, deleted his entire Twitter history Monday morning, leaving only one tweet asking for the CEO of Twitter to be fired and the abolishment of the platforms new Trust and Safety Council….
“This group-think, Orwellian, so-called Safety Council is really killing the wild west of ideas that Twitter was,” Baldwin laments:
“That’s what made Twitter fun. You could run across all sorts of differing viewpoints. That is what free speech is all about. As long as you’re not threatening people with violence, have at it.”
Baldwin cites the banning of prominent conservative tweeter Robert Stacy McCain as a major reason for leaving …
(14) REASON’S INTERPRETATION. Reason.com’s “Hit & Run” blog asks “Did Twitter’s Orwellian ‘Trust and Safety’ Council Get Robert Stacy McCain Banned?”
Twitter is a private company, of course, and if it wants to outlaw strong language, it can. In fact, it’s well within its rights to have one set of rules for Robert Stacy McCain, and another set of rules for everyone else. It’s allowed to ban McCain for no reason other than its bosses don’t like him. If Twitter wants to take a side in the online culture war, it can. It can confiscate Milo Yiannopoulos’s blue checkmark. This is not about the First Amendment.
But if that’s what Twitter is doing, it’s certainly not being honest about it—and its many, many customers who value the ethos of free speech would certainly object. In constructing its Trust and Safety Council, the social media platform explicitly claimed it was trying to strike a balance between allowing free speech and prohibiting harassment and abuse. But its selections for this committee were entirely one-sided—there’s not a single uncompromising anti-censorship figure or group on the list. It looks like Twitter gave control of its harassment policy to a bunch of ideologues, and now their enemies are being excluded from the platform.
(15) BRIANNA WU DEFENDS TWITTER. Brianna Wu commented on Facebook about Correia’s Twitter statement. (File 770 received permission to quote from it; the post is set to be visible to “friends” only.)
He and other conservative figures like Adam Baldwin are claiming that Twitter is breaking down on “free speech” and capitulating to the “SJWs,” which I guess means people like me. I have spent much of the last year asking Twitter and other tech companies to improve their harassment policies. There is one problem with Mr. Correria’s claim.
There is no evidence whatsoever for it.
None, zilch, zero. It’s a fantasy. A similar lie is going around that Twitter has put Anita Sarkeesian in charge of their Trust and Safety council, which is similarly baseless. I’ve spoken with a lot of tech companies in the last year and I have never heard anyone propose shadowbanning.
The only “proof” that Twitter is shadowbanning people comes from a disreputable conservative blog, that is so disreputable it cannot even be used as sourcing on Wikipedia. That blog used anonymous sourcing, and was written by someone with a personal axe to grind against Twitter.
The truth is, companies like Twitter are finally enforcing their own TOS if you threaten someone, dox someone, or set up an account specifically created to harass someone. That has led to some people being banned, and some accounts that perpetually break Twitter harassment rules to become deverified.
The backlash against Twitter is by people that prefer these system to remain as they are – a place where the women in your life will get rape threats, where anyone can have their private information posted, and where swarms of vicious mobs are destroying people’s reputation with slander.
The last I checked, almost 100 people have spread Mr. Correria’s baseless claim – and even more with Adam Baldwin. This is an important thing to fact check, and I hope you’ll share this to set the record straight.
(16) ELSEWHERE ON THE INTERNET. Bailey Lemon at Medium writes “Why This Radical Leftist is Disillusioned by Leftist Culture”.
…And yet I witness so many “activists” who claim to care about those at the bottom of society ignoring the realities of oppression, as if being offended by a person’s speech or worldview is equal to prison time or living on the streets. They talk about listening, being humble, questioning one’s preconceived notions about other people and hearing their lived experiences…and yet ignore the lived experiences of those who don’t speak or think properly in the view of university-educated social justice warriors, regardless of how much worse off they really are. That is not to say that we should accept bigotry in any form?—?far from it. But I would go as far as saying that the politically correct mafia on the left perpetuates a form of bigotry on its own because it alienates and “otherizes” those who do not share their ways of thinking and speaking about the world.
I’m tired of the cliques, the hierarchies, the policing of others, and the power imbalances that exist between people who claim to be friends and comrades. I am exhausted and saddened by the fact that any type of disagreement or difference of opinion in an activist circle will lead to a fight, which sometimes includes abandonment of certain people, deeming them “unsafe” as well as public shaming and slander.
(17) YES, THIS IS A SELECTED QUOTE: Dave Freer makes his feelings clear as the summer sun:
I couldn’t give a toss how I ‘come over’ to File 770 and its occupants, (there is no point in trying to please a miniscule market at the expense of my existing readers) but it’s a useful jumping off point:…
Is Freer simply unable to generate his own column ideas? He proves his indifference by spending most of today’s 2,500-word post teeing off about half-a-dozen imagined slights he thinks self-published writers suffered here.
(18) PROVERBIAL WISDOM. Mark Lawrence declines to reap the dividends of political blogging.
When you declare a political preference (especially at either end of the spectrum) you’re immediately plumbed into an extensive support network. It’s rather like a church. Complete strangers will shout “Amen, brother!”.
Yes, you may well alienate half the political spectrum but you’ll still have half left, and half of ‘everything’ looks pretty attractive when all you’ve got is all of nothing.
Plus, the business of blogging becomes easy. You don’t have to think up something new and original to write, you can just turn the handle on the outrage machine and content drops onto the page.
“SJWs ate my baby!”
“This group of two is insufficiently diverse, you BIGOT.”
If you don’t ‘get’ either of those headlines from opposing political extremes then I’m rather jealous of you.
Anyway, the fact is that joining a side in the culture war can seem like a no-brainer to an aspiring author who needs backup. I’m entirely sure that the motivations for many authors taking to political blogging are 100% genuine, born of deep convictions. I’m also sure that many jump on board, dial up their mild convictions to 11 and enjoy the ride, blog-traffic, retweets, prime spots on the ‘right on’ genre sites of their particular affiliation, oh my.
It’s a step I’ve never been able to take. I do have moderately strong political convictions, but they’re moderate ones, and moderation doesn’t sell, doesn’t generate traffic, doesn’t get retweeted.
(19) CASE IN POINT. io9 reports “The BBC Is Bringing Back The Twilight Zone As a Radio Drama”
Ten classic episodes of The Twilight Zone will be broadcast in the UK for the first time—but, much like the show’s trademark, there’s a twist. The episodes will be reinvented as radio plays taken from Rod Serling’s original TV scripts, thanks to BBC Radio 4 Extra.
According to the Independent, veteran actor Stacy Keach will step in to perform the late Serling’s iconic monologues; other cast members throughout the series will include Jane Seymour, Jim Caviezel, Michael York, Malcolm McDowell, and Don Johnson. Producer Carl Amari has owned the rights since 2002, which he obtained in part by promising to do the episodes justice in terms of production values and casting.
(20) TECH TUNES UP FOR TREK. The Daily News profiled cast members of the Star Trek musical parody being performed this weekend at CalTech.
It’s not unusual for the cast and crew to open up text books, work on papers and discuss theoretical physics in their downtime. It provides an opportunity to network too, with students acting beside people who work in the fields they’re studying, Wong said.
“To be able to stand on stage with all of these people and sing about ‘Star Trek’ that’s just crazy,” he said.
“Boldly Go!” started out with the cast meeting on weekends, before amping up to twice a week and nearly every day in the past month.
Marie Blatnik, who studies experimental nuclear physics and plays a fierce Klingon named Maltof, described the scheduling as hectic. She originally auditioned — in half a Starfleet uniform — for a different role, but the brothers recast a male Klingon when they saw her energy.
“It kind of feels like a cult where they lure you in with ‘it’s only 15 bucks’ then jump to ‘I want your life savings,” Blatnik joked about the time invested in the show.
(21) YOUR GAME OF THRONES NEIGHBORS. Seth Meyers has had two Late Show skits where Game of Thrones characters are featured in everyday situations:
- Melisandre at the Meyers’ baby shower:
- Jon Snow at a dinner party:
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Frank Wu, Rob Thornton, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Anna Nimmhaus (you know who you are!).]
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Much as Aaron, TheYoungPretender, Rob_Matic, etc. have all immediately attacked or dismissed my statements because they were contrary to the general consensus?
Your statements were dismissed because they were stupid. For example, your “paraphrase” of:
I will paraphrase the quote as saying, “People whose opinions I don’t like claim they are being silenced, and I could really care less how they feel about that because I don’t like them or what they believe.”
Is stupid. Correia and Baldwin claim of being silenced is rooted in misinformation, and conspiracy theory level gullibility. They claim Sarkeesian is heading the council. She isn’t. Correia claimed Baldwin was banned from twitter. He wasn’t. Correia claims he’s heard rumors of shadowbanning, with no evidence they are true. People said they didn’t see some of his tweets, which is something that happens all of the time. From this, Correia constructed a conspiracy theory that only the truly foolish would believe, and you bought it hook, line, and sinker.
Correia’s bullshit isn’t being dismissed because someone we don’t like is being silenced (and he’s not being silenced anyway, since he’s posting away on his blog to all of his gullible followers)*, Correia’s bullshit is being dismissed because it is quite obviously bullshit.
*No one else is being silenced either. Even those who have been banned from twitter for behaving like assholes are still free to spew their bloviations on the internet. Just not on twitter.
@Nate Harada
He was also considered by Charles C Johnson the model to follow…
@Sean
Apologies for dragging my pet peeve into this, but no.
As a scientist, I can say that there are plenty of “significant viewpoints” out there that do not benefit us for being expressed. The people screaming about how global warming is a hoax have not bettered the state of modern climatology, they have worsened it considerably. I have met people who think they have disproved the mean value theorem (an important tool of modern calculus) when in fact they just do not understand how an if/then statement works: the only benefit obtained by this person showing their views is that I can use their faulty reasoning as an object lesson to my students on how to properly understand an if/then statement.
How are we to tell the difference? It’s usually the ones who insist on conflating the right to speak with the right to be heard.
From reading a number of articles on the matter, some more mainstream than others, the complaints and exodus is at least partially because some of the bans have come down without any kind of explanation to the person being banned. See Mr. Gobry at TheWeek.com
It would help your argument if the article you linked to was actually connected to the claim you are making. The article you linked to doesn’t say anything about bans being handed out without any kind of explanation. In one of the cases it talks about – that of Yiannopolous – the reason for the removal of a verified checkmark was explicitly spelled out by twitter at the time the action was taken.
Given that Robert Stacey McCain – the other example cited – has a well-documented history of repeated harassment, the reason for banning him seems pretty clear as well. It wasn’t because he expressed “differing views”. It was because he was a harasser who routinely violated the twitter terms of service. I’m sorry that all of your chosen heroes seem to be unable to keep from being harassing assholes on the internet. Perhaps you should find better role models.
Mr. Fugue, I agree with much of what you say, but disagree with your conclusion. For example, here you find no value:
However, you *did* find value in that it served a purpose to instruct. Mistakes are to be learned from. For example, a company that rhymes with “bitter” appoints a counsel to address abuse and misuse of its product but fails to include on its council all ideological groups that would be affected by this proposal. I’d say that’s a mistake to learn from, especially when it begins to lose them customers because a perceived (read, not necessarily actual) bias is present.
They really should have advertised for an Abuse And Harassment Advocate.
Well, I will be showing myself the door, for the moment at least. I’ll check back in later to see if there are others interested in having a non-dismissive, non-insulting, reasoned discussion of balancing public protection with the open discourse of ideas and/or the importance of business practices that at least appear politically neutral, if nothing more than for your company’s bottom line.
Maybe when you come back you will have something substantive to say on the problem of widespread and horrific abuse and harassment across social media platforms and in every corner of the internet, and whether your ignoring this issue in favour of asserting an absolutist view of free speech is related to the fact that the overwhelming majority of the victims of said abuse are women.
I’ll check back in later to see if there are others interested in having a non-dismissive, non-insulting, reasoned discussion of balancing public protection with the open discourse of ideas and/or the importance of business practices that at least appear politically neutral
Provide some claims that are not conspiracy theory bullshit, and maybe you might get that. You are receiving dismissive attitudes because everything you have brought up thus far is specious at best. People aren’t being banned from twitter because they are conservative, they are being banned from twitter because they are abusive, harassing assholes. A more insightful man than you might stop and wonder why there is so much overlap between prominent conservatives on twitter and abusive assholes on twitter. I don’t expect that much self-awareness on your part though, so you’ll probably just rant some more conspiracy theory bullshit and throw a pity party for yourself instead.
@sean: Do you really see no difference between the replies you’ve gotten here and the repeated doxxing, rape and death threats, calling of employers and family members, and overall *harrassment* that goes on in Twitter, and the sharp comebacks to your sarcastic comment? If you do not, then that’s the problem right there.
Look, it’s one thing to simply say something unpopular or different from what a majority of people in a particular venue believe. Nobody should be slammed for that. It’s quite another to go defending vile, hurtful, harmful attacks, harrassment, and doxxing, up to and including attempted murder by SWATing and rape. If you think that this sort of thing should be countenanced by anyone and is ‘free speech’ and that people should be allowed to do it at will, then there’s not a blessed thing we can ‘discourse’ or ‘debate’ about.
@Sean
Could you explains something before you go? What ideological input on the value of people being able to “disagree” by threatening violence on another human being could be needed?
It’s not the ‘taking off one’s pants’ part that leads to a convention being unable to find a venue so much as the ‘stand beside our friends no matter what stupid and socially unacceptable things they do and how much they annoy everybody else’ part.
[warning – I discuss some examples of internet bullying below]
I think the Trust and Safety council is very much about free speech. I disagree with others here (to a limited extent) that because Twitter is a private company that free-speech doesn’t come into it. The broader notion applies even if the specific aspect of the US Bill of Rights does not – i.e. if you are making a platform for people to discuss ideas and communicate with each other then people should feel free to speak openly. Twitter isn’t obliged to do that but it is something that I think ethically they should TRY to do given the nature of what they were doing (e.g. if they were making cornflakes then not so much).
Doxxing, harassment, threats, bullying, sexualized comments, fat shaming, attempting to persuade people to commit suicide, SWATing and systematic verbal abuse are all actions that LIMIT speech. There is no doubt about that nor any doubt why the alt-right has adopted those behaviors (which can be found in all ideologies to varying degrees) as formal tactics in their culture war. They do these things to SILENCE people, to drive people away from platforms. This isn’t a secret. They are open about their use of these tactics as weapons against what they see as leftwing cultural hegemony. Consequently, yes any moves to PROTECT speech on twitter (i.e. people actually discussing ideas) falls disproportionately on a group that OPPOSES speech on Twitter (i.e. those attempting to make people FEAR that if they speak up they will be targetted for abuse by a particular kind of political troll).
The alt-right didn’t invent online abuse and they didn’t invent trolling. They don’t have a monopoly on either. However they have, of their own free will and as a deliberate ploy, adopted online abuse as a tactic whose purpose is to silence their opponents.
Free speech is a good thing for a reason. It is good because it is what facilitates the exchange of ideas and that needs to include unpopular ideas. Is this what the alt-right are defending? No. They aren’t defending the *exchange* of ideas nor are they trying to facilitate a dialogue. Rather they are trying to shut particular voices down (which voices? In particular *women* – hence the false claims that Anita Sarkessian heads the Trust and Safety council). There are ideas that they do not want expressed and they will use personal attacks designed to cause real world damage to people as a means to that end.
I don’t think the issue of free speech is limited to government but I also don’t think it is some rule-book clause either. The ethical imperative that arises from free speech is that we should seek to maximize the exchange of ideas and enable people to discuss without fear. Consequently I don’t have a problem with limiting how others may try to stop others speaking freely. Can Vox, Milo, Baldwin, et al currently express their ideology? Sure, they are hardly lacking platforms and it isn’t like Vox’s political views (for example) don’t get an airing. Can they seriously not find a way to discuss their views via Twitter without breaking the Twitter terms of service? I very much doubt that and to date none of them have explained how there is intrinsically a conflict.
[That kind of ran away from me and I note others said something similar more succinctly. Sean apologies for the dogpile and the wall of text – not motivated by personal animosity just people wanting to explain stuff.]
@Camestros
You get the feeling that out friend Sean was thinking, but didn’t have the nerve to say, that he thinks that all the reports of violence or doxxing were just women having the vapors or exercising their feminine wiles?
Standback:I included Robbins’ line about Rosen dropping her pants at ConQuesT 45 as confirmation it happened and one need not depend solely on Oshiro’s hearsay. I took Robbins’ single sentence to be humorously intended, as the “I learned…” structure signals. Since she was responding with humor, it struck me as logical to assume she was not distressed by it, as she has now confirmed in a serious post.
Thank you, Camestros. I think that was a much better way of saying what I flailed around at and expressed poorly at best.
Possibly – I don’t know. I think people who have not been following all aspects of this may see things as falling disproportionately on rightwing people and hence conclude that it must be inherently biased. We know, irrespective of ideologies, that various communities can descend into toxic verbal abuse (and people here can probably cite various sub-fandoms that became toxic) but at the same time one political grouping has decided to align themselves with that general internet malaise and making a stand for troll-rights it seems.
So does each days scroll now get its own dedicated troll?
I’m not sure I understand why it would’ve been a problem if Anita Sarkeesian had actually been on the panel. Making people jump to say she isn’t must be satisfying, though. Is all the manufactured outrage that she is when she isn’t to keep women off the panel in general now and in perpetuity? Are there any women on the panel or is that considered a no-no because of the response it would get? As in, no, of course we don’t have her or any other women on the panel! Are you happy now? And the answer in private would be, yes, that’s exactly what I was looking for… While in public it’s all, Anita Sarkeesian, Anita Sarkeesian, Anita Sarkeesian, bogeyman, dog whistle, blue in the face, MY free speech and yours doesn’t count, sides have been taken, line in the sand.
And by the way, Camestros, that was a lovely post. Thank you. With that and the Timothy interview, you are having a stellar day.
Camestros, Johnathan M,
Thank you. Thank you for talking and not dismissing.
To the extent of my knowledge, neither Mr. Baldwin nor Mr. Correia are defending or perpetrating these actions. Assuming they are is more than a bit disingenuous. I certainly am not defending it; I think it’s awful, and it’s already criminalized in virtually every jurisdiction within the United States. It’s actionable harassment/threatening behavior. Painting Correia, Baldwin, etc. with that brush is using a *really* big brush. I would argue that it’s a rather limited group of bad actors who have some serious psychological issues who are responsible, but that doesn’t stop people with opposing views from conflating staunch, outspoken conservatives with them.
Nor would i want any person making that kind of threat on any type of board that has any kind of say on just about *anything* (except for perhaps what the prison yard is serving for lunch). That being said, I agree with Camestros that Twitter has an obligation to keep discourse available to all those who aren’t using it for illegal activity (see above).
The problem is, the council that was established was made up entirely of victim advocates. Why is that a problem? Seems like it makes sense on the surface, right? Would you say the same if in a court of law the only people who got to show up and say anything was the Plaintiff? Especially if you’re the Defendant? The Plaintiff, i.e., the person crying “foul!” is always going to tell it like they see it which is not always the way it really is. That’s why the opposing side gets a voice. And here, when I say “opposing side,” I’m not talking about GamerGate. I’m talking about free speech advocates like FIRE, people who are going to present an opposing argument to knee-jerk sensorship. The lack thereof I find troubling.
As to being a “troll” you all do realize that I’ve posted here before, many times, about books, awards, and many other things right? I’m a troll because I have different perspective on free speech? It is a convenient way to dismiss my point of view, I’ll grant you that.
@BigelowT
Ms. Sarkessian is a noted proponent of women being just as much people as men; as well as proponent in them not being hit with tire irons for saying things men don’t like. Thus, a fire-breath radical of the worst sort to some people. Advocating for the victims – must have a nefarious purpose!
Did Sean have anything to say, other than unsubstantiated insinuations that “I want to ban X for being abusive” is just a cover for “I want to ban X for disagreeing with me”?
Someone in this forum—I don’t remember who—defined trolling as a denial-of-service attack on a conversation. The troll spouts bullshit that takes no effort to compose (it could be just regurgitated talking points, or accusations pulled out of fart-scented air); other interlocutors, assuming the troll is arguing in good faith, try to respond with logic, checking sources, and so forth; the troll, not arguing in good faith, keeps up the stream of bullshit; the others continue to waste effort on the troll that would be better spent on an exchange of ideas with people who actually care about those ideas.
Nickpheas: For one-fifth of a second I thought about adding at the end “Thanks to the Pixel Troll of the Day….” But, no….
@Sean: When you continue to dismiss others, e.g. by suggesting “victim advocates” tend to “knee-jerk censorship”, it gets awful easy to dismiss you. Especially when you seem pretty clueless, e.g. implying* that Baldwin has somehow been censored when he has voluntarily left Twitter and ignoring that he is (or was) one of the leading voices of Gamergate.
*I think. You’re not terribly clear about what you’re saying.
Sean said: “As to the second, well, I will paraphrase the quote as saying, “People whose opinions I don’t like claim they are being silenced, and I could really care less how they feel about that because I don’t like them or what they believe.” Perhaps Mr. Seavey could clarify if that’s not what he meant to say.”
Happy to oblige. Correia and Baldwin are not simply “expressing opinions I disgree with,” and we both know it. You’re being disingenuous by suggesting this is some sort of neutral free speech issue where people are simply expressing contentious points of view.
Correia and Baldwin use Twitter as a platform to silence other users of Twitter, both personally and through their followers. They actively suppress free speech through targeted harassment of users who express sentiments they disagree with. I condensed this down to “being an asshole,” because I operated on the apparently incorrect assumption that people were familiar with their behavior and were going to discuss the issue in good faith, but you’re apparently disproving me, so let’s clarify it. Baldwin, Correia, and pretty much everyone else whining about this has been using Twitter with one goal–to shut down free speech. You cannot, by definition, give them a platform to do so and still be in favor of freedom of speech, because giving them freedom of speech removes the freedom of others to speak freely.
So yes, I give zero fucks about Correia and Baldwin’s whiny baby temper tantrums, because they are exactly the kind of pearl-clutching conservatives who complain about pearl-clutching liberals “silencing” them with criticism, while demanding that liberals literally not be allowed to speak in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable. They are all about “free speech for anything I want to say and my critics should be gagged”, and this is just the latest case of them screaming at the top of their lungs about how _CENSORED_ they are and not even beginning to grasp the irony involved in vocally and repeatedly telling everyone about all the things they’re not allowed to say.
Or the TL;DR version: Come back when your “free speech” advocates aren’t telling everyone but them to stop talking.
Man, Sean couldn’t even stick the flounce.
And BigelowT, you should have seen the commotion when gaters thought that Sarkeesian was involved in the production of Mirror’s Edge 2. Or how some people decided because she was thanked in the credits of a game, that meant they should get refunds of the four hour game they played through until the end.
@Fugue
Hey we share pet peeves!
While there are surely people that do just that….and more that say such things in a joking manner when they mean something else….there are serious counter arguments that are being advocated by people that are not calling it a hoax. One example would be climatologist Judith Curry and her concerns about the variability and certainty associated with the modeling process.
I agree that there are some perspectives that are not helpful. Those that suggest that the moon is made of green cheese are not helpful. Suggestions that every dissenter believes in fromage vert lunaire is an equally unhelpful person of hay(1).
Regards,
Dann
(1)’person of hay’ TM by me
It might be worth noting that Twitter has changed the way it shows posts delivered while you were away in its apps at the beginning of February.
Most people have had a drop off in engagement as a result – unless you are a news-like feed with high engagement levels your content probably won’t be shown in the “tweets you missed” view in the official clients (the most popular way of viewing the service).
Seth,
Those are good definitions of “troll” IMO. And the ideas I’ve been bringing up are related to the “exchange of ideas” at hand… actually 5 of the 21 topics in the original post. Granted, the ideas and concerns I’ve listed don’t agree with most of the opinions put forth, but doesn’t that make it more valuable since “exchange of ideas” requires that there, in fact, be different ideas to exchange?
Waving away the concerns of conservative authors, readers, and twitter users as being “complete BS” because you say it is, well, that in my opinion is the opposite of “exchange of ideas.” I guess what I’m asking is, are you all trolling me?
@Steve Davidson another thing Twitter is doing: making the majority of their customers happy over the objection of a minority of their customers.
… Taking a stand against assholes can be problematic, but there are a lot of intangibles that go along with doing so.
Yes I left this out. Thank you for pointing it out. This is very important.
@Sean
Why did you stop by file770 today and ask your question the way you did?
A. To troll us
B. You can’t word questions in a way that opens real dialogue
C. Both A & B
Also seconding the request Could you explains something before you go? What ideological input on the value of people being able to “disagree” by threatening violence on another human being could be needed?
@Camestros Felapton
Beautifully worded.
@nickpheas
Yes & it’s all Cally’s fault as she asked for a better class of troll 😉
@BigelowT
If Anita Sarkeesian were the head of the panel I’d be okay with it. It’s annoying to see yet more shit being sent her way. I’m sure she’s getting a higher % of rape and death threats than normal over this. Something wrong with that sentence rape and death threats than normal shouldn’t be a part of anyone’s life.
Two people asked me for additional comment and both asked substantive questions. Isn’t that what I said I wanted? So why “flounce” as you call it?
@Sean
The fact that you feel that the purpose of the group is ‘knee-jerk censorship’ is a little telling about your position.
As I mentioned before, within the list of groups involved in this council, there are groups that deal with free speech advocacy on the internet. Despite Correia’s tin-foil hatted statement, these groups are not handed the source code and get to delete users or dictate terms. The group is designed to generate input from a wide variety of sources on developing tools, policies and guidelines in order to limit the abuse that has arisen from people using Twitter as an attack platform. Having that council reflect groups with specific knowledge of the structures of online abuse and harassment is exactly the input you want, because they are dealing with the direct repercussions of it.
Twitter’s community policing is and remains Del Harvey’s department. Who gets banned or throttled still goes through her team. Which is exactly why Baldwin and Correia’s calls of censorship remain nothing but paranoid fantasy.
Just finished Going Dark. I’m really impressed with the arc of The Red.
I’ve been a fan of Nagata’s since The Bohr Maker, but I think this could be her most influential work. I’ll put it alongside Vinge’s Rainbows End and Naam’s Nexus as an important piece of futurist SF. In the AI-mediated world of Coma Day and beyond, she’s really captured the shape of the world over the next decade or so.
The Trials is on my Hugo nomination list, with Going Dark only just missing the cut.
In re: “the more opinions the better”, I will use my go-to example.
There are people out there, a surprisingly large group of them, who deeply and sincerely believe that lizard people are controlling the world. How much time are you willing to spend with one of them, seriously considering their statements and exchanging ideas? If one showed up at a party you were hosting and started cornering everyone by the punchbowl and explaining how the Queen of England is a Reptoid, would you feel obligated to let them just keep on doing that?*
* ETA: I mean, I’d be tempted, because that particular scenario is kind of Good Times, but you know what I mean.
I don’t think it takes a broad brush to associate the originator of GamerGate and one of SF’s best-known proponents of GamerGate with the repulsive acts committed by some members of that movement. Show me where they’ve ever condemned that vile behavior being used against GamerGate targets and I’ll revise my opinion.
@Sean
Multiple people have said quite clearly that their chief concern is the threats of violence, and how regular and normalized they have become. And you have ignored them every time while clutching your pearls about substantive conversations and talking about some censorship commission, which again, may not exist outside of the fevered imaginings of Correia and Baldwin, at least not in the form they say it does.
So again – what possible use is it for twitter to have voice of the people speaking for the threats and the doxxing and the harassment? How is wishing for that harassment to stop shutting down everyone who disagrees with you? We’re waiting.
@Simon Bisson
Didn’t Nagata’s entire trilogy come out this year? I think I’ve seen some mention putting the trilogy on the ballot. It’s on my TBR and the books are in my kindle cloud. My time would be better spent reading books than engaging with people behaving like trolls.
Reading comprehension. See post above stating that:
For example, Larry Correia likes to argue with people on Twitter. This equates him with people who “threaten violence on another human being”? How big is the brush you are using? Would you like to apologize to all the people you just slandered by lumping them together?
@Tasha Turner
I asked her directly and because The Red was previously published, it’s not eligible. The Trials and Going Dark are though.
@Sean,
If you are going to say things like “I’m leaving!” then I expect you to leave. I’m sort of a literalist in that regard.
@Tasha
Re: The Nagata Trilogy. The original THE RED came out a couple of years back, and was the first self published book to get a Nebula Nomination. I read both versions, the self pub (I am proud that S&F was one of the early adopters of Nagata’s return to SF), and the new, and the differences aren’t that large. As Alex just said, its not Hugo Eligible. I’ve left that off my ballot.
THE TRIALS and GOING DARK, on the other hand, are definitely in my longlist of not yet narrowed down to five final nominees.
12) Sean on February 23, 2016 at 11:10 am said: As to being a “troll” you all do realize that I’ve posted here before, many times, about books, awards, and many other things right? I’m a troll because I have different perspective on free speech?
Indubitably sir. That is indeed the case.
5) Oh look, another witch to burn. BURN HER!!!! I shall have to update my decoder ring: gay, male and Latinix (wtf?) now trumps gay, female and white.
Tolerance, my friends! Inclusion! There are many tasty dishes in the multi-cultural Feast of Life! Celebrate your diversity! (But not you, Sean. Free speech, are you mental? Shut up dude!)
If you want to nominate a trilogy as a single work, then it doesn’t matter when the first book was published. It falls under the serialization rule, which only requires that (a) the last part of the work was published in the right year to be eligible, and (b) no individual part was previously a Hugo finalist.
Tasha Turner,
I’ll let Cally know when I see her next Monday; I believe she’s currently without internet, so she can’t see the “better class of troll” herself at the moment…
@alexvdl and @Paul
Thanks for the eligibility update.
@rcade, if you want Larry condemning rape and anything like unto it, there are lots of entries on his blog addressing it. Here’s one.
A quote:
Again, re Twitter. The Trust and Safety Council includes the CDT: one of the oldest and most influential free speech organisations on the ‘net.
@Cassy B
Cally did see one of the new trolls. She lamented on making a request. Tell her I said hi, miss her, and I’m blaming stuff on her while she can’t defend herself. 😉
There isn’t a word in that post about vile behavior by some people in GamerGate, which is what we’re discussing.