August, 2013 - Death Is Bad

SF/F Review – Best Served Cold

Aug 302013

Synopsis: A Grimdark Count-of-Monte-Cristo style revenge story.

Brief Book Review: What a difference a skilled writer can make. I can’t help but compare books I’m reading to one’s I’ve just finished, and the difference in quality and craftsmanship between this and Mira Grant’s Blackout slapped me in the face on page one. This is an author who effortlessly draws you into a richly detailed world with robust characters and a tried-and-true plot structure. Once you (quickly) realize that each of the seven revenge murders will involve an elaborate setup and then explore how it goes wrong you fear that this will get tired and repetitive fast. It never does. The book keeps you hooked, and it’s an enthralling read. A word of caution – the violence is relentless. This isn’t a horror or torture-porn (which I will not watch or read), but it is bloody and doesn’t pull any punches. I reached my annual limit of unrelenting death about 2/3rds of the way through, and still had hundreds of bodies to go through before the end. However that only contributes to the story and its exploration of the senseless nature of violence. This book is fantastic. Highly Recommended.

Book Club Review: There is a treasure-trove of discussion in these pages. There are so many highly memorable scenes and lines that people will be bringing up their favorite moments for quite a while. The two main characters start with very different moralities, and as the book unfolds their views slowly switch in magnificent parallel character arcs. The exploration of a world without order makes for strong talking points, especially the contrast of Cosca and Friendly. These two characters act as foils, one pragmatically accepting the world as it is and riding atop the chaos, the other rebelling against the anarchy in a unique sort of optimism. The choices made, the twists, the downward spirals – they all contribute to a great churning discussion. There’s even a few minor things to dislike, for the nit-pickers in the group. :) Highly Recommended.
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Living for the day

Personal No Responses »

Aug 292013

Recently an acquaintance posted that she doesn’t make long-term plans because you never know when you might die. She could be gone next week, so she enjoys every day as much as possible without worrying about the future.

In practice, this means coasting by at a comfortable job, a lot of social activities in the evenings and weekends, a fair bit of recreation alcohol and marijuana use, lots of media consumption, no savings, and being really out of shape.

This is, at an objective level, a stupid thing to do. You probably won’t die next week, so taking care of your body, building up some savings, and doing something with your life are all really good ideas. More to the point – they actually feel better in the long term! You’re failing to enjoy every day as much as you could by focusing on immediate gratification because it’s not nearly as fulfilling.

But interestingly, I don’t think that her motivation is flawed. I am motivated by the exact same worry. I could die next week. And there are still so many things I need to do! The HPMoR podcast is incomplete. I haven’t had every sexual experience I’ve wanted to yet. I haven’t written a novel, and have only just started getting some of the stories I have bottled-up inside down on paper. There’s two dozen books on my must-read list that have been stagnating there for years, and dozens more waiting in the wings. I haven’t met most of the authors I idolize, and I haven’t visited a single city in Europe or Asia. I will die soon, and I have so much to do before then. I can’t get it all done fast enough.

So no, I can’t discourage the “you may die next week” mindset, because it motivates me to do more than simply abide. If all I did was lounge around enjoying myself I might as well never have lived at all.

The slut-shaming of Miley Cirus

Musings On Present Day 3 Responses »

Aug 272013

/sigh. I wanted to move away from Blurred Lines, as it seems to have taken over my blog the last couple weeks, but shit keeps coming up.

I get most of my news from social media and podcasts. And I gotta say, I’m pretty proud of my friends-list! Barely a peep about the Miley Cirus thing, except to comment on how stupid the media is. I finally learned about it from NPR, which is a black mark on NPR. :/

Much is made of American rape-culture, and a large part of that is slut-shaming. Taking any positive expression of sexuality by a woman and attacking her for it, tearing apart her reputation and destroying her social net. Rape culture depends on fear of slut-shaming both to control women and to scare them into staying quiet about sexual assaults. The entirety of this Miley Cyrus “scandal” is nothing more than one giant slut-shaming extravaganza by all the privileged white men who can’t abide the young women they feel they own showing any sexual agency. It’s a blight on our culture, and the news media are gleefully wallowing in it like pigs in shit because it drives up their web-traffic. NPR could have thoughtfully reported this as “millions of people in our society are still slut-shaming assholes”. Instead they jumped on the sexist bandwagon. With an online poll to boot! So all the ass-brained pricks can reassure themselves of how right they are to be getting high on self-righteous indignation. Once again The Onion shows itself to be the American news source with the most integrity.

I sent an adapted version of the above to the NPR Ombudsman. It’s not much, but at least it’s not nothing.

Gender-Swapping is Ineffective

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Aug 232013

I found this video the day after I saw the official Blurred Lines video. I’ve previously said I’m unsure if Blurred Lines is really sexist. Before I watched the parody I thought “Yay! Now men can be just as objectified and everything is equal.” Except – it really isn’t, is it? Because it isn’t about objectification, it’s about power. And not individual face-to-face power, but rather nation-devouring Leviathan power.

There’s a reason that the N-word is such an emotionally-loaded word, but that any racial pejorative used for white people ends up sounding silly and lame. Honkey, whitey, cracker. No matter how much hatred is in the voice, the words themselves are flaccid things. N*****, on the other hand, is such a charged word I don’t even feel comfortable typing it out when I’m trying to talk about why it’s bad. And the reason is power. The person calling you a cracker may attack you or kill you, but he is only one man. He will face retaliation from society. The term “n*****” carries with it a promise that if you do not defer to the whims of the aggressor you can be pulled from your home and killed (yes, I’ve linked that article before, it’s a good one), and there will be no consequences. The state will not defend you, it will not prosecute your attackers, it may even support them. You have to fear the wrath of Leviathan if you even try to defend yourself, while they can act with impunity. You are helpless. And even if you don’t care about your own life, they can (and will) go after your loved ones instead. The word is a reminder of the terrorism you live under.

The same is true of words like Faggot (vs Breeder) and Cunt (vs Prick). In all cases the group holding the leash of Leviathan is the one with the Words of Power.

An individual person can be prejudiced. Your sister can detest all men. But she can’t be reverse-sexist because sexism is a society-wide phenomenon, not an individual one. Sexism flows in the direction of power – Leviathan cannot serve two masters.

And that’s why the parody video isn’t really the same. The men are objectified, sure. But objectification can be fun and consensual. Those men aren’t ever in danger of being abused by those women, told by their friends that they were asking for it, and having the power of the state protect their attackers from retaliation.

Now in fairness, that wasn’t literally the case in the first video either – the actresses were there by choice in a safe environment and seemed to be having fun. But the scenario is possible, and in some places all too common. You cannot simply swap the sexes in the video and have them be analogous when the alignment of social power is unchanged. There is no way to say “See, here’s a similar video for the ladies, so it’s fair now.” It’s more likely to result in men saying “Well heck, that ain’t bad at all! I’d love to have women checking me out like that!” than to convey the discomfort that the original video provoked.

A Sad Day

Musings On Present Day No Responses »

Aug 212013

Today my country holds political prisoners again. 35 years, for an act that should have gotten him a medal.

By way of comparison, Marine Lance Cpl. Jerry Shumate and Lance Cpl. Tyler Jackson were both sentenced to 21 months for the aggravated assault of Hashim Ibrahim Awad, 52, a grandfather, in 2006. Awad died after being shot during the assault. Their sentences were later reduced.
Marine Lance Cpl. Robert Pennington was sentenced to eight years for the same incident, but served only a few months before being granted clemency and released from prison.

Commit murder? Get a few months. Let the American public know that the army is committing murder? Say goodbye to your life.

There’s a petition for clemency. Go sign it. It’s not much, but it’s one step.

Link Archive 7/20/13 – 8/20/13

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Aug 202013

It’s that time again

20 Historic Black and White Photos Colorized

Note to everyone: crack all the books you bought legally before you travel. Or disable wi-fi on your reader. In a world where reading is outlawed, only pirates will have reading material. :/

You’d rather go out of business then help spy on the populace? That’s a paddlin’.

Founding Father Pin-ups. You can click the pics for centered full-screen.

Proud to be a Coloradan today! :D Colorado Becoming a Stoned, Gay, ‘Worst Possible Hellhole on Planet Earth
“It’s interesting how the most evil people in the world who bring about the Marxist, Communist, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual agendas typically revert back to the worship of Satan,”

Holy crap this blog is awesome. In the first four posts not only is there a feminist critique of HPMoR, there’s also a comparison of Madoka Magica with Those Who Walk Away From Omelas, and a conversation on the visual intelligence of Pacific Rim.

Pacific Rim – “Mako’s character development is actually almost entirely visual in nature–no one talks through her memories or explains her motivations aloud. What’s more, her personality and character arc is defined strongly by color symbolism. So, while she doesn’t have a huge number of lines, that doesn’t make her shallow.”

Madoka/Omelas – “To me, it’s pretty clear that the show is more than a revisionist reimagining of the Magical Girl genre. The show tears down the trappings of the Magical Girl only to tear down the trappings of the revisionist narrative as well. Remember that Le Guin is interested in pointing out the treason of artists–the willingness of creators to accept evil as something that must exist for there to be beauty. This show asserts, in its own way, the same basic idea.”

HPMoR – Some points I agree with strongly, others I disagree with strongly, but a good read regardless.

I love petard-hoists!
“Senate Bill 1425, would require food supplement companies to label their supplements in much the same way similar legislation would mandate GMO labeling.

Supplement companies and their interest groups fear that the legislation would impose severe restrictions on their industry and gradually drive the price of supplements higher than most would be able to afford”

An awesome fan-theory about Labyrinth

The world is becoming a better place :) Dear Daughter: I Hope You Have Awesome Sex

Why are all the mammals getting fat? It’s because the aliens that grow us are getting ready to return for the harvest!

Following God’s inspiration, a family sailed off into the Pacific. God led them to needing to be rescued by the secular country they were fed up with. One of these forces is greater than the other.

Oprah couldn’t buy a handbag, possible due to racism. I’m unable to feel bad for a $3B media mogul, but the ‪#‎MyOprahMoment‬ tweets at the bottom are rage-inducing.

HA! I find it interesting that in red states there are many voters who seem to be both hard-core capitalists and christians. Have they paused to consider why god would go through the effort of saving all the christians without any incentive? Where’s his profit motive? Solution presented: God is VERY good at marketing! And your soul is delicious.

Time Travel in Movies. How could they forget to put Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure in?? It should be by 12 Monkeys and Prisoner of Azkaban under “Novikov self-consistency” and “Interaction with self”!

Great application of Radical Transparency – cops being recorded as they harass minority kids, and good cops coming forward to reveal how this has become official policy. We need more of this.
When all of the good cops leave the service because they can’t stand the bigotry and corruption, who will be left policing us? Oh…

GM crops don’t kill kids. Opposing them does “Ingo Potrykus [and] Peter Beyer had added three genes to the 30,000 in rice to help to prevent vitamin A deficiency, one of the most preventable causes of morbidity and mortality in poor countries with rice-dominated diets. They had done it for nothing, persuading companies to waive their patents, so that they could give the rice seeds away free. […] 10 years later this rice would still not be available to the poor, that a systematic campaign of denigration against it by the behemoths of the environmental movement, especially Greenpeace, would be consuming lawyers’ fees while perhaps 20 million children had died in the meantime.”

WarGames. This is pretty amusing. What would happen if Apple and Google went to actual no-holds-barred war? They couldn’t have spent the 15 minutes and $0 it would’ve taken to clean this up in Audacity though? A bit distracting to leave those flubs in.

The world’s tallest slum. Modern ruins fascinate me.

An actual worthwhile use of a Walmart!

Casualties of War. “the War on Drugs provides an excellent pretext for violent action by the U.S. and its client states in the Western hemisphere […] The War on Terror works exactly the same way in the Middle East”

Fantastic Commercial :) “It’s like Santa for your vagina”

I hear many of the big companies are dropping their “lateral thinking” puzzle questions, since they haven’t been a good indicator of… anything, really. Here’s a cool perspective: what would you do if you were actually trying to solve the problem, rather than simply showing off your cleverness?

Hilarious lip sync to an old song. I don’t even understand why this is as great as it. But it is. :D

An interesting test in India of giving a minimal basic income to everyone unconditionally

A poem. Trigger warnings – what you’d expect. “Rape Joke” by Patricia Lockwood

Japanese Commuters Tilt Train To Free Trapped Woman. Whoever designed the train’s suspension system deserves a medal of extra-awesomeness.

Stills from the cartoons we watched growing up that look very sexually lewd out of context. Funny, but so wrong. :)

Abandoned Parts of Detroit. I love ruins like this. Very Fallout-esque. Have people shot any post-apocalyptic movies in Detroit yet?

SF/F Review – Blackout

Book Club Review No Responses »

Aug 162013

Blackout, by Mira Grant

Synopsis: A zombie B-movie in book form

Brief Book Review: My dislike of Deadline is well documented. So it may be surprising that I didn’t hate Blackout! Many of the things I hated in Deadline are fixed – there aren’t long boring stretches and the climax actually happens on-stage. Whereas Deadline was like a bad home movie, Blackout is more like a mediocre B-movie. This is definitely a step forward! It’s kinda ridiculous just how B-movie-esque it is, from the generically-evil bad guys, to the incompetent amateurishness of everyone, to the mad scientist, to the conviction that adding a death will make things dramatic(!) simply because. Actually, if you like B-movies and keep firmly in mind that this is a B-movie you can enjoy this book quite a bit. There needs to be some sort of way to signal to readers to change their expectations in novels the same way you know to change your expectations when you’re going to see Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter
(such a good B-movie!!). You can tell just by looking at the cover of JC:VH the sort of treat you’re in for. You would be forgiven if, based on the cover of Blackout, you thought you were getting something other than intentional camp.

There are some genuinely good parts to Blackout. The blog posts between chapters were rarely bad, and often downright poignant. I would have enjoyed a book that was written with that sort of sensibility. However I am not generally a fan of B-movies, so – Not Recommended.

Book Club Review: Funny thing about B-movies – they can be a lot of fun to watch with a group of loud friends. Mike Nelson of MST3K and RiffTrax fame has made a whole career out of lampooning bad movies. That same dynamic can work here if you have club members with a good sense of humor (and I’d imagine all do). There’s so much to shake your head and laugh over that there can be a lot of fun had by the whole group. The book reads fast, so it’s not that big a time commitment, and it isn’t nearly as infuriating and slog-like as Deadline was. Unfortunately this is the third book of a trilogy, and those in the book club who’d had the good fortune of not reading the previous book were left in the dark on several plot elements. That’s to be expected, but it means this book isn’t as great of a Riff-target as a stand-alone would be. And I cannot in good conscience ever recommend anyone read the whole trilogy just for this purpose. We had a lot of fun, but – Not Recommended.

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US Government fighting against Transparency

Musings On Present Day No Responses »

Aug 142013

Recently Lavabit, which lets people send secure private emails via encryption, was shut down by the government. Why?

“we offered secure storage, where incoming emails were stored in such a way that they could only be accessed with the user’s password so that even myself couldn’t retrieve those emails. And that’s what we meant by encrypted email. That’s a term that’s sort of been thrown around because there’s so many different standards for encryption. But in our case it was encrypted and secure storage because as a third party I didn’t want to be put in a situation where I had to turn over private information, I just didn’t have it, I didn’t have access to it. And that was sort of, may have been the situation that I was facing.”

Because it makes blanket spying on everyone very hard. Feels like a pre-emptive strike by the totalitarians, no?

I’m pro-Radical Transparency. I’m up for opening all my communication – but only if it goes both ways. A one-way window is not transparency, and I’ll open my communications if the government opens theirs. Which begins with a full pardon for Manning and Snowden and the prosecution of the people who tried to hide what those two revealed. What sort of government punishes our heroes and protects the villains?

There’s a link to the Lavabit legal defense fund from their homepage, here: http://lavabit.com/ We can’t fight The Powers if we don’t combine our efforts. Individual humans are weak, united we are strong.

Rorschach Test of a Society’s Sexual Health

Musings On Present Day, Personal 2 Responses »

Aug 132013

I was taken to the previously-mentioned clothing-optional club for the first time by my now-fiancee. She later confessed it was partly a test, as she couldn’t be long-term with someone who wasn’t comfortable with that sort of thing (spoiler alert: I passed). There’s a fair bit of nudity (more female than male), a bit of sex, and a lesser amount of public sex. It is also one of the most women-friendly places you’ll find.

As my fiancée said, these sorts of places only exist if the women feel comfortable and secure. If they don’t then they leave, and don’t come back, and the whole scene dies. It’s an empowering environment and I dare say it’s far more feminist than most places in the day-to-day world. Women can express their sexuality exactly however they want without judgment or shaming. There’s lots of exhibitionism and everyone’s enjoying it.

When I first saw the Blurred Lines video it reminded me of this. Partly because this is my experience with topless ladies running around, and partly because the first time I heard this song I was actually at the club. So I’ve associated this song with liberation and sexuality and all those good things. When I first heard someone say the video was sexist it was like getting slapped. “Wait, what? The song I associate with one of the most anti-sexist places I know of is sexist? How can this be possible??”

It seems most people don’t draw this same association. Most people have never been in a safe sex-play area. For most people, their experiences of nearly-naked women interacting with clothed men consist of strip clubs. I’ve only ever been in a strip-club once, and that was a very limited engagement which probably wasn’t typical. From what I’ve heard of them, many strip clubs can be degrading and are filled with douchebags. I don’t want to cast stones at something I don’t have experience with, but they have a reputation as being frequented by sexist assholes.

So, sadly, the average viewer will not see this and associate it with “awesome liberated sexy-time fun!” but rather “dark dingy sexist titty bar”. Thus the video’s bad reputation. I think it’s a test that our society has failed utterly, that this is the association people make. Once happy swinger clubs are the norm and shitty strip bars are almost impossible to find, videos like this will be associated with play rather than exploitation. How is it that the opposite of that is what ended up happening? The world is mad.

Blurred Lines – sexist?

Musings On Present Day, Personal 5 Responses »

Aug 122013

A little over a week ago I heard Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” for the first time, and I immediately loved it. The music was catchy and light, the vocals were fun, and the song was vaguely sexual. A good summer song. A friend who was with me at the time was surprised I hadn’t heard it before, and promised to email me with the artist & song name so I could listen to it again. The next day he sent me a link to the Unrated Video, and I immediately loved it even more. Several very hot ladies romping around nearly naked? What was not to like? :) And it fits the mood of the song very well.

Warning – extremely NSFW.

Since then I learned the video is sexist. This kinda surprised me. Me & my fiancée periodically attend a clothing-optional club and so I’m quite used to seeing naked people running around and having a good time. It’s never been sexist then, what’s different now?

It can’t be because the ladies are there on display – that’s always been half the point. Speaking both from personal experience and from talking to others (lest one think I’m presenting only the male opinion here) – people who go to those sorts of clubs are going with the intention of displaying themselves. It’s a lot of work to keep up (often a lot of money as well), people are proud of how they look, and they are showing off so people will look at them. I don’t feel comfortable accepting that people who are comfortable naked and enjoy displaying themselves are being sexist against themselves. That feels only a couple steps removed from demanding people wear burkas and saying it’s a pro-feminist thing to do so.

Yes, it’s objectification, but it’s a song about sex. A lot of sex is objectification. We are all sex objects for each other from time to time. It can be sexy as hell to be treated as a toy by someone else, or for them to let you treat them like one. It’s great fun when it’s consensual and well done – power imbalances are hot. It certainly isn’t sexist for us to be having sex the way we both want to be having it. Obviously this is confined to the bedroom/play-area… but the whole point of civil rights is that everyone is respected as a person, and that includes respecting our decision to bring objectification into our sex play when we want it. If the video had been taking place in an office, or out on the street, or really just about anywhere in day-to-day life it would be incredibly offensive. But it looks very much like it’s taking place in a safe sex-play area (soft pink walls, gentle lighting, semi-private). It’s a place where people go for this sort of fun, in a song about sex. I contrast this to Benny Benassi’s “Satisfaction” video (also NSFW), which does strike me as sexist. There’s never nudity in that video, but the women are using all sorts of construction tools – something you’d see at work, or walking around town. That is NOT when someone is putting themselves out for objectification! Wrong message!!

As far as I can tell, Robin Thicke is just sharing the more private parts of sex-positive culture, and people are pattern-matching to sexist warning signs without actually taking the time to think if it’s actually sexist. But I’m very cautious that I might just have a blind spot for this video, so I’m leaving myself very open on this topic. I do already have one reservation about the video, and one about the song. And so much opinion is against me that I realize it’s most likely me that is wrong. But really… what am I missing? Does what I said above not apply in this case?

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