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The Internet

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The Internet

OH DEAR GODS wut

Internets, if like me you follow The Mary Sue and/or the fine ladies over at Smart Bitches Trashy Books, you may have seen one of the scariest phrases the Internet has provided us since Transformers fandom gave us “muffled clank”: i.e., “dinosaur erotica”.

Because this is apparently a Thing That Exists. No, I am not in fact kidding. And RedHeadedGirl, one of the regular guest reviewers at the Bitchery, has valiantly taken one for the team and reviewed Ravished by the Triceratops.

COMEDY. GOLD. Particularly the parts in the comments where she informs the rest of us “I HATE YOU ALL” and how the last thing she reviewed for the site, i.e., the were-hedgehog paranormal romance, was actually better than this.

THEY FOUND A THING THAT WERE-HEDGEHOG PARANORMAL ROMANCE IS BETTER THAN, INTERNETS.

If you need me, I’ll be over here giggling helplessly until my brain recovers. This may take a while.

Further coverage at the Mary Sue and Jezebel, because BWAHAHAHAHAHA.

Movies, The Internet

Post-vacation link roundup

Here’s a fun thing I apparently missed while I was on vacation: some nimrod made a “SFWA Fascists” Twitter account attacking the various notable SF/F authors who have been speaking out against racism and sexism–in other words, the people who are speaking up for treating everybody like people. Names like Scalzi and Kowal and Hines and Jemisin are on the list, and others have started calling this the roundup of People You Should Be Following On Twitter. Props to them!

And the maddest of mad props to Mr. Hines, who, being awesome, has responded beautifully.

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In other news, The Mary Sue has reported that Lionsgate is scrambling to distance themselves from Orson Scott Card. They’re even going to host a LGBT benefit premiere for the movie.

How nice for them. I’m still not going to see the movie.

I’ve seen quite a few people opining that to specifically avoid seeing this movie because of Card is ill-advised, on the grounds that Card probably wasn’t even involved once his rights were optioned, and also because boycotting it would hurt the pro-LGBT people at Lionsgate and who have worked on the film. I don’t buy it, and I remain pretty damned sure that not one person, from Harrison Ford clear down to the catering staff, is going to be financially harmed by my failure to buy a ticket. They’ve gotten paychecks. They’re not going to starve.

I’ve also seen people opining that there are way better ways to assert one’s support of LGBT causes than by inaction–i.e., not seeing a movie. I don’t buy that either. For one thing, speaking up publicly about why you choose to not do a thing is itself an action. For another thing, it is inappropriate to assume that people avoiding the movie aren’t doing other, more active things in support of LGBT rights. Like, say, donating money, which Dara and I have done on a rather regular basis.

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Meanwhile, in other news of Movies I Am Specifically Avoiding This Summer, I’d also like to call out this excellent little commentary as to why exactly Benedict Cumberbatch playing Khan in the current Trek flick is problematic.

(Yes, I’ve heard the criticism pointing out that casting Montalban to play a Sikh in the original series wasn’t exactly ethnically appropriate either. But moving from that to casting a white guy was not, in my humble opinion, a step in the right direction.)

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However, to shift over to news of Movies I’m Feeling a Lot More Hopeful About, I’m very much looking forward to seeing Despicable Me 2 and Pacific Rim as soon as possible. And I shall direct you post-haste over to Tor.com who provides this helpful guide to Knowing Your Kaiju.

Because it is critical, CRITICAL I SAY, to know which monster is about to stomp your city into rubble.

The Internet

Thank you, Kickstarter

As a quick followup to yesterday’s post, I’d like to note that userinfoariaflame has just brought to my attention that Kickstarter has issued an excellent apology about their actions this week. They’ve owned up to what they did and are taking steps to make it right, including a sizable donation to RAINN.

I’ve already updated my previous post with an ETA about this, but I wanted to call this out separately as well and issue a public thank you to Kickstarter for these actions. As someone who’s run a Kickstarter of her own, I feel that this goes a long way to restoring my faith that they are a safe, creative space for everybody.

The Internet

And now, this week in rape culture–and speaking out against it

A lot of you may have seen the explosions going around the Net about a Kickstarter that got funded in the last couple days, one based around a guide to getting women that is pretty much promotes trampling all over consent. That, yes, pretty much is a step-by-step manual for how to rape a woman. The guide’s described in quite a few places, but I’ll point you over to the article about it on The Mary Sue, which provides a few telling screenshots and gets into discussing what this means for Kickstarter’s overall policies for what projects it will and will not allow.

(For obvious reasons, before you click over, especially before you go looking for the actual project page, trigger warning for deeply sexist, rape-promoting douchebaggery. I’m not linking to the project.)

I’d just like to state categorically and for the record that if Kickstarter can’t commit to saying that yes, this project does in fact violate its guidelines, that it actively promotes harm to women, then the next crowdfund project I run–likely to be for Book 3 of The Free Court of Seattle, once I finish squaring away Rebels of Adalonia as well as all pending rewards due to the patiently waiting supporters of my first project–will be either on IndieGogo or Peerbackers.

Because this shit is NOT OKAY. I’m disgusted that Kickstarter let the project onto their site to begin with, and even more disgusted that apparently it found enough backers to make well over its target goal.

I don’t want to leave you with that rancid taste in your mouths, Internets, so here, have another link: Jim Hines laying out exactly what rape culture is in his own response to this mess. To which I’ll add: yes, exactly what he said.

ETA 6/21/2013: userinfoariaflame has just brought to my attention that Kickstarter has owned up to their being wrong, and have issued an excellent apology on the matter. Moreover, they are donating to RAINN. I would like to publicly thank Kickstarter for doing this, as this goes a long way to restoring my faith in them.

The Internet

Dammit, Google! I was using that!

For those of you who haven’t heard already, Google has announced that as part of a “spring cleaning”, they are shutting down Google Reader.

My previous solution was to use the RSS in Mail on OS X. But Apple yanked that out as of Mountain Lion (another instance of “Dammit, I was using that!”).

So now I’ve been doing a two-pronged solution of NetNewsWire parked as my local reader on my computer, which is where I keep up with authenticated feeds–and that synced in turn up to Google Reader, where I was keeping up with everything that wasn’t authenticated. That way I’ve been able to read things at work in between doing, well, work.

I tried feedHopper on my iPad, since it was the ONLY RSS app I was able to find that’d do authenticated feeds at all; all of the rest I looked at were strictly Google Reader clients. And I’ve also tried Flipboard, but honestly, the ‘magazine’ type layout doesn’t do anything for me. Yes, it’s pretty, but it’s not at all helpful in keeping track of what things I’ve read and what things I haven’t. Which is the whole point of me trying to aggregate all the things I want to follow in one or two places.

But now that Google Reader’s going away I’m going to have to rearrange things AGAIN!

What will have to happen now: find out whether NetNewsWire, my current frontrunner for RSS apps, will implement any kind of syncing solution between computer, devices, and web, maybe via iCloud. If they do that, I will happily throw them my money.

Alternately, if anybody out there wants to recommend me an app that will a) specifically handle authenticated feeds, and b) sync between computer, devices, and web, I’d LOVE to hear about it.

If you want to go hunting for a new RSS solution yourself, I’ll also point you at these links:

  • Feedly has a transition plan in play
  • ExtremeTech proposes 8 alternatives
  • Slashdot to the rescue!
  • Marketing Land proposes 12 alternatives (many of which are also in the ExtremeTech article, but)

ETA: Apparently there’s a petition to ask Google to keep Reader active. As of this ETA, it has nearly 75,000 signatures.

The Internet

And now, nerd humor!

If you have access to a command shell on your computer and you have the traceroute command available, type this, for lo, there are lols to be found. No other hints shall be given!

traceroute 216.81.59.173

(For those of you who don’t know what traceroute is, it’s a command that shows you all the hops necessary to go from your computer to the computer you’re trying to get the route to. It shows the names and IP addresses of intervening hosts.)

If you don’t have immediate access to a command line, click over to userinformd‘s LJ where she has thoughtfully captured the output for your amusement!

H/t to both userinformd and my own belovedest userinfosolarbird!

The Internet

Plug post for three Kickstarters!

And now, three quick comments about Kickstarters currently on my radar!

First up, I give you take two of Leannan Sidhe’s attempt to fund her second album! Her first attempt sadly failed so she’s trying again with revised rewards and a lower funding target. She’s one of the musicians who’ll be working on the Faerie Blood and Bone Walker soundtrack, so I highly encourage you to check this project out if you haven’t already!

Secondly, here’s a kid’s adventure game that was brought to my attention, targeted for launch on PC and Mac browsers as well as iOS. Looks like it might be fun, so if you’ve got kids for whom this might appeal, give it a look!

And last but not least, indie magazine Crossed Genres needs to raise funds to continue publication, so here’s their project to do that! I’ve jumped in myself to support this one, with an eye for all the ebook goodies they’re offering to some of the lower tiers of supporters. But more importantly, there’s a promise of ongoing indie, QUILTBAG-friendly SF here, and I’m all about that.