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Just discovered: My horse does not accept apologies or surrender.
"Enough! I submit!" pleads the Forsworn Ravager.
"Nay!" says my horse. (Approximately.) And keeps kicking.
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Calling out something that has been acknowledged as racist *even by the people who made it* is apparently leaping to "omg racism" and doing so will "weaken our efficacy to fight real racism [sic]". But he tooootally knows what he's talking about, because he's a history teacher and is doing a Ph.D. in modern US history.
I want to be able to punch people via the internet. Punch them with bullets.
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It's not that I believe that privacy concerns aren't important, that if you are concerned about privacy it's because you have "something to hide", or anything like that.
But.
Pieces talking about e-mail privacy in terms of how the government could totally access your e-mail in circumstances X if they have a warrant, or even if criminal investigators have reasonable grounds to believe that your old e-mails/metadata thereon are relevant to an ongoing investigation, is not something that is of great concern to me.
Because, you see, if criminal investigators are able to convince a judge that it's relevant to their investigation, then I am okay with them getting the information, because I like criminal investigations to be possible.
If the police accessed my e-mail and read through it, I would only have a problem with this if they revealed the contents publically, because I would feel embarrassed and exposed, since some of the e-mails I have exchanged with friends have been personal in nature. (I would also be livid if they revealed personal information of my friends.) This would be the kind of silly embarrassment that follows things like, say, slipping on wet pavement and falling over, in that really, it's not that big a deal, but we feel silly, because odds are, anyone who read through my e-mails would not actually think less of me as a person, or anything.
My life would not fall apart around my ears. Because I like to maintain a life policy of not doing shit that would cause my life to fall apart if I got caught. I don't want to live in fear of Getting Caught. I wouldn't even be embarrassed because I got caught bitching about someone behind their back, because I don't do that, because I like how much drama does not happen in my life as a result.
It's all very well saying Petraeus's affair was revealed due to the invasion of his e-mail privacy, but you know what would have helped him avoid this?
Not having an affair. Or, if he wanted to have an affair, not taking a job as the Director of the CIA. Because apart from anything else, when you agree to be director of the CIA, you sort of have to assume that the government will be paying close attention to your life, because you're the head of the fucking CIA and if you are doing stupid shit, that is a potential national threat in the making. There are certain jobs that entail a reduction in your personal privacy, and if you don't want that, don't take those jobs.
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Today's xkcd, the plans of the Up Goer Five, are a curiosity: having looked at them, I feel like I understand the concepts involved less. There's a certain degree of simplification that starts to make things less comprehensible, to me.
I was surprised to learn about the David Petraeus scandal, and disappointed. More disappointed than I ever would have imagined I'd be. The thing is, I'd respected Petraeus. I thought he seemed like a man of honour and integrity.
But no. He's an adulterer, and therefore an oathbreaker - and if you can't trust someone to keep the vow they made before their family, friends, and in many cases, God, in what situation can you trust their word? If their own families can't trust them, who can?
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So, something called The Atlantic Wire has a piece up, with screenshots and videos, glorying in the bit on Fox News when Karl Rove was trying to insist that it was too soon to call Ohio and Megyn Kelly was sent to the stats guys to ask them about the reasoning.
The thing is, some of their summaries go like this:
"They seem very confident," Kelly says, not entirely confident in the nerds.
See, I've watched the footage, and I disagree; I think Megyn Kelly's demeanour throughout is a mixture of the following factors:
1) She thinks this is kind of stupid. If the numbers desk has made the call, then they're going to have reasons, and Karl Rove is being a whiny idiot.
2) She a bit nervous about it, because she mentions that they tried this in rehearsal, and they lost audio (which did happen again), and is, I suspect, worried that this is going to turn into an embarrassing debacle of miscommunication and technical errors.
3) She is politely asking of the stats dudes/nerds (if you're going to be unnecessarily bitchy about it) that they explain their reasoning, for informational purposes, so that the viewers and hosts can understand. She is, in this scene, being a journalist. You can tell, in part, by the way she asks them to explain Karl Rove's theory (and why they disagree with it).
In less diplomatic, journalistic terms, I think her question translates to: "I think what Karl Rove said sounded like bullshit, but I'm not discounting the possibility I didn't understand it correctly, because he also expressed himself badly. Can you explain what he said in a smart way that makes sense, and then explain clearly why he's wrong?" She's not siding with Karl Rove, she's asking the requisite questions for clear information to be conveyed, leaving no ambiguity or confusion.
Seriously. I'm not a fan of Megyn Kelly. In fact, overall, I kind of sincerely dislike her, or at least her public persona.
But in this instance, she was completely unobjectionable, even decent. That piece on the Atlantic Wire is a spectacular example of how people can let their biases overwhelm them to the point where they only look at their ideological opponents as caricatures, rather than people, and it just gets actively unhelpful.
After all, if you can't even see that you're finding common ground with someone on the point of Karl Rove Is A Douchebag, where *can* you ever find it? And if you can't find common ground, how is there any resolution to America's political divides before the Second Civil War?
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Apparently some American Republicans were talking about moving to Australia after Obama's victory.
Because we're exactly what they're looking for. A nation with strict gun control laws, universal health care, entrenched social welfare programs, and an established tradition of paying for government expenses via tax revenue, and an unmarried woman atheist head of government. (Not to mention a monarchy-based head of state.)
Pro tip: If Hurricane Sandy had been Cyclone Sandy and hit Australia, the costs of dealing with the disaster would likely be met by an additional levy on the wealthy via the tax system, because that's how we generally handle government expenses that the existing tax code doesn't cover.
Seriously, though. Show up to a political rally with an assault rifle here, and you are, I assure you, guaranteed to be arrested as soon as the tactical response group get there to arrest you at the point of about twenty assault rifles of their own, in full body armour, possibly with air support. Because, Republicans, I can assure you, you are not going to get legal access to an assault rifle in this country, and you sure as shit are not going to get away without prison time for taking one to a crowded location.
I'm not sure Republicans could handle our gun control laws alone, let alone living with all our socialism. In Australia, air rifles and paintball guns are Category A weapons, requiring a license, for which you must have a "Genuine Reason".
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"It looks like Obama got over the line in places like Ohio because of high black voter turnout. I gather that four years of racism-based politics has kind of annoyed people. They're a bit shirty about it, so they all went and voted."
"Gosh. Who ever would have expected that?"
"Not the Republicans, apparently."
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(As an aside: I really haven't been posting much, as well as failing utterly at keeping up with my reading list. I can tell in part because my new computer is a good few weeks old now, at least, and I still didn't have a bookmark for the Dreamwidth update page.)
So, I've been following the US election closely-ish, because American politics have an impact on my own country. In retrospect, we, as a planetary community, shouldn't have let America become the only superpower, and we shouldn't have let their economy become as connected to everyone else's as it is... but at the time, how could we know that? America used to be non-interventionist in matters outside its own borders very much to a fault, and after the Great Depression, their economy was well-regulated. There was no way we could have anticipated the modern Republican Party, we just couldn't.
And yet, the wingnuts of the so-called GOP (and why is it called that, seriously? It's the younger of the two main parties in American politics. WTF, America?) are the biggest current threat to my country's economy.
Still, along the way I've noticed a few things that are just, regardless of your political affiliation, objectively wrong about how some countries run elections.
Bipartisan Election Officiation
No. Just no. Do you know what the bodies that organise and run your actual elections should be? Non-partisan. Partisan politics has no place, at all, in the mechanics of the electoral process.
Voting Machines
The idea of voting machines still confuses me, frankly, because what is this, I don't even, especially when it comes to the existence of voting machines that don't leave a paper trail at all. Voting machines that can "need recalibration" because they miscount votes, voting machines that can just be hacked to lie outright - do you even care about your election being fair, at that point?
Ballots should be cast on paper. Paper ballots should then be counted by people. With other people watching. If you have multiple questions being decided, you have a separate slip of paper for each question, colour-coded, and then you sort each stack by how people voted, and it's not that difficult. And that way, if anyone is unsure about the accuracy of the vote count, you know what you can do? Count them again!
And you avoid the sub-issue, which is:
Privately-Owned Voting Machines
Words can not express my shock and confusion when someone mentioned to me that Mitt Romney's son was, via Bain Capital, buying voting machines in swing states.
How could such a thing even be possible? Something which is a part of the very important process by which your government is selected should not only be unable to be owned by someone with partisan interest in the result, it shouldn't be able to be privately owned BY ANYONE. The infrastructure of your elections should be owned by your NON-PARTISAN electoral commission-type body.
Voting on a Weekday
If you are going to hold your election on a weekday, it should be a public holiday. Voting should be something *everyone* can find time to do.
And finally...
A Personal, Less Objectively True Opinion
If you didn't vote in your country's election, and you could have, don't you dare express any kind of complaint about the government. Shut up until you've voted, because if you didn't vote, you didn't do your most basic, most elementary civic duty. Which means civic society owes you nothing. You blew off your chance to participate in governance, and therefore you ditched your right to object to how that governance proceeds. If you could have voted and didn't, just sit there and take it, whatever happens, because you sat there and let it happen, so just. shut. up.
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I was tremendously proud of her recent, much-remarked-upon speech on the topic of misogyny.
(I was irritated by the people - where by people I mean Liberals* and by Liberals I don't necessarily mean people - accusing her of "defending a misogynist" in the speech, since she very, very specifically didn't do that. The only argument she made that could be construed as "defending" Peter Slipper, as opposed to attacking Tony Abbott, was that the matter under discussion is currently before the courts, and that, this not being an entirely new topic, after all, the court proceedings be allowed to run to completion before Parliamentary decisions be undertaken. In my view, it's actually a cogent point.)
However, two points, one shallow, one not, remain for me:
1) I am glad that, in a video that was watched around the world, Prime Minister Gillard was wearing a nice blue jacket, not her horrible, horrible red one that clashes with her hair. (Julia, you're what, fifty? You are old enough to know that your hair will clash with almost any shade of red. In general I don't think criticism on the basis of your clothing is valid, but trust me, I would be just as thoroughly critical of a man with your hair colour wearing a bright red jacket.)
2) Just about everything wrong with Julia Gillard's policies, political career, and government would be absolutely fine if only she would undertake to give a firm, clear fuck off to any person or policy emerging from the NSW Right.
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Why Borderlands 2 is awesome:
Because right now, I *should* be hijacking a train via explosions, in theory, but I'm putting that off because I need to pick up crumpets for a tea party.
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From the Last to the First
"Victoria didn't blame you," he says.
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So, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) lazulisong and I have been posting a thing over at AO3. Aimed primarily at Teen Wolf fandom, because Teen Wolf actually has a major character with ADHD, it's a bunch of stuff about ADHD and about writing characters with mental health issues and about researching fic, iunno.
Anyway, this is the link to the entire work. I've done chapters 2 and 4 so far; chapter 2 is basically a breakdown of what ADHD is, and chapter 4 is my best attempt to explain what it feels like.
Sooo if you've ever wanted to try and get an idea of what it feels like inside my head, with the ADHD thing, then here's the quick link to Chapter 4.
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I really, really resent being put in the position of feeling like I should stand up for Julian Assange.
The guy is, at best, a power tool. His is the sine qua non of Backpfeifengesichts. His face is in dire, desperate need of at least one fist in it, possibly many, and I can easily believe that he is guilty of the crimes Sweden is trying to allege he committed.
However.
Every single thing about the way his case is playing out is dodgy as hell, and Sweden, it seems, has already handed someone over to US custody who went on to immediate rendition.
If the prosecution against him had played out normally, instead of seeming ridiculously politically motivated, it would be different, but... it didn't. Pretty much everything the governments pursuing him have done looks dodgy. Since when can you not interview someone unless you've cuffed them?
And now the UK is even making not-very-veiled threats against Ecuador, for offering him asylum, which... seriously. Violating international treaties over him, and it's not a grudge thing? Roman Polanski didn't get chased this way, and he unquestionably deserved it more.
If the rule of law and the principles of justice we attempt to uphold are to mean anything, they have to apply to anyone, even someone as intrinsically unlikable as Julian Assange. His very image makes my teeth itch, and yet I yearn to fight, on principle, for his right to a fair trial.
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So, I don't know if this changes in season 2, but in season 1, Allison is seen using the modern equivalent of a compound bow, and a recurve bow. Not a crossbow. I hope season 2 does not show her using a crossbow, because crossbows kinda suck. They take too long to reload, and they're less accurate, in proficient hands; the reason crossbows were good for armies is that they take vastly less training to use effectively. Since Allison has already demonstrated bow proficiency, crossbows would be a serious downgrade.
(velithya suggested that maybe it's because crossbows can be smaller, but I don't find that a convincing argument. They're bulkier; a bow, especially unstrung, can take up less space, regardless.)
So, that's one thing - talking about her crossbow. Unless canon introduces one, which I hope it doesn't, the word people want is "bow".
But that one maaay be allowable.
What is hilariously, comedically not allowable at all?
Referring to the projectiles launched by her alleged crossbow as arrows.
CROSSBOWS DO NOT FIRE ARROWS.
Bows fire arrows. Crossbows fire bolts. They are quite different.Current Location: still not really dealing with reality
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I am going to tell you something very important here: ADD/ADHD drugs do not hype up people who actually have those disorders. They calm us down. Mostly, they give us focus. Any remaining hyperactive behaviour is either the degree to which the disorder continues to affect the individual despite the medication, or a factor of personality and/or mood.
e.g. When Stiles approaches Scott talking at a hundred miles an hour and then, when Scott stares at him, says that he had lots of Ritalin? That scene plays, to someone like me, i.e. a person with adult ADHD, as an incredibly familiar moment. Stiles isn't citing his Ritalin to explain why he's hyper, he's defensively pointing out that he has had Ritalin and therefore the appropriate response at this point is not to tell him to go take his meds, he's being hyper because of the situation. Which, justified.
I'm kind of in love with Teen Wolf's having a character who's been shown to have ADHD but who is still functional with it and awesome. I've read some good Teen Wolf fic, but wow, do some fics fail at ADHD.
My pet peeves include:
- "hyped up on Ritalin" (see above)
- references to Adderall - only forgivable if it turns out he's switched in season 2, which I haven't watched yet, but certainly as of the end of season 1, Stiles takes Ritalin, and these things are not interchangeable
- one fic which even referred to "Adderol" in the summary. Sorry, if you can't even spell the name of the incorrect drug you are suggesting he takes, you have done way, WAY too little research into the condition to be allowed to talk about it, and if you're going to write Stiles, you need to leave the ADHD stuff as undiscussed background.
I realise that to many people ADD and ADHD are jokes, not real and serious conditions which cause significant learning disabilities and substantial impacts on lifestyle.
Those people can bite me.
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Sooo, we're watching the Olympic opening ceremony.
It can best, I think, be described as a combination of the following elements:
"... This is bullshit."
"What the fuck? That's kind of inappropriate."
"Yes, that does represent that aspect of that era. If by that era, you mean a different era, about fifty years later.
"My, how cheery we are about the annihilation of the lives of millions of people. It's impressive how much they've managed to pull that off while entirely ignoring colonialism."
And all that comes after featuring a display of choral unity that showed the United Kingdoms united-ness via:
- Flower of Scotland, a song that is, in fact, entirely on the topic of kicking the English the fuck out of Scotland
- Jerusalem
REALLY ENGLAND. AT A TIME WHEN RELATIONSHIPS WITH ISLAMIC WORLD ARE KIND OF STRAINED, YOU FEATURE JERUSALEM TO OPEN THE OLYMPICS.
Oh well. This is the country which has taken the Olympic Games, international symbol of peace and goodwill, and surrounded the stadium with possibly the most heavily militarised border in history, and added the truly charming touch of installing surface to air missiles on residential buildings and the greatest militarisation of the city of London generally since the fucking Blitz.
ETA, after they showed Her Majesty the Queen parachuting into the stadium with a fictional character:
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is the titular head of state of a number of countries, not just those of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
As such, I would like to request that the people of Britain show my monarch some fucking respect.
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So, the Disney movie Song of the South has never been released on home video.
I have no idea, therefore, why I have clear, if distant, memories of watching it, since I wasn't born until 1980 and therefore definitely couldn't have seen it in the cinema. (Also I remember that I was sitting on the floor for at least some of it.)
I know, now, that that movie is horribly racist and everything, but as a small child, I had never heard of the American Civil War, or a plantation, or any of the context that explains why it's racist. What I remembered of it was mostly Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, with the bluebird, and Uncle Remus seemins so nice, and Br'er Rabbit stories.
How did this happen?
(Oh, hey, my mother intermittently reads this now. Mum? How did I see Song of the South? We lived in Australia! In the 80s! (I refuse to think that I saw it in South Africa, and my sole memory of pre-emigration life is a Disney movie.))
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Huh.
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Jul. 18th, 2012 @ 12:16 pm
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If it were a state, Puerto Rico would be America's 29th most populous.
I think 3.7 million people really should be either a state or a country, for serious.
(The Northern Territory isn't a state, sure, but NT has only a couple of hundred thousand people, and we asked them if they wanted to be a state in 1998. They said no.)
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It's perhaps unfortunate that we so rarely see politicians reacting to truly surprising events. It's definitely unfortunate that political campaigning tends to involve so much time spent blowing up every trivial detail into something of allegedly vast magnitude, because doing so drowns out the issues that actually do matter.
Last week, on the live discussion progrm Q&A, one of the panellists, Simon Sheikh, who heads GetUp and is therefore a perennial irritant to pretty much all politicians, collapsed. He's epileptic, and had been fighting flu for a few weeks while still working harder, it turns out, than was advisable for his health; he had a minor seizure, apparently, and definitely passed out, faceplanting on the desk with an audible thud.
The reactions of the two politicians on the panel were notable.
Sophie Mirabella (LIB), who was sitting next to him, recoiled, giving him a horrified look, and stayed leaning away until Sheikh had regained consciousness and been escorted off the stage by crew-type people. When he makes a slight noise, she pulls further away, and shuffles the papers in front of her slightly further away as well. She puts a hand on his shoulder and helps push him up, but that's still moving him further away from her.
Greg Combet (ALP), who was on the other side of the panel and was mid-sentence at the time, said something like: "I don't know what Simon is doing. Is he okay? I think Simon's not okay..."
At that point, the crew members were starting to converge, and the presenter said, "Simon is not okay." At which point Combet stood and went around to where Sheikh was being pulled up to a sitting position. Combet's voice is just audible, as this is happening, saying: "Oh, no." When Sheikh becomes responsive, if a bit waxen, Combet is asking if he's okay. (One of the crew, who clearly knows more about him, can be heard asking if he had a seizure. Sheikh acknowledges a bit glassily that he passed out, and is escorted at that point from the stage. (He was looked after very well, he said later, until the ambulance came to take him to hospital.)
Combet hovers by Sheikh's chair for a moment after Sheikh is taken away, watching a bit anxiously. As Tony Jones starts regaining control of the situation, telling everyone to sit down and leading in for further questions, Combet can be heard saying "Dear oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear." And then he sits down but looks rattled and concerned.
Now, I'm not a huge fan of Combet. He's had a number of policies I profoundly disagree with, and I say this without malice, but he is arguably the dullest speaker currently in Federal Parliament. This man could tell you that you'd won the lottery and also been made the ruler of your own small but wealthy nation, while congratulating you on the birth of your child and finish on a recitation of the band of brothers speech from Henry V, and you would realise around the point of and hold their manhood cheap, your attention caught by the childish entertainment value of "manhood", that you had totally tuned out and missed every word he droned. He lacks charisma so profoundly that if he ever shook hands with someone like Bill Clinton or Robert Downey, Jr., it would produce a reaction that would risk catastrophic damage to the personalities of everyone within a hundred-mile radius. (It's been theorised that this is how Victoria happened.)
However, I would trust him infinitely more than I would Mirabella. I now, until further notice, am convinced that he's not a bad man, just misguided in some of his policies. Whereas Sophie Mirabella is perpetuating the apparent trend that conservative politicians are basically horrible people.
There are more examples of character-demonstrating issues regarding politicians, but I still have the Maybe-Actual-Flu Death Cold of Doom and am out of stamina. Must go collapse.
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So, we start here, with a beautiful letter written by a freed slave to his former master: As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you.
That's not actually the best part of the letter (the final line is), but really, the whole thing deserves to be read. (There is a line that is slightly heartbreaking, in reference to past tragic sufferings of slavery, but they are, at least, past.)
What's also supremely nifty, though, is kottke.org followed it up, and did some research into what happened to the family; the short version is that they appear to have done quite well, and the gent in question seems to have lived until at least his seventies.
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