sundries

[rm]

Mainly, this is me trying to get back on the bandwagon and knowing that tomorrow won't be the best day for it. Also, there's some news you can use.

There's a dude trolling for women to stalk on LJ. Several LJ'ers have already had extremely upsetting interactions with him. You can read the details, but be aware they involve a lot of triggers for everything from rape to eating disorders to racially-based hate because of this guy's totally unacceptable behavior. The post does have a list of his identities on other online communities though and may be useful if you are in his target demographic (young, white, slim, intellectual and often in a position to be enabled by him regarding alcohol and drug abuse, eating disorders or other activities that are self-harmful).

I had heard the stuff about cracks in the sea-bed and potential complete death of the Gulf waters. I hadn't heard the thing about how the oil spill may be about to trigger an extinction level event. Yes, that includes us. I don't have the skills to evaluate the science involved, nor the data to evaluate the relevance of that science even if I did. But I'll tell you one thing, the media blackout as regards the site and response efforts? That's weird, and it makes this article scare the living crap outta me. As bitsyrant so delightfully said on Twitter, now would be a really good time to find out he's really the Doctor and I'm really Jack or we are all fucked.

ETA: Actually, not so much, although it would still be rad if our Bitsy was the Doctor. Anyway, see comments for why the Gulf is a Bad Terrible Thing but is not going to Cause the Planet to Blow Up. That's a relief.

You know the whole thing with the bees disappearing? Well, we suck. It looks like it might be cellphones.

Man, these are weird sundries. Deathity, death, death. Now, men who want to be cryonically preserved and the women who love them.

I am reading the Advocate's website right now. What the fuck is this thing that appears to be a trashy gay vampire show that there are ads for on it? The Lair? Has anyone seen this? It seems awesomely bad enough to merit some Netflixing and a drinking game, ne?

A very strange sale of Kiss of the Spiderwoman is about to take place. Interesting both because of the significance of the film, and because of this idea of selling a film in a complete and singular way.

Comments

[dr-is-in.livejournal.com]

I shouldn't have read that BP article. Thoughts of dying trigger panic attacks for me that last for days.

That said...2012 isn't that far off.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

FWIW, there are plenty of bad things to be worrying about in the Gulf of Mexico, but extinction level methane explosions is not one of them (http://scienceblogs.com/speakeasyscience/2010/07/warriors_against_claptrap.php) - that article, as I understand it, is bad reporting of an already bad paper. The real problem with methane leaking into the Gulf is that it depletes oxygen and creates these oceanic dead zones, as you note, but obviously that didn't sound quite cinematically epic enough for some hacks to report.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Well, yay. It's only as horrible as we already thought. Or something. I'm glad the planets not going to blow up though.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Ha, yeah, that. This kind of reporting actually really bugs me because I feel like it gives people an excuse not to think about the real bad stuff.

[dr-is-in.livejournal.com]

I could kiss you for debunking the article. Seriously. I was making myself sick after reading it.

[hoyland54.livejournal.com]

I second to this. Though I hadn't actually gotten as far as reading it; I was busy worrying about how much I shouldn't read it.

[dr-is-in.livejournal.com]

Seriously, as its being shown to be way off the mark, don't read it unless you want to spend the next few hours shaking and sick. One of my panic attack triggers is thoughts of dying....this article didn't do me any favors. And this is why my husband doesn't let me watch doomsday documentaries for my own mental health.

[rihani.livejournal.com]

I get the same kind of panic attack triggers from the same type of thoughts, and I stupidly read the original article this morning... and spent the rest of the day (failing to) convincing myself to forget I'd read it. So, totally sympathize with how you felt! I'm glad someone gave us the debunking info. I'll probably sleep tonight now.

[habiliments.livejournal.com]

Forgive me for being completely off topic, but your is SO PRETTY I, um, accidentally seem to have just lost myself in your userpics for a bit. What a lovely collection you have there.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Thank ontd_science, not me; we already went through all this yesterday :)

[dr-is-in.livejournal.com]

Ah well, the thanks still goes to you for pointing it out. Now I need to go get my husband to stop laughing at me in the other room for freaking out.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

I found this on LJ last night and got nervous, but some of it sounded off so I wasn't sure. Then I tooled around later today and found the link you provided further upthread. It's a shame that this bad reporting is going to make the rounds for awhile.

[used_songs]

Thank you! I read about that a few weeks ago and had pushed it aside mentally as thing-I-can't-control but I feel better hearing this. I'm only an hour or so from the Gulf of Mexico, so I figured we were toast if it blew.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

I've been sick for TWO DAYS over it. Yesterday was my son's first birthday, and, um... yeah. I had to really work to not cry at a few points. I've been alternately nauseated and depressed....

Ugh.

N.

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

Okay, thanks for that. :)

Not that it really makes the Gulf Spill any better, but it's good to know anyway. I guess the sad thing is that it does seem plausible that we humans could fuck things up enough to cause an event like that. And, you know, if it was ONLY humans who were going to become extinct as a result, part of me thinks that might not be such a bad thing.

[nicoli-dominn.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with your last sentence. I'm a little bit sad that the article was debunked. I mean, I didn't entirely believe it, but it seemed plausible.

[azurelunatic]

The methane thing is apparently dubious: http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=2334

[maryling.livejournal.com]

Does the BP thing mean I should hold off on buying Dragon Age: Awakening because I won't have time to play it before civilization ends?

*using humor to cover up the scared-shitless feeling*

[arjache.livejournal.com]

Oh man. I watched through the entire first season of The Lair once when I was at home with a bad cold. It is incredibly bad, but entertaining if you're an MST3k sort of person. Standard vampire history tropes w/ Cinemax-level porniness.

[(Anonymous)]

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

OK, what and who is this?! The same exact wording (and obstreperous use of red giant text and capslock) just appeared on a post on dwcanon_fodder.

[bugeyedmonster.livejournal.com]

And here I thought someone was trying to be sarcastic.

Maybe it's another case of "why you should never drink and post."

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

No, this happened as a reply to yet another comment of mine elsewhere; I think there's either a troll or a bot about.

[laurab1.livejournal.com]

I had it, too. Seems to be Who people/comms that are being targeted, for no apparent reason :/

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Hey, it's the dude who wrote that article.

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

We're already in a mass extinction event -- it's just not the metor hits the earth type of event.

Also, the Lair -- I tried. But couldn't manage more than about 10 minutes. The acting is excrucitatingly bad. I think it's a bunch of gay porn producers making a vampire drama thing. Notable for guy walking into a soft core gay orgy and screaming 'haven't you heard? the bars closed!'.

There's a similar guy who harasses women via IM -- don't recall his name(s) though. He requests women write rape!fic

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I agree with smirnoffmule's assessment of the Methane Disaster article you linked to. Additionally, I'll note that it set off my BS detector quite early on because (a) it makes extraordinary claims without providing any extraordinary proof, (b) it alleges a conspiracy, and (c) it engages in sensationalistic representation of the information. While it's true that any or all of these things might be going on and the article still be true, they're the sort of things that make me ever more skeptical.

I note that none of the professional scientists and engineers cited in the article have actually bought into the disaster prediction that the author is making. Rather, the author is citing their published research and then going several steps further to put together the prediction of imminent disaster. I'm sure the management at Helium.com is loving the page hits this thing has generated.

[sethg]

As an economist with an interest in political institutions, Robin came up with the concept of futarchy, a form of government in which prediction markets would be used to determine the viability of various policies. He would like to live in a futarchy, and an effective cryonic preservation would improve his chances of seeing one.

“I want to be frozen after death so that hundreds of years from now I can be resuscitated and see a whole political system acknowledge that I really was a visionary and not a crackpot!”

[lovefromgirl.livejournal.com]

Spreading the word about the creep. Thanks for the heads-up, as I am only a little bit removed from his target population.

[tacky-tramp.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip about the creepazoid. Ugh, and I was just involved in an awful exercise in stalking-denial in the World of Warcraft community.

[chiasmus.livejournal.com]

I hate the way the article on the methane is presented. It freaked me the fuck out when I first read it, but then after talking to my Geologist friend and poking around more on the Internet, the whole methane mass extinction argument thing was something that was presented by Ryskin at least as far back as 2003, and it's the article guy who's linking it, not necessarily scientists, other than the oblique "many experts" he keeps referring to. So I'm really glad there are other people debunking it, too.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I saw a vid for The Lair (http://community.livejournal.com/strangefandom/17438.html) -- I think it's the same people who do Dante's Cove and it appears to be similarly ridiculous. I say, get yourself some robot pals and MST the night away.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I pinged duikermiese the other day about the ZOMGMETHANEWILLKILLUSALL thing. She set me on the path right quick.

Still, if you're Jack and Bitsy's the Doctor, I'm...totally willing to hang out in a dimensionally wibbly blue box with you guys? Or something?

Also, I really have to convince my family to let me keep bees. BEEEEEEES.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

The cellphone/bee thing seems dubious to me, just because that study sounds so much more superficial than these studies (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,477804,00.html).

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

The methane thing freaked me out, too. I spent some of this morning digging, and posted about it on my blog, here. There's an article interviewing a Texas A & M geologist who's just came back from a study of the methane levels in the water.

[alterjess.livejournal.com]

The bee study is highly dubious (http://skepchick.org/blog/2010/07/bees-cell-phones-and-bs/) for a number of reasons.

[nicoli-dominn.livejournal.com]

There's a dude trolling for women to stalk on LJ.

I almost thought you were talking about an ex of mine, but no, this guy is actually worse. Thanks for the warning.

That article about the oil spill is terrifying. No wonder BP is trying to fine the media for getting anywhere near the area. But then again, if this event comes to pass, BP won't have a reputation to protect anymore, will it? Scientific theories like these only reinforce my fantasy that nature is an unconscious force that will move to protect itself whenever significantly threatened.

[nicoli-dominn.livejournal.com]

Awww, debunked. Never mind.

[azn-jack-fiend.livejournal.com]

From what I've heard, the bee collapse isn't that mysterious. It's because the bees are kept under too much stress and exposed to too many different conditions (including pesticides).

Smaller organic farms have been reporting that their bees are doing just fine. But when the bees are trucked all over the country and forced into stressful living conditions, which is the standard agribusiness practice to maximize profit, they tend to fall victim to CCD.

The cellphone experiment doesn't sound very rigorous since it only mentions one hive.

[kitaloon.livejournal.com]

I am really glad that this theory has been debunked, because despite the pathetic science in that article ("many geologists", "most experts in the know", "omg it's a government conspiracy"), that article actually made me sick to my stomach and scared in a way that few things do. It's terrible science, but as a piece of rather sensationalist writing it's quite effective.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

There have been horrendous problems with bees in Western Canada, but the culprit has always been said to be mites. And they(the bees) seem to be coming back.
I'll ask around, and see what the Smart People say.

[coriander.livejournal.com]

The Lair is SOOOO bad it's good... I found it best to watch all at once. One ep at a time was not enough. And there are not enough episodes either. They need to make more. lol.

Gotta read about the bees now!