sundries

We had a very nice weekend that mostly involved hiding in places with airconditioning and Patty singing the Batman theme to the cats a lot ("CAAAAAAAAATCAT!" instead of "BAAAAAAAAAAAATMAN!"). It was awesome.

This is the final week to bid on things at graduate_maria. I'll be putting up some new items tonight. For those that missed it Maria (theotoky is a long-time friend that I helped get out of an abusive relationship many, many, many moons ago and is now trying to finish her last semester of college but has run out of funds, (this after supporting her abuser through school when they were together). Maria has just, on top of everything else, lost her job and so needs our help more than ever. Projected fundraising total is currently at about $1,200, which means we've $3,800 to go to get her tuition bill paid. Can we do it Internet?

lucylooo died over the weekend. Her work was familiar to many in fandom, and while I knew her stuff but not her, I get the impression she was pretty awesome. Fuck cancer. Do what you can to fight it. This snuck up on her fast and took her quick. My condolences to those who knew her. I saw this multiple times on my friendslist yesterday, so my impression is that there are a lot of you out there hurting.

While there aren't plane tickets or anything involved yet, yeah, it looks like I am heading back to Switzerland in October, which I pretty much already knew but it just got more official.

At least a partial Dragon*Con schedule this week, I'm guessing, since one of the tracks that has the biggest impact on my schedule has promised me "before the end of the month." And hey, tsarina will be attending too!

30x30: dance in the streets of New York.

Scuzzi the cat.

I got this from eumelia who is in Israel about something going on in the UK: but "Brokeback Coalition" what? I assume this is the further, and increasingly less amusing, outgrowth of the whole "let's write slashy RPF about our incredibly disatisying coalition government"? Anyone who can fill me in here?

Peripherally on point, I suppose: xtricks's hilarious guide to teh buttsex! which was linked yesterday is now, among other things, serving as a listing of the worst things we've ever read used as lube in fanfiction and pro erotica. Current entrants (ha!) include chocolate, peanut butter, alcohols and guacamole. Can you add to the horror? I bet you can.

Where are all the lesbians in UK TV?¹ The article asks (I'm over-simplifying their oversimplifying) if we are invisible because we're not about men the way UK TV is. I ask how slash does or does not factor into an attempt at visibiity by queer women in fandom by making it about the dudes, since femmeslash remains fandom's arguably least visibile component. via andrewducker.

A letter to patients with chronic disease has been making the rounds, largely to very positive reviews. I've had a profound problem with it, however, as, despite containing useful, pragmatic and even illuminating information, read as one long, condescending tone argument to me (and I may be the most allergic to the tone argument of everything, because I'm loud, and I don't strive to take up as little room as possible, so I get it a lot).

firecat has a good, brief critique that hits at that sideways by talking about the inherent doctor/patient imbalance in the system and the implications of what that means when a patient has to expend lots of energy reassuring the doctor that he's still the most powerful guy in the room just to get their condition dealt with.

Have not seen Sherlock yet. Will get on that ASAP, which probably means like next week, schedule being what it is.

For those of you who don't read the Internet on the weekends, I wrote a looooong thing about marketing online. Stil owe you a post about Inception, though, that's other than "Suits, pretty."

Okay, I'm only like 20% through the Jack/Auggie story, but it's finally working.

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¹ Maybe Buffy stole them?

the war logs

This is a post all of its own, because it's important.

It's not just about what's really going in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) and why the Taliban is stronger than it's been since 2001 despite all the money we're spending and all the lives we're losing.

It's also about the nature of journalism. It's been a long time since we've had a leak event of this scale, and it's arguably the most significant one we've had in the age of digital journalism, i-reporters (damn you, CNN!) and the like.

The documents, which were released simultaneously to The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel a few weeks ago with a simultaneous embargo to prevent anyone from scooping anyone else, come from an organization known as WikiLeaks that seeks to "combat unethical behavior by governments and corporations."

Of course, some argue that WikiLeaks endangers the privacy of others for the sake of self-promotion. Others wonder, even if that's true whether it matters and should instead be considered an acceptable price for honesty about a war the general public has never quite understood or paid enough attention to.

We spend a lot of time as a culture and as an Internet culture talking about The Media as if it is a single, large, amorphous machine with specific, agreed-upon and unwavering agenda. In the age of marketing the media as entertainment (not a new phenomenon at all, merely one we've cycled through to varying degrees of obviousness for centuries), this isn't totally wrong, but it also contradicts everything I understand and believe as someone who has trained and worked both in and about the media.

If you talk about The Media like it's a single entity -- like the guy who won a bunch of awards for coverage in Rwanda didn't sit across from me way back when with a bottle of booze in his desk just like every fucking journalism movie cliche you can think of -- it's time for you to do just a little more work than usual.

This matters. This is about the young women and men fighting in our name in Afghanistan and a war that may be doing anything but keeping us safe or helping the Afghan people.

This is also about the practices of companies like BP, before and after shit breaks.

And this is, potentially most critically, about the future of journalism.

Read this. Pay attention to it. Form some opinions. Talk about them.

Civic duty, folks. I'm not even kidding.