dragoness_e | Entries tagged with rant

Note: going through my old Disqus account and reposting some of the more interesting comments I made to Slactivist back in the day.

2019-11-09:

I have quite a few thoughts on this topic, because I realized that so much of pop culture about vigilantes and rogue "good-guy" cops like Dirty Harry are based on some Very Bad Ideas: to wit, (1) that people can be divided up into Good People and Bad People, and that (2) "A leopard never changes his spots", i.e., Good people never "go bad" and Bad People can never truly be good, and (3) You can infallibly tell Good People from Bad People because reasons (the reasons vary, but traditionally, being an unrepentant criminal is considered a signifier of Badness. Or being a minority criminal). The logical implications of these exceedingly bad ideas leads to "if we just eliminate all the Bad People, then no one will ever do Bad Things again and the world will be Safe", and that "Only Good People should have rights, so ignore the rights of Bad People, they're just 'technicalities' that keep us from punishing the Bad People".

These are Very Bad Ideas because they're flat-out wrong, and lead to very bad conclusions. (1) People are complex and volatile; they are neither good nor bad, for the most part, but just human, with needs, fears, ignorance and literal brain damage driving a lot of apparent criminal behavior. (Then there's the condition of living under an oppressive system, wherein just surviving from day to day may be a crime in the eyes of the oppressors, but in no way is actually bad or evil). (2) People grow and change; people grow out of youthful folly, and people fall into mature debauchery or just do something stupid out of desperation or lose touch with their compassion and let fear drive them instead. (3) Given that there are no such animals as "Good People" and "Bad People", you certainly can't tell them apart.

Why doesn't Batman just kill the Joker? Because he's really tempted to do just that, and he knows it would set him on the road to becoming an even bigger monster than the Joker.

Why doesn't Superman fix every disaster, rescue everyone, stop every crime and put every corrupt politician and criminal away/remove them? He's capable of it. Because Clark Kent is wise enough to know that humanity neither needs nor wants a vengeful god looking over everyone's shoulder, and, as much as they might want it, it's not good for humans to have everything solved for them. And it would probably turn him into a monster like TurboJesus in Left Behind.

I managed to get myself banned from /r/wow. Well, I had already quit the game, so... *shrugs*. That's the second forum I've ever managed to get banned from. I need to work harder on my cranky old lady reputation, obviously.

Note to anyone who posts on that subreddit: the mods don't like being argued with over whether or not something is hate speech. I don't like ridiculous language-policing. I do not believe that calling a concept "retarded" is hate speech.

I'm not sure I actually believe in "hate speech" as an objective concept. As actually used, it's a form of insult--and since any word can be used as an insult if delivered with the right tone and intent, all words are potentially "hate speech". I figured that out years ago and refuse to go down the road of crippling my native language because some people are stupid, hateful assholes. I refuse to self-censor out of fear that someone, somewhere might deliberately take offense. I refuse to jump on the Euphemism Treadmill.

In general, I don't write to intentionally offend people. If I deliberately offend you, you'll know it unless you are spectacularly oblivious. If you are the type of person to seek out sources of outrage and take offense where none was intended, I'm not here to please you.

Watch on YouTube

Good riddance to bad rubbish. I look forward to the day that feculant piece of human garbage that has been disgracing the office of President for the last four years is finally ejected. I only have two questions: (1) Will the big orange turd concede before Jan 20 and leave with a tiny shred of dignity, or will federal marshals have to drag him out of the White House crying and ranting? (2) Upon being evicted, will the turd defect to his buddy Putin for protection from all the criminal prosecutions waiting for him here in the U.S., or will he stay and try to pretend that ex-presidents are above the law?

cross-posted to my Facebook

Current Mood: jubilant

It's hard to go to sleep when you are utterly enraged. Last night, I discovered that Barnes & Noble defrauds e-book purchasers: you do not actually get your epub file. Instead, you get permission to read your purchased ebook in their choice of ebook reader, the Nook App, or in their web viewer. When you "download" an ebook to the Nook App, it is hidden on your device; you cannot access it with another e-reader app, nor can you back it up to your computer or other storage. THIS APPLIES TO NON-DRM books as well, so if you purchase say, a Tor sci-fi book (Tor does not add DRM to their ebooks), you still cannot access your own book.

I purchased Martha Wells' two latest MurderBot stories from B&N, and then tried desperately to get them into my Calibre library and visible to FBReader (my favored e-reader app). No go. The books were simply not available to be copied or moved. B&N's order status considers the books to be "delivered" once your Nook App downloads them, even though you don't have them accessible. Their support website arrogantly tells you that you don't need to backup your ebooks, because they are always available on the Nook server. So when B&N goes bankrupt or decides not to support that format of ebook anymore, they will be "always available"? If I move to another country, they will be "always available"? If I lose my account info in some kind of catastrophe, they will be "always available"? Yeah, no, fuck that shit.

My final solution? I hoisted the jolly roger, searched for torrents of the two books, and within five minutes had unencumbered, accessible, readable epub files of the two books I HAD ALREADY PAID FOR (AND NOT RECEIVED). The lovely Martha Wells has already received her royalties and whatever arcane sales performance metrics from B&N on my behalf, so no harm done. The second thing I did was delete my credit card info from B&N and put in a Data Rights Request to delete all my personal info (since there does not seem to be a way to just delete my account). The third thing I did was write a one-star review of the Nook App in the Google Play store, highlighting the fact that it HIDES YOUR OWN BOOKS and that B&N lies about "delivering" your ebooks to you.

I will never do business with Barnes & Noble again, neither for ebooks nor physical books, and I encourage you not to do so. Businesses should be punished for shady practices in the only way they understand: in their sales. Spread the bad publicity, too; it can only help.

To friends & family: please do not give me Barnes & Noble gift cards in the future; you will be wasting your money because I will not use them.

Current Mood: angry

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: angry

I don't plan on watching the Superbowl this year. I can always catch the cute ads on whatever site likes to showcase them afterwards, but the NFL will not get my advertising eyeballs for this fake championship.

On the one hand, we have the New England Patriots, known serial cheaters. Am I supposed to take seriously that they're really the AFC champions when they feel they have to cheat to win?

On the other hand, we have the Lame-A** Rams, who are illegitimate, Non-Champions of the NFC. You're not a champion when the championship game gets handed to you by crooked refereeing. I don't recognize the Rams as NFC champions, because they didn't win the NFC championship legitimately, therefore this SubparBowl is fraudulent, a game of two second-class teams pretending to be the battle of champions. I don't care about either team, and the game is a second-class fake of the real thing, so why would I watch it?

As the NFL is hoping to make their usual huge profit via you watching a fraudulent game that's not what it is represented to be, I encourage you to show them what you think by not watching the Subpar Bowl either. Also, if the NFL can't be bothered to make sure that the referees are honest and competent, then the game itself has no integrity and isn't worth watching. Who cares what the results of a game are if it's rigged in advance?

I hope the Patriots flatten the Rams in a massive blow-out, like 45-0, because Tom Brady is actually a great quarterback, and coach Bill Belicheck has advocated for some time that all plays be challengeable and reviewable, like the Canadian Football League does it. If that rule had been in place, that crooked "No-Call" in the Saints-Rams NFC championship would have been challenged and overturned, and we wouldn't be left with bitterness and a pointless fraud of a Superbowl. Also because the Rams players are jerks, and were gloating over benefiting from the obvious crooked refereeing. They deserve to have their Superbowl hopes and dreams crushed like a squashed cockroach.

Current Mood: angry

[Inspired by recent incidents in the Canadian writing community]

Cultural appropriation is a good thing. It means the majority culture is learning to appreciate and is curious about something besides themselves. It means the culture isn't stagnating. It means The Other is good, not bad, and a friend, not an enemy to be suppressed or exterminated. It means The Other is stopping being "Them" and is becoming "Us". We humans love Us; we humans regrettably tend to hate Them. Better for all if they are Us.

The notion that cultural appropriation is bad is one of the more snowflake, dumb-ass and downright poisonous ideas to come out of the left. The logical end-point of "cultural appropriation is bad and you mustn't do it" crowd is cultural segregation and apartheid--everyone is only allowed to write or make art about their own racial and cultural niche, and no one will be exposed to any culture but their own. That would be bad; we learn to tolerate and accept People Not Like Us by getting to know them in person; ditto for cultures.

At worst, badly-done appropriation comes across as crass, rude and insensitive to people of the originating culture. So don't be crass, rude, or insensitive. However, there is not a single damn thing wrong with braiding your hair differently, eating different food, or wearing different clothes than those you grew up with. Don't let anyone force you into a creative or life-style strait-jacket because of what they think is appropriate for you.