The Slacktiverse

Jun 02, 2012

Updated This week in The Slacktiverse, June 2/3 2012

The Blogaround

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Twilight: Rape Narratives, Good and Bad
(Trigger Warning: Rape, Victim Blaming, Profanity)

Twilight Recap: Bella and Edward are having dinner in Port Angeles.

Ana Mardoll arrives at the last day of the Chapter 8 posts: You've no idea how dull and repetitive I feel over here. Oh, look, Edward is victim blaming Bella for her own near-rape. Oh, look, Bella is ignoring her own near-rape and Edward's crappy behavior to focus on her personal self-loathing and to slut-shame the waitress for doing her job. Oh, look, these are terrible people and they richly deserve each other and their dull, passive-aggressive romance. *YAWN*

So, there you go, these are terrible people and they richly deserve each other.

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Deconstruction: Callous Helpfulness
(Trigger Warning: Medical Issues, Surgery, Fat Hatred, Dieting)

Ana's trip to a new dermatologist results in a a Fat Acceptance 202 post.

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Narnia: Good Hair, Bad Hair
(Trigger Warning: Racism, Murder, Rape, Domestic Violence, Violent Deities, Animal Attacks )
Narnia Recap: Prince Caspian has been told (in flashback form!) about the peoples of Narnia.

Ana posts about racism in the context of (among other things) hair texture.

Laiima writes: This week I posted about my design process unfolding, interpersonal boundaries - complexity, boundaries & learning to trust myself and artmaking, boundaries and energy, part 1 & part 2.

chris the cynic writes: This week in a post called Quicksave, Cheating, and the Sanctity of Singleplayer I talked about a phenomenon in the gaming community that I don't understand where people can't be happy unless they know everyone is playing in a way that matches their particular beliefs about the correct way to play. I also rewrote a section of Twilight such that Jessica stood up to Edward for Bella.

After taking a tour of a unique local site that's closed to the public in Washington, D.C., Storiteller wrote about it in McMillan Reservoir Park - An Unpolished Jewel. As the commercial / residential development she describes is quite controversial on both sides, there's some debate in the comments. Then, inspired by a particularly inane column in the local conservative newspaper mocking the city's bikeshare scheme, she considers how programs that set up shared resources can have huge benefits in I Am a Communal Enthusiast, Thank You Very Much.

Coleslaw reports: I'm Back after a week off of blogging for reasons explained in the post. A Twitter Exchange of views led me to write about why young people, and not just young people, might prefer giving to secular charities rather than faith based ones. I posted a recipe for Chicken the Way My Mama Made It, which can be made gluten free with a minor tweak.

Michael Mock reports: Over at Mock Ramblings, Mock Ramblings,the week began with the second installment of Into The Game, and followed up with a bit of mopish navel-gazing regarding the effects of exhaustion on the writing process. For Wednesday, I posted a bit of filler: a youtube video of the Zombie Apocalypse, done in legos. Also on Wednesday, there was a mysterious message that seems to indicate the return of the Deranged Cultist.

For Thursday, I pulled a question from the site analytics, and talked about how I (as an atheist) would feel about Religion As A Way Of Finding Meaning In Life. Finally, on Friday I posted the next installment of Pimp My Art Friends: Trinlay Khadro.

Also... last week I mentioned a Facebook group for Christian parents of atheist or agnostic children. There is now a companion group for atheist or agnostic children of Christian parents. If you know anybody who might be interested, please pass the word.

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Twilight: Painted Waitresses
(Trigger Warning: Rape, Surgery, Cancer, Choice, reference to BDSM)
Bella is sitting in the car with Edward while Edward calms down after rescuing Bella from a situation of possible gang rape.

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Hunger Games: A Question of Agency
(Trigger Warning: Death, Agency, Reproductive Rights)
I've decided to run a Hunger Games deconstruction to post on a non-regular basis. This will not be a line-by-line deconstruction like Twilight and will not precisely be a read-a-long like Narnia; it will be a thematic deconstruction by chapter with the assumption that everyone is already familiar with the books. Spoilers lurk herein.

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Narnia: Savior White, Savior Bright
(Trigger Warning: Genocide, Othering through Romanticization, Nazis)
The Pevensie children have rescued a dwarf.

In case you missed this

SpaceX Dragon Returns to Earth from ISS: The first commercial visitor to the ISS splashed down successfully in the Pacific after a supply run. [From Scientific American, May 31, 2012.]

Milestone in an epic journey as Aung San Suu Kyi leaves Burma at last: Almost quarter of century since she last left Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi arrived in Bangkok last night as part of a busy schedule of international travel that would have been unimaginable two years ago. [From The Independent, May 30 2012.]

Things you can do

[From Demand Progress]: Senate: Don't Legalize Propaganda:
An amendment legalizing the use of mass propaganda campaigns on American audiences has been inserted into the latest defense authorization bill — and that bill just passed the House.

The NDAA amendment lifts bans on propaganda that have been around since the 1940s, neutralizing laws put in place to protect the American people from its government’s own “misinformation” campaigns.

“It removes the protection for Americans,” a Pentagon official told Buzzfeed, who broke the story. "There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.”

The amendment would remove all distinction between a hostile foreign audience and American one, turning the massive information operation apparatus within the federal government against its own people.

Click here to send an email to the Senate. .

--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community

The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

Posted by The Board Administration Team on Jun 02, 2012 at 08:28 PM in Blog business | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jun 01, 2012

At Patheos: NRA: Unnecessary secrets

Fred Clark has posted a new post, NRA: Unnecessary secrets, at Patheos.com.

This week Fred writes about pp. 4-7 of Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist

Excerpt:

I’m not criticizing Jerry Jenkins here. We’ve tracked his strange obsession with telephony for more than 900 pages now, and that’s still kind of hilarious, but I do have genuine sympathy for his plight in beginning a series of a dozen “near-future” novels in 1995. Jenkins probably should have known more about cell phones than he did when he started writing that first book, but basically he wrote one book every year from 1995 through 2007 — a period in which commonplace technology changed dramatically. In 1995, Google was nonexistent. In 2007, it was indispensable.

That would have been a challenge even for a skilled writer who cared about what he was doing. Jenkins had to figure out how to adapt to these changes as the series and technology both progressed. His approach seems to have been just to incorporate the new technology into the story as though it had always been a part of the world of these books. As this passage shows, that doesn’t always work seamlessly, but I’m willing to cut him some slack on this point. No matter how long it takes him to finish A Song of Ice and Fire, this isn’t a problem that George R.R. Martin will ever have to face.

[Fred Clark, NRA: Unnecessary secrets, June 1, 2012, posted at Patheos.com]

Commentators who would like to share their responses to the new post with all of Fred's fans (old and new) can cross-post to both boards.

Posted by The Board Administration Team on Jun 01, 2012 at 08:05 PM in Left Behind | Permalink | Comments (5)

(Nearly) Open Thread, June 1 2012

First, we would like to thank those who submitted articles in the last week. Several are in the process of editing and revision right now. We look forward to more submissions in the near future.

Second, what's your earliest memory ?

Posted by The Board Administration Team on Jun 01, 2012 at 06:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (24)

May 31, 2012

Board Post, May 31 2012

Regular Business

Don't forget to send in items that you want included in This week in The Slacktiverse June 2/3 2012.

The three sections of the weekend post are:

The Blogaround

Any denizen of the Slacktiverse who has posted an article to their own website during since the previous weekend post is invited to send a short summary of that article along with its permalink to TBAT. That summary and link will be included in the next weekend blogaround. This will help to keep members of our community aware of the many excellent websites hosted by other members.

May 30, 2012

"Hello, Mother; Hello Father": Gendered Language and the Family

A gender binary does not accurately describe the world I live in, and certainly not a world I want to live in. I commonly encounter people whose gender I cannot define, and instead of feeling threatened or anxious about the uncertainty, I feel liberated by the diversity.

I want our common humanity to bring us together. But I don't want to erase differences, I want to celebrate them. I want a world where we are all free to be 'out' about whatever gender we feel ourselves to be.

A person who identifies themselves as some form of nonbinary, like genderqueer, though, may have trouble defining how they relate to others, simply because there are not enough gender-neutral words in English. Here are options I have thought of:

Instead of sister or brother, I can say sibling.
Instead of daughter or son, I can say child.
Instead of goddaughter or godson, I can say godchild.
Instead of mother/grandmother/godmother or father/grandfather/godfather, I can say parent/grandparent/godparent.
Instead of forefather or foremother, I can say ancestor.
Instead of wife or husband, I can say spouse or partner.
Instead of girlfriend or boyfriend, I can say friend, lover, or significant other.

I've been using the word atriarch, to replace matriarch or patriarch.

In English, cousin is gender-neutral.

But what can I use in place of aunt or uncle? Niece or nephew?

'Social status' of adults is referred to by Mr. for men, and Mrs., Miss, or Ms. for women (depending on if they wish to announce their marital status, or not). But what can we use that is nongendered? I've seen Mx, which I think is pronounced 'mix'.

Hanne Blank's fascinating book, Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality, points out that both of the adjectives heterosexual and homosexual refer not to who someone is intrinsically, but who their partner is. But both terms assume that there is a gender binary. What if your partner is genderqueer? Or intersex? What if you both are different flavors of nonbinary genders?

Are there other relationship words that I've missed?

What do you think?

--Laiima

Posted by The Board Administration Team on May 30, 2012 at 04:01 PM in Laiima | Permalink | Comments (45)

May 28, 2012

The meaning of Memorial Day

Today (May 28 2012) is Memorial Day in the United States. According to the (American) Department of Veteran Affairs website: Memorial Day, which is observed on the last Monday of May, commemorates the men and women who died while in the military service.

In the Netherlands Dodenherdenking is a day of official remembrance of those that have died in the service of The Netherlands, from the outbreak of World War II and in conflicts since, both civilian and military.

On the Australian War Memorial website Remembrance Day is described as follows: marks the anniversary of the armistice which ended the First World War (1914–18). Each year Australians observe one minute silence at 11 am on 11 November, in memory of those who died or suffered in all wars and armed conflicts.

Questions:

1) Do you think that we should separately remember/mourn the deaths of civilians in war?

2) How do we honour the service of those who fought for their countries/peoples without mythologizing/demonizing those involved?

--mmy

Posted by The Board Administration Team on May 28, 2012 at 12:48 PM in mmy | Permalink | Comments (26)

May 26, 2012

This week in The Slacktiverse, May 26/27 2012

The Blogaround

This week, Storiteller contemplated the many ways biking reverberates throughout communities. In National Bike Month, Week 3: Ride of Silence , she describes her participation in a ride meant to honor and remember bicyclists lost to bicycle-car accidents. A few days later, she pedaled her way to work, along with 12,000 other people in the region. Although it was Bike to Work Day, she made an unexpected pit stop on the way home to get a book signed by author John Scalzi.

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Twilight: Painted Waitresses
(Trigger Warning: Rape, Surgery, Cancer, Choice, reference to BDSM)
Bella is sitting in the car with Edward while Edward calms down after rescuing Bella from a situation of possible gang rape.

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Hunger Games: A Question of Agency
(Trigger Warning: Death, Agency, Reproductive Rights)
I've decided to run a Hunger Games deconstruction to post on a non-regular basis. This will not be a line-by-line deconstruction like Twilight and will not precisely be a read-a-long like Narnia; it will be a thematic deconstruction by chapter with the assumption that everyone is already familiar with the books. Spoilers lurk herein.

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Narnia: Savior White, Savior Bright
(Trigger Warning: Genocide, Othering through Romanticization, Nazis)
The Pevensie children have rescued a dwarf.

Kit Whitfield continues her analyses of famous first sentences. This week: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

This week Laiima wrote about pattern complexity in plaids and paying heed to me.

chris the cynic reports: This week I wrote a post [Noninteracting Magisteria and the Bechdel Test] about the way female characters in The Avengers and Firefly have roles that don't bring them into contact, which also touched on how few female characters there were in The Avengers. I returned to .hack//Sign with a post starting on Episode 3 Folklore. I wrote a silly post about the various versions of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and a rambling post about Godzilla versus the Sea Monster. I also made an index of what I posted in the month of March.

Nick Kiddle writes: I have a post this week about my return to the joys of blood donation now that a relaxation of rules makes me an eligible donor once more.

Michael Mock reports: This week at Mock Ramblings, there's some big-ish news. At least, I think it's big news. Hope so, anyway. Back in December, I wrote a post aimed at Christian Parents of Atheist or Agnostic Children. In the months since, it has received a modest-but-steady stream of page views and fresh comments. This week, by reader request, I joined with Matt Mikalatos, author of My Imaginary Jesus and Night of the Living Dead Christian, to create a Facebook support group for parents whose children had left the faith (or parents who find themselves in comparable situations). The group is here. So far it's still tiny, but if anyone here is interested in joining - or helping out - you'd be very welcome.

Other weekly ramblings include an explanation of The Wombat Massage, the first section of a new fantasy writing project called Into The Game, some thoughts on Music Festivals and Ableism, and the second installment of Pimp My Art Friends.

yamikuronue reports: Last weekend we saw the first post in a new series called Decon Vs, in which my partner Chaos deconstructs two sports anime, comparing the way they handle characters and plot pacing and so forth. A new post in that series will be queued up for this weekend as well.

Monday and Wednesday both saw RSS Quickies posts from Real Simple Magazine's website: one on cleaning and one on children viewing pornography online. There was no TPD this past week, but Easily Amused examined the dark side of Hubert's character.Friday had another Life Lessons, this time on the phrase "everything happens for a reason".

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Twilight: Appropriating Victims' Experiences
This is serious priority inversion, and it happens all the time in real life and in literature, and it irks me so very much. I have to assume it's a symptom of Privilege; when everything in your entire life has been framed in terms of how you -- Privileged White Male Vampire -- feel, then of course a traumatic experience that happened to someone else should immediately (and only!) be framed in terms of how the Privileged White Male Vampire in the room feels about things! It's just the natural order of things, right? Privileged White Male Vampire feelings come first.

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Deconstruction: The Patriarchy Hurts Women, Too
We live in a harmful Patriarchal society where women are frequently judged, insulted, and slandered not by their words or their positions or by their beliefs, but by their gender and sexuality. The intent is to de-personify women who commit the crime of being public figures, who work publicly for political and social change.

In case you missed this

Literata announces that she is now a legally ordained High Priestess. Yay!
Any Slacktiversians in the area of DC/Northern Virginia are invited to come celebrate with her next weekend.

Leum reports: (Trigger Warning: Rape) I've discovered Project Unbreakable. People hold up posters with quotes from their attackers and the people (family members, friends, law enforcement officials) they've told. Very sad, but also very powerful.

Things you can do

From the World Food Programme:
Ongoing drought, combined with rising food prices, is creating an alarming situation in the Sahel region of West Africa. Working together with our partners on the ground, WFP aims to reach more than 9 million people with life-saving food.
...
Will you stand between a woman or child and hunger today? $50 helps us provide food for the next 100 critical days.

--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community

Posted by The Board Administration Team on May 26, 2012 at 07:57 PM in Blog business | Permalink | Comments (7)

May 25, 2012

At Patheos: NRA: Switching horses mid-apocalypse

Fred Clark has posted a new post, NRA: Switching horses mid-apocalypse, at Patheos.com.

This week Fred writes about pp. 1-4 of Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist

Excerpt:

In stories featuring intentionally flawed protagonists, we can read with the hope that these characters will eventually be redeemed. Even when, as in The Sopranos, the repeated rejection of such redemption is the central theme, such deliberately flawed characters help us to explore what the possibility of such redemption or growth might be like.

But here in this series, the authors do not allow for the possibility that Rayford and Buck might require any such redemption. In their minds, explicitly, these characters have already experienced all the redemption they will ever require. They’re not going to change. They’re not going to get any more likeable than they already are.

And where unlovely characters like Meursault, Raskolnikov, Winston Smith or Tony Soprano are never held up as role models, it seems that here the authors are constantly pointing to Rayford “That Guy” Steele and to the insufferable Buck Williams as ideals whom every reader ought to imitate.

[Fred Clark, NRA: Switching horses mid-apocalypse, May 25, 2012, posted at Patheos.com]

Commentators who would like to share their responses to the new post with all of Fred's fans (old and new) can cross-post to both boards.

Posted by The Board Administration Team on May 25, 2012 at 10:15 PM in Left Behind | Permalink | Comments (2)

Completely open thread

Guys, we really do need you to write and submit articles if you want to have anything to read.

Posted by The Board Administration Team on May 25, 2012 at 06:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (40)

May 24, 2012

Board Post, May 24 2012

Regular Business

Don't forget to send in items that you want included in This week in The Slacktiverse May 26/27 2012.

The three sections of the weekend post are:

The Blogaround

Any denizen of the Slacktiverse who has posted an article to their own website during since the previous weekend post is invited to send a short summary of that article along with its permalink to TBAT. That summary and link will be included in the next weekend blogaround. This will help to keep members of our community aware of the many excellent websites hosted by other members.

May 23, 2012

Some comments on comments

Last week's "This week in the Slacktiverse" included a link to John Scalzi's article Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is. In the days that followed the initial publication of that post Scalzi published an article, "Lowest Difficulty Setting" Follow-Up, about some of the comments made to the original article, some of which he deleted/moderated because they violated the commenting policy of his site. Finally, on May 21, Scalzi posted an article about the very nature of comments, "Lowest Difficulty Setting Follow-Up" Now on Kotaku + Comment on Comments.

In reading the comments to the original post, the follow-up post and the "comments on comments" post two different types of anger are visible: the first anger is aimed the content/argument of the original post; the second type of anger seems to reflect a particular form of commentator entitlement--the belief that it is always wrong/offensive for anyone to be asked to abide by a set of commenting rules even (or even particularly) by the person who owns/moderates the blog.

I admit that I don't "get" the way in which people deal with either form of anger. If one wants to be heard (in the sense of carrying any argumentative weight) in a blogspace then it behooves one to learn the community standards of that place and if one doesn't like the way a particular person runs their own blog then it seems best to me that one go somewhere else and start a blog of one's own.

What do you think?

--mmy

Posted by The Board Administration Team on May 23, 2012 at 02:15 PM in mmy | Permalink | Comments (33)

May 21, 2012

(Nearly) Open Thread, May 21 2012

Lots of us have top tips, shortcuts, patterns, techniques and labor-saving ideas, things we've worked out ourselves or had passed down from older generations. What are your favourites?

Posted by The Board Administration Team on May 21, 2012 at 04:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (25)