mcity

Someone on my deviantWatch just made a post saying that Olivia from SVU is a stronger female character than Beckett from Castle, who is apparently a Mary Sue.

Okay, it is kind of interesting to look at Beckett in isolation, compared to the way she was "designed"; as Castle's counterpart and Love Interest, and he for her. Both characters are intended to complement each other. Beckett doling out little tidbits actually reinforces her emotional isolation, especially in comparison to how Castle will cheerfully talk about details of his personal life, or accidentally let personal details slip. Beckett is a lot more strategic in her small talk (and yes, I speak from experience). As for her heels, she's a fashion-conscious detective, and we all have our vices. Detectives don't actually do that much running.

She has been used as a distraction, but she's an attractive women and knows it. The team has no problem using Castle in exactly the same fashion. "Hey, famous playboy good-looking writer, go over there and distract people!" Most of the time, IIRC, Kate is the one who decides to be a distraction, and on one occasion her sexy act saved Castle's life. And most importantly, she's the head of a three-man detective team, and had a deeper backstory than the title character of the show. The show plays fast and loose with "realism" in the first place; just ask someone with relevant knowledge about the steampunk episode.

The funny thing is that they really like every other female character on the show, but somehow missed the point of the female lead. If they're doing such a good job on everyone else, maybe you're just misreading the character. I mean, TVTropes can't find anything really objectionable about the show. TVTropes.

Speaking of which; yes, the female characters on Everybody Hates Chris tend to be irritating jerks. Just like the male characters.

I don't care how stupid the character is.

I don't care that she's the equivalent of a little girl.

You cannot, with a straight face, have her speak in lolcat.

-J

Our boy specifically thinks he does not want to marry women X and Y, while he is sneaking into a quick wedding with woman Z.

X and Y were willing to share, since the planet allows polygamy, but he did not want to be shared, since he felt that for all their good company in the bedroom, either or both would be the domineering type of woman his mother is before long, and more than he could bear. He has been dodging their offer of marriage for two years.

And Z is the girl next door type, and he both loves her and wants to help out her dad.

Due to a series of circumstances, X and Y show up, and our hero is forced by social and political pressure--from two Emperors, no less--to marry all three women. Z seemed to have no problem with it, but absolutely no one saw fit to consult our boy, even while they were negotiating right in front of him.

So he walks in expecting to marry one woman (whom he loves), and ends up marrying three women, two of whom he explicitly did not want to marry.

I know he's the whipping boy of the canon, but that's Not Okay.

And to think, this fanfic series was going so well up until now, then you just ran full tilt into what TVTropes calls Unfortunate Implications.

Do you know why people like the Wooster books? Because we know Wodehouse is never going to let Bertie end up in a loveless marriage. If he ever did end up getting hitched, we would be reading less along the lines of a light-hearted comedy of manners, and more along the lines of those critically-acclaimed Oscar-nominated movies where everyone is miserable but played by really good actors.

Hang on, I think I'm onto something here. All I have to do is call it a "deconstruction".

Srsly?
-Jonathan

I didn't have a chance to get out today. Let's see if there's some internet comment I can find that'll get the blood pumping.

I just want to point out that ‘men are violent’ isn’t a stereotype, it’s a statistical fact.Men aren’t really taught any coping skills, except for violence, so I’m surprised women aren’t more wary of them. There’s no difference between a ‘normal’ man and a PUA, and there’s no difference between a normal man and a rapist. Heck, the American ideal male is basically a sociopath.

That'll do.

I don’t really care if you’re offending men en masse – bigger fish to fry, and all that – but I do care that you’re actively spreading propaganda that’s going to make people like me (assault survivors, that is) function less productively in society.

When feminist blogs I've seen talk about, say, false rape accusations, it's usually been in the context of how the false accusations make it harder for genuine accusations from women down the line (letting the side down, so to speak), with very little concern for the men usually subject to such accusations *. Feministe actually tried to sell the idea that the accuser was the real victim here because she was being publicly shamed in the same basic fashion the alleged perpetrators were, and that the (male) DA was really responsible, as well as insinuating that the boys might actually have been guilty of...something.* (They had to be up to something, right? Something happened, and it's a shame we'll never know for sure what crime the Duke boys certainly committed.*)

Similarly, the second commenter I just quotedsays she literally does not care about the first commenter's misandrist generalizations about men except in the context of how it will affect women. They don't actually call her out much until much later down the thread.

Real god job of fighting for gender equality, there.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021500818.html?hpid=sec-artsliving

"I call myself a feminist when people ask me if I am, and of course I am 'cause it's about equality, so I hope everyone is. You know you're working in a patriarchal society when the word feminist has a weird connotation. "Hippie" has a weird connotation. "Liberal" has a weird connotation."

The implied logic here seems to be "feminism has weird connotations, therefore we are living in a patriarchal society". Or perhaps "feminism has weird connotations, and only men are responsible".

"Conservative" has a weird connotation too. It's associated with fat, old white "the 1%" far-right Christian guys. Who's responsible for that, pray tell? Is it an indication that we are living in a Conservative society?

I know, I know, I'm overanalyzing an Ex Tempore remark. But it's one that was widely repeated across the feminist blogosphere, with the equivalent of "you go girl!" attached. Theoretically, feminism is about equality. In practice, however, not so much.

The cyst grows with usage of the affected areas. It has doubled in the past week or so.

It also makes my wrist hurt.

So using my right hand both hurts me, and makes the cyst grow, so it hurts me even more.

No, it is not always, or even usually a good idea to err on the side of the alleged victim in cases of abuse or rape accusations. Yes, women are most likely to be raped. But the dark corollary to that which no one likes to talk about is is that men are most likely to get falsely accused of rape. The Duke Lacrosse incident was in March 2006, charges were filed in April, and it was December before they were partially dropped. The remaining charges weren't dropped until April 2007. Innocent men spent a year with the sword of Damocles hanging over their head, because of a lying or perhaps mentally unstable woman and an incompetent DA.

This comes up in feminist discourse, except the hue and cry is that it makes it harder for the genuine accusers of rape. While this is true, there is little concern for the innocent people falsely accused of a crime. Ironically, they take something that should, in fact, be about the menz and tried to make it about the womenz.

If anything, err on the side of caution. "Innocent until proven guilty" gets thrown out the window far too much when dealing with sex crimes; where "too much" is equal to or grater than "at all". Even SVU has episodes where everyone is convinced He Did It, then it turned out He Didn't Dood It. In one case, the poor guy got killed in prison because the "victim" and her family were actually trying to scam the place where the alleged rape happened for a settlement.

And the fact that you are self aware enough to note the irony of you having distaste for Chris Brown, but not Michael Fassbender, means there's some hope for you yet.

asdfgh
-Jonathan

Black and white GIF as a background.

Dark text directly on that background.

Images and permalink boxes that actually become semi-transparent on mouseover.

Light text on dark boxes with a glow effect applied to it.

All text is a small size and ugly font.

It's nice to see Tumblr is enabling an entire new generation of bad web designers who would once have to make do with just FrontPage.

Jonathan planned to make something better, something more substantial around 9. A salad, perhaps. He had some chicken in the freezer. Perhaps he could cot it into strips, have himself a bit of a fry. That might be nice. Salad with chicken.

At about 9, his flatmates trooped into the kitchen and started setting up for a little get-together. He knew because he clearly heard their music playing through the wall.

When he checked later, the kitchen table was occupied by about a dozen bottles, and--yes--a sign he was pretty sure was stolen from the car rental place next door. Either that, or it fell off the back of a fence.

A few minutes later, they started on sing-alongs.

Jonn rolled his eyes heavenward.

EDIT: They left the sign, and dozens of bottles in the kitchen.

There's a room inspection tommorrow.

Previously: Dear Albanian Pudding Wrestling story writer,

Turns out it ends with the monsters invading the rest of the galaxy.

After one of them made a point about them simply wanting to be left alone.

I need a "Scumbag Space Werewolves" macro.

And the how is entirely stupid, too. There was a SPAH among the crew of Intrepid Marines sent to investigate. He carries one of his partners, now a monster, back to the mother ship in an escape pod. For some reason, the security/HAZMAT measures consist of pointing guns at the agent, even after he marches off the pod and admits he's infected. He admits this, BTW, after he hands off a biological sample directly to the Evil General, who is not wearing a hazmat suit. The General wants to destroy the space station not because of the threat it poses to all sentient life, but because he wants to cover up the fact that the blight on the galaxy was caused by a civilian mistake.

I would not have let the spy back onto my ship like that. I would've had robots talk to him and take the sample. I would've had a big red button I could hit to eject the pod and expose the bay to vacuum. I would've had turrets and laser beams. If I did have men, they would be wearing max level Hazmat suits. I would have a big green button that quadruples the artificial gravity. I would've had a yellow button that, last resort, detaches the entire bay. But this story would have us believe that a four-star general was a complete idiot, taking not even the most rudimentary security precautions besides "POINT GUNS AT IT".

Yeah, no.

At least a sop was thrown to the whole All-Male Crew thing; apparently women serve in separate units, and the military is almost all male. Even Gears of Manly Hypertrophy has female characters serving as frontline troops. Congratulations, terrible story, you've set gender relations in science fiction back a few dozen years.

Divide a salad into hot components, cold components, and neutral component.

If you want to reheat the salad, remove the hot components, and heat them separately. Heat neutral components to taste.

Bought to you courtesy of trying to eat microwaved lettuce a few years back.

I used two last night.

Two were left this morning when I happened to open the freezer drawer.

I hate my flatmates so very much.

There's a popular blog that has recently taken umbrage with trends in the cover of a certain magazine. Every year for a while now, this magazine has featured a "gatefold" cover. The type with one main cover, and two additional panels that fold out, with the "power cover" being the one on the left. This blog shows about half of them, and points out that most of these have only had white people on the cover, with the implication that this is racist.

Let me summarize;

Take a feature that has been going on for nearly twenty years.
Find only the covers that support your thesis.
Show several of these covers.
Mention in an aside, but do not actually show, the covers that contradict you.
Use a title that implies active racism, in a field historically known to be racist, but in a deniable fashion that nonetheless biases the casual reader.
Do not mention a single alternative explanation, such as sheer statistical happenstance.
Make broad generalizations about race in said field to close out the post, using a recent race-related controversy.
Never actually directly accuse anyone of racism.
Watch commenters trip all over themselves to talk about how you've clearly exposed racism, and swarm over anyone who points out the holes in your argument.
???
Profit!

One of the commenters even went so far as to point out that covers with POCs on the cover were "obviously tokenism". So even when they do exactly the thing the post complains they don't do enough, it doesn't count. I have a habitual distrust of any claim something is "obvious", because I find it's often used by people who are are too biased to consider any alternatives. When they say "obvious", they mean "impossible that it could be anything else".

The funny thing was, the blog didn't limit itself to the front cover, in what's basically the textbook definition of No True Scotsman. If no people of color were selected for the cover at all, it pointed it out, but if POCs were on the cover, it still doesn't count because they weren't on the front cover. And when they are on the front cover, they don't matter in the light of the obvious racism of them predominantly not being on the front cover.

This is like saying the NBA has biased hiring because most of its players are black, without considering other factors like the fact that a disproportionate of the men who try to get into the NBA are black. Actually, that was one of the most unrealistic things about "Hang Time". That, and the basketball court being only slightly larger than your average parking space.

(If you want to see the original version of this post, look at the HTML.)

Either I bought milk that someone had cracked, or one of my flatmates somehow managed to unravel two reef knots on a plastic bag, take off the lid with "WOOD" in it in block capitals, crack the seal, and only then realized that it wasn't their milk and put it back in the fridge. Since it was on its side and those bottles aren't airtight, a significant portion of the milk spilled out.

Either that, or one of my flatmates is a selfish dick. I don't know which.

I notify the caretakers about a leak in the toilets. They say they'll send a specialist.

About a week later, a mop and bucket shows up in our flat's bathroom. The mop has strands about six inches long, and holds about a teaspoon of water.

I seem to be the only one who uses it.

It's like one of those movies where the protagonist turns out to be the killer, except much, much worse.

MegaUpload is a website for file-sharing. Most of the files on it are pirated. The FBI recently shut it down while they investigated. Not only were most of the files pirated, staff members actively encouraged it, removing specific links to files when asked to do so by content producers, but leaving the files themselves up. It's the equivalent of closing down a store's front entrance and selling things out through the back alley. Staff even posted links to pirated files themselves; the FBI has email exchanges.

A Harvard law professor argued that taking the site down discouraged innovation, and TorrentFreak, always ready to seize on the flimsiest justification, made a post about it. Then Reddit picked it up. The idea, basically, is that it prevents people from "exchangni ideas", therefore it's bad for innovation, and they could use the same rationale to shut down any file hosting site.

I'm sorry, if someone is accused of embezzling, with what basically amounts to objective, slam-dunk proof, you don't refrain from arresting them because their workplace will have to hire a temp. If a local business is accused of money-laundering, you don't let it stay open after you start arresting people. It's chain-the-doors time. One idiot was even arguing that allowing the site to stay up actually encouraged productivity. Because that's what piracy does; encourage productivity. By decreasing the chances someone will be compensated.

MU was accused of breaking the law, and doing so in a flagrant manner. Ignoring that to make broad generalizations about what it might mean is a slippery slope argument. Saying they should've left the site up for the sake of the few legit users is also wrong, just like legit customers might be inconvenienced by the money-laundering place going down. And freezing only the pirated files, or even determining which files those are, is basically impossible without manually downloading and checking them. The millions of files.

But all you have to do is wave the "freedoms oppressed" flag in front of Reddit and they charge, regardless of the fact that this is an excellent example of a corrupt company, and that Megaupload is legally so screwed they couldn't get out of this with a defense team consisting of Johnny Cochrane, Perry Mason, Ben Matlock, and Phoenix Wright.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7434492/1/Overdue_Protection

After the dueling club incident in Year Two where he is discovered to be a Parselmouth, Harry Potter is subject to abuse from the students, culminating in him running away. The Ministry needs to track down Harry, and for that they need the permission of his legal guardian. Since Sirius is still his legal guardian instead of Petunia, because he never had a trial, they hustle him out of Azkaban and convene a kangaroo trial--in a matter of hours--then pour truth serum down his throat. Upon discovering his innocence, they proclaim him innocent, give him a ton of money and some new clothes, and politely request he come to the Minister for Magic's office, where they basically ask him not to sue them and help them find Harry. He calls them out on it, and leaves to find Harry on his own.

Alright. ( Take it as it comes. )

http://mcity.livejournal.com/342606.html

Idiot: The UK police would've been able to handle this situation without shooting someone. They would've called for backup. Their way is better.
Me: Aren't the UK police usually not armed? In fact, didn't you personally mention that they weren't armed?
Idiot: The US cops could've taken down the man without shooting him, according to their training.
Me: Leaving aside the fact that they were acting exactly like their training tells them to, you think the course of action that puts the US officers and the suspect at more risk than calling for backup is better?
Idiot: The dog could've made it.
Me: Prove it.
Idiot: The cops provoked the suspect into "making an aggressive move".
Me: Any judge would laugh at you.
Idiot: The suspect was not actually going to attack the officers, he was actually in a defensive position.
Me: A defensive position which required advancing on a policeman with weapon raised? Also, you just contradicted yourself.
Idiot: They should've tried to subdue him non-lethally.
Me: They did, it failed, and the suspect escalated the situation to deadly force.
Idiot: Those weren't non-lethal, those were gadgets. Gadgets which failed. So they shot him.
Me: They shot him because he tried to take a swing at one of them, employing deadly force.

And so on.

Currently, they're arguing that the suspect's attack on the cop was actually warranted, because there were five of them, and that the suspect was actually in "counter-stance", not aggressive stance. They are also trying to say that deadly force is irrelevant.

All I want to do is draw Derpy Hooves and Cookie Monster in Illustrator. Why is the fill so complicated? Why can't I just tell the program "put the fill here!" like in Flash? Why?

asdfghjkl;
-Jonathan

A guy smashes some windows in a restaurant with what's basically a long crowbar. Police show up, one with a dog, and ask him to stop. He ignores them. One pepper-sprays him, and he shrugs it off, likely from drugs. As the nearer officer tries to back away and draw his weapon, the suspect advances, and is shot dead by the other officer, holding the dog, who has had his gun drawn and pointed at the suspect the entire time.

I was having a somewhat intense discussion with someone who thinks the shooting was unjustified.

Among their ridiculous claims;

-Suspect was just "intimidating" the police.
-The dog could've stopped him.
-He had the crowbar behind his head, and could not have swung. (I pointed out, several times, that it takes a fraction of a second to swing a crowbar from that poisition, once in range.)
-The nearer cop could've dodged. (Note how the cop is actively trying to get away from the perp.)
-The officers could've stopped and disarmed the suspect in hand-to-hand. (Yes, at substantial risk to themselves.)
-UK cops never kill anyone. (Such a shooting was what kicked off the London Riots last year.)
-Using "Bobbies" to refer to cops is patronizing.

Most prominently, they keep insisting there are "other options" when it's been shown there were no other options that did not present a risk to the nearer officer. Release the dog? Suspect has time to swing. Farther cop tackles the perp? Suspect has time to swing. "Martial arts"? Unnecessary risk to the officers. Pepper spray? Tried, didn't work. Taser? Couldn't be drawn in time to be effective, even if the suspect couldn't resist it with the drugs he was probably on.

The funny thing is that they are constantly saying UK cops would've been able to resolve the situation without guns. They receiving different training and equipment and face different challenges. No matter how many times I pointed this out, they kept insisting that they could've done it, along with a few dozen other Straw Men. As evidence, they cited a case where a guy assaulted three cops and struck them with a crowbar, leading to the hospitalization of two. Yep, the UK cops are doing so much better.

The biggest fly in their ointment, of course, is that UK cops don't usually carry guns in the first place.

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Dear fanfic author,

Dear fanfic writer,

Modern gender egalitarianism, everyone!

From an interview with Ellen Page

I have a cyst.

Dear X,

"The aristocrats!"

I had some cereal when I got home.

You know that Very Specific story I've been ranting about?

PROTIP

I bought a six-pack of hot dogs yesterday.

Folks tilting at windmills.

(no subject)

(no subject)

The Internet is dumbing again

"Overdue Protection" by PadyandMoony

Same idiot I was arguing with earlier.

Dear Adobe;

Internet fight

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