Will Shetterly's Blog, page 139

the Dogness Monster?

Between the sidewalk and the street, there're a long mound in most parts of Minneapolis that's three feet high or more. When I looked out the window yesterday morning, I saw the upper body of a man walking with one arm slightly extended. About eight feet ahead of him, moving at exactly the same speed, was three inches of an upright, slightly wagging tail.

about my Social Justice Warrior book, and a thank you to John Scalzi

If you have no interest in social justice warriors or scifi fandom's politics, be glad. This will be the last post I make about either on this blog, and I hope I won't make many more at Social Justice Warriors: Do Not Engage, because the point of writing the book was to be done with them. The book is about done, and so am I.

If you'd like to make comments on the latest draft, see A guide for Social Justice Warriors: Do Not Engage. Any comments left this month may inspire changes imme...

How honorable people behave when a public apology has been publicly accepted

Mary Kowal accepted Sean Fodera's apology. I was one of the first to see that. I hesitated for a moment, then, in the thread here, left this:
*slow clap* William Monetta asked if that was intentional rudeness, so I clarified:
Not at all. I admired the way they both handled this. I realize many people will be parsing each syllable of what they each said because outrage culture encourages that, but it seems to me when an apology has been publicly made and accepted, the only honorab...

Everyone in a mobbing deserves the insanity defense

I left this comment at A Brief Comment Inspired by SFWA Stuff | The Dream Café:

For the record, I do think everyone in a mobbing deserves the insanity defense. It’s why I forgave everyone in Racefail. The hardest to forgive was myself. Here’s a quote I love about one of the US’s two most famous mobbings. Five years after the Salem witch hunts, jurors signed an apology saying, “…we also pray that we may be considered candidly and aright by the living sufferers as being then under the power...

I read (most of) the Fodera and Feist and Co. thread on sff.net so you don't have to

The essential bits:

1. No one there is arguing that they were private. When someone showed up to announce that the site was not private, Lawrence Watt-Evans said, "Nobody thought it was -- in fact, that was one subject under discussion. Usually, though, the rest of the online world doesn't pay much attention to SFF Net."

So this suggests sharing their discussion wasn't illegal; it was just unethical—at least, if you think legal eavesdropping is unethical. I realize the first requirement fo...

P.S. Aja Romano, this may be more evidence that the expectation of privacy is relevant

Dear Aja,

I read John Scalzi's Join the Insect Army! and wondered who said the bit he didn't credit. So I googled it and didn't see the answer right away. I tried an advanced search and still had no luck. Then I wondered if the original message had been deleted or if something else was going on, so I tried fodera site:webnews.sff.net - Google Search, and got this:

A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt

Then I wondered if all of sff.ne...

Carl Sagan on bamboozles

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. it is simply too painful to acknowledge—even to ourselves—that we've been so credulous." —Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"

Dear Aja Romano, regarding Sean Fodera, Journalism 101, and the Expectation of Privacy

Dear Ms. Romano,

I was thinking about your recent bit of outrage journalism, Apparently, these guys don't want women to write science fiction, and why the Popehat response, Science Fiction Community Generates This Weekend's Buffoonish Defamation Threat, didn't convince me.

So I googled "journalism privacy". The first hit was Journalism Ethics: Privacy. To use a favorite cliché of social justice warriors, it's Journalism 101, basic principles spelled out in big letters and simpl...

Mobbing drives people a little—or a lot—mad

When you notice someone is being mobbed, no matter how offensive you may find what they did, try to have some pity for them. From Yankton Press & Dakotan > Mobbing Like A ‘Rape Of The Spirit’:

“Mobbing is like a rape of the spirit. It destroys a person from the inside,” Elliot said. “Before I found out about this, I used to wonder why someone would go into a work environment and spray the whole area with bullets. Why do people go postal? This is one reason why. You know who your fr...

mobbing drives people a little—or a lot—mad

When you notice someone is being mobbed, no matter how offensive you may find what they did, try to have some pity for them. From Yankton Press & Dakotan > Mobbing Like A ‘Rape Of The Spirit’:

“Mobbing is like a rape of the spirit. It destroys a person from the inside,” Elliot said. “Before I found out about this, I used to wonder why someone would go into a work environment and spray the whole area with bullets. Why do people go postal? This is one reason why. You know who your fr...