The Anything Goes chit-chat thread (subject to tiny fine-print rules)

[Derek]

Elsewhere (and off-topic) we'd discussed tea and tea-making ad nauseum. This just arrived in my newsfeed. This guy may not know much about either making or drinking tea, but he sure knows photography:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/t...

[Amy (Other Amy)]

Wow! That is awesome, Derek. Thanks for sharing.

[Linda]

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "Elsewhere (and off-topic) we'd discussed tea and tea-making ad nauseum. This just arrived in my newsfeed. This guy may not know much about either making or drinking tea, but he sure knows photograp..."

Brilliant! They deserve every penny they get from that shot! (And I do hope that they milk it--the shot, that is, not the tea!)

[Derek]

They're always joking that that far North, if you pee outdoors you may need a chisel to free yourself. I've never done the physics, but it appears it's not as far-fetched as I thought!

[Linda]

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "They're always joking that that far North, if you pee outdoors you may need a chisel to free yourself. I've never done the physics, but it appears it's not as far-fetched as I thought!"

Um, just a heads up, in case it´s occurred to any of you. You know the bit from ¨The Christmas Story¨´, where they dare a kid to lick a metal pole in freezing temperatures? Yeah, don´t do that.

[Derek]

If you didn't already know that, I guess you don't really know the bit from ¨The Christmas Story¨ :-)

[Linda]

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "If you didn't already know that, I guess you don't really know the bit from ¨The Christmas Story¨ :-)"

Well, some people say, "Oh, that's only in the movies." or "Oh, that's an old wives' tale." Nope. Actual fact, happened to my best friend with a popsicle in the train station in Toronto many years ago!

[Saski]

My neighbors here in Sweden were talking about it, and laughingly reminding each other when they had each done it. It seems that if there isn't warm water immediately available, well, consider what warm 'water' might be immediately available anywhere.... Yup!

[Amy (Other Amy)]

LOL. Perfect way to bring this whole topic together, Ruth :)

[Derek]

Yeah—I was about to say we've come full circle.

[Traveller]

Heh. I've never done the pole thing, but I know silly people who have.
I loved the vid that goes with the circle tea pic!

...and once again some of the images reminded me of the TV show Fortitude which I have by now stopped watching. It was becoming a bit too weird, the way Lost started to become towards the end...

I might pick it up again sometime, though.

[Saski]

Yeah, we kind of gave up on Fortitude as well. It seemed like all dialogue was complaining about the same stuff all the time, just going around in a circle. Meh!

[Jennifer]

I liked Fortitude. I am looking forward to the next season. It was kinda weird. But life far north is kinda weird in general. We throw hot water outside and make snow. :)

[Saski]

Tell me about it ;)

No, normally I really like Scandinavian series. Bron (the original Swedish /Danish collaboration, I think the American version is The Bridge and the British one uses the Chunnel) is absolutely the best! Did Äkta Människor (Real People) ever make out of Sweden? Such great scifi.

[Traveller]

It does seem to have spread, but I haven't... oh wait, I have! I've watched one or two episodes of the British-American show called Humans, and when I looked it up now, I saw that it is indeed based upon the Swedish one. I was about to say there's a show very similar to it called 'Humans'.

If you endorse it, I'll make a plan to catch up with it. :)

[Jennifer]

Ruth wrote: "Tell me about it ;)

No, normally I really like Scandinavian series. Bron (the original Swedish /Danish collaboration, I think the American version is The Bridge and the British one uses the Chunne..."

I SOOOO want to watch that Bron the Danish version. But I can't find anything that will play here with subtitles.

[Saski]

It is probably the best thing that's come out in years!I can usually keep up with the Swedish but fortunately there are subtitles for the Danish.
I watched a 'making of' doc for it. They were so surprised at the success after the first season; until then they hadn't really thought about continuing, and were terrified that season 2 wouldn't live up to the promise. But at the end of season 4 a couple of weeks ago it was clear that there would be a season 5. Yippee!

[Saski]

Traveller wrote: "It does seem to have spread, but I haven't... oh wait, I have! I've watched one or two episodes of the British-American show called Humans, and when I looked it up now, I saw that it is indeed base..."

So they call it Humans? Ha! I really liked season 1, but season 2 got ever so much more complicated. Between that and trying to keep up with the Swedish, it was a tough to follow but still amazing

[Traveller]

Merry Christmas, everyone!

[Linda]

Traveller wrote: "Merry Christmas, everyone!

"

Love it! The dog´s cross-eyed over cookies!
Happy Christmas, all!

[Amy (Other Amy)]

Merry Christmas to all!

[Yolande]

Merry Christmas! Love the pics Traveller!

[Saski]

Hoping you all are having a safe and happy Christmas :)

[Derek]

From the BBC's "Ten things we didn't know last week":

"6. There is no NYPD choir."

La-la-la.... Not listening!

[Traveller]

Heh, re the late eating: I always eat just before going to bed because if i don't, i get hungry in the night and it keeps me awake unless I go quench my tummy's rumblings.

[Traveller]

A quick announcement: Amy was a guest mod for a while in order to work on her Banned Books project, but then decided that she likes us so much that she'd like to stay on as mod. :D
Welcome, Amy!

[Saski]

Yippee! Welcome to permanent status. I love the work you have been doing on the Banned Books Project :)

[Amy (Other Amy)]

Thanks :)

[Traveller]

Indeed, Amy is an asset. :)

Happy New Year, everyone!

[Traveller]

Guys, do any of you know where/how I can contact GR to report a user? Someone stole my profile write-up, but has not posted any reviews which I can use to 'flag' her. Surely there must be an email via which one can contact them to report abuses of this kind? I mean, it's identity theft and plagiarism! Believe me, it's a very weird feeling to read your profile info on somebody else's profile....

[Derek]

support@goodreads.com is the only way I ever contact them. Far more responsive than any other channels

[Traveller]

Thanks, Derek. Will mail them there. :)

[Amy (Other Amy)]

How bizarre. I hope they get this taken care of for you pronto, Traveller.

[Traveller]

It's a very weird and horrible feeling; as if someone had broken into your bedroom and stolen your clothes and underwear and been wearing it without your knowledge.
Or, like someone had managed to get hold of your private correspondence and been passing it off as something they themselves had written.

Now I start to understand how celebrities must feel when unauthorized nude photo's of them are distributed on the internet...

[Amy (Other Amy)]

It's such a creepy thing to do to someone, and I can't even understand why anyone would do it. I mean, what on earth would you get out of it? I guess you could go into threads and pretend to be that person, but there again, what do you get out of that? I just don't understand people. (Whatever the motive is, it's definitely gross and weird and needs to be stopped.)

[Traveller]

Well, maybe she simply could not string together the necessary to write something there? She's not using my name or my images; she rated a bunch of books all on one day (she joined August 2015) and no reviews. ...but she's been posting selfies of herself and a friend in sexy poses, so that makes it feel even more ...weird...

I have no idea why she decided to use specifically my profile for that, though. I have never heard of her in my life before, and my profile is certainly not one of those, er... "looking for a date" ones, so...

[Traveller]

The first thing I did was to check if she'd plagiarized any of my reviews, and was relieved to find not. But it has set me to wondering if people might indeed not be plagiarizing our stuff w/out us even knowing about it...

[Amy (Other Amy)]

Traveller wrote: "Well, maybe she simply could not string together the necessary to write something there?"

I am such a chatterbox I cannot anywhere in my being fathom the idea of not having enough of your own words to fill up your own profile on a social book site. (I actually just added to mine and had to cut it down because GR said 'too many words!')

I would say something about 'people these days,' but honestly in today's world with people using social sites all the time, I'd think people would be more sensitive to wanting to create something originally and not stealing someone else's profile stuff. And 'ick' to the pics. Just all round weird.

[Amy (Other Amy)]

Traveller wrote: "The first thing I did was to check if she'd plagiarized any of my reviews, and was relieved to find not. But it has set me to wondering if people might indeed not be plagiarizing our stuff w/out us..."

I know there is some sort of a scrape issue where GR reviews get exported to an external site and posted illegally, but I think they've put in a block for that. I'd think if someone on GR started copying reviews it would get noticed pretty quickly, unless they confined themselves to books with a huge number of reviews.

[Traveller]

Okay, looks like our reviews are being "used" without our consent, and I suppose that is what part of the whole recent fight around Goodreads has been about lately.

So, then, did Amazon change the TOS to make our content theirs to use anywhere as they please? I had thought they could only use it on the Amazon site, but it looks like they have been selling our reviews to all and sundry.

I googled some unusual wording from a review of mine, and it showed up on at least two sites, one of them claiming that I am one of their users, and I see friend Jeffrey Keeten's reviews also made it there; see here and here:
http://www.worldcat.org/title/turn-of...

and
http://www.allyoucanbooks.com/ebook/t...

I see they seem to have made it onto a pirating site as well.
If they're going to "use" my reviews in this way, I might want to consider changing to my "real" name. Sigh.

[Cecily]

Trav, that's shocking in multiple ways. There is (was?) a profile setting where you had to untick a box to say you didn't want your reviews used on other sites, but I can't find it now (nor do I know if it works).

[Traveller]

@Cecily, maybe they have since removed it? I haven't seen it, myself...

Yeah, they weren't very open about the extent to which they would be using our reviews, but I can certainly understand now why so many members got so het up. There are many people around here who work very hard at their reviews and put a lot of work and/or unique artistry into their reviews.

[Amy (Other Amy)]

Hmm, it seems to me there is something in the Feedback group about this recently and GR was trying to shut it down. (Not sure about World Cat though.) I will see if I can find it.

[Cecily]

Found it:
1. Edit Profile (drop-down at top right).
2. Settings (heading along the top).
3. Half way down, "allow partners of Goodreads to display my reviews"

I've always had it unticked.
It's currently greyed out as well, probably because I changed my privacy settings a couple of weeks ago, so that only people logged in as GR members can see my profile (a trio of options immediately before the "partners" one).

Perhaps I need to find a suitably unusual turn of phrase from one of my reviews, though that may be tricky...

[Amy (Other Amy)]

I also have the box unchecked and greyed out, and I just googled for a line from my oldest review and got nothing.

Here is the feedback thread I was remembering:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...?

[Traveller]

Okay, thanks for the heads up. I must have been away from GR when that specific info went round...

Amy, per the google search, I also found reference to it on this site, which looks pretty dodgy to me: http://www.urbanartifacts.com/thread-...

[Amy (Other Amy)]

That does look dodgy. You might consider alerting GR to see if they have license to use the GR API. It looks rather like one of the pirating scrape sites, to my eyes, but what do I know?

[Traveller]

Mmm-hmm, doesn't look very legit to me. Ok, will do. :)

[Linda]

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "Hmm, it seems to me there is something in the Feedback group about this recently and GR was trying to shut it down. (Not sure about World Cat though.) I will see if I can find it."

How ironic, WorldCat being a librarians´tool.......that they´re using people´s reviews without permission..

[Traveller]

I'm not sure if the WorldCat is without permission, though. I had assumed that Amazon would have given them permission, and at least they acknowledge where they're getting the reviews from, so I suppose I don't mind too much about that one, except that maybe then I wouldn't want to have my reviews attributed to "Traveller".

I'm starting to seriously consider using my real name, which I have not been doing partly because I'm known across several websites as Traveller and partly for reasons of privacy and partly because I have a pretty common name which kind of makes people confuse me with other Jennifers. :P