Bjorn

People have been trying to introduce new pronouns to the English language for over a century, or about a hundred years before Tumblr existed. The primary purpose has been to have a third option, or simply a single genderless set. A primary reason it hasn't caught is pretty much your attitude, adopting a new word into an existing, very limited class of words, can feel dumb, weird and awkward. One of my newest pet peeves is when people try to blame Tumblr for things that have been going on in society for many generations. Tumblr is the new perversion of the youth. It's the new metal, the new television, the new radio, the new fangled serial magazine, the new whatever that people want to blame everything they don't like on. Edited to add: Beat to the punch. Pretty much what Apple Cider said.

I've definitely seen the whole "everything a woman says who is associated with Zak is really just her being a puppet for him" thing pop up multiple times, which is always a gross accusation. And it's one of the things that's made me take the shit thrown his direction with a grain of salt.

Hooray! \o/

My only issue with ze is that every time I see it, I get a picture of Ze Frank's head in my mind. We went to a presentation by the Kansas City Anti-Violence Project a couple of weeks ago. Before anyone spoke, they were asked to introduce themselves and list the pronouns they preferred be used. As a cis-male, it was an interesting experience just having to state outloud that I prefer he, him and his as pronouns. That's not a thing I've ever had to do vocally before. There were several parts of that program that were kind of like that, getting cis people to approach the world, even briefly, slightly more like someone who isn't cis. It struck me as the kind of exercise that if it were institutionalized even a bit (in school, or some business settings), would get people over the uncomfortablness and awkwardness of different pronouns.

My understanding of the Philippine-American war is that there wouldn't have been much to interfere with. It was America's first quagmire, an ugly and shameful thing, without purpose other than causing misery and death, that dragged on for years and was spread across an archipelago with guerrilla fighting and concentration camps galore. There's no entry point for the fictional Columbia to enter. Whereas Columbia's interference in the Boxer Rebellion was clean and simple in contrast since it involved only lifting the siege of a single location.

Oh, another note on the idea of pairing capitalism with social good. There have been a couple of examples of companies that maintained rigid pay caps or ratios, ensuring that the wage gap between each level of the hierarchy couldn't become too big. Ben and Jerry's was one, but sadly that ended many years ago. Whole Foods is another (of course that company is a whole conversation in itself). And then there are the new companies who have transparent pay policies, allowing everyone in the company to know what everyone else makes. While not as obvious as direct charitable giving or socially responsible investing, I'd still say these kind of business philosophies fall under the social good category. They alleviate, or can help alleviate, problems with wage gaps caused by social inequality. Harder to underpay your female employees when they know what all the male employees are making.

Since it's kind of relevant to the discussion going on here, we went to a public screening of Paris is Burning this evening, a documentary on the drag balls in New York during the mid to late 80s. It's really damn good, and quite powerful. In relation to this discussion, part of the evolution of the balls was a steadily increasing number of categories for competition, to accommodate the wide array of different identities people have, and the kinds of gender identities/presentations people have to present as in different parts of their lives for survival or safety vs the identities they would prefer to present.

From everything you've described, a move sounds like a good idea, honestly. I don't have any pertinent advice though, I've never moved inside Canada, and its been years since I had to relocate any significant distance.

I'd argue that the Komen Foundation example is one of the charitable-industrial complex run amuck, and that it shows that businesses that do not have internally identified social goods they want to help achieve can latch onto something popular to try and emulate the appearance of caring, while also tapping into a worldwide recognized brand. I'd have to go look up one of the firms that does this, but an example would be investing firms (usually small ones) that focus on providing diversified packages to investors that exclude companies some people may find morally objectionable (tobacco producers, weapon manufacturers, etc). A founder who doesn't want to invest in products that cause harm, and who wants to help others achieve the same goal. That's what I mean when I talk about pairing a ethical stance with a business structure.

This is something I've been thinking bunches about lately, how to pair social good with a healthy business.

Fair point about body slam versus check. Otherwise, yeah, storming the court is just super dumb.

K-State fans did an excellent job of making sure no one is paying much attention to their upset of KU last night. While storming the court, one fan intentionally body slammed Jamari Traylor, while a crush of fans pinned both Bill Self and Bruce Webber against the scorer's table. University police are now trying to identify the man who slammed into Traylor. This may ultimately be the final straw that results in changes to policies about storming the court. And its a shame, as KSU played their ass off to win that game, but that's lost in the discussion. It's also the third time this season that fans have rushed the floor after beating KU. Like, I know we're the big dog in the league and beating us is exciting. But people, show some fucking class. This is not KU's strongest year, we ain't gonna win the national championship, we even have a chance to lose our conference championship win streak. These schools just look kinda silly (to be fair, KU has done this same thing in football, a sport we are terrible at, and I think its just as silly when we do it).

I absolutely agree that it's become a cultural incentive. And I think that our modern mega-corps are both dangerous and shouldn't be trusted by default. The reason I pointed it out though is that the idea that there's a strong legal case for pursuit of profit is really insidious, it puts another wall in front of achieving any change. We have changed our understanding of what a corporation is in the last 40 years, and I think we should fight tooth and nail against that to move the needle back towards more social responsibility. This happened within my lifetime, it can be reversed. We're getting a bit far afield here, to bring it back towards the original topic of corporations, the advantage in realizing that maximizing profit isn't a mandate is that it allows for decisions, both big and small, to be driven by considerations that aren't purely monetary. Products are still going to have to benefit a corporation, but that benefit does not have to be defined purely through maximized profit. I would be very surprised if internal arguments for a female Thor was based solely on the idea that she would be a more profitable character than a male Thor. And she doesn't seem to be overly sexualized in the way a lot of female superheroes are (though she does have boob armor), so it's not like her design is one aimed at appealing to the basest elements of a pubescent boys fantasies. I understand being cynical about the decisions that corporations make, particularly Disney. But I think there's something far more interesting going on with Marvel right now than it simply being about maximized profit.

Bolded part is not, and never has been, true. It's a truism that both defenders and detractors of capitalism love to repeat. But it ain't true. The only time that corporations are required to maximize value is during the sale of a company, and there are historical reasons for that protection to exist (boards selling companies at well below value to friends, family or partners to the detriment of shareholders). There are a few outliers in which shareholders challenged corporations about some decisions in regards to maximizing profits, but the few decisions I've seen on that ended up being far, far more complex than simply being about maximizing profit. My understanding is that corporate culture has changed radically in the last 40 years. Not that corporations were run by saints before then, but that mantras like "profit above all else" were elevated, and ideas about being socially responsible to the communities they existed in were minimized.

I've seen it argued both that it represents a third gendered set of pronouns, or that it simply replace the existing pronouns, because we don't really need gendered pronouns in the first place.

I really appreciate the rest of your post, and either agree with it or appreciate it as an insight into how you approach things. But this part mirrors a lot of the other talk in the thread about capitalism and corporations. Which, there is a lot of truth there, but one thing that gets lost in that talk is that there are individuals in corporations whose decisions are affected by their own ethical compass and who do care about things like feminism and diversity. Some of these changes in comics aren't coming because the bean counters think they'll be profitable, they are coming because there are individuals who think they are the culturally right thing to do and valuable beyond simply their monetary worth. It simplifies out the individual fights that do occur with corporations. On a more general thought, I also get somewhat frustrated with the vague way capitalism is talked about. The problem is usually big corporations, and the unethical and amoral people who run them, the type of corporations who have the deep pockets to shape society and government. Several of the Thumbs are capitalists (in that they are business owners), but I trust that their business decisions are informed by their individual moral compasses. I trust that if Danielle were to start her own businesses, she wouldn't suddenly become the type of business owner solely fixated on maximizing profit. Capitalism is a system, but not one that I'm convinced is inherently evil or even broken. It's that as a culture, we have encouraged and valued the kind of terrible behavior that drives many corporations.

You're telling me that we shouldn't get our hopes up for Valve to deliver a product in a timely manner....or at all?

I've been trying to have more self control about buying peripherals and hardware that I don't really have a pressing need for.

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!! I probably will buy a Steam Controller though, my old wired 360 controller is getting long in the tooth and near needing to be replaced.

Valve is outsourcing HL3 to Dan Marshall!!!!!

Public Radio International has published an essay by an old friend of mine, Miguel Morales, on the relationship between a former child migrant worker and the food he eats now.

Five awesome hosts set up a mic, For a five hour podcast, A five hour podcast. (I would watch a Gilligan's island reboot with the Thumbs' hosts cast in it).

So Tegan pointing out the Harlan Ellison episode in the latest Scooby Doo has actually got me watching it, first time in years I've watched the full run of a cartoon. I really didn't think I'd continue with it after the first few episodes. They were neat, but not compelling enough to watch a 52 episode series. Glad I hung with it a few more episodes though. It warms up and starts getting really good, and quite dark, after a bit. The callbacks to old Scooby Doo incarnations, plus the inspirations for a lot of the episodes are really good as well.

There is, but it is also modeling the same kind of behavior that people do offline. That's the point I was trying to make, there are behaviors we engage in offline, amongst people we know, that don't translate online. But a combination of the pseudo-familiarity of the internet, particularly with social networks, and privilege lead to something like the joke repetition.

The section in there about repeating a woman's joke is a good, subtle one that wouldn't be obvious to a lot of people (probably particularly men). It's the kind of behavior that's relatively natural in a group of people, someone cracks a joke, someone else riffs on it, pattern is explored until it's been mined of funny, much laughing ensues, conversation moves on. It usually passes within a few minutes. It's the kind of thing the Thumbs' hosts do all the time. But once you've got dozens or hundreds of strangers engaging in that pattern for hours or days...that's just obnoxious, and a little gross.