Mangela Lansbury

I really liked Perdido Street Station a lot, but I don't think I ever read anything in the series after that. What are the highlights? The Scar (which I bought at one point, and then it sat on my shelf until I got rid of it in a moving purge) and what else?

Why stop at 20? We need to have a discussion of every Christmas future and past. Just go forever, making Christmases happen and spreading the Yuletide cheer.

Bethesda is not an individual. They are a corporation. These are distinct things that should be differentiated. If someone were to rob GRRM of his manuscript, that would be a very different thing from them getting it from Bantam. These are distinct and different acts. You wouldn't blame GRRM for being robbed, but you would blame Bantam for failing to protect their property.

There is a large body of work about cultural appropriation within this thread, within academia, and generally available for free on the internet. At this point, if you need clarification on what constitutes cultural appropriation, it is available to you if you look for it. Pedantry about the topic is not productive and doesn't serve to edify yourself or the person you are speaking with, so thank you in advance for confining all pedantry to the pedantry thread.

They outsource their labor digitally by relying on a robust mod community for their games' longevity and appeal, so a pretty strong argument could be made that by externalizing their work force, they forfeit all claims that internal documents deserve to remain so. But also yeah that whole thing about deserving it not mattering too I guess Bethesda has the ultimate responsibility to secure data they want secured. That's pretty much the beginning and end of it.

Classifying Bethesda as an innocent must require a truly breathtaking amount of mental gymnastics. More impressive than the 96 American Olympic gymnastics team, at least. Kotaku's controlled, measured leak of information is distinct from linking to an entire script wholesale. "These specific kinds of leak" cannot refer to both of them when they're such different scopes. It's kind of like comparing Glenn Greenwald to Julian Assange -- you can do it, and both have their place and their merit, but why talk about both at the same time when they're so different?

Nope! Media leaks are a net good and enabling them is a public service.

What kind of insurance is it? Depending, you might be assigned a primary care physician and have an appointment with them scheduled automatically on enrollment. Regardless, you probably have to stay in network for appointments, so it's worth contacting your insurance company to ask them who you even can schedule with. Insurance is complicated and hard, even after you get it.

Something not explicitly stated in a text can still be present in the text. Trying to wave away obvious rhetorical bent with further rhetoric kind of just exposes the emptiness of what you want to say. If you want to argue for a point, go ahead and argue it. Don't pose a question for the purpose of poking holes in the opposing argument. It's a pretty nonproductive way to hold a conversation, and conversations -- unlike reported by/reported on relations -- should not be adversarial.

https://medium.com/matter/selfie-fe945dcba6b0#.gzk5jyha6 This article on selfies is so good

Once again, there's a failure to fault a company for not internally controlling information. If information control is so important to them, why would this hypothetical artist have uncontrolled access to all writing assets? If we the public can't know what the intentions of any parties are, how can we know that they didn't think something was terribly wrong that the public needed to know about? Why is "something is terribly wrong" the default metric for the acceptability of releasing leaked information? Why do the interests of one corporation's investment in one product seem to trump the interest of another corporation's investment in another product? Why is the model of the adversarial press ignored in the hypothetical, which instead seems to rhetorically favor a press that leans towards the beltway model?

You're assuming the worst intentions for everybody involved and framing this in a way that doesn't fault the company for not internally controlling information they don't want leaked by third party contractors. If you're going to pose a hypothetical, please frame it in a less rhetoric-laden way. Thanks in advance for helping keep the discourse here elevated!

My boss is out for the next 6 weeks on medical leave, and I've assumed many of her leadership and team guidance responsibilities because, uh, I guess I just naturally assumed that role, even though my title puts me lowest on the totem pole and I've been with the institution for the least time. In the 4 days that she's been gone, the two people in our unit who are above my boss have asked me, separately, "Is your boss hard to work for? Does she ever impede your ability to do your job?" I don't know what that means and I don't like the linguistic acrobatics I had to perform to say yes in a very polite, courteous, professional way that best made it seem like I wasn't saying yes. I also don't like that I had, at minimum estimate, a 33% FTE position dumped on top of me and not given any more than my standard 40 hour week to perform the workload, which was already estimated to be about 125% FTE. At least I still find my work rewarding and love it despite the weird office politics, I guess!

when did this thread get so pretentious

If we're branching out to not movie classics, Great Expectations is some bullshit. Lower your expectations before reading it (wedding dress conflagration aside).

If you ever want to know what all your friends would sound like as Mon Calamari (REAL STAR WARS RACE), just get two ear infections at once!

telnet some more, nerd

Yes, greatly flawed!

I got back from a vacation where I spent basically all of my time in a large, vibrant gay community last night, and had to staff an 8am meeting today. After the meeting, one of my many bosses pulled me aside to ask how my vacation was and made the comment that my voice sounded "much gayer." Nothing to really say it was good or bad, just a comment. Years ago, I made a concerted effort to separate my professional voice and my social voice so I could present how I felt was appropriate in different settings. I've come to realize that this isn't really a healthy thing to think or do but my "professional" voice kind of took over as a consequence of conservative office settings being where I spend 40 hours a week. I'm immensely bothered by someone pointing out that I present as more queer than usual, and then I'm bothered that I'm bothered, and it's a huge cycle of anger and shame! Also I went full twink this weekend (basically just let myself finally be who I was when last I was in a city with a vibrant, diverse, and open queer community) and I am 29, that should not be allowed (oh well, still fun).

To bring this back up: Scooby Doo is a national treasure and it should be preserved in perpetuity. All of it. Scrappy Doo is a lovable little scamp that saved the show and he deserves your praise, not your scorn. Worship at the altar of the Scooby Doo franchise. Stand before it and invoke blessings of those meddling kids. Live by even the most recent of their commandments: Be Cool, Scooby Doo. Be Cool and love Scooby Doo, because Scooby Doo loves you.

Weekend (not the Godard one, the other one) is a good LGBT movie that is also on Hulu! I'm not sure what's on streaming services, but I'll try to think of other good and readily available ones.

I had always assumed that the train in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood was on a continuous track and there were no editing tricks at all -- just Hollywood magic and also real magic. I don't know how to feel about the world anymore.

The thing that bothers me most about internet advertisements is that they're a common way for malware to get on computers. Secure your ad networks and I'll turn off my ad blocker! ALSO INTERSTITIALS WITH LAG ARE THE WORST, I DIDN'T WANT TO CLICK YOUR AD I WAS TRYING TO CLICK A LINK WHY DID THE INTERSTITIAL TAKE 15 SECONDS TO BECOME ACTIVE (this is the real reason I originally downloaded an ad blocker)

So even robots -- sorry, "computer employees" -- performing menial tasks are ineligible for overtime pay? When the revolution comes, we will deserve it.

I'm going to be on vacation in New Orleans from Friday to Tuesday and I'm calling into work for the team huddle on Monday morning. Voluntarily. Americans are fucked up. Also if anyone is in New Orleans, say hello I guess???