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Send me to Mars with party supplies before next august 5th

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We live in a dystopia....

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Amazon fucks everyone over again

some of you may recall Neil Clarke's blog post on the deluge of AI-generated spam that has hit Clarkesworld Magazine's submissions queue.

well, Clarkesworld and other short fiction magazines like it are about to get another swift kick in the dick: Amazon is discontinuing their magazine subscription service (and replacing it with a new service that pays creators much, much less). of the very little money made in the short fiction market, most of it was coming from Amazon.

as Clarke points out in his editorial on the subject, "While there are plenty of people happily reading, listening to, and writing short fiction, a very disappointingly small percentage of those same people are actively paying for it."

short fiction is not dead. the existence of subreddits like r/NoSleep and blogs like @writing-prompt-s proves that. if you value these stories and you want to help writers get paid for their work, please consider checking out (and subscribing to) some of the following publications:

Analog Science Fiction and Fact

Apex Magazine

Asimov's Science Fiction

Clarkesworld Magazine

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

Fantasy & Science Fiction

Fantasy Magazine

Nightmare Magazine

many of these publications charge less than $5 USD per month for subscriptions, so if you've just dropped Netflix and have an extra $10/month lying around, you can instead support two fiction magazines full of interesting, original, well-written stories.

(feel free to reblog with your own favorite publications!)

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Checking the Calendar http://dlvr.it/SgFMN0

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Here Where I Stand at the Turning of the Years http://dlvr.it/SgCSF8

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I realized today that Lindsay Ellis left youtube due to mobbing, and I’m devastated about it. It’s terrifying what she was put thru, and how badly it traumatized her. Her goodbye message shows that she got hurt until it broke her, until she regretted everything she had ever done, and has become frightened of other human beings alltogether, not knowing who will turn against her next.

I relate deeply to being isolated and smear campaigned into traumatic fear of people, and I’m enraged that a mob of males managed to do it to her, just because she was a woman with a public voice. Lindsay Ellis was the absolute ideal of liberalism; she was sensitive to every minority, supportive of every pro-liberal propaganda, great supporter of every woke category, contributed greatly with her opinions to every issue liberals fought for. I watched her video ‘Mask Off’ with bated breath, completely in shock that she had the courage to make it, because it was raw and powerful and brilliant. She apologized for miniscule missteps, and it kept going thru my head, that had she been a male, she would have been considered an absolute icon of progressiveness. She’d be praised as the absolute best, most precious, nuanced and important ideal, proof that males are 'becoming perfect’ and 'can do no wrong’. Instead, she was berated over tiny shit males have never been called out in their lives. It made me sick.

She got mobbed because she was a woman with a voice online. Males decided it was not okay for women to get as far as she went in the society, and suffocated her as a threat to any woman who’d dare to try. I looked up the videos of people sharing their thoughts of her leaving, and they were all made by males. Every single one. Not only they did this, but they get to shape the public opinion of it. Disgusting.

It was only in the comments I was able to find people acknowledging how much she has done for the youtube community. She entered the stage of youtube filled with angry male videos, and she provided brilliance, humor, nuance, intellectual analysis, she created a genre of media essays that didn’t exist beforehand, and paved the way for many other women to speak and gain public voices. She was the number one in how popular, funny and well-received her videos were. I remember being completely obsessed the first time I found them, I’ve never seen interesting and educational content like that before. I’ve learned so much about the ways movies are written, shaped and put together, I’ve learned more about creating stories than I did anywhere else. I’ve appreciated and loved her content. I didn’t agree with all of it, but I didn’t need to, I’ve benefited from it all the same.

My heart hurts that I couldn’t do anything for her in return, that I’ve done next to nothing to support her when she was getting torn into pieces by the mob. It confirms her horror and pain about how people turn their back on you as soon as you lose popularity.

I want to know if there’s any way we can organize to protect women when this is happening to them. I don’t want to see another woman chased out of public space because she dares to speak her mind. I don’t want to leave another woman who helped, taught, encouraged, and benefited others, to be unprotected against an angry mob intent on traumatizing her. I don’t want to see this happening to my favourite women online, and I want to know what we can do.

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I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again but it is absolutely an example of civilizational inadequacy that only deaf people know ASL

“oh we shouldn’t teach children this language, it will only come in handy if they [checks notes] ever have to talk in a situation where it’s noisy or they need to be quiet”

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to my fellow usamericans….in light of the supreme court overturning roe v wade, well known organizations like planned parenthood dont need your money right now - they have plenty - if you’re going to donate, donate to your local or state abortion funds

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Plan B is shelf stable for up to 4 years. Afterpill is shelf stable for about 18 months.

Plan B is currently available over the counter, and you can find coupons for it online for various retailers; some of those coupons require a prescription so check the coupon details carefully. Both of these medications can be ordered online.

Plan B and Afterpill in the 1.5mg tablets are less effective for people over 176 pounds, however it is safe to double the dose, so if you are heavier order two doses. Ella is also effective for heavier people, but requires a prescription.

Emergency contraception is effective for a short period after sex. You need to take Plan B or Afterpill within 72 hours of unprotected sex to prevent pregnancy.

IUDs and birth control implants are effective long-term birth control that does not require your partner to participate in using the birth control or even be aware of it. IUDs are 99% effective and are effective for 3-12 years depending on type. Planned Parenthood can place an IUD for you, and so can many gynecologist's offices, and IUDs are covered under most health insurance plans. Talk to your doctor or gynecologist about how to get an IUD. Birth control implants are 99% effective and are effective for up to 5 years. Like IUDs, you can talk to your doctor or gynecologist, or visit Planned Parenthood, to get an IUD.

The birth control methods listed here are not effective for preventing STIs, they are for pregnancy prevention only.

If you can become pregnant but do not want to be pregnant, now is a good time to consider a long-term birth control option like an IUD or a birth control implant, and to purchase emergency contraception like Plan B or Afterpill to have it onhand in an emergency.

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And I'm gonna really enjoy that bread and soup today.

I wish you all very good sex. if you don't like sex, I wish you a very good romance. if you don't want either of them. I wish you a very good bowl of soup and some bread, mate.

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Holy crap.

Afab ace culture is growing up thinking you won’t have kids cause birth seems painful and then realizing your Ace and sex seems painful and nasty so little 10 year old you knew something before you did

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using “dissociate” when actually meaning “spaced out for a bit” walked so using “gaslighting” when actually meaning “lying” could run

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Don’t return ebooks or audiobooks you’ve consumed on Amazon and Audible

Amazon and Audible made it into their policy that you can return ebooks and audiobooks and get a full refund.

They actively promote this, making their book shop into a book lending service, de facto a library you subscribe to. That’s their business plan to encourage subscribtions.

The dirty thing, however, is that Amazon and Audible are making the authors pay for each refunded item. They will detract money, income, royalties, from the authors’ account. They’re not hurting from the refund, the author is.

Look, no-one is saying you’re not allowed to return an item if you’ve read the first 50 pages or listened to the first 45 minutes. Maybe the style is not your thing. Maybe you don’t like the narrator’s voice. Maybe the quality of the writing drops severely after chapter three. Go ahead, if the product is bad, return it.

What I’m talking about is that no one should be able to listen to a ten-hour audiobook or read through nearly an entire novel and still get a refund.

Most of the readers don’t know who’s paying for this business plan. It’s not Amazon and Audible, they’re still keeping your subscription money. It’s the authors.

Spread the word.

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It could have been so incredible. ☹️ And now I'm wondering if the promise of gay characters is why me parents told me I wasn't allowed to watch TNG. Not that that stopped me.

“I did a lot of the heavy lifting for the first six months of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I wrote the bible for the show. I brought in writers to do scripts and things and then they started bringing in other people,” he said. “Gene [Roddenberry]’s lawyer came aboard and started taking apart everything that we had created. And it was a very unhappy experience. But the straw that broke my back was Gene had promised we were going to do gay characters in the crew. We were going to have a gay crew member. And he had promised it in front of an audience of 3,000 fans. And then he had said it again in a staff meeting. So I knew he was serious.”

He continued, “[Producer] Rick Berman wrote a three page memo listing all the different issue stories we could tell. And the third one on his list was AIDS. I've been big on blood donations because of my friendship with Robert A. Heinlein, and so I said I wanted to do a story about how the fear of AIDS has cut back blood donations. So the story was about a disease, some of the crew members were infected, and the only way to save their lives, was to donate blood because they had run out of artificial blood. The show could put a card at the end of the episode saying ‘You can be a hero, too. Go and donate blood.’ I thought that if we did that then the next day, the next week, blood donor-ship would go up 100% because all of the Trekkies would run out [to donate blood]. And Star Trek would get credit for it. It would have been good publicity for the show, but it would also save human lives. I thought it was perfect. That's Gene Roddenberry's universe.

So by the time I got to the script, they approved the outline and I said ‘Oh, you know what? These two characters, they're boyfriends! Or married! Or whatever!’ And so there's four lines of dialogue in the script. — ‘How long have you two been together?’ ‘Since the academy.’ — That's it! Now, if you're under 12 — ‘Oh, they're good friends!’” And if you're older than that, you realize, ‘Oh my gosh, they just put gay crew members on this.’ So you might say ‘hooray!’ but it created an uproar of biblical proportions. As you would say, in Ghostbusters — ‘dogs living with cats’.”

Gerrold went on to tell me about a follow up memo that he had received, saying that he had to take the gay characters out of the show due to the threats and angry letters from mothers that they were bound to receive, to which Gerrold responded in the best way: ”Let them write letters then! The Streisand Effect is free publicity!”

“We went through two or three different rewrites and the script didn’t get any better. [Producer] Bob Justman finally realized that we needed to go back to my original draft, but by then it was too late,” he remembered. “That made me realize that if we didn’t do that script then not only is Gene a hypocrite, but I’m also a hypocrite for staying aboard this show when we’ve broken a promise and I let them straight-wash my script. If I do that, then I’m not doing what Star Trek is supposed to do.”

David Gerrold discusses the discourse of his attempt to include gay crew members on the show during the AIDS epidemic and his eventual departure from Star Trek: The Next Generation

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Today I found out that yarners think crocheting socks is subversive and controversial and I just…on one hand, why the fuck not, I guess yarners are allowed to have their controversies, but on the other, how much time do you have in your FUCKIN DAY??

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Our system is broken.  It is cruel.  It is dehumanizing, degrading, and it’s vile nature is so, so unnecessary.

We need universal healthcare today in America.  We needed it 40 years ago.  It’s cheaper, it’s simpler, it’s more efficient, it’s more effective and it is so, so, so much less cruel than what we have.

Additional sources/references:

Universal Healthcare Cost in America would be cheaper by trillions of dollars

The US has worse life expectancies than socialized healthcare countries

We have worse generalized healthcare results

We have the most expensive care

Our system is so cruel and unique that doctors from other countries literally can’t believe what happens here

I can’t tell you where or how to activate to help solve this.  There are politicians, groups, and activists pushing for this in so many ways.  I can tell you when, though.

Now.