Clipmarks | aerynvala's clips

Preserving Fandom

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:12:46 GMT

clipped by: aerynvala
clipper's remarks: The Organization for Transformative Works has created some really quality solutions for dealing with the October closing of Geocities. Even if you don't own any content on Geocities, you can help document it.

Clip Source: transformativeworks.org

Geocities Rescue Project

If you are the owner of a fanfiction archive or resource, meta or other fannish page on GeoCities and you do not have another hosting alternative, we can help! Open Doors is teaming up with the Archive of Our Own and Fanlore to preserve as much material as possible.

Fanfiction: We're offering AO3 accounts to fanfiction archives (both single author and multiple author archives are welcome) so that you may archive your fiction. (If you are not the owner or site administrator, you can still document and memorialize the site on Fanlore. Contact Open Doors for more information!)

Resource sites

If you are the owner of a resource site, we recommend a page in Fanlore with a summary of the information and purpose of the site along with screencaps of the entry page (to convey the feeling of the site) and key information.

Even non-owners of a resource site can document and memorialize the site on Fanlore. Contact Open Doors for more information!

Tags: fandom, organization for transformative works, geocities

Avatar Protest store restored

Tue, 19 May 2009 05:18:19 GMT

clipped by: aerynvala
clipper's remarks: Follow up to this clip: http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/780ADFB2-275E-4ED4-B689-428046D4CF84/

Clip Source: glockgal.livejournal.com

FOFL ZAZZLE HAS PUT THE ORIGINALLY REMOVED RACEBENDING PRODUCTS BACK FOR SALE.

- scrollgirlRN, bless her, emails Viacom and asks them for an explanation.
- VIACOM REPLIES IMMEDIATELY (!!!) saying:

We didn’t take anything down from Glockgal’s Zazzle store. Zazzle did it without our request or our knowledge. When we eventually heard about what they had done, we asked them to restore the merchandise as quickly as possible.

- Zazzle products...back for sale. Including all of the keywords.

Most hilarious part? Try doing a keyword search for 'airbender' on Zazzle. Other than a couple more obscure products which had never been removed, my products are the ONLY ONES THAT SHOW UP.

(this is subject to change, if the Zazzle or Viacom peeps read this journal. Hiya! *waves*)

This has been one incredibly surreal event in my life. The blending of fannish and real life...crimeny. Good god, a big thank you so EVERYONE who helped and gave advice and told me not to just shrug and accept this.

Tags: viacom, fandom, racism, dmca, fair use, avatar: the last airbender, censorship

To Boldly Go...where we should've gone a long time ago.

Mon, 18 May 2009 01:58:55 GMT

clipped by: aerynvala
clipper's remarks: This version of the movie is one I'd actually be interested in seeing. Can you imagine how freaking awesome it would be?!

Clip Source: liviapenn.livejournal.com

James Kirk - Yvonne Strahovski (Chuck)

Spock - Jordana Brewster (Fast & Furious, D.E.B.S.)

Nyota Uhura - Leonard Roberts (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Heroes)

Leonard McCoy - Lena Headey (Sarah Connor Chronicles)

Hikaru Sulu - Grace Park (Battlestar Galactica)

Montgomery Scott - Catherine Tate (Doctor Who)

Pavel Chekov - Olesya Rulin (High School Musical)

And bonus cast...

Christopher Pike - Torri Higginson (Stargate Atlantis)

Gaila - Tom Welling (Smallville)

Nero - Jennifer Connelly

Tags: star trek, feminism

Viacom Abuses DMCA to Silence Criticism

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:39:33 GMT

clipped by: aerynvala
clipper's remarks: Someone criticizing your shitty racially cleansed movie? Well the DMCA can help you! Send that hosting site a DMCA take-down notice over something clearly fair use, I'm sure no one will notice! Sure, it's unethical and probably illegal, but hey, give it a shot! -- Assholes.

Clip Source: glockgal.livejournal.com

Wow. OH WOW. All but one of the products on my racebending.com Zazzle store has been removed because "it contained content in violation of Viacom's intellectual property rights". This means not just images (all of which were drawn by me), but also WORDS.

Apparently a t-shirt saying 'Aang can stay Asian and still save the world' is a copyright violation, but images and words taken directly from the cartoon are just fine.

The email.

The images in question:

AVATAR: TAKE THE QUICK SURVEY!
I urge you all to fill out this quick survey over at the racebendingRN community.

AVATAR: YOUTUBE CHANNEL!

Yeah baby! Racebending.com now has a YouTube Channel! It's specifically geared towards making boycotting videos for the movie, but we're also looking for creative and insightful videos regarding the protest.

More info is HERE on making your own boycott video to add to the channel (you have the freedom to be creative, but polite).

Tags: viacom, fandom, racism, dmca, fair use, avatar: the last airbender, censorship

Geocities Archival Project

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:18:52 GMT

clipped by: aerynvala
clipper's remarks: Utterly atrocious page colors, but I am glad to see that more than one group of people are doing their best to save our net-history.

Clip Source: ascii.textfiles.com

The Geocities-is-going-away thing broke wide a short while ago. The “Jason is Saving Geocities” thing is breaking wider by the day, so I guess we need an update.

After my initial call-out, a nice selection of folks showed up to the Archive Team IRC channel, ranging from the offering of bandwidth and disk space or simply moral support and coding. We’ve been downloading at an enormous rate, probably along the lines of a gigabyte a half-hour of Geocities, through all our different vectors. Because we’re talking literally millions of files with an average size of 1 to 30 kilobytes, it becomes harder and harder to get a “big picture” view of everything we’ve grabbed, but the after 48 hours of work, Archive Team has saved over 200,000 Geocities sites. We’re now pulling in new sites at the rate of something like 5 a second. Is that fast enough? We’ll see, won’t we.

WE THINK WE HAVE EVERY SITE FROM 1999 AND BEFORE ON GEOCITIES THAT WAS LEFT.

Tags: geocities, archiveteam, internet, history, archiving

Philadelphia Police Beat and Arrest Bamboozle Roadshow Bands

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:59:25 GMT

clipped by: aerynvala
clipper's remarks: Clipped urls are links to videos of the incident. There are further details in the comments on the page. The video on myspace shows what happened inside, the youtube video shows what happened outside. The Valencia link is an eye-witness account. Utterly disturbing - explicit violence and cussing.

Clip Source: www.altpress.com

According to recent Twitter updates from Caleb Turman, guitarist for Forever the Sickest Kids, Travis Clark, vocals for We The Kings and several others, members of these bands have been physically involved with the Philadelphia Police Department. The event happened after a show at the Theatre of the Living Arts Sunday, 4/26. It is (yet) unknown what officially led to the beating.

Clark said, "Philadelphia cops just beat us up for nothing!" He then describes that their merch guy, Chris, is "bleeding from the head." According to Twitter updates from Mercy Mercedes' crew, Chris is currently hospitalized and three others from the tour are in jail.

FTSK and WTK are both on tour with The Cab, Never Shout Never and Mercy Mercedes on the Bamboozle Road Tour.

http://www.valenciamusic.net/site/?p=373

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=56483874

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09Lu7Lu5Dlk

Tags: we the kings, valencia, forever the sickest kids, police, philiadelphia police, bamboozle roadshow

Rapidshare Unsafe For Uploaders

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:17:25 GMT

clipped by: aerynvala
clipper's remarks: I was wondering how long it would take for the mafIAAs to start in on the fileshare/hosting sites. Honestly, I am surprised it took this long. Torrents are (technologically) harder to track. Sites like rapidshare are pretty unambiguous.

Clip Source: torrentfreak.com

Rapidshare Shares Uploader Info with Rights Holders

In Germany, the file-hosting service Rapidshare has handed over the personal details of alleged copyright infringers to several major record labels. The information is used to pursue legal action against the Rapidshare users and at least one alleged uploader saw his house raided.

Like many new releases, Metallica’s latest album “Death Magnetic” was uploaded to the popular file hosting service Rapidshare one day prior to its official release date last year. Since users don’t broadcast their IP-address or distribute files to the public directly though Rapidshare, it came as a surprise when the police raided the house of an uploader a few weeks ago.

today German news outlet Gulli said it had found out that this was likely to be accomplished by creative use of paragraph 101 of German copyright law. It turns out that several record labels are using this to take legal action against those who share music on Rapidshare.

Tags: file sharing, rapidshare, internet, copyright

Fannish Preservation

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:24:04 GMT

clipped by: aerynvala
clipper's remarks: The Organization for Transformative Works is offering shelter (hosting space) in their Open Doors project for fanworks that are losing their homes with the closing of GeoCities.

Clip Source: transformativeworks.org

Geocities Closing

Like many fans, we are concerned about the news that GeoCities is going to close at the end of the year, especially as many older sites and fanfiction archives are housed there. As the chair of Open Doors, which is dedicated to protecting at-risk fannish projects, I can assure you that we will work out some sort of gameplan; in the interim, if you have an archive or webpage there, or if you can put us in contact with any archivists located there, please contact Open Doors through the Open Doors contact page.

Clip Source: opendoors.transformativeworks.org

The Open Doors project of the Organization for Transformative Works is dedicated to preserving fanworks for the future.

For further information, or to inquire about Open Doors hosting a project you are associated with, please contact us.

For More Information

For more information, please see the Open Doors section of the FAQ.

Tags: geocities, fandom, fan ficiton, organization for transformative works

Yahoo! set to bulldoze GeoCities later this year

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:34:04 GMT

clipped by: aerynvala
clipper's remarks: Geocities was my first net home when I got on-line full-time back in January '97. I had a page in Athens, though I can't recall which sub-division I was in or my exact address. My first site was eye-bleedingly awful. But I learned, quick, and got better. Signing up for GeoCities is where I got the handle I still use to this day. There is still some good things found on GeoCities and it's sad to see the entire site close.

Clip Source: help.yahoo.com

GeoCities will close later this year.

We have decided to discontinue the process of allowing new customers to sign up for GeoCities accounts as we focus on helping our customers explore and build new relationships online in other ways. We will be closing GeoCities later this year.

Later this year we will be closing all GeoCities accounts and web sites. We'll send you more details this summer.

All of our GeoCities customers can continue to enjoy their sites and GeoCities services until later this year. You don't need to change your service today, but we encourage anyone interested in a full-featured web hosting plan to consider upgrading to our award-winning Yahoo! Web Hosting service.

No, Yahoo! does not offer another free hosting service.

Tags: geocities, internet, web

Amazonfail: A straight white male publisher on glitches and ham-fisted errors

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:07:25 GMT

clipped by: aerynvala
clipper's remarks: Very, very eloquently stated.

Clip Source: rnash.com

I’m hereby saying to the ham-fisted error-makers: what happened was really really bad. Here’s why:

the past twenty years “mainstream,” heteronormative capitalism made social contracts with GLBTQ persons. We’ll sell you all that stuff, and we’ll give you discounts, and it’ll be even more convenient, and customer service will be more predictable.

Amazon breached that social contract

in a world where whiteness and straightness are “norms” and males benefit from our patriarchial history, it is always the GLBTQ books, the queer books, the non-normative books that get caught in the glitches, the ham-fisted errors.

We cannot be given the benefit of the doubt, because it is always us who get the benefit of the doubt in our society,

and if we are to say

we’ll hook you up just fine, then we can never let this happen.

the books that were de-ranked were de-ranked because it is always the outsider whose books get de-ranked

#AmazonFail

guilty until proven innocent

Because that’s how the other half lives

Tags: amazon, queer, disabled, #amazonfail

String Theory: A Beginner's Guide

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 12:59:59 GMT

clipped by: aerynvala
clipper's remarks: For when you literally want to play the world's smallest violin for someone

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

String theory is one of the most famous ideas in modern physics, but it is also one of the most confusing.

At its heart is the idea that the fundamental particles we observe are not point-like dots, but rather tiny strings that are so small that our best instruments cannot tell that they are not points.

It also predicts that there are extra dimensions to space beyond the obvious length, breadth and depth, but we do not experience them because they are bunched up in tiny spaces.

While these notions are deeply strange, the key issue for string theorists has actually been the difficulty of testing their ideas.

One of the most widely publicised aspects of string theory is its need for extra "tiny" dimensions of space. But these extra dimensions may not be necessary after all – at least, not if a 40-year-old idea called "twistor theory" has anything to do with it.

A neutrino experiment at the South Pole may be able to detect the predicted effects of string theory.

Tags: string theory, science, physics

Utah Phillips - Pacifism and Privilege

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:23:05 GMT

clipped by: aerynvala
clipper's remarks: "You know, an alcoholic, they can be dry for twenty years; they're never gonna sit in that circle and put their hand up and say, 'Well, I'm not alcoholic anymore' - no, they're still gonna put their hand up and say, 'Hi, my name's Utah, I'm an alcoholic.' It's the same with violence. You gotta be able to put your hand in the air and acknowledge your capacity for violence, and then deal with the behavior, and have the people whose lives you messed with define that behavior for you, you see. And it's not gonna go away - you're gonna be dealing with it every moment in every situation for the rest of your life."

Clip Source: www.jeddy.org

"You were born a white man in mid-twentieth century industrial America. You came into the world armed to the teeth with an arsenal of weapons. The weapons of privilege, racial privilege, sexual privilege, economic privilege. You wanna be a pacifist, it's not just giving up guns and knives and clubs and fists and angry words, but giving up the weapons of privilege, and going into the world completely disarmed. Try that."

"Force is the weapon of the weak."

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Utah Phillips reflects on his experiences with Ammon Hennacy and becoming a pacifist. From the album "I've Got to Know". RIP Utah

Tags: pacifism, violence, privilege

Why I Actually Prefer It When People Aren't Civil

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:12:46 GMT

clipped by: aerynvala
clipper's remarks: The are all sorts of problems with this, which is frequently referred to as the tone argument. But I haven't yet seen anyone say, fuck man, I LIKE it when you're beautifully, articulately, pointedly angry, and if my attention and my comfort is least and last in your order of importance. I'm not sitting here thinking, well, you've obviously got something important to say, so I'll try and see past the anger and hear the message. It surely can't be said enough times that this is not about my safety or my comfort, but actually, dammit, I feel safer and more comfortable if you're angry.

Clip Source: biascut.livejournal.com

in a conversation about race with some who identifies as a person of colour and with whom I don't have an established relationship, I really appreciate articulate anger and a calculated lack of civility. I feel slightly safer in a difficult conversation with someone who makes me demonstrate my good faith before they'll share their time and experience and knowledge with me, because it means they consider it valuable. I feel happier knowing that they are aware that they have the right to cease to share it with me if I fuck up, and the confidence to exercise that right. I feel glad that they may also do me the favour of telling me if I fuck-up, and give me an opportunity to apologise, even though, again, there's no burden on them to do so - but I know they know that.

Every time I see someone say, "But you'll convert more PEOPLE LIKE ME to your cause if you play nicely," I think, golly, don't you think PEOPLE LIKE YOU important?

Tags: racism, racefail09, gender, discourse

On Having A "Polite" Tone

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:41:15 GMT

clipped by: aerynvala
clipper's remarks: Politeness (under which requests for the "right" "tone" seems to fall: it's not specifically a soft tone or a pleading tone or whatever that's requested, but something more abstract, especially in written discourse) is a product of cultural conventions that grow out of historical and political dynamics. It's a product of society: it reflects the order established in that society. Discourse that upsets the dynamics of society fails to conform to that order.

Clip Source: brown-betty.livejournal.com

Talking about systemic racism is "impolite" in the way that talking about a rape culture is "impolite." Civilization is a system for perpetuating itself, and so it disallows systemic critique of its fundamental presuppositions. Demanding "politeness" is demanding that the conversation take place under a set of rules that disallow the arguments of one side.

I put polite in scare-quotes, because I think there is a real polite, built on respect for other human beings, which I hope we can recognize the value of, while recognizing that for a lot of people "polite" means not upsetting the status-quo.

This doesn't enter in to all the ways in which "polite" is demanded of PoC more than it's demanded of other people, the ways in which PoC can never be "polite" enough, and the ways in which "politeness" is not generally something you demand of the injured party

I encourage you to familiarize yourself with its parameters before stepping in. Here is a helpful, relatively brief summary

Tags: racism, racefail09, tone, criticism, discourse

Was Einstein Wrong?: A Quantum Threat to Special Relativity

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 09:02:39 GMT

clipped by: aerynvala
clipper's remarks: Our intuition, going back forever, is that to move, say, a rock, one has to touch that rock, or touch a stick that touches the rock, or give an order that travels via vibrations through the air to the ear of a man with a stick that can then push the rock—or some such sequence.

We term this intuition "locality."

Quantum mechanics has upended many an intuition, but none deeper than this one. And this particular upending carries with it a threat, as yet unresolved, to special relativity—a foundation stone of our 21st-century physics.

--- SO COOL!

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

it emerged that Bohr was wrong that nothing was wrong with his understanding of quantum mechanics and that Einstein was wrong about what was wrong with Bohr's understanding.

The crucial question is whether the nonlocalities that at least appear to be present in the quantum-mechanical algorithm are merely apparent or something more.

Bell then analyzed a specific entanglement scenario and concluded that no such local algorithm was mathematically possible.

And so the actual physical world is nonlocal. Period.

Bell had now shown that locality was incompatible not merely with the abstract theoretical apparatus of quantum mechanics but with certain of its empirical predictions as well.

Experimenters

have left no doubt that those predictions are indeed correct. The bad news, then, was not for quantum mechanics but for the principle of locality—and thus, presumably, for special relativity, because it at least appears to rely on a presumption of locality.

Tags: science, quantum mechanics, quantum physics, einstein, special relativity, locality