Category: Rant

Facebook IS the bully

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Once upon a time, I created a Page on Facemuck. It was just a place to share my origami. It was nice, people liked it. It was like a cozy, sunny room with an open door. I could come and go as I pleased.

But this was Facemuck, land of the whore and home of the knave, where all that matters is making money. Big Bully constantly annoyed me with nags about my “business”. Then along came the NEeeew PAyage Expeeerayance. The door slammed shut. I could still go into my Page, but it wasn’t mine any more. I had to change clothes every time I went through that door, and the door was always locked behind me until I changed back.

I locked the door and barred it.

Now I have a Group. It’s another pleasant room, a cheerful place where there’s always a little party going on. I can freely go in and out.

I wonder how long it will be before Big Bully thinks up a way to ruin that too.

wait until Facebook sees my flamethrower

How to say it, maybe

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A brief screed and pronunciation guide for science fiction names, in particular those of the inhabitants of Ann McCaffrey’s Pern. This material is intended for those who think they speak English :p

The greatest danger in pronunciation of “strange” names is our perceptual habits. Skimming carelessly over an unfamiliar combination of letters can result in the incoming data being interpreted as something familiar, from a first impression based on only a few letters. Sticking with that, not taking a second look, results in the mangled pronunciation being reinforced!

Our word recognition algorithms are only as good as information and *Practice* make them. Exercising the mind, and self-checking – not always accepting what seemed to be at first glance – sharpen one’s ability. The more new things become familiar, the more effective the process can be.

Experience with languages other than one’s native tongue can help by providing an alternative framework of pronunciation guidelines, as well as merely making us more aware (and wary) of what we see. Or think we see.

When I was a small child (back when God was making rocks), my favorite crayon color was magenta. I construed the color name as “magNETa.” Eventually I saw it as it was. Eh, it’s not my fave color any more anyway.

Accent on the first syllable. (JAXom, FANdarel, ROBinton)
Exception: Double letters take the accent in names of more than two syllables (MenOLLy) – although it seems a general rule that female names are accented on second or next-to-last anyway! Considered this way, Ruatha Hold is – um – a female. As for Sebell . . . eh, I think SEA-bell sounds silly.

Consonants as in normal English, except that hard G may be preferred to soft (by me).

Gaelic-derived names should be approached warily. Guidance is available. You get the hang of ot after a while.

Vowels – a matter of context.
A – Lean toward AH, with some long A in accented syllables
E – Generally short, as in lEft, with some more of an “ei” (as in Spanish). Meh-LEI-na (Melena, Robinton’s mum), Feh-LEI-na (Felena, Benden Weyr personnel))
I – “eee” in most cases (internal). Igen is a problem. Eye-gen (hard G) is my pref.
O – Can usually be played by ear according to context with no unfamiliar twists.
U – Generally a trouble-free letter, unless it gets inserted where it isn’t.
Y – This ambiguous – nay, amphibious! – vowel-consonant does not appear much, at least among the people of Pern. I just want to say, while I have the opportunity, that hearing it pronounced as if it were plying both trades at once is horribly annoying. In other words, if I had a friend named Yvonne, I would NOT call her Yivonne, Yuvonne, Yehvonne, or Yavonne. It ain’t a one-letter diphthong.

Diphthongs and other pairs:
AI – as in “aye-aye, my eye” – AIVAS should be EYE-vas, yes?
IE – I insist that Harper Piemur / Rhymes with bubbly pie fur. (Of course, you will never see a bubbly pie with fur, because they must all be eaten fresh, and sharding well will be if Piemur is around!)
The rare (to us) consonant combo “MN” just had to be thrown in for F’lar’s dragon. If you can’t figure out how to get some M in your N, just do the N! Mnementh won’t care.

Weyr: Weer (not wire or ware)

There. More may be added. Like it or bite me.

Kingdom of the Blind Giant

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A Parable of Privacy and Security

Once upon a time there was a a country ruled by a blind giant. In the beginning, he seemed to be a kind ruler. His subjects were contented and happy. Neighboring kingdoms readily allied with his.

Since most of the people thought that he had their best interests at heart, few objected when he asked them all to wear bells. It was for their own good, after all. A blind king must have some way to know where people were.

The bells gave the blind giant more freedom to move. He persuaded other kingdoms to merge with his, and their people wore bells too.

There were still some people who didn’t like wearing bells. And, of course, there were many more who would forget to put their bells on when they went out. People without bells were apt to get hurt if they got in the giant’s way. At first, no one paid much attention to their cries of pain. The king said that it was sad that anyone was harmed, but had he not given them bells? Surely it was no his fault if anyone was not using them.

After a while, the people who tended to forget their bells started to wear them all the time. It became a common custom for everyone to have their bells on at all times. Despite the inconvenience, they felt safer with the bells.

Those who disagreed strongly with bell-wearing were alarmed by the nearly universal acceptance. They would ask their friends, “Why do you wear your bells all day, even at home? What are you afraid of?”

The answer was always, “No, no, I’m not afraid! The bells are for my protection. The king is good, bells are good.”

But the anti-bell faction continued speak out against bells, insisting that they were unnecessary. If people accepted personal responsibility and kept out of the blind giant’s way, they would never get stepped on, they said. “Watch out for yourselves,” they repeated. “The king gives you bells so that he can avoid blame. The bells are for his convenience, not yours.” In fact, the constant jangling of bells had begun to negate their supposed purpose. In the cacophonous confusion, people who wore bells suffered injury more than those who kept their eyes open and kept out of harm’s way.

The king denied this, of course. Being blind, he knew only what his advisers told him, and he chose his advisers carefully. All of them had well-tuned bells. They never got stepped on or knocked over, which proved to them — and the giant — that bells were completely effective. If people got hurt, it was their own fault.

Life was getting harder for the anti-bell people. They were often denied access to basic public services because they had no bells. It often took them several times as long to get anything done because of bell discrimination. But there was no where they could go to escape the tyranny of the bell cult, since the giant had taken over nearly all the adjacent kingdoms, and most of the territories that still claimed to be independent had adopted their own system of bells.

The giant’s name was Google.

Letter to Charter Communications

Emily Lake

Dear Minions of the Insane Monopoly;

My check for the current amount due is enclosed. Please also accept my sincere disgust for your cavalier treatment of an honest, reliable paying customer.

For several years I have enjoyed the convenience of paying my bill online. Lately, it has changed from a convenience to a growing annoyance. Finally, the waste of my time became so unbearable that I was forced to waste even more time obtaining a mailing address.

I am tired of being treated like a criminal when I try to log in to pay my bill. Not once, but over and over IN ONE SESSION I am presented with a time-wasting game to “prove” that I am not a bot. When I have completed the test, the website sits grinding its gears until it times out, and then demands that I do it again. Rinse and repeat.

And there is no way out of this automated Hell! Why should I have to “prove that I’m not a robot” only to chat with your robots? Seriously? I tried a phone call, and never got past a brainless recording! The very next day, I had a problem with eBay, which was pleasantly resolved with a phone call, during which I spoke to two human beings. EBay has real customer support!

I am a human being, and as such I have a right to be treated with a minimum of respect; in return I will give whatever respect is due. I can not respect any entity that wants to punish me for honestly trying to pay a bill! Nor do I appreciate the assumption that I am just another inept, ignorant user “having trouble logging in” when the fact is that the website’s automated rudeness and seemingly purposeful slowness are preventing my login. Moments earlier I had logged into my bank to check my account balance. It was all over in a minute.

My apparent location should have no bearing on my ability to pay my bills online. What if someone is out of town on business or visiting a relative? Should their actual, physical change of location, and therefore change of IP address, make it impossible to pay a bill? Isn’t that one of the things the Internet is for, to make distance irrelevant? AT&T makes no fuss about it when I pay my phone bill; my ID, password, and zip code are good enough. I can get the whole process over with in less time than it takes to suffer ONE bout of your obstructive game-playing.

My use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is not a sign of criminal activity. I maintain several websites, and log into other non-https sites; the VPN makes this much more secure. It is not illegal for an ordinary citizen to take precautions against being hacked. I can see no reason why I should take time to stop the VPN simply because I want to pay a bill in an idle moment between other activities. My time is just as valuable as that of anyone my money goes toward paying (that’s you, Bunky, and you’re not that special). If your system can’t understand who I am unless my identity is tied to an apparent location, there is something wrong with your system.

An IP address is not a personal identifier; it is nothing but a temporary identifier for a device or group of devices that allows communication with other devices. A hacker could, theoretically, use my wifi. Does that make us the same person, one that you would trust because you “know” the location? Even judges have ruled that an IP address is NOT an infallible means of identification of a person. To wit:

“An IP address provides only the location at which one of any number of computer devices may be deployed, much like a telephone number can be used for any number of telephones.”
— Judge Gary Brown, United States District Court of the Eastern District of New York.

If you are truly concerned about security, there are much better ways to ascertain the correct identity of an individual logging in than their IP address. There are also better ways to ensure my legitimacy than to use a CAPTCHA that works so poorly that it never really works! There are certainly better ways to handle regional data — AT&T seems to manage this quite well. Perhaps you should ask them how they manage their database.

No amount of advertising and promotional hype (which I also have to pay for) can cover the fact that Spectrum has become an inhuman monster with no respect or consideration whatsoever for the faceless, dehumanized masses it feeds on.

SSL – One Moment of Security

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SSL, Secure Sockets Layer, keeps data sent between two points from being intercepted and misused by a third party. This means that your password, credit card info, Social Security card number, or the name of your girlfriend’s dog will be safely transmitted when you click the DoIt button.

But that is all it does.

Once that information has been stored by the website, it is only as safe as the website itself. SSL does not make a website secure; it only makes communication with it secure.

Every recent huge data breach has released personal information from sites “protected” by SSL. So think twice or more before letting https// www Big Business keep your payment information. Or your birth date, mother’s maiden name, pet’s name, or anything else that can contribute to the cause of identity theft.

There are two reasons I’m not seduced by any temptations to enroll in autopay: One, I might not have any money in the bank tomorrow. Two, the reason I don’t have any money in the bank tomorrow could be that the site I gave my banking info to has been hacked.

Just In Case

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…you need something else to call Tronald Gump, here is the list I composed. Some of these may be found elsewhere, but none of them were copied. Not all gems, perhaps, but I wanted a mix of long and short.

Prune Covered In Orange Slime Mold
Decaying Baby-Tooth
Dead Blobfish Dipped In Tang
Thing Moving In A Pile Of Rotting Seaweed
Smelly Sock Found Under A Bed In A Homeless Shelter
Walking Buttworm
Diseased Ho’S Used Tampon
Blazing Juggernaut Of Trivia
Monument To Bad Fuck
Puke Dumpling
Troll Doll Made Of Earwax And Dead Caterpillars
Mass Of Congealed Rancid Lipids
Unfinished Sculpture Of A Turd
Melonball With Bad Hair
Specimen Of Unhealthy Urine
Leprous Tropical Fruit
Horny Banana Slug
Cyanide Pill Disguised As A Kumquat
Babyshit Colored Dingleberry
Overgrown Fetus
Hairy Penis
Slab Of Rancid Pork Belly
Scrofulous Tergiversator
Fear-Biting Soi Dog
Smelly Vaginal Discharge
Oversized Flesh-Eating Bacterium
Yuge Blowfly Larva
Vat Of Putrescent Foreskins
Diseased Puffer Fish
Tiny-Fingered Skankworm
Boil On A Bum’s Arse
Ventriloquist’s Dummy With A Fly In Its Head
Urinal With A Clogged Drain
Imitation Leather Dildo
One-Man Freak Show
Leaky Condom
Highly Overrated Financial Failure
Soiled Codpiece
Insane Parody Of A Demented Ape
Overflowing Toilet
Refugee From Kindergarten
Bale Of Straw With The Face Of A Blobfish
Sow-Humping Sack Of Spoiled Lemons
Poster Child For Mediocrity
Anus-Mouthed Swamp Creature
Rump Of A Naked Chicken
Deserving Target Of Ridicule Since 1946
Overused Diaper
Runaway Honey Wagon
Thing That Fell Out Of A Junkfood Dumpster
Illegitimate Offspring Of A Pardoner And An Ass
Discrepancy In A Virus Scan Report
Comic-Book Villain Wannabe
Talking Sperm Cell
Drooling Idiot Who Can’t Zip His Own Fly
Master Of Gibberish
Party-Crashing Total Bore
Golf-Club With A Dick
Descendant Of Undesirable Immigrants
Nigerian Scam Personified
Spoiled Child With Yuge Entitlement Problems
Half-Ass Attempt At Creating A Sentient Being
Irresponsible Wannabe Penny-Ante Tyrant
Obese Frog In A Puddle Of Piss
Moldy Poundcake
Laxative Overdose
Puppet Of Slimy Rich Pigs
Mass Turd Baiter
Smug Hypocrite With Flaming Depends
Long-Nosed Short-Penised Bullshit Wrangler
Radioactive Citrus Fruit
Stranger To The Truth
Mutant Kumquat In An Expensive Suit
Self-Righteous Ignoramus
Fine Blend Of Pus And Sputum
Significant Source Of Unhealthy Thoughts
Comb Without A Rooster
Ten Gallons Of Low-Grade Sludge In A One-Gallon Pail
Sorry Mook
Yuge Amount Of Artificial Flavor And Color
Elderly Teenager
Tumor With Bad Humor
24-7 Fertilizer Factory
Vast Cloud Of Ignorance
Groper Of Young Models
Misogynistic Misfit With Stinky Fingers
National Disgrace And Embarrassment
Cheese Curd With Evil Intent
Hat Without A Head
Venusian Slime Worm With An Anus On Both Ends
Lost Boomerang

What Would You Call…
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American Imperialism

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I was made aware of Steve McEllistrem’s blog post on militarization, Why Are We Militarizing the World?, on Twitter today. He makes a terribly clear statement on matters we are not supposed to think about.

“Good” Americans who mindlessly repeat the Pledge of Allegiance, who want to Make America “Great” “Again,” who don’t see the narcissistic implications of patriotism, have now pushed us all over the edge of the cliff we built. A billion little bricks of arrogance high, it raises bullying above leadership; glorifies and deifies behavior that creates hatred.

It is said that it takes a real man to admit his mistakes. What about a real nation?

The New Holocaust

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Guest post by Hallie Dolin
__________________________

Let me tell you a story. It’s violent and it’s not pretty, but it needs to be told.

My paternal grandmother’s mother was from a family called Sereichik, named after their hometown of Sereija in what is now Lithuania. My dad has a sheaf of documents, full of my grandmother’s meticulous research, attesting to the fact that the town was a center of learning. Sereija boasted one of the best yeshivas (Jewish schools for children, almost always boys) in the area. In fact, my great-grandmother earned her passage to America by writing letters for illiterate people, for which she was paid.

Somewhere around forty years after she left, my great-grandmother’s mother Pesse Baile Sereichik, her two daughters who hadn’t managed to get out of the country, and their husbands and children were rounded up over the course of two days in September 1941. They were taken to the edge of town and, by the testimony of surviving townsfolk, were forced to dig their own graves. They were then lined up at the edge of the pits they had dug and shot so that they fell in. Murder and burial in one convenient step.

This is the family of ONE great-grandparent accounted for – an EIGHTH of my ancestry. Every single one of my ancestors, even my maternal grandmother’s American-born parents and her immigrant grandparents, had family back on the continent they were forced into by the Romans and ghettoized within (which is why I go freaking ballistic if you call me white, by the way). They lived in the Ukraine. Poland. Lithuania. Romania. Russia. A scant train car’s ride away from Stutthof, Kaiserwald, Koldichevo, the six extermination camps of Poland. One in six Jews killed in the Holocaust was killed at Auschwitz, and it’s likely that at least some of my family went there.

I’m telling you this story because the people who shot them were not Nazis. The SS didn’t dirty their hands with backwater towns like Sereija. No, my family’s murderers were their own neighbors. Lithuania was one of the bloodiest countries in terms of Jews murdered by their own countrymen. In fact, about ninety-three percent of Lithuania’s 210,000 Jews were killed. Much of this predated the gas chambers. Imagine the sheer hatred, the sociopathy in the upper echelons that goaded these people to foaming rage and let them shoot hundreds of thousands of their own neighbors between the eyes because of their ANCESTRY. Thousands of mass executions in God knows how many unmarked graves.

That is what I’ve seen in these two days of The Orange One taking office, and in the months preceding it. The short story I wrote back in 2008 that explored my fear of what might happen if MCCAIN won doesn’t seem so far-fetched now. The religious right wants much of the country dead. So does any Angry Calvinist businessman who thinks that people who don’t or can’t conform to a fairly recent model of productivity deserve death by no help at all.

Make no mistake, I am not talking just about Black people, Muslim people, immigrants of all stripes, or same-sex-attracted people like my fiancee and me. I’m talking about Jews. I’m talking about being scared as hell that we’re next.

Nearly every pro-Trump gathering that I’ve seen involves that same rage at Jewish people. There is an armed march being planned, specifically against the Jewish people of Whitefish, Montana. Armed march. Does the term “Kristallnacht” ring a bell?

I’m telling you this because we will be among the first to go. Maybe not by Trump and his cronies, who will turn their heads and focus on people who are “less desirable” than us horrible lizard people (yes, I know all the euphemisms that Nazis use). No, Bannon is going to quietly smile as thousands of our neighbors turn against us and reawaken centuries-old racial and ethnic prejudice – yes, I said racial against US, no matter how well some of us pass – to do what they’ve been longing to do for years.

Look me in the eyes, if you know me. Look at my photo, if you don’t. Somewhere in this country is a human being with the fortitude to face me head-on and put a bullet through my brain. I’d even wager that there is more than one.

Help me. Help others like me. FIGHT HIM.

Fifty Shades of White

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A Short Tale of Betrayal

I have built a reputation for honest work and trustworthiness. People rely on me to help them recover their passwords, rescue locked email accounts, salvage their lost files, clean up and speed up their computers. Last Friday, I was fired from a job I held for nearly ten years. Seems that my computer skills are no longer needed, and that’s all I was good for. (I have some other thoughts….)

I wanted to clear the office computer of files and software that no one else would know what to do with. I was not allowed to finish the job. This made the computer very unhappy, I am told. I do not feel that this was my fault; my intentions were only to remove things that might be confusing. Had I been allowed to do it completely and systematically, there would have been no trouble. Paranoia born of ignorance can cause more problems than it could possibly prevent.

One thing I left behind was my personal web browser — chock full of cookies! Because of this, I have been forced to change passwords for a forum I visit frequently, Facebluk, Gmail, and anything else I might have checked into. Yes, I should have known better than to stay logged in, lol.

It is well known that firing the hacker can have unpleasant consequences. However, I had no intentions of taking any vengeful action. If the princess who took over management last year thinks otherwise, she is dead wrong. The funniest thing is, her IT pet still hasn’t changed some passwords. [eyeroll] I logged into wordpress as another user and removed my personal login, because I like tidying things up.

I removed myself as admin of their Facebook page (which of course I had created, along with a Twitter account and other good things that I am now locked out of). I also created a new FB page for the organization that previously owned my workplace, because I still help them out.

Life goes on; I made many friends in that job, and they are still my friends. They will still trust me with their computers. As for the princess, I wouldn’t trust her as far as I can throw “Leviathan,” my favorite computer. That’s not far at all, the damn thing is heavy.

The phoenix rises

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My previous web hosting lacked security, and gradually my site became a party zone for script kiddies. Not only littered with unwelcome files, it was impossible to clean up because file permissions had become unchangeable. Support ticket? Forget it.

So, last night I grabbed some recent logfiles and torched the whole thing. Well, scorched it, anyway. Now hosted by A Small Orange, the site can regenerate. It won’t be the same, so if anyone has bookmarked specific pages, those bookmarks will never work again. Heh, sorry, but site happens. The old material will be restored after cleaning, which will take some time.