Unwarranted Assumptions

I stopped by the mall today, mostly because I needed to kill time and didn't have any better ideas. While I was there, I was accosted by one of the people manning a stall in the center of the hallway. I do sort of mind that, because I always have such a hard time saying no when someone's aggressively trying to get me to buy something - or at least, say no in a final enough way to get them to listen to me.

(And yes, the idea that I can say no and not be listened to is part of a much larger problem. It's one that this post isn't really going to get into.)

Interestingly enough, this particular stall was selling, effectively, makeup. That's probably not the best word for it; the stuff that he was trying to sell to me was designed to make one's fingernails look better, and was comprised of several things including lotion and... I guess something kind of like a fingernail file? I wasn't exactly paying too much attention, since I was trying to find a way to extricate myself from the sales pitch without just flat-out saying "go away". Either way, though, damn if it didn't actually work. I have one very shiny fingernail now!

And yet, even though the guy went through the effort to use my fingernail as a demonstration, even when his own fingers provided ten more examples of the stuff he was trying to sell me... he wasn't really trying to sell this stuff to me.

The conversation began with him asking if I am married. Then if I had a girlfriend. Both get answers in the negative. He pointed out that Valentine's Day was coming up. When he showed me the results of his little buffing tool, he asked me if I thought my mother would like that effect. When I wasn't inclined to buy the full set of products he was selling (even after three or four discounts on the price) he started asking which one I thought my mother would use.

Through the entire conversation, he simply assumed that I had no desire to buy this thing, and that he would have to sell it to a family member or friend of mine by proxy through me.

This is not an unusual incident or a coincidence. While it's the first time that I've seen an obvious example in my life, this happens all the time (more often to women trying to buy something that isn't feminine enough, I would guess), and it's one of the more irritating displays of gender stereotypes in society.

If I express interest in your product, unless I specifically mention buying it as a gift, you damn well better believe that I'm buying it because I want it. And if you're coming after me to sell me something? Before you try to convince me to buy your product, you should probably convince yourself that I want to buy said product first.

Final notes for Midchildan Music

Well, in case anyone missed the memo yesterday, I finally got around to actually updating one of the stories I had started writing. In this case, Midchildan Music was first posted to fanfiction.net in December 2010, meaning it's been over two years from story start to completion - and this is a work that tops out just over 25k words, when I can and have pounded out twice as many in a month.

The short version of that paragraph? I may have some issues with procrastination when it comes to things like this.

Part of that has to do with my personality, I think. I tend to be fairly... anxious about putting my writing on the Internet for all to see. (As an aside, that applies not just to fan fiction, but to blog posts and comments as well.) What happened with this final chapter of Midchildan Music was that I had it essentially finished and ready to post - and then stopped to re-read it. Theoretically to make sure that it was free of errors and that it was what I wanted to post. Then I re-read it again. Then I went to bed, deciding to sleep on it before I posted it. And then, well, it kind of slipped out of my "immediate concerns" pile and didn't find its way back into said pile for around a year and a half.

To be fair, I did make some edits over the past few days to the chapter that I had written back then. So perhaps it turned out better for the delay? I doubt it ended up better enough to justify as long of a wait as it was, but who knows.

Anyway! Chapter 5, Miku Append. Spoilers ahead! Go read the chapter itself first.

Of all of the Vocaloids, Miku is and probably will remain my favorite - and as far as Vocaloid costumes are concerned, in my opinion Miku Append wins hands down, at least as far as "general purpose" is concerned. Then again, I didn't title the chapter entirely on that reason, considering that the Miku in this chapter is very much an evolved form from the Sergeant's first Intelligent Device creation, just as Miku Append in the real world is to some extent an "upgrade" for the original Miku Hatsune.

There are two major goals that I was aiming for in this chapter. The first is to finish the Sergeant's change of heart. Meeting Miku has affected him. He started this story in a very uncomfortable position as someone who was very inwardly focused on his own goals, and very narrow ones at that. He ends it as someone who cares a little more about the people around him - not only Miku, but he demonstrates in the letter he sent to Haruko that he recognizes the mistakes he's made in ignoring the world around him before Miku showed up. Or at least, that's part of what I was trying to get across.

The second was to give the Sergeant and Miku a chance to finally win something. And to show off some of my favorite Vocaloids songs as battle themes. The fights are short and sweet, but I hope they are sufficiently awesome all the same. I also enjoyed the chance to link the magic he was using to some particular songs that I enjoy, and I would encourage people to go give a listen to both Disruptive Diva (yes, the one line in that song was entirely responsible for calling the spell Prelude to Destruction) and Love is War.

That wasn't the only thing I got out of the second fight with Fate, though. I highlighted the Sergeant's change of heart, as well. He's no longer focusing on sheer and overwhelming power, but on using what he has and what he knows to "defeat" a foe that is (still) far superior to him in raw combat ability. And it works out very well for him in the end.

Anyway, I should probably cut this off here before I write another several thousand words. I hope everyone that read Midchildan Music enjoyed the ride! And hopefully I'll be able to polish up and properly finish the sequel that I started working on for last year's National Novel Writing Month...

Midchildan Music chapter 5

Well, I finally got around to dealing with my fan fiction stories again. Yay!

The next (and final) chapter of Midchildan Music, my Nanoha/Vocaloids crossover, is up.

Chapter 5: Miku Append

The beginning of the story can be found here. Feel free to let me know what you think either here in comments or through Fanfiction.net's review system; I'll try to post a longer kind of author's notes here sometime within the next day or two.

Managing Elections

Honestly considering the 2012 election, I think it's pretty clear that the Democrats won just about everything that we could have honestly expected to get. Sadly, control of the House was never really on the table, but we cut into that majority somewhat, won several major Senate races (although not enough for the 60-vote cutoff, that was also never really on the table) and of course re-elected President Obama. It's pretty obvious that the Republicans lost that election quite severely.

Needless to say, the Republican Party commenced with a great deal of soul-searching and after-action analysis. Why did they lose the election? What can they do next time to win? I have only a passing interest in such discussions, because as far as I'm concerned the only plan that will actually work is to reform the party entirely so that the numerous intellectually bankrupt ideas they hold aren't treated as gospel anymore. Of course, a GOP that accepted the economic evidence against their orthodoxy (see: anything Paul Krugman has ever written) and the weight of history bearing down on the progressive side of the social debate wouldn't really be the GOP anymore.

So the question is, how can the Republican Party win an election without changing the viewpoints that make them the Republican Party? I would prefer it if the answer to that question was "they can't", and heaven knows I'll be trying as hard as possible to make that happen! But some state-level conservative governments have come up with a different answer: change the way electoral votes are handed out at the state level. Give out electoral votes by congressional district rather than state.

I may not entirely agree with the idea of calling it "cheating" - it's already law in Maine and Nebraska, and it's certainly constitutional. It does, however, lock in the one big problem with the Electoral College: it ignores the will of the people. It's abundantly clear that had this system been in place in 2012, Romney would have been elected president, with 62 electoral votes going the other way. Despite President Obama's 51.1% of the popular vote, to Romney's 47.2%.

I don't like the electoral college system, and I'd be happy to see it reformed... so long as that reform makes the system more responsive to the desires of the people of the United States, not less. And to the Republican Party, in Virginia and Pennsylvania and Michigan and wherever else they might try to enact this, I have only this to say: if you want to win the 2016 presidential election, you might try convincing a majority of the electorate to back your candidate. If you can't manage that, it won't be the Electoral College that dooms your hopes for office.

Verbal Abuse, Online and Off

As with any other online game, League of Legends has its own forums where people can go to discuss the game. The community on said forums is about as pleasant as the in-game community, which is to say it's absolutely not. I mean, probably most of the discussions on there are perfectly civil and productive, and it's nice to read the things that the developers are saying, since they come and post on the forums regularly, but it's still aggravating sometimes to have to wade through the racism and elitism that comes with it.

Recently, though, I stumbled across a thread on the League's General Discussion forums that I actually ended up participating in. One of the common threads on there, you see, is the "how do we react to verbal abuse" thread, which revives itself in a new form fairly often. Inevitably, it devolves into a flame war between two separate camps: on one side, the decent people who want to try and improve the community by getting people to stop spewing abuse at their teammates and/or opponents; on the other, the not-decent people who complain about how the entire community's made up of thin-skinned babies who can't take a joke.

No, that's obviously not an even-handed summary of the arguments, but I stopped caring about presenting this "debate" fairly a long time ago. The thread itself is here, for the curious, although I would be very cautious about following that link given some of the decidedly not-safe-space invective that some of the people on that forum were resorting to. My personal participation in that argument began on page 9 and concluded on page 14 (just the two posts on those two pages) if anyone wanted to see those specifically.

But, if there is actually anyone reading this who thinks there's a viable debate here, allow me to set the record straight: "just toughen up" and all variants thereof are horrible advice to give someone who's having to deal with abuse or harassment. At the very least, I can say it did not help me. It didn't actually do anything to address the abuse itself, which continued unabated. And even if it "worked" in the sense that it helped me "ignore" the abuse, it did so by forcing me to conceal my emotions and identity - not a price that anyone should have to pay just to get by in society.

Maybe the rules are different enough online for it to work. Maybe the faceless nature of the Internet is enough to make ignoring abuse a viable strategy. I honestly don't care, because I see absolutely no reason to go with a "maybe" when I have a much better option to offer. It's a simple option, too - all you have to do is say three words.

"Cut that out."

It does make a difference. Even if you're only on League of Legends. It will matter to the person who's being abused, tell them that they're not alone and that they have support on their team. It will put the jerk in question on notice that they are being watched and will be held accountable by the people around them. And it's a much better idea than spreading advice that has caused real harm in the past.

If you actually want to do something about verbal abuse, whether the online abuse in games like League of Legends or the offline that continues to be a problem in schools today, don't tell me to toughen up so that I can ignore the abuse. Tell them not to say abusive things in the first place.

A Tribute to Aaron Swartz

This blog's Internet tag serves as a useful way of getting at everything I've ever written about online society. Shocking, I know, the tag serving its stated purpose! More importantly, in light of recent events, it is an excellent way of reading everything I've ever written about... well, what I have called "piracy" in the past, but what the subject of this post would probably not describe as such.

Yeah, I know, I'm a good three days late. Whenever it comes to writing about major events, this always seems to happen...

I digress. In case anyone wasn't already aware, Aaron Swartz committed suicide a few days ago, at 26 years old. I was only passingly familiar with his work and his ideas, despite the connection that I had to his family (one which I won't describe in detail, in keeping with my tradition of not discussing personal matters in this forum). Indeed, I don't feel informed enough even to provide a summary of his life; I would encourage people to follow the link to the Wired article for that.

Although, given some of the things I have found online in the wake of this tragic loss, I can safely say that I can add one more person to the list of people with whom I would love to meet and talk to in person... or rather, the subset of that list that is made up of the people for which that will never again be possible.

I am too late to discuss his ideas with him in person, but thanks to the Internet which he valued so highly, I have been able to read (some of) those ideas now. And more importantly, I've re-read the things that I've written - about SOPA when that was being considered, about Megaupload when that site was taken down, about the ways the American community watches anime.

I do believe that some of those ideas still stand. I believe that content creators should have the right to determine how their work is shared with others, whether that be posting to the Internet under a Creative Commons license or a DVD collection that costs a staggering three hundred and seventy dollars.

And yet, focusing on that (as I have done in the past) has caused me, in some major ways, to be guilty of missing the point to an almost staggering degree. Re-reading what I've written and what Aaron Swartz has argued for in the past has forced a rethinking of my own thoughts on these issues. Indeed, forced a rethinking on how I reacted to the "crime" which played a major role in this saga, Aaron's downloading of multiple different articles from JSTOR and his intention to make them widely available, although that reaction is one that I never discussed publicly.

To an extent, those reactions have been shaped by my concern over the way society functions now. My desire to play by the rules, and a personality that considers intentionally breaking the rules to be usually unjustifiable. This, then, was my failing: to discuss the issue as if the rules we play under today were inviolable. As if society cannot change. It is a failing that is all the more unbelievable considering the way I react to "society can't change" when the subject is misogyny. A failing that is frankly absurd considering that the rules in question, that led to federal prosecution for his actions, are ones that need to change.

Let this mea culpa, then, stand as my personal tribute to Aaron Swartz. If it were possible, I would beg his forgiveness, in that it had to come to this before I gave his ideas the attention they deserved... and I will work to ensure that I do not continue in the errors that have characterized my thinking on these issues.

My condolences go out to his family and friends, and I would encourage people to visit the memorial website that they have set up in his memory.

May you rest in peace, Aaron Swartz, knowing that your work will not go unfinished.

Right Wing Ideology:Reactions to Newtown

While I could probably be charitably be described as a liberal firebrand, I'd at least like to believe that I'm moderate enough to recognize when my own position is flawed. I try to make a habit of self-examination (as I've mentioned before) and dispense with ideas that have been proven not to work. It's probably arguable as to how successful I am in that respect, but still.

I'd also like to suggest that at least this sets me apart from the right-wing ideologues. Because even in the wake of Newtown, with over two dozen dead and most of those children, numerous members of the extreme right wing have doubled down on the same gun control policies (or rather, the lack thereof!) that brought us to this point in the first place. One would think that this would at least give them a moment's pause!

Of course, the arguments take two positions, the religious and the anarchist. The former is embodied in the first two links, people like Huckabee or Dobson saying that this is the inevitable result of our culture turning its back on God. This, of course, ignores the fact that President Obama made open reference to Christian scripture in his speech in Newtown; that Christians of some type are still the majority in this country - we're clearly in the wrong for daring to support birth control, and abortion, and gay marriage.

I think it's worth noting that this is exactly the same as the Westboro Baptist Church's position: events like these are God's wrath on our sinful nation. And as far as I'm concerned, if that's the way God actually works, I'll burn in hell for eternity before I offer one word of prayer or thanks to Him, much less work to shape public policy to bring it in line with His dictates. Assuming I believed in the Christian God in the first place, which I do not. I'm just grateful that most of the Christians I know don't actually agree with that view of God's will. (I hope.)

More worrisome to me, though, are the anarchists, the latter four people I linked. I'm sure they would not appreciate being labeled with that term, but what else am I supposed to believe? These are the people, after all, who believe that yet more guns are the solution to this problem. Who dare to say that the American people should be prepared to take on their own government, and argue that gun rights are an important shield against the tyranny of the government. Who seem to think that the only way to stay safe is to protect yourself, preferably with as much firepower as you can possibly get.

This really kind of disturbs me. Isn't part of the point of having a government to "provide for the common defense", to quote the Constitution? If I can't trust the government to protect me, why do we even have that government in the first place?

Now, even if I didn't trust the government in that respect (and for the record, I do), obviously I can think of a few other things that the government should be responsible for, given my position on the political spectrum. But those mostly work out to social welfare, which means that your average right-wing ideologue would hate them even more than providing for the common defense.

Given the way these people are reacting to Newtown, I'm left with nothing to do but wonder. What is the government supposed to do in the ideal world of the right wing?