Like Trying to Hide the Daylight From the Sun

Dear Congress:

Thanks to the bizarrely tireless efforts of  Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and a majority of the House Judiciary, you're going to vote on SOPA once you're back in session. While you enjoy your recess, your constituency would really appreciate it if you took a little time to reread Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution and meditate on its meaning and intent.  I'll save you the bother of looking it up:

This clause addresses both patents and copyright. And yet, the duration and powers of these protections for inventors and scientists vs. authors and other media creators has become vastly different.  SOPA will only exacerbate that gap.

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This is a comment I just put up on igrick's updated post, but it has wider applications, so I'm dumping it here too. 

A note to users of RP, Meme and other communities, where subject line is crucial for operation: for the moment we are developing only standard commenting representation, well know in LiveJournal as S1 styles, but we will keep subject lines, both in terms of form and representation, in advanced — S2 — styles, and provide an ability to keep it forever for certain communities, as well as, by request, will develop an extra functionality for such communities thru OpensSocial applications going public next year.

No. Nyet. Nein. La. Lo. Bu. Non. I've run out of languages in which to tell you that "this is a bad idea." Your lovely, elegant, bandwidth-gobbling new design retains the vertical space-hogging Icon dividers between comments, so you're not conserving space for body text. All you're doing by eliminating subject lines is removing functionality. If subject headings REALLY bother you, make the option to turn them OFF, not on.

In fact-- ATTENTION ALL WEB DESIGNERS:

Rule One (1): When it comes to privacy options, users want to default "opt out". This is because users like to control who has access to their personal information. Not abiding by this rule will get you investigated by the FTC and you may be forced to pay millions of dollars in fines, like Facebook! (igrick: please remember this rule whenever you decide to implement whatever "OpenSocial applications" are. They sound like a terrible idea already.)

Rule Two (2): When it comes to functionality options, especially pre-existing functions, users want to default "opt in". This is because users hate change. Not abiding by this rule is why no one uses delicious.com anymore, and why NetFlix is about to go under!

Oh--and Rule Three (3): every time you add a functionless animation or a needless transparency to your site/program design, you kill a baby panda (and further alienate users who have bandwidth limits or aging hardware).

/don't be a panda killer

Contains spoilers for tonight's episode - but if you haven't watched it, I don't encourage you to do so.  Also contains references to triggery material.  I should know.  The episode triggered me.

ETA: I don't think I'm leaving the fandom.  I still do love this show.  But I still feel... really, really hurt.  I may not be as squee happy about it for awhile.  And I'm really disappointed in the entire production crew for not thinking about any of these issues before they brought the episode to air.

ETA2: It's been brought to my attention that there was an outright statement that the relationship was never consummated during the episode - however, this occurred during the scene that hit my single trigger -- involuntary chemical-induced memory loss -- and so I missed the line while I was retrieving my anti-anxiety meds.  Nonetheless, my overall feelings about the episode and the writers' complete incomprehension of the horror that they wrought still stands.  Intercourse or no, the emotional and mental manipulation remains reprehensible and unfunny.

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Last night, the Penn State Board of Trustees met and fired University President Spanier and Coach Joe Paterno. effective immediately.  Paterno had announced his intention to retire at the end of this season earlier in the day following the indictment of his long-time assistant coach and one-time heir apparent, Jerry Sandusky, on forty felony charges associated with molestation of at least 8 children since 1996.  Sandusky's known victims, many of whom were sexually molested and assaulted for years, ranged in age from seven to fifteen during the abuse and were all participants in The Second Mile, a charity that Sandusky founded to assist at-risk youths.   Said Paterno on Sunday: "...the nature and amount of charges made are very shocking to me."   CBS News reported last night that, "The legendary football coach was said to be stunned by his firing. Said the source, "You give your life to this place, and that's how you're treated."

Yes, Paterno, you miserable piece of slime, that's how you're treated.  No, you don't get to leave on your own terms.  No, I don't give a shit that you won 409 football games or that you're a "legendary coach".  No, I couldn't give two shits about how disappointed your seniors are going to be at the Nebraska game this weekend.  You may shut up and go enjoy the remaining time you have left before the Federal government indicts you.

(  And the worst part is that you're pretending not to understand why. That's what makes you slime. )

(Warning: many things in this post make me despise large sectors of humanity. But I have good intentions.)

Okay, so if you don't check fandom_wank regularly, apparently SPN-fandom has reacted to the news of the potential-mini-Padalecki in spectacular and horrific form.

Yeah. I've already spewed my RAEG at Squid. But, well, even the vaguest connections that I might have to some of those nonnies at spn_gossip make me feel all filthy-by-proxy (and not in a good, porny way either), because for whatever reason I believe in the concept of karma if not the actual existence of it. Thus, my immediate reaction is to note that Mr. & Mrs. Padalecki have requested that in lieu of presents for their sprog, they'd much rather have folks donate to St. Jude's Children's Hospital, a fine and noble cause, and whip out my credit card... oh wait:

I don't have a lot of cash on hand (I'm donating what remains of my "buying a dress and having a good time in NYC/Washington" fund - about $35), and when it comes to things like this, I like to make sure the charity gets every bloody cent. Which brings me to my next point, because I am also a bleeding-heart-anti-corporate-liberal crusader: did you know that most credit cards don't waive their merchant processing fees (usually approx. 3%) for charitable donations? I didn't until the Haiti Earthquake, when a bunch of them got called on it and they temporarily reduced but didn't eliminate the charges for donations headed to Haiti.

(Sorry, I have to go smoke a cigarette while hating humanity for a second after remembering this fact. My misanthropic tendencies are having a field day today.)

Anyway, I'll be sending my donation to St. Jude's via check, but there is (potentially) another option. And here's another thing I never thought I'd do: endorse Capital One. Despite being one of my least favorite and predatory usurers, they redeem themselves through a program called "No Hassle Giving" wherein you can look up a charity on their website and donate using (only) a Capital One credit card and 100% of the donation actually goes to the charity. For the lazy, here's the link to the form to donate to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.

If you have a Capital One card, I highly recommend going this route, if only to encourage its continued existence and maybe help shame the other companies into following suit. If anyone else knows of a permanent site that performs the same function for any other credit card company, please feel free to share. For everyone else, here's the form for donating to St. Jude's by check.

Also, I'd love it if I could get a signal boost on this information, but I refuse to go anywhere near spn_gossip right now, I'm not sure that it's appropriate for spnanonhaven or any of the other fandom comms I'm a part of, and I don't have twitter or tumblr - if someone has the balls to tweet it to Jared I'll actually dig around and find ten more bucks to throw on the check in your name (and hell, I'll throw in a charity fic prompt as well, because hey, that's how fandom rolls - at least a drabble, any fandom except for RPF/J2 for obvious reasons, to the first person who sends the tweet). Feel free to copy/paste any of the above information and spread it however you can - I don't care if my name's attached to it, I just can't stand pretty much any of the facts that I've just listed above and I'm gonna stop now before my RAEG gets completely out of hand. But if you have any questions, go ahead and ask.