Current Events

Potential Web Hosting Replacements for Media Temple

After yesterday’s announcement of GoDaddy buying Media Temple, (more about this on TechCrunch) I’ll need to move. But it’s going to be a couple months before I can do that, so these are some notes about hosts to research when I get some free time to make the switch. These were all recommended to me by friends or picked up from the TechCrunch comments as possible replacements.

Green Geeks

Rackspace Hosting

Digital Ocean

LiquidWeb

pair Networks

Solar VPS

SoftLayer

BlueHost

Datarealm Internet Services

I hope that some of these share screens of their control panels. Media Temple’s control panel interface was far more usable than any other host I’ve worked with, so I hate to take a step backwards.

table flip princess bubblegum 1

Sigh.

Continue ReadingPotential Web Hosting Replacements for Media Temple

GoDaddy buys Media Temple and I lose my mind

I was checking my email this afternoon, all unsuspecting, and suddenly this crap bomb appeared in my inbox from my web hosting provider Media Temple:

I am proud to share some momentous news with you today. GoDaddy, the Internet’s largest platform for small businesses, has acquired (mt) Media Temple. We will continue operating as an independent and autonomous company and our mission will remain unchanged. However, new investments from GoDaddy will provide us the necessary resources to strengthen our focus on web professionals and will help accelerate our plans to expand internationally.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you surely have seen GoDaddy’s incredibly sexist ad campaigns. But here’s a nice refresher course for you, just the same:

Ms. Magazine: Top Five Sexist Super Bowl Ads, 2013

The Moderate Voice: GoDaddy: Poster Child For Silicon Valley Sexism

Geek Feminism Wiki: Go Daddy’s advertising

Miss Representation: #NotBuyingIt: Go Daddy Disappoints, Again

GoDaddy has also been critiqued for really terrible user interfaces and “dark patterns” – a user interface designed to trick you into doing something or buying something that you didn’t want or intend. Read more about some GoDaddy’s dark patterns tricks.

I actually had 12 domains registered with GoDaddy from really early on. I never hosted files on their servers, but when their domains were $3 and $5 a year, I registered quite a few of them. This was before all the horrible sexist advertising and before the dark patterns took over their interfaces. Once they started their terrible ad campaigns, I began moving my domain registrations, but unfortunately it wasn’t as easy to do as I had hoped. I had purchased some of my domain names under an email address I no longer had. When I changed emails, I updated all of my contact addresses for each individual URL. But unbeknownst to me – this is an example of one of their dark patterns – those changes didn’t also apply to the privacy settings on those URLs. So when that address when away, I couldn’t turn off the privacy settings in order to move the domains to a new domain provider. I finally found the log in numbers to the privacy accounts by searching on an ancient backup drive I put in the closet 6 years ago, and was able to update my privacy information in order to move, but it took me months to get it sorted out. So I was GoDaddy-free, finally!

I hate you fucking people.

Annnnnd now I’m back. I host 12 sites on Media Temple architecture. I’m going to be moving them sometime this spring, unfortunately. So far, Dreamhost, Digital Ocean and Pair.com are front-runners for new hosting providers. We shall see.

Continue ReadingGoDaddy buys Media Temple and I lose my mind

Todd Rokita embarrasses Indiana twice (at least)

Indiana State Representative Todd Rokita (R) has been making the news cycles recently to discuss his ignominious role in the government shutdown. He’s blissfully unaware of how ridiculous he sounds in this soundbite that gets prominent discussion on The Daily Show yesterday evening:

But what takes the cake is Rokita’s sexist remarks to a CNN anchor during a discussion of the government shutdown. At one point, Rokita dismisses Carol Costello’s questions with the remark “You’re beautiful, but you need to be honest.”

Lovely. If we’re remarking on people’s appearances, Todd, I have a thing or two to say about how you look.

Not to be outdone by Rokita, Indiana Representative Marlin Stutzman had this to say:

“We’re not going to be disrespected,” conservative Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., added. “We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”

Continue ReadingTodd Rokita embarrasses Indiana twice (at least)

Some government shutdown reading

First – let’s be clear on who’s responsible for this debacle:

The truth of what happened Monday night, as almost all political reporters know full well, is that “Republicans staged a series of last-ditch efforts to use a once-routine budget procedure to force Democrats to abandon their efforts to extend U.S. health insurance.” (Thank you, Guardian.)

And holding the entire government hostage while demanding the de facto repeal of a president’s signature legislation and not even bothering to negotiate is by any reasonable standard an extreme political act. It is an attempt to make an end run around the normal legislative process. There is no historical precedent for it. The last shutdowns, in 1995 and 1996, were not the product of unilateral demands to scrap existing law; they took place during a period of give-and-take budget negotiations.

Shutdown coverage fails Americans

As the rest of the world laughs at the United States:

“The world looked on with a little anxiety and a lot of dismay, and some people had trouble suppressing smirks,” wrote Kevin Sullivan in a piece for Malaysian outlet Awani entitled, “US shutdown leaves the world scratching its head.”

While Russia Today devoted an entire article to U.S. shutdown comedy, featuring noteworthy images and tweets carrying the #govtshutdown hashtag, photojournalist Lynsey Addario tweeted from India that the shutdown was not being taken too seriously.

“I’m in India, and my driver and translator are laughing at U.S. govt shutdown. So much for world’s great superpower. It’s closed,” she said in a Tuesday tweet.

As US shuts down, rest of the world looks on with bemusement, laughter

And of course Indiana has to show up as a national embarrassment, courtesy Todd Rokita being a dumbass on television:

Continue ReadingSome government shutdown reading

The Pope’s “new stance” on homosexuality

Let me do the TL;DR up front – it’s the same as the old stance.

Several new stories have come out today about a recent interview Pope Francis did where he expanded on his comments from July on homosexuality and women’s roles in the church. I’ll link to some articles about what he had to say in a moment, but first I want to say this – my issue with what he’s saying is the same as it has been since July – it’s all PR and no substantive change. The articles note specifically that “The pope’s comments don’t break with Catholic doctrine or policy, but instead show a shift in approach, moving from censure to engagement” and that “The catechism, the Catholic Church’s book of official doctrine, condemns homosexual acts, but says gays and lesbians ‘must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.'”

That is not real change. Not at all. For gay people, we need concrete, specifics, and here’s why:

Here’s the story, for the first time I’ve ever told it in any explicit detail, on why I quit attending the Catholic Church just after college, way back in the dark ages, back in 1992. At that time, I went directly to the priest that was in charge of my mother’s church and asked him straight out what the church’s policy on gay people was. I had begun “coming out” in 1987, and in the years after that I fought with my mom tooth and nail over going to church. In July of 1992, this specific paper was released by John Paul II on gay people and the Catholic church [Some Considerations Concerning The Response To Legislative Proposals On The Non-Discrimination Of Homosexual Persons] and it was discussed in some of the gay newspapers at the time. I looked it up at the library, made a copy of it, and took it to the priest of my mom’s church Our Lady of Grace in Noblesville, Indiana. This specifically bothered me:

1. The letter recalls that the CDF’s “Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics” of 1975 “took note of the distinction commonly drawn between the homosexual condition or tendency and individual homosexual actions”; the latter are “intrinsically disordered” and “in no case to be approved of” (No. 3).

2. Since “[i]n the discussion which followed the publication of the (aforementioned) declaration …, an overly benign interpretation was given to the homosexual condition itself, some going so far as to call it “neutral or even good,” the letter goes on to clarify: “Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder. Therefore special concern and pastoral attention should be directed toward those who have this condition, lest they be led to believe that the living out of this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not” (No. 3).

I told the priest that I was gay, that I intended to fall in love with and marry a woman someday. I wanted to know, specifically, what that meant in relation to the church.

The priest told me, straight up: “You will not be welcome in the church if you maintain a sinful lifestyle without any remorse or desire to change your behavior. We expect you to not engage in sexual behavior with women, to confess to your sins in confession, do penance for them, and to be celibate before you would be allowed to take communion. If you don’t, you will be able to attend mass with your family on holidays, but you won’t be allowed to take communion. If you regularly attend church without going to confession or renouncing your sinful behavior, we wouldn’t continue to welcome you in the church on a weekly basis, and we would ask you to stop attending.”

That told me everything I needed to know about where I stood with the Catholic Church, and other than attending on holidays with my family for the sake of family harmony, I haven’t been back.

This is still the Catholic Church’s position.

Nothing in the interviews Francis has given in July or now changes what I was told by my priest back in 1992. What Francis is saying is basically “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” They aren’t going to inquire what I’m doing with my wife under the covers, but it’s still considered a sin. My wife and I still aren’t considered a family to them, and if we were a part of the church, they would expect us to keep our relationship on the downlow. I imagine if I went to confession and told them that I regularly have sex with my wife, they would be forced to confront the issue somehow, and what would come out of it would be exactly what I was told back in 1992, more or less. They might not tell me never to come back, but they would still think my romantic relationship with my wife is a sin.

CNN’s coverage of the interview:

Pope Francis said the church has the right to express its opinions but not to “interfere spiritually” in the lives of gays and lesbians, expanding on explosive comments he made in July about not judging homosexuals.

In a wide-ranging interview published Thursday, the pope also said that women must play a key role in church decisions and brushed off critics who say he should be more vocal about fighting abortion and gay marriage.

Moreover, if the church fails to find a “new balance” between its spiritual and political missions, the pope warned, its moral foundation will “fall like a house of cards.”

And a summary of his remarks from the New York Times:

Pope Francis, in the first extensive interview of his six-month-old papacy, said that the Roman Catholic Church had grown “obsessed” with preaching about abortion, gay marriage and contraception, and that he has chosen not to speak of those issues despite recriminations from some critics.

In remarkably blunt language, Francis sought to set a new tone for the church, saying it should be a “home for all” and not a “small chapel” focused on doctrine, orthodoxy and a limited agenda of moral teachings.

“It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time,” the pope told the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a fellow Jesuit and editor in chief of La Civiltà Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit journal whose content is routinely approved by the Vatican. “The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.

“We have to find a new balance,” the pope continued, “otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.”

Pope Francis

As I was going over this post, I did a bit of looking through things I’ve written or noted here on this blog about the Catholic Church and the crazy, offensive and hostile things they’ve done over the years. Here’s a short list of bullshit the Catholic Church has been up to in the time I’ve been keeping this blog… Interesting how much Pope Francis’s new statements resemble that link that I posted in November of 2006.

Continue ReadingThe Pope’s “new stance” on homosexuality

My DC Comics Pull List Purge

The only comment that DC Comics has made so far about the epic fuck-up that they have made with Batwoman and refusing to allow her to be married [Batwoman writers leave DC Comics over ban on same-sex marriage] is this:

“As acknowledged by the creators involved, the editorial differences with the writers of BATWOMAN had nothing to do with the sexual orientation of the character.”

This has been their statement to many media outlets, and is, apparently, in reference to this tweet by J.H. Williams:

Annnnnd here’s why that is complete and utter bullshit on the part of DC

Like it or not, comics are not immune to the political realities of the real world we live in. Comics don’t exist in a vacuum; they speak to us as readers because they have some significance to our everyday realities. Otherwise, why bother to introduce a gay character into a comic book at all? The point of course, is that we want to identify with the heroes of comics – that we want to related to them and imagine being them. For gay people, seeing a character like Kate Kane existing, carrying out her job and also balancing the realities of romantic relationships is appealing because it touches on our real lives. She has to go through some of the same difficulties and triumphs that we do in order to keep our attention.

And like it or not, same-sex marriage is a huge, emotionally-complex thing that we as LGBT people are dealing with. It has relevance to gay characters in comic books as much as it does to us in the real world. There’s just no way to side-step that issue with any gay character right now. And because of that, there is simply no way that you can separate the subject of Batwoman’s romantic relationship from her sexual orientation.

Because the character’s sexual orientation and romantic life are on the table as subject matter for the comic book, allowing or disallowing her to marry is inextricably bound to the current global climate on the subject of same-sex marriages. And banning her from getting married has a very different connotation than it does for heterosexual characters. There’s no way that doesn’t resonate with real people being banned from getting married and amplify the issue to all readers, no matter whether DC wants it to do so or not.

As Williams said, specifically for this character – “but it still should not be a story to be avoided, but embraced fully.” If you are going to have gay characters in comic books, marriage HAS to be addressed. There’s no way this subject CAN’T come up.

Two days have passed since this news hit the press. Comic Book Resources is running a poll – Will You Be Interested In “Batwoman” Once J.H. Williams & W. Haden Blackman Exit the Series? The current results stand at 83.6% – No. 16.4% – Yes.

Batwoman Rain

Given that there are 6,697 news articles on this issue currently out there on the web, almost all with some completely damning version of a headline like “Batwoman Writers Quit as DC Comics Prohibits Lesbian Marriage” I would have expected a much more complete and thoughtful response on the part of the company at damage control. But… apparently not. I’m not inclined to give the company any more time to craft a satisfactory response, given that they have been wrangling over the issue with Batwoman’s authors for quite some time on the issue, and they didn’t seem to be prepared with any sort of complete or statement about their position.

I can’t imagine they didn’t realize what a massive mistake this would appear to be, and yet… no real acknowledgement of their LGBT readers at all other than a terse statement.

My pull list from my local comics shop yesterday was this:

  • Ame Comi Girls
  • Batgirl (I’m so sorry to do this, Gail Simone)
  • Batwoman
  • Birds of Prey
  • Captain Marvel
  • Fearless Defenders
  • Katana
  • The Movement (Again, really sorry, Gail)
  • Red Sonja
  • Supergirl
  • World’s Finest (Power Girl & Huntress)
  • X-Men Now
  • Young Avengers Now

And my pull list as of this afternoon, when I dropped in to change things around:

  • Batwoman (until issue 26, the last Williams/Blackman book)
  • Captain Marvel
  • Fearless Defenders
  • FF (the fantastic four spin-off by Matt Fraction)
  • Hawkeye
  • Red Sonja (I had to keep at least one Gail Simone thing)
  • X-Men Now
  • Young Avengers Now

There are some other independent books that I’ll probably add in, too. I’ve been meaning to investigate other publishers, and now I’l have time for that.

It kills me that my childhood favorites – Wonder Woman and Batgirl – are no longer in my comic book reading, and that the thing that pulled me back into comic books after I stopped reading in college was the DC New 52 reboot. They got me back into comics, and then turned around and kicked me out again. So – good job, DC at attracting women to your readership, only to alienate them again and push them on to better work.

Continue ReadingMy DC Comics Pull List Purge

Batwoman writers leave DC Comics over ban on same-sex marriage

J.H. Williams III and Haden Blackman — longtime writers of the Batwoman comic book — are leaving DC Comics over a dispute about editorial changes to their planned story lines, including being forbidden to show the main character marrying her same-sex partner. Cross-posted by the authors to both author sites:

Unfortunately, in recent months, DC has asked us to alter or completely discard many long-standing storylines in ways that we feel compromise the character and the series. We were told to ditch plans for Killer Croc’s origins; forced to drastically alter the original ending of our current arc, which would have defined Batwoman’s heroic future in bold new ways; and, most crushingly, prohibited from ever showing Kate and Maggie actually getting married. All of these editorial decisions came at the last minute, and always after a year or more of planning and plotting on our end.

In response to questions about the issue, J.H. Williams clarified:

Batwoman Kiss

DC Comics has had serious problems in the past with public disputes with authors over comic book story lines. In December of last year, the comic book company fired fan favorite Batgirl writer Gail Simone only to turn around and rehire her after an embarrassing public backlash. Simone didn’t delve too deeply into specifics, but did say that last-minute editorial decisions and push-back on treatment of a transgender character were involved.

Back in 2010, DC Comics also had difficulties with the previous Batwoman writer/creator Greg Rucka over editorial control of his work on Batwoman. Except for saying ‘he realized that he “needs to [tell] the stories he wants to tell again,” rather than getting complacent at DC,’ Rucka didn’t get specific about what the issues with DC were, but in retrospect it seems safe to speculate that Batwoman’s love life may have had something to do with it.

DC Comics has also been embroiled in controversy about same-sex marriage issues in the past after they hired famous homophobe and same-sex marriage opponent Orson Scott Card to write a single-issue of a Superman comic. Public backlash caused the book to eventually be put on permanent hold when no artist was willing to work on the book due to the publicity.

For DC Comics, this is a fuck-up of epic proportions. The blog DC Women Kicking Ass suggests that it’s not necessarily a problem with homophobia but an anti-marriage-in-general stance on the part of DC, since they’ve broken up Superman’s marriage to Lois Lane and some other prominent super-hero marriages. I’m not sure whether I believe or care if that’s the issue. Another set of tweets between authors Gail Simone and J.H. Williams support that theory:

Tentatively, my plans are to keep getting Batwoman through the end of Williams/Blackman’s story arc – issue 26 – but after that, I’m going to cancel it. Based on the news over the next few days about this, I’m probably also going to cancel – right away – every other DC title I’m currently getting. I’m not going to continue supporting a company that seems to have such a public problem with gender and sexuality issues. I have better places to spend my money – like Marvel and independent publishers.

UPDATE: the only official statement from DC Comics, so far:

They may wish that, but it isn’t the case. The fact is that one of the only same-sex marriages in comics was just banned; there’s no way it could be about anything other than sexual orientation. It has huge implications. It was, as I said above, a fuck-up of epic proportions.

Continue ReadingBatwoman writers leave DC Comics over ban on same-sex marriage

Go Ahead and Play Project Photos

A slide-show of photos of many of the piano’s from the Women’s Fund of Central Indiana’s “Go Ahead and Play” Project. Now that the pianos are out and about through the downtown area, check out some photos of the various artist’s work. And visit the pianos while you’re out at GenCon or IndyFringe this weekend. There’s a handy map here to find them.

Other than our own yarn-bombed piano, there are definitely several that I was enamored of, especially the Hidden Objects seek and find – the silver one – created by Go students in first through fifth grades. There’s just so much interesting stuff to find on that piano that I could have looked at it all day. I especially loved that there’s a monster truck rally taking place on top of the piano.

Go Ahead and Play Project

Continue ReadingGo Ahead and Play Project Photos

Documenting the increasing violence towards LGBT people in Russia

In June 2013, Russia passed draconian new laws targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people, which have led to roving bands of neo Nazis and Russian military groups attacking, torturing and killing gay people. Attacks against individuals perceived to be gay or lesbian are on the rise over the last several weeks.

Russian Rainbow Equal sign

Gay Teenager Kidnapped And Tortured By Russian Neo Nazi Group Is Believed To Have Died From His Injuries (Video)
Trigger warning – the video at this link and photos are very disturbing.

Brutal Russian anti-gay vigilantes abduct, attack suspected “pedophile”
Trigger warning – this video is very disturbing.

Another video of a brutal anti-gay attack.
Trigger warning – this video is very disturbing.

Videotaped Bullying Of Gay Russian Youths Highlights Growing Homophobia
OSCOW — Some show youths being forced to drink urine, or having it poured over their heads. Others show young men being taunted with phallic sex toys, threatened with axes, and forced to carry wooden crucifixes. These are just a few of the images contained in a series of shocking videos filmed by a nationalist gang in Kamensk-Uralsky, an industrial town of 175,000 inhabitants in Russia’s Sverdlovsk Oblast near the Ural Mountains.

Change.org Petition to Add Russian LGBT Rights Violators to Magnitsky’s List
According to the adopted by US Congress Magnitsky’s Act, anyone who has committed a gross human rights violation against a whistleblower or someone trying to exercise or promote universally recognized human rights (such as freedom of expression) could be put on Magnitsky’s List. Thus such individuals would be denied entry to the USA and US financial institution would freeze their assets worldwide. By signing this petition, we hereby request to include these two individuals on Magnitsky’s List effective immediately.

Russia: MP calls for law allowing gays to be whipped in public squares

Stonewall UK issues update and advice on LGB & T human rights abuses in Russia

Russia: Orthodox priest who supported pro-gay punk band Pussy Riot found stabbed to death

Boycotts of products produced in Russia are having some effect, but the outbreak of violence is on the increase, and discussion of lobbying for boycotts of the Winter Olympics, or calls for the Olympics to be moved from Russia are being discussed more widely.

LGBT activists urge boycott of Winter Olympics due to Russia’s anti-gay laws

Change.org Petition to Relocate the 2014 Winter Games to Vancouver

NY Times, Frank Bruni: Striking Olympic Gold
As for an American boycott of the Olympics, it would punish athletes who’ve been training and dreaming and sacrificing for years. It might redirect the conversation from how Russia treats gays to whether the United States overreacted.

New York Elected Officials Call On Obama To Spurn Putin Over Anti-Gay Oppression

New Yorker: A Terrible Time To Be Gay In Russia

Continue ReadingDocumenting the increasing violence towards LGBT people in Russia

The Gender Flipped Character in Elysium

Elysium Movie Commentary

A couple of comments I added to the article at The Mary Sue “Add Elysium’s Secretary Delacourt To The List Of Characters Written For Men And Played By Women“:

The Entertainment weekly quote from that article:

Her role was created as Secretary Rhodes, who was male. But then Blomkamp woke up one morning and it suddenly occurred to him the character could be a woman. He and one of his producers, Simon Kinberg, drew up a list of potential actresses, and Foster’s name was on it, but the director thought she would never do it. “I thought, ‘That would be f—ing awesome, but there’s just no way,” he says.

And the commentary from the Mary Sue:

It’s great that, as a young male director whose debut feature gave him a lot of Hollywood leeway to do whatever he wants next, Blomkamp decided that one of the things he’d do is put at least one prominent lady in his next blockbuster sci-fi flick. I mean, in a perfect world, it’d also be great if the movie had enough female characters that I didn’t have to go check a trailer to make sure there were any other non-minor women in the film other than Jodie Foster (there’s at least one). Either way, Elysium still has the potential to live up to the standard Blomkamp set when District 9 left me speechless.

My comments to that, specifically because of the Entertainment Weekly article identifying the movie as being Real Life commentary on the 2008 economic crash, with some links to the content I quoted:

I’m glad that they’re casting women in roles originally written for men, but it would be nice if they just wrote them for women in the first place, given that women play less than 30% of the roles onscreen. 51% of the population, but consistently less than 30% of on-screen roles, and when Annenberg calculates the amount of screen time that the female characters get, the numbers get even worse. And given that Foster’s character is basically a class-warfare oppressing villain, is it really all that great that the role was given to a woman? Women are not historically the oppressive forces when it comes to class warfare, and women represent over 70% of the world’s poor, disproportionally specifically because of sexism leading to lack of opportunities for women in poverty. So doesn’t making Foster the villain distort the picture quite a bit? Especially when the protagonist of the piece is a white guy, who would probably not be part of a future poverty-stricken class. If they’d flipped the genders and made the protagonist a woman of color and a white guy they oppressor, I would have been TRULY impressed by their chutzpah.

And someone commented:

I agree that more roles should be originally written for women from the get go. But I also think women should be villains as much as heroes. They should be given a chance to play all kinds of roles.

My response (because she was pretty much missing the point):

Normally I’d agree with that – but in this particular instance, the role is problematic specifically because of the subject matter. They’re openly trying to make a movie about the 2008 economic crash and wage gap and the difference between the haves and the have-nots in our country – which is awesome and much needed. But if they’re trying to make commentary on that real-life issue, they CAN’T ignore where gender plays a role in that in real life, where women were massively disproportionally affected by that event in a way that men weren’t, around the globe, and where the wealthy and well-off who benefited from the crash were, in real life, disproportionally more men. The villains of the IRL story are very much men, and flipping the gender and make the villain a woman changes the IRL story they are trying to tell in a way that does a massive disservice to women.

And in general, women are not under-represented as villains on film and television. I’ll have to poke around and look at those numbers, but I’d say that women are probably represented as the bad guy pretty damned often.

Continue ReadingThe Gender Flipped Character in Elysium