Mock The Movie: Hercules, plus VLC live tweet stream!

Oh hey guess what time it is? Almost? In a few days?

*crickets*

That’s right, it’s time to MOCK THE MOVIE! YAY! *Kermit flail* Stephanie has the details, and our upcoming schedule:

This Thursday, September 13, at 9 p.m. EDT, the mocking crew will subject ourselves to the Lou Ferrigno version of Hercules (currently available on Netflix and Amazon streaming video). This version promises that it’s “updated” for the 1980s. That apparently means bad hair, bad special effects, and… space aliens.

As he labors, so shall we. We probably won’t feather our hair, though.

I wish I had enough hair to feather.

Here’s how we do these things:

  1. Start following @MockTM on Twitter.
  2. Start watching the movie on the appropriate Thursday at 9 p.m. EDT.
  3. Once you’ve got the movie going, tweet your snarky comments to @MockTM.  Directing our tweets to @MockTM will keep our followers from being overwhelmed with our snark!
  4. Set up a search for @MockTM on Twitter for the duration so you can follow along with everyone else sharing your pain.

If you have suggestions for other movies that can and should be mocked, send them to @MockTM. Preference will be given to movies that are free or stream on the major media delivery services. Watch the feed, and we’ll set up the calendar for more terrible, mockable movies.

In other related news, CompulsoryAccount7746 had a brilliant plan, and implemented it. That plan involved building a plugin for VLC that streams a Twitter search directly to your player as subtitles. That plan is brilliant because it means you could be watching Hercules in all its glory on a media center or computer with VLC installed, and could stream the mockery directly into to the video feed so you never miss a snark, all in realtime. WE’RE LIVING IN THE FUTURE, BABY.

It’s ready for public beta, so go check out the project page and download your copy now. If you plan on watching on a different screen from your Twitter, or if you’re not technically inclined, this might not be the best option. However, for geeks like us, it’s a great idea and a sound implementation. Couldn’t ask for anything better.

Mock The Movie: Hercules, plus VLC live tweet stream!
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Happy 1 year anniversary, Escher Girls!

Escher Girls, the Tumblr blog devoted entirely to pointing out comics’ frequent anatomical impossibilities drawn in the name of making women look “sexy” (read: making them look like they have swivel waists and broken backs and are shaped like camels), celebrates its one-year anniversary. Go say Happy Birthday to Ami Angelwings on Twitter. She’s a fellow Canuck, don’tchaknow. Doing our country proud.

DC’s comic character Black Canary, in a very contorted battle stance, once featured on Escher Girls. Added because it happened to still be in my media library.

And don’t miss the Tumblr blog itself, where there’s sure to be birthday celebration boobs-and-butt drawings! (That girl at the link’s name is Liefelda.)

Happy 1 year anniversary, Escher Girls!

Trolls are spoofing commentariat and authors (Update: countermeasures!)

Thanks to the spate of trolls (who are, in fact, members of our rationalist community!) spoofing our users, owing mostly to their levels of immaturity and the realization that they can type other people’s identities in the comment fields, a few blogs are turning on comment registration. I strongly advise that, even if your primary hangout is a blog that does not require registration, you should consider registering your username/email address anyway.

If you’ve already registered your account, and you need to edit your profile because the display name or email address are no longer valid, the top bar shows a “Howdy, username” link on the right. Hover over it, then click on Edit My Profile. You should also be able to get to it by clicking here — but that link might change depending on your user access level and future WordPress changes. The top bar should always be right.

I have no intention of turning on comment registration at my blog. I am instead working on making changes on the network (via a plugin or via editing the core of WordPress) to ensure that anonymous users cannot use a username or email address of a registered user. If you want to protect your name here, I strongly advise you register your account.

The registration process can use Facebook, Twitter or WordPress as authentication tokens, so you don’t necessarily have to build an account unique to Freethoughtblogs. Our software will rely on those sites’ auth APIs, and won’t ever see your login information. However, if you use these options, I strongly advise that you also log into your profile per the above instructions before making a comment, and set all the options appropriately. Otherwise your display name will show as “sc_{random characters}”, which is dead ugly.

Update: I’ve installed a plugin network-wide that protects login names and email addresses from being spoofed by anonymous users. It doesn’t protect the display name though — if your display name is something different from your login name, this won’t help you much. On blogs where registration is required, people shouldn’t notice a difference. And I’m sure asshats can still spoof people with a fair degree of fidelity to casual outside observers (I can think of two ways myself — there might be more), but this at least gives us an idea of when it’s happening.

Regardless, register your accounts.

Trolls are spoofing commentariat and authors (Update: countermeasures!)

It’s happening everywhere

No, not “to everyone”. Everywhere. io9 talks about three of our communities – skepticism/atheism, sci-fi fandom, and computer hacker culture.

But it’s also happening in comics, in video games, in the movie industry. In every area where a woman tries to improve their lot, or to break those rigid gender roles by entering areas that are otherwise traditionally populated by men, she faces exponentially more abuse and vitriol than men in those areas.

In every aspect of our society, there is a hidden war on women.
Continue reading “It’s happening everywhere”

It’s happening everywhere

Gates Foundation attempts to end the anti-birth-control debate in one video

Well, the whole idea of female autonomy and saving women’s lives rather than forcing them into forming babbys that they don’t necessarily want or can’t necessarily take care of is great for those of us who honestly care about humanitarian efforts. Those of us who’d prefer that these unexpected children go on to become uneducated religious zealots thanks to the evisceration of the education system, however, might not actually see the value in the humanitarian argument.

I have to say this to get it out of the way though, as part of my nerd contract: I still think Windows sucks. Glad you’re doing something quite useful with your money, Bill. It’s only my preexisting prejudices that incline me to credit Melinda instead.

Gates Foundation attempts to end the anti-birth-control debate in one video

Comparing movement atheism and Catholicism on matters of misogyny

Silentbob posted an excellent comment on one of the last threads that I think really cuts through a lot of the pushback with regard to cleaning up our own houses. It’s not about who’s “good enough” to be part of our “exclusive club”, it’s about acknowledging problems when there’s overwhelming evidence that those problems exist, and fixing them. Given that we’ve attacked the Catholic church so often for their issues with child molestation, even though MOST PRIESTS AREN’T CHILD MOLESTERS, one would think that we would recognize the need to acknowledge the problem of antifeminism and outright misogyny even though MOST ATHEISTS AREN’T MISOGYNISTS.

The comparison my be odious, but I suggest an analogy with the paedophilia problem in the catholic church.

Atheists, of course, strongly condemn this behaviour, but are we not almost as appalled by the church’s response, which is typically to trivialise, dismiss or conceal the problem? How do we react when the church says, “Oh, but this is just a few isolated incidents! You shouldn’t condemn the whole church. Most priests aren’t paedophiles. Why make such a fuss? Focus on the good, not on the bad!”. Aren’t we especially disgusted when they resort to blaming the victim? When someone within speaks out and acknowledges the problem, don’t we praise them?

There is a misogyny problem within the atheist movement. It is well documented. Let us not trivialise, or dismiss, or sweep the problem under the carpet. Nor complain that is it isn’t representative of the atheist movement as a whole. And most of all, let us not blame the victim. We must do just what we would expect of the church – focus on the problem, highlight the problem, condemn the problem in the strongest possible terms, and set about fixing it. The people who have been doing this should not be attacked for exaggerating the problem, or for calling the movement into disrepute. They should be thanked for the courage to take a stand.

We must hold ourselves to a higher standard than we would hold those we oppose.

I’ve also elsewhere likened it to people being told they have cancer, but instead of treating it, they demand that doctors stop talking about your body being “full of cancer” when it’s really just one tumor, and really the tumor is teeny-tiny, no bigger than 0.01% of your body mass!

Can we just deal with the tumor please? Is that so hard?

Comparing movement atheism and Catholicism on matters of misogyny

Congratulations to Team Douchebag on their first major victory

It’s war once there’s casualties, right?

Jen McCreight and her commenters dubbed the necessity for a third wave of atheism — a wave that actually gives a shit about people who are getting forced out of the movement by a cloud of vile hatred just because they’re not cis males — as “atheism plus”. A forum is built and a thousand members join within a week. Organizations form to shore up some social justice movement intersections with the atheist community. We built something good. Something energizing. Something that portends a great swamp-draining. A way for movement atheism to heal itself.

Then a whole antifeminist and anti-woman wing of the atheist movement rallies to show us why we can’t have nice things. They amp up the hatred, the vitriol, the vileness. They steal Jen’s resources and leave her drained and incapable of contributing, by making her clean up rivers of bullshit aimed at tarring her personhood, slut-shaming her, and threatening her job by taking the same bullshit to her employers. They make her dread contributing her writings to this movement. This movement which she loved. This movement in which she gathered fans of her writing as easily as some people breathe.
Continue reading “Congratulations to Team Douchebag on their first major victory”

Congratulations to Team Douchebag on their first major victory

Lawrence O’Donnell: Just imagine if this was Obama

This… was simply hilarious. It never fails to amuse me when people who bought into Ayn Rand’s policies and politics run for office on platforms that are anathema to most of their voter base, but that this voter base is so blinded by the promise of maybe eventually becoming one of the hyper-privileged that they ignore all those inconvenient facts and accept the backpedalling by people like Rand Paul Paul Ryan (d’oh!) uncritically, and can’t be whipped into the same kind of furore that they manage at the mere mention of the name of a Democratic candidate who shows the merest hint of being anything like their own heroes.

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The whole thing kinda proves the tribalism at play, doesn’t it?

It’s funny though. Ayn Rand doesn’t represent humanism, despite her correct assessment that gods don’t exist and all morality must come from humans’ reason. I suspect it’s because she had a gross lack of empathy. It’s probably a big part of why there’s such a Great Rift in the atheist community now — there are people who just want atheism to deal with atheism, and that’s fine. But there are other people who are atheists who hate the idea of building a morality that involves egalitarianism or plurality, and they are the most vociferous pushers-back on ideas like atheism plus. When they say “atheism plus is like a religion”, they’re saying “you’re suggesting that some actions are moral or immoral, and religions do that too, and like Ayn Rand, I hate religions.”

Except we’re using reason to suss out the best positions that have the most egalitarian outcome. Shouldn’t a Randian libertarian be totally on board with that?

Lawrence O’Donnell: Just imagine if this was Obama

Turtle chases tomato

Here I am on Labour Day (that’s right, check that extra U!), slaving away at some code rather than playing on the blogosphere. I mean, sure, it’s FUN to program, but I’m still neglecting my blogoduties. So, here’s some squee filler.

You should also check out PZ’s excellent analysis of the scientific evidence for how turtles evolved their shells. It’s both informative and well-illustrated, and the illustration of the turtle fetus kinda makes me go “awww”.

Turtle chases tomato