susanreads | Three things that are not random (Reply)

It's "spot the connection" time.

1. At the street at the end of my road there are some shops I use regularly, and opposite them there's a Tesco. I assume the Tesco is open later than anywhere else and sells a variety of useful everyday items.

I've never been in there. If I needed any of those useful everyday items after regular shopping hours, I'd walk 3 or 4 times as far to the Spar on the High Street and see how late that's open.

I'm not Spar's biggest fan, but I don't know anything against Spar.

2. I don't have an Amazon account, for several reasons, and then there's the latest. It's not all over the blogs any more, and I don't Twitter: are people still talking about #amazonfail?

I used to be a programmer; I still would be if the IT industry hadn't decided I'm too old to retrain (whereas the Govt. thinks I'll still be fit for work in 12 years' time *hollow laugh*).

Even if Amazon reinstate the sales rank on everything that was wrongly deranked, and fix all the other problems that surfaced as a result, and apologise already, I won't be able to use the site without remembering them saying [free translation]:
"When we realised we needed a safe search, it didn't occur to us that anyone would want to turn it off, and we couldn't think of a better way to implement it than to lie about our sales figures; also, our tagging system depends on third-party metadata because we forgot we had more than one supplier ... or maybe that's all a lie and we'd rather you thought we were imcompetent than tell you the real reason."

3. Anything I might say on the latest iteration of RaceFail (

naraht is doing the archiving this time) has already been said by people closer to the action. But I was struck by a particular derailing technique that I've spotted before (and which I'm sure goes back further than I've been paying attention): the spurious conflation of choosing what to spend your time, money and emotional energy on with boycotts, and the completely spurious conflation of boycotts with censorship.

Instead of just going "Reading comprehenshun, can u haz it?" and offering to send people dictionaries, I'll quote some coherent responses:

flourish: Wrede Redux: Some Clarifications of Terms

Saying that The Thirteenth Child is problematic does not mean one is lending one's support to censorship. I believe that Wrede had every right to publish The Thirteenth Child and if anyone suggested that she should not have that right, we would have a major problem. However, I also believe that each of us have the right not to engage in certain acts of free speech, based on our judgment. Just as I would not yell "FIRE" in a crowded theatre, so I would not write certain kinds of stories in a society that has big honkin' race problems. I would like the authors I valorize to share my opinions in this respect. I think that there are at least a good number of other people who feel the same way as me.

torachan: Two things about Racefail: The Colonialism Remix

Once again, it's put forth that it's invalid to have an opinion about something unless you have seen or read it yourself. Now, yes, there are times when people do get hysterical over things via second-hand misinformation, but just because some people believe crazy rumors about Harry Potter books that could be easily disproved by actually reading them doesn't mean that no one should ever form an opinion based on a review of something they haven't read (or seen) themselves. People do this all the time! That's why reviews exist! No one has time to read and watch everything. We are all always forming opinions based on something other than the full text of the work in question. Sometimes our opinions are "hey, this sounds interesting, I'm going to read it", sometimes they are "do not want".

ithiliana: Personal/Political, Time/Money, Choices/Freedoms/Responsibilities

Readers are not a government. Individual consumer choices are not censorship. Individual consumer choices are also not bookburning.

Disagreeing with a person or the premise of a book (or film or television show or fill in the blank) is not censorship. It is also not bookburning.

(Yes, that was several days ago and it's still going on. I've realised I'm not going to catch up any time soon.)