by Britt Hutchinson

• World Fantasy wasn’t the only convention this week to have a bit of a blow up. SXSW Interactive did, too.
  • “And when organizers received threats to those panelists […] SXSW canceled both events without alerting them on what the threats were, who made them or how they could report them to law enforcement.”
  • Chris Kluwe has some choice words for the organizers: “I read this, slammed my head against the wall for an hour, snorted half a bottle of bleach, force-fed myself eighteen pounds of lead-based paints, andstill couldn’t approach the depths of sheer bloody-minded imbecility it must have taken to put those words together in that particular order.”
  • “Being a woman in tech is fraught with all kinds of complications, and speaking up against inequalities in technology and harassment leaves victims open to more harassment.”
• World Fantasy did email a revised code of conduct this morning (note: no longer a harassment policy!). It’s an unholy mash-up of last year’s policy and this year’s garbage policy of defaulting to calling the police and, in fact, indicates that con staff may call the police regardless of the wishes of the reporter.
  

On to other topics!

• I’m just gobsmacked that this was a thing. That people believed (believe!) that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS while people were literally dying in the streets. “Thousands of people died because the conspiracy theory was able to outrun the facts, thriving in the climate of fear and suspicion around a grisly disease that had struck a vulnerable population.”
• This link may not be particularly safe for work as it deals with Playboy’s recent decision to no longer have naked ladies in the US edition of the print magazine: “So if the busty, leggy blonde is no longer the dominant ideal, what is? Well, that’s the point: There shouldn’t be one. As a society, we shouldn’t be brainwashed into believing that a singular type is alluring.“
• What World Are We Building? “Data is power. And, increasingly, we’re seeing data being used to assert power over people. It doesn’t have to be this way, but one of the things that I’ve learned is that, unchecked, new tools are almost always empowering to the privileged at the expense of those who are not.”
• Morrissey’s marketable merde: “Morrissey’s novel has the delightful characteristic of generating income for a publisher with very little effort.”
• This is a wonderful essay about Sylvia Plath. “Her rage is what shines most clearly in her last poems – her huge, perfect, unfeminine rage.”
• In which Rose Lerner goes all conspiracy theory about the death of a journalist.  This is really intriguing stuff. Did Jefferson have that journalist killed? Maybe! Maybe not!
• Harriet Klausner has, reportedly, died. It’s the end of an era.