I’m being inducted into the Canadian SF/F hall of fame

mostlysignssomeportents:

I just got an email asking if I could be free on August 15 for Canvention, the annual Canadian national science fiction convention, because I am being inducted into the  Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association’s Hall of Fame.

Needless to say, my answer was a VERY ENTHUSIASTIC YES.

CSFFA administers Canada’s Aurora Awards and the Hall of Fame, a juried prize that I am UNBELIEVABLY STONKED to be receiving.

https://www.whenwordscollide.org/canvention.php

This year’s Canvention is

a) Online

and

b) Free

So if you have a hankering to see me in a deeply ferklempt state trying to express my gratitude, you can certainly do so on the 15th!

The list of previous inductees is pretty fantastic, and includes five of my most important mentors:

  • Judith Merrill
  • Lorna Toolis
  • Phyllis Gottleib
  • William Gibson
  • Spider Robinson

https://prixaurorawards.ca/home/hall-of-fame-home/hall-of-fame-inductees/

As well as many writers who were extraordinarily kind to me over the years, like Charles de Lint and Elizabeth Vonarburg and Tanya Huff.

It is stellar company to be in - joining some of my lifelong heroes. I could not be happier about this.

Congratulations on your impending induction into the Canadian SF/F Hall of Fame, Mr Doctorow!

Mexico’s copyright vs self-determination and national sovereignty

mostlysignssomeportents:

I’ve written extensively about Mexico’s new copyright law, which was copypasted straight out of the US’s lawbooks without debate or consultation and is a catastrophic blow to human rights.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/mexicos-new-copyright-law-puts-human-rights-jeopardy

The law does senseless violence to the free expression rights of Mexican people, enabling both automated and deliberate censorship, as well as making it trivial to dox anyone by claiming copyright violations:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/how-mexicos-new-copyright-law-crushes-free-expression

And its DRM rules are a nightmare for cybersecurity, fencing off devices that Mexicans entrust with their data and personal safety from independent security audits:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/mexicos-new-copyright-law-cybersecurity-and-human-rights

Today, I published two more articles analyzing the threats the new law poses to human rights in Mexico. The first is “Disability, Education, Repair and Health: How Mexico’s Copyright Law Hurts Self-Determination in the Internet Age.”

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/disability-education-repair-and-health-how-mexicos-copyright-law-hurts-self

It explains how Mexico’s new law will prevent people with disabilities from adapting their technology without permission from a distant manufacturer who may not care to have their products altered:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/disability-education-repair-and-health-how-mexicos-copyright-law-hurts-self#adaptation

And how it undermines the Right to Repair, by allowing foreign firms to monopolize repairs and unilaterally decide when a product is “beyond repair” and must be replaced, which has major implications for agriculture and public health:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/disability-education-repair-and-health-how-mexicos-copyright-law-hurts-self#r2r

And finally, how the rules on takedown, filters and DRM interfere with education, allowing for the arbitrary removal of curricular materials from the net and prohibiting educators from bypassing digital locks to integrate works into their teaching.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/disability-education-repair-and-health-how-mexicos-copyright-law-hurts-self#education

Nominally, the new Mexican law protects these activities, but as I explain, these protections are a fiction - in 22 years, no one in the USA has been able to invoke them, because of all the conditions they impose.

In a second article, “Mexico’s New Copyright Law Undermines Mexico’s National Sovereignty, Continuing Generations of Unfair ‘Fair Trade Deals’ Between the USA and Latin America,” I connect the new law to generations of economic colonialism.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/mexicos-new-copyright-law-undermines-mexicos-national-sovereignty-continuing

Mexico’s new copyright law didn’t get rushed through Congress in a vacuum: it was passed as part of the USMCA, Donald Trump’s replacement for NAFTA.

Like so many trade deal-based laws, this new system doesn’t create an even footing between trade partners, but rather imposes a permanent, structural disadvantage on Mexican businesses and the Mexican people.

Under this law, Mexican firms will be bound by terms far more onerous than those of their Canadian and US counterparts, such as automated copyright filters, which cost millions to install and subject Mexicans’ communications to censorship from black-box algorithms.

Mexico’s new DRM laws do not contain even the minimal (wholly inadequate) safeguards in the US or Canadian systems, nor to do they have the 22 years’ worth of exemptions US films can rely on.

Meanwhile, the USA is likely to abandon this law, as we are suing the US government to overturn it:

https://www.eff.org/cases/green-v-us-department-justice

Along with the DRM rules, Mexico has brought in a harsh and unremitting “notice and takedown” system tailor-made for abuse, which will allow companies to remove warnings about product defects and dox their critics.

Mexico’s Congress didn’t rush this law through without public debate because they knew we’d love it and didn’t want to spoil the surprise.

Like every dirty trade deal, this was heavily lobbied and passed without scrutiny because its backers knew it couldn’t withstand scrutiny.

Mexico’s National Commission for Human Rights has until TOMORROW to open an investigation into this law. If they do, they can overturn it. If you are in Mexico or are Mexican, here is a petition you can fill in:

https://participa.nicensuranicandados.org/

Working as a grocery cashier, when I couldn’t get nitrile…



Working as a grocery cashier, when I couldn’t get nitrile gloves, I started washing and reusing the ones I had.  You need to turn them inside out to dry, and then back again.  Trust me, it is hell.  

I was trying to find somewhere to buy them (as our store pharmacy wasn’t able to get them) and someone I didn’t know gave me a box of 100 that she’d been given.  (Through Facebook.)

My store provides vinyl gloves which are much less comfortable, hotter and inefficient.  You can’t open a plastic bag with vinyl gloves.  Nor can you get a sticker off it.  

Many of the other cashiers don’t wear gloves at all.  I wouldn’t either, except the constant cleaning was wreaking havock on my hands.  

A customer pointed out that I should be sanitizing my hands between each customer so as not to spread covid cooties from one to the next.

Homeschool to prison pipeline

mostlysignssomeportents:


Hey guess what?

We have a homeschool-to-prison pipeline now.

https://www.propublica.org/article/a-teenager-didnt-do-her-online-schoolwork-so-a-judge-sent-her-to-juvenile-detention

Grace is a 15-year-old with ADHD and a long history of behavioral difficulties who ended up on probation after a fight with her mom led to the confiscation of her phone and her briefly stealing a classmate’s phone.

Grace is now in a juvenile facility where her life is at risk from covid because one of her probation conditions was to do her homework, and when her school in Oakland County Michigan went online only, she struggled to complete her distance education homework.

As a result, Judge Mary Ellen Brennan ignored the Michigan governor’s orders to minimize the incarceration of children and ordered Grace imprisoned…for not doing her homework.

The Propublica story on Grace and her single mother Charisse - written by Jodi S Cohen - is a heartbreaker and a half. It paints a picture of a kid whose need for extra educational attention was met by a stern and uncaring system, from caseworker to judge.

Judge Brennan does not come off well in this story. She ordered Grace to appear in person in court - the only case of the day with that requirement - and then refused a continuance when Grace’s lawyer said he would NOT come to court and risk his life to argue her case.

Brennan’s sentence was handed down after Grace’s caseworker Michelle Giroux admitted that she did not know the details of Grace’s learning disabilities and had not familiarized herself with the legally mandated supports for them that Grace had not recieved.

Brennan called Grace a “threat to the community” for missing her homework, denied Grace’s pleas for more time to adjust to homeschooling, and had her taken out of the courtroom in handcuffs.

It goes without saying that, like the majority of Michigan teens sentenced to youth detention in defiance of the governor’s orders, Grace is Black. Black children in Michigan are four times likelier to be imprisoned than their white peers.

Grace has not been permitted to see her mother, except by videoconference. Her mother’s attempts to bring her clothes and toys have been rebuffed by the facility, because of petty rules like those stipulating that underwear must be briefs, or that jeans can’t be “too tight.”

When Grace is brought out for videoconference status meetings with the court, the child is handcuffed and put in ankle shackles. She makes heartbreaking pleas to be returned to her mother. The judge has ordered her held until at least Sept 8.

For missing her homework.

OMFG

You can’t bully your way into success with animals (or people)

pinkmanthedog:

You all know me here for my love of dogs and dog training, but I am a certified  all-around animal nut. I did my degree in fisheries and wildlife, focusing on reptiles and amphibians (specifically North American herpetofauna) but also had the opportunity to work with owls, eagles, hawks, vultures, wolves, possums, and a host of other non-domesticated species. My passion for animals and animal behavior and training really started, though, with my love of horses. 

I have been riding and working with horses since I was eight or nine years old. I have always been an awkward, anxious rider; I am afraid of heights, I have scoliosis so my back is never straight, I am not pretty on a horse and I get bored going in circles so showing was never for me. Despite all of this, I also had a distinct reputation for loving “problem ponies” - does your horse bite? Does it kick? Does it run off? Does it stop in one spot and never move? Does it literally lay down mid-ride and roll on you? Sweet glittering baby Jesus come to daddy. I accepted that I would never be a “good” rider, but I was excellent at working through issues and improving behavior in “troublesome” horses and that’s what I loved most. 

When I was around 15, I had a terrible fall off of my own horse, Grace. She spooked as I was getting on from the mounting block, my foot got caught in the stirrup, and she dragged me across the arena. She ended up stepping on my thigh and breaking my hand, and I was (understandably) traumatized. In retrospect, I absolutely have PTSD from this incident. For months after I would panic at the mounting block; I felt like I was having literal heart attacks, and sometimes would vomit due to anxiety. 

My mom shows horses in a relatively high-strung discipline, and the adults around me during that time, including my mom, were vicious to me. They told me I was being a baby, I was stupid, I was a terrible rider, I needed to show her who was boss and if I wasn’t going to ride we should just sell my horse (whom I’ve had since she was a yearling) and be done with it. Shockingly, none of this helped my anxiety, and it quickly sucked the love and joy out of horses for me. I stopped riding altogether by the time I was in college, still keeping my horse Grace but only as a pasture ornament. I blamed myself for being “too cowardly” and not being able to “cowboy” up and just get on and MAKE my horse do what I wanted her to. 

A few years ago I had the opportunity to visit the director of the ranch where I learned to ride. I idolized her growing up, and I still think she is one of the most gifted horsewomen I have ever met. I told her I was no longer riding, and hadn’t in years, and she told me that out of all the people she every worked with, she fully expected that I would have had a career working with horses. I was shocked and asked her why she thought that, since I had spent literally my whole horse career having people tell me what a bad rider I was. 

“You’re not a good rider. You’re a great horseperson.”

What others (and I) read as timidness, she saw as the patience and flexibility to work within a horse’s comfort zone. Where others saw bad form, she saw mixing techniques from different disciplines to communicate in a way that worked best for each individual. And where everyone saw a coward who gave up riding, she saw someone who still loved horses, despite the trauma, despite the resentment, and despite the fact that many would consider an unridden horse “useless”. 

That conversation fundamentally changed how I see myself, and it also explained my history with animals. It explained why I would pursue a career with animals that I can’t even pet and why I’m drawn to the misunderstood critters (possums are my absolute favorite animals, with snakes a close second), and it also explains what brings us all here to this blog today: why I would take a chance on a little deaf puppy with no eyes, and how we could work together to create a happy, functional, incredible little dog - not in spite of her limitations, but in celebration of them. 

You cannot bully any animal into a partnership. Not a horse, not a rattlesnake, not your dog, and not people. You can bully them into compliance - which is toxic, fear-based, and usually temporary. A partnership grows from seeking to understand your partner instead of trying to make yourself understood; from finding or creating ways to meet each other where you’re at; and finding joy in the unique journey that you embark on together, even when it’s difficult. 

I have been riding Grace again, alone, just the two of us with no one to criticize or antagonize, and our relationship has never been better. Some days we ride through the desert. Some days I spend an hour getting on and off from the mounting block. Some days I get too anxious to get on at all so I lead her up to the patio with Pinkman and Bitsy and we watch Australian 60 Minutes and split a beer. We’re doing things I never dreamed of because she trusts me and I trust her, and I have learned to treat myself the way I treat my animals: with kindness, patience, flexibility, and compassion. I will probably always be a timid, awkward, ungainly rider, but I am an excellent horse person and no one will take that away from me again.

Oh, and if you hear of a crabby, stubborn, willful horse with a bad attitude, let me know - I’m in the market.