2009

13 April

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Books Amazon goes anti-gay (now updated) by Nick

Update: maybe not anti-gay, but certainly anti-smart.

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2008

22 May

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New Media Twitter wimps out on Harassment Problems of its users by Nick

Found this, ironically, from a comment on Twitter itself:

Twitter refuses to uphold Terms of Service

As I found out last month, the reality of Twitter is that they refuse to warn and/or ban people who use their service to “abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users” (to quote their forth line item on their TOS page). What does this mean? In short, anyone can use Twitter to consistently harass you and ruin search results for your identity and Twitter won’t execute any means of community management.

Ariel Waldman’s been experiencing persistent abuse from the same internet fucktard for at least a year, but Twitter is too scared of lawsuits to ban said fucktard.

I love Twitter but this ain’t right, guys. To put it mildy.

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2007

24 September

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New Media Chinese Gaming Company Bans Transgender Play by Nick

From Kotaku

Shanda Entertainment – one of Mainland China’s heavy hitters in the gaming industry – announced that their subsidiary, Aurora Technology, has frozen accounts of male players who have elected to play as female characters in the King of the World MMORPG. Apparently there are no bans on women playing male characters, but women (and men-wanting-to-play-as-women) will be required to prove their gender via webcam.

Incidentally, Kotaku blogger Maggie Green is doing a bang-up job in attempting to bring culture to the site’s community of teenage fanboy readers. I don’t envy her, though.

01 January

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Politics Australian PM Declares Victory over Feminism by Nick

This little news item might have been better placed as a feature in The Onion, but there you go. More choking sounds of convulsive rage at Larvatus Prodeo.

Also, Happy New Year!

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2006

17 December

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Television Heroes Straightens Supporting Character by Nick

It looks like the producers of Heroes have broken under network pressure and made the sexuality of Zach, confidant of indestructible cheerleader Claire, a lot less ambiguous

The TWOP forums, as ever, are on the case.

In brighter news, it’s unsurprisingly turned out that Masi Oka, Heroes‘s special-effects-technician-turned-actor (he plays the time-travelling ‘Hiro’) is a World of Warcraft junkie in real life

30 November

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Politics The Mad Monk vs Medical Science by Nick

Australian Prime Minister, John Howard has approved the use of a cervical cancer vaccine, over the objections of his health minister, the mad monk Tony Abbot.

Larvatus Prodeo commentator Austin gives us the snarky low down:

Abbott is distancing himself from this. The virus is spread by sexual intercourse, a process I’m not sure he fully understands. This is another one of these issues where there are “religious” group which don’t comprehend the human condition properly, much like the use of condoms to stop other STDs.

30 August

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Politics Library Censorship Strikes Again by Kate

The latest issue of free newspaper HopeDance (which describes itself as “Radical Solutions Inspiring Hope”) has been removed from the shelves of San Luis Obispo City-County Library, CA, for being too explicit. The director of the library, Brian Reynolds, apparently ordered the removal of the issue due to “graphical illustrations”. The Library Journal has more information about the circumstances of the publications removal (including the great response from an unnamed librarian about creating an information DVD from the situation).

Certain segments of the library blogging community have noticed that the issue is still available online (and is all the more enticing for all the attention). My favourite article title is Liberating the Caged Female
Human Animal’s Sexuality , although there are certainly some tough competition.

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