(no subject)
* 95 Liberian health workers have died of ebola. Liberian medical workers are considering striking for hazard pay and proper protective equipment.
* Rumor control: Ebola is not robust enough to surviving bleaching and incineration. The ashes of incinerated bedding are not going to infect people.
* It is sounding like the Dallas hospital wasn't using the buddy system during dressing and undressing/decontamination, which is weird. They haven't said why they chose not to follow standard protocol for contamination control, but I'm guessing that's how the nurse got infected. I'm flat out blaming the hospital admin, because that's a policy level fuck up. you don't send in a nurse without proper hands on training on getting in and out of the suits and not assign her a buddy with a checklist. Both of those are bad decisions.
They have decided to isolate and monitor the nurse's dog rather than euthanize it as they did in with the Spanish nurse's dog.
* The infected cameraman in Nebraska was well enough to be tweating today, which looks like a good sign.
* A medic from a ship off the Coast of Africa that did medical support for locals with a variety of ailments is in a hospital in Kansas. They are running tests.
* "My Thoughts This Morning on GamerGate:" http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/10/11/my-thoughts-this-morning-on-gamergate/
* "Transpinay Killed In Philippines:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2014/10/transpinay-killed-in-philippines.html
* "Arrest Made In Zoraida Reyes Murder:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2014/10/arrest-made-in-zoraida-reyes-murder.html
* "Nartional Coming Out Day 2014- It's STILL Different And Challenging For Trans People:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2014/10/nartional-coming-out-day-2014-its-still.html
* This strikes me as containing a whole lot of really important thoughts. "Real Human Beings: Shadow of Mordor, Watch Dogs and the New NPC:" http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/10/real-human-beings-shadow-of-mordor-watch-dogs-and.html
* Z Nation referenced Sharknado. O.o
* The more I learn about Gérard Depardieu the more I dislike him as a human being and the angrier I am that his Cyrano is the only good one.
* I watched the SyFy movie "The Dead." It was very nearly good. No really. It came achingly close. In fact, large stretches of it were actually good. The two main characters could actually act, even though the supporting cast were occasionally embarrassingly bad. Given that so much of the movie was the main dudes traveling, periodically dealing with perils, punctuated by short bursts of dialog, it was the acting of the leads that mattered. Whoever made it correctly identified that Romero's slow, silent zombies creeping inexorably up on people not looking in the right direction was unnerving and used that to good effect. Unfortunately, someone else decided to fuck it up, but randomly making certain zombies hiss or growl like lions, which was not nearly as effective as the silent sequences. Similarly, there were all these extremely effective ambient sound sequences, with the eloquent sounds of (presumably foleyed) insects, the hum of the motor, small grunts and metallic sounds and the like, but randomly, someone would fuck that up by deciding some particularly sequence desperately needed a cliched incidental music track under it, even though the near silence would have been so much better and more compelling. They also decided to make the American the main character, even though the Sierra Leonian had a more compelling back story and arc, as well as the better actor, and the movie took place in and was about Africa. He also gives a terse monolog about the way the west is only interested in Africa when it wants something and then the whites flee at the first sign of trouble. Seriously, why wasn't this guy the lead? I know, I know, racism. The point is, that they had stuff like the Soldier's speech and a whole lot of subtext, and somebody clearly knew what they were doing with the silent creepiness and the ambient sound and the way it was shot. It was so close to art movie/indie film good, but clearly someone at the network needed to squirt enough Syfy on it to prevent it making it to legitimately good.
* I've been rewatching Dark Angel, which despite cheesy wirework and the obviously wrong timeline, holds up pretty well. I'm pretending it is an alternate history in which all advanced tech was blown up by the EMP pulse in 2009, pushing us back to pagers, 3.5 disks, big phones and the like. It's not that big a stretch. So many of the themes are very timely, the police state, the ubiquitous surveillance, the massive gap between the rich and poor with little in between, the subversion of the media, the corruption and violence of the system, etc.. There is a sequence where the police stop her for no reason and break her tail light so they can impound her vehicle and try to make her spend several month's rent for her whole floor of apartments getting it back. Seriously, ripped from the headlines to my sorrow.
I was not best pleased by their trans episode and Original Cyndi's transphobia in particular. I was not best pleased by them playing with the trap meme, given how many women are murdered over "trans panic." I did think it was interesting that Normal's lack of transphobia is the first thing that humanizes him as a character. I just wish they'd at least had one of Max's friends call Cyndi out on her assholery instead of Herbal and Sketchy siding with her. It could have been so much worse though, as they were setting it up for the "joke" to be the reveal and the humiliation of normal for being attracted to her, then didn't follow through.
The thing I've been thinking about most though, is that "Dark Angel" is what "Batman" would be like, if instead of Batman being a sick fuck who got off on beating up poor people, he instead teamed up with Cat Woman and tried to tackle bigger problems like corrupt officials, child trafficking, defrauding veterans out of the health care to which they are entitled, and the police state in general. They even have the equivalent of Jim Gordon in the form of a ridiculously sexy Korean American cop. While Max clearly is framed for the straight male gaze, trust me Logan, Det. Matt Sung, and sometimes Herbal are clearly set up to please a different gaze entirely. Max lives in a diverse Seattle peopled by people from all sorts of backgrounds. Her best friend is a lesbian of colour. She has multiple friends and some of the episodes pass the Betchdal test. Max may be singular, but she's not the only competent and tough woman she knows. The show addresses class directly, but is less direct in the way it talks about race and classicism. Max and Original Cyndi are the only PoC at the wedding that aren't servants, and I think that was deliberate. The damsel in distress is generally the slacker male coworker instead of the women, and when Max needs helps, she still does most of the saving herself. They have disabled characters, though one of them gets better if I remember correctly. The one with ALS doesn't, also if I remember carefully. It's not perfect. (I am so not a fan of giving us a hero in a wheelchair, then partially taking him away again). Still, pretty good for a 14 year old show.
* NWS. Delightful 19th Century porn with men in drag: http://antique-erotic.tumblr.com/post/99576897995/antique-erotic-a-truly-spectacular-set-of
* Fundraiser to Help Us Survive: http://www.gofundme.com/cuovws
This entry was originally posted at http://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/474969.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
* Rumor control: Ebola is not robust enough to surviving bleaching and incineration. The ashes of incinerated bedding are not going to infect people.
* It is sounding like the Dallas hospital wasn't using the buddy system during dressing and undressing/decontamination, which is weird. They haven't said why they chose not to follow standard protocol for contamination control, but I'm guessing that's how the nurse got infected. I'm flat out blaming the hospital admin, because that's a policy level fuck up. you don't send in a nurse without proper hands on training on getting in and out of the suits and not assign her a buddy with a checklist. Both of those are bad decisions.
They have decided to isolate and monitor the nurse's dog rather than euthanize it as they did in with the Spanish nurse's dog.
* The infected cameraman in Nebraska was well enough to be tweating today, which looks like a good sign.
* A medic from a ship off the Coast of Africa that did medical support for locals with a variety of ailments is in a hospital in Kansas. They are running tests.
* "My Thoughts This Morning on GamerGate:" http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/10/11/my-thoughts-this-morning-on-gamergate/
* "Transpinay Killed In Philippines:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2014/10/transpinay-killed-in-philippines.html
* "Arrest Made In Zoraida Reyes Murder:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2014/10/arrest-made-in-zoraida-reyes-murder.html
* "Nartional Coming Out Day 2014- It's STILL Different And Challenging For Trans People:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2014/10/nartional-coming-out-day-2014-its-still.html
* This strikes me as containing a whole lot of really important thoughts. "Real Human Beings: Shadow of Mordor, Watch Dogs and the New NPC:" http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/10/real-human-beings-shadow-of-mordor-watch-dogs-and.html
* Z Nation referenced Sharknado. O.o
* The more I learn about Gérard Depardieu the more I dislike him as a human being and the angrier I am that his Cyrano is the only good one.
* I watched the SyFy movie "The Dead." It was very nearly good. No really. It came achingly close. In fact, large stretches of it were actually good. The two main characters could actually act, even though the supporting cast were occasionally embarrassingly bad. Given that so much of the movie was the main dudes traveling, periodically dealing with perils, punctuated by short bursts of dialog, it was the acting of the leads that mattered. Whoever made it correctly identified that Romero's slow, silent zombies creeping inexorably up on people not looking in the right direction was unnerving and used that to good effect. Unfortunately, someone else decided to fuck it up, but randomly making certain zombies hiss or growl like lions, which was not nearly as effective as the silent sequences. Similarly, there were all these extremely effective ambient sound sequences, with the eloquent sounds of (presumably foleyed) insects, the hum of the motor, small grunts and metallic sounds and the like, but randomly, someone would fuck that up by deciding some particularly sequence desperately needed a cliched incidental music track under it, even though the near silence would have been so much better and more compelling. They also decided to make the American the main character, even though the Sierra Leonian had a more compelling back story and arc, as well as the better actor, and the movie took place in and was about Africa. He also gives a terse monolog about the way the west is only interested in Africa when it wants something and then the whites flee at the first sign of trouble. Seriously, why wasn't this guy the lead? I know, I know, racism. The point is, that they had stuff like the Soldier's speech and a whole lot of subtext, and somebody clearly knew what they were doing with the silent creepiness and the ambient sound and the way it was shot. It was so close to art movie/indie film good, but clearly someone at the network needed to squirt enough Syfy on it to prevent it making it to legitimately good.
* I've been rewatching Dark Angel, which despite cheesy wirework and the obviously wrong timeline, holds up pretty well. I'm pretending it is an alternate history in which all advanced tech was blown up by the EMP pulse in 2009, pushing us back to pagers, 3.5 disks, big phones and the like. It's not that big a stretch. So many of the themes are very timely, the police state, the ubiquitous surveillance, the massive gap between the rich and poor with little in between, the subversion of the media, the corruption and violence of the system, etc.. There is a sequence where the police stop her for no reason and break her tail light so they can impound her vehicle and try to make her spend several month's rent for her whole floor of apartments getting it back. Seriously, ripped from the headlines to my sorrow.
I was not best pleased by their trans episode and Original Cyndi's transphobia in particular. I was not best pleased by them playing with the trap meme, given how many women are murdered over "trans panic." I did think it was interesting that Normal's lack of transphobia is the first thing that humanizes him as a character. I just wish they'd at least had one of Max's friends call Cyndi out on her assholery instead of Herbal and Sketchy siding with her. It could have been so much worse though, as they were setting it up for the "joke" to be the reveal and the humiliation of normal for being attracted to her, then didn't follow through.
The thing I've been thinking about most though, is that "Dark Angel" is what "Batman" would be like, if instead of Batman being a sick fuck who got off on beating up poor people, he instead teamed up with Cat Woman and tried to tackle bigger problems like corrupt officials, child trafficking, defrauding veterans out of the health care to which they are entitled, and the police state in general. They even have the equivalent of Jim Gordon in the form of a ridiculously sexy Korean American cop. While Max clearly is framed for the straight male gaze, trust me Logan, Det. Matt Sung, and sometimes Herbal are clearly set up to please a different gaze entirely. Max lives in a diverse Seattle peopled by people from all sorts of backgrounds. Her best friend is a lesbian of colour. She has multiple friends and some of the episodes pass the Betchdal test. Max may be singular, but she's not the only competent and tough woman she knows. The show addresses class directly, but is less direct in the way it talks about race and classicism. Max and Original Cyndi are the only PoC at the wedding that aren't servants, and I think that was deliberate. The damsel in distress is generally the slacker male coworker instead of the women, and when Max needs helps, she still does most of the saving herself. They have disabled characters, though one of them gets better if I remember correctly. The one with ALS doesn't, also if I remember carefully. It's not perfect. (I am so not a fan of giving us a hero in a wheelchair, then partially taking him away again). Still, pretty good for a 14 year old show.
* NWS. Delightful 19th Century porn with men in drag: http://antique-erotic.tumblr.com/post/99576897995/antique-erotic-a-truly-spectacular-set-of
* Fundraiser to Help Us Survive: http://www.gofundme.com/cuovws
This entry was originally posted at http://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/474969.html. Please comment there using OpenID.