Blogkeeping

We are Overwhelmed

Stephanie Zvan4 Comments

It isn’t just that PZ has managed to transfer most of the Pharyngula traffic here from ScienceBlogs. Well…okay, it is largely that. But it’s also Ed, and it’s Chris and Justin and….

Look, to tell the truth, it’s not us. It’s you. FreethoughtBlogs has an awful lot of readers, many of whom read several blogs. That is really, truly awesome…and we just weren’t prepared for it.

You’ve noticed the problems: posts disappearing back into draft status, comment counts not keeping up, occasional long load times. So tonight, in order to fix that, we’re moving to the beefiest server our host can manage. This means downtime. At 10 p.m. EST, FreethoughtBlogs will go away for a bit.

You’re just going to have to find something else to do with your Friday night, I’m afraid. The current estimate is three hours, but you know how these things go. Well, being married to an IT guy, I know how these things go.

You’ll also need to bear with us a bit as we discover problems and straighten them out. Report them in comments as you see them. Give us pages where they happen and browser information so we can duplicate the weirdness. We’ll pass it all along to our tech. Fair warning: We will insist that he sleeps some this weekend, so you may not see immediate fixes.

It will also take some time to find an appropriate level of caching, which we’ve been using to fight the lag times, in order to fix the original problems. We’re on it, though, because really, it is about you.

We are Overwhelmed
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Now It’s My Turn

Stephanie Zvan124 Comments

Well, you know you’ve struck a nerve when people start researching you. It happened with Rebecca, of course. Juvenile jokes were blown up into “crimes” in an attempt to tell people they shouldn’t listen to anything she has to say. Information about her relationship history was passed around. Years-old insensitivity was posted as though it had been uttered yesterday as evidence of massive hypocrisy.

Think of it as a nifty little combination of character assassination and argument ad hominem. A particularly insidious way of saying, “If you don’t shut up, we’ll shut you up.”

Rebecca hasn’t been alone in this, of course. Continue reading “Now It’s My Turn” →

Now It’s My Turn

“Elevatorgate” Challenge #4

Stephanie Zvan587 Comments

Let’s talk pseudonymity and anonymity.

To borrow a cliche, some of my best friends are pseudonymous. Really, truly. Scicurious, Bug Girl, Dana, Enmelishment–all fun people on- and off-line (I’m extrapolating for Dana since I haven’t met her yet, but she has promised me margaritas).

In most of these cases, I know their secret identity but I interact most with the pseudonym. I don’t even think about their “real” names unless I’m talking to them in the context in which they use them. I don’t want to. Those names get tucked away where they won’t accidentally pop out at inconvenient times. I’m a bit protective that way.

I’m even more protective of the “real” names of people I haven’t always gotten along with perfectly. I attended ScienceOnline in 2010 and managed to avoid reading Isis‘s name tag, and not because we weren’t in the same places. When I accidentally found out DrugMonkey‘s secret identity, I told him and offered up a small piece of leverage in return. It was silly, but I did it anyway.

I habitually protect pseudonymity. Except…

Continue reading ““Elevatorgate” Challenge #4″ →

“Elevatorgate” Challenge #4

From the Neighborhood

Stephanie Zvan2 Comments

While I’m busy arguing with some guy who thinks I can’t possibly not use the same insults he would, and another who thinks only one white guy can handle the problems of Canada’s First Nations, have some tasty blogging from my neighbors who have a bit more time.

Dana was at GeekGirlCon on a panel about skepticism, and she’s bringing back the goodies for the rest of us.

Skepticism 101: In Which I Say What Skepticism Is, and Shoot a Video

Being a skeptic isn’t something you are so much as do. Because, you see, skepticism is a tool. It’s a way of detecting bullshit. It’s a set of methods applied to assess the truth of a claim. It saves you from falling for Nigerian princes and people who claim there’s a curse upon you which can only be lifted by silly rituals and the application of generous funds to the fortune teller.

And that’s what we tried to impress upon the audience at GeekGirlCon: skepticism is a tool, or rather a tool kit. I’ll show you mine.

Continue reading “From the Neighborhood” →

From the Neighborhood

The Admiral Has Arrived!

Stephanie Zvan2 Comments

If you don’t remember the Carnival of Elitist Bastards, you missed out. It was a web carnival dedicated to getting things (proudly) right, and it inspired some gloriously bizarre behavior, like carnivals in short story form or as a Shakespearean play or as a lesson in proper arrogance. Also, pirates. Lots of pirates.

Well, today our wondrous admiral, Dana Hunter, who built and steered our strange vessel, has joined us at Freethought Blogs. And she’s brought with her fine self an amazing crew.

Al Stefanelli, A Voice of Reason in an Unreasonable World

The Atheist Experience

Ian Cromwell, The Crommunist Manifesto

JT Eberhard, What Would JT Do?

Justin Griffith, Rock Beyond Belief

Kylie Sturgess, Token Skeptic

All right, maybe they’re not Dana’s crew, but they’re ours–and now yours. Enjoy.

 

The Admiral Has Arrived!

A Perfect Birthday Gift

Stephanie Zvan4 Comments

It’s been a long, busy weekend visiting friends. I held a 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet in my hand and touched 600-year-old vellum. I also got one of the best birthday presents of my life.

Congratulations on lapping the sun once more. Though I’m sure you didn’t put any direct effort into it, you’ve managed to make it all the way around again. Sure, Earth may not be where it was this time last year, what with the movement of the solar system in this galaxy and the movement of the galaxy in this universe, but hey. As fixed frames of reference go, this is the best we have, saying that we made it all the way around the sun again. And as is customary for marking such an arbitrary and otherwise fluid milestone, I did something for you that I hope you’ll appreciate.

I do. I appreciate the gift, and I appreciate all the people who got together behind my back and made it happen.

Now it’s time to recover from an grand weekend and an amazing gift.

A Perfect Birthday Gift

Moving Day

Stephanie Zvan1 Comment

After four-plus years of blogging independently (and as part of a group blog), I’ve been thinking for a while that it was time to join a blog network. While I’ve been invited to join elsewhere, it probably won’t surprise you to find my new home is at Freethought Blogs. Even before the rumors of its existence were confirmed, it struck me as the best fit for this eclectic little blog. Luckily, Ed agreed.

I think you’ll find it’s a nice place to visit. The neighbors are great.

But that’s just the original crew. We’re bringing in reinforcements.

So please, update your feeds and your links to follow me to the new place, look around, get to meet my new neighbors if you haven’t already. I’ll introduce you over the next few weeks. They’re a pretty cool lot, and the neighborhood is only getting bigger.

Moving Day

Nice Place We’ve Got Here

Stephanie Zvan15 Comments
Moving In
'Packing' by Ryan Hyde. Some rights reserved.

Welcome to the new home of Almost Diamonds. If you’re reading the blog for the first time, the old home is here. I also blogged for a time at Quiche Moraine and guest posted at Greg Laden’s Blog, Sex in the Public Square, the Scientific American guest blog, and the Journal of Are You Fucking Kidding. I won’t be migrating my archives wholesale, but I’ll likely polish up and pull over some of the more relevant posts and parts of ongoing series. I’ll start today with “The Accommodationism Challenges.”

Those of you who have been following the blog for a while should know that I don’t have any plans to change what I’ve been blogging. If you can figure out what that actually is, please let me know. Well, I know there’s science and sex and politics and atheism and art and snark, but if any of you think you’ve managed to come up with some sort of organizing principle for it all, speak up.

What about me, you ask? (Yes, I can comfortably hold up both sides of a conversation.) I’m an analyst by trade, and that is as deliberately vague as it sounds. I’m not a scientist, but it is still my job to pull lots of information together from the best sources identifiable, figure out what it says, and figure out where the big, gaping holes are. On top of that, I write science fiction and fantasy, with my first professional sale to be published soon (“soon” being a publishing term with its own special relationship to everyday English). I’m also a once and future host of Atheists Talk radio, which is available as a podcast through iTunes or on the Minnesota Atheists website.

I have a very unusual, but not unique, name, which makes me easy to find on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ (for now, at least) if you like what you find here and want more. I’m the snarky one.

Nice Place We’ve Got Here

I Do This Why?

Stephanie Zvan22 Comments

I’ll let you in on a little secret: No one reads this blog.

Well, that’s not quite true. The people who read this blog aren’t anything like “no one.” There just aren’t very many of them.

To put this in perspective, last Thursday night I wrote a blog post regarding a ridiculous letter published in Times Higher Education in support of Satoshi Kanazawa, the “researcher” who claimed that his analysis showed that black women were “objectively” less attractive than women of other ethnic backgrounds. The letter was causing an angry buzz in my Twitter feed, and I put that anger into words.

The numbers looked good to start with. A dozen people or so have shared it on Twitter, a couple of them quite influential. It’s being passed around on Facebook a little. It was Tumbled and reblogged a few times. Go, me.

I know better than that, though. I passed the post on to the JAYFK as well, to give it its best chance of finding an audience. After all, the defense of Kanazawa isn’t just ridiculous; it’s damaging and outrageously hypocritical. So I also pushed the post more than usual, playing up the controversy aspect by retweeting John Rennie‘s “Possible to draw & quarter people while hoisting on own petards? @szvan does it to Kanazawa’s defenders. http://t.co/oxWIjoQ” and Chris Clarke‘s “Note to self: stay on @szvan‘s good side. http://t.co/EEECI3q #kanazawa“

Jason at Lousy Canuck, very much not a “no one,” also thinks the topic is important. He wrote a post yesterday reporting on my post and promoting it. Half a dozen people retweeted his post, mostly the same people who had promoted mine, including me.

Now, this is how my blog traffic works: In two hours, Jason’s post–meant to get people to read mine–passed it in total traffic, at least on this blog. For the record, that’s less time than it took to put my post together. Half a dozen people clicked through from his post to mine. One person retweeted my post again.

So much for timely and topical. So much for content is king. So much for networking and self-promotion. So…yeah.

Why do I do this again?

I Do This Why?

Tweeting the Nobel Conference

Stephanie Zvan

Life is still busy. Yesterday and today are the Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN. This is an annual event, coinciding with the announcement of the winners of the year’s Nobel Prizes, pulling together a number of scientists to talk about a particular topic. This year is “Making Food Good.” Next year is “The Brain and Being Human.”

Each scientist gives a lecture, but what follows may be the coolest part: All of the invited scientists then get together for a panel discussion of the lecture, asking questions outside their fields and trying to fit the information they’re hearing into their framework of the topic. The presenting scientist also takes questions from the audience. That audience includes an internet audience, as the lectures are all streamed live.

What the lectures are not, despite the presence of lots of students from the college and from local high schools, is live Tweeted. At least, they weren’t. After missing part of the first lecture due to an accumulation of delays yesterday morning, I checked the conference hashtag, #Nobel46. There was nothing. So I took over.

I’ll blog the lectures later, with additional information, but if you want to follow along in the meantime, that hashtag is your place to be.

Tweeting the Nobel Conference