That dull, boring, moronic slimepitter ScentedNectar has put out a youtube video (which I will not link to) accusing me of nefarious and underhanded manipulation of the ads on FtB to get an unfair edge in revenues. I’d call it a lie, but it’s clearly a product of her stupidity and incompetence. Just to clarify: 1) I have absolutely no control over the ads here at all. Ed Brayton handles all the accounting and ad placement. I don’t even want to have to deal with ads. 2) All revenue from ads at FtB, without regard to their source, is put into a common pool and shared out to all blogs on the basis of their page views. If I were somehow gaming the system to bring in extra ad money, it would go into the pool and benefit everyone blogging here.
I don’t know why I’m bothering to respond, since she also whines that I’d just lie and make excuses anyway, so she’s not going to care about the facts. But I hate being accused of somehow scamming my colleagues here — this network is about building a cause, not lining my pockets. If I cared about nothing but the money, I would never have left Scienceblogs — their rates are much better!
I’m seeing “local mom exposes an anti-aging mircle” (sic). You schemed to show me that?
I can see how she’d get that idea though – after all, academia + blog = pure profit, right? [/sarcasm]
I have AdBlock so I see none of them. But I am happy to give y’all pageviews, no matter what the ads are.
Does she not have better things to do with her life?
No.
No.
You know, the prayer is supposed to be “make my enemies ridiculous,” not “make my enemies tedious, stupid, and dull.”
I actually saw an ad earlier today that did catch my interest: Tickets to a (Heineken Cup) Rugby game in Paris (Saracens vs Racing Metro, as I recall). But why bother? I can just pop down the line to Toulon or, a bit further, Montpellier…
Haven’t seen any Russian
slavewife ads (yet), which is what really irritated me when they sometimes showed up at Sb.Surely with every new stunt she and her ilk pull like this, it makes it abundantly clear to actual skeptics that they are merely pursuing a vendetta.
This is pitiful.
So you’re the reason I’m looking at an add that says “Who will save Mitt’s dog, Sheamus”. How nefarious of you.
I got the ad for Iain M Bank’s latest, which I will probably buy.
Advertising works.
i read on the internet that nefarius PZ and underhanded Ed take all the ad revenue money and spend it on the dinosaur ride outside the creation museum.
You also do that “Around FTB” thing where you encourage people to go to other blogs. That’s an odd thing to do if you’re trying to keep all the delicious, delicious ad revenue for yourself, whether or not it all goes into a pool (which I’m sure it does).
You’re a terrible businessman. ;)
Overtentacled poopyhead.
If you wanted the money, a great big “born again” moment and forgetting everything you ever knew about evolution, Behestyle – might net you a templeton prize. Oh, but wait, to do that you’d have to sell your soul and you don’t have one. :(
“What’s that sort of droning noise in the background there? What, kind of boring, kind of low, sort of droning, boring, kind of miserable, whining, kind of, sort of boring noise going on?” — Malcolm Tucker.
I have absolutely no idea why, perhaps deep seated self-hatred or sheer curiosity, but I felt compelled to listen to the video. I am astounded by how attentive and obsessive a person would have to be in order to notice the difference, to investigate it, and then use that in order to suggest some kind of devious scheme in a ten minute long video. It also acts as awful background noise as you work on stuff, it’s motivation kryptonite.
It’s comical that she bemoans the poor treatment of co-bloggers yet made a video about the matter rather than finding a way to directly contact those she thought were affected. Even if she simply couldn’t contact them then the video would only need to be a minute long at most if it was intended to ‘warn’ co-bloggers and would have had a very different style.
Her actual motives are patently obvious and I’m sure the intended audience happily lapped it up.
Not if it was a Jose Alvarez/Carlos hoax he reveals after he’s raked in some cash. Ha! You thought I was converted!
Yet another data point in the “prayer fails” category.
I’ve got Suncorp Life Insurance, Sign-a-Rama, Embroidme and a learn Hebrew course.
Yo! PZ! Take the money and run!
Blog ad revenue: Obviously to be filed under Serious Business.
A better ending to your post would be: “If I cared about nothing but the money, I’d go the Limbaugh/Glenn Beck/Sean Hannity/Sarah Palin route and give up all my principles and take advantage of the gullibility of a rather large segment of the American population.”
(There are undoubtedly another 20 well known names that could be added to that list. And you can’t deny that their schtick works.)
Wonder if this is some sort of backlash from Vaculas ‘bullying’ from the SCA… The Rebecca ‘doc dropping’ seemed a rather poor quality rumour as well, easily dispelled. Maybe output will increase from the grumpity lumpas of the slimefactory but quality inevitably will drop.
Oh, come on! You obviously make millions as a blogger! It’s as wealth generating as being a college professor, all of whom drive around in those solid gold rocket cars with a half dozen supermodels on their arms.
of course it is. Since they can’t admit they’ve done anything wrong, they have to try to distract attention from their constant bullying, lying, harrassing, and blatant lying. They can’t find any evidence of actual wrongdoing, so they have to make it up.
Abbie Smith has whined in this vein before. She seems convinced that you’re earning vast amounts of money from ScienceBlogs, while she’s left eating gruel.
Correction: It started with John Loftus. He seems aggrieved at you (supposedly) making $36,000 a year from ScienceBlogs. Abbie then started whining on the Slymepit about how you’re “leeching” from them.
Apparently, some things are beyond all gods’ powers.
(/Who’s really surprised? But all the same, for precision’s sake, let’s now call it the theological ‘problem of meh’.)
What makes me happy is that most of the ads I see on here are for some kind of Christian Seminary, or a link to “Proofs for the existence of God/reliability of the Bible” site.
No, you were right the first time. Ms. Smith has publicly nursed this grudge since the beginning of FtB.
I’m going to start referring to the non-Pharyngula FTBlogs as “the proletariat.”
Income from scienceblogs is also based on traffic to the site. Since I put most of my effort here, traffic to Sb Pharyngula has dropped to 10-15% of what it once was (but I’m getting the difference here now, at the lower rate that Ftb pays, unfortunately), and revenue from that site has dropped equivalently.
I don’t know what she’s complaining about. I’m only compensated by the amount I contribute to Sb’s overall traffic and ad revenue, same as her site.
Wait, I make $36,000 a year from Sb? I wish.
PZ Myers:
The Big Pharma checks make up for it though.
oolon:
I doubt that this particular baseless claim was in response to the Vacula campaign as the video was posted two months ago. If I listened to the wrong video or it has suddenly received a lot of attention from the usual suspects then I pre-emptively apologise since both would indicate a desire to smear for the exact reason you outline.
Of course, the particular trigger for her actions is rather irrelevant because the behaviour is part of such a long trend of misrepresentation and manufacturing.
ChasCPeterson:
I wonder where it actually started. I know that such lies go round and round in circles, until they’re accepted as fact, but they must have starting points.
The starting point was Watson’s elevator incident. Abbie was furious about it — as I recall she was upset that apparently she was once assaulted and the police were pissants about believing her (I can understand how she was angry about that), and somehow that has been translated into outrage when lesser assaults against a woman are actually believed.
I’m not going to dig back into the archives. It was ugly. But really, if she can’t get justice for an insult, she’s going to make sure no one else’s grievances are taken seriously.
Oh, right! Big Pharma!
Also, the Pro-Kitten Vivisection League is slipping me buckets of blood diamonds under the table.
most of the requisite archives (i.e. the Monument and associated ‘pit-threads) have disappeared down the memory hole anyway.
What about the rumors that you light your Cuban cigars with $100 bills?
Yes revenues go into a pool, a giant salty pool that is ruled by a multilimbed cephalopod. Gasp! She’s right! HOW can we have been so blind?
Hyperdeath, do you mean like this?
I loved Kirsty. What a voice she had.
Completely unsubstantiated. He uses only $20 or $50 bills, and only wipes his ass with $5 or $10 bills. It is a bad economy, after all.
Wait. . . you mean you collectively share in the income from the ad revenue ? This is some kinda Commie Collective ? what’re you, some kinda leftist ?
Oh wait . . . he is.. .
Carry on.
one of the reasons I seldom follow links to religious nut sites and other fringe sites besides the stupidity is what it does to the add spaces on the browser window. Instead I get tempted by adds to things I might even like or things I have all ready looked at. The down side it is not so good for the budget.
some people seem to need to make up bad guys to blame and make up vast plots to ezplain their victimhood
uncle frogy
@valindrius,
Yeah the slimepitters told me that. Oh no I didn’t know it was recycled crap! Not having an unhealthy obsession with what each ‘side’ said and when is apparently a mortal sin in slime-world. Nectar must be gutted it took 2 months for PZ to notice it, they usually have a sub-second response to any perceived FtB infringement. They are always watching, but no one is that arsed about them.
Hmmm… Accordining to Janine, PZ is so wealthy that he lights his cigars (Cuban no doubt) with banknotes. There are also disturbing rumors that he uses banknotes as toilet paper.
Scented Nectar is such a dope. It tickles my heart she is and has always been one of the main slimepitters.
Of course she’d be a favourite among Pharyngulites, what with her radfem sentiments and all.
Brownian, I think that Bad would be closer to our collective radfem soul.
And I’ve had my eyes on that carving knife
Oh you’ve been lucky so far
Just just what is being used to make the background sounds?
— ADVERTISEMENT —
SKEPTICS HATE THIS MAN!
Learn how a normal Minnesota biologist earns amazing cash at home using this one weird trick!
—
I give up. Chris Clarke is far funnier than I’ll ever be.
Oh, Chris Clarke, you are so wonderful.
***
Could someone explain to me what Abbie Smith’s charge against PZ (related to Scienceblogs) is, exactly? I’ve seen people mention it, but never been quite clear on what she’s alleging.
I eat filet mignon seven times a day,
My bathtub’s filled with Perrier.
What can I say?
This is the life.
SC (Salty Current), OM:
You’re assuming a degree of coherence that isn’t there.
Considering some of the ads I see on this site at times, are you sure Ed is doing his job?
http://imageshack.us/a/img7/216/69730331.png
Sorry that I haven’t read the whole thread so someone else might have pointed this out already. It seems that ads on blogs are targeted using some kind of computer algorythm that bases its decisions on keywords. I would imagine that this method is normally very effective, but there will be the odd exception. Because the computer only counts the keywords without caring about whether you are being positive or negative about a specific subject, the targeting of the ads can be pretty amusing.
Thus, as has already been mentioned, we are being offered courses in magic crystal healing, Bible studies, eternal youth, etc. It would be nice to think that the woo peddlars are wasting their money, but, of course, the system targets the gullible just as effectively.
I suspect Smith may well be nervous over the prospect of losing Sb income, given that she may very well have destroyed her career over the years since she drank the Pepsi. Honestly, what employer would touch someone with a Google footprint like hers?
I’m not saying that out of malice or schadenfreude: I empathize with her on that score. I was young and stupid once too. Still paying the price now that I’m old and stupid.
Sea Org?
Ads are served both by subject and keywords of the blogs as well as prior searches you’ve done.
For example, I had to replace my dad’s toilet with a high-capacity model (he’s 88 and shits ROCKS!). For a couple of weeks after I did research into the best brands, the top banner ad I was served while visiting Pharyngula was for a high-end crapper.
fuck me, anyone who hasn’t blocked these ads and has half a brain could see you aren’t controlling the ads, since there are so many complaints about random ads for religious nuttery and woo that pop up.
I both have at least half a brain and have the ads blocked, so could of course hardly care what an inane conspiracy ranter concludes about anyone from them.
I suspect Smith may well be nervous over the prospect of losing Sb income, given that she may very well have destroyed her career over the years since she drank the Pepsi.
yeah, that does seem to be just about where the shit hit the fan.
You can see the underpinnings of that in her writing long before though.
It tickles my heart she is and has always been one of the main slimepitters.
bless her soul.
Ed Brayton handles all the accounting and ad placement.
accounting yes, placement, no.
Ed contracts placement to the agency used to feed the ads to FtB.
if he wanted control over the groups of ads pushed to FtB he might be able to make requests to the ad feeder, but that’s about the limit of it.
there ARE better ad feeders out there though.
#56 that thread is bad but thanks to it I’ve learned about the Hollywood stuff, it’s pretty cool that initiative happened!
Piffle. The true story is that he lights $1000 bills with Cuban cigars just for the irony.
Where?
I think it starts here:
Oh yeah, PZ owes Smith $5.00, totally. *eyeroll*
@Chris Clarke
You link is a little broken, but your comment there is spot on!
Aratina Cage, that quote you give is from after Elevatorgate.
Is there any pre-Pepsigate evidence of Abbie’s… eccentricities?
I meant that in the most constructive possible way, though.
Where?
if you’ve read her science she first started posting at sciblogs, you will have noted how every once in a while she will go off the rails on some topic related to something like mountain dew red.
there were many occasions where she would demonize her opponents quite irrationally over something as silly as that.
no kidding.
it didn’t, however, affect her ability to discuss virology, nor does it still IMO, but it did over time influence my opinion of her as a person.
I slowly but surely stopped going to ERV before “Pepsicogate”, and only saw that as just a more clarified example of things I had already noted.
this stuff just doesn’t happen in a vacuum, you know?
first line:
“science” should be “since”
Is there any pre-Pepsigate evidence of Abbie’s… eccentricities?
you know, if you’re really curious, you could spend hours going through her old posts and figure this out for yourself.
sorry, but you’re talking YEARS back now, and nobody is going to be able to quote you specifics without going back and doing the same thing themselves.
not worth my time.
Aratina Cage
Agreed. PZ’s clone is awesome. Now he’s started traveling back in time, and injecting snarky comments into past debates.
No problem.
Agreed. PZ’s clone is awesome. Now he’s started traveling back in time, and injecting snarky comments into past debates.
what in the fuck are you talking about?
I believe hyperdeath was referring to me.
You know, this kind of confusion could be avoided if we’d just set up threaded comm#@#^#$%#(#@^ NO CARRIER
no, I understood at least he was referring to you.
it was the rest of it that made no sense to me.
you’re a clone of PZ? Not from any of your writing that I can see.
you injected comments into past debates?
if he’s referring to your link, that was hardly “injected”, wasn’t a “debate”, and really couldn’t have been defined as snarky.
so, just to clarify that i still have no clue what they are talking about.
I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Ah, I remember that! Thanks. I believe I might have even commented at the time pointing out that PZ had promoted her as a blogger both before and after she was invited to Sb (on what I assume was at least in part his recommendation). Her “Im just a peon that normally gets a tiny fraction of his traffic” also contains some truth, in that it’s not as though the blogs there independently draw their separate traffic – much of hers has come from Pharyngula one way or the other, I’m sure. This isn’t to say that her work over the years didn’t attract a regular readership, but that a lot of the exposure to it came via PZ in some way, if only because he had the blog that overwhelmingly (Bora Z. made some charts about it once, as I recall…) drew the most traffic to Sb.
Her “Im just a peon that normally gets a tiny fraction of his traffic” also contains some truth,
Beyond, of course, the obvious truth that her blog gets a tiny fraction of the traffic his gets. I was trying to say that it has in a meaningful sense actually been a fraction of his traffic.
I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
didn’t I already admit I was babbling?
;)
I think this was it.
But PZ is all about denying Abbie Smith her rightful $5. Bastard.
It was clear to me. Perhaps I’m too tired.
It was (meant to be) a joke about the fact that Pharyngula has acquired a second blogger, who superficially resembles PZ, hence the clone part. Chris Clarke is a lot less famous than PZ, and I was (attempting to) joke about him not having existed before he joined Pharyngula, hence the time travel part.
Did anyone else at least partially get it, or am I expecting too much?
Release the hounds
Damnit, I’ve just realised I’ve made another mistake. Loftus accused PZ of making > $36,000 a year from FreeThoughtBlogs, not ScienceBlogs.
I got it.
Okay, now you’re making it clear. The joke you meant was too cryptic, I think, to be funny except in your head where you had stored all the missing pieces … resulting in the one joke I’ve ever seen that did get funnier when explained.
Next time, don’t expect mindreading and you won’t be disappointed ;)
I was young and stupid once too. Still paying the price now that I’m old and stupid.
Oh hush. Creek Running North was awesome.
ScentedNectar reminds of this friend I had when I was in elementary school. She had to be the center of attention and lied constantly to get it. Like when she said her sister had an artificial finger because she’d buried one of her fingers in dirt till it rotted off her hand and had to be replaced. Or that when her dad went out on walks, she could summon him back by playing a certain combination of notes on the piano. According to her, she could resurrect dead bumblebees and float between floors in a house using an umbrella. She insisted her parents let her drive the car everywhere. She explained with conviction that to call someone from a non-dial candlestick phone you pressed the screws in the base. Those are just some of the lies I remember. ScentedNectar’s lies are less obviously childish, but just as desperately attention-seeking and ridiculous.
blf (#7)
I use an iPad for half my browsing, and I’ve seen a few of that sort advertising Asian women. On posts talking about abuses suffered by women, no less. (Fuck you, patriarchy, fuuuck youuu.) The religious ads irritate me because there are so damn many of them and they talk about idiotic things like “reasons Jesus exists.” However, the ad for the mental performance enhancer with its fluffy pink brain amuses me given how fluffy pink ladybrains get mentioned sarcastically quite a bit.
~*~*~*~*~
hyperdeath (#83)
I got it.
Why thank you. I was kinda thinking about 25 or so years before CRN started, though.
I got the joke, too, hyperdeath. There used to be a time (not so long ago) when I did not realize that it was Chris Clarke posting and instead thought it was PZ. There really is something similar about their writing styles to those of us new to Chris. So the clone part was well understood. Now I double check the byline when I read a post here. :P
I’ve found that to be a good practice.
It was (meant to be) a joke about the fact that Pharyngula has acquired a second blogger, who superficially resembles PZ, hence the clone part. Chris Clarke is a lot less famous than PZ, and I was (attempting to) joke about him not having existed before he joined Pharyngula, hence the time travel part.
ah, got it.
you see, I’ve actual witnessed people, not in this thread mind, that have actually posted things like they actually believe people like Chris have gone back and edited past conversations on other blogs.
Ah, that explains the Pullet Patrol Products™ uptick in sales of tin foil hats. And here I thought it was because the PPP engineer’s devised a brim to hide the wearer’s eyes from anything other than an aluminum mirror showing their own features…
I…what? I don’t think my comments are worth that much, but OK — I must be causing Abbie untold pain, suffering and privation for all the comments I haven’t made. She could be tooling about in a gold-plated Mercedes if only I’d pay her the attention she deserves.
Again, I wish. I wasn’t making that much at Sb, and please, get this straight: I took a massive pay cut by moving the bulk of my writing to FtB. Same amount of traffic, but we don’t have the pro advertising support, and I get about a quarter of the amount per click that I was at Sb.
It would be nice to get paid more, but I’m not worried about the money.
Hey, maybe I should just sell out and move to Patheos!
Really? Fame doesn’t go to the deserving, I guess.
I got it! And I’m pretty drunk and kind of high.
Dr. Myers is too polite to mention that Ms. Smith’s complaint quoted above came well after she told in in so many words to “go fuck [him]self”. If a blogger said that to me, I’d never comment there again either.
Really?
I don’t doubt your sincerity or honesty, and I’m asking out of curiosity: if PZ told you off that way, you’d never comment here?
I totally grok that: as I said, I’m just curious.
I like my crazy ads, thank you… but I still don’t know why I’m getting cars and shampoo right now.
A. Noyd (#89):
Ah. Lucy Van Pelt syndrome.
I got it! And I’m pretty drunk and kind of high.
which also explains the delayed reaction.
:p
PZ:
You expect us to believe that? It’s already been established from multiple sources that you light your Cuban cigars with $100 bills, and now there are rumors circulating that you drive around in a gold-plated Mercedes.
PZ, it was OK when you only stole from Thunderfoot, but now you’re stealing from people I like!
Gheez, I wonder how many iterations of “FtB is a fraud, destroying the movement for blog-hits” we’re going to hear.
I’m also wondering how much traffic the other sides get by people checking out Pharyngula and then reading another blog because something in the “Most recent posts” list caught their attention.
I do that all the time…
@hyperdeath: I’m another one who got the joke.
That is the way to roll. I wish there was a link to a “Most recent posts” page that just has a running list of all posts made across FtB (instead of just the few we see in the current design).
And I also appreciated hypereath’s joke. Thought the time-travelling bit was pretty funny.
I’ll have you know that almost everyone I’ve ever met has heard of me. Therefore I must be phenomenally well known.
+1 ;)
Sure. If PZ told me to fuck off, I would.
I’d try, anyway.
Scentednectar is a slimetroll. I had a mouse in my apartment that I kinda got friendly with (ok, I am a total animal lover) and this slimetroll made a long video about how the mouse was in my c*&$.
She’s a piss poor excuse of a human being and needs to find a life, and quick.
The crowd she used to run with on YouTube, the so called ‘sex positives’ (which is a misnomer, I know), have alienated her.