Apologies for the Overly Aggressive Spam Police

I don’t view my WordPress dashboard very frequently, so I’d missed that the Stop Spammers Registration plugin had trapped 75 registrations/commenters it shouldn’t have, some of whom are regular commenters here.

Nor did I know where the UI was for that. (I do now and have whitelisted all 75 of you.)

I’m sure 75 sounds like a lot, but let me give you context here.

OpenID Change

A while back, I switched from one openID plugin to another because the one I had been using was not being maintained. The new one apparently let through a lot more spam registrations than the previous one did—to the point where that was more than half of my email.

Then I installed the Stop Spammer Registrations plugin. Blissful quiet.

Stop Spammers in total has stopped 33,680 spammers since 2014/02/26.

And, unfortunately, 75 legit folks. (As well as possibly more who didn’t say, “Hey!”)

Almost Half Were Cache Problems

There’s a joke in computer science:

There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. —Phil Karlton

My host sometimes needs to service machines and switches me over without me noticing. This invalidates cache, and Stop Spammer Registration latches onto that like a fierce little puppy and growls.

Why? Because invalid cache is a security attack vector, unfortunately.

An Added Bonus

Ever looked at your Akismet spam queue? Even after setting it to delete the worst, I used to have 50-100 per day. Now I get 1-2 per week.

Though…

I’m going to look at the settings and see if anything needs to be tweaked.

Originally published at deirdre.net. You can comment here or there.

Editor Edmund R. Schubert Withdraws from Hugo Awards

Althea Kontis shares Edmund’s statement:

My name is Edmund R. Schubert, and I am announcing my withdrawal from the Hugo category of Best Editor (Short Form). My withdrawal comes with complications, but if you’ll bear with me, I’ll do my best to explain. I am withdrawing because:

1. I believe that while the Sad Puppies’ stated goal of bringing attention to under-recognized work may have been well-intentioned, their tactics were seriously flawed. While I personally find it challenging that some people won’t read IGMS because they disagree with the publisher’s perceived politics (which have nothing whatsoever to do with what goes into the magazine), I can’t in good conscience complain about the deck being stacked against me, and then feel good about being nominated for an award when the deck gets stacked in my favor. That would make me a hypocrite. I can’t be part of that and still maintain my integrity.

2. Vox Day/Theodore Beale/Rabid Puppies. Good grief. While I firmly believe that free speech is only truly free if everyone is allowed to speak their mind, I believe equally strongly that defending people’s right to free speech comes with responsibilities: in this case, the responsibility to call out unproductive, mean-spirited, inflammatory, and downright hateful speech. I believe that far too many of Vox’s words fall into those categories—and a stand has to be made against it.

3. Ping pong. (Yes, really.) A ping pong ball only ever gets used by people who need something to hit as a way to score points, and I am through being treated like a political ping pong ball—by all sorts of people across the entire spectrum. Done.

Edited to add this paragraph: the statement on the IGMS website clarifies my point #1 wass wrong, and I have corrected it accordingly. My apologies to Mr. Schubert.

I think it’s important to note these things:

1. It’s likely Edmund knew did not know about the slates prior to nominations closing.
2. Edmund accepted the nomination (people are given the ability to decline prior to the official nominee list being posted).
3. Edmund likely knew others withdrew after acceptance. Edmund chose not to at that point.
4. Edmund likely knew the ballot had been locked after two people were declared ineligible and two withdrew.
5. Like Black Gate, Edmund’s withdrawal took place after all these events.

While that allows for some sympathy/empathy, it’s not as large as someone declining the nomination in the first place or, as Dave Creek did, asking off the slate prior to nominations closing.

The statement is significantly longer than what I’ve excerpted above, but I’d like to highlight two parts.

What About the Works Pushed Off the Hugo Awards Nominations?

I will not, however, advocate for an across-the-board No Award vote. That penalizes people who are innocent, for the sake of making a political point. Vox Day chose to put himself and his publishing company, Castalia House, in the crosshairs, which makes him fair game—but not everybody, not unilaterally. I can’t support that.

This is, my opinion, classic speaking from privilege.

You know who was really penalized? Hint: it’s not the people who were nominated.

It’s the works (and people) who were pushed off the ballot entirely.

There are works that will never receive fair consideration for a Hugo award.

Voting no award for the two puppy slates does not deprive the puppies of their Hugo Awards nominations.

That’s why I’m voting down the entire slate.

Schubert’s Comments About IGMS

As editor of IGMS, I can, and have, and will continue to be—with the full support of publisher Orson Scott Card—open to publishing stories by and about gay authors and gay characters, stories by and about female authors and female characters, stories by authors and about characters of any and every racial, political, or religious affiliation—as long as I feel like those authors 1) have a story to tell, not a point to score, and 2) tell that story well. And you know what? Orson is happy to have me do so. Because the raison d’etre of IGMS is to support writers and artists. Period.

IGMS—Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show—is open to everyone. All the way. Always has been, always will be. All I ask, all I have ever asked, is that people’s minds operate in the same fashion.

It’s published some fine writers and some fine stories. My problem with it, understandable in context, is that it’s Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show and not just InterGalactic Medicine Show. There’s no real way of promoting the magazine without the full problematic title and its problematic patron.

Much like L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future.

Yet I’m also fascinated, in the case of comparing people’s feelings about the two, how much harsher people are about IGMS than WotF. So far as I know, Card has never made a gay or lesbian (or, in this case, someone accused of same) stand in a trash can for twelve hours while screaming obscenities and epithets at them.

Scientology has, and it runs Writers of the Future.

Originally published at deirdre.net. You can comment here or there.

What A Celiac Thinks of the Gluten-Free Foods Fad

Falafel balls with salad, photo by Ilya Shapovalov.

I really, really, really wish someone would ask a few celiacs what we think of the gluten-free foods fad. Instead, we get pieces with inflammatory headlines like this steaming poo and this pile o crap, and I just want to make all of you suffer my culinary life for the rest of yours. With extreme prejudice. (Sorry for the lower digestive metaphors, but if you were celiac, you’d understand where I’m coming from. So to speak.)

Look, I’m a child of scientists, and I do absolutely believe in basing your culinary decisions, at least in part, on science. And I would not wish a gluten-free diet on anyone, not even my worst enemy.

For me, not eating gluten free means feeling like I have food poisoning. In fact, I thought I did recently when I accidentally grabbed the gluten-filled waffles at the store and managed to eat two before I noticed.

Having to eat gluten-free foods all the time has brought me to tears more often than I’d like to admit to. Occasionally, like my first day at Apple, they’re tears of joy because there are four gluten-free soups and you’ve never seen a gluten-free soup in the wild before.

Here is what I’d most like to say to people who eat gluten free and have pressured various restaurants to have gluten-free foods available:

Thank you.

That’s it. Thank you.

Because of all of you, I can walk into pretty much any first-tier hotel pretty much anywhere in the world and not starve. I usually can have gluten-free food I like. Better restaurants and hotels have gluten-free bread, even though sometimes it’s so awful I’d rather not actually eat it (glares at the Hilton Frankfurt Airport).

Sometimes, there’s a gluten-free menu. I live for those days.

Sometimes, those menus have cool things on them.

I had, for the first time in the almost 20 years I’ve lived gluten free, gluten-free fish and chips for the first time in a restaurant. It was magical.

Also, I’d like to extend a warm shout-out to those who aren’t celiac but who do have genuine problems with gluten and/or wheat, rye, or barley. There are the people who are flat-out allergic, and there’s at least an arguable case for non-celiac gluten sensitivity.

But: Gluten-Free Foods!

If you don’t absolutely have to eat gluten-free foods….

Look, as much as I appreciate your support, I wish you’d consider your life choices, and also how you’re harming those of us who have no other choice.

• Because you are willing to accept gluten substitutes, you make us look flaky.
• Some people will passively aggressively serve us gluten because they don’t believe anyone needs a gluten-free diet.
• 20 ppm really apparently does harm some celiacs, and a lot of kitchens aren’t celiac safe. Like: pizza places that cut their (formerly) gluten-free pizzas in the same workspaces, with the same tools, that they cut their wheat pizzas. That may be fine for you, but it’s not fine for us. Consequently, we still have to ask All the Annoying Questions.

Doing gluten free right is hard. I get why you sometimes just say fuck it and eat what you’d rather have. (I wish I had that choice.)

While You’re Lobbying for Foods for Us…

Would you please all collectively ask for regular old meat lasagne for me? Something akin to what Marie Callender’s used to serve, but in gluten-free form?

I’ve never seen a gluten-free meat lasagne in a restaurant, and I’d very much like to.

Much obliged.

Originally published at deirdre.net. You can comment here or there.