I haven’t posted about the Puppies lately…

I haven’t posted about the Sad/Rabid Puppies lately, mostly because I just haven’t had anything to say that I haven’t already said. I’m just not good at re-chewing old material – it’s not like all the previous posts I wrote aren’t still around. (Do remember to vote NO AWARD above any slate candidates, tho’.)

But if you miss that whole mess and want something new, here’s a post from Jim Hines called Puppies in their Own Words. It’s mostly extensive quotes from Sad leadership, and leaves white supremacist Rabid leader Vox Day out. I’m not sure that’s fair, given how much of the the Sad success depended upon Vox’s pack of Rabids – while simultaneously trying to distance themselves from him after he became to embarrassing – but there y’go.

The best thing Jim’s post is for is again detailing how this was in fact a purely political exercise, despite Puppy denials. It’s hard to deny when you’re extensively talking about how you need to show it to those liberals.

eta: Oh, Agrumer has a very good post on Livejournal about notorious homophobic Korrasami-hater and Rabid Puppy John C. Wright and his tired claim that He’s Not Homophobic, He Loves the Queers, He Just Hates “Perversion” – something he attributes to his Catholic faith. But as Agrumer shows, his anti-queer hate predates his Catholicism by some time. Also with original references and links! Apparently, John’s faith-sourced moral beliefs don’t include objections to straight-up lies.

eta2: George R. R. Martin pointed at Eric Flint’s takedown, point by point, of the Puppy arguments, such as they are. It’s quite thorough.

eta3: There’s a follow-up post, here, which is actually quite a bit longer and about Tor Books and Irene Gallo.

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wow, paypal is slimy

Paypal has a new trick that makes me want to punch faces with extreme force. I was logging in today to pay for an Orycon membership (because that’s the only payment they take online), and I got this stop dialogue:

Dung.

Now, this is a load of donkey dung, because I have a laptop I’ve been using for exactly this stuff for four years. Same laptop. Never even reformatted. But I’m all, ‘okay, fine, whatever.’

They give you two options. One is to receive a phone call at a predetermined number. Another is to verify data. Or let me put that more specifically, like they did: verify public data. That’s an important difference, and they think they’re being oh-so-very-clever, and I almost fell for it.

See, I didn’t want to deal with a telephone, so I chose verify data, thinking this would be some sort of account information validation. WRONG. They’re trolling public records and (presumably) credit report information to tie together a more complete – meaning more saleable – identity profile, and asking me to “verify” data I’ve never given them, ever. That’s when I realised what was up.

In short, you’re not “verifying” anything. You’re drawing them a comprehensive historical map of your life, connecting all the little dots they think they might have for you, on their behalf, all under the guise of some sort of security check.

You get: inconvenience and data mining! They get: A far more saleable and more complete historical profile of you, under false pretences.

Just to see what happens, I tried my other Paypal account, after verifying my computer on this one. OH LOOK, said Paypal, WE DON’T RECOGNISE THIS COMPUTER!

Dung twice.

And the same set of options. So, yeah. If – or more likely, when – you get this dialogue, pick a disposable number and have them call you and enter a pin. Because this? This is horseshit.

Paypal is just awful.

eta: IT GETS WORSE: In comments, check this:

Michael Hanscom: Did you see the recent story about their new TOS’s authorizing robocalls from them or their associates for basically whatever reason they want? It was enough for me to just flat out close my account.

Really. No, I missed that. So either way, you’re screwed. You give them a legit number they can phonespam or you let them datamine you. Awesome. Fuck, I wish I could close my accounts. But I have business need. Goddammit.

eta2: And here we go – the first spam call has already arrived.

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