Look! There is a thing!

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From tzikeh: she's linked a gif that demonstrates quick brown fox jumping over lazy dog. I laughed till I choked.

Of course, I had to look for the source, and found a youtube vid of what is obviously a dog/fox friendship, with the dog's owner / neighbor / friend filming their play.

Linked to that was a youtube vid of two very young foxes with their canine adoptive 'mother'. The dog certainly looks the same, although the vidders have different names, so I dunno. But what the heck; speculation is harmless, and lots of fun.
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I think maybe I need to make this a (semi)-regular feature. (I don't do anything regularly, except going to school.) And I see so many things on my flist or circle that I think, "Ooh, I need to tell everyone about that." So here's the first (I hope not only) installment.

Cool Thing #1 comes from tzikeh / tzikeh: she showed us a youtube clip of a young beluga whale watching a mariachi band and bobbing its head in time to the music.

About Google+ -- I was bemused when it popped up. I saw people saying, 'I have Google+ if you want an invite', without any earlier buzz about what it even was. I mean, we heard about and discussed OTW, and AO3, and DW long before they opened their doors. And, yes I hang out in the eddies of fandom, so I was in a position to see some of the input and discussions. But I'm not totally unaware of the wider world of internet; I saw nothing about Google+ until, apparently, it was launched.

(I use gmail; there was a note for a few days at the top of my inbox that said, 'Come join us on Google+'. No explanation, and we're warned about clicking suspicious links, so I ignored it.)

Eventually, I figured out that it was Google's attempt at a social network. Uh... no, thank you. It's enough to keep up with DW, LJ, and all the feminist sites I visit; I have resisted Twitter and Facebook, so I just added Google+ to the 'ignore' list. And, I forget the specifics, but Google is still wiping the egg from its face from when it summarily linked people's different accounts together, thus allowing private information to be discovered by people the information was being keep private from. (Not just in theory; I saw a rant by a woman whose stalker ex-husband learned her new email and location because of this debacle.) So I somewhat reluctantly use gmail -- because I expect it to be stable, and am tired of changing email addies every time I change my internet provider -- but I won't attach anything else to it.

But some people like joining, and inter-connecting, and more power to them. But Google+ insists on "real names" -- okay, I suppose, if you know that going in -- and then, without warning, starts DELETING ACCOUNTS of people whose names don't meet their standards of what names are "real" enough. And they didn't delete just the Google+ accounts; they deleted all associated accounts, including gmail... where many people save their old mail (comments, etc) because gmail advertises so much available space.

All this is an introduction to today's Cool Thing #2 -- this excellent post by denise, co-creator of DW: "Real Name" policies: They just don't work.

This is something I care about a lot. I've spent the last ten years of my life, more or less, immersed in the idea of what it takes to build a healthy online community and how to handle (and discourage) the abuses that develop. [snip] One thing we never, ever, ever considered, even for a moment, was instituting a "real name" policy to prevent abuses. Why? Because it doesn't fucking work. [snip] But the first and foremost reason to avoid a "real name" policy is, and continues to be, that it is worthless for the purposes people try to use it for. The amount of abuse on your service has nothing to do with whether or not people are using their real names. It has to do with the community norms, the standard that people hold each other to, the tools you give your users to manage reputation and abuses, and the clearly-communicated expectations of the service.

Denise has a lot more to say, and a lot better explanation, with links to some relevant sites, including one that demonstrates how many people can be endangered by a "real names" policy, and one that demonstrates that "real name" policies frequently don't work for those who don't have a white-sounding "Western" name. It's well worth checking out her post.

And now I'm off for my annual eye checkup. See ya later.
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