Why Amazon Sucks Reason #928374982

Almost a year ago, I ordered a copy of Rube Goldberg: Inventions from Amazon. My mistake for supporting them in anything but an emergency. I got the book on the right:

The book on the left however is the one I ordered. To be clear, this was not from "a seller on amazon," this was from AMAZON itself.

Note that it shows and claims to be the authentic book on the left above. But it was not, it was a shit-tier print-on-demand bootleg, made by Amazon itself and not Simon and Schuster as the page claimed:

They did this to others as well. Though they refused to post my review, this one got through-

Here is the print on demand page in the back of my Amazon book-

Here is how bad the reproductions are-

Best seen on the spine where Simon and Schuster's logo is literally a blurry mess-

I tried to report this to the publisher but the only thing I could find was an email address on their site that nobody replied to.

If anyone out there knows anyone in copyright law or the publisher, please let them know about this. Amazon is literally turning the publisher trademark into unreadable crap.

Reblogging here in the hopes writing blogs will take this up as well.

I cannot emphasize enough how much you need to read thoroughly through the terms of any publication before you send your writing to them. It is mandatory that you know and understand what rights you’re giving away when you’re trying to get published.

Just the other day I was emailed by a relatively new indie journal looking for writers. They made it very clear that they did not pay writers for their work, so I figured I’d probably be passing, but I took a look at their Copyright policy out of curiosity and it was a nightmare. They wanted “non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide license and right to use, display, reproduce, distribute, and publish the Work on the internet and on or in any medium” (that’s copy and pasted btw) and that was the first of 10 sections on their Copyright agreement page. Yikes. That’s exactly the type of publishing nightmare you don’t want to be trapped in. 

Most journals will ask for “First North American Rights” or a variation on “First Rights” which operate under the assumption that all right revert back to you and they only have the right to be the first publishers of the work. That is what you need to be looking for because you do want to retain all the rights to your work. 

You want all rights to revert back to you upon publication in case you, say, want to publish it again in the future or use it for a bookmark or post it on your blog, or anything else you might want to do with the writing you worked hard on. Any time a publisher wants more than that, be very suspicious. Anyone who wants to own your work forever and be able to do whatever they want with it without your permission is not to be trusted. Anyone who wants all that and wants you to sign away your right to ever be paid for your work is running a scam.

Protect your writing. It’s not just your intellectual property, it’s also your baby. You worked hard on it. You need to do the extra research to protect yourself so that a scammer (or even a well meaning start up) doesn’t steal you work right from under you nose and make money off of it.

Exclusive publishing rights have to have a set time frame! Do not agree to anything that doesn’t clearly state “up to five years from signature” or something like that. 

What if the publisher goes defunct? What if they get bought by another publisher who doesn’t care to promote or publish your work? You still can’t to anything with it, you don’t own it anymore!

For a thorough overview of what you should be aware of regarding your intellectual property and publishing rights, please read through this collection of post [https://kriswrites.com/business-musings/contracts-and-dealbreakers/] by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. 

Protect your IP. Do not give away your stories.

Every writer needs to read this before signing that contract:

Writer Beware!

A snake in Thailand spent enough time sitting still in the water to grow moss and turn into a dragon, apparently.

More video at the source account!

While snakes can sit still a very long time, this is some kind of hair algae (not moss!) many species of which grow in n fast moving streams, so the snake could have been fairly active and still grow an algae coat, which it will lose next time it sheds or if environmental conditions (like seasonal temps) change too much for this algae's liking :)

Quetzalcoatl time

“Before the writers started working on the first season, I wrote a list of six things on the wall that every episode had to do.” - Mike Schur (x)

sometimes people writing about fantasy gay sex are right, actually. just found out that sword oil CAN be used as lube. listening and learning.

As someone who write fantasy, including the gay one, I’d very much love to know how you found that out.

Well... I'm the kind of person who will start reading a fic on AO3, say "that can't be right," and go down an hour-long Wikipedia hole about historical lubes.

Most natural plant-based oils may be used as lube, though they're messier and not as good as modern water-based or silicone-based lube. Just remember that oils aren't good with latex — but your knights probably aren't using latex condoms, anyway.

Historically, a common sword oil was linseed oil, which is natural, plant-based, and food-safe. So, again, a fine choice.

Other historical options include other plant- or vegetable-based oils, which are probably fine. Some also used animal oils though, which is not fine and can lead to infections. Avoid that shit 🙅

For traditional Japanese swords, choji oil was used, which is made from cloves. High concentrations of clove oil can be toxic, so you HAVE to dilute that shit — 1% concentration or less. Once diluted though, clove oil is considered safe and can be used to treat and soothe anal injuries. It also has a numbing effect that could help with rough anal sex, but your ass would hurt like a bitch after the effect wears off.

A lot of modern sword oil is just mineral oil, which, while not plant-based, is food-safe and is actually recommended for use in enemas because it's safe and long-lasting. So while it's not great for vaginal use because it can irritate the skin there, it can be pretty well-suited for anal use.

There are a few modern sword oils made from machine oil and motor oil. Those should not go in any orifice whatsoever 🙅 Always check the label before using improvised lube.

Anyway, I hope that helps! I hope your knights enjoy their fantasy love-making ❤️

Thank you so much for sharing all these details!! ❤️

sometimes people writing about fantasy gay sex are right, actually. just found out that sword oil CAN be used as lube. listening and learning.

As someone who write fantasy, including the gay one, I’d very much love to know how you found that out.

A drabble is like a sonnet. It has rules. The rules make it an art form. It should have exactly 100 words.

This has been around since the old fandoms, of live journal and newsgroups.

Ficlet. Flashfic. Those are short things.

A drabble is 100 words.

With due respect to OP, while sure, this has been around since Ye Olden Days (and before the internet, iirc), it is only honest and truthful to note that people have also been fucking with/ignoring this definition and calling things that are not perfectly 100 words "drabbles" just as long, as well as the ongoing fight about how to count those 100 words.

I feel like this is important to note.

I looked it up and Drabble comes from publishing contests and science fiction in the 1970s. (Apparently it started with Monty Python, which is fun.)

Part of the fun of a drabble is the challenge of working within 100 words, and cutting down, or finding just the right thing to add. Like other strict word forms, part of the fun is the structure.

If a writer is tagging it a drabble and it’s not, they’re missing their audience and there are so many other words that are available.

I come from a place of drabble enjoyment, where the restrictions are fun, and it is an art form. I think it takes skills worthy of celebrating to write something that is only 100 words.

I like the ease of writers and readers who enjoy the strict 100 words being able to find each other.

The orthodox, traditional drabble is there for those who enjoy it, and it’s fun.

As noted, I am a drabble agnostic and honestly don’t care (and can’t write anything that short to save my life anyways).

My point is that people REFUSING TO CARE that this is The Orthodox Meaning and using it to apply to things that are not strict 100 words is has ALSO BEEN AROUND THAT LONG. I personally have been watching both sides of this fight since the 90s, and it was already an “oh god this again” thing at the time.

And what I do care about are statements that appear to refer to history I was there to see for their authority that represent that history as far more unified than it was.

Trust me, I have been watching fights about whether it matters how people use the word for so long.

Yes, it is a child of pre-internet fandom. So is the fight between drabble purists and the people that persist in not giving a shit about how the drabble purists feel and just use it to mean a very short fic.

I have watched flame wars beyond sanity fought over this, you understand? I watched people get BANNED FROM PRIVATE ARCHIVES and watched FRIENDSHIPS END.

Yes: the word was invented to mean this. It was also more of less immediately used less strictly. There has never been actual functional consensus.

(And people also fought over how to calculate the word count: does an em-dash count as one word or two (many word processors count it as two, fyi!); what about ellipses?? What about digits versus written numbers? (We count all of these as solved issues now bc we tend to just accept what word count the automated word counter tells us - never mind that they disagree!) Do we include prepositions and conjunctions? Some older, pre-word-processor methods of counting words do not! And so on.)

And regardless of one’s position, it is only honest to note this, especially when making an appeal to “old fandoms” as a source of authority. There were screaming matches about it on livejournals and I was there.

Arguing the value of the orthodox definition of them is something I’m happy to leave you to! Acting like there was consensus for more than about the length of a single competition in the 1970s and that people haven’t been fighting about of ever since…. not so much.

wait do people read first person stories and think they're the ones in the story???

Saw people talking about not liking first person, which is fair, but their reasoning was like "I would not do that" and I don't understand that mindset.

First person stories are still about a character. A character making their own decisions. First person isn't about you???? At least I thought it wasn't. What am I missing? I've always seen first person as just a more in-depth look into a character's mind and stricter POV. Not as a reader stand-in.

I see first person stories like I'm sitting down across from the narrator getting the wildest tea imaginable

Most accurate way to read a first person story

The famous Falkirk Wheel, which links the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal.

Holy Frijoles!

I would love to take a narrowboat through this, but possibly not one I was living on. Someone else’s boat. A rental.

@philomytha

“the habsburgs weren’t even that inbred” uh yes they were, why is this discourse it’s just a scientific fact

I listened to a podcast episode about the Habsburgs, and the guest expert said that Charles II’s DNA reads as being a product of two parents who are closer than brother and sister.

“Eight generations should contain 254 different ancestors. Charles II’s has 82. This is what we might refer to as ‘suboptimal.’”

Also, it's not just that the Habsburgs married within the family over so many generations but the fact that the couples were too closely related.

Like marrying your first cousin has been commonplace throughout most of human history (and also in plenty of regions of the world today), but the reason you don't see most of the human population facing Charles II levels of debilitating genetic conditions is because:

A) most families will not have exclusively first cousin marriages in the family tree, and

B) even in the case of cross-cousin marriages (girls marry their paternal uncle's sons, boys marry their maternal aunt's daughters) there's typically enough genetic variation to avoid the problematic traits everyone carries around in their genomes from presenting itself.

The reason Charles II faced so many medical hardships is because 3 of the parents in his family tree were Uncles who married their Nieces, which is far too close of a DNA match. It's basically within the same proportion of similarity as a father's or brother's DNA. If everyone had married their second cousin (which only happens once in... 5? 6? generations of Charles's family) he would have appeared as genetically sound as anyone who didn't have family marriages in their ancestry.

But typically you only see this level of incest in royal lineages, because they want to consolidate their power within as small of a group of people as possible to avoid other families having ancestral claims to the throne (see basically every war between France and England thanks to the Plantagenates). Additionally, in the case of the Ptolemaic Kingdom and other Egyptian dynasties, breaking mortal taboos by marrying family members like the gods do, without repercussions to the kingdom (famines, etc), serves as "proof" of their "godhood".

1st image: "Therefore, Charles' maternal grandmother was his paternal aunt. Philip and Maria Anna's mother was Margarita of Austria, which means that she was Charles' grandmother and great-grandmother at the same time. On the pedigree itself, these are clearly visible as closed loops, when they should be open branches. In another loop, Charles II of Austria was both great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather. These marriages frequently intergenerational, often an uncle marrying a niece, so Anna of Hapsburg (1528-90) was Charles' great-great-aunt, great-great-great-aunt, great-great-great-grandmother, and great-great- great-great-grandmother twice. Six generations should contain 62 different people, as does mine, and our own queen's today. Charles II's has 32. Eight generations should contain 254 different people. Charles II's has 82.

"Indulge me one more, because this whole dynasty is set up by the marriage of Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Castille in 1496. The shortest route from Charles to Joanna is five generations, which occurs twice, but she is also six generations from him via five routes, and seven twice. Over those three generations, fifth, sixth, and seventh, you should in principle have 112 women. Joanna of Castille occupied nine of those positions on her own across three generations. This is not desirable."

2nd image: "a century before Charles II's birth in 1661. Six generations should contain 62 different ancestors; Charles II's has 32. Eight generations should contain 254 different ancestors; Charles II's has 82. This is what we might refer to as "suboptimal."

"As examined in the previous sections, family trees are much less arboreal than we might assume, and on a long enough timeline we're all inbred. One hopes, though, that your immediate family branches outward and upward without a loop in sight. The Hapsburg tree that ends in Charles II is a tragic thicket, and doomed to what is known as "pedigree collapse.""

the first law of tragedies: the end is already written and inevitable. the second law of tragedies: your actions are all your own and you can choose to get off this ride whenever you want. the third law of tragedies: we both know that you are never going to do that.

This is badass: Medieval Nubian Fashion Brought to Life. Click through to the link because there’s more replica clothing and it is all stunning!

This is AMAZING.

I loveee fantasy settings doing magical exhaustion:

Druid, low on magic: I'm [coughs up flowers] fine.

If you have the time and flexibility, you can also try out libreoffice.

Just did this on November 14th, 2024, so this is very current!