Category: Blogmeta

1 Kiva project update: August/September 2012

October 1, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Kiva project

Hey cromrades,

I was unforgivably (but somewhat characteristically) lazy this past period with handling the Kiva project. As a result, the donation to the Sioux expired before I got my act together to donate. Mea culpa. What I have done instead is donated $50 of your money to the Canadian Red Cross’ Aboriginal Outreach program, and matched that donation with $50 of my own. Additionally, we had a windfall of Kiva repayments in the past couple of months, so I was able to direct a number of new loans. There were two pay periods since our last update, so there’s quite a bit of activity summarized below.

Here are the loans we made this month: … Continue Reading

10 State of the Blogion

September 26, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Blogmeta · personal

I feel I owe you an explanation for the disrupted service that’s been going on for the past weeks. Maybe you haven’t noticed, in which case “great”, but if you’ve been missing the schedule of posts, here’s what’s been going on.

As I mentioned some months ago, I started a PhD program at the beginning of September. This means that, in order to fit my class schedule into my work schedule, I have moved to longer days at the office. As a result, I have been trying to bang stuff out on my lunch hour instead of working on it the night before as has been my habit for the past year or so that the blog has been running. Hence why, for example, most of the last couple of week’s posts have been going up at 1300 PST rather than their usual 0600 PST. It also explains why there are fewer posts.

As I’ve also (I think?) mentioned, I have just started dating someone. Because she and I are both busy people, we covet the time we get to with each other, meaning that on weekends I am usually preoccupied with enjoying the living shit out of her company. Weekends were when I was able to get most of my substantive writing done, but that time is now being used for something else. … Continue Reading

13 Kiva Project: Doing something different with our money

September 4, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Kiva project

It’s the beginning of the month, which means I have a blog paycheque burning a hole in my online pocket. I thought, in light of this morning’s story, that it might be worthwhile to do something a little different this month:

Pe’ Sla is an area in the Black Hills of South Dakota (just west of Rapid City) that is considered by the Lakota people to be the Center and heart of everything that is. It is part of our creation story. It is a sacred place. We perform certain ceremonies at Pe’ Sla which sustain the Lakota way of life and keep the universe in harmony. This area is partly owned by the Reynolds family. They plan to auction off almost 2,000 acres on August 25, 2012 to the highest bidder. It is likely that the state of South Dakota will put a road directly through Pe’ Sla and open up this sacred place for development.

(snip)

We are hoping to buy as much of the sacred sites as possible. Currently for sale is 1,942.66 acres which is in 5 tracts (300 – 440 acres each). It is diffcult to say how much this land would be sold for as developers may increase the true western “value”.

As much as the idea of ‘sacred land’ irks me, I think the goal of reclaiming ancestrally-held lands is a good one. The more economic power these communities have, the harder it is to ignore their needs and ‘otherize’ them. This campaign is closing in 5 days, so I thought it might be cool to kick this month’s pay to this cause. I will wait to see if there are any major complaints or concerns. Unlike Kiva, this is a donation and not a loan, meaning that when this money is gone, it’s gone for good.

We also got a bunch of repayments in our Kiva account, so go check out any campaigns there that you might like and I’ll pick a couple of those as well.

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11 Internet notoriety and the blogosphere

August 20, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Blogmeta

I did promise to finish my thought process from last Friday’s post, so I will. After this though, I think I’m going to intentionally avoid blogging about blogging for a while – after all that’s really not what you’re here for and there are more important things to do.

Since joining Freethought blogs (and particularly since the whole #FTBullies nonsense started on Twitter), I have occasionally been accused of trying to gin up controversy in order to gain attention*, and/or expressing opinions for the primary purpose of winning the favour of PZ Watson (because let’s be honest – as far as most of the ‘critics’ are concerned, they might as well be the same fiendish mastermind of a person). My position has been dismissed as being irredeemably biased because of my assumed obligation to defend the FTB network at all costs. I have, in short, been accused of trying to ‘climb the ladder’ in order to sit at the cool kids’ table in the high school cafeteria that is the freethinking movement.

I can’t do anything except roll my eyes at these kinds of aspersions, for reasons I will attempt to flesh out in this post. … Continue Reading

28 Traffic, sensationalism, and internet fame: a rambling omni-post

August 17, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Blogmeta

This morning, PZ Myers posted an examination of the evidence relevant to the claim that bloggers stir up controversy solely or primarily to garner attention and blog traffic. This is a relatively common claim from cynics who believe, for whatever reason, that bloggers are all craven, fame-hungry, unprincipled agitators. I myself have had this accusation thrown at me from time to time, and while I don’t like it, I also don’t give it much time or energy because hey, stupids gonna stupe.

PZ also said this:

What makes a blog grow is 1) regular updates, 2) consistent themes, 3) maintaining the attention of other blogs out there, 4) cultivation of an interactive readership that adds value to your blog, and 5) time (slow steady growth is best, and it can’t by definition happen overnight). Probably also good writing, but I wouldn’t know much about that, and I’ve also seen some gloriously well-written blogs that idle along with light traffic because they ignore my top 5 suggestions.

Which is fine as his personal opinion, but it’s not much more evidence-based than the claim that they’re built by constantly courting scandal. While PZ has built a juggernaut of a blog, and followed that up by helping to build a juggernaut of a blog network, I don’t know that he can really be cited as an authority on what it is that makes a blog successful. Considering that I’ve heard him on many occasions say that the blogging game is random and fickle, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that this was his own observation only, and not intended as a statement of fact.

The main reason why his post rubbed me the wrong way is because of this: … Continue Reading

3 Jamie’s story: three months

August 10, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Blogmeta

My friend and fellow skeptic Jamie’s saga of activism here in Vancouver continues anabated. You can read part one here, and read part two here.

THREE-MONTH SUMMARY: ACTION AGAINST MISOGYNY

My life has become a complete fucking mess this month. Since publishing the two-month summary of Action Against Misogyny (here), one of my former friends has come under the media spotlight and multiple simultaneous ongoing investigations for a) misconduct as an officer of the law, b) suspected involvement (the degree to which, if any, has yet to be determined) in the Robert Pickton serial murder spree of 49 women (most of whom were aboriginal) he abducted from Vancouver’s Downtown East side, and c) being as icky a complete creep as an unapologetically sexist pig could possibly be found to be by a psychologist who has worked with law enforcement for over 30 years. Read about my personal (sometimes intimate) relationship with him here, about the beginning of a localized red herring panic wave about privacy within the pervert community here, and about where I finally lose my patience and ask the same community to stop and think instead of resorting to tearing my own hair out by the fist-full here. I’m also losing my housing and will have to resort to indefinite couch-surfing for the second time in my life, in order to avoid becoming homeless for the third time. Read about how that news made me feel here.

So after Week 7, we decided as a group to try and occupy the intersection on Fridays and Saturdays. I wound up standing there alone (but still down to my skivvies), picketing a huge posse of these misogynist assholes, on the Friday. That was all sorts of wacky and powerful. The cops made it plainly apparent right away that they are there to protect me, I was truly moved that two men who had just been released from prison took the opportunity to stand up for women’s rights when they saw me, and a woman (a fucking WARRIOR) told me her rape survival story. On the Saturday, I was joined by more people, and it rapidly became apparent to us that we are making a difference and they are getting desperate. Read about Week 8 here.

During Week 9, as I limped around on second-degree burns on the bottom of both my feet, utterly desperate pro-lifers resorted to punching and grabbing pro-choice women. My friends. I was fury, bro. It wasn’t enough that a bus driver actually refused me service because my exposed arms and cleavage were offensive to him (I was wearing a bra). But on a scale of 1 to 10, I was only at 10 until the cops showed up and pretended no crime had been committed because the offenders in this case are elderly. Now I was mad out of 10. I took it out on sexist assholes by yelling at them — while wearing a loincloth. Read all about it here.

Jamie is a total BAMF, and you should definitely be reading the rest of this story. I’d particularly like to draw your attention to this post on the overlapping problems of relative privilege, in case you thought that this ‘social justice’ thing was a cut-and-dry issue with clear “right and wrong”.

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2 My triumphant return

August 7, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Blogmeta · personal

I am (at least physically) back from Tofino after an unbelievable weekend, only some of which I am comfortable describing on the internet 😛

It’s going to take me a couple of days to have new content up here, so unfortunately my hiatus continues for a while but (as always) I will get back to my routine as soon as I can locate my frontal lobe. Until then, you can check out my photo album from the trip. I haven’t yet had a chance to resize these pics for those of you without ludicrous-speed internet, so please stay tuned.

There is video, however:

What happens when you throw naphthene on a fire?

We bought fire colourant packages from a park administrative office. Very pretty result:

When our fire got shut down, we started a mobile beach dance party:

I’ve also freed some people from comment jail. Again, my apologies, but it was either that or get spammed to hell. New stuff up soon!

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2 Movie Friday: Off the grid

August 3, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Blogmeta · personal

I’ll be in Tofino this weekend, which means no phone, no e-mails, and best (or worst, depending on your perspective) of all, no blogging. I will be complontly unplogged for 4 glorious days. This means I will not be supervising comments or posting new stuff for a few days, which means y’all are on your own. I’m sure I’ll come back to a bunch of people with comments in moderation complaining about how I’m “censoring” them and how un-“freethought” that is of me. I won’t care though – did I mention I’ll be in Tofino?

See you when I get back.

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39 I can’t believe I actually have to answer this question

August 2, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Blogmeta · race · racism · science

Greta Christina has put up the Bat Signal:

But it’s also a ridiculous question because the reality of racism is extremely well-established, with study after study after study. Charging into a conversation about racism and saying, “Give me scientific evidence that it exists!” is about as absurd as charging into a conversation about vaccinations and saying, “Give me scientific evidence that vaccinations even work!” It’s one of the reasons that, in the Race and Inclusivity — A To-Do List post I put on my blog, “Get your “Race and Racism 101″ on Google or at the library. Don’t expect people of color who come to your group or event to bring you up to speed” was on the list. It’s incredibly frustrating to have to re-introduce ground-level concepts to people who are jumping into the conversation but haven’t bothered to do their homework. (And since atheists are a subset of our society at large, it would be an extraordinary claim indeed to assume that atheists are somehow miraculously free of this racism.)

However, I’m swamped today, and I really don’t have time to do Google-Fu, and email all my friends and colleagues who have sociology and psychology studies at their fingertips, and otherwise spend the entire day lining up links to the countless studies demonstrating the reality of racism. So I’m going to crowd-source it. People here who do have sociology and psychology studies at your fingertips… can you please provide links to scientific studies on racism? Thank you.

So I’m going to help out, because I like Greta.

I’m a little annoyed that Emil Karlsson, for whom this list is being assembled, hasn’t bothered to put any effort whatsoever into looking into the question before deciding that it’s all a bunch of hooey that needs to be proven to his own satisfaction before he’ll accept that the problem is a problem (and I wonder if he would stand up on that soapbox and demand the same kind of evidence to substantiate discrimination facing atheists). That being said, I just so happen to run a blog that talks specifically about racism. So Mr. Karlsson, and others who are hyper-skeptical about the existence of racism, hopefully some of this will filter through. … Continue Reading

0 Kiva Project Update: July 2012

July 30, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Kiva project

It’s that time of the month again, Cromrades – where we sink our hard-earned money into Kiva loans! Here are this month’s recipients:

Mary – Kenya

Mary is age 36 and married with one child who is age 12 years and in school. Mary has been in farming for 14 years running and currently produces milk, maize, beans, vegetables, and poultry birds. She runs a retail business in the local market dealing with grocery items. Mary has made a loan request of 31,200 Kenya shillings (KES) from Juhudi Kilimo to buy and insure a dairy cow. She believes this will improve her farming income, which she will then use to expand her retail business and purchase more land. Mary says the major challenges in farming include substandard input materials and high cost of feeds. She is happy with her Juhudi Kilimo partnership and believes she will be able to meet her family’s needs adequately.

Julius – Kenya

Julius is 48 years old and married to Emily. The couple is blessed with six children between the ages of five and 19 and they jointly provide for their family. For the past 14 years, Julius has been selling cereals and earns a monthly income of 5,000 KES. Julius is requesting a 25,000 KES loan through KADET LTD to pay university fees for his child. This is his second loan and he successfully repaid his previous loan. His dreams and hopes are that his children are educated well for a brighter future.

Canaana Group – DR Congo

This client, Kabugho, is the leader of the Canaane loan group. She is a young entrepreneur, bravely dealing with her situation, and is 30 years old. She is married and has three young children. Her husband is a broker for a transportation carrier. This featured client sells beignets and cakes that she makes using local technology. She began this business with her own funds, given to her by her husband. However, she just received her first loan with the microfinance institution Hekima. This group recently joined Hekima’s microfinance program. This client is full of hope for her business. This new loan should allow her to supply herself with one bag of flour, 10 kg of sugar, yeast, etc. She is grateful to Hekima for this first loan she is receiving without the need for a material guarantee, because thanks to this loan, she is going to improve her capital and provide for her family’s various needs.

This is our 7th round of loans, and brings us to a total of 21 loans since we started this project back in January. Traffic took a little drop in May (because of my vacation) and has been up for the past two months, so depending on how the numbers shake out, we may end up with a fair chunk more to loan going into the fall.

For the month of October, we made $46.38, and loaned $50.
For the month of November, we made $65.81, and loaned $50.
For the month of December, we made $44.76, and loaned $50.
For the month of January, we made $58.59.
For the month of February, we made $57.33 and loaned $125.
For the month of March, we made $78.68 and loaned $125.
For the month of April, we made $64.62, and loaned $57.50
For the month of May, we made $58.45, and loaned $75.00

Total amount loaned so far: $525.00
Total loan funds repaid: $93.78
Fund balance: $19.70

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