(no subject)

[roadrunnertwice]

At work yesterday, I was talking with the co-workers about the Somali pirates, and dropping some science I'd heard several months ago about how they started off as basically a freelance coastguard after the government died, and how they didn't get into the more traditional violent hijacking game for a good while after that. jwz linked to a cool-looking article about that today, so I thought I'd share with all of you, too.

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And as I'm checking my friends page, it looks like Amazon.com is stripping the sales rank info for GLBT books, including totally innocuous stuff. (It sounds like Heather Has Two Mommies got on the too gay for sales-rank list?! WTF!) It looks like someone's collecting links to stories about it over here, and you may have already seen other roundups elsewhere. (It sounds Neil Gaiman's on the job now too?)

I don't have the juice right now to go off on a proper disdain-and-fury tear, but Dear Amazon, THIS IS NOT OKAY. It is, in fact, bullshit, so CUT IT OUT.

EDIT: Oh, I should have just phoned Candy about that one—Smart Bitches is totally doing the googlebomb thing on ye olde Amazon Rank.

Comments

[b-zedan.livejournal.com]

RE: "Pirates"—not surprised. Chase and I were discussing privateers the other day. I totally feel that they logically must still exist.

[chronographia.livejournal.com]

I love how the news media anchors are audibly supressing their excitement at the novelty of covering omg!pirates. Oh man. Way to be in touch with reality, guys.

[gyladia.livejournal.com]

Re: Amazon- Based on how Amazon handled this and how little they actually wanted to talk about this, I'd believe it was just a glitch or even some sort of hacker (but I don't know if it's possible to do what he said he did).

http://www.pcworld.com/article/163024/hacker_claims_credit_for_amazons_gaythemed_book_glitch.html

I don't believe that I'll immediately start ranting and raving against a company that I think probably sells more gay and lesbian literature to people stuck in the Midwest than any brick store.

I guess it's good and useful that other people get angry really quickly, kind of like a fire drill, but Amazon isn't, like, Walmart.