#farrar

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Stewart Farrar - Forcible Entry - Robert Hale - 1986 (jacket design by Barbara Walton)

[postcard-from-the-past]

Geraldine Farrar on a vintage postcard, mailed in 1906

[opera-ghosts]

Geraldine Farrar: 1917 Excerpt from "The Woman God Forgot"

Geraldine Farrar and Wallace Reid in an excerpt from "The Woman God Forgot" (1917) directed by Cecil B. De Mille.

Music: Geraldine Farrar sings "Rest with the Dew of the Dawning" from Frasquita by Lehar recorded electrically in 1927.

[monkeyssalad-blog]

1915 victor farrar by Al Q

[lilibetbombshell]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Antiusurpation and the road to disenshittification

THIS WEEKEND (November 8-10), I'll be in TUCSON, AZ: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

Nineties kids had a good reason to be excited about the internet's promise of disintermediation: the gatekeepers who controlled our access to culture, politics, and opportunity were crooked as hell, and besides, they sucked.

For a second there, we really did get a lot of disintermediation, which created a big, weird, diverse pluralistic space for all kinds of voices, ideas, identities, hobbies, businesses and movements. Lots of these were either deeply objectionable or really stupid, or both, but there was also so much cool stuff on the old, good internet.

Then, after about ten seconds of sheer joy, we got all-new gatekeepers, who were at least as bad, and even more powerful, than the old ones. The net became Tom Eastman's "Five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four." Culture, politics, finance, news, and especially power have been gathered into the hands of unaccountable, greedy, and often cruel intermediaries.

Oh, also, we had an election.

This isn't an election post. I have many thoughts about the election, but they're still these big, unformed blobs of anger, fear and sorrow. Experience teaches me that the only way to get past this is to just let all that bad stuff sit for a while and offgas its most noxious compounds, so that I can handle it safely and figure out what to do with it.

While I wait that out, I'm just getting the job done. Chop wood, carry water. I've got a book to write, Enshittification, for Farar, Straus, Giroux's MCD Books, and it's very nearly done:

https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Adoctorow+%23dailywords&src=typed_query&f=live

Compartmentalizing my anxieties and plowing that energy into productive work isn't necessarily the healthiest coping strategy, but it's not the worst, either. It's how I wrote nine books during the covid lockdowns.

And sometimes, when you're not staring directly at something, you get past the tunnel vision that makes it impossible to see its edges, fracture lines, and weak points.

So I'm working on the book. It's a book about platforms, because enshittification is a phenomenon that is most visible and toxic on platforms. Platforms are intermediaries, who connect buyers and sellers, creators and audiences, workers and employers, politicians and voters, activists and crowds, as well as families, communities, and would-be romantic partners.

There's a reason we keep reinventing these intermediaries: they're useful. Like, it's technically possible for a writer to also be their own editor, printer, distributor, promoter and sales-force:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#intermediation

But without middlemen, those are the only writers we'll get. The set of all writers who have something to say that I want to read is much larger than the set of all writers who are capable of running their own publishing operation.

The problem isn't middlemen: the problem is powerful middlemen. When an intermediary gets powerful enough to usurp the relationship between the parties on either side of the transaction, everything turns to shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/direct-the-problem-of-middlemen/

A dating service that faces pressure from competition, regulation, interoperability and a committed workforce will try as hard as it can to help you find Your Person. A dating service that buys up all its competitors, cows its workforce, captures its regulators and harnesses IP law to block interoperators will redesign its service so that you keep paying forever, and never find love:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2024/02/13/1228749143/the-dating-app-paradox-why-dating-apps-may-be-worse-than-ever

Multiply this a millionfold, in every sector of our complex, high-tech world where we necessarily rely on skilled intermediaries to handle technical aspects of our lives that we can't – or shouldn't – manage ourselves. That world is beholden to predators who screw us and screw us and screw us, jacking up our rents:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/yes-there-are-antitrust-voters-in

Cranking up the price of food:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

And everything else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

(Maybe this is a post about the election after all?)

The difference between a helpmeet and a parasite is power. If we want to enjoy the benefits of intermediaries without the risks, we need policies that keep middlemen weak. That's the opposite of the system we have now.

Take interoperability and IP law. Interoperability (basically, plugging new things into existing things) is a really powerful check against powerful middlemen. If you rely on an ad-exchange to fund your newsgathering and they start ripping you off, then an interoperable system that lets you use a different exchange will not only end the rip off – it'll make it less likely to happen in the first place because the ad-tech platform will be afraid of losing your business:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Interoperability means that when a printer company gouges you on ink, you can buy cheap third party ink cartridges and escape their grasp forever:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Interoperability means that when Amazon rips off audiobook authors to the tune of $100m, those authors can pull their books from Amazon and sell them elsewhere and know that their listeners can move their libraries over to a different app:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate

But interoperability has been in retreat for 40 years, as IP law has expanded to criminalize otherwise normal activities, so that middlemen can use IP rights to protect themselves from their end-users and business customers:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

That's what I mean when I say that "IP" is "any law that lets a business reach beyond its own walls and control the actions of its customers, competitors and critics."

For example, there's a pernicious law 1998 US law that I write about all the time, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the "anticircumvention law." This is a law that felonizes tampering with copyright locks, even if you are the creator of the undelying work.

So Amazon – the owner of the monopoly audiobook platform Audible – puts a mandatory copyright lock around every audiobook they sell. I, as an author who writes, finances and narrates the audiobook, can't provide you, my customer, with a tool to remove that lock. If I do so, I face criminal sanctions: a five year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine for a first offense:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

In other words: if I let you take my own copyrighted work out of Amazon's app, I commit a felony, with penalties that are far stiffer than the penalties you would face if you were to simply pirate that audiobook. The penalties for you shoplifting the audiobook on CD at a truck-stop are lower than the penalties the author and publisher of the book would face if they simply gave you a tool to de-Amazon the file. Indeed, even if you hijacked the truck that delivered the CDs, you'd probably be looking at a shorter sentence.

This is a law that is purpose-built to encourage intermediaries to usurp the relationship between buyers and sellers, creators and audiences. It's a charter for parasitism and predation.

But as bad as that is, there's another aspect of DMCA 1201 that's even worse: the exemptions process.

You might have read recently about the Copyright Office "freeing the McFlurry" by granting a DMCA 1201 exemption for companies that want to reverse-engineer the error-codes from McDonald's finicky, unreliable frozen custard machines:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

Under DMCA 1201, the Copyright Office hears petitions for these exemptions every three years. If they judge that anticircumvention law is interfering with some legitimate activity, the statute empowers them to grant an exemption.

When the DMCA passed in 1998 (and when the US Trade Rep pressured other world governments into passing nearly identical laws in the decades that followed), this exemptions process was billed as a "pressure valve" that would prevent abuses of anticircumvention law.

But this was a cynical trick. The way the law is structured, the Copyright Office can only grant "use" exemptions, but not "tools" exemptions. So if you are granted the right to move Audible audiobooks into a third-party app, you are personally required to figure out how to do that. You have to dump the machine code of the Audible app, decompile it, scan it for vulnerabilities, and bootstrap your own jailbreaking program to take Audible wrapper off the file.

No one is allowed to help you with this. You aren't allowed to discuss any of this publicly, or share a tool that you make with anyone else. Doing any of this is a potential felony.

In other words, DMCA 1201 gives intermediaries power over you, but bans you from asking an intermediary to help you escape another abusive middleman.

This is the exact opposite of how intermediary law should work. We should have rules that ban intermediaries from exercising undue power over the parties they serve, and we should have rules empowering intermediaries to erode the advantage of powerful intermediaries.

The fact that the Copyright Office grants you an exemption to anticircumvention law means nothing unless you can delegate that right to an intermediary who can exercise it on your behalf.

A world without publishing intermediaries is one in which the only writers who thrive are the ones capable of being publishers, too, and that's a tiny fraction of all the writers with something to say.

A world without interoperability intermediaries is one in which the only platform users who thrive are also skilled reverse-engineering ninja hackers – and that's an infinitesimal fraction of the platform users who would benefit from interoperabilty.

Let this be your north star in evaluating platform regulation proposals. Platform regulation should weaken intermediaries' powers over their users, and strengthen their power over other middlemen.

Put in this light, it's easy to see why the ill-informed calls to abolish Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which makes platform users, not platforms, responsible for most unlawful speech) are so misguided:

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

If we require platforms to surveil all user speech and block anything that might violate any law, we give the largest, most powerful platforms a permanent advantage over smaller, better platforms, run by co-ops, hobbyists, nonprofits local governments, and startups. The big platforms have the capital to rig up massive, automated surveillance and censorship systems, and the only alternatives that can spring up have to be just as big and powerful as the Big Tech platforms we're so desperate to escape:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/23/evacuate-the-platforms/#let-the-platforms-burn

This is especially grave given the current political current, where fascist politicians are threatening platforms with brutal punishments for failing to censor disfavored political views.

Anyone who tells you that "it's only censorship when the government does it" is badly confused. It's only a First Amendment violation when the government does it, sure – but censorship has always relied on intermediaries. From the Inquisition to the Comics Code, government censors were only able to do their jobs because powerful middlemen, fearing state punishments, blocked anything that might cross the line, censoring far beyond the material actually prohibited by the law:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/22/self-censorship/#hugos

We live in a world of powerful, corrupt middlemen. From payments to real-estate, from job-search to romance, there's a legion of parasites masquerading as helpmeets, burying their greedy mouthparts into our tender flesh:

https://www.capitalisnt.com/episodes/visas-hidden-tax-on-americans

But intermediaries aren't the problem. You shouldn't have to stand up your own payment processor, or learn the ins and outs of real-estate law, or start your own single's bar. The problem is power, not intermediation.

As we set out to build a new, good internet (with a lot less help from the US government than seemed likely as recently as last week), let's remember that lesson: the point isn't disintermediation, it's weak intermediation.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/07/usurpers-helpmeets/#disreintermediation

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en (Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

[quirkycatsfatstacks]

Review: One For All by Lillie Lainoff

Review: One For All by Lillie Lainoff

Author: Lillie LainoffPublisher: Farrar, Straus, and GirouxReleased: March 8, 2022Received: NetGalleyWarnings: Ableism, sexual assault (implied) The Three Musketeers, but OwnVoices, LGBTQ+, gender-bent, and with a leading lady that deals in chronic illness? Where do I sign up?!? One For All, written by Lillie Lainoff, makes a lot of big promises – and it nails every single one of them. Tania de…

[blue-sadie]

Love Even In Death

Halloween Special

Colby Brock x Ghost Reader

Summary: the story of a haunted school in the eye of a ghost, the investigators being the new owners which some ghost might not like

Warning: murder (described)

Yn/2nd person pov

You've seen the paranormal explorers come and go, none of them ever intriguing you, Farrar school has been your home for quite some time now since 1927 the day you came to pick up your baby sister and you were both killed there, she moved on while you were stuck here.

Your case was closed and said to be unsolvable no evidence or leads so the police said but the other ghosts know it all, they saw the male teacher hit you over the head with a metal pipe, they saw how he dragged you and your sister as she struggled all the way down to the boiler room.

They saw how he strangled your sister to death and tied you against the boiler, they saw the sick things he did before leaving you there, they watched as you sobbed for your sister and how you screamed in agony as your body burned against the boiler, they saw as you died from the pain You and your sisters body were only found 2 weeks later.

You kept to yourself not bothering any of the others especially the principal, you've never seen him and you never bothered to look, you heard enough of the other ghosts whisper of how horrifying his is and you don't want to be around men in general.

Since the day of your death your body would shake whenever your around them, goosebumps would raise upon your skin and your breath would cut short, the others felt almost sorry for you but their stories weren't any better.

"Welcome guys to HELLS WEEK" I rolled my eyes as I heard male voices down the hall I watched as the little children went to go see our new visitors they were always exciting to make new friends but they would get all sad when they leave.

"Are you gonna come with us to meet them" my eyes turned to Lilian a young former student at the school I smiled slightly as I looked at her, she had strawberry blonde hair that was slightly frazzled her skin pale but clear except for around the neck which held marks of her death.

I leaned down to her level raising my hand and tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear "you know I won't but you have so much fun Lilian" I murmured making her slightly huff and pout out her lip "but it will be different this time I can feel lit" I smiled at her whines.

"It might but you go ahead" I said she smiled at me before running off down the hall I waited for a bit trying to hear their conversation but I was too far I soon gave up and walked down the hall into whichever classroom I found first.

The three explorers came and went into every single room looking around and talking they all looked the same to me but there was one that caught my attention his dark hair and blue eyes just mesmerized me he felt different.

"Ok guys we're about to go head down to the boiler, Colby and I will start there looking for activity" his blonde haired friend said as he placed his hand onto Colby's shoulder "Colby" I said to myself.

I followed them down the stairs almost against my will, my body moved on it's own, I was following them just behind the group of kids following them Lilian joined me by walking beside me "they said their the new owners, I don't think he'd like that" my gaze turned to her as she spoke her eyes where fixed to the explorers.

I knew who she was referring to "he'll hurt them" she paused as she looked up to me "like he did to the others" I grabbed her hand and slightly squeezed it as reassurance as we continued down as soon as we reached the room I stopped at the doorframe not daring to go further.

"this place just feels terrible this room in particular" Colby muttered taking a seat in one of the abandoned chairs, I watched as they started trying different methods, the kids playing with them and only answering every few minutes and they laugh at their reactions.

I was enjoying myself until I heard the nearing footsteps from behind me, a shiver ran down my back "hide" I muttered for everyone to hear me "hide hide" I said moving into the room ushering everyone into different spots as i dragged along Lilian with me and at the end pushed her into a hiding spot before finding my own "run" I shouted loud enough for the monitor to hear me the boys looked shocked.

"Hes coming"

[xxcrossroadsxx]

(SAMPLE) The Ancient Magus' Bride Official Complete Book (2024)

[toiich]

Sin You Sinners (1963), dir. Joseph W. Sarno, Anthony Farrar

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Geraldine Farrar (Carmen, Joan the Woman, The Woman God Forgot)— I guess technically she was more of an opera star, but she was the leading lady for a ton of major silent films and she’s got two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for both music and film so I think she counts as a film star

Clara Bow (It, Wings)—The original It Girl (literally), Clara was the epitome of a flapper film star. She was obviously a looker, but it was her acting that won over hearts. Watch the movie It (no clowns) to get a sense of her charms. And while she's most known for her silents, (including Wings, the winner of the first ever Best Picture Academy award) she did make some talkies! Contrary to popular belief, sound films didn't ruin her career; she reportedly just hated the process of making them. She had a really interesting background and it's a shame she's not as well remembered as others of her time.

This is round 1 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Clara Bow:

She has gorgeous doe eyes, how can you not love her?

The original it girl! Flapper icon! She's sooo fun and charming and confident, it just shines through any film or picture you see of her.

I love love love her genderbendy boy style and her cute twinkly performances!! watch wings i s2g she absolutely brings it

She's literally THE It Girl. Like actually, she's the term's namesake. She was an extremely prolific silent film actress with a reputation for wild behavior who defined the 20s flapper era. Her boyish frame, androgynous style, and red curly hair were widely emulated.

Geraldine Farrar:

[esqueletosgays]

BLACK NARCISSUS (1947)

Director: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger Cinematography: Jack Cardiff

[postcard-from-the-past]

Geraldine Farrar on a French vintage postcard

[opera-ghosts]

101 years ago 1921 at The Metropolitan Opera a very rare played Opera was on stage. Zazà by Ruggiero Leoncavallo (1857-1919). Take also a look on the weekly performance announcement with great casts.

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Janet and Stewart Farrar - SPELLS and How They Work - Robert Hale - 1990

[lovelyballetandmore]

Brady Farrar | Constantine Allen | Aran Bell