PSA for American SFF fans wondering what the fuss is about over The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction publishing a story by David A. Riley just because he's a member of an obscure British political group called the National Front:
The NF in the 1970s was the British Nazi Party. This guy was a *parliamentary candidate* for the NF. Your reaction to F&SF's decision should be the same as if they were fooled by the leaders of Atomwaffen or the Proud Boys.
That is all.
@cstross Uggghhhh what the hell.
Add that to the list of places I won't be submitting stories anytime soon...
@johnbierce @cstross F&SF is the most radically left-wing print science fiction magazine left.
The editor is a woman of color who publishes all sorts of non-binary people, people from developing countries, and that sort of thing.
I've been reading F&SF for over 40 years, and I like these new changes.
I suspect it's simply that the American editor has no idea who the British writer was.
@TomSwirly @johnbierce @cstross I mean, is it really that difficult to use a search engine?
@aral @TomSwirly @johnbierce It might be—have you tried using one recently? (The results from Google has taken a steep nose-dive in the past year, and it hasn't been terribly good for a decade: others are no better.)
@cstross @TomSwirly @johnbierce This is true. Here’s hoping DuckDuckGo doesn’t have its exit anytime soon.
@aral @TomSwirly @johnbierce DDG is a front end for Bing if I recall correctly, and is as contaminated by LLM junk and SEO spam as the other search engines. They're just not trying to sell adverts themselves.
@santiago@masto.lema.org@cstross @aral @TomSwirly @johnbierce Hum so is there one decent search engine in this world ?
@santiago @cstross @aral @TomSwirly @johnbierce
I've been very tempted to give https://kagi.com - a paid search engine - a try after skimming through their FAQ and philosophy and such. Seems weird to pay for it, but given how bad the alternatives have become and that the "free" services model is how we've dug our global vc hell pit in the first place... I've spent more money on less useful things 
@jaawerth @santiago @cstross @TomSwirly @johnbierce I have to say, founded by the ex-“VP of Product at GoDaddy” does not exactly fill me with confidence.
@aral @santiago @cstross @TomSwirly @johnbierce ngl, I missed that when I first looked over it, and I can't say I disagree 
@aral @jaawerth @santiago @cstross @johnbierce I am willing to cut some guy from Yugoslavia a break, even though GoDaddy is extremely evil, because things are very slow for people there, and if you were a bright technie, you might take any lifeline offered.
@TomSwirly @aral @jaawerth @santiago @cstross @johnbierce I'm not up to date on GoDaddy, what did they do?
(I didn't go with their services because they can't seem to reliably host their own shit.)
@TomSwirly @aral @jaawerth @santiago @cstross @johnbierce Oh. Registrar review blogs & sites should perhaps mention that more often. (The awful customer service & reliability are mentioned, so why not that?)
@hyde@lazybear.social@TomSwirly @aral @jaawerth @santiago @cstross @johnbierce
Coming from Serbia, I know it's difficult to find great opportunities there. Many companies were using pirated versions of Microsoft or other products.
Many left for Western European countries or Canada to find a "better life", which in retrospect I think most of them live better there than in our capitalist countries.
I don't know his involvement in the GoDaddy evil though.