I almost titled this Some People Really Piss Me Off, but didn’t want any confusion re: the first person mentioned.

• As mentioned previously, David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc) has recently been dejobbed, and he’s decided to throw himself into cartooning instead of seeking out new gainful employment immediately.

  Welcome to the ranks of full-time pixel-stained wretches, Dr Morgan-Mar! A few of the other webcomics PhDs will no doubt tell you that webcartooning is exactly as remunerative and professionally fulfilling as other physics/engineering careers! And, hey, being in Australia — a country with a proper approach towards healthcare¹ — you have at least some safety net to explore your comicking options rather than scheduling an imminent demise in the gutter.

  And since Morgan-Mar has jumped headlong into funemployment this week, he’s already dug into his famed collection fountain firehose of ideas and unleashed the first new implementation:

  As part of my new Jobless-let’s-make-more-stuff state, I’m launching a new science blog site: 100 Proofs that the Earth is a Globe.

  This is an idea I’ve long had for a book. But I don’t have a publisher in my pocket, so I’m launching this site to generate some buzz. As stated in the site’s About page: This is not primarily an attempt to debunk Flat Earth theory. It’s just a way of organising a bunch of surprisingly diverse science essays with a common theme. The challenge I’ve set myself is to see if I can come up with 100 different scientific observations or experiments that we can do that show the Earth is much more likely to be spherical than flat.

  Can I do it? Let’s see!

  Speaking purely as someone who finds sincere Flat Earthers annoying and conspiracy-minded², I approve. Got soak up some science, and maybe check out Morgan-Mar’s previous webcomics endeavours for which you can exchange money.

• Folks that piss me off more than Flat Earthers or even Moon-Landing Deniers: content leeches. I got a press release (names redacted, don’t want to give these folks any exposure, ironically) promoting a loot box focused on manga with an announcement: A contest! The winner get their manga included in our crate!

  That was it. No details, just a link to a Google Form for submissions to this (quoting here) rare opportunity. I emailed asking about judging (criteria and who’d be judging), deadlines, rights, and so forth. On the plus side, they weren’t asking for any rights. On the minus side, the reply stated, and I quote:

  Hey Gary, there aren’t any actual rules. They just need to submit content and we’ll decide who gets featured. The winner gets their manga printed and distributed for free to the 5k+ [name] subscribers plus the newsletter subscribers. Deadline doesn’t exist as this is an ongoing thing. The owner wants to support manga creators for as long as possible. The creator maintains 100% ownership rights. [name] is purely acting as a distributor and promoter.

  To which I pointed out that distributors and promoters are people that you pay to get your product into sales channels, so what was this going to cost. Quoting again:

  No cost here at all and no hidden agenda. [name] will feature their content for free. He gets content for his subscribers and the creators get free exposure.

  There we go — exposure. I imagine that you can imagine what my voice is doing with that word. I replied:

  Yeah, I don’t promote “for exposure”. Artists and writers get paid for what they create. If they want to give it away, fine. But for somebody to say “if your stuff is good enough I’ll let you give it to me so I can sell it and keep the money”?

  No.

  I’d have thought that would have ended it, but PR guy said that I could call him (but not now, because he’s traveling) and he would try to convince me. Couldn’t come up with a factual counter as to why I was misinterpreting the contest with no rules where the prize is you get to let somebody else make a profit off your work by exposing it to subscribers who, even if they like you work, wouldn’t necessarily be able to get it from you any cheaper than they already got it from the guy making the money.

  Loot boxes are for stuff you’ve already made, maybe it’s underselling or not worth keeping in print/storage, and you sell to a repackager at a discount to get out from under it. It’s not where you create something new to supply somebody else with content they can sell. Don’t fall for this. And sweet suffering fuck, don’t enter contests without rules. No rules means they’re explicitly saying there’s no way for you to win.

Spam of the day:
That would be the thing from the content leech.

_______________
¹ Which is to say, an acknowledgement that losing a job should not immediately condemn one to a never seeing the doctor again, and just as well since everything in your country wants to kill you.

² But I can tolerate them if they aren’t also anti-vaxxers. In a just world, Jenny McCarthy would not be on my TV, she’d be in the dock at The Hague. Fuck every one of those lazy childkillers.