Insomnia

This is the second morning in a row that I've been awake at 3am.

I am not amused.


Going back to bed soon. . . .

Another Perspective on the Amazon #fail

Via a friend's locked post:

http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html

This person, who worked for Six Apart during the Strikethrough crisis of a year or so ago, has presented a reasonable alternate explanation for the removal of LGBT books from the sales rankings.

Hir theory is that a large group of conservatives have been manipulating the Amazon process for flagging "objectionable" content, rather than Amazon putting into a place a policy that deliberately removes these books from the rankings. If this is true, it's not Amazon that is the homophobic villain.

That said: whatever the reason for the books to have been removed from the rankings, they need to be reinstated. If it's due to a homophobic policy by Amazon, the policy needs to be changed. If it's due to a crusade by an anti-LGBT group then Amazon needs to find a way to prevent its policies from being exploited.

The Unfolding Path

I just finished my formal severance review with an HR manager who I've worked with the entire five+ years I've been with MyCo. She asked me what my plans are, and I told her.

She's interested in doing spiritual direction with me.

She gave me her personal email and I'm going to follow up with her next week after my move.

*boggle/wow!

Brezny-scope

Sagittarius: At a Buddhist sanctuary in Khun Han, Thailand, monks have used a million beer bottles and soft drink bottles to build their temple. Bottle caps have come in handy, too, serving as the raw material for numerous mosaics portraying the Buddha. Your assignment, Sagittarius, is to draw inspiration from these geniuses. How could you take some profane elements of your life and turn them into a hotbed of sacred inspiration?




I find the accompanying image also particularly apt, given my circumstances.

My Response from Amazon

This is the email I received this afternoon from Amazon, in response to my "feedback" on the sales ranking issue:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Amazon.com.

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search.

Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.


Sincerely,

Customer Service Department
Amazon.com


I like that they acknowledged that the problem is even larger than the critics said. "Cataloging error" is a nice vague term, but hopefully they will indeed take steps to ensure that something like this doesn't happen again.