kewleo

lulz:

“For years, varied and sometimes wild claims have been made about the origins of a group of dark-skinned Appalachian residents once known derisively as the Melungeons. Some speculated they were descended from Portuguese explorers, or perhaps from Turkish slaves or Gypsies.

Now a new DNA study in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy attempts to separate truth from oral tradition and wishful thinking. The study found the truth to be somewhat less exotic: Genetic evidence shows that the families historically called Melungeons are the offspring of sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin.

And that report, which was published in April in the peer-reviewed journal, doesn’t sit comfortably with some people who claim Melungeon ancestry.

“There were a whole lot of people upset by this study,” lead researcher Roberta Estes said. “They just knew they were Portuguese, or Native American.”

also, whoever wrote this story used the term: “race-mixing” which he actually misspelled; it’s race-mixin’ and you need to be hoisting a pitchfork in the air or else you’re not spelling it correctly.

=D

trapezoid pizzah!!!

also, i just assumed aang was too much of a man to keep that ‘ish on lock down

so a guy who runs the fallout fansite “fallout posters” got a cease and desist letter from bethesda’s lawyers who are claiming copyright infringement, trademark infringement (passing off) and unfair competition. the fan sent a letter back to bethesda’s lawyers making a claim for fair use and while you can tell he did an impressive amount of research from reading the letter, it unfortunately doesn’t really address the potential claims in the cease and desist (it mostly ignores the trademark & unfair competition issues except from citing some Lanham Act provisions that would mostly be irrelevant should bethesda make a dilution claim, misunderstands the legal definition of “derivative work” and so on.)

whenever you see an incident like these there’s always a sense of rage from the gaming community. something along the lines of: “i can’t believe they treat their fans like this!!!1!!1!” and “this is going to hurt their fan base!” and while i doubt that these incidents ever really hurt sales (but don’t take my word for it, i’m no expert!) i’ve never understood why publishers never seem to explain clearly why the law requires them to respond to infringement claims in such a way.

see, trademark is a fickle right.  it’s not really a property right, it’s more of an “anti-confusion” consumer protection right.  in a world where bethesda didn’t send out cease and desist letters: imagine some rando out there makes a game called “fallout 4,” bethesda’s would try to get a court to keep the game from coming out under that title by claiming that a consumer would think it comes from their house when it actually doesn’t.  the court would then look around and say “hey there’s a bunch of different video gamers out there using the name ‘fallout.’  therefore, the term fallout doesn’t tell us the game comes from bethesda, it could come from anyone of these people!” and the TM could essentially be canceled. all the time, energy and $ bethesda expended in creating the fallout brand would be for nothing. 

the way the law is set up now, TM owners are pretty much required to go after infringing uses if they want to keep the value in their “properties,” thus the cease and desist letter to “fallout posters.” in fact, their lawyers might even be negligent if they didn’t.  so they send out a form letter like the one this fan got.  ya it sucks to be a fan and think that someone who’s work you feel passionate about is engaging you this way, but really their hands are tied.