Amazon has a peculiar idea of what your science fiction short stories are about.

Who knew you wrote chick-lit?

Yes, I know the marketing mouthpieces are insisting that replacing male Thor with a woman isn’t just a gimmick, but yeah, it’s just a gimmick. If it weren’t, they wouldn’t have spent so much PR money to build buzz on it.

So, since it’s a gimmick, and there’s plenty of evidence of what real-life women think a female Thor should look like, I think the most important question is: will she have a thing for Sif and/or Jane Foster?

Most interesting result in that image search: Pikachu Thor.

[Update: …and in another diversity-pandering press release, Captain America will be black. Next week, I’m guessing they’ll announce that the Iron Man armor will be passed to a Thai ladyboy.]

Apparently you’ve been replaced.

Jason Mitchell, professor of Social Psychology at Harvard, vigorously demonstrates Richard Feynman’s point about pseudosciences that adopt the appearance of science without the substance. By aiming the gun at his own feet:

"Because experiments can be undermined by a vast number of practical mistakes, the likeliest explanation for any failed replication will always be that the replicator bungled something along the way. Unless direct replications are conducted by flawless experimenters, nothing interesting can be learned from them."

Natsuki Kojima, helping you celebrate Independence Day. The little speech bubble reads “smiles and swimsuits are free”, and she uses these freedoms well.

Kinda tame, but I can see that you were raised in the same hell dimension as the Hello!Project designers. The Legos are a nice touch, though.

…it was just one of those random moments of googling, and I was saddened to discover that while there are plenty of panther-claw t-shirts, there are no Panther Claw t-shirts.

Hmmm, what about a nice “Keep Calm and Honey Flash” poster?

In your lengthy Creative Cloud survey (in which you mistakenly addressed me as a former customer), I was struck by what was missing in the list of possible answers to the question “how did you learn to use Adobe creative tools?”: books.

Apparently the kids you’ve got running the game now are so hooked on the web that they’ve forgotten that Adobe software used to ship with manuals, and that third parties used to write entire books on how to use the stuff. Or perhaps they’re too young to have ever known.

Also, I was amused when the surveydroids referred to the process of installing the CC tools as “onboarding”, and then immediately had to explain their jargon, but what the fuck does this statement mean, which I’m supposed to rank my agreement with: “I have been able to meet the objectives I set for using Adobe Creative Cloud”? The correct answer would be “you stopped selling products, so I had to start renting them, which I’m not a big fan of”.

And I love this question toward the end:

“What methods would have been helpful to you in getting started to use Adobe applications or use the applications more?”

• A call from customer support to provide more information
• More emails explaining the benefits of applications
• A learning game
• Live chat online to provide more information
• A five minute how-to video
• A prominent 800 number to call Adobe customer support
• Included access to a 3rd party training provider such as Lynda.com
• A social network connection e.g. via Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, etc.
• Step-by-step tutorials (just text and graphics, rather than "how to" videos)
• Online or in-product tutorials
• Access to an Adobe learning resource center
• Links to CC user forums
• A 30 minute webinar/online seminar
• Other (specify):
• None/no other resources needed/none would be helpful

Odd how none of these options are related to the quality of the documentation, which defaults to online help pages these days. In fact, you have to manually download the actual PDF reference manuals separately from the CC applications; it isn’t even a clickable link in the help options.