ELF thots

Next steps in moving to DW

2010-03-09T16:16:52Z

F'list purge; comm purge--I'm trying to cut down on LJ time in favor of Dreamwidth time. (See recent Dreamwidth post for more details.) If I cut you and you're *not* crossposting (and you care), let me know; I'll re-add people.

I probably won't make any announcements about future winnowing down of the f'list, but I also probably won't be cutting twenty or more journals at a time in the future.

I have DW invite codes if people want them. (Only a handful, but I'll get more with time. And there's almost always some available at the DW_Codesharing community.)

In case anyone was wondering

2009-07-22T14:30:10Z

I've moved to Dreamwidth. I mostly crosspost to InsaneJournal, but not entirely. I comment at various places around LJ, and occasionally post in comms, but I don't make "real" posts in my journal here.

I almost always have Dreamwidth invites; if you'd like to try it, drop me a line (by PM, or commenting-and-deleting, or commenting at DW) with an email address & I'll happily send you an invite code.

User representation on LJ: an idea whose time has come... and gone.

2009-05-10T15:39:41Z

LJ's Advisory Board--that thing that had 4 appointed members and 2 user-elected ones--had its most recent meeting on Mar 10; outline was posted on April 16th, to a rousing collection of comments saying "umm... whut? Where's the part where LJ pays attention to its customers?"

It looks like LJ may have abandoned the elected representative part. Livejournal's Advisory Board elections was well into the nomination process this time last year.

May 5: Nominations begin; about 90 people announce their candidacy.
May 14: Nominations closed
May 22: Voting begins for a one-year term of service [beginning] on June 1, 2008.
May 30: Results tallied & announced

They've done a masterful job of splitting important information across several communities. I suppose people are supposed to just not notice that this year's election... isn't happening. Come June 1, LJ will no longer have a user-elected representative on the board.

I suppose this is one of SUP's ideas that, like the "increased limits for Basic users," was mentioned to appease users, and dropped when it proved inconvenient to implement.

6 Year LJversary: Hello, Dreamwidth!

2009-04-01T14:34:48Z

Six years (and two days) ago, I bought an LJ account, because of a post by wickedthought. (It's locked now, or I'd share it with you.) It wasn't a deep-and-meaningful post; it was sharp and funny. But I'd been looking for him since his website vanished, and I had a few friends who were active on LJ, and it seemed like the right time to join this game. Besides, it had NO ADS. This was rare in user-content-based websites, and I treasured it, and wanted to support the idea.

I was active at A Witches' Thicket at the time, and asked one of my friends there to make me an LJ userpic. I'm still using it. I had much fun here. I made some great friends. And then LJ was sold to SixApart, and then ads crept in, and then they grew to new areas. And 6A's policies were not "geeks welcome; post anything legal and we're fine with that." Nipplegate was one of their more ridiculous decisions. Nevertheless, I enjoyed my time here. I wrote some fic. A few essays. Joined religious debate communities and snark communities, and was metaquotes'd a couple of times. And then Strikethrough07 happened, and I bought an InsaneJournal, and joined the OTW, and lamented the loss of the LJ I'd come to love.

But I knew IJ wouldn't be fandom's long-term home, wouldn't be my long-term home. The name bothers a lot of people, the code is an older version and occasionally glitchy, and there are ads. (IJ, unlike LJ, never promised there wouldn't be.) So I waited, caught between two journals, crossposting for a while, looking for the site that would be based on the principles I loved about LJ-that-was.

It's here! (Okay, it's not here. It'll be here at the end of the month.) dreamwidth is being put together by former LJ coders, who asked themselves, "what would we fix about LJ, if we had free access to all the code?" (The site itself is in closed beta right now, and up-and-down at various times.) Here's what they came up with: easy import of LJ, including with comments, splitting the f'list into "I'm watching these" and "I want these to have access to my locked posts," better interface, no ads, invite codes. Paid accounts that start at $3 for one month, for those who don't have a code but want to try it out. Better OpenID features--OpenID accounts get 6 userpics and a profile and can subscribe to a watchlist; they just can't make posts.

I plan on buying one of the 400 seed accounts, if I can get one. And over time, I'll shift from LJ and IJ to DW.

Look outside.

2008-11-04T07:36:14Z

1. Stop talking about politics for a moment or two.
2. Post a reasonably-sized picture in your LJ, NOT under a cut tag, of something pleasant, such as an adorable kitten, or a fluffy white cloud, or a bottle of booze. Something that has NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS.
3. Include these instructions, and share the love.

(Picture from an old issue of Fine Homebuilding magazine.)

I ATEN'T DED

2008-05-02T18:58:03Z

I haven't vanished; I've mostly shifted to InsaneJournal.
April posts.
I've also been active at metametameta, and created lexiconga where I'm slowly uploading the text of the filings for the WB/JKR v RDR Books trial. (The Harry Potter Lexicon trial.)

I'm still commenting in some places on LJ, but I don't check it as often. And I'm not getting most email notifications of comments (I get some, but not others. Weird.), so I lose track of conversations, and I probably won't notice replies to older comments in other people's journals. (I look at LJ from My LJ, so I know when people have commented on my journal. It's everywhere else that I have trouble tracking.)

For anyone who missed the background:
I'm very unhappy with the various censorships by the owners. This includes Strikethrough last May and June, the unsearchable interest terms (many still unsearchable), the temporary removal of interests from the publicly-viewable listings of top intersts (wouldn't want potential advertisers to know that a lot of people at LJ like sex, fairies or bisexuality). And since they've removed Basic accounts as an option for new accounts, and are working on a new sponsored-paid account... there will be more and more ads creeping into LJ. I don't like ads. I especially don't like ads that support the idea that a customer protest is blackmail and intimidation. And I'm not comfortable with the explore feature that can spotlight communities whether the mods want it or not, unless they f'lock the whole community.

It's possible this is my last public post here. It's possible this is my last post, period, and I'll only use this account to read & comment in other people's journals. It was... interesting, not posting for a whole month.

Five Years (what a surprise) (my brain hurts a lot)

2008-04-01T07:08:33Z

I got my LiveJournal account April 1st, 2003. So it's my LJversery. Or something. Half a decade is a long time online; no wonder I'm not finding it easy to leave.

I think back at what brought me to LJ. I'd show you the post that convinced me to buy an account, but it's f'locked now. (Not specifically, I think; the whole journal's gone f'locked.) I'd joined for pretty much no time when I went to a sig-picture design group at delphiforums, and asked if someone could make this icon for me--I had the fairy-in-a-circle image, but wasn't skilled enough at Photoshop to put a rainbow behind it. And I wanted "sparklies," details unspecified. I was very, very happy with it. I still am. (I think it was by tx_leigh... but I can't remember for certain. And I should, and I'm sorry about that. Because anyone who can design the icon that still says "me" for the recipient five years later deserves a prize.)

I was most active in pagan groups, not fannish ones, when I first joined LJ; I had a lot of experience in different online pagan forums, and it was easy for me to learn my way around new ones--I quickly identified potential allies, people who were interesting even if they disagreed, and people who were active and I thought were complete twits. I knew how to spot the difference between a newbie-pagan who had picked up sloppy terminology from poorly-written books, and was all hope and sincerity, and a wannabe-pagan who had decided that this cool new trend would make them beautiful/popular/spooky/whatever.

Can't remember exactly how I found slash on LJ. I do know that I did some interest searches and some google searches, and started discovering it on my own; read rec lists and fics and didn't comment on anything (at first, 'cos a lot of the rec lists were for stuff not on LJ; later, 'cos I'm still not sure how to comment--I hate being the fortieth person to say "ooh wow this was really cool.")

And just as I started getting really comfortable here--just as I got used to the idea that I could be actively pagan and fannish, and still post the occasional political or home-lifey post and entertain people, just as I was getting used to the idea of writing fic, not just reading it, and participating in meta-discussions--boom, strikethrough. Damn. All gone.

Okay, not "all gone." But crippled. The LJ-that-was is never coming back. Too many flocks, too much spotlight, too many ads, too much offsite harvesting of public posts. People have scattered, have purged f'lists, have become more cautious about what they say. And dammit... we've lost something. Something important.

I want to bring up my favorite (if that's the right word) "meme" on LJ. The one that hit me hardest; the one I still think about and revisit. August 2nd, 2004, misia (whom I've never exchanged comments with, AFAIK), wrote a post about sexual abuse. It contained the words,

“I wondered for a moment what it would look like if just for one day, everyone who had survived sexual violence were visible as a survivor, if we could actually see the extent of it, if we could all know just how very not-alone we are. I wondered how angry and sad it would make me to know. I wondered how much power there might be in the truth.”

I've never read it. By the time the meme got to my f'list, the original post had been locked; it's maybe been deleted. But it swept LJ, sparked hundreds of replies. (At the time I collected them, I could read them all. This is no longer the case; many have been flocked or removed, some journals have been deleted.) The first week of August 2004, I read dozens, maybe hundreds of posts that said,

I’m ______. I’m a survivor of sexual violence.
No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.

If you weren't reading LJ that week, I don't think I can express how powerful it was. It felt like strikethrough without the wank. (Not that there wasn't wank. There were plenty of people saying that this was all some massive pity-party, or that Person X was faking it to get attention, or that some of these women should just get over it already. But the wank got the attention it deserved, and the supportive posts and shy comments and survivor comms and funding drives for shelters & self-defense classes continued.) If you had to read just one, I'd recommend joedecker's mostly link collection, in proper traditional LJ style.

And that's what we've lost, that's what 6Apart and SUP never understood as the magic and power that LiveJournal used to have. It changed people's lives... it wasn't just a window into the activities of fascinating strangers (we have television for that, and more reality TV every week); it was a way to interact with them and transform ourselves. And them. A way to share joy to increase it, to share sorrow to lessen it. A way to connect, not just with people who share our interests ('cos hey, the whole rest of the web exists for divorced ex-Rosicrucian pervy hobbit fanciers with Aspergers to set up communities), but with people who found us through friend of a friend of a friend (of a friend) who might say, "oh! I, too, had an encounter with a landlord's girlfriend on crack! Let me tell you what worked for me..." or "yes, I remember that song from childhood" or "no, I don't think flag-burning is [ruining/saving] America, and I'll tell you why..."

LiveJournal expanded our monkeysphere.
And all the wailing and gnashing of teeth at the corporate overlords will not bring it back, will not make them agree that any place, any software, any meme that can do that, for so many diverse people, is precious and needs to be cherished and nurtured, even if it doesn't make much of "a profit" in a way that makes sense to the IRS.

Because as our nation grows, as our world grows, we need to know each other as people. We need to share hopes, share fears, share random wanky comments. Because we can always empathize with "the poor starving children in outer Mongolia"... it's the street thugs in Brooklyn, the Republican dog-breeders in Montana, the psychadelic hippies still living in the 60s in Berkeley, the average housewife in Iowa, that we lack communion with. It's not the exotic and alien and downtrodden, but the person six miles away from the part of town you never drive through because they're not your kind of people, that we have trouble relating to, trouble believing their opinions could matter to us.

LJ showed that they matter. That we can celebrate our differences and still build on our similarities. The other journal clones don't prevent that... but it's harder to build what's already happened spontaneously. We're all a lot more cautious; the business-world is a bit more web-savvy so there's a lot more anonymity and f'locking; we're all a bit scared of being hurt again.

Oh, maybe I've got that wrong. Maybe "we" aren't. Maybe it's just me.
It's my five-year LJversary, and I just want to cry.

Categories of hate

2008-03-26T08:11:55Z

Saw a post today about kids being a good choice for those who got into parenting via informed consent. On the surface, a nice enough idea. Made me slightly uneasy, but nothing settled enough to comment. (The vast majority of the planet is not here because of informed consent. And while yes, we have a population problem--or rather, a resource distribution problem--the answer is not "only those with a college education and a couple of parenting classes should have children.") I probably wouldn't have noticed, except I've been reading various comments about "radical feminist" views, including the notion that the vast majority of m/f sex is "probably rape," which leads me to wonder how the radical feminists think the world should be populated in the future.

But that's a kind of parenting meta that I can hash out some other time. (Someday, I will do the incredibly raging and accusatory anti-"childfree" rant. For the nonparents on my f'list: Got no problems with nonparents. But if you intend to be around in 20-30 years, and you want people to be ringing up your purchases and making clothes for you to wear... don't diss parenting. Someone's got to raise the people you want waiting on you--or tending to your medical needs--in a few decades.)

What got to me:
Someone replied to the post saying basically, "of course I agree with you that kids are not always the right decision; I hate kids; I not only never want to have any, I can't stand being around them at all. Eww yuck kids. Nasty things they are." (I'm probably exaggerating a bit. But not about "I hate kids.") And that bothered me. Not enough to comment (b'sides, getting into debates about children in a childfree person's journal is rarely a good thing for parents), in part because I couldn't figure out what bothered me. It finally hit me:

If she'd said, "I hate Muslims, can't stand to be around them even for a few minutes, would never date one, wish I didn't have to see them when I go shopping"--she would've been soundly denounced as a horrible bigot. Had she defended her opinion, the wank would've exploded across ten journals. But arguing against hatred-of-children gets rolled eyes and shrugs, and all the non-parents on one's f'list take a polite step away from the "radical" parent.

I don't expect people to denounce her. I don't expect, nor want, similar statements about kids to be denounced. I'm contemplating which categories of people it's considered acceptable to despise based on category alone (children, apparently; convicted criminals, for most people; "the wealthy" in many cases; people who practice vices of various sorts; perhaps other groups), which ones it's socially unacceptable to denounce by category (races, religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations), and which are in a fuzzy area (genders--it's okay for a woman to say "I hate men" and for a man to say "I don't understand women"; old people; various disabilities)... and which are considered so irrelevant that people look at you funny if you say you notice them at all.

That'd be the categories with no privilege attached, I believe: zodiac signs, dancers, knitters, geeks, and so on. (My husband has a firm policy of "No [more] pisces roommates." Nobody thinks he's serious about that, because they have trouble believing you could discriminate on the basis of zodiac sign.)

So I'm contemplating how we categorize ourselves and each other, and which categories are considered acceptable to have prejudices about and which ones aren't. Which ones are considered matters of chosen activity and therefore acceptable to draw conclusions from ("I always try to include some non-drivers at my parties; they have such interesting opinions") and which are considered physicall inherent and therefore off-limits for personality assumptions.

And I'm trying to consider these issues from this perspective, I think, to avoid my sense of absolute outrage at the notion that it's okay to hate people, to despise human beings, because they happen to be born 15 years after you were.

(Am leaving this public. I know it could get wanky. To avoid wank, focus on how we categorize people, and why some categories are acceptable to make assumptions about, and why some aren't.)

Comments enabled at matching InsaneJournal post.

LJ Content Strike: Friday Mar 21

2008-03-19T06:52:18Z

I'm never sure how effective one-day boycotts are. But I'm perfectly willing to join them. Especially given how SUP's director of blogs thinks "there's never been a successful company whose success was based on bowing to collective resistant forces"... note that he's calling his paying customers "resistant forces." (The full text of the interview is... informative. I'll leave it at that. Go boggle.)

Details of the boycott/strike available at http://beckyzoole.livejournal.com/395125.html.
(Starts at:
Thursday, March 20, 5:00 PM -- San Francisco; Los Angeles
Thursday, March 20, 6:00 PM -- Mexico City; Denver
Thursday, March 20, 7:00 PM -- Chicago
Thursday, March 20, 8:00 PM -- Montreal; New York)

I like thinking of it as a strike--it's a way to affirm that *we work for LJ*--we create something of value for them: Content that draws viewers who read ads, or might pay for an account later. That we don't "pay for a product;" we create a marketplace for their widgets. That without user-generated content, a great muchness of which is created by nonpaying users, it really doesn't matter how many layout options or tracking gizmos they come up with.

We're not their customers; we're freelance employees, working for access to the nifty rss aggregate that is the LJ friendslist and some of the coding features attached. And mostly, we're happy with that pay scale; we do this in our free time, at our leisure, by our own schedules and to the amount of our whims. But we're aware that we don't need to be HERE... we could have our own blog sites elsewhere, or be on FaceBook or MySpace or Tribe instead; we've chosen LJ because we liked the atmosphere, we liked what it used to stand for. We need to point out that if we're not respected, we can leave... that even if no other site offers the same e-widgets, we are not so stupid and addicted that we're unable to change. And hey... it wouldn't take massive leaving of LJ to make a huge impact... just a few less posts a month each, over time.

If your journal is googleable, please post about it; I like that the phrase "LJ content strike" gets 405,000 hits already.
Some people at InsaneJournal are planning (or quasi-planning) a meta-fest content spike for InsaneJournal. If you don't have a non-LJ account, now's a great time to create one, or use your openID to comment on IJ posts.

LiveJournal Content Strike, Friday, March 21, midnight to midnight GMT.
Один день без контента
No posts. No comments. No content.

More interest-related censorship from LJ

2008-03-15T15:14:45Z

stewardess points out that porn, sex, and fanfiction have been removed from LJ's most popular interests page.

Yeah, they're working hard on improvements in content delivery... by removing access to content they wish they didn't host. (And that part about "increasing certain limits for Basic and Plus users?" Ummm... they'll be increasing the status points you get for having a Basic account, since they're not available anymore.)

In case anyone's forgotten, there's still a whole bunch of interests you can't search for.

No more Basic/Free LJ accounts

2008-03-13T14:35:50Z

From the FAQ: New accounts (created after March 12, 2008) may choose between Plus and Paid account levels.

A comment in no_lj_ads says that it's based on UserID number; past a certain point won't be able to select "basic." Theoretically, currently paid accounts will have the Basic option when they revert, but hey, that could change tomorrow.

A (the?) VP of Product Development says, "it was more about creating a new registration process that was easier for new users to understand. ...it was quite confusing and included a table of options that was not very inviting to new users."

Riiiight. It's not about "every account needs to give us money in addition to content that draws paid users," it's about simplifying things for those poor idiots who just can't handle THREE account creation choices. jasonshellen thinks we're all gully dwarves.

brad is not happy, did not advise this... but was not consulted. That advisory board? It'll apparently be asked about new themes & layouts; they're not interested in their opinions about policies or business decisions.

Sorry, folks. End of an era.

A Plea to Stop Using Movie Ratings for Fic

2008-03-11T03:57:02Z

I don't like using MPAA ratings (G, PG, R, NC-17) for fanfic. They are (1) designed for movies, not text, (2) often applied badly to fic, because the standards are so vague, and (3) used by the MPAA to discriminate against topics they finds offensive, gay sex being at the top of that list. And I don't want to support a system that says "gay sex is more obscene than het sex."

Current MPAA Ratings: http://www.mpaa.org/FlmRat_Ratings.asp
Check the contradiction in the NC-17 rating: "The rating simply signals that the content is appropriate only for an adult audience. An NC-17 rating can be based on violence, sex, aberrational behavior, drug abuse or any other element that most parents would consider too strong and therefore off-limits for viewing by their children." (Emphasis added)

We've decide these are only for adults, even though
We admit that some parents would allow their children to watch them.

Caught that? We will decide what's appropriate for your children, based on the will of the majority, as we perceive it.

Some history --

1930 - The MPAA adopts the "Production Code" (also known as the Hays Code) - a set of industry guidelines governing the production of American films: 1. No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin. 2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented. 3. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.
1966 - MGM becomes the first MPAA member company to violate the production code, releasing the film "Blowup" without a certificate of approval. In the same year, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf" is released by Warner Bros., featuring an unprecedented amount of profanity and sexual implication. These two films ultimately break the back of the production code, prompting Jack Valenti to begin work on a new rating system.
1968 - The Production Code is abandoned and the MPAA introduces a rating system. Originally, the rating system offered four ratings - G, M, R, and X.
1980 - In order to receive an R, William Friedkin has to cut 40 minutes from his film "Cruising," featuring Al Pacino as an undercover cop investigating gay bars in order to track a serial killer. Almost 30 percent of the original film ends up on the cutting room floor.
1999 - Collette Burson's "Coming Soon," a teen comedy about three girls' search for an orgasm, is rated NC-17 when the filmmaker expected a PG-13 rating, prompting questions of whether the MPAA favors depictions of male sexuality over female sexuality. In an interview with Seattle Weekly, Burson said, "Men who have issues with their sexuality, or issues with their daughters' sexuality—we're talking about men in their 40s with seventeen-year-old daughters—they're the audience that does not respond to this movie, and unfortunately many of them are in marketing." ("Not now, girls" by Bret Fetzer, 7/7/1999) http://www.seattleweekly.com/film/9927/film-fetzer.html
1999 - In order to receive an R instead of an NC-17, Jamie Babbit removes a scene where a fully clothed female masturbates from her film "But I'm a Cheerleader." Also in 1999, the R-rated "American Pie" is released. Even the "American Pie" trailers include scenes of a male teenager masturbating.

So. The MPAA ratings are biased against female sexuality, against gay sexuality. When asked in "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" why gay films were rated more restrictively, Kori Bernards, the MPAA's vice president of publicity, said that "we don't try to set the standards, we just try to reflect them." (So… racism and sexism are okay, as long as they're majority opinions?)

But setting aside, for the moment, the idea that any male-male eroticism should create an R-rated fic, there's the other problem: we're dealing with text, not moving pictures. Does the word "cock" automatically make an "R" rating? (If it refers to male anatomy, that is; I assume that references to "born in the year of the cock" are okay for any rating.) Does an obvious description of male genitalia make it "R" or NC-17," even if only "tame" words are used? If the genitalia being described is covered at the time, does that lessen the rating? If the fic says "Hermione rushed out of the shower naked, blushing as she passed Ron on the stairs," is that PG-13, or R? If her nipples hardened as she did so, does that bump it up a notch?

And then we have to think of violence... Passion of the Christ was rated R. This means pretty much any amount of graphically violent torture tops out at R; there's no such thing as NC-17 for violence. NC-17 only means sex.

Using the MPAA ratings means you support the idea that violence is more appropriate for children then sex. That no amount of violence is too intense or damaging for children (as long as they've got parental supervision)... but female masturbation is utterly off-limits.

And WTF does "R-rated fic" mean, anyway? A minor can read this with parental supervision? PG—parental guidance advised? Does ANYONE expect their fic to be read with parental support?

If you want to limit your fic by age, say that: People under 13 should not read this fic. Do not read if you're under 18. If, however, you prefer to stick to US legal standards (I can't speak for laws in other countries), which include no restrictions on text, and allow the reader to decide for herself (or, I suppose, himself) what to read, rate by content, not by reader: This fic has explicit sex and mild violence. This fic has graphic violence. This fic has no explicit scenes. This fic deals with possibly triggery topics; details in white text; highlight to read. This fic features the following kinks: A, B, C. This fic has erotic romance but no explicit detail. And so on.

If you're not sure how to rate your fic, I happily suggest maeglinyedi's Proposed New Ratings. (Warning: post is over three years old. But it's still hilarious.)

Comments may be left at the InsaneJournal post.

New LJ Policy

2008-03-11T01:19:29Z

New policy is up at draft policy page (compare to current policies here); they said that they want conversation (and should complete the consultation process by "the end of May"--contrast with the 100 day plan of "Establish a clear set of policy guidelines by mid-March).

My thoughts:
Not gonna bother. I did my arguing last round (Last several rounds?) I asked lots of questions about definitions. They were ignored. I've still got two open support requests, being ignored for a couple of months now.

From the initial staff comments in the "discussion," it's obvious that there will be no definition of "sexually explicit"--it'll be assumed that "you know it when you see it." Or at least, "we know it when we see it." There will be no definition of "minor" in relation to art--staff will decide if art depicts a minor based on their own biases, not based on canon of whatever it might be a picture of, and not based on an understanding of different artistic styles. There will be no definition of "promotion" of the three super-icky topics, which have to get their own special mention away from content that encourages other crimes.

Definitely, the phrase "graphic and explicit in nature" will not be defined. They gave an example (image with nudity, sexuality, or violence... how much, not mentioned); we should all understand exactly what they mean by that.

In short: the new policy is, "if it squicks us, it's not allowed. What we think is hateful squicks us. Pictures that we think eroticise children squick us. Erotic text, at this point, does not squick us. Except maybe we think kids shouldn't be able to see it, even if it's legal for them."

So much for "we support freedom of speech," which they've often stated in the past. If it doesn't include speech you find morally reprehensible, it's a useless statement. Saying "LiveJournal has chosen not to host it due to its highly controversial nature" shows that LJ doesn't care about free speech; it cares about advertising dollars, which are not gained by controversial content. (And next year, what "controversial" topics will LJ "choose not to host?")

I expect to be posting much more at IJ, and also to be crossposting most public posts (which I don't expect to do many of) with LJ comments turned off. I've given up on LJ; I just have to sort out whether I dislike and distrust them enough to lose touch with the people I value at LJ. (C'mon, F'list, make IJ accounts so I can friend you there and set up my filters properly.)

The IJ Clone of this post at http://elfwreck.insanejournal.com/162233.html allows comments.

A Linguistic Consideration

2008-03-05T22:46:30Z

Driving to the store yesterday, I saw a billboard advertising

1260 AM Catholic Radio

Share the ♥ of the Christian faith.

And I wondered...
should I read that as "Share the love of the Christian faith" or
"share the heart of the Christian faith?"

The meaning changes. Interesting.

Eris help me

2008-03-04T01:39:23Z

Today, I got to explain the extremely technical and exotic concept of "email list" to tech support at my ISP.

*headdesk*

See, we have a mailing list where some of the mail gets tagged as spam. Not all, which would (presumably) be simple to fix (or impossible to fix, depending). Called tech support. Said, "I'm not getting all my email from one of my lists." It's not a Yahoogroup or other "big company" mailing list; it's one of the old style ones where you subscribe & unsub by sending an empty email to [name]-request@domain.com with the appropriate word in the subject line.

I thought I might have to explain, no, it's not a yahoogroup; I can't read the archives online.

Instead, I had to explain how an email list works. No, they're not sending email to me which is bouncing. They're sending it to the list. No, we don't have any problems sending mail to people on the list, nor the list itself. The mail comes from [person] with a reply-to of [list]. No, I'm not going to send you all the email addresses involved; there are hundreds.

No, it is not acceptable to say "well, if it's sending email to hundreds of people at once, of course it'll get tagged as spam."

Halp?

Happy St. Tib's Day!

2008-02-29T14:47:23Z

St. Tib's day is a Discordian holiday that happens once every four years (except for century-years not divisible by 400 or something like that). The traditional celebration of St. Tib's Day involves dressing in brightly-colored exotic clothes and wandering around an airport, occasionally asking the staff to page someone who doesn't exist. Erisian bonus points if you can get them to ask "Mike Hunt" to come to the elevator lobby.

LJ has its advisory board

2008-02-29T00:44:05Z

http://community.livejournal.com/lj_2008/3384.html:

danah boyd, Esther Dyson, Lawrence Lessig, Brad Fitzpatrick.

Keyboard probs

2008-02-28T08:44:03Z

Ourkeyboard is dying. Spacebar sticking.A lot.

Grrr.

Note to self: No,cannot rinse out keyboard. If the kids have managed to insert juice behind the keys,there'sreally not much I can do about it except replace board.

PermInsane going away

2008-02-25T15:27:56Z

Last chance for Permanent accounts at InsaneJournal; at the end of Feb, they go away for an unknown amount of time; when they come back, they'll cost a lot more than $40.

Now's the time to get them if you've been thinking about it.

Escapade

2008-02-23T06:34:07Z

I officially am planning on going to Escapade. I know this is a last-minute decision. I couldn't decide for sure until after PantheaCon last weekend.

I have not yet bought
1) Membership,
2) Room,
3) Transport.

Membership's easy. $125 thrown at a website. No decisions involved in that. The other two are troublesome.

My husband's going to look into what he might be able to do in the area, if he drove me. (He has somewhat less than no interest in the con itself.) He flies RC airplanes, so he'll be looking for model clubs nearby; if there's a known cliff with a regular weekend crowd within an hour's drive of the hotel, that'd be perfect.

If that doesn't pan out, the other main options are Amtrak or "ride down with someone." Amtrak takes just under 10 hours each way, and costs $46 each way. I'd be much happier throwing that money at a person, and probably cutting the time in half. (I suppose airlines are a possibility, but the idea of dealing with LA's public transit from LAX to Ventura gives me fits. And I really don't want to fly.) FWIW, I live in Oakland, work in downtown San Francisco, and can get to most of the Bay Area on public transit.

Room. Hmm. Rooms is pricey. I could maybe afford a room on my own (I might have to), but that moves the weekend to over $500 in base costs--it means I buy *nothing* while I'm there, and try to survive mostly on snacks I bring with me. Anyone(s) looking for a roommate?

I suppose I need to make decisions and all that by the end of the weekend.

Anyone surprised?

2008-02-19T19:29:33Z

You Are 85% Burned Out

You are extremely burned out.

You work too hard, and you're not getting the results you deserve.

It's time for a life change, as soon as you can manage it.

You're giving away most of your energy to something you don't even enjoy.

Are You Burned Out?

And that's immediately after a "relaxing" weekend surrounded by friends.

I didn't even have to fudge the answers. It's always a bit spooky when my answers for everything actually fit with the choices (even when the choices are the always/sometimes/never variety); usually, there are some questions where I say, "well, maybe this, or maybe that, or it depends on whether I take this word to mean today or most of the time, or something else..." But this time, nope; nice clear answers for everything.

Shudder.

I'm back.

2008-02-19T03:12:53Z

I left Friday morning before 9. I haven't been online at all in three and a half days. If there's anything you think I really should see/know, please point me at it.

Discordian Magic presentation @ PantheaCon

2008-02-15T04:06:17Z

I'm giving a talk (or, umm, something like that) on Discordian Magic (or, umm, something like that) at PantheaCon tomorrow at 3:30 pm.

P'con's at the Hilton Doubletree in San Jose. Odds are, if you didn't already know this, you weren't going to be there.

I will have handouts. And eight different discordian magic spells for people to take home.

A Discordian Koan

2008-02-14T07:45:12Z

This is a poll at my IJ, but I figured I'd open the topic for discussion here.

When stranded far from home and surrounded by enemies, you want:

Lawyers, guns and money.
Captain Jack Sparrow.
Five tons of flax.
A bathtub full of brightly-colored East German power tools and a butterfly net.
An infinite improbability drive.

I am ugly.

2008-02-12T08:14:47Z

We are all, sometimes, ugly; we have dark and vicious thoughts, and insensitive beliefs, and shallow interests we spend too much energy on, and we all occasionally over-react or hurt someone who didn't deserve it. (Whether anyone "deserves" to be hurt is a question for another time.)

Inasmuch as I am ugly--in the areas I am not kind and generous and graceful and considerate and loving--I will not hide. I do not want people believing lies about me, thinking I am defined only by my best behavior and my most beautiful thoughts.

That doesn't mean I need to inflict my ugliness on random strangers, push my deformities and vices into their faces. But it does mean I have an obligation to not pretend to be other than I am--and part of what I am is ugly. The more random people who look at me, the more obligation I have to share my ugliness, to say "I am not hiding behind a veil. I wear no burkah to entice your interest or hide my flaws." And if you would skim past my flaws--only look at me in profile, or make sure the lighting is right, or walk quickly past when I am contorted into an unpleasant shape--well, you may do that, but I will not appreciate it. I have no interest in acceptance or respect for "the person I could be, if I were different."

In this quest we all share, this "life on earth" game, I do not need or want allies or friends who will abandon me unexpectedly if they have to look at my whole face. If my friends believe I am ugly, and that can and should be fixed--if I have a distorted mole that makes my eyes look angry, or a hunched back that hinders my movement and makes my dancing a gawky travesty that trips the other dancers--they can tell me. And they may have to accept that I may resist... that mole has been a part of my face for a long time, and I would have to re-learn how to dance. If I am living in my own filth, than so are many of the people dear to me, and we have grown accustomed to our stench. No matter how offensive my ugliness is, it is part of me, and I am at peace with myself.

Doth my ugliness offend thee? Look away; avert, avert. Six and a half billion other people live on this planet; look at them instead. Don't give me the power to make your life miserable.

I am not ashamed of who I am. I am not ashamed of being ugly. I could be convinced to learn beauty--to stand straight, to walk smoothly and gracefully and dance with elegance. To wash the tattered filthy rags that have sheltered me for so long; to trade them for new shining garments. I would like that, I think. Some of my ugliness, I want to change. I may seek out help for this... I can't put myself into a back-brace; I can't re-learn to walk without help. I am baffled at the choices of new garments, and unsure if they'd only be shiny for a short time and then be filthy rags again. I crave guidance in these matters. But such lessons will not begin with shame and guilt.

The words, "she could do so much better if only she tried," never inspired anyone. I am not here to meet your expectations, or to create the world you believe would be best for everyone. If we agree--if we share a vision of a better world--then we may discuss our shared parts in that growth. But such sharing will not begin with "my vision is right, and yours is flawed and wrong; remove the beam from your eye that you may see the beautiful world I envision."

If you would have me change, you must speak to me. To me: lover of strong men and brave women, cuddler of sleepy children, writer of rants and fervent prayers; she who laughs at rainbows and lusts for pirates. And also, forgetter of birthdays, avoider of chores, procastinator of ficwriting; she who snarks at typos and incites flamewars. But still me. I will not play the part of some category you've assigned me to, no matter how well you think I fit there. All complaints or requests aimed at "_____ people [like you]" will be ignored. If you want something from me, if you feel I have an obligation, if my actions have offended, address your words to me.

This is not narcissism--I delight in others' identities as much as my own. This is striking out against a culture that tries to categorize and box us all, that believes that if we first established absolutely and then removed the categories themselves, we'd all agree, we'd all have the same interests and tastes and be, aside from the category of "differences of birth," equally intelligent, creative, loving, and good. As if the world would be a better place if all categories were blended into one, and our sameness could protect us from bias and hatred, because we only hate what's different. As if our differences were limitations, handicaps, something to be overcome or set aside.

I will not live in the Harrison Bergeron world. I do not want to remove our differences. I want to glory in them, and built a beautiful variegated future that embraces such plurality and diversity that no person dares assume how many categories another person belongs to by mere appearance or casual meeting. And I do not believe we can get there by creating new categories, by reinforcing the walls around the ones we have, by saying "[X] people can never be [Y]." Not even with the qualifier, "at least, not in today's society."

Anyone can be anything. This is one of my deepest truths; it is the core of both hope and inspiration. To remove a single category from "anything" is to deny all human potential.

All restrictions, all lacks of possibility, are of the individual. I, perhaps, can never be a mountain climber; I do not have the lungs or arm strength for it, and it's very possible I never did. But there is no group of "people like me" who can never be mountain climbers. "Girls from the suburbs" can be mountain climbers. "Fannish geeks" can be mountain climbers. "Poor white trash" can be mountain climbers. "Argumentative bitches" can be mountain climbers.

Ugly people can be mountain climbers.

...

Hand me those pitons. Point me at Everest. I will take strength, not weakness, from my categories.