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9/8/2015
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12.00 - About me! La-da-da-da.
Who I am: a student, a fandomer, a Reedie, a liberal, an amateur linguist, an amateur writer, and a user of LJ since late 2001.
The deal: This journal is mostly used for storing old entries (now f-locked), cross posting friends-only entries from my other journals, and publicly posting LJ-centric news and rants. I am generally not going to be friending anybody new (though I will still read my flist), but you can add me if you'd like and I'll add you back; I don't mind at all.
Why: After the Strikethrough fiasco of summer 2007 and the absolutely insane things 6A and SUP have tried to do (and done) since, I'm doing my best not to give money to LJ. My five years of paid account expired May 2008. I'm not renewing it.
Other stuff: I just finished a thesis on typographical metafiction and the concept of the remix. Yes, I like to bite off more than I can chew, thankyouverymuch, but apparently it was good enough to merit a degree, so that's something. If you wanna talk to me about House of Leaves or Tristram Shandy or anything else typographical or metafictive or fannish, just, uh, let me know.
Finally: I'm ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) the_fucking Harry Potter of LiveJournal! (I had too. I mean, really.)
mood:  blah
music: Brand New -- Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis (it came on randomly, I swear.)
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where a storm-wind roams
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5/4/2009
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15.31 - Dreamwidth
I'm brownstudy on DW, too. Add me if you like. I will actually make posts over there, especially since college is kind of ending. Or at least I hope college is ending.
Just bought food to feed my thesis orals board tomorrow at 10 AM: bread, cheese, preserves, grapes, juice, tea, and a Trader Joe's sushi plate. I already know I'm going to have to make changes; I'm hoping they'll be relatively minor. *crosses fingers* On the upside, guess who never has to write a thesis again? Oh yeah. That's right. It's me. Awesome.
mood: blah
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4 eyes like a lake | where a storm-wind roams
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5/24/2008
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13.37 - Voting
Read the platforms and vote, guys. This is the only chance we're getting to make LJ suck less. Take it. If at any point you want to change your vote, go here.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rm is, to me, the best candidate, hands down. She's participated in tons of LJ fiascoes with grace, and I can vouch for her being super nice and patient firsthand.
Do not vote for jameth or cambler. Please. The former is a wankstorm who's only running for lulz (seriously -- check out his entry over at ED), and the latter is pitching a (women think) sexist campaign to a primarily female userbase. Dumb, much?
Aja's lovely roundup of the candidates' fandom involvement is here. Pay particular attention to who's a member of fandom_counts. If you care about fandom, or understand that it's one of the most frequently attacked (and therefore underprotected) groups on LJ, vote fandom. Fandomers can and do protect non-fandomers, since what fandom wants is often more liberal than non-fandom. Check out fandom_votes for more about the fandom vote.
ETA: This is useful to read, too, though the community as a whole shouldn't be taken seriously. Obviously.
ETA 2: I am so tired of cambler claiming that people being offended by his campaign amounts to censorship. Being offended =/= advocating censorship. He's allowed to show sexist photos. I'm allowed to be offended. Those aren't at all incompatible. He's totally allowed to post whatever kind of photo he wants. Furthermore, most of the offended people aren't offended by the sex, or the breasts, or whatever, we're offended by how sexist his campaign is. The fact that he doesn't understand this difference just gives me MORE reason not to vote for him.
mood: awake
music: Lisa Harlow Stark -- Daddy's Girl simh
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2 eyes like a lake | where a storm-wind roams
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3/13/2008
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00.51 - Goddamnit, LJ.
1) According to Y!News, that bastion of hard-hitting stories, eight hundred chihuahuas and eighty parrots were seized from a MOBILE HOME in Arizona. I don't know if any of you have ever been in a mobile home, but, uh, you can't fit all that in there. I keep imagining a sea of dogs underneath a sea of flying parrots, who occasionally swoop down and catch the dogs like raptors catch rabbits.
My other favorite part is that the police seized 100 dogs one day and 700 two days later. Seems kinda... uneven. And hilarious, since I feel like they took all the dogs they could fit in their car the first day. Which results in me picturing a sea of chihuahuas underneath a sea of parrots inside a police car.
2 (the important one)) ljnews, recently partially redeemed bastion of I-Wish-It-Weren't-Wank, decided not to tell us that there will be no more ad-free accounts on LJ unless you give them money. I have a long, angry opinion about this, but the gist of it is as follows: A) SUP should try cutting some of the super indulgent crap SixApart loved so much before they say OHNOES WE HAVE NO MONEY. B) Fandomers (and others) who don't have enough money to buy LJ accounts will now have no choice but to worry about the legal risks of having their content associated with a corporate sponsor. C) Hiding things is never okay. Brad doesn't approve, and the LJ advisory board was not consulted, which means that SUP not only hid this from the users, but from LJ as well.
mood: blah
music: none
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2 eyes like a lake | where a storm-wind roams
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9/19/2007
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14.06 - Why you shouldn't opt out.
I've been watching the latest at LJ-biz (via feed) from my vantage point over at Scribblit, and there's something about the response that's really not sitting right with me. From LJ_biz:
Back in January, we announced that we'd start using Omniture SiteCatalyst as the system that lets us dig deeper into how members and visitors use LiveJournal. Back then, we had only used Omniture's tracking on the site-schemed pages of LiveJournal (those are the ones with the LJ menus and header, not the ones that follow your journal's style).
With this new change, we'll now also use Omniture on a very small random sampling (about 5%) of journals and communities, including profile pages, friends pages and comment pages. This change will take place on or after September 27, 2007.
[...]
As always, we are providing a way for any user to opt out of contributing to the stats-gathering (even though we know it runs the risk of statistically biasing our results). If you’d like to opt out, go to the Admin Console and type "set opt_exclude_stats 1". This opt out applies to the entire implementation of Omniture -- site-schemed pages and the new inclusion of journals, profiles and communities. If you've already opted out, you don't need to do so again.
I do have a problem with them tracking my use. It freaks me out. I'm glad there's an opt out, and two years ago I would have taken it. But I'm not going to opt out, and you shouldn't either.
Hear me out. LJ has refused to make this announcement anywhere but in LJ_biz, as can be seen by reading any page of comments to the latest post. They've continued to not make this announcement more widely available even after it's been pointed out that an opt out is worthless if nobody knows about it. There are two groups of people in this debate: the people who think this needs to be announced all over the place (including in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/newsinfo.gif) news), and the people who think it makes no difference whatsoever because the people who want to be aware are already paying attention.
It makes a big, fat difference. The people who are aware, who read _biz, who post about this kind of thing and think about their internet privacy, are the most active of the most active users, the users responsible for disbursing information. These people are frequently in fandom, but that's beside the point, for once. These are the people who are currently opting out. The intelligent, active, mindful userbase is opting out. So who does that leave to get monitored? The people who don't care. The people who use LJ like it's any other run-of-the-mill "social networking" site, who are "new" users. Their information is going to be used to improve the site, suiting it to users' needs.
The casual LJ users generally don't visit the site every day, but we do. The most active of the most active users -- the people who are opting out -- are actually the people who most need to be tracked if we want to see genuine site improvement. What LJ should be doing is tracking everybody, or make it opt in, with their improvements stacked in favor of more frequent users, but that's too much to ask for. The best we can do is hope they track some of us, but as more and more of us opt out, we're losing that chance. I realise it's not exactly the same as having a voice, but it seems like nothing's the same as having a voice with 6A these days, and an impartial data collection robot marking down whether you hate the boxes on the main LJ page is as close as anybody is going to get without taking serious initiative.
Some facts about the data collection from the _biz post (it's not as creepy as it initially appears):
The system will collect information that's pretty straightforward, including what browser you're using, what site scheme you use, your window size, how people travel through the site (what are the common links, where are people going after viewing their friends page, what people are or aren't clicking on), and things like how many page views different parts of the site get.
With this change we will be able to learn more about how you use the site and what areas are confusing or are in need of improvement. We'll also have a good way to help prioritize all of your suggestions based on what people actually use.
Some key points:
* We're only going to apply the cookie to a very small random sampling of users, about 5%.
* We're using the resulting stats to find out what to focus on in the future for LJ.
* The Omniture code doesn’t capture any private data such as payment information provided in the Gift Shop.
* Omniture does not have access to friends-only or private entries.
Note that LJ will not be judging us, just looking at which parts of the site we use.
What I see here is a chance for the people who use LJ all the time -- who are, like I said, the ideal people to track -- to have their site usage patterns noticed. Since LJ seems to be bent on ignoring their older, more active userbase in favor of the newer users, this is a nice, objective way to be counted. For every one of us who opts out, we become less likely to be noticed. Protesting and complaining when something goes wrong are all well and good, but if LJ has been collecting statistics that go directly against what we're telling them, how seriously can they take us?
So how do I opt back in?
Enter "set opt_exclude_stats 0" in the admin console.
---
ETA: Go ahead and link this up.
ETA2: Note that the latest news post contains more about Knocked Up coming to DVD than it does about LJ getting a new CEO.
ETA3: We should have everyone we know who doesn't use their journal at all opt out, and we should opt out all the names we don't use very often. Shrink the pool, guys.
mood:  annoyed
music: Rie fu -- Shine
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10 eyes like a lake | where a storm-wind roams
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8/10/2007
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8/9/2007
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15.31
ETA: Consider signing this letter.
---
This is the place to go for making suggestions on what the site we're moving to (or your ideal blogging site, if you're not moving) should be like. The only thing I don't agree with are the editable comments, which I extra do not support. Unprecedented wank would ensue.
In case you're setting up shop over at GreatestJournal, be warned. GJ will remove fanart in a manner similar to LJ's.
The guy who runs InsaneJournal is awesome. If it comes down to choosing between GJ and IJ, I would recommend IJ for a number of reasons, his willingness to toss advertisers before us just being one.
Of course, I'm still pulling for Scribblit, even if it has decided to go over 18 only. The only thing that makes Scribblit different from JournalFen at this point seems to be that JF is overtly fandom-run and based in the U.S., whereas Scribblit will probably be based in Canada and run with a little less emphasis on fandom.
Please go here to make TOS suggestions. I'd like more; this is helping me think.
( News, links, and new developments. )
mood:  anxious
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where a storm-wind roams
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8/8/2007
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16.51 - A post that I hope you guys will actually answer, instead of just reading.
Hey, guys.
I'm a beta tester over at Scribblit, which is looking like it's going to be a really fun, fandom-friendly, regular person-friendly, Canada-based, eighteen plus service using LJ's coding. We're trying to hash out the Terms of Service, and I want to directly ask you guys what you want in an ideal TOS/user agreement. I know this has been asked in a lot of places, but I wanted to give you guys a chance to say what you think on a post made by someone who is currently discussing what will soon be a very real TOS. I love my flist and I respect all of you a lot. You can refer your flists to this post, too; the more responses, the better. Even if you're not moving off of LJ, I still want to know what your ideal TOS would say.
PLEASE REPLY HERE, NOT ON SCRIBBLIT.
( The questions currently under discussion. )
You can also address anything else you think falls under TOS, but please don't tell me features you want the site to provide. I'm not the right person for that.
Thanks, guys, for all your help. ♥
mood: accomplished
music: bleach
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8 eyes like a lake | where a storm-wind roams
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11.39 - PLEASE READ THIS.
ETA: Oh, goddamnit, guys, there's more.
ETA2: Archive of all official comments, because they are determined not to make this easy for us.
---
Still quitting LJ. Need to show this to people who care because they are on LJ.
So, lj_biz's response. Their response itself isn't that bad, minus it making me feel like they think I'm a pedophile and not explaning why they have the worst customer service of all time, but HOLY GOD. READ THE THREADS ON ANOREXIA, EVEN IF YOU DON'T READ THE REST OF THIS. PEOPLE WHO WORK FOR LJ ARE SAYING THAT ANOREXIA ENCOURAGEMENT COMMS ARE NOT A VIOLATION OF THE TOS (WHICH EXPRESSLY PROHIBITS GIVING ADVICE ON HOW TO HARM OTHERS OR YOURSELF) AND THEY WILL NOT TAKE THEM DOWN.
anorexia, nazis, lj sucking hard, etc.: http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/241884.html?thread=12454876#t12454876
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/241884.html?thread=12681436#t12681436
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/241884.html?thread=12553692#t12553692
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/241884.html?thread=13482460#t13482460
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/241884.html?thread=12482780#t12482780
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/241884.html?thread=13443804#t13443804
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/241884.html?thread=12521692#t12521692
THE DIGG: GO DIGG IT.
( links to comments about more general things that also suck. )
I'm very, very proud to be friends with the people on my flist who are over there yelling. This anorexia bit is easily the most irresponsible thing 6A has ever, ever, EVER said.
mood:  infuriated
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5 eyes like a lake | where a storm-wind roams
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8/6/2007
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15.00 - Hi.
ETA: You know shit is bad when BRAD IS LEAVING.
ETA2: A good article to read. And click here to see the new abuse panel. Note that we cannot report people who work for 6A.
---
I've been writing this post in my head for four days, and it's still incredibly painful to write.
I'm moving off of LJ. After six years of first lurking, then commenting, and generally going merrily along. After four years of being brownstudy.
If you don't know what's going on, read the following. Where there was an option, I linked away from LJ. ( Here. )
Here's how this is going to work for me: I will continue to post on LJ; however, I am withdrawing all financial support and requesting a refund. Not that I'll ever get one. Until September 8th, posts will either be directly on LJ or links to posts I'm making somewhere else. Commenting will remain on. After 9/8, all LJ posts will be links to posts made elsewhere, and commenting will be off on my LJ (my WHOLE LJ, except for an explanatory post at the top), with anony commenting and Open commenting turned on everywhere else. I will probably turn wherever I've relocated to into a feed that you can put on your flist. After that, I will be following the plan the people in favor of a gradual mass movement are developing.
I'm still deciding whether to lock and/or private all my entries, and whether they will be reuploaded on GJ or somesuch. I will probably NOT be deleting my LJ. I have no idea how I'm going to comment on your posts, guys, but hopefully I'll figure it out by September.
Please don't comment just to tell me that leaving LJ is stupid. Please.
who I am:
brownstudy on InsaneJournal and JournalFen
torrentofbabies on GreatestJournal and WordPress
a beta tester on Scribblit (currently my favorite. ♥♥♥♥)
( All the links you or I will ever need for leaving LJ. Updated as info becomes available. )
To parallel my post from last time, we're fucked. LJ is extra super officially no longer fandom safe space. I am saying get off now, especially if you participate in a fandom or support anything "illegal." Definitely switch to a basic, ad-free account and make sure you make accounts elsewhere and back up your journal.
If you think this doesn't or can't affect you, remember the "first they came for the communists" stuff. Non-fandomers, odds are that someone on your flist other than me is going to be screwed by this, too.
If there are any lurkers reading my LJ -- something I seriously doubt -- now is the time to alert me to your existence. I don't want to accidentally exclude anyone who wants to read me and/or likes me in my efforts to keep track of all of you as I'm doing this.
Update: Have LJ Archive up through this entry.
Update 2: Have switched all public entries posted before 5/1/2007 to general friendslock. I may or may not be undoing this at some point. If anyone has any entries of mine in their memories they will want to be able to to access, tell me now.
Update 3: Have mostly moved journal to InsaneJournal.
Update 4: Have downsized flist.
mood: intimidated
music: Coheed
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4 eyes like a lake | where a storm-wind roams
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7/19/2007
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02.15
Still no spoilers here. Screening comments, though. It feels like the right thing to do.
I officially just had a freakout, and now am sobbing uncontrollably.
If you've ever shipped H/D, if you've ever read goodfic or badfic or crackfic, look. Just. Look.
And that freakout was before I saw this.
I know that everybody knows this, and that Malfoy's LJ is, y'know, just a person, but really? When you were reading NA, it was Malfoy. It is Malfoy. And it's just Harry. And seeing them is making me cry even harder.
monochromal is talking about what fandom is and what it will be. And because Harry and Draco are there themselves, there is, in the LJ-verse, assurance that they are together. They're watching over the rest of fandom, what we're doing with them, and they're okay.
mood:  nostalgic
music: still the Dirty Dancing song
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where a storm-wind roams
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5/31/2007
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5/30/2007
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16.36 - O fandom! A very long post about LJ.
ETA: We're fucked. LJ is officially no longer fandom safe space. I'm not going to say get off now, but if you participate in a fandom or support anything illegal, you should consider either switching to a basic account or make sure you have a name reserved on GreatestJournal or JournalFen. The lady who got Pornish removed -- well, her blog is here. I link to it very tentatively. She is a neo-confederate, crazy Christian, and a xenophobe. And LIVEJOURNAL LISTENED TO HER. Furthermore, LJ TOLD THE PRESS THAT THEY'RE DOING THIS ON PURPOSE WITHOUT TALKING TO ITS USERS FIRST.
---
This is my original post (before the edit). Note that it is considerably less alarmist.
Read this whether or not you're in a fandom. pornish_pixies is gone. LJ, at the request of a creepy vigilante group, Warriors for Innocence, is suspending some accounts based on their interests only, without looking at their behavior. LJ also did not give the warning it promises in its Terms of Service -- it just started removing accounts.
( If you don't know what's going on yet... )
IF YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON:
I've called some people who know their stuff, and this is what they have to say about the suspension of Pornish etc.:
1) Because there is no monetary value to fanfic and fanart, we will probably need a clear, easily explainable way to prove that they have other value, especially if we want to argue that their sudden disappearance is a breach of contract, which we do. This is not a freedom of speech issue.
2) LJ has definitely violated the Terms by not giving notification in advance. They do have some legal room to do this, since they do get paid by their sponsors and the Terms is a teeny bit vague. (Sidenote: I am reasonably sure that they will lose more money by alienating fandom than if they were to do just about anything else I could think of. We need to say this to SixApart and LJ Abuse directly instead of just pledging not to renew our accounts, since it would take about a year for all of our accounts to run out.)
3) I knew this one already, and many of you probably did too, but just to confirm: FICTION IS ALWAYS LEGAL BECAUSE IT IS NOT REAL. As long as no copyright is violated and everything (on the internet, anyway) is marked with appropriate warnings, we are in the clear. Fanfic is NOT a copyright violation. The only time fic is forbidden is when the author of the original works decides he wants his work to be excluded from fic, and even then it is HARDLY EVER on the grounds of copyright violation.
4) Another obvious one: remember that laws are different in different countries.
5) We need to stick together in this, and keep any one person from being the frontman. It's much more useful to us if we actually handle this as a community. Basically, what you can do legally and what gets associated with you as an individual should be a concern, especially since fandom frequently gets depicted as a bunch of miscreants.
6) If everything was properly disclaimed as both fictitious and adult content, and we were not inviting sexual predators to congregate, we should, technically, be in the clear. Unfortunately, people are stupid, and we're going to have to argue our way through this.
---
( Other things and my opinions. I'll be editing this post as more stuff happens -- I doubt anyone wants any more entries about this on their flist. )
I will not support Livejournal financially until they learn the difference between fiction and reality.
mood:  angry
music: Nirvana -- On a Plain (not acoustic)
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6 eyes like a lake | where a storm-wind roams
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12/3/2005
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12/28/2004
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00.17 - Extra late H/D gift fic.
If you don't slash, you probably ought to ignore this post.
So, erm. Written for idroppedarice, who asked for H/D and said, "for some reason I really feel like reading a legitimate wedding fic." At first I was having a hard time with this, but then it mutated into something I enjoyed. And, Rice, if you don't like it, I will gladly post that parody fic, which I am considerably more confident about.
With thanks to all the people to whom I nervously showed this during editing. Lyric by R.E.M..
( Weather )
mood: nervous
music: OM -- Everything Disappears
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7 eyes like a lake | where a storm-wind roams
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contemplative
relieved
woody allen love