Stewardess

Hello, folks! I am in the process of copying my fanfiction from livejournal to my new insanejournal community account, stewardess_fics. I cannot use lj-sec or another utility to quickly copy entries from one community to another, unfortunately, so it is going to take eons... So long, in fact, I may never get it done, especially as a better option, an archive of our own, is getting closer to launch. Danga Interactive blogging software was never ideally suited for archiving fiction, and I will be happy to leave its 65,535 byte limit behind.

Unlike my LJ account, stewardess_fics at InsaneJournal is a not a locked comm. You can read my fiction at InsaneJournal without having an IJ account.

When all of my fanfiction is moved to IJ (or somewhere else), I will delete my fic at LiveJournal.

10/19/2008 11:40am: An IJ member tells Squeaky Yes On Prop 8 ads are appearing on the site.
10/19/2008 11:56am: Squeaky apologizes, explains the ads are selected automatically by google, and asks for the ad URL.
10/19/2008 11:59am: Member provides URL.
10/19/2008 12:06pm: Squeaky blocks the ad.

Link.

Why did Prop 8 pass? Is it because Prop 8 "received critical support from black voters who flocked to the polls to support Barack Obama for president," as the Associated Press claims?

No, because:

1. Since WWII, when black migration to the golden state peaked, black Californians have been the incredible shrinking minority. In the 2000 census, only 6.7 percent of Californians described themselves as black, compared to 12.1 percent of the USA as a whole. It's fucked, but it's a fact: black voters have very little political power in California.

2. Prop 8 passed overwhelmingly inland, where the population is whitest. Black Californians are concentrated in urban areas along the coast, where Prop 8 lost.

( It's shown best by these two maps from the Los Angeles Times. )

I understand advertisers are supposed to target their audience. A car ad in Good Housekeeping does not look like a car ad in Details. But this banner ad on IMDB...



WTF was the concept here? "Honey, somewhere between the chocolate covered raisins and the second Netflix disk, I totally forgot about family planning."

It uses imagery from America's recent past to suggest Michelle and Barack Obama as targets of assassination. Michelle Obama is in Black Panther guise, Angela Davis style. The caricature of Barack Obama is strikingly like black American leader, and Sunni Muslim, Malcolm X.

Even today, Angela Davis and Malcolm X are arguably the most potent, and most feared, symbols of black political power to white American racists. Malcolm X was murdered. Angela Davis miraculously escaped that fate, despite the best efforts of the FBI and the media to portray her as a gun-toting terrorist.

( Relevant images behind the cut )

I agree with Jon Carroll that nothing is not funny. But even LiveJournal < / sarcasm > draws the line at content which is "harmful, threatening, abusive" and "hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable." The New Yorker cover might as well have depicted Michelle and Barack Obama with lynching ropes around their necks.

Edit: New Yorker editor David Remnick defends SGA fanfic portraying Ronon as a barista. Just kidding. Kinda.

I (unfairly) blame mrkinch for this.

( For Bay Area residents only? )

I'm hideously embroiled in personal business, but I must comment on Dreamwidth, a "technical and social fork of the LiveJournal codebase, brought to you by people who have been working in social networking for the best part of the last decade."

It sounds great, but Dreamwidth is being established as a profit-based business. It doesn't matter how talented and idealistic the people working on it are: it will eventually go under, or sell out.

Brad Fitzpatrick wrote beautifully reassuring things about LiveJournal back in 2003. Everything he promised was abandoned. Not because he's a bad person, but because business is business.

No matter how shiny Dreamwidth is, fans need a non-profit, fan-run site. I'm willing to wait for one, and to donate to groups building them. I will not be getting an account at Dreamwidth.

...because I have too much respect for Squeaky.

If Squeaky feels it is a good business practice to compensate members because of the recent outage, than by golly he should do that.

I'm showing my appreciation for Squeaky and this blogging service by checking out which friends o'mine don't have paid accounts yet, and buying a couple.

*waves at morgandawn and amalthia*

InsaneJournal doesn't need our love. It needs our CASH. :D

After reading the responses to a friend's post on sponsored accounts, I decided it was time to point something out.

SUP said from the get-go it acquired LiveJournal for international expansion. The American chunk of LiveJournal is not important to SUP's long range plans.

LiveJournal USA, since its humble beginnings (as Jason Shellen used to say), is a niche market. While some have accused 6A, and then SUP, of trying to turn it into the next MySpace or FaceBook, it would take serious drugs to be that optimistic about its growth potential.

SUP shows no sign of being under the influence of drugs. Its recent changes to USA accounts are geared towards maximizing profit from a static user base. Sponsored accounts, no more basic accounts: that's how to make money when you're stagnating.

To SUP, LiveJournal USA is the flagship department store in a slowly decaying downtown. ( And fandom is the bag lady sleeping in the entry way. )

I can create polls here, but not on LiveJournal. I'm going to ask people to use comments here, too, so I'm getting the same type of feedback.

No need to provide answers to all three; just the ones you can. Recent comments are your friend.

1. When did you notice "guys" return to top interests, ahead of the other filtered interests? Please include the date and your local timezone (don't convert to another timezone). Include AM or PM. Example: March 16 8:00 am EST.

2. When did you notice the filtered interests return? See above for date and time format. Remember, use your local timezone.

3. Did you notice "slash" briefly disappear from top interests? If so, when? See above for date and time format. I have two reports it disappeared, on March 17 3:45 p.m. GMT, and March 17 11 p.m. EST. Many other people also mentioned seeing it disappear. If it was gone, it seems it was gone quite briefly, so exact times are essential.

Bizarrely, LiveJournal is claiming "guys" did not show up in top interests on Sunday, March 16, a full day earlier than the other censored interests. Their reason for this absurd lie is obvious: "guys" reappearing first explodes the claim censoring sex, boys, guys, girls, fanfiction, yaoi, hardcore, porn, bondage, faeries, pain, depression, and bisexuality from the top interests page was a "mistake."

It's easy to imagine what happened on Sunday: A LiveJournal developer gets a call from the asshat(s) behind the interest filter: "Duuuude, guys? I didn't say that!"

I do believe LiveJournal's claim there were no code changes to the top interests page between 3/6/2008 and 3/17/2008. But interests aren't code, they are data. There is a file or table containing the interests to filter, and it can be easily edited. Based on the code change on March 6, I vote for a simple file named INTERESTS_KW_FILTER—but, really, whether it's a file or table is not important.

I took screen shots of that change in case they are needed.

For background, please see my lj: censorship tag.