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I posted this on LiveJournal and Daily Kos 11 years ago, but never posted it here. It's about time I did.
Happy Birthday, Coffee Party USA--A Timeline #coffeepartyusa
Happy Birthday, Coffee Party USA--A Timeline #coffeepartyusa
A tweet about LiveJournal
Jan. 6th, 2021 09:16 am"I left LJ shortly after it became the biggest blogging platform in Russia and it became subject to DDOS attacks because of that. By the time I wanted to return, I would have had to sign the Putin-friendly TOS, so I refused."
Returning to Dreamwidth and LiveJournal
Dec. 29th, 2013 09:57 pmI've decided to come back to both journaling platforms, if only to reblog some of my more fannish or personal entries over at Crazy Eddie's Motie News. I get a lot of page views over there that I can track for free, unlike having to pay here, whether "here" is DW or LJ, for the ability. However, I just don't get the feed back there that I get here. Both DW and LJ have a livelier commenting culture, and I definitely have more friends on LJ than I have followers on Blogger/Blogspot. So, here I am. Besides, I miss those of you who aren't on either Facebook or Google Plus.
I posted the following to fandom_lounge on JournalFen. The response there is also DO NOT WANT!
Fast Company publishes an article titled The Return of LiveJournal. This should be good news. It isn't.
According to LiveJournal general manager Anjelika Petrochenko, LiveJournal's planning a major 2012 push based around attracting new users to community sites. Petrochenko told Fast Company that the blogging service was planning between 10-50 new community sites by the end of 2012. These new community sites will offer organizers and admins highly detailed metrics and statistics on user activity that appear to be more detailed than Facebook. Petrochenko also stressed that LiveJournal accounts do not have to be tied to a real name/identity and offered greater anonymity than other social networks. However, LiveJournal has been involved in numerous censorship controversies in the past.
Oh No They Didn't will be the first community site to participate in LiveJournal's initiative. The company designed custom widgets to highlight frequent commenters, instituted new metric tracking and analysis systems, and created a new, community-driven interface seemingly designed to deemphasize blog content. The next LiveJournal-hosted site to get a makeover will be the popular AnythingDisney fan site. LiveJournal is staking their continued American growth on the community model; Oh No They Didn't's Brenden Delzer was hired as an on-staff community editor by LiveJournal several months ago.
The formatting of Oh No They Didn't--which includes advertising and a commenting-heavy interface--is close to what LiveJournal has planned for other communities.
...
LiveJournal recently unveiled a complete redesign that overhauled the service's comments system, emphasized social networking, and set the stage for the upcoming communities blitz. Reaction from longtime users has been overwhelmingly negative--LiveJournal patrons slammed the redesign on the service's official blog.
LiveJournal's leadership has made it clear that their future American business strategy lies in generating new traffic rather than catering to the service's current small-but-loyal membership. The challenge for Petrochenko and other executives at LiveJournal will be redefining the brand's identity in a crowded media marketplace.
The entire article was posted over at ontd_political here. The response has been
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In the previous digest, I promised "global and national environmental issues, local (Michigan and Metro Detroit) sustainability issues, and Tea Party screw-ups." I'll do the first one, as I just posted an entry on that general topic.
Next Media Animation on the Keystone XL pipeline
Next Media Animation on Thanksgiving food inflation
Phil Plait on saving Earth from asteroids
Nebris and I have a conversation
A video gift from a student
Yes, I posted that one before. It's worth seeing again. Besides, I'm an environmentalist; I recycle.
The village of Wukan, China, in open revolt
The situation in Wukan escalates
More paranoia about Agenda 21
You'll see this one again, as it's about Tea Partiers screwing up.
Next Media Animation thinks low birth rates in the U.S. and China aren't all good
Next Media Animation on Canada leaving the Kyoto Protocol, plus a Rick Perry joke
With that last entry, the topics complete the circle, as the first and last are about Canadian tar sands.
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An ironic error message
Dec. 29th, 2011 04:31 pmJust received this in my inbox.
Your Facebook account has been disconnected due to the following error: (#100) FBCDN image is not allowed in stream:
The image in question was in the repost of Since I'm in a Star Wars mood lately.
So, I'm not allowed to post an image hosted on Facebook back to Facebook via LiveJournal. I suppose there is a good reason for this, other than LJ not wanting to cause an infinite loop--probably a copyright agreement with Facebook--but I still think it's ironic, if not downright perverse.
Now I have to reconsider reconnecting my LJ to my Facebook for autoreposts. Maybe I'll just do it by hand from now on. I'll also make sure I don't use images hosted on Facebook for my LJ posts anymore, if LJ doesn't like me doing that.
On August 1st, I made the following promise on Dreamwidth.
That concludes this irregular status update. Next one whenever I pass 500 on Twitter, 450 on Facebook, 150 on Daily Kos or LiveJournal, 50 on Dreamwidth, or 25 on any of the other services, whichever comes first. If it's Crazy Eddie's Motie News passing 25, I'll crosspost it there, too.As you can tell both from the bolding and that you're either reading it on Crazy Eddie's Motie News or you're seeing the "crossposted to Crazy Eddie's Motie News" notice while reading it on Dreamwidth or LiveJournal, my Blogspot/Blogger followers hit 25. I'm actually a bit late, as the event happened late last week (thank you John Henry for being the 25th follower), but I had a good excuse--it's final exam time. Notice that my posting rate slowed down early this week, as I was grading. Final exams are now graded, so it's time to post the next update.
Twitter: 478
Facebook: 423 (was as high as 424)
Daily Kos: 140 (still down from 141)
LiveJournal: 124
(down from 125, although the person who defriended me is now subscribed to me on Dreamwidth)
Huffington Post: 107 fans and 106 friends
(I've had this account for a while, but never got around to including it until now)
Dreamwidth: 41
Crazy Eddie's Motie News: 25
YouTube: 18 friends and 12 subscribers
(I could have more, but I'm not impressed by the people who try to friend me on YouTube)
Journalfen: 8 (no movement for months here)
Google+: 5 (New!)
Flickr: 1
Posterous: 1
Now I'm wondering if I should get a Tumblr account. The coolest kids seem to be on that service.
That concludes this irregular update. Next one whenever I pass 500 on Twitter, 450 on Facebook, 150 on Daily Kos or LiveJournal, 50 on Dreamwidth or Blogspot/Blogger, or 25 on any of the other services, whichever comes first.
Above originally posted to Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
On June 10th, I wrote:
That concludes this irregular status update. Next one whenever I pass 450 on Facebook or Twitter, 150 on Daily Kos, 125 on LiveJournal, 50 on Dreamwidth, or 25 on any of the other services, whichever comes first.
As you can tell from the bolding, I passed two milestones. The 125 on LJ happened sometime in July, while the 450 on Twitter happened on Friday. Time for another update!
Twitter: 453
Facebook: 411 (was as high as 412)
Daily Kos: 140 (down from 141--time to write more interesting diaries!)
Livejournal: 125
Dreamwidth: 40 (the DDoS on LJ really drove this number up)
YouTube: 15 friends and 11 subscribers (I could have more, but I'm not impressed by the people who try to friend me on YouTube)
Crazy Eddie's Motie News: 22
Journalfen: 8 (no movement for months here)
Flickr: 1
Posterous: 1 (new!)
That concludes this irregular status update. Next one whenever I pass 500 on Twitter, 450 on Facebook, 150 on Daily Kos or LiveJournal, 50 on Dreamwidth, or 25 on any of the other services, whichever comes first. If it's Crazy Eddie's Motie News passing 25, I'll crosspost it there, too.
Tags:
What motivates Americans to act
Jul. 28th, 2011 02:58 amHere's something inspired by this thread on the most recent LJ is down post on JournalFen. People there are counting their blessings that U.S. LJ users are so far not calling for SUP to suspend accounts of Russian users who are being targeted. In particular, lied_ohne_worte wrote about the last DDoS:
Yes, I recall suggestions to just put everything Russian on it own servers, so that everyone else can enjoy fandom in peace. LJ going after fanart: ZOMG FREEDOM OF SPEECH! Political bloggers under a not-exactly democratic regime being attacked, and LJ actually preserving their freedom of speech: ZOMG WHY CAN'T YOU SUSPEND THEIR ACCOUNTS!?!My response:
I figured out something a while ago and posted it in a comment to a Huffington Post article on Dancing with the Stars. “America is quite clear about its screwed up priorities. My experience has convinced me that the surest way to get Americans to act is to mess with their entertainment." Google says my insight wasn't original. In a letter preserved in a blog post copy of a Paul Krugman New York Times article,# Paul Box, Alice Springs, Australia observed, "Mess with people's health care or retirement and they get fatalistic. Mess with their entertainment or Internet access, and you've got war!" LJ down is messing with both enertainment and internet access, so no wonder the U.S. users are grumpy.*That was in 2007. I swear that I never saw it before and came up with my opinion independently. Second!
The Register on why LJ was down
Jul. 27th, 2011 02:24 amThe Register: Mystery data centre snag floors LiveJournal
Eyes crossed out, tongue protruding
By John Leyden • Get more from this author
Posted in Networks, 26th July 2011 09:05 GMT
Community and blogging site LiveJournal is continuing to suffer a prolonged outage.
The service has been down since Monday due to unspecified data centre problems. Russian media firm SUP bought LiveJournal from original developers Six Apart back in 2007 before moving product development and design functions to Russia.
LiveJournal was hit by a DDoS attack earlier this year but a second attack does not appear to be the cause of this week's extended outage. ®
In other words, The Register doesn't have a clue. At least they admit it.
BTW, LJ is back up.
UPDATE: But it's not as up as one might think: Failed to crosspost entry to darksumomo@LiveJournal: Failed to connect to http://www.livejournal.com/interface/xmlrpc.
Posted this at JournalFen
Jul. 25th, 2011 05:59 amIt's not just you! http://livejournal.com looks down from here.
Dreamwidth invite codes? Cracked articles? TVTropes entries? Good blogs?
Now watch LJ be back up.
Dreamwidth invite codes? Cracked articles? TVTropes entries? Good blogs?
Now watch LJ be back up.
In addition to my posts about the travails of Julie Bass here on Crazy Eddie's Motie News, I've been blogging about it elsewhere, beginning with posts to my Dreamwidth and my LiveJournal. I've also posted it to ontd_political on Dreamwidth, unfunnybusiness on JournalFen, and peakoil_prep and ontd_political twice on LiveJournal. The results have been very satisfying.
For starters, those posts have received lots of comments. The winner so far has been the first post on ontd_political on LJ, Michigan Woman could go to jail for planting vegetable garden, which prompted 126 comments. Next is the unfunnybusiness post, Woman in Oak Park, Michigan, could go to jail up to 93 days for planting a garden, with 39 comments. The followup to ontd_political, Update: Michigan woman no longer going to jail for her garden but now in trouble for her dogs, has 21 comments and counting. The mirrored posts on my LJ currently have nine comments and their counterparts on Dreamwidth have six. In contrast, I have a grand total of eight comments on the same posts so far here on Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
This mirrors the situation with the rest of the Swim posts here on Crazy Eddie's Motie News, which have a grand total of three comments on the non-Julie Bass posts, two on the five posts about Kunstler and one on the post about Elaine Meinel Supkis, two once I respond. In contrast, the LiveJournal mirror of James Howard Kunstler swims against the stream on gender role equality, too alone received 13 comments, which I pointed out in Follow up to women in Kunstler's fiction. Honestly, I'd like more comments. I could even deal with a couple of trolls, as I'm not above trolling my own comments sections.
On the other hand, I have been getting readers from the signal boosting posts, with 108 views from JournalFen and 69 from ontd_political on LJ during the past week, handily beating out what I'm getting from Facebook, just 16 referrals. Even the hits coming from my own LJ, nine so far this week, are beating out what came in from Twitter, which is not even in the top ten sources. Facebook and Twitter may be the big boys on the blog, but they aren't the traffic drivers people think they are. Google, on the other hand, is my friend, with 176 hits. The big winner turns out to be Julie's own blog, which referred 296 readers in one week. Thank you, all of you coming here from Oak Park Hates Veggies!
Just the same, I've had nine days in a row and 11 days out of the last 12 with more than 100 hits, so I have no room to complain. On that note, welcome new readers, and keep the page views coming!
Speaking of signal boosting, above originally posted to Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
Nablopomo for July: Swim
Jul. 1st, 2011 08:47 pmThe following arrived in my email last night.
Hi bloggers,Of course I'm participating. The only question is which blog to submit to the blogroll. I don't have to decide right away. As the instructions at the top of the July blogroll state, "The July blogroll is open until July 4th." I'll probably post to both my Dreamwidth/LiveJournal and Crazy Eddie's Motie News on Blogspot and see how I feel about each on the 4th. Either would work, but I never get worn out from blogging on LJ. I do get burned out knowing I have to blog daily on my Blogspot. Based on that alone, I should probably use my LJ. Since I'm a procrastinator, I'm still waiting until the 4th to decide.
July's theme for daily blogging: SWIM. Hopefully the Southern Hemisphere will forgive the Northern Hemisphere for having swimming on the brain. But it's more than just pools -- when things are going well, we say they're going swimmingly. We can sink or swim. And of course there are always bloggers swimming against the stream. I think it's a theme everyone can dive into.
As always, bloggers planning on posting every day in July who would like to be on the blogroll can go here and follow the directions at the top of the page. The "official" July badge is here, but please feel free to create your own and add it to the comments there for others to share.
Fan: Nebris
Jun. 19th, 2011 02:02 pm.One of my favorite posters on LiveJournal is
![[info]](https://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=2){kind=small}
nebris. Here's what I had to say about him when I recommended him to another poster on LJ.If you want to be extremely adventurous, I recommend
nebris. He thinks very seriously about issues of empire and sustainability (he is a big fan of Joe Bageant and Ran Prieur, and James Howard Kunstler was his camp counselor), but he and his solutions are downright bizarre (for starters, he likes to post porn in addition to his serious musings), although some of them might just work. If you actually look at his LJ, don't say I didn't warn you.Old Nebs is by turns serious, silly, outrageous, and sometimes downright offensive, and he's not everyone's cup of tea (He had a page on the now defunct Encyclopedia Dramatica and still has a scathing entry on the Fandom Wank Wiki), but I find him consistently compelling and never boring.
Last night, I wrote:
Next one whenever I pass 450 on Facebook or Twitter, my Twitter followers exceed my Facebook followers (that could be in a couple of days)It turns out that it took less than a day, as just happened late this afternoon, when @dkmich (Kid Oakland on Daily Kos and someone who lives in the same county I do), followed me back. I now have 406 Twitter followers to 405 Facebook friends. That means it's time for another update.
Rest of report follows.
Twitter: 406
Facebook: 405
Daily Kos: 141
Livejournal: 123
Dreamwidth: 29
YouTube: 13 friends and 11 subscribers
Crazy Eddie's Motie News: 12
Journalfen: 8
Flickr: 1
That concludes this irregular status update. Next one whenever I pass 450 on Facebook or Twitter, 150 on Daily Kos, 125 on LiveJournal, 50 on Dreamwidth, or 25 on any of the other services, whichever comes first. Time to start posting on Daily Kos. I might be able to get nine more followers there before the end of the month.
Tags:
On June 1st, I wrote:
That concludes this irregular status update. Next one whenever I pass 450 on Facebook, 400 on Twitter, 150 on Daily Kos or LiveJournal, 50 on Dreamwidth, or 25 on any of the other services, whichever comes first. Any bets on which one it will be?No one bet, but they should have bet on the 400 followers on Twitter, because that happened yesterday. I now have 401.
Rest of report follows.
Facebook: 405
Twitter: 401
Daily Kos: 141
Livejournal: 123
Dreamwidth: 28
YouTube: 13 friends and 11 subscribers
Crazy Eddie's Motie News: 12
Journalfen: 8
Flickr: 1
That concludes this irregular status update. Next one whenever I pass 450 on Facebook or Twitter, my Twitter followers exceed my Facebook followers (that could be in a couple of days), 150 on Daily Kos, 125 on LiveJournal, 50 on Dreamwidth, or 25 on any of the other services, whichever comes first.
In other news, my wife installed the latest edition of Firefox on this computer. I'm much happier already than with Internet Explorer 9. That program was relatively stable for Exploder, but it was s o s l o w.
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As I wrote in the first post in this blog:
I'll also post reviews of other blogs about societal collapse and what to do about it. There are plenty of them out there, and they all deserve a good meta look.The first one was an obituary of Joe Bagaent as told through his interactions from a distance with Jim Kunstler. The second was supposed to be a review of Clusterfuck Nation. For some reason, I keep postponing that review. As I wrote in my second post on this blog:
[T]oday isn't the day for that review. It's not that I don't have a lot to say about him; I do, but I can always repackage my opinions on a slow news day.Or when don't find another blogger that I think deserves more attention, which brings me to the subject of today's post.
My friend andelku on LiveJournal has been posting a series she calls Contemplating the Hedgehog. Why "the Hedgehog?" In the first post in the series, Welcome to the Hedgehog, she wrote:
When I was just a wee lass, me and my talented underachieving college friends spent large amounts of time sitting around kitchen tables and on back porches of our cheap apartments drinking bad wine and talking about how we all sensed this country, if not the world, was headed for some kind of crisis. Until finally one girl says "I'm tired of calling it the Big Awful Thing That Nobody Knows What It Is But Everyone Can See Coming. Let's call it The Hedgehog." And so we did.In reality, she's looking at the same situations that I'm writing about here; it's just that she's doing it from a more global (pun fully intended) perspective than I am. That means her series is exactly the kind of material I should be reviewing. Besides, I rather like this conceit, so I'm looking forward to commenting on her posts. Not only will it get her writing the attention it deserves, it should be fun.
Above originally posted to Crazy Eddie's Motie News here.
Here we go again
Apr. 9th, 2011 06:55 pmIt's not just you! http://livejournal.com looks down from here.This literally happened in front of my eyes. First I see my friends page, then I saw "500 Internal Server Error" and immediately after that, "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage."
Time to use the appropriate icons.
Remember, in Soviet Russia, LiveJournal trolls you!
It's not just you! http://livejournal.com looks down from here.
Also, the longest LJ is down thread I've ever seen on JournalFen.
Three more weeks of Mercury Retrograde. Hang in there.
First post
Feb. 25th, 2011 01:55 amGreetings, everyone. If you're on Livejournal or Journalfen, I'm darksumomo on those services.
