Various and sundry

[graculus]

You know, it's kind of tricky to take seriously an episode of Criminal Minds about a serial killer targetting the homeless when all the homeless folks and drug addicts have such perfect, shiny Hollywood-white teeth.

Please feel free to ignore me if I get all preachy about the current lj shenanigans in your journal, dear friends, it just bugs me to heck when I pay for a service and said company decides they can trample roughshod over people in an arbitrary fashion.

It's warm here. I mean warm for the UK, before anyone starts. Maybe it's summer at last? The kids are all crashed out, and I'm glad that unlike them, I don't have a fur coat.

Bullet points are your friends. ;)

Has anyone got experience of any of those open source gallery software thingys, because I'm thinking how it might be easier for the future danielpix pics when I move everything over to my own webspace?

I'm currently about halfway through HP7, since I decided it would be easier to listen to it when I commute, and that I might finish it before Christmas that way. Much appreciation for your continued lj-cutting. :)

Is it just me, or does the current fashion for tops look like over-bright maternity wear?

Comments

[graculus.livejournal.com]

Well, after the whole Strikethrough business, where someone on lj got triggerhappy and deleted a bunch of accounts and communities (including a major HP slash community, pornish_pixies because of pressure from some fundamentalist Christian nutjobs, the guy running lj assured everyone that there would be no further action like that without due process, that fandom was welcome on lj, yadda yadda...

Then, at the end of last week, two HP fan artists got banned on a permanent basis from lj for posting pics that initially were claimed to involving underage characters, with no opportunity to appeal. This included the deletion of one artists other journals, including one where they posted recipes. The pics in question were originally posted to pornish_pixies and were by no means a) the only ones, or b) the most dubious things ever posted there. One pic was a Snape/Harry pic where Harry appeared at least 18, the other was a Fred/George pic drawn in more of a cartoon style, which made telling their ages more tricky.

When the fact that the pics weren't clearly underage was vigorously pointed out, the response from lj abuse was to admit that maybe the Snape/Harry pic wasn't underage, but it didn't have enough artistic merit to balance out the sexual content. Because clearly a bunch of lj-abuse folks are well placed to judge obscenity v. artistic merit when the US Supreme Court would say it struggles to do so...

Cue outrage over lack of communication, actions that appear a complete turnaround from what was being said only weeks ago, questions over whether those previous statements were a cynical attempt to reassure people into buying permanent accounts, over whether lj is being homophobic since there has been no similar action towards m/f art or fic, outrage that lj is essentially calling all artwork involving characters who might be under 18 child porn and the people who draw/view it paedophiles, and a general lack of confidence that lj won't start behaving in an equally arbitrary fashion towards the rest of us.

How's that for a summary? ;)

[mfluder42.livejournal.com]

A truly excellent summary, thank you kindly. :-)

This has the makings of a good movie, actually. Pity there's no Erin Brockovich for bloggers. *g*

Beyond anything else, I love the inequality of the application of the rules - if it's homosexual in nature it must, of course, be far more evil. Just when you think that, in some quarters, progress is being made for greater acceptance... yadda yadda

I'm guessing LJ haven't heard the expression of not biting the hand that feeds them.... and they've likely missed the fact that if they bite one hand, many hands in fandom will slap back. :-)