picked a handful of violets in my name

Recently

I have finagled my inbox all the way down to four things in Priority Inbox (one of which is my flight info and one of which relates to the practice GRE I'm taking tomorrow), and eleven things in the regular inbox, none of which requires an actual reply (they're all emails containing coupon codes I stand a decent chance of using - I keep them in my inbox so they don't get lost, and so they can be easily deleted once they expire).

Anyway, yeah. Practice GRE tomorrow (free, and it's been a while since I've taken a test like that). I should just register for the next convenient real GRE,* since it's not like I am going to study. And I went to an hour-long thingy about grad school, in which I had a lot of things I sort of knew confirmed, and had to suffer through a lot of stupid questions. Not sure it was entirely worth not getting paid for that hour, but eh.

In other "did $thing like a motherfucking adult" news, I have successfully paid the internet bill (which we just didn't receive last month, wtf. Verizon has the absolute worst billing system in the world, I swear), and requested an absentee ballot (since, oops, out of town for the election).

* Or maybe not, since it looks like I don't actually need it. IDK if I should take it anyway, though. So, uh, I turn to my dreamroll! For your information, I am seriously considering the Archives/History dual degree program at Simmons** but also seriously considering just the M.S. and going back for a history degree later. So y'all should give me advice on that, too.

** xkcd really nailed it.

Links

• Disabled Feminists: Let’s Bust Some Myths: Depressed People Are Always Sad or They’re Faking!

  Mix up a few details, and Blanchard’s story is a pretty common one. Whenever I talk to people who are currently living with long- or short-term depression, or have lived with it in the past, they tell me the same story: Friends thought they were faking because they managed to get out and have a good time. They laughed at a joke once and everyone decided they were “over” their “funk”. They didn’t act like stereotypes of depressed people, so they must not actually be depressed.

• britpop


• Browse Dreamwidth styles by color group and color characteristics.


• And there was going to be a link to a really cute picture I found while doing my actual job today, but it's on the test server, which A) I don't remember its IP address and therefore can't get to it from here and B) I probably shouldn't be linking the test server around anyway. But old photos of serious-looking small children, woo.

Notes

I've created a character for LARPing in the desert participating in the MCR/Killjoys shenanigans. If this is relevant to your interests, check out the Violet Menace on Twitter, tumblr, and Dreamwidth.

Links

• rydra_wong: So, yeah

  brenden's now-deleted sockpuppet trolling of the news post included taunting a user about having Asperger's.

• thedivinegoat: "Can I talk to you" Troll redux

  Just a heads up, the "Can I talk to you" Troll seems to have increased his activity again, only this time is taking advantage of the Facebook Connect.
  
  I'm still updating the original post with any new pseudonyms that come to light, if you or any of your friends have come across new ones, please let me know.

• Social/Justice

  Solomon's threat is the threat of fairness; Solomon's justice is that he restores right human relationships. Justice is not measured by a pattern -- of uniformity or otherwise -- *or* by a fair process which must logically produce fair results. Justice occurs only when it supports just human relationships. It doesn't matter how fair the process, if a beggar starves while a rich man feasts *this is not justice*, because justice is about having the right human relationships. "Social justice", in my thinking, is a concept of justice that is still focussed, as of old, not on who has the "stuff", but on the relationships between people that the "stuff" (money, property) is tracking. We need a modifier because "justice" unadorned now refers to the process of law, e.g. in "Department of Justice".

• copperbadge: THE .DOC FILE OF J ALFRED PRUFROCK

  This morning I was asked to change my password on my work computer, as I must do every four months. And I sat there waiting for it to authorise my new password, and I thought, I have measured out my life in login codes.
  
  And, as it so often does, then my brain screwed me out of several hours of productivity.

• skalja: An experiment in translation.

  O Hai Just FYI

• zvi: LiveJournal automates privacy breech, breaks accessibility for small gains, and ...

  LiveJournal has automated crossposting of entries and comments to Facebook and Twitter.
  
  There are two serious problems with their implementation, one to do with accessibility/usability and one to do with privacy.

• via dw_news: new update page demo


• zarhooie: Friending Frenzy!

  What with the recent influx of new folk to Dreamwidth (thanks, LJ!), I think it's time for a friending frenzy. You know the drill: comment here with 3-5 reasons that people should follow you on Dreamwidth. Also comment with your favorite spice, your least favorite ice cream flavor and your bedding preferences.

• rydra_wong: In this morning's LJ shenanigans

  cleolinda reports that if you turn on Facebook connect, it will automatically put your full real name (as listed on Facebook) on your LiveJournal user page.

Links

Plans

Scissor Sisters concert with Ellie.

Important things:

• Every year, shadesong does Blogathon for the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. Her fundraising includes a charity auction; I have three pieces in the mix this year: Chains and Crippling Shoes, We Met in February, and The Awful Feeling of Knowing You Don't Remember No. Plus lots of other really lovely things that you should go and bid on!
• I am going to Grand Forks! I'll be staying with C. and will also take the opportunity to hang out with Ellen and Greg, since I missed them in New Orleans this year. I am not sure what that will do to my internet time: on the one hand, C. and I will probably be very occupied with each other, but on the other hand, I can easily see us just chilling together with our laptops for a little while every day. At any rate, I will be out of Boston from August 14th to August 21st.
• Speaking of C., we are now officially in a relationship! We put it on Facebook and everything. Current relationship status is "open" although there's an unspoken expectation that we'll be functionally monogamous at least until we can talk about it in person. There will be a more *ahem* detailed update later - hooray for filters.

And by that, I mean I Organized All The Books. Next step is to get them into LibraryThing.

Ellie suggests that the best place to hole up during the zombie apocalypse is a strip mall with a home improvement store and a Super WalMart that share an interior wall. Then you have materials for fortifications from the home improvement store, plus food and guns from WalMart. Just knock a hole through the interior wall and you're golden.

But if you have to choose, pick the WalMart and use random merchandise to block the doors. Ellie suggests filling shopping carts with slashed-open diapers and watering them to create a kind of sandbag thing.