picked a handful of violets in my name

Not dead.

2012-06-14T17:33:23Z

I just got eaten alive by Avengers fandom after the first time I saw the movie (and seeing it twice more hasn't helped). I have been spending all my free time reading fic on the AO3, or on tumblr because it takes zero brain cells to operate.

Therefore, I haven't checked my dreamroll in a month. If I missed anything important, please point it out to me? :]

I've been on vacation for the past week, first in Maryland with my boyfriend and his family, now in Virginia with my cousins, and starting tomorrow, back in Maryland for con_txt. ~~(Speaking of Con.txt, does anyone have space in their hotel room for me to crash?? *so not on top of things right now*)~~ Resolved: hotel room and roommate acquired.

comments

happymaking things

2011-10-06T22:34:29Z

Most of the good stuff going on in my life right now has to do with gaming, munches, or both. Cid recruited a fourth player for Shadowrun at the munch Saturday night; he came to our first real session on Monday even though he didn't have a character yet, just to meet everyone and get comfortable with the group.

And Neoclassic is getting a new D&D group together; she wants another group, and she's been recruiting among her friends and acquaintances in the kink community. I'm definitely interested in playing, as long as it's not Mondays (conflicts with Shadowrun) or Wednesdays (when I wind up doing the homework for 2 of 3 classes).

In other awesome news, I'm having dinner tonight with marina and her Boston hosts who I am not currently internet-acquainted with.

comments

sofiaviolet @ 2011-09-02T12:45:00

2011-09-02T16:47:29Z

cluegirl: Cyberhate, Stalking, Trolling, and Women Bloggers.
Advice for people being stalked and/or threatened online.

comments

"Only an archivist..."

2011-08-12T01:59:27Z

... or so sayeth the boyfriend, about my saving of correspondence.

Today I decided to configure Mail to serve as a local backup for my Google-Apps-For-Your-Domain account (I think it's working? yay). Backing up that inbox will also back up all my other GAFYD accounts, my undergraduate and graduate school email, and my old Gmail accounts,* so I really hope it works. (And then Time Machine will back up my backup. Whee.)

( because nobody but me cares about my email from 2003 )

Link is unrelated to the above blathering.

laughingrat: We're not all liberals

Cataloging as a tool for social (in)justice: In EBSCO's Academic Search Complete, articles discussing women's anger at men for actual, real-life, systemic violence and discrimination towards women are given the "MISANDRY" subject label, implying that calling out oppressive behaviors is "man-hating" and unreasonable. Articles about these actual, real-life, systemic crimes--rape, spouse abuse, incest, sexual harassment, etc.--are not, however, given the subject heading "MISOGYNY," despite research on an ongoing basis demonstrating that violence against marginalized persons is absolutely a systemic, not an individual, issue.

comments

sofiaviolet @ 2011-07-22T22:34:00

2011-07-23T02:38:21Z

Infotrope: I’ve been suspended from Google+

So today, I got off a plane this afternoon to find a pile of tweets, emails, and blog comments asking whether it was true that my Google+ account had been suspended. When I managed to get some wifi and check, it turned out that it had been.

I know there’s a lot of people wondering what happens when you get suspended, so here is my experience so far.

comments

my thoughts on Google+

2011-07-08T22:58:21Z

My profile is here. Yes, you can add me.

So far, I really like it? But really, I think xkcd nailed it - it's Facebook but not Facebook. (Although, alt text aside, I think I would have much better luck getting my mom to use Plus - she already uses and more or less understands Gmail.)

Other than that, IDK. It's a social networking site and I tend to prefer journaling. But it seems to allow for pretty meaty posts and comments, so yay for that. I can see myself actually using it (as opposed to Facebook, where I... read my boyfriend's status updates because I miss him).

I have four problems with Google+ so far, two of which will probably get resolved, one of which is not a major problem for me but is for other people, and one of which I really hope will get resolved but it might take a while.

No usernames, so the urls for profiles are long and unwieldy.

No Mac clients that I've found so far. Currently, I use a multi-service client; I am hoping that it adds Google+ support (so I don't need to download and learn a new app). My computer is just old enough that running multiple clients has a noticeable impact on performance; if a standalone Google+ client comes out before a multi-service client and I like that client enough and enough of my people begin using Google+ - I will more or less disappear from Twitter and Facebook.

Policy on pseudonyms. I'm pretty safe because my pseud could be someone's legal name (in fact, I spent most of my teenage years after selecting said pseud convinced I would change it in court one day). But this issue matters a lot to a lot of people for a lot of reasons, and if Google does crack down hard on pseudonymous accounts it will impact the shape of my social circle and the kinds of things people are sharing in a way that will bind Google+ to its "Facebook but not Facebook" status and prevent it from becoming anything better in my personal constellation of internet services - if that happens I'll probably just wander off and quit using it. They also force users to make their gender selection public.

Only open to @gmail.com-style Google accounts. Google Apps for Organizations doesn't have access to Profiles and therefore those accounts can't use Plus. I don't have a profile set up for my professional identity (I like to maintain some online presence under my legal name so that people looking for that aspect of me find something and aren't as motivated to digDIGdig) because that Google account can't use Plus. And, should my "real" account gain access to Plus, yay, but I will need to move everything over; I kind of doubt Google will set up some shiny "move your shit between accounts in two clicks" process.

In short, I like Plus and I'll keep playing with it even though my situation makes it way more annoying than it should be. If you'd like me to try and invite you, shoot an email to sofiaviolet@sofiaviolet.com (not the Google account you'll be invited by, but I'll get your email sooner!) or PM me on Dreamwidth and I will attempt to make it happen.

comments

One important thing before work.

2011-06-14T12:03:37Z

kythryne: internet powers, activate!

Okay, people. I need you to take this viral, and fast.

We know someone in upstate New York who needs a good custody lawyer ASAP. I'm not at liberty to go into details publicly, but this woman is very afraid that her abusive boyfriend is going to get sole custody of her young child. She's presently being represented by a public defender who doesn't seem to care about the case, and she has very few resources left at this point. Her next hearing is on Thursday.

If you know a good lawyer in New York State who might be willing to take this case for a low fee or pro bono, or at least offer her advice or support, please let me know. If you don't know anyone, please repost this far and wide. As a mother and an abuse survivor, it makes me absolutely sick to my stomach to contemplate a child being left in the hands of an abuser.

I can be reached at kythryne@gmail.com if you have any leads or want to help.

The internet can work miracles. Let's go.

comments

not dead, just resting

2011-06-13T22:15:06Z

Notes

... oops? Kind of fell off the face of the earth there. I've been fine, just busy.

Question

For how many days after having an IUD inserted can one expect to have cramps? (IUD went in Tuesday evening. By Friday, I was down from NSAIDs-like-clockwork to NSAIDs-as-needed, but I'm still having to take something at least once a day. Seems to still be in place and I have had no bleeding/spotting whatsoever, so I am not worried, just annoyed.)

Training

( Survivor Speakers Bureau )

Links

( four: attraction, sexism, privacy, appropriation )

Plans

None for tonight; weekly Battletech got canceled due to GM illness. Tomorrow I have a few errands to run after work. I also have room-cleaning and furniture-moving to do before my mom arrives on Saturday.

comments

sofiaviolet @ 2011-04-28T22:11:00

2011-04-29T02:13:12Z

Notes

Turned in my last assignment today! Except actual content soon as a result. :D

21 Days of Dreamwidth

4. What do you do online when you're not on DW?

Tumblr, Fetlife (sofiaviolet on both). I read a bunch of non-Dreamwidth blogs plus I use Twitter and Facebook, but since I interact with those mainly through apps instead of a browser (Vienna for feeds, Socialite for Twitter and FB status updates, Adium for FB chat), they don't feel the same.

comments

sofiaviolet @ 2011-04-19T11:07:00

2011-04-19T15:43:06Z

Notes

I already have a few ideas of things to post. If there are things you would like me to post about, then prompt me. (No guarantees, since I will be offline for 5+ days, but I will try.)

Questions meme!

( Long-overdue )

Links

( 2 links: Portal fanart and criticism of rape culture )

Plans

Finish up my semester (my last semester of undergrad omfg), MCR concert, Capture the Flag in Franklin Park, play party.

comments

9 links

2011-04-06T03:26:31Z

( Read more... )

comments

sofiaviolet @ 2011-03-15T09:26:00

2011-03-15T13:33:03Z

Much of this essay annoys me, but I want to reproduce this quote:

But, in the digital world, you get to decide exactly who to be, where to go, and how to behave. This can be problematic if you try to create an entirely new persona (it’s a dishonest and unsustainable representation of yourself), but when wielded skillfully, it can propel the real you to new heights. Rather than create a whole new you, create the best you. Choose the traits you like about yourself, and exemplify them online. Let the less attractive qualities fall by the wayside. Place yourself in a digital environment that will allow you to flourish.

When I focus on creating an improved digital version of me, I find those qualities actually start to carry over into my physical self.

This is actually something I did in my offline life, parallel to beginning and sustaining my online life. I've referred to the name 'Sofia Blackthorne' (which I use in any context where my legal name is not required and where explaining myself won't be absurd) as an aspirational identity, by which I mean: I had an idea of who my ideal Me was, and I continued to develop that ideal self, and I named it so I'd have easier access to it all.

( links and stuff )

Now to get ready for my interview. It's going to be great but I am still super-nervous, of course.

comments

links

2011-03-09T22:42:25Z

jimhines: Troll Poll

To me, a troll is someone who shows up solely to stir things up and piss people off. There’s zero interest in the conversation, zero interest in listening. It’s a game for the troll’s amusement, to poke buttons and see who s/he can piss off.

To me, clueless =/= troll. Angry =/= troll. Even blatant violation of Wheaton’s Law doesn’t necessarily equate to trolling. We all act like jerks sometimes. (I might still ban you for repeated offenses, but I wouldn’t automatically assume you were a troll.)

The Morning News: Who You Are and Who You Say You Are

A Norman Rockwell painting from 1995: You can almost hear the modem connecting over the course of 90 screeching, howling seconds. A man’s back is framed by a desk chair—because he’s at a desk, the only place he can use his computer, a 16-pound beige rectangular desktop model with a loud fan that has three plugs connecting it to various electronic conduits. The person is alternately posting on a message board and trolling a chat room under an assumed name, and probably an assumed age, sex, and/or location. There is safety in the scenery of this painting: the basset hound curled under the desk, the tapping of fingers on keys, the fantasy of being Petunia, 18 years old, from Princeton, N.J., when in fact the person at the desk is really Robert, 49, from North Hollywood.

Miller-McCune: Slugging - The People's Transit

And off the three go toward the highway — and the suburbs — complete strangers, with not the least concern for personal safety, trying to shave 20 or 30 minutes, maybe more, off their afternoon trip home. “People are cooperating … to commute?” says Marc Oliphant, underscoring the novelty of what is going on here. “It’s like the opposite of road rage!”

I fiddled with the Dreamwidth bookmarklets some more, in response to this comment by facetofcathy. Now there are some view=flat bookmarklets (and they should work on LJ, too).

comments

[The Networked Society] Retooling Shirky's blog types

2011-02-16T23:37:17Z

[Originally posted at The Networked Society]

In Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality, Shirky defines three basic kinds of blogs: the mainstreamed-media blog (too big for its writer/s to reply to comments etc.), "Blogging Classic" (outward-facing blog with a small enough readership that the writer/s can be involved with them), and journaling. (For comparison, Dreamwidth's Design Personas: Betty Broadcast and Ivy Inward on a journal site versus the first and last of Shirky's blog types.)

I'm not personally interested in where the tipping point between Blogging Classic and mainstreamed-media lies. What I do care about is how popular a journal can get before its writer can no longer interact significantly with readers. I'd argue that there are two basic ways of managing a journal (as opposed to a blog): a semi-broadcast model and a more reciprocal model (for more popular and less popular journals, respectively). I'll name them along the lines of the Design Personas.

Sandy (Semi-broadcast): Sandy has more readers than she can fully engage with. She has a group of friends with whom she interacts by reading their entries, replying to their comments sooner and more fully than others, and allowing them to read locked entries in her journal. Sandy tends to have far more inbound relationships (another user lists her as a friend, subscribes to her, and/or grants her access) than outbound relationships, and she probably has relatively few outbound-only relationships.

Rita (Reciprocal): Rita is able to be friends with all or most of her readers. The volume of entries and comments posted by Rita's social group fits within the time Rita can devote to this form of interaction. She tends to have a relatively even number of inbound and outbound relationships, and many of them are mutual.

So what is the tipping point between Sandy and Rita? For what it's worth, I currently subscribe to about 240 journals and have about 250 subscribers (although there are some inactive accounts in there, and about 30% of those relationships are non-mutual) and would consider myself a Rita because I don't feel that I have more other-people's-content than time.

comments

You ate my sandwich!

2011-01-24T15:53:54Z

It is really cold in Boston today. And the entire MBTA died. (Well, the bus system seemed to be in good working order. It got me to campus, at any rate.)

I've mostly been going to class, decluttering, and being ill. Sinus infection. Which would have been fine if I had been sick and then got over it, but noooo. At least at this point I can breathe through my nose again.

( Here are some links that are kind of old, since I fell off the face of the earth between compiling them and updating my freaking journal )

And finally, the subject line... when Ellie and I were getting groceries on Saturday, I decided I would bring my lunch two days this week (Monday, when I have a break between classes, and Wednesday, when I have a break between work and class), and I decided I would bring ham and cheese sandwiches and salad. So we got bread and ham and I insisted (correctly) that we still had an unopened, unexpired package of Swiss cheese at home.

We were so desperately hungry when we got home that we tore into the lunch supplies. But there was still ham and cheese enough to make one more sandwich, which I could then eat on Monday, after which I would take myself to the store and replenish the supplies.

But she ate my sandwich! :( I slept really late yesterday, and when I woke up, she had forgotten that the whole reason we had the ham and bread in the first place was so I could have lunches, and she had eaten my sandwich.

So I'm so hungry my stomach is trying to digest itself and there's still ten minutes before the fast food joints in the student center open for lunch.

comments

linkspam

2011-01-15T17:06:08Z

ursamajor: United Airlines, I don't even *know*.

10. In Hyoun's words, because I was over at the Customer Service desk asking what the next steps were:
When I asked the desk agent what his name was and whether I could confirm that he had no information about holding the flight open for us and 4 other customers headed to Knoxville, he refused to identify himself and said "you don't need to know that". He then proceeded to shove me backwards and yelled "Fuck you" at me. (Check the camera pointed at Gate A6 at Dulles around 10 PM on 1/7 to watch this exchange.)
In other words, A UNITED GATE AGENT JUST ASSAULTED MY HUSBAND.

cleverthylacine: My thoughts on Sarah Palin's responsibility for the Giffords shooting.

I am not a politician. It is not actually MY JOB to get people to do things for me. If I know better than to ask for things on the internet that I don't actually want, if I know that I'm responsible for what happens when I ask for things on the internet, I don't think I am wrong to look at someone like Sarah Palin, who can get thousands of dollars from people she will never meet and was a vice-presidential candidate, and say, "Yes, you too are responsible for what happens when you ask for stuff on the internet."

tim: But I Really Didn't Mean It

Get it? When you say, "You shouldn't be angry with me about that, because I didn't mean any harm," you are demanding that someone else do your emotional labor because you're too privileged to have to do so. And that is generally worse than the original thing you said, because while the original thing may have been unthinking, the response is a not-so-thinly veiled attempt to leverage one's superior political position. That, my friends, is busted. And is it what you really intend to say?

ajnabieh: Linkspam, Tunisia Edition

littlebutfierce: hourou musuko

Last night we watched the first ep of Hourou Musuko, & people, it is wonderful. It's about trans kids in junior high, & I have been reliably informed that the manga isn't faily at all (isn't it nice to be able to watch things w/o holding your breath waiting for it?).

comments

[The Networked Society] Introduction: Separation and Consistency of Identity

2011-01-14T00:31:32Z

[Originally posted at The Networked Society]

Many important pieces of paper call me Dominique, but I wouldn't say that's my "real name." More on that in a moment.

I've been a blogger/journaller (in varying proportions) since 2002, when I whirled through several journal sites before settling on LiveJournal. I have since switched my allegiance to Dreamwidth, which I have been using since closed beta.*

I will be cross-posting and cross-linking everything I contribute to this blog on Dreamwidth. For the class and anyone who happens upon The Networked Society by whatever means: you are welcome to follow me home to sofiaviolet. For my regular readers: you can visit The Networked Society to read everyone else's posts.

I have almost always been pseudonymous online, for certain values of pseudonymous: Sofia Blackthorne and sofiaviolet aren't on my passport or anything, but they're both me in a way my legal name isn't. I use them everywhere. This isn't the first time I've made a connection between my offline, "official" self and my online/offline "real" self, but it is the first time I've made the connection publicly in a manner that funnels people from Dominique to Sofia.

So I'm not super-strict in enforcing separation of my "official" self's (fairly minimal) online presence and the vast majority of what I do online. I avoid directing people from Dominique to Sofia and exercise caution in directing them from Sofia to Dominique. Basic internet skills.

As for internal separation, talking to one group of friends about this topic and another group of friends about some other topic - I pretty much don't do it. This is an area where journal sites, like most social networking/social media** sites, kind of fall down on the job. Sites using the LiveJournal codebase (which include clones such as InsaneJournal and forks such as Dreamwidth) have filters (user-defined groups of people; entries can be restricted to a particular filter or to multiple filters), which can be used for this kind of separation as well as for privacy.

* I would like to devote another post to issues surrounding Dreamwidth: why the site came into existence, who has started using it and why, etc. I'd also like to talk about the experience of being an early adopter, something I'd never been before committing to Dreamwidth.

** In part three of her essay on Why Monetizing Social Media Through Advertising Is Doomed To Failure, synecdochic/denise (co-founder/co-owner of Dreamwidth) provides a nice disambiguation for social networking and social media:

The two terms are not interchangeable, ultimately. Social networking seeks to (for the most part) replicate a person's existing social web (think of sites like Classmates.com and LinkedIn.com); its purpose is to define your ties with others. Social media takes that one step further: it seeks to create and nurture social ties to others, through the content that you provide.

If you think of a site as a game, the "winning conditions" of the game will be a good clue as to whether the site is a social networking site or a social media site. If you win the game when you collect all of your existing friends, or collect as many new friends as possible, you're on a social network. If you win the game when you provide content that's interesting enough to get other people to build relationships with you, when your social currency is the content you provide, you're on a social media site.

This suggests to me that social media users may in fact benefit from talking to everyone about everything, in terms of creating these new relationships. Not simply because diverse content brings more diverse followers, but also because publicly available content brings more followers.

comments

Catching you up on me: school

2011-01-13T15:36:42Z

I am finally completely confirmed for my capstone, with mini-deadlines set up and everything. First a proposal, then a really detailed bibliography, then my research trip. (Amount of research that needs to happen still uncertain, but I will still have time to hang out with Cameryn, who's going to New Orleans for other reasons at the same time. Unfortunately, Cory probably won't be able to meet me there, because he's too broke for plane tickets.)

I continue to have a job! Unfortunately this iteration of my archives employment requires that I answer the phone.

Urban Social Problems looks really cool, but I am going to drop it because it's too much. One of my seminars is on classical music, performers and performance thereof. Interesting but ultimately not really my thing, but I actually need this one for my honors requirements.

But the other seminar is going to kill me with awesome. It is all about social networks. Wheeee!

comments

links

2011-01-11T02:52:01Z

The Hathor Legacy: If audiences don’t want women as leads, why did Aliens succeed?

Let’s compare and contrast a few female leads and see if we get a pattern. As I said above, we don’t have enough to consider this statistical, but we’re just looking for a starting point. Besides Aliens, I can think of one other female-led action movie that was successful enough to at least spawn a franchise: Underworld (Kate Beckinsale). And two female-led movies regarded as financial disappointments would be Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron) and Catwoman (Halle Berry) – neither of which even made back their budgets on the gross revenues.

Tiger Beatdown: Why I Didn’t Delete Tiger Beatdown

But here’s the thing. Here’s why I’m not deleting Tiger Beatdown: They only do it if you’re good. Seriously. They only do it if your work reaches people, and convinces people, and if they literally cannot frame an opposing argument that they think might have any chance of winning. They can’t beat you in an argument; that’s why they abuse you, that’s why they try to make you feel as worthless and self-loathing and incapable of self-defense as any other abused person, that’s why they abuse you till you can’t work or even think about anything but being abused, that’s why they try to make you believe that it won’t stop till you stop publishing or die. That’s why they make you want to stop publishing. Or make you want to die. Because after all of it, after all the “bitch” and “cunt” and “die” and “dyke” and “ugly” and “smoker” (???) and “I’monna rape ye, woman,” there is actually one threat scarier than ALL of that: The threat that you’re right, and you’re going to win. And that’s the threat that you pose.

The Pursuit of Harpyness: Signs and Wonders

Unfortunately, after six months of Skype and e-mails, and spending quite a bit of money to visit him, I began to get the feeling that while things had improved somewhat over the past three years, they hadn’t improved enough. He says he wants to move back to New York soon…but, well, he told me the same thing three years ago. His shit is slightly more together, life-wise, but it turns out he’s not a whole hell of a lot more emotionally available. I kept extending myself, but he was doing a pretty crap job of meeting me halfway. He tends to be a brooder, and while dealing with his issues, likes to retreat into complete radio silence. Being met with a week or two of zero communication feels horrible when you’re in a long-distance relationship—especially when you notice that he updates his FB page, thus eliminating the possible explanation that he has died or is trapped under something heavy and can’t get to his computer.

Derangement and Description: This comic is brought to you by the letters E, A, and D

tim: Cause and Effect: Jared Loughner, Chinese Mothers, and Plausible Deniability

The conspiracy of silence in which Chua participates, and which psychologist Alice Miller (for example, in her book For Your Own Good) has written about, involves perpetuating this myth: What adults do to you is for your own good. Be grateful for it, and suck it up, cupcake. It's a politically useful myth. Kids who internalize it turn into obedient workers (bosses naturally replace parents) and into supporters of authoritarian politicians. They also tend to turn into bullying parents themselves. And the cycle goes on. But people like Chua aren't helping break it. Read Chua's essay while asking: "What is it doing for her to treat her children in all of the ways she describes?" This is a question she never seems to ask herself. But it's a question that would decenter her perspective and show that claiming that coercion is "for your own good" is the act of psychological coercion that enables all others.

flourish: Mental illness & Jared Loughner

Here is a summation of this: Schizophrenia may have been one of the factors leading to Jared Loughner's actions - I don't know - but it is not enough to say "well, he had schizophrenia," and shrug it off, as though there are no other factors. That's like saying of a rapist, "well, he's a man," and considering that the end of the discussion - no, actually, it's even worse. 99% of rapists are male. In comparison, only about 10% of people who commit homicide have schizophrenic disorders, or possibly less. And yet, if I were to make a statement like "Oh, well, he's a man - probably completely pumped with testosterone - that's all we need to know to explain why he's a rapist," people would (rightly) have my head on a pike. If I make a statement like "Well, she's schizophrenic - probably having delusions at the time - that's all we need to know to explain why she's a murderer," nobody gives a damn.

comments

sofiaviolet @ 2010-12-16T07:40:00

2010-12-16T12:40:53Z

So that's three times now I've received spam with variations on "Big penis like a girl!" as the subject. Okay then.

Geek Feminism: “Why don’t you just hit him?”

Warning: this post and links from it discuss both harassment and violence, imagined and real.

Am I against hitting a harasser in all situations? No. Am I advocating against it in all situations? No.

However, here’s a lengthy and incomplete list of reasons why victims may not be able or may choose not to hit a harasser and why it is definitely not a general solution for the problem of harassment. I even have a special buzzer on hand that will sound when the reasons are related to gender discrimination. Listen for it, it goes like this: BZZZT! Got it? BZZZT!

The Pervocracy: Beyond body acceptance.

It's good to like your body, but you know, your body isn't the biggest deal about you. (Or rather, your beauty isn't the biggest deal, since few people insulting your body can be dissuaded by hearing how many pounds you can lift or how quickly you recover from injuries.) It's a heartbreaking waste to take a human being, a person rich in history and abilities and relationships and ideas, and judge them on how nice a decoration they make. Maybe that's inevitable when it comes to strangers, but you damn well know better when it comes to yourself. When you're judging your appearance, you're only judging one tiny part of your self.

glass_icarus: announcing: Potluck!

Potluck is intended to be a carnival for multicultural and intersectional discussions of food. There are no real limits on theme; however, the focus of the carnival is on thoughts and experiences around food through various topics that you might see around the social justice blogosphere, including but not limited to food discussions intersecting with disability, gender, sexuality, fat, animal rights and of course cultural and racial issues. We welcome you to share your recipes as well as your thoughts and experiences, but we ask that you do not submit posts with recipes only.

Anna J. Cook: Queen Everett

Then I came to a small yellowed clipping that featured a photograph of the five young women nominated in 1971 ... and the young man, Everett Nau, who had been crowned the Winter Carnival Queen of 1970. The brief caption to the photograph read (in part)
NAU GOOD LUCK GIRLS ... Everett Nau, last year's Winter Carnival Queen, bestows his best wishes upon this year's recently selected finalists (all girls if you'll notice). ... In this year's campaign, the judges ruled it mandatory that the contestants be of the female gender.

comments

link backlog

2010-12-02T00:44:32Z

( links )

comments

in which I get shit done

2010-10-16T01:01:13Z

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.

comments

just the link backlog for now

2010-10-04T03:17:52Z

I've had a headache for most of the weekend, spent waaaaaaay too long trying to sleep the headache off, and then it took Ellie and I all afternoon to get groceries (we hit Allandale Farms, Whole Foods, BJ's, and Stop-n-Shop. Plus Home Depot so she could price some set-building stuff).

All in a Name: New Software Benefits Transgender Students
The new software, created as an adjunct to the Banner student information system, allows students to fill out a form specifying their preferred name and pronoun. The information appears on all paperwork seen by faculty, so petitioning professors individually, a process that gave students no choice but to out themselves, is a thing of the past.
via naraht: The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes
My anecdotal evidence generally seems to support the idea that group sizes will usually plateau at a number lower than 150 participants. This comes from 20 years of doing facilitation both on and offline, running several software companies, and running various forums at America Online. In particular, many online communities provide good evidence for Dunbar's Number actually being an upper limit (either due to reduced efficiency or due to increased dispersion).
dw_news: Weekly Update: 30 Sept
* Development
* Code Push
* More DW Creativity
* RIP, Vox
* DW Advocacy
* Icon Renames
Dreamwidth Wiki: Advocacy

denise: DW artisans

via wordweaverlynn: Kink Aware Professionals

comments

NANANANANANANANA

2010-09-22T23:07:42Z

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

comments

yawns

2010-09-04T03:09:02Z

Recently

I've been following the latest LJwtf and going to work, pretty much. Managed to wear a skirt today, and I think every single person I work with complimented it.

( Follow Friday )

Links

( 7 links )

Plans

Get rained on and blown about. Hope the power stays on long enough to to chat with C. for a good long while. Drive up to NH with Ellie and shadesong for the art retreat, and catch the bus back. Drag Ellie to see Scott Pilgrim, get groceries, and pick up the hair stuff I forgot last week. Make attempt number 4 at purple hair: bleach a thick streak and purple it, then update the rest to black.

comments

picked a handful of violets in my name

Not dead.

happymaking things

sofiaviolet @ 2011-09-02T12:45:00

"Only an archivist..."

sofiaviolet @ 2011-07-22T22:34:00

my thoughts on Google+

One important thing before work.

not dead, just resting

Notes

Question

Training

Links

Plans

sofiaviolet @ 2011-04-28T22:11:00

Notes

21 Days of Dreamwidth

sofiaviolet @ 2011-04-19T11:07:00

Notes

Questions meme!

Links

Plans

9 links

sofiaviolet @ 2011-03-15T09:26:00

links

[The Networked Society] Retooling Shirky's blog types

You ate my sandwich!

linkspam

[The Networked Society] Introduction: Separation and Consistency of Identity

Catching you up on me: school

links

sofiaviolet @ 2010-12-16T07:40:00

link backlog

in which I get shit done

Recently

Links

just the link backlog for now

NANANANANANANANA

Notes

Links

*yawns*

Recently

Links

Plans

yawns