sofiaviolet | Entries tagged with activism

Made my first improvement to my Shadowrun character on Monday: acquired the Longarms skill at rating 2, so she can use a sniper rifle. Further away from the NPCs you're trying to kill means less chance they can lodge bullets in you. (This Monday, I need to actually buy the sniper rifle, and talk to Daly about initiation and Adept powers.)

Did my first survivor speech on Wednesday night. I drafted the full length of what I wanted to say in my paper journal a couple of times on Tuesday and Wednesday. When I went to actually give the speech, it just kind of happened (and I don't think I talked too fast or went over my allotted time). *sigh* Now that that's done, I am no longer wound up so tightly my spine's range of motion is obstructed, which I very much appreciate.

After work yesterday, I got lunch at Ghazal (where they now remember I like plain naan with my lunch buffet, I am there so frequently) and then went to the thrift stores on Centre Street. I got sweaters and glassware. Sweaters because I need warm things that are more professional than hoodies (which is a really low bar to set); one of them is argyle but none of them are cardigans because pullovers seem much more common and I an super-picky about my cardigans. Glassware is for terrariums and aquariums: Ellie's potted herb garden died a while back, so I am going to replace the rosemary, basil, and thyme with live moss terrariums (since they need less sun and there's no window in our apartment that gets much of that, particularly in winter). And I want some marimo balls to keep in my bedroom.

(Ellie mocks my desire for pet protists. I figure they're just the right amount of maintenance and attention for me to keep them alive.)

Any advice on super-low-maintenance, low-light houseplants welcome.

Made a rather small error in reading comprehension a few weeks ago (thought a primary source was from Corporate Body X, whose records have been digitized, but actually it was Corporate Body Y, whose records don't even have complete online finding aids), procrastinated on an assignment, and only discovered my error at the eleventh hour. I would have been massively sunk were it not for my kind-hearted parents, who went to the repository the very same day I called them in full freakout mode, and took photos of some very old documents for me.

Best parents ever, y/y? I am totally buying them a nice dinner when I go home for the holidays.

***

In other news, I wish to remind folks that I like to send holiday cards around this time of year! (Not that I have mailed any just yet, but I have loads of time.) I'm happy to send cards anywhere USPS will let me, and I am also happy to send you a card even if you're not doing your own "mail stuff to people from the internet" thing.

***

I have a speaking engagement later this month at my undergraduate institution - in my old dorm, no less. I'm not really nervous about it yet, but I'm sure I will be. I will probably do some practicing in the mirror, since I haven't done the full speech since I was trained over the summer.

Rather energy-consuming weekend for me. I went to a munch Saturday night (although I showed up a bit late because I'd been sitting in the dark waiting for some tylenol to kick in, and I left early to get groceries). And then on Sunday I met up with Lorraine in JP and we headed up to Cambridge for Safe/Ward. After getting some ice cream, smelling all the things at Lush, and scoping out used cookbooks, we arrived early at the Democracy Center because Lorraine had volunteered to help out. I also wound up volunteering, helping out, etc., just because I was there. The workshop was very productive, and afterward, I spent three hours in a food court with a small group of people just continuing our conversation.

And now some more tylenol and sleep. My knee is unhappy again; I guess it's not as healed as I thought it was. :(

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.

Links

charmian: more notifications problems at LJ?

Currently there's a notifications problem at LJ, which apparently has something to do with a third party [EDIT: possibly Spamhaus]. People are getting fairly upset about it in the comments of the news post (well, also because of the banner color scheme).

Also, LJ is currently blacklisted with Spamhaus.

azurelunatic: Spamhaus and LJ

LJ has been listed by Spamhaus, which has likely got a decent amount to do with the notifications some people aren't getting. I propose a plan of action for users to help the Abuse Prevention Team squish as many spammerbots as humanly possible.

Follow Friday

lireavue has been posting good links and personal accounts of the Wisconsin protests.

laughingrat posts about library and social justice issues.

helpfordelight is an auction comm to assist

delight with moving out of an unsafe housing situation and paying for her mother's cancer treatment.

three_weeks_for_dw is ramping up for another round, beginning on April 25th. Planning of activities is currently in progress.

unclutter is devoted to getting rid of one thing per day and one thing per new thing. (Kind of high traffic, but a really great way to clean sustainably.)

dw_meetups is usually pretty quiet, but if you are interested in hanging out with other Dreamwidth users, you should subscribe in case someone plans a meetup in your area (and/or plan a meetup yourself!).

Boston meetup

Boston Meetup: tentatively scheduled for 3/17

Meme

Poll #6257 Ask me a question!

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 2

My question is:

I have another question!

And another!

When I answer your question(s), may I reveal who asked it?

Yes, you can say that $username asked "blah blah blah?"
2 (100.0%)

No, please answer my question without attributing it to me.
0 (0.0%)

Subject refers to icon.

Day of Epic Personal Responsibility! Got shit done at work. More importantly, wrote emails I'd been putting off to history advisor and my closest contact in the honors department. Haven't sent them yet; I am going to read over them one more time after dinner.

Tomorrow's Epic Personal Responsibility! Print off paperwork and spend part of lunch break chasing down people in order to declare my minor in women's studies. Because I took all the courses, dammit. (This may be a multi-day project...)

Other things I need to do: senior clearance, apply to graduate, register for classes (while I'm in North Dakota, hence the urgency of the emails: if something goes wrong, I don't want to be trying to fix it over email with no advance warning to whoever has to deal with it/me).

Senior pictures are next week, apparently. I feel kind of meh about it, but then I am pretty meh about most things like that. I mean, I tried to skip my high school graduation (and while I don't have any strong feelings now that it's over, I still think it was a waste of an afternoon). It's kind of telling that the main thing encouraging me to bother with it is the fact that my hair will be super-purple (since this weekend is my last chance to do that before I need to have very bright hair for Halloween). I might even be willing to order prints, for the sheer awesome of being able to give them to my stodgier relatives.

Things I Don’t Have to Think About Today
Today I don’t have to think about still not being equal.
Today I don’t have to think about what it takes to keep going.
Today I don’t have to think about how much I still have to hide.
Today I don’t have to think about how much prejudice keeps hold.
Today I don’t have to think about how I’m meant to be grateful that people tolerate my kind.

Today I don’t have to think about all the things I don’t have to think about.
But today I will.
The Slutcracker
Boston/Camberville-area people! We should make plans for this. I quite enjoyed it last year.

NaNoCraftMo
I don't think I'll be officially participating, but I could certainly do with some effort in the craft arena. (I'm still undecided about NaNoWriMo, too.)

Current Mood: manic

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

Recently

Today's lulz: letter from Glamour magazine attempting to get Mr. [Sofia Blackthorne] to subscribe. My legal first name is technically unisex (I was named after my great-grandfather), though in English-speaking cultures, Dominique pretty much female (although I wonder, given the number of times people have attempted to call me Dominic to my very cis-female face - can they not pronounce -que endings or something?).

Also, Ellie is eating all my Green & Blacks milk chocolate. :\

Links

scottpilgrimslash: comment-fic-athon

via holyschist: [Activist Modus Operandi] Methods of Communication

tim: How To Fail Out Of Grad School Without Really Trying
There's a saying that you should never take advice from the survivors, and I felt that way reading this list of reasons Ph.D students fail. If I interpret this article as advice, it's good advice. But if I interpret it as a compendium of reasons why students fail, it doesn't really capture my experience or that of other people I know who left grad school. One reason why is that the author attributes failure only to individual students, ignoring the important role that unsupportive faculty members and indifferent institutions can play in encouraging failure. As Barbara Lovitts shows in her book _Leaving the Ivory Tower_, there are disciplinary and institutional patterns to grad student attrition, suggesting structural reasons for why Ph.D students fail that cannot be reduced to random individual variations in character.
via #dreamwidth: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names

via rydra_wong: I love the smell of dreamwidth in the morning.
Every day that you're online, scout around dreamwidth. Find one person you don't normally comment to and comment on an entry. Pick a community that looks cool or that you're a member of and don't normally post to/comment on, and leave a post/comment. Post something of substance in your journal. Start a conversation. Engage. Enrich the community.

Plans

Need to redo the purple on my hair this weekend, or maybe sooner if I feel like it. It's starting to fade significantly near the roots. Also need to go to the post office, since those bastards have stopped leaving international parcels on the porch. Also should install software updates and restart my computer, especially since it might fix the problems that exist between Adium and Facebook chat. Also also should order some tights for extended skirt-wearing season.

OH GOD FINALLY I AM CAUGHT UP. I only had to go to skip=620 to do it.

Apologies for my epic failure at updating; I don't like to post when I'm behind on my reading. And speaking of my dreamroll... I am having to cut down on my subscriptions because I am overwhelmed. Bleh full-time job. I love my work, but I also love my internets. It is a sad time for me.

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.

( links )

shadesong/

shadesong is looking for people to make t-shirts for the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center's Clothesline Project.

She says:

The Clothesline Project is for survivors of rape, sexual assault, incest, domestic violence, any kind of sexual violence, but can also be for loved ones of survivors; there are shirts by parents, partners, and friends of survivors. (Note: I am hoping for shirts from male survivors and anyone else whose experience challenges people's assumptions of "the typical rape victim", but I will take any shirt you want to make.)

This shirt-making event will take place at Shadesong's house at a time to be determined. They're also looking into ways for non-local survivors to contribute.

***

mark did a code push last night. Things that are live include a fix for removing users from subscription filters (basically, It Works Now) and

yvi's sticky entry patch. To set a sticky post, you can choose any existing post and enter its URL or ID at the bottom of the Display settings page. Crossposting from clients should now work, although I haven't mucked around with it since I don't use a client. There are also a bunch of new themes.

***

Johnny Blazes will be performing Wo(n)man Show at Northeastern tonight. But Ellie isn't coming, because work. You should come and hang out with me, though! Email me if you are coming and we can meet up. Doors at 7:30, show at 8.

April 2014

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Page Summary

Five class meetings before the end of the semester.
oops
weekend! *flop*
not dead, just resting
multi-part post
Well, it's a bit late for that. Maybe just a concentration?
NANANANANANANANA
(no subject)
(no subject)
Relevant to interests of Boston locals, Dreamwidth users, and Boston locals again.

txtbx

Not nice, but friendly.

picked a handful of violets in my name

right between the scapulae, back of the heart

Entries tagged with activism

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Five class meetings before the end of the semester.

oops

weekend! flop

not dead, just resting

Notes

Question

Training

Links

Plans

multi-part post

Links

Follow Friday

Boston meetup

Meme

Well, it's a bit late for that. Maybe just a concentration?

NANANANANANANANA

Notes

Links

(no subject)

Recently

Links

Plans

(no subject)

Important things:

Relevant to interests of Boston locals, Dreamwidth users, and Boston locals again.

April 2014

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