The Extraction Space

After not having posted here for the larger part of a decade, it looks a if a bunch of my Tumblr friends are headed this way, and it’s time I started getting away from the necessary short form stuff of Zuckerbook and Twiddle and back to my traditional TL:DNR form of LJ days. Now I just need to track down who else is here. 

Let the games begin! 

It is, in fact, only a test of the Dreamwidth cross-posting marching and chowder society (and do they eat the chowder while they're marching? Wouldn't that get messy?). Stay tuned. Film at 11, although who knows of what.

Okay, the vintage Italian espresso machine thing seems to have taken hold.
( You know the drill )

Short ristretto shot of Monday roasted Mokha/Sumatra blend.

Soon, she will be mine

( ... )

Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha

For those of you who don't live in the L.A. area, we're having a fairly big election tomorrow (didn't elections used to just be in November, on Election Day, instead of scattered willy-nilly through the year?). At stake are the mayoralty, city attorney, a number of council seats, community college board, and a raft of stupid propositions and other crap all bought and paid for by the usual suspects.

Even if I hadn't been following the news, I'd know because local politicians have discovered the internet and, even more importantly, the charms of spamming.

The most egregious example is an email I received from a candidate for city attorney who wants to remind me that he's not in the thrall of the 'downtown political machine' but a prosecutor who will vigorously pursue all the people that can be gathered together under the code words that are used to signify 'brown'. To top it off, the subject line of this spam is 'Public Safety Message'. I suppose that's to make sure that people read it, 'cause the dam might have broken or something and the city figured that sending out email was the best way to announce it in order to avoid panic. This idiot's name, btw, is Michael Amerian (just like 'American, only without that pesky 'c', 'cause you know there's one of them in 'Communist', isn't there?). Hmmm, I wonder who I'm gonna vote for tomorrow? I suspect I know who it's not going to be.

Recently, a number of friends have sent me links to online petitions for one thing or another. When I realized I was getting unreasonably annoyed at this, I had to give it some thought because these are, after all, friends for whom I care. Here are the conclusions I've come to.

1. Online petitions are worth exactly as much as the paper they're printed on – in other words, nothing. They cannot offer proof of anything. Anybody could collect hundreds of thousands of email addresses (znc I can point you at a number of places that will sell you exactly that) and paste them on a petition. 'Signing' an online petition might make you feel good, or as if you've taken action, but it doesn't really accomplish anything.

2. That list of email addresses can be harvested and sold to spammers. I wouldn't be surprised if a number of circulating petitions are being used for exactly that. What do we really know about the people who are behind any given online petition, anyway?

3. Signing a petition makes many people feel as if they've been let off the hook. They've done their bit now, and don't have to worry about it anymore. This leads to complacency and a sense of powerlessness and frustration when the outcome of that particular issue isn't what the signee desires.

There's a lot more that I could extrapolate, but those are my initial thoughts.

I'm a big believer in social activism, individual initiative, and community involvement. But I think that you need to get your hands dirty. Care about an issue? Do some research to make sure that you've got all the facts and that particular rock is someplace you're comfortable standing on, then get out there and work for it. That's how stuff gets done. Knock on doors. Talk to people. Try to help them see things from the same angle you're looking from. Show up at that council meeting/school board/senate hearing/environmental impact study/what have you yourself, get up, and be a goad. Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, whatever they're afflicted with or comfortable about. Question your own motives. Make doubly sure that you really mean what you think you mean. Listen to the other approaches to the problem. I mean, really listen. Try to put yourself in their shoes, the same way you would hope they put themselves in yours. If somebody gets stuck somewhere in the process, offer them a hand to pull them out, no matter where they sit in relation to you. Life's too short to not bear our common humanity in mind at all times. Everybody wants the same stuff, and if we play our cards right, we can all come out of this okay, although 'okay' may not necessarily be what we thought it was going to be.

Or at least, that's what I believe.

There's a fairly stupid discussion over on Slashdot about the current straits of the SF magazines (go here if you want to read it). Now, as you should be able to guess from my presence here, on Facebook, MySpace, and multiple other sites, I'm pretty comfortable with the online world, and I do believe that it is, for better or worse, where many things are heading. But we're a long way yet from publications being able to exist solely on the web and pay writers, editors, etc. anything other than token sums. Ad-driven isn't going to do it (I don't know any web-savvy folks who don't use ad-blockers on their browsers and if it comes to a war between advertisers and coders who don't want to have ads get in their way on the web, my money's on the coders), so the suggestion made over there that sticking Google ads on your blog will make a not-yet-established writer rich doesn't quite hold water. Neither do many of the other "well, it's so obvious" suggestions that are made over there. It was surprising to me how few of the posters even seemed aware that Asimov's, Analog, and F&SF are all available as non-DRM files by subscription, and have been for most of a decade.

The little geek fantasyland that many Slashdot folks live in must be a lovely place. Too bad it doesn't really exist.

Brian May (Queen) - PhD in Astrophysics
Phil Alvin (The Blasters) - PhD in Mathematics
Greg Graffin (Bad Religion) - PhD in Evolutionary Biology
Sterling Morrison (Velvet Underground) - PhD in Medieval Literature

I'm feeling distinctly undereducated here. There's gotta be more. Who?

I just used the word 'synergy' in body copy without a twinge of conscience. Does this mean I need an intervention? Am I succumbing to the dark side?