RivkaT

1. Hilariously, I just realized: I’m flying to Atlanta next Monday, then home Tuesday, then to Utah Wednesday—via the exact same flight to Atlanta as I take Monday.

2. The Torrent of Our Own graphics challenge proceeds: go here to see a vid that’s all about what vidding means to the vidder (then stay and make icons!)

3. You have been the victims of a terrible swindle: Great reading; not so great living.

( demonic YA; film theory; the science of mistakes )

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Class Action

Discworld, gen (Vetinari, Vimes)

Notes: This was started years ago, when Yuletide allowed Discworld, which helps date it some. Thanks to katarik for beta. Also, I tried to follow instructions for making footnotes accessible; if I made a mistake, I am very sorry.

( But all mine ever says is goodbye. )

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Anybody willing to beta a short, gen Discworld story?

I’ve been thinking about the LJ comments-to-Facebook changes. Code structures what we think we can do; it influences what we think we should do as well, which is why Facebook makes it so very easy to post to Facebook from various sites (not just LJ). I find the concept of affordances useful in discussing this (you can download Larry Lessig’s whole book, Code, which also explores the concept). It has always been possible to repost content seen in a locked post. But suggesting that one can do so by checking a box normalizes it: makes it easy to imagine, which may also (not necessarily, and not for everyone, but even a shift of the average matters) make it easier to approve. And that’s putting aside the accessibility/accidental posting issues, which are significant. We should generally structure our institutions to support behavior we like and discourage behavior we don’t.  With respect to comments, I think LJ is not following that rule, at least as many of us have understood commenting.

If this had just been posts, I think the reaction would have been different. I see some comments that my Facebook friends make on posts by their friends, though I doubt I see them all (Facebook privacy is a confusing mess). That plus Twitter makes it clear where the idea came from. But Facebook culture is not LJ culture; and in any event the open-comment-on-locked-post combo is bad. But I’m not sure the idea of making it easier to publicize public posts is anything to worry about, even though your commenters also might get a bit of that exposure from people who then follow the link to the post. And I don’t think anybody else can disseminate your comments as such using this new feature.

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I have already been making a feed available for Twitter as rivkat_lj because some people asked, but that’s a feed of my entries only; I do the same for my pro blog; I don't get why people want notification of long blog entries via Twitter when RSS is available, but I also don't want to make it difficult for anyone who wants to read my stuff to do so.  I'm actually trying the LJ implementation because in my experience twitterfeed, which I've been using, misses about one post in five. 

I will never crosspost comments anywhere, and I don’t really get why you would in most cases, since my mental image of comments is things that participate in a particular conversation. But then I think that about a lot of tweets too. This latest LJ trick obviously increases various risks, though I think it increases them in direct proportion to the similarity of your LJ name to your Facebook name.  As far as I’m aware, anything crossposted to Facebook will show up there as “comment on rivkat’s post” and not as “comment on legal name’s post,” so even if you have overlapping friend sets (as I do, a bit) it won’t be obvious to someone looking at your Facebook page that the two are the same. If I am wrong I will be very perturbed.  Obviously it would make me sad if someone crossposted comments to one of my very few locked posts, and I could seriously do without the changes in the comment form.  I installed the greasemonkey script and it seems to work, but my guess is that it will break eventually.

ETA: Okay, this just got bad.  I got a pingback to an entry to which I don't have access.  I don't like having talk behind my back shoved in my face, and I think it's silly to have pingbacks in those circumstances along with being invasive of the journaler's privacy.  But that's not the bad part.  The bad part is that a big chunk of the access-controlled entry was contained in the pingback.  Which, if I unscreened it, would be visible to everyone (since the post at issue is public).  Not on, LJ.  Not on.  Has anyone else seen this?  I thought the pingbacks only had post titles.

I have DW invites if anyone wants.

In other news: For some reason the button on my library access authentication page that says SUBMIT reads as very sexual to me. Possibly I’m just strange.

( TV: Eureka squee )

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( I'm as surprised as you are. )

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Full Service Firm

Note: Here it goes, another wall I thought would never fall. CW RPF: J2, AU. Explicit.  Thanks to giandujakiss for beta.
Content notes: see prompt—sex work, deception.
Prompt from the SPN/J2 sex industry fic meme: Jensen's ego is stinging four weeks after being dumped by his long time boyfriend. He's been turning down guys left and right because, while he wouldn't mind some nice, no-strings-attached sex, he's more than a little scared of any kind of rejection. Enter the hot guy in the expensive suit who's been drinking the bar's best all night. Jensen nearly swallows his tongue when hot guy sidles up and says he'll pay double Jensen's going rate if he agrees to leave right the fuck now. Jensen's more than a little peeved that the guy thinks he's a hooker, but when he names an outrageous price off the top of his head, and the guy agrees without blinking an eye, he feels all his insecurities vanish. At least until a few months later when he realizes he may be in love with his one and only regular.

Me again: Sorry, I tweaked it a bit and didn’t quite work all the optional parts in.

Read the whole thing on the AO3.

( The customer is always right. )

Part 2

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Had I known just how many angry white people would be sharing the Metro with me on Saturday for Glenn Beck’s rally, I probably would have taken a cab to the airport.

( Buffy fandom, Sime/Gen, Jim Hines )

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Annoying: the guy in my field who really rubs me the wrong way responded to a mailing list question about implementing practice X by saying that, because he tries to be a nice guy, he does not-X. Yeah, you’re super nice, as that response clearly demonstrates. (Must enhance my calm. Delete button, how you have saved me.)

( Flint/Wentworth )

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Who remembers the name of that science fiction story where, in the future, total database access makes it possible to show that new art is never "new"--you're always composing/drawing/etc. something that's been created before?  And the dreams of artists are crushed by (a rather weird interpretation of) copyright law?

ETA: Found, in minutes.  You all are the best!

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Passing it on: the pink sparkly hearts challenge at fanlore. The idea is that over the next two weeks, we're encouraged to make new pages at Fanlore celebrating favorite fanworks -- specifically, the first fanworks we ever fell in love with.

I did one for The Sin-Eater, which was either the first X-Files fic I read online or as near as makes no difference; it was the first for which I wrote feedback, and I received a gracious reply from Jane Mortimer, which was a wonderful introduction to online fandom. So I went ahead and wrote another for Mercy. I’m not sure how I prove the story was influential, but I remember that it was much talked-about.

In other news, I’m in the middle of reading a book that, when I described the first 60-odd pages, two separate people spontaneously responded, “Red Dawn with aliens!” It’s mostly, but not quite, that; I’m still reading.

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