burning at the centre of time

Being super-cryptic about this, but lately on the interwebs with all of the fuckery going on both in the world and in community settings,* some people make me want to punch things. And I can't say anything to these people, e.g. PISS OFF, YOU DON'T HELP, because they are sort of Important and have cultural cachet and I may need to not have bad blood with them in future.

(I am, perhaps, too pragmatic about these things to be a real activist or interested in social justice, but I haven't ever claimed to be anything but a sell-out.)

We have been watching a lot of The A-Team lately, so basically my brain ends up wanting to non-lethally roll over cars and explode stuff on people, as well as quoting Hannibal and B.A., so.

Also, as usual, just reading about SDCC gives me anxiety. And then I get anxiety about not liking the idea of it and being a killjoy.

ANYWAY. In good things:
- I may need to post my Rule 63 in-period A-Team on Twitter because it's so necessary. The occasional thing like this is why I guess I need a Tumblr, but I cannae be bothered.
- I have yet to figure out why so many people follow me on Twitter in the first place. I suspect it's, as mentioned in previous post, because I'm a useful links aggregate and occasionally let out a bit of snark and that's it.
- I do quite enjoy a bit of my RPs right now.
- I actually finished reading a book! Which is good because my copy of Hild is in and I will pick it up and it will be lovely.
- I kinda want to reread Feed because it's the summer of 2014 and #wwyr is so wonderfully creepy.


* I have a lot to say about the Wiscon situation that I am not saying because it won't help anybody and also because I suspect no one cares what I think.

Um, because I have had all the December things on my mind plus RP plot of doom plus being sick with the flu lately...I completely forgot who I asked for posts in the December posty thing.

So likely you have posted about something I asked for and I have not commented. and dear god, I don't want you to think I've forgotten entirely and am not interested. I just have been falling down massively on reading the follow circle of late and now it's gone too far past my flicking backwards in entries.

If I've failed, could you please shout in comments?

If for some reason you missed it, I am rhivolution, Dreamwidth noobs.

I will be a bit busy the next few days, but I will try to add back asap. And if you have me friended on LJ but not DW, that's cool. I'll try not to feel hopelessly sad. [g]

I do not have to answer anyone's pay queries for the better part of a week thank god

Dearest internet, I have no good way of telling people when Twitter goes down, because TWITTER HAS GONE DOWN. So you get a post about it.

Oh, my soul.

Also, I have a migraine. And there is a new Simon's Cat. I'm tempted to update my icon with this year's holiday SC instead.


ETA: Twitter is back. I neglected to mention that like others, I'm remembering Russell Hoban, who I think of every time I eat bread or toast with jam. Seriously, every time.

Hoban had this to say about writing which is entirely too true:

I dont have nothing only words to put down on paper. Its so hard. Some times theres mor in the emty paper nor there is when you get the writing down on it. You try to word the big things and they tern ther backs on you. Yet youwl see stanning stoans and ther backs wil talk to you.
(Riddley Walker, 1983)

I sometimes wonder if I was the only person in Bill Oram's '04 class to get a lot out of that book...as a geek looking at language drift and cultural drift, I think it speaks more to me with a few years hindsight.

Okay, seriously, I've restarted my browser, and I STILL can't see this Create Entry page that is apparently made of fairy farts and glitter.

Never mind. Thanks, lilmoka.

Trying to x-post to LJ while I can, so I can update my friends, especially RP-based, who are there...

I've had nothing, not even patchy, over this DDoS, except for right now, where I can see LJ but can't leave any comments or switch my login for tags. Suffice it to say, I continue to be displeased.

I also continue to be posting here at Dreamwidth, just FYI.

My IBS hit me with a sucker punch this evening, as it does every few months, so this will not be overly coherent.

But today is my LiveJournal (rhipowered)'s tenth birthday, so please help me in singing a little birthday song for it and maybe fetching some fairy cakes.

It's been a hell of a ride so far, LJ (and DW) based fandom, and I am still happy to be a part of it!

also, i am twenty-seven when did that happen

Oi, LiveJournal, I'd really like to start getting my rhipowered notifs regularly again. You know, instead of a goddamn Farmville clone I won't be using? This is getting really, really old.

(For me, RP ones are fine, apparently.)

STRIFE. /Homestuck joke

The whole piracy of ebooks thing...yeah.

vito_excalibur wrote a good post elucidating her position, a lot of which I agree with, and karenhealey said some stuff in response in the LJ comments that rang really wrong to me, but I couldn't really put my finger on why. I've come back after dinner to find some responses by deepad (The politics of discussing illegal file-sharing) and colorblue (this is not a post about yoga!) that are very good in pointing out just exactly what I hadn't quite processed: just how Western the concept of intellectual property rights is, as it exists now.

Additional posts on this topic can be found at troisroyaumes' roundup.

So, before I start talking about my own POV, please consider that there are other important viewpoints on the topic...but those non-Western views dovetail with my own concept.

-----
I find it really problematic to say that you shouldn't access books illegally at all, full stop.

Firstly, I was fortunate enough to grow up in an area with a really good public library system, then went to college in an area with a fairly good library system as well; both are in the US.* Therefore, I have been privileged enough to expect to read nearly anything I want for free, given time and patience. And frankly, while in the US, I never really had the money to buy as many new books as I read, considering the cost of hardcovers and trade paperbacks even before the advent of ebooks. (I read a LOT.)

This is generally true of me overall: I don't like to buy things I don't want to own and consume again. Period.

In comparison to my past experience, the UK library system has been lacking. Birmingham was quite bad, Glasgow is better but not as good as what I'd like. According to people I've spoken to--anecdotal, but a variety of people nonetheless--the system is not as good as it was decades ago. And now, government cuts are suspected to be ripping the remaining guts out sooner rather than later.

So yeah, go ahead, tell me to make a request at my library, so they can buy a copy of your book so I can read it. They won't laugh in my face, exactly.

Assuming they can even buy a copy of your book at all, which brings me to my second point.

I now live in Britain (still Western, still with a high standard of living), but many books, even on major publishers, do not always come out here, and vice versa. (There are, for example, loads of books by FSF author Gwyneth Jones that are on a major UK imprint but completely inaccessible in the US. There's also a Jones book on Aqueduct Press that doesn't have a UK publisher, but I don't blame Aqueduct for that, it being indie.) And I really can't afford the absolutely ridiculous cost of buying from the US and shipping. Most people I know don't have that kind of expendable income. And I'm not sure why Karen Healey didn't really address this very satisfactorily (imho) in her own post.

This is not the authors' fault, but the fault of the publishing industry. What needs to be done, in my mind, is what needs to be done with television: a revision and opening of international licensing, as well as a revision of ereader accessibility and restriction. (I mean, I'd like something better, like government-funded universal library access and Creative Commons reuse/remix stuff. But that ain't happening in the current socioeconomic model.)

So...I'm kinda descending into incoherency and must sum up: I don't want to whinge about how I can't get a bunch of books...though, frankly, it frustrates me on a regular basis.

Instead, there's a deeper issue here of which my life only skims the surface due to privilege: saying that piracy is universally terrible and what...it's not good, but there is often no other access option. (Now, you don't want to go wave that in an author's face, that's just fucking stupid. And, as I noted, most authors can do fuck-all about the situation anyway.) In a globalised society, seeing reviews and recs for things dangling out of the reach of people with limited funds or not in the US stings like hell. You have to globalise access, and not just to the Western world, either.

Kinda comes down to bread and roses, friends. Bread and roses.

ETA: I believe everyone should have access to information if they want it. Less about entitlement, more about fulfilling the bullshit lip service towards this sort of thing that's been going on for ages.

* I'm not fond of US government/bureaucracy overall; this is actually probably the biggest thing I miss from the US system. Except perhaps the US Postal Service.

So I keep mulling over the idea that I should change my Tumblr or get a second one to talk about political stuff. Because it seems like that is where All The Discourse is happening in real time these days, and then I get lost and confused when people bring stuff up here or on Twitter.

Except when I think about it hard enough, I realise that that wouldn't be good for my brain.

Because, see, Tumblr for me works really well to post pictures of sexy people and cute animals and ridiculous stuff and the occasional thought too long for Twitter. But I find it really intensely difficult to follow all the intricacies of a complicated discussion on there. I need responses and discussion on one page or with a diagram with easy to follow hyperlinks like a branching tree. For me, the Tumblr method is great for clicking about, a la a bored day of Wikipedia surfing, but I can't read it for srs bsns unless I'm sticking to one person.

Otherwise I miss stuff that's really vitally important and don't have the spoons to go chasing it down. Hell, I neglect to answer LJ/DW comments and I get emails about those, ffs.

It's not Tumblr, it's me. My brain is borked. It's a self-realisation that is awkward as hell. And I'm angry at myself for not getting it because there is interesting shit going on that I'm missing.

More on the psychiatrist later.