Fucking shoes.

In retrospect, shoes have become symbolic of every moment of obligatory gender and other role performance that required to go out of my way and to some expense and personal discomfort-shading-into-agony for something I do not want to do.

I am a person who voluntarily wears the same pair of shoes, black knee-high stockings, a mid-calf or longer black skirt, a black top, and a black knit cardigan, week in, week out. (Currently I've the four good everyday black skirts and the one that needs mended, plus some better-than-everyday skirts.) Since 2000, I have leveled up from shorts and a tank top to everyday business casual that is simultaneously comfortable and allows me to perform minor feats of athleticism above and beyond what I am actually capable of doing, and it is good.

In my everyday clothes, I do not have to think about what I am wearing, either while I am getting ready to put it on, while I am actually wearing it, or while I am washing it. ( I explain, and complain. )

Even the anticipation or fear of clothing discomfort is sometimes enough to make me completely flip my stack, and rationality is no longer a part of this conversation. In short?

SHOES. FUCKING SHOES. I HATE FUCKING SHOES.

(Old stuff: December 20-27) Eclipse, holiday, blue canary, etc.

( Read more... )

Spamhaus and LJ

[Edit: Kareila rightly brought my attention back to the fact that this is a problem for the people who haven't been getting comments, and pointed at http://www.livejournal.com/tools/recent_comments.bml as a resource to check for comments in your journal, at least, even if you haven't been getting email notifications or inbox notifications.]

Someone in the news comments noticed that livejournal.com is currently listed on a Spamhaus blacklist.

LJ's IP is listed in the Spamhaus Blocking List because LJ is allowing Russian pharma spammers to abuse their service. Spamhaus is one of the most respected anti spam organizations in the world, and being listed there means they've ignored spammers on their network for quite a while and virtually no large ISP/email host wants their mail until they start acting like responsible Internet citizens.

http://www.spamhaus.org/Sbl/listings.lasso?isp=livejournal.com is the listing.

astragali, in the news post from 9th March 2011

The Spamhaus listing says:

SBL104433
208.93.0.128/32 livejournal.com
02-Mar-2011 08:29 GMT
livejournal.com: Again used by botnet spammers to host

My interpretation: Looking at the listing there, it seems to be that it's spammers hosting their warez on LJ, rather than other forms of bad behavior (like spammers spoofing email claiming to come from livejournal.com, or people reporting news post notifications as spam rather than retrieving/resetting their account info and unsubscribing). So if that is correct, then LJ would want to track down the spammers who have set up little nests on LJ, and root them out and destroy them.

Some of the spammers that are on LJ don't serial-add, don't spam communities, and don't comment, they just sit around in their own journals making spammy posts (and apparently emailing people to point them to those spammy posts). There are a lot of them.

As a user, I can't take action directly against them. But I can report spam in my own journal and in my comms. I can hang out on the Latest Posts page (http://www.livejournal.com/stats/latest.bml) and use the Report a Bot form (in the contextual hover menu, or at http://www.livejournal.com/abuse/bots.bml) to get more of the bots reported to the Abuse Prevention Team.

I don't know how many hours the team has had to devote to spamwhacking, but I know I can spare five or ten minutes to report some of the bots on that page. The more we report, accurately, the more they can zap. The more we report, the more information on the bots (the IP addresses they use, the email addresses, the email domains, the other patterns) they have to analyze.

I've spent nearly ten years on LJ, through all sorts of ups and downs. Spamhaus blacklisting LJ means it's serious. We've had our differences, but I want to keep LJ around, for myself and for my friends who have made their homes here. I can spare five or ten minutes reporting bots. Who's with me?

Spamhaus and LJ

[Edit: Kareila rightly brought my attention back to the fact that this is a problem for the people who haven't been getting comments, and pointed at http://www.livejournal.com/tools/recent_comments.bml as a resource to check for comments in your journal, at least, even if you haven't been getting email notifications or inbox notifications.]

Someone in the news comments noticed that livejournal.com is currently listed on a Spamhaus blacklist.

LJ's IP is listed in the Spamhaus Blocking List because LJ is allowing Russian pharma spammers to abuse their service. Spamhaus is one of the most respected anti spam organizations in the world, and being listed there means they've ignored spammers on their network for quite a while and virtually no large ISP/email host wants their mail until they start acting like responsible Internet citizens.

http://www.spamhaus.org/Sbl/listings.lasso?isp=livejournal.com is the listing.

astragali, in the news post from 9th March 2011

The Spamhaus listing says:

SBL104433
208.93.0.128/32 livejournal.com
02-Mar-2011 08:29 GMT
livejournal.com: Again used by botnet spammers to host

My interpretation: Looking at the listing there, it seems to be that it's spammers hosting their warez on LJ, rather than other forms of bad behavior (like spammers spoofing email claiming to come from livejournal.com, or people reporting news post notifications as spam rather than retrieving/resetting their account info and unsubscribing). So if that is correct, then LJ would want to track down the spammers who have set up little nests on LJ, and root them out and destroy them.

Some of the spammers that are on LJ don't serial-add, don't spam communities, and don't comment, they just sit around in their own journals making spammy posts (and apparently emailing people to point them to those spammy posts). There are a lot of them.

As a user, I can't take action directly against them. But I can report spam in my own journal and in my comms. I can hang out on the Latest Posts page (http://www.livejournal.com/stats/latest.bml) and use the Report a Bot form (in the contextual hover menu, or at http://www.livejournal.com/abuse/bots.bml) to get more of the bots reported to the Abuse Prevention Team.

I don't know how many hours the team has had to devote to spamwhacking, but I know I can spare five or ten minutes to report some of the bots on that page. The more we report, accurately, the more they can zap. The more we report, the more information on the bots (the IP addresses they use, the email addresses, the email domains, the other patterns) they have to analyze.

I've spent nearly ten years on LJ, through all sorts of ups and downs. Spamhaus blacklisting LJ means it's serious. We've had our differences, but I want to keep LJ around, for myself and for my friends who have made their homes here. I can spare five or ten minutes reporting bots. Who's with me?

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.

41 tweets for 2011-3-10

In the last 24 hours, I posted the following to Twitter:

• Thursday, 0709: @maureenjohnson Sometimes the SOUND was #airhorn, however.
• Thursday, 0710: @laliandra @ifonlyella To the bit bucket. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/bit-bucket.html
• Thursday, 0716: @biodelusion Reading an article on what to do with leftover wine (vinegar is one option if you have a "mother"), changing burn dressings.
• Thursday, 0808: Had a wish-fulfillment dream last night. Woke up thinking about it. Alas. (Also dreamed about bizarre coven politics re: kitchen utensils.)
• Thursday, 0820: @jai_dit It was fairly mundane, just involved possession of kitchen utensils being symbolic of one group's desire to split off.
( read the other 36 )

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