conuly

PSA

2011-12-01T15:10:18Z

Phishing attempts are being made on LJ. Short version: If you get a comment that is accompanied by a pop-up asking for your password, don't give it your password. If you've already done that, go change your password.

More information here

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Trying to get back into the swing of posting.

2010-10-26T17:30:55Z

Firstly, let me just give this a resounding WTF?

In other news, this person wants information about traditional Thanksgiving foods. We're all MORE than happy to help... and I managed to get into a flame war about the definition of the word yam.

Well, I tried not to. I said sorry, I pointed out it's my own personal pet peeve (yams! They're African! You can't (easily) get them over here! THEY ARE NOT THE SAME AS SWEET POTATOES!), and I posted a few explanatory links...

but when the person I'm talking to goes "In America we, as Americans, call them yams" I have to point out that I, in fact, have been an American all my life, have lived here all my life, and only see them (mis)labeled "yams" in the supermarket (the same place that sells "wanuts", "peers", and "apels", so I don't take this very seriously) sometimes (probably due to dialectical variation). Most of the time they're labeled "small" and "large" sweet potatoes. And I certainly do not call them yams.

The yam issue is kinda like the robin issue. Settlers from England saw these birds kinda like their robins, didn't see their robins, and so decided to call these new birds "robins" just for the heck of it. Now we distinguish them by calling them "American" robins and "English" robins. Similarly, slaves from Africa saw these tubers kinda like their yams, didn't see their yams, and decided to call these new tubers "yams" for lack of a better term. Which is all well and good until a new wave of immigrants from Africa (and apparently the West Indies) hits and they bring real yams with them! I'd be happy to call them "American" yams and "African" yams (it's not like sweet potatoes are really just "sweet" potatoes either!) but to just use the term "yam" bugs me.

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Well, LJ news has updated. (Finally.)

2010-09-10T22:30:53Z

At the last possible second for "see you next week!" that doesn't make people work overtime.

It's pretty much what I expected. LJ made no changes yet, promised to make very few changes "in the next update", and all of a sudden the same people who hours ago were still comparing the recent code change to rape and LJ to a physically abusive partner, who as recently as yesterday were discussing calling the ACLU (see, it's stuff like this that makes me say some people were overreacting just a little bit. Is LJ linking to Facebook really a civil liberties issue?), who for the past week have been passing around DW invite codes like candy (VOX works for everybody, apparently)...

Yeah, these people are all going "YAY! YOU ARE AWESOME! THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!" all over the comments.

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So, some articles on the recent... thing.

2010-09-03T21:44:55Z

Firstly, if anybody is interested in creating a journal at DW, I've culled a lot of codes from old posts. I feel bad for the poor, unused codes! They're not getting any love. *sniff*

And now, three links I got from The Post of Doom, before it, uh, broke.

Facebook won't shut down stalker
LiveJournal integrates Facebook into its website
After Facebook and LiveJournal, Russia buys Twitter

Edit: A last minute link on an alternative to Facebook launching on the 15th.

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