The sky continues to fall. Full story at 11.

For those of you who have been either living under a rock or out having lives recently, there are some changes to LiveJournal you should know about.

First, there is a new content flagging feature. No matter what your settings for anything else on LiveJournal have been, you will want to visit your settings page, go down to the section for "Adult content options," and pick something. You can rate your journal if you like, or you can leave it alone--this option is (currently) (supposed to be) voluntary. If you are unable to select certain options, make sure you have your birthdate set to something (anything!) over 18.

For information on both your ability to rate content on your own journal, and the ability of different people to flag content on journals they do not own, see this post and this post in lj_biz.

Next: LiveJournal has been sold to a Russian company called SUP (pronounced "soup"). Many people, knowing something about the corruption that's endemic to Russia, are a bit concerned about this, even though the new LiveJournal, Inc. is located in California and is supposed to be governed by U.S. law. Other people, somewhat less informed about what's been going on in Russia, are afraid that LJ's servers will now be located behind the Iron Curtain. (Hint: There has been no Iron Curtain since the 1980s, dudes. Hate Putin's government all you like, but pick a new metaphor.)

This thread should prove very useful for us all.

Brad's reaction.

An old Wired news article about SUP's involvement with LJ in Russia.

Collection of more links here from stewardess.

Note: If you're coming to the game this late, all of the "In Soviet Russia..." jokes have already been made. Better luck next time.

Now I have a question: If it is indeed now going to be dangerous to criticize and/or make fun of Vladimir Putin on this site, which one of the following will get me into more trouble?

Funny how the mind works

Looking back in my LJ archives, I see that the song in my head on December 3, 2005 was:

In the meadow we can build a snowman
And pretend that he is Alton Brown
He'll say, "Are you cooking?"
We'll say, "No, man
But you can show us how while you're in town."

Music running through my head this evening:

In the meadow we can build a snowman
And pretend that he is Jackson Browne
He'll say "Doctor, my eyes
Cannot see the skies
Is this the price
For having learned how not to cry?" *

I... I don't even want to know what goes on with my brain at times like this. I just don't.



* Edit: Now I see that the Jackson Browne version was in my head on December 19, 2005. The next line was:
We'll say, "Dude, we are so not inviting you to any more Christmas parties, ever."