Random observations in attempt to break non-posting habit

[matgb]

Item: Jennie put on Would I Lie To You, and the female panellist reveals she lied repeatedly to her husband before they married.

Jennie: Why did he marry her then?
Me: Jennie? She's Keeley Hawes.
(Jennie then went on to wonder why she felt the need to lie, but that's a Serious Topic)

Item: I am a listed here: Brighouse Ward: Statement of persons nominated: Calderdale Council, yes, that is the ward I actually live in, and yes, I'm actually running seriously to try to win. Last minute unplanned nomination, but that doesn't change that I could do it and would like to. This does of course mean that I'll need to be posting some 'local news' stuff over the next few weeks, as that'll be stuff I'll be concentrating on. And having spent years building up the Google presence for my name, ought to actually make use of it.

Item: Livejournal has for the best part of the last week been under a massive, sustained DDOS attack. It appears to be politically motivated from within Russia. This does of course highlight the need, if you care about such things, to backup your journal somewhere, either on your own machine or elsewhere online. I like that I've got two homes that are interoperable for my writing; if you haven't got a DW account & don't want to pay for one, I have a number of invite codes spare--I need an email address to send them to, feel free to comment or email me (matbowles@gmail.com).

Item: At the gym recently, Jennie watched an episode of Doctors, partially. It had Colin Baker in it. She didn't see all of it, so is now inflicting it on me. It has some reasonable actors and acting in it. Shame about the script, plot, etc...

Comments

[karohemd]

Good luck with your council run! Can't vote for you but I'll vote for your party mate down here, local elections being the only ones I can actually vote in.

[miss_s_b]

<3 the heroic Colin

[(Anonymous)]

Oh man if you have dreamwidth codes left please email
EZM1985@gmail.com! I would be forever grateful! :)

[andrewhickey.info]

Let me know if you and/or Jennie want help with leafletting etc. I'm currently trying to work out the amounts of time in my fortnight off I'll be spending relaxing, writing my book, campaigning for local Lib Dems, campaigning for Yes2AV and going to Leicester to help with the by-election, but I'm looking for an excuse to get up Calderdale way anyway (just discovered that a friend who lives in Hebden actually lives next door to another old friend I haven't seen in years) so will definitely be coming down your way anyway.

[daweaver]

Russia is such a fascinating place. It's a wonderful testing ground for some philosophical ideas, particularly the line that goes, "Politicians and leaders have dreams of how they want the world to be. Then they find that real life is complicated, and human beings unpredictable. Even when leaders try to force their ideas onto society, it reacts in ways they didn't expect and didn't plan for." Adam Curtis has made a career out of saying that in a million different ways. In that vein, let me tell a story, something that may make sense of the world, but that I'm basing on nothing more than speculation, not even on hearsay.

At some point in the not-so-distant past, the Poutine-Medvedev regime in the Kremlin commissioned some hackers to have a network of cyberbots available. If there was a political need to exert their force, such as a military campaign in Georgia, or someone in Estonia wiping their boot on a statue, then the Russian government could react at the drop of a cyber-hat.

While not waging war on behalf of the regime, these bots can be used for other purposes. After all, what's the point in writing code to infect shonkily-patched machines running IE6 if it just sits there? So these bots are hired out to Rent-a-goon, for whatever purposes they like. In this case, the purpose is striking against Livejournal. Whether that's because someone rich is offended by something someone's posted, or someone's got a beef against Alexander Mamut, or someone's got thoroughly pissed off with yet another installment in The Sekrit Life of Frank "He Gets Your" Goat, we don't know.

The above is speculation and is probably wronger on more levels than the time they played Only Connect in the Great Glass Elevator. Fact is that Metafilter has been discussing this topic, complete with the delicious quote,

"YOU try to convince 100+ Uruguayan soccer nuts who just want a place to squee over Diego Forlan on an hourly basis to switch over just because Lj is TEH EVIL. I'M not going to."

[maddock-ist-rad.livejournal.com]

That makes sense; I was wondering why my My Guests thing was showing a bunch of Russian anarchists.

[tyrell.livejournal.com]

I'd PAY Keeley Hawes to lie to me.
But then we knew that.

[arcdiaego.livejournal.com]

good luck on the elections! :D will you add me? on here? I'm working on the dreamwidth thing, sort of as a backup to
LJ just in case. haha. Hi I'm Elliott by the way!

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough, I've barely been posting on LJ too. Though I posted three times today...

Good luck in your campaign. I din't think I could take local politics. I'd just ended up swearing at everyone and telling them to just fucking get on with it...