i feel stupid, and contagious

+ I just read about Amanda Palmer's latest fail (a bit late, yes). Ironic hipsters are going to be the death of me.

Instead of ranting against her, because she's only one famous person and this stuff happens all the time, I will just link to the sparkymonster's post on the issue, because it's all about why calling the KKK 'ironic' in any context would make someone an asshole of the highest order, and it needs to be seen by as many people as possible.

+ In other news, I have so much respect for the staff over at Dreamwidth. I wish the LJ staff could be one tenth as mature when they get called out for things.

Most of you know this, but I do have a DW account; (feel free to add me there). I mostly use it to keep up with friends and communities there, and I crosspost from there to LJ because hell -- it's really easy to do. I'm not sure if I'll ever completely stop using LJ; there are still so many people and communities I follow there and I'm not annoyed with any of them even if I'm annoyed with the LJ staff a lot of the time. But I know a lot of youse are switching or have switched.

Anyway, this and a conversation I had with a friend this morning about Tumblr vs. LJ have got me thinking about e-relationships and social media and fannish drift. Or something.

( Mostly inconsequential babble borne of a couple email convos )

+ In still more news, I bought a Kindle and it will be arriving today! I AM EXCITE. I've been wanting one for a while (I was going to go for a Nook but I got wary of the first-gen thing), and it's one of the few chunks of my tax return not going to bills or things that need to be replaced. Wheeeee.

Fandom is having another one of its messy revolving debates, this time about slash and het (femslash? what femslash?) and misogyny and I guess I have a take, such as it is.

( here, I'll even cut it )

I would've made this an ETA to my previous post, but it really kind-of deserves its own, so I hope you don't mind the spam.

If you haven't been reading all the posts about/related to/in response to RaceFail '09, I think you should be. It's informative, exhausting, not a little painful, and worth the time I've spent reading through it. Here's an abbreviated round-up by rydra_wong, which also points to a much more extensive list of links that are also useful.

Anyway, I'm mostly posting to point to this post by bossymarmalade that I've finally got a chance to read. It was written in response to this entry by Elizabeth Bear. And while Bear martyrs herself quite nobly, I found bossymarmalade's response eloquent and perfect. It made me cry.

We actually can't all "just let it drop" for a while. It's beautiful that we're having this discussion -- sometimes I think about what my mother would say if she were reading all this. I actually tried to explain it to her this weekend, what's been going on, and she doesn't even understand why we try: it goes nowhere, ever, and it leads to pain. She and I are about two generations apart, though, and she's been through things I can't ever completely understand, so I can't tell her that her feelings are wrong. I could never, ever tell her that.

Besides, sometimes, I think she's right. Frustratingly so.

But then I read the above post, and I wish that I'd been more vocal.