Slate: Why are engineers more often terrorists than other professions?

Jobs and the nature of the field argues slate.

Vampire Spam

I got spammed by a vampire... it is a great deal les frequent now, but they are worse than ever...

[15:29] LotusEffect Darkwatch: hey cutie
[15:29] Lillie Yifu: hello
*spammed bite*
[15:32] Lillie Yifu: loser
[15:32] LotusEffect Darkwatch: i see
[15:32] Lillie Yifu: no you don't but then losers like you, never do
[15:33] Lillie Yifu: so play count spamula with some one else
[15:33] LotusEffect Darkwatch: haha your funny
[15:33] Lillie Yifu: that makes one of us
[15:33] LotusEffect Darkwatch: yeah funny looking MUTE dick head.

He's part of the management at Pixie's Paradise Club,and is a paying member, so he knows he can get away with this, since LL almost never bans permanent members for anything.

More change like this and Jeb will be in the white house.

I count the bodies long in the numbering
I feel river of blood flowing down over the cataract of blivion
I don't know why we love you like we do.
You take our money and burn us like cigarettes.
Washing us clean of our birth

Take to me to river, drown me in water.
Baptism in the worship
Change we can bereave with,
only hope till there is nothing to be pried from our fingers.

1600 bodies, blown through some yet to be built wall.

Take me to river, drown me in the water.
I carry no cross,
and now you know why.

It's just war. Just war. Just war.
Just like the one, we lost before.

As they say, a memo for the clue impaired

No really, I don't make these up...


[23:37] sneaky Tigerfish: u into voice?
[23:37] Lillie Yifu: with people I like
[23:37] sneaky Tigerfish: u will like me
[23:38] sneaky Tigerfish: give me a try
[23:38] Lillie Yifu: umm I already dislike you
[23:38] sneaky Tigerfish: w/e then
[23:42] sneaky Tigerfish: i did not do anything
[23:43] Lillie Yifu: I am sorry I've handed out all my clues, you'll have to ask the next person for one.
[23:43] sneaky Tigerfish: just being be a bitch for no reason
[23:44] Lillie Yifu: that was stupid

Oh and by the way

for you face light haters out there, you can turn off attached particles and lights. Bling and lights go away, and, at that point, they don't create as much lag as the prim clutter you are wearing yourself.

Bling has been noxious for some time, long ago leaving the tasteful and interesting behind, and reveling in the ugly. Face lights are generally badly made, but not all of them.

If you don't know how to turn them off, don't be rude to those of us who do.

There is a sim in particular that I'm going to avoid, precisely because the local ignorati have started a crusade about this, not realizing that other things, such as color changing titlers, are much worse.

In the days of those days

Julie Bindel is a long time crusader on the front lines of sexual violence. Sexual violence is a pervasive part of almost every woman's imaginary world, even those who have never expereinced more than the most mild forms of it, because I don't think any of us can say we've never experienced any of it. This is because the threat of it is all around us, and it is a fear that pierces into the core of our most hard won possession. That is, namely, our sense of personal bodily control. Autonomy is won in slow hard steps, and sexual violence, the threat of it, and the imagination of it, destroy hat autonomy.

There is also the other part, and that is that pregnancy and reproduction necessarily involve the loss of this very same thing. As a result, sexual violence stares back at us from our fantasy life. Where and how to draw the line of the push in, is no easy thing.

Bindel writes in the guardian as follows:

It started about 10 years ago: prior to this I had no male friends. There were certainly men in my life whom I liked and respected, but no one I would meet up with for a drink and a heart-to-heart. Why? Not, dear readers, because I am a man-hater. As I have written before, I only hate those who rape and abuse women and children, and those who do nothing to stop other men doing so.

The bunker mentality is easy to come by, but I can only imagine what it was like to be part of radical feminism in that time. But the bunker sensation, that sensation where it seems that there are wolves with teeth and fangs in every direction, is common to every time and place I think. Little Red Riding Hood survives as a story, because there are so many woods to travel through.

I am sorry for her that she did not have the ability to have friendships with men until late in life. I am also even more sorry for a world where I understand how it happened.

And could happen tomorrow to a young woman trying to be herself.


And is probably happening now.

Professional Sexism at work

AWGroupies is a techie group. It had a prupose once, but it has become mostly a chat room for projects.

Now think on something. He's a real person, probably a manager or other person with some position. If I were to apply for a job at his company.. would I get it? No, he'd find a way to sink me,for, basically, not submitting to his "master" fantasies.

I've been told I am too aggressive about these things, but the reality is the reverse: sexism is endemic in the technical fields, and women who do not submit to it, and push back, are first treated with contempt, and then with hostility.

The half-anonymity is a threat: he can strike back at me from his real, in sl terms, identity, with his professional connections, if I don't accept his imposition on me.

[2009/12/15 0:56] Herc Serpente: There was a time when "jazz" referred to more than music
[2009/12/15 1:26] Herc Serpente swings the bat, hitting only air
[2009/12/27 16:31] Herc Serpente: I'd really like to get to know you, I like your blog. Chatted with you as an alt on AW Groupies, I don't usually disclose our 'relationship' though
[2009/12/27 16:31] Herc Serpente: add the people i meet here
[2009/12/27 16:31] Herc Serpente: odd
[2009/12/27 16:32] Lillie Yifu: hello
[2009/12/27 16:33] Herc Serpente flushes with excitement
[2009/12/27 16:33] Lillie Yifu: How are you?
[2009/12/27 16:34] Herc Serpente: i'm not usually so tongue-tied
[2009/12/27 16:34] Herc Serpente: you haven't even completely rez'd, but i can admire your subtle tan lines
[2009/12/27 16:35] Lillie Yifu: thank you. I like deail
[2009/12/27 16:36] Lillie Yifu: you are stillmostly gray to me
[2009/12/27 16:36] Lillie Yifu: so waht brings you here?
[2009/12/27 16:37] Herc Serpente: I enjoy the arts
[2009/12/27 16:37] Herc Serpente: theatre, especially
[2009/12/27 16:37] Herc Serpente: erotic themes are, in particular, attractive
[2009/12/27 16:37] Herc Serpente's fingers trace the tan lines on your chest
[2009/12/27 16:38] Herc Serpente: Sometimes it's possible to find partners who share a similar appreciation
[2009/12/27 16:38] Lillie Yifu puts his hands back on his chest.
[2009/12/27 16:38] Lillie Yifu: I'm not one to be pawed randomly
[2009/12/27 16:38] Herc Serpente looks to see if his fingernails need trimming
[2009/12/27 16:40] Herc Serpente: did you think it a random gesture? It was made with careful intention
[2009/12/27 16:41] Lillie Yifu: That's true.
[2009/12/27 16:42] Lillie Yifu: don't talk to me again
[2009/12/27 16:42] Lillie Yifu spits in his face
[2009/12/27 16:42] Lillie Yifu: hows that?
[2009/12/27 16:43] Herc Serpente: unexpected, perhaps unprovoked? A "no thanks" would be less ambiguous
[2009/12/27 16:43] Lillie Yifu: Definitely provoked, asshole

models revolt over revolting heels

There's no reason for these things.

SL Blogger/Musician Needs Your Help

Details here.

She's asking to help by buying her CD of acoustic folk.

Tour Eiffel 2

Tour Eiffel 1

The new version is much better than the old texture driven one.

Trust

I have come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of people, those who have enough money to live, and those who don't. Quantity isn't the issue. 

They don't get each other, and that leads to trust problems.

Any man who asks a woman "are you an escort?"

Isn't going to score with her if she isn't.

I'm thinking of burning a bridge

I will decide in the morning.

[not going to do it.]

Dark Star of the Ballet Stage leaves us

Georgina Parkinson radiant physical presence who moved with a tremendous power in every gesture, and taught an exacting way for students to express that power within themselves, has died. She danced with the Royal Ballet during the peak of Sir Fredrick Ashton's reign, and came to be the ballet mistress of American Ballet Theatre.

There was an androgyny to her face, an almost vampiric stretched quality to her movements, and a tremendous flexibility that defined the unbending steel of her poses. She flowed into positions, and then sustained them, and taught that same way. At the same time, she was always discussing, always changing, always searching, always fitting. For the dancers she knew had talent, she would work and weave their own uniqueness into the steps. She talked about how having a role created on you was an intensely personal act, and how it had worked in the Royal in her time, how the choreographer would set the problem, and the dancers would have to solve it, often having their changes added to the steps.

This vibrant seeking artistic freedom rested on a basis of absolute assurance in technique, and it was liberating, even for those who could only touch their toes into the sea of freedom that she had once sailed on herself.

Near sunset

Wish my forgotten wishes, and feel a forgotten rhyme,
from touch of the forgotten lore,
and dust upon forgotten times,
from droplets of forgiven hours,
that fall from forsaken flowers.

Narcissus, first flower of forgetfulness,
whose Lethe bathes us in our sleep.
Give the forgotten memories,
that we never can forget.

Forge a forgotten fire,
from a forgotten flame,
forgetting is more beautiful than any recall.

Lillies that fill the valley,
roses by other names,
lilacs by the courtyard bloom,
and daffodils follow the rain.

For each forgotten petal,
that opens in forlorn passion,
their finds a place,
where rests your face,
upon my lap,
and fear no evil,
even in the valley of death.

For I have forgotten the fears,
that are whispered in years,
in cradle and crib.

Set me feet on an earth unborn,
untorn by wars,
unturned by years,
untouched by tears,
undrenched by sorrows,
unblemished by age.

It has been forgotten,
because it never was in their hearts at all.

There is something to be said

about a blingtarded avatar with a tag that reads "Intelligence is hot."

Delicate impulses that reach for the caress of keys,
that softly hold all the arcane secrets of the heart,
if only we should dance upon them,
and leave behind that trail of steps,
the tracks of the windings of a mind
that fumbles with the meanings of its motion

Ian Welsh's avatar

I redid Ian Welsh's avatar, the first version being a rough job in a hurry. I think he's pleased with the results, even if SL isn't his thing.

Also this one...

I tried to capture a kind of brooding romantic look to him, because I think that is what lies underneath his writing, or so it seems to me when I read it on his blog.

Go, give, and gain, that which is more valuable,
when given away.
Love, and knowledge, linked in this,
stationary they have no existence,
in motion they are bliss.

Not much of a poem this morning, not much of anything. But then, I'm doing art irl right now, and that means less time for SL, and all the minor things that I do. I'm actually sorry that I won't be able to show pictures of my current rl project, but that is the cost of not being an integrated identity.

back

I was ill for a few days and was in hospital for the last two. Nothing to be overly worried about, but it was not fun.

I was tempted to do a parody of someone logging into my account and telling the world about my demise, but my sense of humor is still recovering.

The trees, their sails of leaves once filled by summer breeze,
had set a course for wintered nights,
now frozen and becalmed, berift of billows.
It is as love is full of heat
only to turn to gray and barren stem,
a sketch of what might have been,
and what will be once again.

A Quater of Young People "Sexting"

I have once or twice. Have you? Survey says you have company. Though I think the break downs would be interesting to see a

Pregnant Fish

Guardian reports that ancient fossils found in Australia are the earliest indication that some fish gave birth to young alive: long before any previous evidence for it.

Every girl want to be a princess in the morning, and a queen in the evening.

A rivulet
     that
     falls
     and fallen is
                       the cataract of contact
                       the gushing foam and whiteness,
                       It scours out
                       cleanses us to life,
                       like growing algae
To beneath the placid pool of satiation, for which we yearn so far below

I can feel the hurtling hell that comes towards us,
that eats the energy of these times
and spits it out as spires filed with marble, silk, and whores.
The finest, imported from everywhere in every color,
the marble I mean, the whores are mostly blond.
And the silk can be dyed anywhere that fingers come the cheapest.

The edges of night

The edges of night bleed into day with hard dimensions,
distances between sleep and waking, which in measurement defy,
the number or the ruler.
How would our rulers tremble if the boundaries of our countries,
matched the boundaries of our souls. Unbound by petty ties to paltry pasts,
from which we did not come, and to which we do not owe anything,
except the tattered times they left us.

No fucking please, we're feminists

No fucking please, we're feminists.
We want to be worse than what we oppose.
Take on the dark corners of the human soul?
Please that's hard.
So much easier to play at passion,
and scrub our sight of what offends it.

No pleasure please, we're pornographers.
Why would we want to give, what can be gotten,
when frustration pays so much more.

No commonsense please, we're cacophony,
and how much better for us,
if every scrap of sanity,
is drowned out by the din.

Falling Between Worlds

Today I received nasty notes from two sides of teh world. It reminded me of a truth conveyed by one of my professors, that noise, not discourse, dominates the passions of the moment. It may not quite be nothing that is signified by this sound and fury, but it is the comments of those who are detached from it, or whose position is enclosed by art an irony, that end up being of the most interest to a waiting eternity.

The first was from someone whose sim I posted about here. It was of that genre that I was first introduced to long ago, that out the outraged club owner attacking a bad review. A parcel full of lies, and then attacks against the reviewer for not understanding the great contribution to humanity that running the sim creates. One reason, I think, LL does well, is that while ego driven meglomaniacs may be a dime a dozen, many of them are good for $295 a month in sim fees.

From the opposite side of the world came a broadside from Stop Violence Against Women, which as become the Bowdler Society of Second life in it's anti-pornography campaigns. On one hand I can understand victims of abuse becoming harpies about anything which might trigger their own deeply embedded agonies. I do not think men begin to understand the prevalent fears of unwanted pregnancy and sexual violence have in the minds of our gender. However, Stop Violence Against Women has passed from protecting people from triggering pains, and into the realm of doing violence themselves. They are not going after people who force their fantasies on others, but to try and block the working out of fantasies entirely. The patriarchy laughs, by multiplying repressive anti-sexuality, it pits woman against woman.

It is hard, again, to express the powerful sense of being watched that most women have laid upon them by their mothers, and other figures of authority. It is we who must say "no," and be the guardians of the economic and social relationships that are attached to procreation. It is not that our desires are less, but it is that our burdens are greater, that we enter into the world of sexuality with a heavier sense of our place in it. It is absolutely essential to liberate ourselves from the burdens, without losing understanding of the risks. And doing this requires claiming our sexuality. This often involves transgressive fantasies, and transgressive actions. Men transgress with permission, we envy this about society.

Often this involves pornography, partaken of alone, or shared with a romantic partner. One could stuff whole libraries with books that a woman offered up to a man, hoping he would see her secret self in it. Fantasies of being forced grow out of this, they strip away the responsibility of saying no, of beign the guardian of reproduction. They elevate the very brute aspects of masculinity. Rape, slavery, force, kidnapping, ravishing... all play some part in the fantasy of being stripped of agency, and in this, finding it. Finding a focus on personal pleasure, uncoupled from that bearing pressure of our mother's eyes squeezing at the back of the skull. It is a palpable physical sense.

SVAW has chosen to be antagonistic, and even more so, violent in their language to those people, including me, who they do not approve of. If Hard Alley is doing violence to women, so is Stop Violence Against Women, which, instead, chooses the sub-feminist and anti-feminist narrative. This narrative is the narrative of sanitization, that every centimeter of the world must be made safe for the sickest. In doing so, they would kill the healthy. They also promote an unhealthy fear of what is, in fact, feeble.

I've walked, often enough, through various rape and forced sims. I have never had anything all that bad happen to me. In fact, the reality of rape sims, and most of the men who partake of rape porn, is that they are weak and under confident in their sexual fantasy role. One time I went looking for rape role play, to see what the state of it was, and found myself having to entice and tease a man to be up to playing it. Rape roleplay is almost the reverse of the sign of a true sexual predator. Instead of being the play ground of the sexual predator, it is the province of men who really feel as bound up in their own guilt and weight of restraint as anything else. Before they can release, the need a woman who is not merely helpless, but almost vamping them from the chains.

It is not that there are not sexual predators on Second Life, there are. However, they do not, in general, put themselves in any one kind of place. Instead, abusive sexuality, and abusive use of it, are all over. In dance halls, malls, escort houses, orgy rooms, businesses, both rl and sl. I've been pressured for sex talk by Linden Lab employees, and by employees of known rl businesses, just as I have been pressured for sex at job interviews at Fortune 500 companies. It is not rape play which creates, or even houses, sexual predators more than any other. Thus protesting a sim which abides by the adult content rules, and is this known only to people who are expressly looking for it, goes against the need to create spaces which are civil, and civilized, by creating spaces that are expressly for transgression. We need our closed doors, and our carnivals, as much as our intellectual spaces. It is inappropriate for a male to enter into a group for, for example, public affairs, and then begin hitting on the builder of the set that a show is filmed on. Yes, this happens. Who is being more problematic? The guys who hang out in a seedy room hoping for a consenting partner? Or the man who inflicts himself on a woman during a book discussion?

But it is harder to go after the later, less fulfilling of gastric upset, less violent.

Let me tell a tale: I went to a sim with one of the leaders of SVAW. She was almost shaking with fear. I do not know, of course, whether this was real, or merely what she projected to get her point across, but it is how she presented. I was unafraid, and told her that in reality, there was little to nothing that anyone there could do to her, except say mean things. SVAW is composed of cowards, and is led by cowards, and preaches cowardice. Courage is not protesting the unpopular, but instead facing it, and facing it down. Pushing it back from the center stage, and reducing its acceptability. SVAW does not do this, and does not fight the tangle every day of the male dominated world of techies. Instead, they act as if street theater on a sim is some noble calling.

I say this is a sub-feminist narrative, I should, I think, explain this. The feminist narrative is simple: nature and society place upon us certain weights, and we demand that we be liberated from them as excuses to hobble our free participation in our own lives. We are feminists not to escape our gender, but to celebrate it, and, at times, places, and in ways acceptable to us, I don't pretend consent is truly the reality of entering into the erotic, express our gender. A feminist believes, and must believe, only two things. That our gender does not define us, and that we have a right to our gender as part of us.

The anti-porn crusader is engaging in an age old exchange: suppressing the freedom of women, in return for a power granted by men and other subfeminist women, to engage in oppression. Stop Violence Against Women in SL, has become Start Violence Against Women in SL. It's violence is embedded in the ideologies, and fears, of its founders. From that fear, they would deny, and indeed attack, people who have aided them and helped them. They bite the hands that hold them, they hate the people who help them.

It saddens me, because it tells me what I have read: that power is so seductive, that even those who would do good, are ensnared with it. As a nobody, writing nowhere, and for no one, these hollow words into empty airs fall, as I feel I am falling between the cracks. But it is the bellowing of those who have their pornographic needs, SVAW, is panic porn, and is everything it's founders say they deplore: anti-women, anti-feminist, committing violence of mind and spirit.

It is essential for people to claim their sexuality. As feminists, we have to accept that the process of doing so is like a journey into the wilderness, or the dark abyss, or the lands of the dead. It is a place fraught with monsters, magic, and mystery. Within the murk of the tangled forces of the erotic, including the desire to engage in that dangerous journey which is bearing and raising a child, are images and narratives that are not pure white and wedding. But only by facing, and encompassing, our darkness, can we be whole again.

I have walked through my darkness, and in doing so become a more whole person, I would wish that the leaders of SVAW would face, rather than run, from their inner fears, and rather than attacking women who are claiming their lives, learn that they must embrace the inner dragon which gnaws at the roots of the soul.