In which Dreamwidth Gets It

Privacy and trust, that is.  This is excerpted from denise's response to discussion of LiveJournal's Facebook/Twitter crossposting 'feature':

Sorry, sophie let me know that my original comment was a little unclear: I should say, if we do allow crossposting of comments, it will be only available on public entries or when you comment on your own locked entries, not somebody else's.  (I think that's a lot easier than people having to go turn on/off the ability for others to crosspost comments on their locked entries!)

Your privacy is absolutely one of our Guiding Principles, and since I've been working in social media since before social media was called social media, I've got a really strong grasp of what 'privacy' entails, especially in the use case of those who use DW most frequently!  Besides that, I've got a lot of people (starting with mark and fu and going allllll the way on down) who'd come find me with the Mallet of Loving Correction (+5) if I made bad decisions about this. *G* We absolutely believe it's possible to merge interoperability and privacy, as long as we put the choices in your hands, and that's not going to change.

(We also are beholden to nobody but you guys. Paid account subscriptions are the only way we make money, so there is zero economic incentive for us to piss y'all off!)

Dreamwidth just picked up a WHOOOOOOLE lot of new paid users for whom this was just one LiveJournal fuckup too many.  I remind those of you on my LJ Friends list that I have a large, shiny pile of Dreamwidth invite codes to hand out.

Oh, and did I mention that I have Dreamwidth invite codes to distribute?

Good.  Because I'd hate to forget to mention the Dreamwidth invite codes.

Seen this reported a couple of different places now

In another triumph of international relations, the TSA has apparently managed to piss off a group of senior Pakistani military staff (variously reported as eight or nine officers, led by a Rear-Admiral) on their way to a defense conference at US Central Command, so badly that they said "To hell with you all", turned around and went home.

This is a serious blunder at a time when the United States badly needs the fullest cooperation from Pakistan.  For crying out loud, this delegation should have been treated as visiting diplomats and flown on a MAC staff flight, not left to make their own way via commercial air.  What the ^@$^%!$&$&@$ kind of game is this administration playing?  Is there some contest on to see how many nations the United States' diplomatic relations with can be ruined in a single term?

My gun is good, and so is yours

[...]  Unfortunately, this was about the same time that serial killer Ted Bundy was all over the news, the “Green River Killer” investigation was in full swing, and I was obsessed with reading Seattle-based author Ann Rule’s true crime books.  Not exactly a great time for me to be heading for Washington State.  But hey, I was cop!  I got to take my gun to Seattle, carry it everywhere, and feel safe and secure.  Great for me, but it got me thinking about all those young female murder victims; many of them close to my age.  What if one of them had been armed?  Could she have saved herself and ultimately, many others?  And back in Illinois we had our own famous serial killer, John Wayne Gacy, still in the news.  He killed 33 young men and boys before he was arrested.  Hadn’t they deserved the legal right to able to try and protect themselves to the best of their ability?

Sgt. Betsy Brantner Smith of the Chicago Police Department talks about how, after starting out a believer in "gun control", she reached an epiphany and realized that just because a person isn't a police officer doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to be legally armed.

I am now a firm advocate of well-trained, well-armed civilians, and this is an issue that police officers must get more involved in.  With layoffs, cutbacks, workplace violence and the raging “war on cops” in the United States, we may have to depend on our citizens to step up, jump in, and help out in an armed encounter.  After all, you don’t have to have a badge to wear a white hat and be one of the good guys.