Somewhere Different Now

Livejournal has changed the look of things, and my opinion is this:



Luckily I found the Secret Button to switch back to the old view.  I REALLY hope they don't take away the ability to use the old layout, because the new one is terrible.  Here's an article from the Daily Dot about the redesign and the general sad state of the LJ community.

I wonder if it's finally time to start originating my posts on Dreamwidth and just having crossposts here. Sigh...

Meanwhile, here are some kitten pictures!  They are super active and playful now.  They can also fit into extremely small spaces, causing me a brief panic last night when they seemingly vanished.  I finally discovered that they were underneath a recliner in a space that is only accessible from the chair's back side.

( Four kitten pictures under the cut )

First, kitten pictures!
( Two kitten pictures under the cut )



Next, how many of y'all are fans of Welcome to Night Vale?  Want to talk about it?  Because I just listened to Parade Day, and I sure need a hug want to talk.

Oh goodness, that ending!  I shouted at my car stereo.  From the sounds of things I fear that the next broadcast may be made by Kevin.  D:

I was not expecting that to happen.  Tamika Flynn's power to rise against StrexCorp had received so much buildup as a storyline. Cecil threw off all pretenses of collaboration with the regime and went into open rebellion.  Even the weather seemed hopeful.  I had a sense that something was going to go wrong, but I was bracing myself for Strexcorp making one last strike-back against Cecil by going after Carlos (likely by trapping him in the house that doesn't exist).  And that could still be happening, but we know that Strex has Cecil and Tamika.

Nobody outside of Tamika's tiny band of dedicated readers/freedom fighters stood up to do anything.  It hurt my heart to hear Cecil, who normally believes the best of people despite living in a town full of horrors, realizing that nobody in Night Vale had been willing to risk themselves for the greater good.  Audio is a weirdly personal medium where it feels like the narrator is talking directly to you, which meant that (despite fully understanding the concept of fiction) I felt personally guilty about failing Cecil.  The show wasn't shy about making a point about the important difference between belief and action.

Anyway, other than being DEEPLY UPSETTING there was a lot to enjoy about the show.

-Cecil going on about how Carlos is awesome at science as well as handsome, followed by Carlos's fondly embarrassed "Stoooop!"  Awwww. I love their established relationship even more than the UST stage.

-Morse code secret messages!  Because the Internet is wonderful, some excellent person put translations on the transcript here.  However, Cecil is (as usual) not terribly subtle.  Surely Strex has people who can translate Morse too.

-Angels coming back!  Their presence made me doubly surprised that everything went to hell in a handbasket so much.

-Mayor Pamela Winchell is willing to admit that mountains might be a thing!  What a world.

-Cecil rebelled against Strex-owned Station Management by locking producer Daniel in and making faces at him, then barricading himself in the studio with cardboard signs saying KEEP OUT! with all-caps and an exclamation mark.  Bless.

-Welcome to Night Vale is often wise in between the silliness and horrors.  In this episode, I really loved the full version of the quote I begin to quote in this entry's subject line:

Are we living a life that is safe from harm?  Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right question. The question is are we living a life that is worth the harm?

I anxiously await to learn where the show goes from here.

Time for a gloomy news roundup!  It's time for some crude talk about oil spills.

( scary yet visually striking photo (no animals in distress) )

The estimate of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico is now up to 60,000 barrels a day.  That's 2,500,000 (2.5 million) gallons. Every. Single. Day.  For those of you who prefer metric units, that's about 9.5 million liters/day. Pretty devastating, right? 

In Nigeria there are around 11 million gallons of oil spilling a year (over 30,000/day), which is slightly more than spilled from the Exxon Valdez...and this has been going on for the past 50 years.  (Figures based on this NY Times article. This Guardian article describes the situation with even more frightening detail with slightly different figures. Since it's few weeks old the Guardian's Gulf estimates are out of date; enormous uncertainty surrounds the Nigerian estimates.) I'd known that Nigeria's oil drilling resulted in really nasty environmental impacts, but I hadn't realized it was quite this horrendous.  Of course, since all this is going on a long way from where Americans vacation or buy lots of seafood, very little is done in the way of environmental cleanup or compensation for those whose health and livelihoods are damaged.  On top of all that, armed conflict and governmental corruption gush up like crude around the Nigerian oil industry. 

Well, shit.  For anyone who's boycotting BP, you might consider that Shell is the biggest culprit in Nigeria.  ExxonMobil also does some nasty business there, not to mention being perhaps the worst of the bad lot in terms of fighting against climate change regulation.  Chevron is responsible for some horrendous oil pollution in the rainforest in Ecuador.  If boycotting BP makes you feel better, go for it, but don't be under any illusions that you're supporting a more ethical way of doing business unless you are buying less total gas.  Letting our money do the talking is a fine idea, but when it comes to purchasing gas and oil there is not really any company that will let those dollars say anything other than "screw you, Earth!" 

Speaking of angry messages, on Tuesday the ship that's collecting a portion of the Gulf spewage was struck by lightning.  Also, as you may have heard, a six-story "touchdown Jesus" statue in Ohio was also recently struck by lightning and burnt to the ground (one of many articles).  Meanwhile, the more bloodthirsty nerds can apparently buy a lightsaber replica with a real laser powerful enough to blind instantly or set skin on fire.  Ponder that the next time you go to a con.

So, all this is really bad, but it's not like the universe is coming to an end, right?  Think again:  actual space pictures show what appears to be The Crack in the universe!!!  In the name of crispy touchdown Jesus, we're gonna die! 

*deep breath*  In other news, kittens are adorable!  Really, ridiculously adorable!  Like this:



I have watched that video about ten times today and laughed every single time.

And now, time for today's ( installment of the 30 days of tv meme )