I don't know whether Robert Francis Kennedy was engaged in plagiarism or allusion when he said

Some men look at things the way they are and ask Why? I dream of things that are not and ask Why not?

It was the former if he expected the audience to take the words as his own, and the latter if he expected the audience to recognize this as an echo of George Bernard Shaw:

You see things; and you say, Why? But I dream things that never were; and I say, Why not?

In any case, when Lionel Beehner said

It seems today's thinkers, to paraphrase Robert Kennedy, like to imagine a world that wasn't and ask, why not?

he was engaged in ignorance.

(Harrison was killed by lung cancer.)

Someone in my apartment complex reports his or her lap-top computer having been stolen from his or her apartment.  They ask that we be alert to someone who seems inappropriately to have an lap-top computer.  Since there are cameræ at all of the entrances and exits, the strong suggestion is that is was stolen by or with the complicity of one of the other residents. I have been used to feeling that I could leave my door unlocked when making a quick trip out, and otherwise feeling that my things needn't be locked away in my apartment. I regret the change.

On a sidewalk along Washington Street this morning, I spotted a belly-ring sans the little screw-ball that would keep it attached to the big screw-ball. I imagined it falling free from someone's navel, though it might instead have escaped a pocket or hand-bag.

As I was passing Club San Diego on Fourth Avenue, the sounds of men giggling were escaping through an open door. I resisted the urge to cry Christ is risen! into the tiled entrance-way. There would have been a good chance of a reply asking just what part of Him had risen.

I breakfasted at the San Tropez Bistro on Fifth Avenue. Now I am parked in David's Coffee Place, until I feel that I must go home and get some sleep.

So to-day we learned that when I am very tired I might leave the Woman of Interest a long rambling message about problems of combinatorial mathematics.

Combinatorial mathematics is, on the whole, extremely useful; but it is deathly dull. And, while its usefulness obtains on the whole, some problems — such as that about which I left my message — are utterly unimportant.

In other words, I rambled about boring, useless math.

I am going to respect the LJ content strike to-day by avoiding even visiting any LJ sites.

I believe that the strike comes far too late. I believe that mere strikes of any length are insufficient measures. I believe that this particular strike was announced with far too short notice (something like five days). And I believe that a one-day strike will produce unimportant statistical results, as it will be followed immediately by a surge of postponed entries and comments.

I also believe that, in response to any action that either seems serious or looks as if it might lead to something serious, the LJ administration will emit more unmeant pieties, and that a substantial number of those who engaged in the action will be all too eager to believe the pieties, rather than to extract genuine and significant commitments.

None-the-less, one forgoes very little not to under-mine this effort. Vayáis con queso.

In his angry response to American critics and elsewhere, Anton Nosik has flatly denied referring to the Friday LJ boycott as blackmail. Unfortunately for Mr Nosik, a recording of the interview in which he did has been put on-line (7210 KB).

In the same message that I quoted earlier, a member of LiveJournal staff writes

Open questions

[…]
• Subscriptions – Should moderators be able to charge for access to closed communities?

And people are responding, positively and negatively, on the interpretation that LJ is contemplating adding support for such subscriptions.

What is more likely to have happened is that LiveJournal has reälized that nothing in their existing rules prevents a maintainer from imposing subscription fees (collected off-site) as a precondition for membership in an LJ community journal, and that one or more cam ho is doing just this. LJ doesn't want to become known as infrastructure for sex work, but they'd probably rather not ban communities only open to dues-paying members of fraternal societies. So they're trying to figure out whether to effect some sort of ban; and, if so, then how to do so.

LiveJournal has been so plainly busted for hypocrisy and for mendacity about the elimination of Basic accounts that they have decided to admit:

The announcement last Wednesday was a mistake in regards to Basic accounts, as the change was not clearly stated, it did not allow for you to provide feedback, and went into effect immediately. Many of you have pointed out that the decision worried you less than the way it was communicated. You should have been given a voice, and you were not; we didn’t follow our own rules, and we apologize.

Of course, if they were sincere about their own rules, then they'd roll-back the change, and run through the proper procedure. But they're not sincere; they're just trying to hold onto enough of the existing user-base to lure the sorts of users in whom they see their future.

Meanwhile, Anton Nosik has engaged in an interesting mix of denial, attack, and self-contradiction in an attempt to shut-up his American critics.

BTW, for those of you who have not been informed:

LiveJournal reports a list of its most popular interests. On 6 March, LJ snuck-in a bit of code that filtered that list so that it wouldn't report bisexuality, bondage, boys, depression, faeries, fanfiction, girls, hardcore, pain, porn, sex, or yaoi as amongst these. After the filtering was discovered on 14 March, the administration was silent on the matter for days, despite many demands for explanation and for removal. The filter was removed on 17 March.

LJ spokesperson marta declares

I don't have a statement for some of your questions. I do know that it was a mistake, and not meant to be a judgment or company opinion of any kind. I will try to have better answers as the day progresses.

(Note that with her I do know that, she insinuates that she doesn't know more than she reveals. We may thus be fairly sure that she knows significantly more. In any case, the administration is plainly stone-walling.)

While I am not surprised that a change to filter the popular interests would be effected in the same unannounced manner as was the change which filtered specific interest searches, and I am not surprised that something like this filtering of the list of most popular interests would eventually be effected, I am none-the-less surprised at just how quickly СУП has been moving.

Over at LiveJournal, some of the subscribers are planning a one-day boycott, to protest the elimination of Basic accounts. From Russia, we get the response of Anton Nosik:

В ситуации, когда нас пытаются шантажировать и запугивать, угрожая уничтожить наш бизнес, есть бизнес-причины не награждать такой род поведения. Это не просто психология человека, который упорствует тем больше, чем грубее на него давят. Дело в том, что никогда в истории какого бы то ни было успешного предприятия успех не достигался путем покорения агрессивной недружественной воле. Никакое решение — даже самое правильное — не должно приниматься под давлением.

Было бы, наверное, правильно этот пассаж про 12 марта пересмотреть в ближайшие дни. Но с точки зрения разумной корпоративной политики теперь придется дождаться бойкота. Пусть уж он пройдет. Чтобы тема народного негодования, угроз и запугивания была закрыта. А уж после этого обсуждать проблему по существу.

which may be translated

In a situation where someone attempts to blackmail and to intimidate us, threatening to destroy our business, there is a business reason not to reward such behaviour. This is not simply human psychology, which resists more strongly the more that it is pressed. The fact is that in the history there's never been a successful enterprise whose success was achieved by submission to aggressive, hostile demands. No resolution — not even the most correct — should be made under pressure.

It would probably be correct to reconsider the change of 12 March over the next few days. But from the point of view of reasonable corporate policy now it is necessary to wait-out the boycott. Let it pass. So that the subject of popular indignation, threats and intimidation would be closed. And after this close, to actually discuss the problem.

For the full article, see Желающим предоставят пещеру in Избранное for 18 March. For one translation thereöf, see the entry of LJ account darkrosetiger for 18 March.