Goodbye to LJ
So a couple things.....
1. Photobucket, where I had all my graphics uploaded so I could link them here, has just disabled third party linking unless you pay them about $30 a month (I think it is). So all my pictures, etc. here are now showing broken blank links, and will continue to do so because I can't afford the new prices that Photobucket just dropped on us. And even if I uploaded things elsewhere I'm not going back through years of posts to relink everything. It would take far too long.
2. LJ got bought out by a Russian company, or somehow merged with them a few years ago. Considering the ongoing efforts of the Russian government to undermine American and European democratic governments and influence elections using (amongst other things) social media to spread fake news, I am no longer comfortable using a platform that is based in Russia. There are way too many sketchy actions that can be traced back to Putin and the Russian government to interfere with and influence elections in not only the US, but also in France and Germany just for starters. I no longer trust LJ as a source to post on and if one of my favorite authors didn't interact with her readership here, I would delete my account entirely. However I want to continue to follow her so I'm leaving my account open.
Other than that, my Kaiba icon says it all. I'm outta here. I'm on Blogspot and WordPress if I ever get around to using either one -- WordPress will be the more political blog, Blogspot will be more personal stuff, the kind of thing I used to put on LJ -- as I said, if I ever get my act together and start writing on one or the other again.