Well. What an interesting two-and-seventy hours or so.
And leading to what might seem an unfortunate coincidence (in the literal sense). I admit it to be an odd time of year for a spring cleaning, in this hemisphere, at least. Please know that my doing so (and I really ought not even to want to make this assurance) is apropos of nothing at all in this journal or any interactions within….
I hope it is unnecessary to say that a de-friending amnesty is on my part always in place; and I hope, whilst I do a minor bit of clean-up, that the same is true in the other direction (please, no One Direction jokes). I’ve not dropped anyone, I think, since the unfortunate occasion on which a correspondent who misliked my manner and my politics decided, some years ago, that her dislike meant I was a Wicked Fascist* (conflating the two. ‘You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means’**) - oh, bar the time one chap effectively equated homosexuality with pædophilia. It’s been, in the past, that is to say, predicated not upon disagreements, which I don’t at all mind, but, rather, upon the making and maintaining of false and defamatory (indeed, actionable) claims: which is not a high bar, when going for years without pruning a f’list, some accounts on which are by this time dead or abandoned or deleted. It is perhaps, then, past time for a bit of housekeeping. If I prune any lively and flowering branches in error, do let me know, and we can regraft.
It shall hardly make a difference to anyone, in any case. I have perhaps on only three occasions, if that, flocked my posts (not to be mistaken for lambing season, when one posts one’s flocks). The only trifling annoyance shall be that I shall thus be compelled to approve some comments. Fortunately, I am rather good about being online in most seasons; and I really should prefer not to want to approve comments, were it not that LJ, since its acquisition by M Putin and the FSB, is drowning in spam.
Most of you shall never even remark the clean-up’s happening.
__________________
* Pleonasm, I agree. Actual Fascists come in only one flavour.
** I did in fact happily re-read, this weekend, Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language’, which, for those who have forgotten, does contain both his celebrated exercise in turning a passage of Scripture into bureaucratese, and his celebrated observation - as early as 1946 - that, ‘The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.”’
I hope it is unnecessary to say that a de-friending amnesty is on my part always in place; and I hope, whilst I do a minor bit of clean-up, that the same is true in the other direction (please, no One Direction jokes). I’ve not dropped anyone, I think, since the unfortunate occasion on which a correspondent who misliked my manner and my politics decided, some years ago, that her dislike meant I was a Wicked Fascist* (conflating the two. ‘You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means’**) - oh, bar the time one chap effectively equated homosexuality with pædophilia. It’s been, in the past, that is to say, predicated not upon disagreements, which I don’t at all mind, but, rather, upon the making and maintaining of false and defamatory (indeed, actionable) claims: which is not a high bar, when going for years without pruning a f’list, some accounts on which are by this time dead or abandoned or deleted. It is perhaps, then, past time for a bit of housekeeping. If I prune any lively and flowering branches in error, do let me know, and we can regraft.
It shall hardly make a difference to anyone, in any case. I have perhaps on only three occasions, if that, flocked my posts (not to be mistaken for lambing season, when one posts one’s flocks). The only trifling annoyance shall be that I shall thus be compelled to approve some comments. Fortunately, I am rather good about being online in most seasons; and I really should prefer not to want to approve comments, were it not that LJ, since its acquisition by M Putin and the FSB, is drowning in spam.
Most of you shall never even remark the clean-up’s happening.
__________________
* Pleonasm, I agree. Actual Fascists come in only one flavour.
** I did in fact happily re-read, this weekend, Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language’, which, for those who have forgotten, does contain both his celebrated exercise in turning a passage of Scripture into bureaucratese, and his celebrated observation - as early as 1946 - that, ‘The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.”’