Okay, consider this a belated attempt to reverse the decline of my journal into an infrequently-updated tumblog. I'm not sure why I've become so reticent lately; I feel like I'm barely managing to leave a comment or two a week in other people's journals, though I compose dozens in my head.

In no particular order:

Gabriella Coleman on piracy as politics: "For those of us who believe in greater access and different ways of imagining structures and strategies of re-compensation, piracy on its own is not certainly enough and I understand fully and even to some degree, share the skepticism many feel toward such language. But I am not quite ready to declare a politics of piracy as always politically bankrupt or necessarily backward." An interesting supplement to Alexis Lothian's "Den of Thieves" argument viz. fandom, vidding, and piracy through the lens of Lim's "Us".

MightyGodKing on current Marvel/DC superhero comics: "[I]t’s worth reflecting upon how few Big Two books are good as opposed to merely being competent. For DC there’s Detective Comics, Batman and Robin, and Secret Six. For Marvel there’s Incredible Hercules, Invincible Iron Man, the “cosmic” books, and whatever comic fills the Iron Fist slot for any given month. That is it at present. (Daredevil’s new direction is uneven, Captain America is in a boring lull period, and Amazing Spider-Man is inconsistent on a week-to-week basis.) Eight books between the Big Two that are genuinely good comics and not just placefillers.... [he ETAs:] I forgot Fantastic Four, which belongs in the “good” category. Also: Ghost Rider. But that’s it." I agree -- the only comics I truly look forward to reading each month are all on his list (the three DC titles, plus Invincible Iron Man and Fantastic Four).

danah boyd on her experience giving a talk at Web 2.0 Expo: "I immediately knew that I had lost the audience. Rather than getting into flow and becoming an entertainer, I retreated into myself. I basically decided to read the entire speech instead of deliver it. I counted for the time when I could get off stage. I was reading aloud while thinking all sorts of terrible thoughts about myself and my failures. I wasn't even interested in my talk. All I wanted was to get it over with." This is basically my public speaking nightmare, except even worse thanks to the Twitter backchannel plus magnified by 100 due to venue, audience size, and sexism. I do several presentations a year, and I've gotten pretty comfortable doing them, but I still remember viscerally the handful of truly wretched experiences. My most surreal one was this spring, when I missed my flight due to a snowstorm and did my talk over the phone with no ability to gauge the audience's response as I was speaking. It was actually worse than the disembodied experience of doing a presentation on a teleconference, because at least with the latter the audience is equally dispersed and invisible to each other.

Skinny Jeans and Fruity Loops: The Networked Publics of Global Youth Culture -- a post about a recent talk by ethnomusicologist Wayne Marshall: "What can we learn about contemporary culture from watching dayglo-clad teenagers dancing geekily in front of their computers in such disparate sites as Brooklyn, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, and Mexico City? How has the embrace of "new media" by so-called "digital natives" facilitated the formation of transnational, digital publics? More important, what are the local effects of such practices, and why do they seem to generate such hostile responses and anxiety about the future?" I haven't had a chance to listen to the audio yet, but he uses Jerking as one of his case studies! Count me in. Also, Marshall has a great blog.

I posted a vid for Bikini Kill's "Rebel Girl" the other day which I facetiously described as Maoist kitsch. But I was fascinated by the images in the clips, and set about tracking down the source. Turns out they're from The Red Detachment of Women, a Chinese ballet that was one of the eight model works during the Cultural Revolution. The full filmed version is available online here, or (in fifteen 6:46 minute chunks) starting here on YouTube. I've seen about a third of it so far, and it really is pretty stunning.