Friends

Tweaks and enhancements

• As a number of you reported, a service interruption impaired sending and receiving notifications for a couple of days. This was due to an avalanche of snowflake cookies. We've removed the free snowflake cookie and unclogged the pipeline. Timely notifications should resume shortly. Please note that there's a backlog in our queues, so you'll be getting earlier notifications first. For more details, check out this post at lj_maintenance.
• In anticipation of the new year, we've embarked on a self-improvement kick to boost our backend (pun semi-intended). This will allow us to offer you a holiday promotion in the next few weeks (yes, we're listening and working very hard to make it happen). We sincerely appreciate your continued patience and support.

Holiday vgifts are here!

We've added some fantastic new vgifts to help you spread holiday cheer. We also hope you'll honor AIDS Awareness Month by purchasing virtual red ribbons. Priced at $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to support the development and global distribution of an affordable HIV vaccine.

Introducing: LJLimericks

In honor of all the brilliant writers on LiveJournal, we've created a brand new community: ljlimericks! Each week, we'll enter a handful of limericks into a poll (which we'll tuck snugly under an LJ-Cut). The winning poem will be published in the following newsletter. In addition, the author will receive a virtual blue ribbon! If you have the time, come drop us a rhyme. Please keep the "Nantucket" stuff on the downlow, since this is a youth-friendly community. Our first prompt is: Insomnia in winter.

Photos of the week

We're back with more incredible images from our global photography community. Congratulations to sempre_marseeya, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our second lj_photophile poll.

Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay warm and safe out there!

What's your primary method of getting from one place to another?

• Open the Future: A Cold War Over Warming
  "What happens if global efforts to set and abide by strong carbon emissions cuts fail? The standard answer to a question like this is that "we all suffer." While that's probably true, it misses the point — we may all suffer, but we don't all suffer equally."
  (tags:eco )
• BBC News – English whisky bottled for first time in a century
  "The first single malt made in England for about a century has attracted the interest of UK whisky enthusiasts. St George's Distillery, a family-run Norfolk company, is behind the drink."
  (tags:whisky )
• climate defense systems – mammoth // building nothing out of something
  Just the term: CLIMATE DEFENSE SYSTEMS
  (tags:eco )
• The 100 essential websites | Technology | The Guardian

  (tags:web )

Well, probably not that Ministry Of Space. But:

Britain is to get its own space agency more than 40 years after the Apollo project landed the first astronauts on the moon. The agency will come into being next year and replaces the existing British National Space Centre as a single co-ordinating organisation for the nation’s space exploration activities.

The announcement coincides with the publication of a government review of space exploration that warns the nation is "at a critical point" in deciding its future in the space business.

Britain has a long-standing policy of not contributing to human spaceflight programmes and instead supports robotic and satellite-based missions. The review urges ministers to consider backing a space programme that involves both robotic and human explorers…

( Click here to view... )

Issue eight of YETI magazine arrived today. I noticed it because it has a Zola Jesus interview, and I am fond of Nika and her noises. But it’s a monstrous 200-page thing packed with all kinds of interesting stuff. Also, an eighty-minute CD full of rare/unreleased music by shitloads of people. Here’s Yeti’s site, with the information you want. It’s USD $11.95, or USD $19.95 if, like me, you’re ordering from outside the USA. For the amount of content here, that’s really bloody cheap.

Oh, and I got this last week., but I want to mention it: Julianna Barwick’s sublime FLORINE, previously only available as an mp3 EP from eMusic, is now available as a CD. This was one of my very favourite discoveries of 2009, and I’m so glad to now have a physical copy to hand. Julianna’s mailing these out herself, and mine arrived with a nice little note on the back of the envelope.

A book by Katelan Foisy:

Fifteen women.
Three portraits each.

They Be We provides an intimate look at the lives of fifteen different women. From mothers, to Voodoo doctors, to those in the limelight, each woman has a story to tell.

Go to this link here for a set of discount codes to use.