Other people have already made all the good "in Soviet Russia" jokes, so I'm not even going to try.

Unless you unfriended news, you probably know by now that SixApart has sold LJ to SUP, a Russian media company. (Despite all appearances, SUP isn't an acronym. It's a transliteration of a Russian word.) SUP has already been operating the Russian version of the site for some time now; when the sale is complete, they'll be running the whole thing.

Cue the conspiracy theories.

Will it be better? Will it be worse? Everyone is saying the right things, anyway -- they're setting up an advisory board that will include two actual LJ users "elected" by the community as well as brad; developing a clear and consistent policy about "appropriate content" is a priority; all development and servers will remain in the United States (a key factor for privacy and security issues). Of course, it's one thing to say the right things and another to actually follow through on them. And the owner of SUP is apparently a crony of Vladimir Putin. So, as usual we will have to wait and see.

Brad, LJ's founder, who has been publicly critical of 6A's moves in the past, seems to be on board. I find that more encouraging than otherwise. I wish I read Russian; it would be great to be able to read the reaction of the Russian users on my own, and to get a sense for the breadth of them, rather than having it filtered through someone-or-another's agenda.

Year in Review, 2007 edition.

Not ganked from anyone this year; I just felt like doing it. ;) First line from the first post each month (except I skipped a couple of GBPs).

January: I have suddenly found myself in the possession of large quantities of manga.

February: The new DSL modem came yesterday and so my home is once again connected to the series of tubes at a rate faster than the land speed of a sloth.

March: I hate losing a battle of wits with the copy machine.

April: I finished my ff_exchange piece!

May: This probably would have come yesterday, but then I was eaten by a wolf and a flan on Mt. Gagazet, and I'd forgotten to save basically all my progress.

June: I had an errand to run on Saturday morning, and it took me near the new Panera that's opened up not far from my house.

July: Actually I am home now.

August: Enjoying the Wii, a lot.

September: Had a good trip.

October: I finally gave in to popular demand and started opening the library 15 minutes earlier yesterday.

November: Welcome to NaBloWriMo.

December: So for the second year in a row, I succeeded in posting every day during the month of November.

Looks at November and December, laughs at self