Profile
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| User: | insomnia (11697)  |
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| Name: | Insomnia | |||||
Message | Send insomnia a text message on his/her cellphone/pager. | |||||
| Location: | Santa Clara, California, United States | |||||
| Birthdate: | 1967-12-04 | |||||
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| AOL IM: |  markkraft (Add Buddy, Send Message) | |||||
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| Bio: | I'm Mark. I'm a geeth... an old-school goth turned computer geek. I am becoming something more than that with time, however. I am probably best known for being the "All things business" manager of LiveJournal, overseeing a ton of things regarding the strategy, design, and viability of the LiveJournal community / open source project. I was later let go by the site's founder over personal differences on how the site should operate. It was a short-sighted and unprofitable decision on his part, but at least it has allowed me to concentrate a bit more on things that are of more personal importance. (i.e. I have a life again.) In addition to overseeing LiveJournal's business and volunteers, I also came up with many of the ideas that make LiveJournal what it is today. Some of the ideas I hatched include:
While I don't work for LJ anymore, I still try to support LJ's members by encouraging new features, better business practices, and more honesty and transparency by LJ's management. Most recently, I led a movement which once more made LJ free for all users, but supported by paid accounts. I am very happily, lovingly married to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} iceblink; we've been together for over 13 years, and married for three of them. I also live with my other partner noressa, who I've been with for two year now, and who I love oodles and bunches. The three of us have shared a house together for over a year now, along with our five cats. (Yes, I know... that's a lot of cats.) It sounds odd, perhaps, but it works! So far, so good. We believe in living in an open, inviting manner. For this reason, we're also polyamorous. (Yes, even my lifestyle is open source!) If there's something important in this life to accomplish, I believe it is to promote human and scientfic progress, to empower others, and to give people a voice in their future. I believe in the ability of humanity to progress, both technologically and societally. Despite our human failings, we can do better. Lofty goals, perhaps, in a life which so often demands a certain degree of compromise, but you've gotta start somewhere. I am a rational idealist. I believe that people are basically good, born with the desire for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. While temporal powers may oppose actions by the people to make a more just and humane world, they shall pass on, but the people shall persist. Therefore, I believe in human progress. It is inevitable. I believe in the mystery of nature and that there is a spiritual "je ne sais quoi" that we can attune ourselves to. Whether it is divine or biological in nature is the great mystery, however. Perhaps it is both. My church is nature. My congregation is life and all living things. They are sacred to me. You could just as easily call me an agnostic. Life is a great mystery -- explore it, worship it, find solutions that work for you, but never fall into the trap of thinking you possess the truth. The quest for knowledge is more important than any knowledge you may gain, and the more certain you are about something, the more likely you are to be in error. They say that for every door you open, another one closes. Personally, I prefer leaving all the doors half-open instead. If absolute truth cannot be proven and everything is merely observed, what does that leave us to talk about? Not sure, really. Life is beautiful and brutal, mundane and miraculous, rigid and coincidental, purposeful and arbitrary. It is everything and nothing. Life is and isn't. Either way, it looks like we may have some time to kill... anyone for another cup of tea, perhaps?!? My favorite thought regarding spirituality is the word "namaste", which has many meanings. "I honor the place in you in which the entire Universe dwells. I honor the place in you which is of Love, of Truth, of Light and of Peace. When you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, We Are One." I honor that place in you. In a world where the rights of individual groups and sects vie for dominance, it is important to look past all that and seek out our common humanity and identify our common struggle. On some level, we most certainly are one. Except, of course, when we most certainly aren't. I am not conventional, but I may just be the sanest person that you have ever met. | |||||
| Memories: | 49 entries | |||||
| Pictures: | over 60 public | |||||
| Interests: | 150: aesthetics, agnosticism, aldous huxley, ancient history, angst, animation, art, asian food, bauhaus, beaches at night, beatles, betty boop, billie holiday, birds, bisexuality, biting, black and white movies, bondage, bonfires, books, breathing, burning man, cartoons, cats, classical, cloves, cocteau twins, computers, concerts, cooking, creativity, cuddling, dancing, dead can dance, decadence, declan o'rourke, djing, dreams, drum'n'bass, ealing comedies, entropy8, ethics, experimental art, extremes, films, friends, gardening, george orwell, glam rock, glitter, gothic, green party, gregg araki, halloween, horror, hot tubs, hugging, human progress, humphrey bogart, idealism, inalienable human rights, independent films, industrial, inflicting pleasure, internet, jaffa cakes, japan, joy division, kate bush, kids in the hall, kisses, lamb, leather, licking, livejournal, love, lust, lyrics, magic, marc lavoine, movies, museums, music, nature, nick cave, nihilism, old books, omar faruk tekbilek, online communities, open-mindedness, opera, p.g. wodehouse, paganism, painting, pansexuality, penn & teller, philosophy, photography, pinball, poetry, polyamory, pronoia, punk, radiohead, rain, reason, red wine, relaxation, ridley scott, rockabilly, roxy music, roy orbison, san francisco, saunas, science fiction, sex, shiny black, silence, simple pleasures, skin, sleep, slowdive, softness, soup, stanley kubrick, surrealism, sushi, tango, tea, terry gilliam, the bill of rights, the constitution, the cure, the mighty boosh, the moon, the smiths, the young ones, this mortal coil, tones on tail, tori amos, traveling, trip hop, vegetarianism, vinyl, web design, weltschmerz, wetlands, william morris, women, writing | |||||
| Schools: | None listed | |||||
| Friends: | 776: View Friends. | |||||
| Account type: | Permanent Account, previously an Early Adopter | |||||
