HONESTLY also like. part of combatting misinformation is just accepting that you’ll fall victim to it sometimes. no-one can be an expert on every imaginable subject and most people don’t have the time to factcheck every single piece of information that comes their way. the key thing IMO is responding appropriately when someone points misinfo ie not doubling down and being like ‘no there’s no way I could be wrong about this’.
As you may have noticed already, Archive of Our Own is currently down. This is temporary, but unfortunately.. we now know that this is much deeper than we thought.
AO3 is currently the victim of a DDOS attack orchestrated by “Anonymous Sudan”
Why? Because AO3 is home to thousands of LGBTQIA+ content and lots of NSFW content. They’re doing this as an Anti-LGBTQ+ attack. If they’re doing this for or from America specifically, we’re not sure. But this is what AO3 is facing at this time.
What can we do?
Spread the word. Spread the fucking word. I’ll be providing updates to my Tumblr page directly from the r/AO3 subreddit. I know that not everyone here is comfortable using Reddit, so I’m taking the blow for you. I cannot access Twitter though.
And please, whatever you do…
Stop using the Archive of Our Own website at this time.
The moderators, showrunners, and service providers all need to repair the damage done by this group. The amount of data flooding in from people trying to log in will cause more problems. Keep yourselves off of the website.
i was explaining my sexuality to my coworkers abt how im both asexual and into kink culture, and after a minute my coworker said “Oh! It’s like, you don’t play the FNaF games, but you like the lore!” and i haven’t recovered
having a child has taught me that every toddler is completely justified in their frustrations and tantrums because learning how to do something you have literally never encountered or heard of before is insane. and being expected to be completely calm in the face of this constant barrage of overwhelming information is doubly insane.
i got charlie a sticker activity book and it occurred to me i have to TEACH someone how to unpeel stickers. it’s SKILL that requires DEXTERITY and FINE MOTOR ABILITY. i thought it was obvious that you have to curl the page a little bit to create a break in the cut so the sticker comes up.
obviously a fucking BABY wouldn’t know that because they have no background experience to inform their thought process. OBVIOUSLY. and OBVIOUSLY the LITERAL BABY wouldn’t get it right the first few times. it would OBVIOUSLY take practice. lots of it.
i hate this feeling. it’s so obvious. why are children treated so badly when they’re learning everything for the first fucking time. why do people treat children so horribly and expect so much. they’re brand new. why didn’t i get the same grace i give to my child? why did no one have patience for me? why, when it’s this easy?
society is spiraling and culture is a wasteland. i know this because i looked and most people prefer things that are fun and easy, making fun and easy things extremely popular. this is the first time that’s ever happened, historically.
in order to get people to enjoy things that are challenging, i will find the people who are enjoying fun and easy things, and i will tell them how cringe and stupid they are
where relevant i will pirate fun and easy things, the better to explain why they are cringe and stupid
if i accidentally find myself enjoying those things, i will find ways to make them difficult through essay writing
ALT
until the internet everyone read the densest prose and trashy movies and shows were extremely unpopular, i checked and have sources all of which agree with me so you can take my word for it
they have a 130 euro “gaming backpack” here. perfect for this new character ive been working on called “the itinerant gamer”
hey guys the itinerant gamer here. coming to you live from a two foot wide path winding up a sheer mountainside in eastern anatolia. today we’ll be checking out (wind howling) a great new release from devolver digital i’m really excited to get into. (reading chat) SedentarySitter says: “lay down your heavy burden and rest your weary legs”. first of all thank you for the comment. unfortunately, as my longtime fans may know, a curse hangs over my head, and the respite of a warm hearth is destined to forever elude me. sorry guys! SedentarySitter, i hope you’ll continue watching. (rocks shift ominously underfoot. the itinerant gamer picks his way slowly across the path, lest he fall to his death. his face in the corner of the stream shows no fear, only resignation. he has been doing this for so long. longer than you’ve been alive. his hiking boots are black and red and covered in LED lights. inside, his feet are cracked and bleeding. he has seen every lost and forgotten corner of this world, every desert, every peak and every swamp. he’s working on a sponsorship deal with garmin so he can start exploring the depths of the ocean. he’s excited for the next minecraft update
The path of the warrior, the path of the scholar, or the path of the artist?
he should wander away and have a picnic while he thinks about what path to choose
Great idea! But where should he have the picnic?
Under the tree, or under the old fort?
By the sea, so he can enjoy the sound of the waves
A lovely choice!
Should he build a sandcastle to pass the time? Or perhaps go fishing?
Perhaps he could collect shells he finds interesting
Sounds fun!
Which shell should he pick up?
This one
That’s not a shell, it’s a tiny earpiece.
Should he listen to music? Or to the mysterious pre-recorded message?
He should give it back to the crab in the largest shell, they thought they had lost their wave-pod and are grateful he found it!
The crab wants to give a gift in return.
Should he accept the gift of power, or the gift of knowledge?
the gift of friendship :)
Friendship acquired!
Should they celebrate with pizza or ice cream?
The crab friend cannot eat either of those! Let’s split a nice seaweed salad instead. :)
So many options!
Should they get tossed salad, wiggly salad, or spiky salad?
Seasar salad
Nothing beats getting it straight from the source
Should they use scissors or claws to cut the seaweed?
What about that sword in the first panel?
The circle is complete.
Through choices, friendship, and salad, he found his way to the path of the warrior. But he won’t walk it alone.
Their path is just beginning, but this story is over.
Thank you to everyone who participated!
I got a lot of comments like these, and I hope all of you realize that I chose these options. I chose which comments to reblog. I chose to let my own dichotomies be broken.
Ok, I’ve seen this sentiment before, but the amount of Kindle Unlimited ads I’ve been seeing is forcing me to repeat it-
Kindle Unlimited is offering two free months of unlimited ebooks. As a trial. Which will then become a paid subscription.
Your local library is offering unlimited ebooks all the time. Forever. No contracts, no predatory practices, no tracking of how long you spend on each particular page in the hopes that information about your habits can be sold for a profit.
Use your library. They want so badly to give you all of the things for free.
If we don’t microdose delusion we won’t make it through this reality babe….
So I remember reading about this study in grad school where they have a bunch of clinically depressed people and a bunch of non-clinically-depressed people a game that was partially chance and partially skill, and asked them to estimate how much control they had over the outcome.
The depressed people were far more accurate in estimating how much influence their actions had on the outcome of the game compared to their nondepressed counterparts, who consistently overestimated the effects of their own choices on their chances of winning.
Then I remember this other study (CW animal testing) where they put rats in a bucket of water that they couldn’t get out of, so they’d have to swim. There was a fairly consistent point at which the swimming rat would falter, and stop swimming, fated to drown.
Except that that’s when the researchers would pull the rat out of the bucket, give it a nice rest warmth and a meal.
When those SAME rats who had been rescued before were put in the same situation again, they swam much LONGER than they had before.
Why? The risk was the same either way- drowning. You’d have thought that the fear of drowning would keep them swimming to their maximum length no matter what.
The researchers conclusion was that the rescued rats had something they hadn’t had the first time- they had more hope. A miraculous rescue could come, and that let them swim for longer, just in case.
I think we do microdose delusion because sometimes that little overestimation of our chances, of our luck, keeps us swimming that little bit longer, just in case something good happens. And sometimes, that little margin really does make the difference.
“All right,“ said Susan. "I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
-Terry Pratchett, Hogfather.
hey, don’t just leave the quote there! the last line is what MAKES it!
“YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?”
“YOU NEED TO BELIEVE
IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW
ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?”
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
Social loafing model is always a bit iffy, because it’s always presented with the tone of ‘how do we get the team to work at 100% efficiency all the time?’. Workplace psychology like this is often about improving capitalist efficiency (or reducing stress, but only insofar as to maximise work output e.g.: Yerkes and Dodson’s Iverted U Hypothesis). It carries the creepy implication that best way to squeeze the maximum work from your workers is to have them believe that each worker is on their own.
Whereas, as social animals, we know instinctively that, if we are working with someone else, we don’t need to put in all of the possible effort, because other people have got our back. Two people pulling at 82% efficiency is still 164% of what one person can do alone. Social loafing, as a term, implies laziness or indolence, which is a very moralistic way of condemning (checks notes) collaborative work
Sad update everyone, Tama recently passed away… An estimated 3,000 people, including railway officials, attended Tama the cat’s funeral on Sunday, days after she died of heart failure aged 16. [x]
For those who haven’t read articles about it, the local shrine elevated her to a god. She’s now the Eternal Stationmaster and patron god of the station.
Beautiful.
Now I’m crying thanks
and a new cat was hired right?
yep! her name is Nitama (essentially ”second tama” or “tama II”) and she served under Tama as an apprentice before being appointed her deputy
she works very hard
Everytime this crosses my dash, I reblog. It is the law.
Law
I’m crying at 11pm over train cats
Nitama, already now a mature cat (born 2010), has a protege named Yontama (fourth Tama, b. 2016). There is no information available for either the physical befellment or tragic self-disgrace which has removed Santama from contention.
^Nitama majestic, and below with Yontama
Yontama.
a legacy
okay but actually what happened to santama (or sun-tama-tama, which is her name because it’s a pun on santama) was that she was basically sent to train for the position in okayama and they liked her so much they refused to send her back
“Sun-tama-tama” (a pun off of “Santama”, lit. “third Tama”) was a calico cat sent for training in Okayama. Sun-tama-tama was considered as a candidate for Tama’s successor, but the Okayama Public Relations representative who had been caring for Sun-tama-tama refused to give the cat up writing, “I will not let go of this child, she will stay in Okayama.” [25]
As of September 2018, Sun-tama-tama is working as the stationmaster in Naka-ku, Okayama and appears occasionally on Tama’s Twitter account.
Every time I see this post there’s new info and it gets better
You are only allowed to scroll pass this after you pay tribute to the great Tama Station masters.
The shrine of Tama Daimyōjin (Great gracious deity Tama), next to the Kishi station where she worked.
Nitama presenting her yearly offerings to Tama
Daimyōjin on the anniversary of Tama’s Death, June 23 (The offerings are presented by the company president, as Nitama is a cat and thus can’t hold the offerings herself) (Not pictured, but also present, Yontama)
you cannot pass without reblogging guys. i’m sorry, i don’t make the rules.
You can’t not reblog a goddess. It’s just what’s so. :)
So, fun fact- the manga Noragami has an arc where the main character, Yato (a minor kami/God that is down on his luck but trying to make it big time) goes to a council/conference for all the Gods in Japan.
And they are announcing the winner of the “up and coming god” award, and of course, Yato thinks it’s him.
im sorry for reblogging this again but this tag has obliterated me
For anyone who’s wondering, that is a yellow spotted box fish. And they love human attention and have the personalities of small puppies. Also, if you stress them out they release a toxin that kills everything around them.
Gee, Tumblr would probably really hate it if you shared and spread this damning article … To the surprise of absolutely none of Tumblr’s LGBTQ users, it turns out the independent NYC human rights agency Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) found that Tumblr’s ham-fisted adult content ban in December 2018 disproportionately targeted LGBTQ users. The CCHR’s investigation revealed Tumbler’s moderation algorithms is demonstrably biased against queer content. As part of the settlement, Tumblr was obligated to review their prejudicial anti-gay moderation policies. Even more mortifyingly, they’ve also had to hire an expert on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) issues and provide unconscious bias training to their moderators. I frankly doubt Tumblr has learned a thing from this humbling experience. Just recently the Tumblr algorithm flagged three ancient posts of mine as violating their terms. All three “offenders” were vintage homoerotic beefcake images (softcore by modern standards) roughly 50 – 65-years-old by Bruce of Los Angeles, Bob Mizer and Tom of Finland. (These are of course pioneering queer artists who routinely faced censorship and imprisonment in the fifties and sixties. Plus ca change!). They’ve been visible on my page - corrupting viewers - for years at this point. I appealed all three immediately. Only the Tom of Finland one was approved. The other two are now hidden. So, they haven’t learned much. Apparently, Tumblr – who loves to declare how hip, youthful, inclusive and progressive their values are - wants to restore trust with their queer users. I’d recommend we remember their hypocrisy when Pride rolls around and Tumblr splashes rainbow flags everywhere and attempts to pink wash their image.
In honour of Pride Month, this is worth a reblog! Don’t buy into Tumblr’s hypocritical “pink washing.”
i’m currently researching butch identity in mid-century america! here’s a fact about post-WWII LGBT communities in port cities that blew my mind today. from lillian faderman’s odd girls and twilight lovers: a history of lesbian life in 20th century america
[Image ID: a picture of a paragraph in a book, which reads
Ironically, the military also contributed to the establishment of a larger lesbian subculture when it became less lenient in its policy toward homosexuals once the war was over. Thousands of homosexual personnel were loaded onto “queer ships” and sent with “undesirable” discharges to the nearest U. S. port. Many of them believed that they could not go home again. They simply stayed where they were disembarked, and their numbers helped to form large homosexual enclaves that were beginning to develop in port cities such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Boston. Historian Allan Bérubé wryly remarks: “The government sponsored a migration of the gay community.”
End ID]
[Image ID: a
picture of a paragraph
in a book, which reads
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
I bet octopuses think bones are horrific. I bet all their cosmic horror stories involve rigid-limbs and hinged joints.
To an octopus, a human is like a thinking being with blood-stained coral growing inside it.
I need to sit down and breathe into a bag for a while.
Its parts were obscenely limited in their movement. Each hinge could open or close only a small amount before reaching its limit, yet by working in concert they demonstrated unexpected dexterity, moving and manipulating the objects before it with cunning equal to my own. It was more torso than limb, as though a seal had been stretched and warped, given long grasping tentacles filled with bones like bars of coral. It’s head was most horrid of all, flat and ovoid, jutting out too small from the trunk as though it belonged to a beast half its size.
The thing rose upon its lowermost appendages, two long trunks that ended in flat, protruding flippers that branched into stubby, grasping mockeries of a sucker. It’s triple-hinged uppermost limbs were similar, but the ends branched into five smaller tentacles, each with three hinges of their own.
I froze, as the thing’s gaze fell upon me and it opened its hideous fish-jaw, filled with thick, many-shaped teeth like white shards of stone, and spoke in a shrill, discordant babble. I felt its horrid dry grip on my flesh, as those hinged appendages closed on me like the legs of a crab.
I felt the heat of its body, tasted its noxious, oily flesh through my touch, and prepared for the end, and all went black as a swoon overtook me.
I awoke, some time later, the cold and comforting water, banished back to the comfort of the sea and the dark. I should be grateful I am alive. I should cast aside the experience like a half-remembered dream.
I shall never again go swimming in search of lights above. The last thing I recall before the darkness took me was my right eye popping free of the thing’s grasp enough to see into the distance for one brief moment.
I saw thousands of lights.
ok so it turns out “horror but it’s about something mundane from the perspective of a non-human animal” fucks severely
GQ published this, got a phone call, and killed it, but someone had already archived it, so…
Time to make sure lots and lots of people see it!
If you’re wondering why the relatively tame article above got scrubbed from GQ, that’s because it’s the revised version of the article. This is a version that was captured 5 hours earlier from what I can tell:
Zaslav presided over “Discovery’s transition from educational programming to reality slop—which is, of course, a much more lucrative business model.”
“But Zaslav did himself no favors, and did little to blur that binary, when announcing the merger of the HBOMax and Discovery+ streaming services in a quarterly earnings call—which included a much-derided infographic deeming HBOMax’s scripted programming as “male skew,” “appointment viewing,” and “lean in” (?), while Discovery+’s unscripted shows were “female skew” “comfort viewing,” and thus ”lean back” (?!?).”
“And while they insisted Zaslav had assured them “that TCM and classic cinema are very important to him,” subsequent reporting indicated that TCM’s staff had been cut from 90 employees to a skeletal 20.”
“Nearly lost in the hullabaloo was yet another of the company’s exhaustive attempts to squeeze a profit from its assets: a $500 million deal to sell around half of their film and TV-music library. In a perhaps too-good-to-be-true detail, the sale would reportedly include “As Time Goes By” from Casablanca—the musical fanfare that plays before every Warner Bros. feature film.”
“Barely a month ago, Graydon Carter was hosting a party in Zaslav’s honor at Cannes, all but crowning him as the heir apparent to Jack Warner. But there’s a crucial difference between Zaslav and the old-school moguls he’s attempting to emulate: They loved movies, and cared about filmmakers. Zaslav sees movies as “content,” sees filmmakers as “content creators,” and is only interested in maintaining, preserving, and presenting “content” that can make him and his stockholders a quick buck. Anything that doesn’t, he’ll happily gut. He’s closer to Logan Roy than Jack Warner and there is a genuine, understandable fear that his bean-counting represents not just shrugging indifference but outright hostility to cinema and its rich history.”
“In Pretty Woman, Richard Gere stars as Edward Lewis, a corporate raider who buys companies “that are in financial difficulty” and sells off their pieces. “So it’s sort of like stealing cars and selling them for the parts, right?” asks call girl Vivian (Julia Roberts), when he explains what he does, and it’s hard not to think of Lewis when looking over Zaslav’s reign at Warner Bros Discovery, stepping into the distressed conglomerate and stripping it for parts.
Edward Lewis, however, is at least honest about what he does. “You don’t make anything,” Vivian notes, and he agrees; “You don’t build anything,” she continues, and he concurs with that as well. And perhaps that’s why David Zaslav is earning a concerning reputation so far. He’s out here carrying on like a mogul, but based on his performance to date, he’s only good at breaking things.”
Thank you! I thought I’d put this version in but I clearly pasted the wrong link.
In case anything happens to the archive link, here’s a pdf of the original article (not a very good one because I made it through Firefox on my phone, but it exists)
Gee, Tumblr would probably really hate it if you shared and spread this damning article … To the surprise of absolutely none of Tumblr’s LGBTQ users, it turns out the independent NYC human rights agency Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) found that Tumblr’s ham-fisted adult content ban in December 2018 disproportionately targeted LGBTQ users. The CCHR’s investigation revealed Tumbler’s moderation algorithms is demonstrably biased against queer content. As part of the settlement, Tumblr was obligated to review their prejudicial anti-gay moderation policies. Even more mortifyingly, they’ve also had to hire an expert on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) issues and provide unconscious bias training to their moderators. I frankly doubt Tumblr has learned a thing from this humbling experience. Just recently the Tumblr algorithm flagged three ancient posts of mine as violating their terms. All three “offenders” were vintage homoerotic beefcake images (softcore by modern standards) roughly 50 – 65-years-old by Bruce of Los Angeles, Bob Mizer and Tom of Finland. (These are of course pioneering queer artists who routinely faced censorship and imprisonment in the fifties and sixties. Plus ca change!). They’ve been visible on my page - corrupting viewers - for years at this point. I appealed all three immediately. Only the Tom of Finland one was approved. The other two are now hidden. So, they haven’t learned much. Apparently, Tumblr – who loves to declare how hip, youthful, inclusive and progressive their values are - wants to restore trust with their queer users. I’d recommend we remember their hypocrisy when Pride rolls around and Tumblr splashes rainbow flags everywhere and attempts to pink wash their image.
In honour of Pride Month, this is worth a reblog! Don’t buy into Tumblr’s hypocritical “pink washing.”
ALT
