The politicians sit in their ivory towers, debating endlessly on the plights of the common man. But when will I, the uncommon man, be addressed? When will my needs be debated and promptly ignored?
I cry a little bit every time I see this comic circulated. The man’s name is Martin Gugino; he’s a peace activist here in Buffalo. He’s since made a full recovery, and is currently active in local pro-Palestine organizing.
I cry a little bit every time I see this comic circulated. The man’s name is Martin Gugino; he’s a peace activist here in Buffalo. He’s since made a full recovery, and is currently active in local pro-Palestine organizing.
some of y'all need to learn how to accept hospitality. stop assuming people are only offering to look after you out of twisted obligation that they don’t actually want to do. when you assume that, you are often denying someone the opportunity to genuinely show a friend or stranger love. even if you don’t really care about what they’re offering, it’s respectful of their desire to be kind to accept it anyways.
i had a bunch of girls i’ve never met over for a women’s group. every single one of them denied my offer to make them tea (despite already making myself a mug anyways), get them water, a scone, etc.
i can tell when people refuse to let me be a good host because they “don’t want to be a bother”. like no!! please be a bother!!! i want to serve you and make you comfortable in my home!
not to be like “we live in a society” but really do live in a modern culture than emphasizes individualism to the point where people will reflexively deny any help or kindness from others for fear of treading on their independence. newsflash: dependence on each other is what makes a community. next time someone offers you kindness, accept it instead of making excuses for why you don’t need it. otherwise you’ve robbed both yourself of being loved and someone else from showing love.
One of the things that really helped me make friends as an adult was learning that people want to be wanted, they want to be useful
Accepting help and offering help in return was key to deepening acquaintances into fully-fledged friendships
What up everyone Jack’s talking about the croissant thing again:
In 2019, I was very mentally and physically ill, and I was recommended to an IOP program, or, as I often called it, Suicide Prevention Daycamp For Grown-Ups.
It was technically a 4-6 week program, but I was not in a place where the counselors and I agreed that I was safe to graduate the program until about week #22 or so. So I was going to intensive group trauma therapy (to say nothing of all the other doctors I had to see), for 15+ hours a week for 5 months.
And one of the things that helped me regain and strengthen my will to live more than anything was going to the nice little bakery beside the hospital in the mornings before session started; buying 3-4 pastries, a banana, and a Lara bar (a gluten-free vegan* snack bar); taking one pastry for myself; and then walking around the morning meeting room at IOP giving away everything else.
* I’m not vegan for gluten-intolerant, but at least one person in my program was.
I did this once on a whim after about a month at IOP, and I liked doing it so much that I then continued to do it every single day I was there for the next 4 months. (I didn’t have a lot of extra money, but it was some of the best spending I’ve ever chosen to do in my life, and I have never regretted it.)
There were about 12-20 of us there in the mornings, depending on the day, and the interactions generally went like this:
Me: Good morning! Have you eaten?
Them: Uhh no.
Me: Okay cool! *I open up my white paper bakery bag like I’m a semi-suicidal Santa* So I’ve got a chocolate croissant, an almond croissant, and a banana left! Which one would you like?
Them: Ohh, you don’t have to do that, I don’t need anything…
Me: I didn’t ask if you need anything, I asked which one you’d like!!
Them: Someone else might need it more…
Me: I have bought these items for the purpose of giving them away, and if no one takes them, I will have to throw them out.
Them *with the most grateful look I’ve ever seen on a person, knowing they haven’t been completely forgotten and that it IS easy for at least one person on this fucking planet to be goddamn kind to them*: …the chocolate croissant. :)
Me *realizing that I want to spend the rest of my life chasing this feeling and showing people I care that they are okay and then realizing that I’ve suddenly started thinking of “the rest of my life” in the long-term again*: Awesome, here you go! :,)
—
And I like this post because it made me remember how grateful I am that those folks let me be kind to them because just by taking a banana from me and saying thank you, they literally helped me build up the will to live and to decide what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
It was also a great way to remind a lot of thoroughly abused, invalidated, and neglected people [read: generally, most of us that end up at mental hospitals] that someone gives a fuck about them in a tangible way, and that at least SOMETIMES people offer help without secretly expecting guilt or repayment.
More than once, someone told me that when they came in on their first day, terrified and not knowing what to expect, they felt instantly more at ease after seeing me bustling about giving people high-quality snacks! And in a suicide-prevention program, feeling safe to stay in and be vulnerable in a space means a LOT.
- Comments like that one changed my entire self image tbh. The “croissant thing” gave me a tiny sense of control over my own life when I was close to death, and it showed me how just the tiniest amount of kindness and consideration can mean SO MUCH to people.
And none of that would have happened for me if all those folks hadn’t believed me when I said I really wanted to make sure they had something to eat! What a kindness it is to be allowed to do a kindness!!
[Image ID: Image 1 of 3. A digital doodle depicting V1, V2, and Gabriel ultrakill all with bunny ears. V1 and V2 giggle amongst themselves while Gabriel yells at them for mocking him. The text behind Gabriel reads “THIS IS ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE!! STOP IT THIS INSTANT MACHINE!! AS THE RIGHTEOUS HAND OF THE FATHER I REFUSE TO BE MOCKED BY SUCH LESSER BEINGS- *trails off into scribbles*” /End ID]
[Image ID: Image 1 of 3. A digital drawing of a Peeps Marshmallows package that resembles the Flesh Prison and contains 4 Minos Prime shaped peeps. The text on the packaging reads “Prime. Minosmallow. 100% Blood. 8 Minos”. /End ID]
[Image ID: Image 3 of 3. A 2-paneled digital doodle of V1 fighting a Filth over a package of Minosmallows (see image 2). In the first panel, V1 and the filth are on the ground both biting onto the package. In the second frame, V1 violently shakes the filth around. They both have bunny ears. /End ID]
some of y'all need to learn how to accept hospitality. stop assuming people are only offering to look after you out of twisted obligation that they don’t actually want to do. when you assume that, you are often denying someone the opportunity to genuinely show a friend or stranger love. even if you don’t really care about what they’re offering, it’s respectful of their desire to be kind to accept it anyways.
i had a bunch of girls i’ve never met over for a women’s group. every single one of them denied my offer to make them tea (despite already making myself a mug anyways), get them water, a scone, etc.
i can tell when people refuse to let me be a good host because they “don’t want to be a bother”. like no!! please be a bother!!! i want to serve you and make you comfortable in my home!
not to be like “we live in a society” but really do live in a modern culture than emphasizes individualism to the point where people will reflexively deny any help or kindness from others for fear of treading on their independence. newsflash: dependence on each other is what makes a community. next time someone offers you kindness, accept it instead of making excuses for why you don’t need it. otherwise you’ve robbed both yourself of being loved and someone else from showing love.
One of the things that really helped me make friends as an adult was learning that people want to be wanted, they want to be useful
Accepting help and offering help in return was key to deepening acquaintances into fully-fledged friendships
What up everyone Jack’s talking about the croissant thing again:
In 2019, I was very mentally and physically ill, and I was recommended to an IOP program, or, as I often called it, Suicide Prevention Daycamp For Grown-Ups.
It was technically a 4-6 week program, but I was not in a place where the counselors and I agreed that I was safe to graduate the program until about week #22 or so. So I was going to intensive group trauma therapy (to say nothing of all the other doctors I had to see), for 15+ hours a week for 5 months.
And one of the things that helped me regain and strengthen my will to live more than anything was going to the nice little bakery beside the hospital in the mornings before session started; buying 3-4 pastries, a banana, and a Lara bar (a gluten-free vegan* snack bar); taking one pastry for myself; and then walking around the morning meeting room at IOP giving away everything else.
* I’m not vegan for gluten-intolerant, but at least one person in my program was.
I did this once on a whim after about a month at IOP, and I liked doing it so much that I then continued to do it every single day I was there for the next 4 months. (I didn’t have a lot of extra money, but it was some of the best spending I’ve ever chosen to do in my life, and I have never regretted it.)
There were about 12-20 of us there in the mornings, depending on the day, and the interactions generally went like this:
Me: Good morning! Have you eaten?
Them: Uhh no.
Me: Okay cool! *I open up my white paper bakery bag like I’m a semi-suicidal Santa* So I’ve got a chocolate croissant, an almond croissant, and a banana left! Which one would you like?
Them: Ohh, you don’t have to do that, I don’t need anything…
Me: I didn’t ask if you need anything, I asked which one you’d like!!
Them: Someone else might need it more…
Me: I have bought these items for the purpose of giving them away, and if no one takes them, I will have to throw them out.
Them *with the most grateful look I’ve ever seen on a person, knowing they haven’t been completely forgotten and that it IS easy for at least one person on this fucking planet to be goddamn kind to them*: …the chocolate croissant. :)
Me *realizing that I want to spend the rest of my life chasing this feeling and showing people I care that they are okay and then realizing that I’ve suddenly started thinking of “the rest of my life” in the long-term again*: Awesome, here you go! :,)
—
And I like this post because it made me remember how grateful I am that those folks let me be kind to them because just by taking a banana from me and saying thank you, they literally helped me build up the will to live and to decide what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
It was also a great way to remind a lot of thoroughly abused, invalidated, and neglected people [read: generally, most of us that end up at mental hospitals] that someone gives a fuck about them in a tangible way, and that at least SOMETIMES people offer help without secretly expecting guilt or repayment.
More than once, someone told me that when they came in on their first day, terrified and not knowing what to expect, they felt instantly more at ease after seeing me bustling about giving people high-quality snacks! And in a suicide-prevention program, feeling safe to stay in and be vulnerable in a space means a LOT.
- Comments like that one changed my entire self image tbh. The “croissant thing” gave me a tiny sense of control over my own life when I was close to death, and it showed me how just the tiniest amount of kindness and consideration can mean SO MUCH to people.
And none of that would have happened for me if all those folks hadn’t believed me when I said I really wanted to make sure they had something to eat! What a kindness it is to be allowed to do a kindness!!
lemon stealing whores are a huge issue separate from food stealing whores. there’s a whole documentary about whores stealing lemons from the trees of unsuspecting victims. you can see the first two minutes of it here.
Thats a rickroll. That totally is a fucking rickroll. No fukin way. Not falling for it.
dude, trust me, that isn’t a rick roll. its something worse
Me to the rest of tumblr after actually watching what was in the link:
…I really don’t know what I was expecting.
What the fuck did i just watch.
It- it’s not a Rick roll
Have we really reached a time when the Lemon Stealing Whores are no longer common knowledge.
I do not have words for the utter misery seeing the second image brought me. Bad future shit holy fuck
Oh thank god 😮💨
Yeah no this is a whole trend on Christian Tiktok where people will show their (real/imagined) “glow-up” from an alt/emo/furry/trans to a “good Christian”
“don’t post links to pirate sites” as a security through obscurity strategy seems… weak. if a pirate site is so obscure that almost nobody can find it, it’s also essentially pointless.
but yes, if a pirate site is common knowledge, the feds will be working on destroying it. so the idea is i assume to achieve an intermediate level of obscurity, where you have to have a certain amount of talent for asking the right people or searching the right things to find it. but… whatever capacity for research you are asking people to have on that front, the feds are equally capable of it, and they have a whole lot more time on their hands for tracking down pirate sites! security through obscurity is a losing game for piracy. the perfect sweet spot where people can find your pirate resource but the feds cannot is something of a mirage.
if not that, than what?
the current piracy system involves a few different tiers of accessibility, and various components that are more or less decentralised.
torrents are the most resilient tech because to stamp out a torrent (with DHT enabled) you have to suppress every seed. so, you have big public torrent trackers like TPB; these are well known and rely on hopping domains and redundancy for security. the ratio of seeds to leeches tends to be low, but the number of users is large enough that there will be at least a few seeds out there for most stuff. torrent clients have gotten a lot better at seeding strategies that take into account your seed ratio and what’s currently available in the swarm, so if you just leave everything on seed and open your torrent client fairly often (use a VPN though lol), you don’t really need to think about it.
then you have private trackers; these operate on an invite basis. the problem with this is that when the pool of users is so small, the odds of a given seed being online are also small. to prevent torrents dying, they gamify it: you get points for seeding and if you don’t have enough points you can’t download anything until you seed more. to help people get back in the game there will be ‘freeleech’ events. being active on a private tracker takes a bit of work.
and of course you have to get in in the first place, which tends to require a proven track record of seeding on other private trackers, and some kind of interview with the operators. getting involved in private trackers is a much bigger ask, you have to figure out where to get your foot in the door, and work your way up to the more insular trackers. it’s like a mini subculture. it’s valuable, but not scalable.
at the top level of inaccessibility is the warez scene. this is a whole subject that i’m not even gonna get into, go read wikipedia. historically this is where the files actually come from, before getting distributed on public trackers, usenet etc. but good luck getting in there lmao, they are understandably quite paranoid.
of course, for stuff to get on pirate sites you need somebody to go the effort of ripping and encoding it. this is where a major point of failure exists. when RarBG went down recently, the biggest loss was not the existing archive of torrent links, which can be backed up - it was that they were very active at converting scene releases into torrents with a decent balance of file size and quality, which then filter out into the various public trackers. that is much harder to replace! but what killed RarBG wasn’t even suppression by authorities - according to their statement, it was a bunch of the admins getting covid or dying or fighting in the Russia-Ukraine war, which made the whole operation impossible to continue. so despite the thousands of people who download RarBG torrents, this single point of failure was overstressed and broke.
as far as the ethics of spreading links to pirate sites go… if it’s something like a mega drive, yeah, the chances of a takedown are pretty high if it gets noticed! no question. but those things are by nature short-lived; if you want to use that for archival you’re building on sand. there’s also databases like emuparadise, but there was no saving that through obscurity, it just took Nintendo a minute to bring the case.
in this kind of centralised case, the clock is ticking from day 1. what we want is to maximise the number of people who are able to save copies while it’s up, and then some of those people can put it up again somewhere else and keep the authorities playing whack-a-mole. (for a small collection of files, a sensible measure would be to make a torrent and a mega drive side by side, so that people can download the mega drive and then add the torrent to their client to seed if it gets nuked.)
as for torrent sites, the thing is that torrents rely for effectiveness on a swarm that is either very large or very responsible about seeding. if it’s a public tracker, it has to be well known or it’s pointless. instead of security through obscurity, the form of security for these sites is try to make the resource itself hard to take down - operating the tracker/archive in countries that don’t have copyright treaties, maintaining mirrors, and of course distributing as many seeds as possible so the torrent can stay alive even if the site goes down.
the major problem with a dead torrent site is discoverability. if it’s harder to find the torrent, fewer people will download it, the existing seeds will gradually go offline, and of course you can’t download a torrent that you don’t know exists. and while you could imagine a system of broadcasting metadata about a torrent (title, encoding etc.) in a DHT-like way but that would be so vulnerable to fakes and spam. maybe some kind of cryptographically signed 'this torrent is good’ declaration is possible? I know certain torrent clients tout discovery features, but honestly I don’t know how well they work. I’m sure there are projects that are way ahead of the game than me on this question.
but yeah anyway trying to browbeat people into not sharing links to pirate media is 1. futile, by the time you see it the cat is out of the bag 2. not a sustainable strategy for security. if you wanna lecture people, 'use a VPN and seed your torrents’ is evergreen ;p
If you were given the chance to equalise everyone’s suffering, so that all those who are below average happiness become average at the cost of all those above average having the same thing happen,
still think that funniest thing in the game is everyone finding that pornographic drawing and trying to shield bonnie’s eyes away from it meanwhile isa’s just like “:o neat”
