escritorian

[escritorian]

Slowdowns, incidentally, like ones already caused during the first Trump administration because of how his trade policies affected the price of wood and steel. We've already seen what it looks like, and it's not good

The "um but the economy actually *isn't* that good" argument is a prime example of what the fuck is wrong - people are deliberately ignoring the majority of the facts to focus on one element and act like that completely negates the rest.

[escritorian]

Holy CRAP the UN Cybercrime Treaty is a nightmare

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If there's one thing I learned from all my years as an NGO delegate to UN specialized agencies, it's that UN treaties are dangerous, liable to capture by unholy alliances of authoritarian states and rapacious global capitalists.

Most of my UN work was on copyright and "paracopyright," and my track record was 2:0; I helped kill a terrible treaty (the WIPO Broadcast Treaty) and helped pass a great one (the Marrakesh Treaty on the rights of people with disabilities to access copyrighted works):

https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/marrakesh/

It's been many years since I had to shave and stuff myself into a suit and tie and go to Geneva, and I don't miss it – and thankfully, I have colleagues who do that work, better than I ever did. Yesterday, I heard from one such EFF colleague, Katitza Rodriguez, about the Cybercrime Treaty, which is about to pass, and which is, to put it mildly, terrifying:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/07/un-cybercrime-draft-convention-dangerously-expands-state-surveillance-powers

Look, cybercrime is a real thing, from pig butchering to ransomware, and there's real, global harms that can be attributed to it. Cybercrime is transnational, making it hard for cops in any one jurisdiction to handle it. So there's a reason to think about formal international standards for fighting cybercrime.

But that's not what's in the Cybercrime Treaty.

Here's a quick sketch of the significant defects in the Cybercrime Treaty.

The treaty has an extremely loose definition of cybercrime, and that looseness is deliberate. In authoritarian states like China and Russia (whose delegations are the driving force behind this treaty), "cybercrime" has come to mean "anything the government disfavors, if you do it with a computer." "Cybercrime" can mean online criticism of the government, or professions of religious belief, or material supporting LGBTQ rights.

Nations that sign up to the Cybercrime Treaty will be obliged to help other nations fight "cybercrime" – however those nations define it. They'll be required to provide surveillance data – for example, by forcing online services within their borders to cough up their users' private data, or even to pressure employees to install back-doors in their systems for ongoing monitoring.

These obligations to aid in surveillance are mandatory, but much of the Cybercrime Treaty is optional. What's optional? The human rights safeguards. Member states "should" or "may" create standards for legality, necessity, proportionality, non-discrimination, and legitimate purpose. But even if they do, the treaty can oblige them to assist in surveillance orders that originate with other states that decided not to create these standards.

When that happens, the citizens of the affected states may never find out about it. There are eight articles in the treaty that establish obligations for indefinite secrecy regarding surveillance undertaken on behalf of other signatories. That means that your government may be asked to spy on you and the people you love, they may order employees of tech companies to backdoor your account and devices, and that fact will remain secret forever. Forget challenging these sneak-and-peek orders in court – you won't even know about them:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/un-cybercrime-draft-convention-blank-check-unchecked-surveillance-abuses

Now here's the kicker: while this treaty creates broad powers to fight things governments dislike, simply by branding them "cybercrime," it actually undermines the fight against cybercrime itself. Most cybercrime involves exploiting security defects in devices and services – think of ransomware attacks – and the Cybercrime Treaty endangers the security researchers who point out these defects, creating grave criminal liability for the people we rely on to warn us when the tech vendors we rely upon have put us at risk.

This is the granddaddy of tech free speech fights. Since the paper tape days, researchers who discovered defects in critical systems have been intimidated, threatened, sued and even imprisoned for blowing the whistle. Tech giants insist that they should have a veto over who can publish true facts about the defects in their products, and dress up this demand as concern over security. "If you tell bad guys about the mistakes we made, they will exploit those bugs and harm our users. You should tell us about those bugs, sure, but only we can decide when it's the right time for our users and customers to find out about them."

When it comes to warnings about the defects in their own products, corporations have an irreconcilable conflict of interest. Time and again, we've seen corporations rationalize their way into suppressing or ignoring bug reports. Sometimes, they simply delay the warning until they've concluded a merger or secured a board vote on executive compensation.

Sometimes, they decide that a bug is really a feature – like when Facebook decided not to do anything about the fact that anyone could enumerate the full membership of any Facebook group (including, for example, members of a support group for people with cancer). This group enumeration bug was actually a part of the company's advertising targeting system, so they decided to let it stand, rather than re-engineer their surveillance advertising business.

The idea that users are safer when bugs are kept secret is called "security through obscurity" and no one believes in it – except corporate executives. As Bruce Schneier says, "Anyone can design a system that is so secure that they themselves can't break it. That doesn't mean it's secure – it just means that it's secure against people stupider than the system's designer":

The history of massive, brutal cybersecurity breaches is an unbroken string of heartbreakingly naive confidence in security through obscurity:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

But despite this, the idea that some bugs should be kept secret and allowed to fester has powerful champions: a public-private partnership of corporate execs, government spy agencies and cyber-arms dealers. Agencies like the NSA and CIA have huge teams toiling away to discover defects in widely used products. These defects put the populations of their home countries in grave danger, but rather than reporting them, the spy agencies hoard these defects.

The spy agencies have an official doctrine defending this reckless practice: they call it "NOBUS," which stands for "No One But Us." As in: "No one but us is smart enough to find these bugs, so we can keep them secret and use them attack our adversaries, without worrying about those adversaries using them to attack the people we are sworn to protect."

NOBUS is empirically wrong. In the 2010s, we saw a string of leaked NSA and CIA cyberweapons. One of these, "Eternalblue" was incorporated into off-the-shelf ransomware, leading to the ransomware epidemic that rages even today. You can thank the NSA's decision to hoard – rather than disclose and patch – the Eternalblue exploit for the ransoming of cities like Baltimore, hospitals up and down the country, and an oil pipeline:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EternalBlue

The leak of these cyberweapons didn't just provide raw material for the world's cybercriminals, it also provided data for researchers. A study of CIA and NSA NOBUS defects found that there was a one-in-five chance of a bug that had been hoarded by a spy agency being independently discovered by a criminal, weaponized, and released into the wild.

Not every government has the wherewithal to staff its own defect-mining operation, but that's where the private sector steps in. Cyber-arms dealers like the NSO Group find or buy security defects in widely used products and services and turn them into products – military-grade cyberweapons that are used to attack human rights groups, opposition figures, and journalists:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/breaking-the-news/#kingdom

A good Cybercrime Treaty would recognize the perverse incentives that create the coalition to keep us from knowing which products we can trust and which ones we should avoid. It would shut down companies like the NSO Group, ban spy agencies from hoarding defects, and establish an absolute defense for security researchers who reveal true facts about defects.

Instead, the Cybercrime Treaty creates new obligations on signatories to help other countries' cops and courts silence and punish security researchers who make these true disclosures, ensuring that spies and criminals will know which products aren't safe to use, but we won't (until it's too late):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/if-not-amended-states-must-reject-flawed-draft-un-cybercrime-convention

A Cybercrime Treaty is a good idea, and even this Cybercrime Treaty could be salvaged. The member-states have it in their power to accept proposed revisions that would protect human rights and security researchers, narrow the definition of "cybercrime," and mandate transparency. They could establish member states' powers to refuse illegitimate requests from other countries:

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/media-briefing-eff-partners-warn-un-member-states-are-poised-approve-dangerou

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/23/expanded-spying-powers/#in-russia-crime-cybers-you

Image: EFF https://www.eff.org/files/banner_library/cybercrime-2024-2b.jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

[escritorian]

young artist posting your work online, heed my warning. im holding your face so gently in my hands, you have to stop caring about numbers right now and start caring about making the weirdest and most self-indulgent art you possibly can

[escritorian]

At Ebooks Direct...

The current sale has been extended to August 31st. Yay!

This is because the "Whole (Ebooks Direct) Store For $44" offer's being made available elsewhere online at the moment. But, frankly, if you feel like ducking in from the Tumblresque end of things to pick up the DRM-free 36-book package, the store won't try to talk you out of it. It's much too well-mannered for that. :)

So feel free to drop in and take advantage of us by grabbing the "Get The Whole Store Deal" bundle at a truly ridiculous price!*

(And would you perhaps consider reblogging this for others who might be interested? Thanks very much.) :)

*That's sort of $1.22 per book. (Or a really long repeating decimal version of $1.22, if you get out the calculator...)

[escritorian]

FEMA is doing an emergency alert test on all TVs, radios, and cell phones on October 4, 2023, at approximately 2:20pm ET.

If you live in the US and you have a phone you need to keep secret for any reason, make sure that it is turned off at this time.

Yes, I'm doing this months in advance, and yes, my blog has very little reach, but I figure better to post about it more than less.

Please reblog and add better tags than mine, I'm bad at tags.

[escritorian]

✨Love and Gravity (the print edition of Always Human season 2) is out, in bookstores, tomorrow!✨

Like last time, I have cool goodies to give out.

The release campaign is running through to the end of August, please go to https://alwayshumanbooks.carrd.co/ for more information and to submit your receipt! There's a Q&A on the site and hopefully that answers most questions. If you have further questions, please ask here and I will answer :)

[escritorian]

on a serious note regarding the wga strike and (as of 1:50 AM PST 7/13) upcoming sag-aftra strike, dsa-la has a fundraiser called The Snacklist which provides snacks and water on the picket lines here in LA. right now the funds they have will not last through the end of the summer, especially given the current and upcoming heatwaves necessitating more supplies. if you have a couple of dollars to spare it's a great way to directly support the writers (and potentially the actors) during this difficult time!

[escritorian]

Glaze is out!

Tired of having your artwork used for AI training but find watermarks dismaying and ineffective?

Well check this out! Software that makes your Art look messed up to training AIs and unusable in a data set but nearly unchanged to human eyes.

I just learned about this. It's in Beta. Please read all the information before using.

[escritorian]

Images only, link to original Twitter at the bottom of post.

Full🧵 here:

[escritorian]

I think a fundamental part of online friendships that people ‘outside’ fail to understand is how comforting it is to have friends right there in your pocket who will keep you company in good times and bad, listen to your rants, let you vent, be supportive whilst offering outsider perspective…

Need to be alone but need support too? Pocket friends.

Something awful just happened and there’s nobody around for you to tell? Pocket friends.

Need to let your feelings out but don’t want people to see you ugly-cry? Pocket friends.

Keep being amazing, pocket friends. You couldn’t possibly imagine how important you are.

[escritorian]

Question, is the cat's name Gremlin or Criminal? I'm nearing the end of my wakefulness cycle so I'm not that good at brain work.

Oh, haha, neither! Her name is Liliana, or Lilly, for short. She just happens to be both a gremlin and a criminal

[escritorian]

That’s so kind of you!  Here is a picture of my very lovely gremlin criminal.  I hope you enjoy drawing her!  Thank you!

For the entirety of August 2021, I want to draw pictures of your pets. During that time, reblog this post with a photo of your pet – make sure to read the rules below and abide by them – and I will draw every single one of those requests I get.

To make a request, reblog this post with a photo of your pet. In the body of the post, include the pet’s name. If you don’t have that text in the body of the post, it makes it hard to find, and I might not notice that you added anything at all in that reblog. Valid requests will be drawn in the order they come in, with some rare exceptions (generally when I’m tired or I need a warm-up).

(If you were here for what I did in April, these are the same rules and methods, only now I’m hoping they’re written out a bit more clearly. Black lives matter, and trans right are human rights.)

Only one photo per request, and only one pet per request. Do not include multiple photos and tell me to pick one. If you give me a photo that has multiple animals in it, be very clear about which one you want me to draw.

Only one request at a time (but see number 5).

It has to be your pet, present or past; I won’t draw just random pictures you found online.

Vertebrate pets only.

If you want multiple things drawn, pick one to start with; wait until your first request is done, and then put in another. That is, you can only have one request “active” at a time.

Once it is no longer August 2021, I won’t be accepting requests reblogged on this post.

Black cats are good, and sleeping cats are good, and curled-up-in-a-ball cats are good; but sleeping curled-up-in-a-ball black cats just look like a black circle. Find a different photo for me to draw.

Answers to common questions are found below the read-more. You don’t need to read this before requesting, but if you have a question, check this out before asking me.

Keep reading

[escritorian]

[escritorian]

pink in the night

[escritorian]

At this point they'd already decided they should be a couple, but they weren't planning on doing anything to make it unambiguously clear because they thought they wouldn't be allowed. Then, in S4, they asked

gdi asami

just do it. comfort her. its fine i promise. you are killing me here

[escritorian]

How to (not) be an Adventurer by Althea Dawnwind Chapter 2 - Role models

All right, so I figure if he’s going to hear all this the first time around, anyway, I may as well keep recording.  Or...asking him to transcribe, I guess.  We talked about it.

While I take no offence to your choice of pronouns, I feel I should remind you I have no gender.

Gotcha.  Sorry.

No need to apologize.

Thanks.  Still sorry.  Wait, so is all this side commentary getting transcribed, too?

Yes.

Lovely.  Perfect.  All right, whatever.  Let’s go.

So there are a bunch of new people at the house.  Most of them are super cool, but one of them’s a total creeper.

Predictably, Julia’s hot into the creeper. (Ugh, her taste) But whatever.  Her romantic graveyard.  Let her dig it.  Besides, I’m sure Galen would never let this guy actually hurt Julia. (If he could actually hurt Julia).  It does make me wonder about why he lets this skeezeball travel with him, though.  I mean, I guess he’s not always the most perceptive, but-

Whatever.  I’m getting off topic.

Can journals be said to have an incorrect topic, properly?

Shush.  Anyway, they were all just here, suddenly, talking about the pact and my plague and my future. I wanted to scream, but I was just so tired and scared. I think I’d have accepted anything that gave me hope at that point.  

Okay. No. Wait. Not anything. They were saying in some alternate past (?), they thought I was about to make a pact with some god of entropy? And honestly, that just sounds bad all around. Like sure, okay, I was pretty sure mine wasn’t one of those cases of spell plague you live through, you know? But some things are just worse than death.

Honestly, I was- am really offended that they thought so little of me. Okay not “they,” really. I barely even know most of them, but Galen…I really though at least he’d have some respect for my integrity. I thought maybe he could see me as more than just the little sister who needs protecting and can’t be trusted to make her own decisions I only even made this pact because everyone seemed so sure it was my best shot. And I- I mean, I wanted to live. Guilty, okay? Who doesn’t?

I felt the same, Althea

Yeah. So… yeah.

It is not wrong to wish or fight for life.

Thanks, Sha- uh, do you have like, a nickname I can use or anything?

Shadhavar is the only name I have ever known.

Wow, that’s…kind of sad. For the record, you can call me Thea. It’s what everyone in the family calls me.

I thank you, Thea.

Ha. Ummm. I was about to say I was smiling, you know, to transcribe it? The idea? Feeling? But, what is it, really? Can you even smile here?

There is no physical form or structure here to demarcate itself into what you call a smile.  The underlying ideas and feelings that cause the smile, however, can be recorded.

Oh. Cool. I mean, no really. Seriously. Cool.  Anyway, what was I saying?

Is this question rhetorical?

Um, yes? I mean it was, but you can- you know.

Those who found me presented you the possibility of a pact.

Yeah, that’s pretty much it, and I said yes.

Do you regret having done so?

Pfff, no. I’m not going to pretend I understand the full implications of having formed a soul bond with an ancient, sentient sword-bridge-focus thing born from both the feywild and the shadowfell? But it’s for serious better than the alternative. I can say that with total confidence right now.

Anyway, most of Galen’s new friends seemed like they really cared for me despite having just met me. It was weird, but also kind of nice? Oh! And Galen’s girlfriend. (!)  Apparently she left after everyone else but flew here the whole way to catch up!

Bad.

Ass.

And they all helped him defeat a death priest (or something) who was after me. I mean, okay. Julia helped. That…doesn’t count for nothing, I guess. I know mom and Nicon have trained her a lot and she’s freelanced a bit without telling mom. But now I have this whole group that seems like they’re sticking around for a bit? And maybe giving me some lessons?

This. Is going. To rule.

I also intend to provide you with instruction regardless of anyone else’s actions.

Really?!

Yes.

That’s…Ioun’s Wisdom, I don’t even know what to say! This is…am I going to cry? Fuck. No. I’m not going to start crying in here. Quick. Help me out.

Focus your mind on a task. You’ve mentioned these friends of your brother, but only just. Describe them.

Y-yeah. *sniff* Okay, yeah.

Breathe deeply and slowly.

Nono, I’m okay. It’s okay. Thanks. I’ve got this. Okay, strong feelings first. Let’s start with that creeper.

So, Creeper Creepzoidington is basically like a broody shadow who shoots everyone dirty looks, and I don’t say he’s a shadow because he’s drow.  Like, that’d be rude and also really inaccurate.  I say it cause this guy loves shadows.  Like, he loooves them - practically lives in them. They’re his home and they keep him safe and warm. Nicon says he’s already stolen from them, and I think the only time I’ve heard him talk was to swear. So yeah, whatever his deal is, I am not training with him.

Then there’s this other drow, Phaedra. I mean, I only point out they’re drow because they’re supposed to be really rare.  Surface elves are, too, but not as much? And I think I’ve only ever seen one of them. And now? Bam. 3 drow. More than I thought I’d ever met in my life, and everyone’s reaction has pretty much been, “Oh, hm! What a perfectly normal occurrence!”  It's just a little bit surprising.

Anyway, Phaedra, she’s about as different from Slimeus Slimeballius as you can get. She’s really elegant and nice. She came by later that night to see how I was doing. I didn’t feel much like talking, so…um…I didn’t, but she was really calm and polite about it. I could tell she knew I wasn’t really fine, but she didn’t press it. She just…did her best to be reassuring then left me alone. I kind of didn’t want her to go, but I appreciate that she did.

And how she moves! I mean, okay, so that probably sounds weird, but you should see her! She’s like floating silk or flowing water. She doesn’t even seem human, sometimes. Well, I mean, she’s not human, but you know what I mean.  She’s just ridiculously graceful, like she’s dancing in slow motion all the time, and my brain wants to learn the secret to it so much it can’t look away. So yeah, her I would totally train with.

Then there’s this younger drow, Tsabura.  (Tsubara?  Someone keeps messing up her name, and it’s really throwing me off.)  I thought she might’ve been be their kid or something, but even without speaking the language, I picked up that was not the case real quick.  She’s super cute but really quiet, and – I mean, I don’t know if the same standards culturally apply (nor am I sure whether or not it’s rude to consider that) - she has such nice skin.  She seriously just glows. Her skin is literally, physically lustrous.  But she’s just so angry.  Like, all the time.  Also?  Really sad.  I hope we can be friends.  I guess that’s a bit random, but it’d be great to have someone to relate to on a different level while on the road (more on that later), and maybe having a friend will help her not be so sad and angry.

It's weird, though. Like, no one’s saying anything about her, but she doesn’t seem like she’s been taking lessons from anyone, and she was pretty much dressed in rags? Mom tried to give her some of my old clothes, but that didn’t go so well. Maybe that’s why she’s in rags. Or maybe it’s a religious thing? Either way, I should probably stop calling them rags. When I tried talking to her, she barely even looked at me.  Honestly, I’m not sure I didn’t just imagine the brief glances she did give me, either.  I just...I want to know why she’s deliberately making herself so distant.  It’s like a mystery my brain needs to solve.

Moving on, there’s this really cheerful gnome named Tielka.  She’s...interesting.  She’s covered in armor and has a sword that drips frost but somehow seems super approachable?  Paradoxically, that makes me kind of nervous to approach her.  She also sounded really smart.  So I guess she’s...what?  A friendly warrior scholar?  I don’t know.  I mean, the image I’d always had of paladins is super stiff and serious, all thees and thous, but this?  It’s a weird vibe.  I mean, she looks like she’s 20, but she’s got this really motherly aura making me unsure if I want to befriend her or make sure she doesn’t catch me at mischief, so she’s got that, “inspiring the best behavior in others” thing down, I guess.

She’s also got a huge dog named Axle with the best leg.  I mean, omigosh, okay.  So his natural leg would’ve been the best leg, of course, but out of potential replacements?  This thing is, literally, divine.  Like, it’s full of clockwork, but it makes almost 0 noise, and it moves with him.  It doesn’t just sit there.  I really want to know how it works.  I mean, I’m guessing the answer will be something like 50% divinity, 40% magic and 10% mechanics, but still.

And then there’s Max.  I’m getting to her last, but she’s easily the biggest personality of the group.  (As befits a bard.)  She’s pretty much the polar opposite of Broody Broodfacerson.  She’s super friendly. She’s always smiling the brightest smile.  She has a siren’s voice and sings all the time.  She has a whole troop of animals who follow her around, all of whom I’m pretty sure she actually talks to.  (I think they’re all named Annie for some reason?)  And she’s so pretty.  Seriously, everything she does is extra charming.  There’s just something about how she moves, how she talks.  Just like, everything she does is so captivating.  There must be some lesson on mannerisms in bard college that teaches you how to keep people’s eyes on you cause there are like hooks on her gestures that grab the brain and don’t let go.  Basically, what I’m saying is she definitely made the right career choice.  Honestly, I wish she were a little quieter, but, well, no one can have everything, you know?

sighs

“You know.”  I have to stop that.

This is your fifth time using that phrase in this entry.

Fuuuck, really?!

Yes. Would you like me to alert you when you use it?

Nooo. I mean- auuugh, Vecna blind it! Yes. Yes, please do.

Very well.

Thanks.  Anyway, moving on...actually, I think that’s about it.

Oh!  And Galen.  But you know about Galen.  Well, I know about Galen, but will you, hypothetical/theoretical mystery future person, know about Galen?  I guess I should talk about Galen.  I mean, honestly, though, it feels like it’s enough to say he’s the best oldest brother anyone could want. Aforementioned rudeness aside, that is.  He’s just, I mean, he’s always giving me his time and teaching me the most interesting things, and he’s smart enough The Academy was too slow for him.  So he just, you know, decided to go adventuring and-

That’s six times.

What?

That you’ve used the phrase, “you know.”

Ugggghhhh.  All right, you know what?  My brain’s clearly tired.  He’s great, and I might end up going adventuring with him, which would be the best.  The end.

…

Sooo, how do I stop...

You can do so in the same manner as you did last time.

Yeah, I’m not really sure what I did last time.

You need simply to “feel” your intent to stop.

Okay, so kind of like-

[escritorian]

My cat's new chair came in. She's very happy with it.