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grabs you by the shoulders. Listen to me. you WILL live. you WILL fucking make it through all of this. do NOT FUCKING GIVE UP. DO NOT

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EVERY BODY KNOWS SHITS FUCKED

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Don’t let anyone silence your voice or steal your power, which is your vote.

Your vote is private. Your vote is your own.

Vote accordingly.

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❗️Nevada voters - this is going to sound weird, but PICK UP YOUR PHONE if an unknown number calls.

**Lots of signatures on ballots are not matching and your ballot may need to be fixed.

TLDR; yes, signature matching is an antiquated way to verify ballots but it is still being used. Reportedly thousands of ballots here need to be cured. Answer the phone!

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Check your ballots and tell your people to check theirs. There is a process to fix errors (usually signatures not matching; common with younger voters who tend to sign their ballots nicer than their driver’s license or whatever form they signed to register)

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message to all bitches

please survive

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I'm certain this is on Tumblr somewhere, but I haven't seen it around, so I'm sharing it myself

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Twitch is gonna start kinda censoring queer people and it would be really helpful if you could read the next few sentences and then also go to a link and click the word vote.

They're implementing a new rule where if you discuss "sensitive social issues" at all you have to flag your streams as such, these issues include things like war and political unrest but also any lgbtq topics (once again our existence is political).

Essentially a streamer will have to choose between never ever mentioning anything queer (or even just discussing their own life if they're queer themselves) or flagging every stream with "sensitive social issues" and scaring away 90% of viewers.

If you have a twitch account you can go here and log in and click vote. They do listen. Please vote.

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We keep finding space stations, and we don't know why yet.

Most are in orbit around planets, but plenty more are orbiting moons, stars, the odd black hole, or just floating in deep space.

Their age varies, some are so old that just getting close enough to dock makes them shatter like glass, others are so recently constructed that the lights are still on and the reactors are still fueled. All are empty of any life or robots smarter than a roomba.

The ones orbiting planets are orbiting dead worlds, or living worlds where nothing on them is smart enough to launch a space station.

The stations in deep space are weirder. The most information came from the one by Epsilon Eridani. A massive installation, it had docking rings for hundreds of vessels, all empty. It was in remarkable shape for how old it was (from the unrepaired micrometeorite impacts, we estimate it has been abandoned for about 3000 years), so we were able to access a lot of information from its main computer. We found the coordinates of several home planets, and visited them all. All were dead, empty, or in one case, simply missing. The star was still there, the other uninhabitable planets mentioned in the databanks were there, but their homeworld? Gone. No debris or expanding gas cloud, it's just missing.

And that's the thing: if we found space stations along with abandoned ruins of ground-based installations, that'd make sense. If we met dozens of living races, amongst a few empty satellites of long dead races, that'd also be expected. But this is all the evidence we're not alone in the universe we've found.

We've sent probes to over half the stars in this galaxy and visited hundreds in crewed spacecraft, but the empty space stations are the only evidence of alien life. Every planet is either a sterile husk, a gas giant, or a vibrant living world with nothing smarter than a giraffe living on it. Oh, there's strange life forms of every kind! But none of them seem sapient, certainly not sapient enough to build a space station.

Where is everyone? We've been asking that question since we first understood the Drake Equation and the Fermi paradox, but the question has taken on a new form as we've gone to the stars and found endless empty houses in the sky.

It's the difference between looking at an empty desert and walking through an abandoned city. In both cases, there's a silent emptiness, but in the latter case, it seems to contain a sinister element. This place is empty, but it shouldn't be. Something made it empty, and we haven't found out why yet.

We keep looking, and keep listening to the echoes of our own footsteps in the silent habitats.

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i hate people who know chess. “i’m moving my rook to c2” okay man. i’m driving down I-65

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i hate people who know highways. “i’m heading south on I-65” okay man. i’m moving my rook to c2

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Did y'all know the man himself could sing? Here's his one and only album!

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so you’ve heard of this 🚨 KOSA 🚨bill but don’t know what it is really or how to stop it. this post is for you!

what is it? KOSA, or the Kids Online Safety (and Protection) Act, is a bill in Congress right now that claims to protect children but is really just an internet censorship bill

don’t believe me? here’s Marsha Blackburn, one of the authors of the bill, explicitly stating that it should be used to censor mention of trans people on the internet

not great.

where is it? well, it just passed the Senate 91-3, which isn’t great, but now it has to pass the House, where it has more opposition. if it gets struck down there, it has to be re-introduced in the Senate.

how can i help? call your representatives! it’s already passed the senate, unfortunately, so calling senators won’t help.

1) find your representatives here ⬇️

2) pick one to call! make sure they’re a representative, not a senator!

3) say this! literally read off these screenshots! determine the script you use based on whether the representative you’re calling is a democrat (left) or a republican (right)

(scripts from this post)

OR

1) go to https://www.stopkosa.com to be automatically connected!

2) read the scripts above!

call. if you’re up for it, call multiple people, multiple times. make it damn clear they should vote no on this when it gets to a vote.

non-americans, reblogs are always appreciated ofc

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There's an EU initiative going on right now that essentially boils down to wanting to force videogame publishers with paid games and/or games with paid elements such as DLC, expansions and microtransactions to leave said games in a playable state after they end support, or in simpler terms, make them stop killing games.

A "playable state" would be something like an offline mode for previously always online titles, or the ability for people to host their own servers where reasonably possible just to name some examples.

I don't think I need to tell anyone that having something you paid for being taken from you is bad, which is a thing that routinely happens with live service and other always online games with a notable recent example being The Crew which is now permanently unplayable.

Any EU citizen is eligible to sign the initiative, but only once and if you mess up that's it. You can find it here. (https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en)

Even if you're not European or you signed it already, you can share this initiative with anyone who is, even if they don't care about videogames specifically because this needs a million signatures and there is different thresholds that need to be met for each EU country for their votes to even count and could also be a precedent for other similar practices like when Sony removed a bunch of Discovery TV content people paid for.

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KOSA update 7/25/24:

Well, unsurprisingly, KOSA passed the Senate procedural vote 86-1.

Proof:

Again, they still have to vote on the final passage & the House still has to vote on it as well.

So, focus on your House Representative now; Continue to call them & tell them to vote ‘No’ to KOSA. Remember: There is more opposition to KOSA in the House.

Spread this around. Don’t panic!

Keep calm & keep fighting!!

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A warning and a recommendation

I've reblogged several posts lately reminding everyone that the current Presidential election cycle is a stark contest between democracy as we know it and outright fascism.

Let me point out one thing this could mean to many of us.

Project 2025 -- the "think tank" for a Tr=mp adminstration -- includes among its goals the abolition and criminalization of "pornography," calling for jail time for those who create and distribute sexually explicit material.

Do you write explicit fanfiction, or read it? Then you are a pornographer and/or a supporter of the distribution of pornography. Do you think, if these people gain power, that fandom will escape their notice? Do you think it will matter to them that no money changes hands when you upload works to AO3 or elsewhere, or read others' work there? Do you think that access to AO3 will continue without incident? Do you think fan writers -- we know, sadly, from assorted fan wars how easily someone can be "doxxed" -- will be spared harassment, including criminal charges?

I don't. I am hoping for the best. But I am also:

-- Downloading onto my hard drive, and backing up on external drives, copies of all my own work as it appears on AO3, even if I have the drafts

-- Downloading the fics I loved and bookmarked

-- Soon, as time allows, downloading my RIDICULOUSLY long Marked For Later list

I recommend that all of us who love our fanfic, whatever the rating, do the same with all deliberate speed. And if the idea of needing to do this freaks the hell out of you, it should.

"They" won't come for your fanfic? Yeah, like "they" didn't come for Roe after 50 years (during all of which I was screaming at everyone I knew that "they" would). We could be, in the change of an administration, back to the days of fanfiction samizdat passed around clandestinely, even of banning shows and films that positively represent sexual expression and variation. To some of "them," the mere depiction of queer and trans people equals pornography, even if they are only holding hands or going to the farmers' market.

We take for granted that any time we choose, we can enjoy fiction -- in many cases sensitively, dazzlingly and affirmingly written -- which features infinite variation in gender, relationships and self-expression, and the harmless joy of good horny fun. That has helped people process and validate their sexual trauma, identity or experience. That celebrates an essential aspect of human nature, one which is the first that authoritarians try to stifle. That's revolutionary, and not remotely true of the whole world.

If the thought of having to prepare for losing that, and the community it's given all of us, jolts you, then VOTE Blue this fall (and if you are not in the US but care what happens here, signal boost this post). It's not the time for a performative third-party vote (or no-vote) that tells the Democrats you've given them a "do better" grade. All that will do is hand power to people who will do fuck-all to correct the worst errors of the current administration, and will most likely double down and make them worse. Save it for after November, when you will still, if you vote against fascism, have the freedom to work for a government that truly reflects your values. Right now, it's hammer time.

*This is a rare political post; tagging my usual list in the replies. If you want to get on or off my list, or be tagged for fanfic posts only, lmk.

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SAG-AFTRA IS STRIKING AGAIN

This time, for video games.

Some key information:

They are striking so all performers will have protection against AI

The struck companies are those signed to the Interactive Media Agreement

The listed companies by SAG-AFTRA include Activision Productions Inc, Blindlight LLC, Disney Character Voices Inc, Electronic Arts Productions Inc, Formosa Interactive LLC, Insomniac Games Inc, Llama Productions LLC, Take 2 Productions Inc, VoiceWorks Productions Inc and WB Games Inc. Though this may not be everyone.

Important things from the FAQ:

Some games from struck companies are non-struck (due to the Collective Bargaining Agreement still being in effect)

Localisations will be affected if covered under the Interactive Localization Agreement

Actors who are part of SAG-AFTRA cannot work for non-union or independent/low-budged productions during the strike unless they are signed to an Interim Interactive Media Agreement, Interim Interactive Localization Agreement or a Tiered-Budget Independent Interactive Media Agreement

Similarly to the previous strike, struck work cannot be promoted. This includes accepting awards for performances in struck games. This does NOT include hosting/performing a skit at an awards show and San Diego Comic Con (the latter due to the close proximity to the calling of the strike)

As implied by the point above, SAG-AFTRA performers cannot partake in panels related to struck games or companies, including finished games produced by struck companies

The best way to check if a game is struck is to use the search tool provided by SAG-AFTRA

Most importantly: You are NOT being asked to stop playing video games, as highlighted in the FAQ for creators and streamers. This does NOT cross the picket line. Though please do talk about the strike and show your solidarity

I expect to see the same amount of support from y'all that we saw in the last strike. Just because it's video games doesn't mean performers deserve any less support and protection.

Also please reblog with any additions (with sources - we are NOT here to spread misinformation)! And please correct me if anything listed here is incorrect.

SOURCES:

Video Game Strike FAQs | SAG-AFTRA (sagaftra.org)

SAG-AFTRA Members Who Work on Video Games Go on Strike | SAG-AFTRA (sagaftra.org)