#2021-08-28

[innbo-memory]

이쁜 사촌동생이 보내준 한국 과자 💜 고마워융 BIG JOY - KOREAN SNACK CARE PACKAGE

[aureliebella]

[griaustinis]

every time i try to be friendly and talk to people

my brain: you are so stupid and annoying. they probably dislike you a lot but are just too nice to say it out loud and you don't catch their body language. they don't want to speak to you. can't you see they just want to live their life in peace, leave them alone. you are so annoying, get off them!! you are so stupid for thinking they might like you, they obviously don't...

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The US Copyright Office frees the McFlurry

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

I have spent a quarter century obsessed with the weirdest corner of the weirdest section of the worst internet law on the US statute books: Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 1998 law that makes it a felony to help someone change how their own computer works so it serves them, rather than a distant corporation.

Under DMCA 1201, giving someone a tool to "bypass an access control for a copyrighted work" is a felony punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine – for a first offense. This law can refer to access controls for traditional copyrighted works, like movies. Under DMCA 1201, if you help someone with photosensitive epilepsy add a plug-in to the Netflix player in their browser that blocks strobing pictures that can trigger seizures, you're a felon:

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-media/2017Jul/0005.html

But software is a copyrighted work, and everything from printer cartridges to car-engine parts have software in them. If the manufacturer puts an "access control" on that software, they can send their customers (and competitors) to prison for passing around tools to help them fix their cars or use third-party ink.

Now, even though the DMCA is a copyright law (that's what the "C" in DMCA stands for, after all); and even though blocking video strobes, using third party ink, and fixing your car are not copyright violations, the DMCA can still send you to prison, for a long-ass time for doing these things, provided the manufacturer designs their product so that using it the way that suits you best involves getting around an "access control."

As you might expect, this is quite a tempting proposition for any manufacturer hoping to enshittify their products, because they know you can't legally disenshittify them. These access controls have metastasized into every kind of device imaginable.

Garage-door openers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Refrigerators:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/12/digital-feudalism/#filtergate

Dishwashers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/03/cassette-rewinder/#disher-bob

Treadmills:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/22/vapescreen/#jane-get-me-off-this-crazy-thing

Tractors:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#deere-john

Cars:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

Printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty

And even printer paper:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#dymo-550

DMCA 1201 is the brainchild of Bruce Lehmann, Bill Clinton's Copyright Czar, who was repeatedly warned that cancerous proliferation this was the foreseeable, inevitable outcome of his pet policy. As a sop to his critics, Lehman added a largely ornamental safety valve to his law, ordering the US Copyright Office to invite submissions every three years petitioning for "use exemptions" to the blanket ban on circumventing access-controls.

I call this "ornamental" because if the Copyright Office thinks that, say, it should be legal for you to bypass an access control to use third-party ink in your printer, or a third-party app store in your phone, all they can do under DMCA 1201 is grant you the right to use a circumvention tool. But they can't give you the right to acquire that tool.

I know that sounds confusing, but that's only because it's very, very stupid. How stupid? Well, in 2001, the US Trade Representative arm-twisted the EU into adopting its own version of this law (Article 6 of the EUCD), and in 2003, Norway added the law to its lawbooks. On the eve of that addition, I traveled to Oslo to debate the minister involved:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/28/clintons-ghost/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

The minister praised his law, explaining that it gave blind people the right to bypass access controls on ebooks so that they could feed them to screen readers, Braille printers, and other assistive tools. OK, I said, but how do they get the software that jailbreaks their ebooks so they can make use of this exemption? Am I allowed to give them that tool?

No, the minister said, you're not allowed to do that, that would be a crime.

Is the Norwegian government allowed to give them that tool? No. How about a blind rights advocacy group? No, not them either. A university computer science department? Nope. A commercial vendor? Certainly not.

No, the minister explained, under his law, a blind person would be expected to personally reverse engineer a program like Adobe E-Reader, in hopes of discovering a defect that they could exploit by writing a program to extract the ebook text.

Oh, I said. But if a blind person did manage to do this, could they supply that tool to other blind people?

Well, no, the minister said. Each and every blind person must personally – without any help from anyone else – figure out how to reverse-engineer the ebook program, and then individually author their own alternative reader program that worked with the text of their ebooks.

That is what is meant by a use exemption without a tools exemption. It's useless. A sick joke, even.

The US Copyright Office has been valiantly holding exemptions proceedings every three years since the start of this century, and they've granted many sensible exemptions, including ones to benefit people with disabilities, or to let you jailbreak your phone, or let media professors extract video clips from DVDs, and so on. Tens of thousands of person-hours have been flushed into this pointless exercise, generating a long list of things you are now technically allowed to do, but only if you are a reverse-engineering specialist type of computer programmer who can manage the process from beginning to end in total isolation and secrecy.

But there is one kind of use exception the Copyright Office can grant that is potentially game-changing: an exemption for decoding diagnostic codes.

You see, DMCA 1201 has been a critical weapon for the corporate anti-repair movement. By scrambling error codes in cars, tractors, appliances, insulin pumps, phones and other devices, manufacturers can wage war on independent repair, depriving third-party technicians of the diagnostic information they need to figure out how to fix your stuff and keep it going.

This is bad enough in normal times, but during the acute phase of the covid pandemic, hospitals found themselves unable to maintain their ventilators because of access controls. Nearly all ventilators come from a single med-tech monopolist, Medtronic, which charges hospitals hundreds of dollars to dispatch their own repair technicians to fix its products. But when covid ended nearly all travel, Medtronic could no longer provide on-site calls. Thankfully, an anonymous hacker started building homemade (illegal) circumvention devices to let hospital technicians fix the ventilators themselves, improvising housings for them from old clock radios, guitar pedals and whatever else was to hand, then mailing them anonymously to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#medtronic-again

Once a manufacturer monopolizes repair in this way, they can force you to use their official service depots, charging you as much as they'd like; requiring you to use their official, expensive replacement parts; and dictating when your gadget is "too broken to fix," forcing you to buy a new one. That's bad enough when we're talking about refusing to fix a phone so you buy a new one – but imagine having a spinal injury and relying on a $100,000 exoskeleton to get from place to place and prevent muscle wasting, clots, and other immobility-related conditions, only to have the manufacturer decide that the gadget is too old to fix and refusing to give you the technical assistance to replace a watch battery so that you can get around again:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24255074/former-jockey-michael-straight-exoskeleton-repair-battery

When the US Copyright Office grants a use exemption for extracting diagnostic codes from a busted device, they empower repair advocates to put that gadget up on a workbench and torture it into giving up those codes. The codes can then be integrated into an unofficial diagnostic tool, one that can make sense of the scrambled, obfuscated error codes that a device sends when it breaks – without having to unscramble them. In other words, only the company that makes the diagnostic tool has to bypass an access control, but the people who use that tool later do not violate DMCA 1201.

This is all relevant this month because the US Copyright Office just released the latest batch of 1201 exemptions, and among them is the right to circumvent access controls "allowing for repair of retail-level food preparation equipment":

https://publicknowledge.org/public-knowledge-ifixit-free-the-mcflurry-win-copyright-office-dmca-exemption-for-ice-cream-machines/

While this covers all kinds of food prep gear, the exemption request – filed by Public Knowledge and Ifixit – was inspired by the bizarre war over the tragically fragile McFlurry machine. These machines – which extrude soft-serve frozen desserts – are notoriously failure-prone, with 5-16% of them broken at any given time. Taylor, the giant kitchen tech company that makes the machines, charges franchisees a fortune to repair them, producing a steady stream of profits for the company.

This sleazy business prompted some ice-cream hackers to found a startup called Kytch, a high-powered automation and diagnostic tool that was hugely popular with McDonald's franchisees (the gadget was partially designed by the legendary hardware hacker Andrew "bunnie" Huang!).

In response, Taylor played dirty, making a less-capable clone of the Kytch, trying to buy Kytch out, and teaming up with McDonald's corporate to bombard franchisees with legal scare-stories about the dangers of using a Kytch to keep their soft-serve flowing, thanks to DMCA 1201:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Kytch isn't the only beneficiary of the new exemption: all kinds of industrial kitchen equipment is covered. In upholding the Right to Repair, the Copyright Office overruled objections of some of its closest historical allies, the Entertainment Software Association, Motion Picture Association, and Recording Industry Association of America, who all sided with Taylor and McDonald's and opposed the exemption:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/us-copyright-office-frees-the-mcflurry-allowing-repair-of-ice-cream-machines/

This is literally the only useful kind of DMCA 1201 exemption the Copyright Office can grant, and the fact that they granted it (along with a similar exemption for medical devices) is a welcome bright spot. But make no mistake, the fact that we finally found a narrow way in which DMCA 1201 can be made slightly less stupid does not redeem this outrageous law. It should still be repealed and condemned to the scrapheap of history.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

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/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[toskarinarchive]

Toskarin Database

Last updated: 2024-08-25, 23:02+00:00

Current Toskarinlike Count: 44

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[thealieninhiding]

The Katie McGrath Archives (WIP)

A repository of my ongoing digital archeology & archival work please contact me if you have anything to contribute and buy me a coffee if you value my content

Updates

(last updated 2024-07-03)

2024-07-03

Scans:

2014-02-07 London Times - Dracula sets

Audio:

(Un)likeminded 2x02 How to Survive The Apocalypse

2024-05-24

Video:

2017 Katie McGrath interview [CW|KMcGsource]

2017 Supergirl Season 3 Sweet dreams (are made of this) Music Video

2017 CW SDCC Promo Supergirl and Arrow

2019-01-01 The CW Promo Open To All

2021-04-25 Supergirl Season 6 Katie McGrath Lena Luthor

2021-09-15 Supergirl Season 6 Katie McGrath Reflecting on Supergirl

2024-05-22

Audio:

Interview - 2009-07-17 Katie McGrath Mr Media interview

Interview - 2009-10-15 Geek Syndicate Merlin BTS special

Video:

BTS - 2008-10-08 Blue Peter Merlin BTS

Events - 2009 TV Choice Awards Digital Spy interview

Events - Getty Videos of 2009 TV Choice Awards, 2010 Merlin Series 3 launch, 2011 W.E. premiere, 2017 King Arthur Premiere

2024-05-17

Archived interviews

2008-12-07 Tribune Magazine - What Katie Did

2011-10-14 What's on TV - Merlin's Katie McGrath- 'Bad girls have more fun!'

2012-12-03 Fanhattan Blog - Colin Morgan, Katie McGrath and Bradley James on Season 5 and The Series Finale

2018-08-01 The TV Junkies - Supergirl SDCC 2018 Interviews- Lena’s Impractical Lab Outfits, the Return of Reporter Kara and a More Grounded Season 4

Audio

HHush samples

Interview - 2009-2011 Sci-fi Talk rewind merlin the series specials episode 1

Interview - 2011? Merlin S4 Sci-fi talk byte katie mcgrath on morgana

Interview - 2013 BBC Radio 1xtra part 1 & part 2

(Un)likeminded 1x02 While You Were Dreaming

Trees a crowd- Irish folklore segment

Magazine scans

2008-09-20 Radio Times

2009-06-08 TV Week (Aus)

2010-09-05 Sunday Express

2010-09-30 Totally Merlin Magazine

2011-12 Total Film

2012-03-14 Sci-Fi Now

2012-10-06 Radio Times

2013-04-06 Irish independent

2013-09-02 Marie-Claire (UK)

2013-12 Instyle

2013-12 Total Film

Video:

Fans - 2012-04-16 Merlin4 [carlospyrrhus]

Fans - 2017-08-30 Supergirl cast together on set [Joyce Law]

Interview - 2009-09-?? Merlin S2 audio interview with Katie McGrath [BJsRealm] part 1

Interview - 2010-09-06 Merlin Series 3 - BBC Radio 1xtra Interview with Angel Coulby & Katie McGrath [BJsrealm]

Interview - 2011-10-14 Merlin S4 Colin Morgan, Eoin Macken Katie McGrath on The Late Late Show

Interview - 2012-07-15 Colin Morgan and Katie McGrath at SDCC 2012 - innerSPACE [merlinnetwork2]

Interview - 2012-07-18 Katie McGrath Talks Merlin At Comic Con 2012 [ThinkHeroTV]

Interview - 2012-10-25 BBC Radio 1 Breakfast - Colin & Katie part 1 & part 2 [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2012-12-03 Merlin S5 Katie McGrath interview international press day [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2012-12-03 Colin, Bradley, Katie phone interview [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2013-11-09 Katie McGrath on BBC One Saturday Kitchen [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2019-07-22 ENTREVISTA SUPERGIRL Elenco fala sobre a nova temporada [Warner Channel Brasil]

Interview - 2019-07-23 Melissa Benoist Teases Directing An Episode Of 'Supergirl' [ET Canada]

Interview - 2020-02-21 ‘Supergirl’ Celebrates 100th Episode [ET Canada]

Panels - 2011-07-28 Merlin Comic Con 2011 Panel [ThinkHeroTV]

[staydandy]

The Lost Tomb 2: Wrath of the Sea (2019) - 盗墓笔记2 - Whump List

List by StayDandy Synopsis : The group of heroes are pulled into another tomb-raiding expedition that takes them beneath the sea. In an ancient Ming Dynasty ship, they encounter monstrous creatures and puzzling traps. Wu Xie opens the box that he obtained from the Seven Star Coffins of Lu Wang's Palace to discover a snake-browed copper fish. Uncle Wu San Xing recounts the strange occurrences over ten years ago when they went on an archaeological expedition to Paracel Islands. Wu Xie leads a team down to the same place to explore a sunken ship where hidden dangers await. (MDL)

Whumpee : Wu Xie played by Neo Hou (center right) • Zhang Qi Ling played by Cheng Yi (center left) • Wang Pang Zi played by Zhang Bo Yu (2nd from right)

Country : 🇨🇳 China Genres : Action, Adventure, Mystery, Supernatural, Bromance

Notes : This is a Full Whump List • Adapted from books 2, 3 and some of 4 of "The Grave Robbers' Chronicles" (Daomu Biji) by Kennedy Xu • Suggested watch order of series (not including movies & spin-offs) : -- 1. Mystic Nine (2016) -- 2. The Lost Tomb (2015) >> 3. The Lost Tomb 2: Wrath of the Sea (2019) -- 4. The Lost Tomb 2: Explore with the Note (2021) -- 5. The Lost Tomb 3: Ultimate Note (2020) -- 6. Adventure Behind the Bronze Door (2024) -- 7. Tomb of the Sea (2018) -- 8. Reunion: Sound of the Providence (2020) -- 9. Reunion: Sound of the Providence 2 (2020)

Related Lists : The Lost Tomb (2015) - Full List • The Lost Tomb 2: Explore With the Note (2021) - Full List • The Lost Tomb 3: Ultimate Note (2020) - Full List • Adventure Behind the Bronze Door (2024) - Full List

Episodes on List : 25 Total Episodes : 40

*Spoilers below*

01 : Wu Xie shocked awake, sweating, from a layered nightmare (nightmare within a nightmare within a nightmare) … Wang Pang Zi knocked out

02 : [nightmare] Wu Xie choked

05 : Unsteady … entrapped in a trance, strangled, broken out of it … Pang Zi knocked over from an explosion … Wu Xie attacked, thrown to the ground, Pang Zi thrown into a wall, Zhang Qi Ling fights; choked & lifted off the ground

06 : [flashback] Passes out

07 : Wu Xie dizzy, entranced … [flashback] head pain, pushed into water … [present] Zhang Qi Ling head pain, recalling forgotten memories … Wu Xie, Zhang Qi Ling, & Pang Zi escaping a collapsing underwater building, stuck on the way out.. Wu Xie unconscious, receives chest compressions, spits up water, knocked to the ground

08 : Recovering from fever (not really shown) … [flashback] cut his own hand

09 : Shocked awake, sweating, from nightmare

11 : (near end) Wu Xie & Pang Zi captured, tied up

12 : … continued from previous ep. ...Wu Xie still captured, tied up … imprisoned.. dehydrated, breathing hard, unsteady.. passes out.. helped to walk

17 : Pang Zi attacked, Wu Xie attacked.. attacked again, knocked out, drowning.. spitting up water … Pang Zi bit by insect

18 : Wu Xie Hit with the butt of a gun, knocked out.. wakes tied up … Pang Zi having a reaction to bug bite; unsteady, arm in hives & paralyzed, passes out … Wu Xie falls, nightmare; wakes trapped in a casket, choked

19 : Drugged, unsteady, passes out, arm nicked & blood taken

21 : Falls, knocked out briefly … Pang Zi entranced into almost killing himself … rolls down a slope

23 : Wu Xie cuts his own hand … dizzy

24 : … continued from previous ep. ... Dizzy … unsteady, holding his head … attacked, choked

26 : Blown back by an explosion, briefly knocked out … falls, hits head, blurry vision, unsteady … cuts his own hand … blown back by an explosion, drowning … wakes in hospital (comedic: with a high-pitched voice from concussion)

28 : Pang Zi's arm in a cast (tho I'm confused as to why)

30 : (near end) Wu Xie knocked out from an explosion … falls into a pit

31 : Pang Zi found unconscious

32 : Found unconscious, head sore from being knocked out

35 : Wu Xie & Pang Zi in a fight; Wu Xie coughs up blood … head pain from noise

36 : Digs out from being buried in snow, head pain.. [flashback] buried in rubble from collapsed tomb, unconscious … [present] rolls down hill, arm hurt.. exhausted, passes out.. headache, collapses … headache … drugged asleep … caught in a trap, hung upside down

37 : Headache … captured … Pang Zi captured, tied up, mouth gagged … Zhang Qi Ling head pain, drugged unconscious

38 : Drugged unconscious … Zhang Qi Ling & Pang Zi trapped in a net, both tied up & hooded

39 : (near end) Wu Xie exhausted, collapses, hypoxia (not enough oxygen), slaps himself, passes out … hallucinating

More Whump Lists for this show: love-me-a-lotta-whump

[helveticablanc]

From the Archives — 2021 07 28-08 03

[calderacitylovers]

Zutara SlowBurn FanFiction: Personal Favs, part II

·        DESTINY IS A FUNNY THING by Megara Pike | Published: 2020-08-21 | 198K Words | 45 Chapters

ATLA Season 3 rewrite, fills in a lot of blanks between canon scenes. From the Southern Raiders to Sozin's Comet through coronation and aftermath. Growing friendships, bonding, being there for each other, a carnival & a cave, epic spirits' appearance on the Ember island, sparring, nightmares, assassination attempts, political ruses, and covert operations. Lovely, sweet. Exciting plot.

 ·        ATLA Book 4: Ashes by elayne_cypher | Published: 2018-10-27 | 306K words | 34 Chapters

This action-packed story picks up right after Ember Island Players and continues well after the war. Zuko is facing many challenges as a new Fire Lord. Romance, tough decisions, rebels, traitors, out-of-body experiences, secret headquarters, angst, teamwork, fire jets. The story has a bunch of OCs.

 ·        Refraction by caroes3725  | Published: 2020-09-09 | 215K Words | 37 Chapters

After breaking up with Aang, Katara needs to figure out her place and role in the patriarchal world. As determined Katara stubbornly bulldozes her way through Fire Nation political scene, her feelings for Zuko grow. Diplomatic visits, Gaang reunion, bonding with Kanna, insights into the life of Caldera city, stuffy politicians, cute correspondence, tropical storm, women supporting women, assassination attempts, personal boundaries. A sweet well-written coming-of-age story with a healthy measure of slow-burn and mutual pining. Katara and Zuko are both POVs, but the story mostly follows Katara. Bonus: Mai is NOT a clingy resentful idiot, but a smart person and a good friend. Some explicit language here and there, a bit of mild smut.

 ·        I Asked You First by halfhoursonearth | Published: 2020-10-03 | 142K words | 22/? Chapters

Ongoing, incomplete. Post Southern Raiders ATLAS3 rewrite. Mostly canon-compliant with blanks filled in between familiar scenes. Zuko and Katara develop a close friendship built on trust and sharing each other’s fears and hopes. Includes mentions of implied child abuse, Lu Ten’s diaries, exploring Avatar Roku’s legacy, sharing a balcony, heart-to-hearts, a hot spring under the stars, an actual date, and artbending. It’s incomplete, but what we have is bliss. Slowburn, mutual pining. Zutara-centric, but also explores the personalities of Team Avatar and their relationships.

 ·        Katara Alone by cablesscutie | Published: 2020-05-31 | 21K words

Katara is not an “unnecessary accessory to a more powerful man”. After the war, she is willing to forge her own path as she turns to people who need her the most on her journey of self-discovery. Features character exploration, correspondence, exploring outback villages of Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom, sweet reunions, and new firebending skills.

 ·        THE PHOENIX AND THE DRAGON - THE COMPLETE SERIES by JasmineTeaLatte | Published: 2021-06-11 | 100K words | 31 Chapters

This story picks up after The Ember Island Players. Zuko and Katara get to know each other during a late-night conversation by the campfire. In this story, you will find healthy boundaries, protective Sokka, a dash of Taang, sparring, funny banter & lots of flirting.

·        HESITATE by tiffaniesblews | Published: 2020-07-11 | 22K Words | 12 Chapters

This story picks up right after Zuko's coronation and spans two years afterwards. Zuko & Katara talk, share a few beautiful moments, write to each other, and reunite for the 2nd anniversary of the war ending. Very sweet, fluffy story about two sweethearts figuring out their feelings for each other.

·        LIKE WE'RE MADE OF STARLIGHT by Naladot | Published: 2021-11-28 | 5K Words

Katara leaves her post as the ambassador to the Fire Nation to take up a new one as the ambassador to the Northern Water Tribe. Her absence makes Zuko realize that he's got an unfortunate crush, which he is determined to keep secret. Unfortunately for him, subtly has never been one of his strengths—especially when he arrives in the Northern Water Tribe and she keeps taking him on what seem to be dates.

·        FIGURE IT OUT by clearascountryair | Published: 2021-12-20 | 35K words | 13 Chapters

After choosing not to kill Yon Rha, Katara rethinks her sense of self and others' perceptions of her. Or,    In which Katara learns that there’s a really big difference between being kissed when you don’t want to be and being kissed when you do. Aged-up 3B/Ember Island AU.

-  I FOUND YOU by that_turtleduck | Published: 2020-11-01 Completed: 2024-02-24 Words: 157,541 Chapters: 28/28

After divorcing Aang, Katara uproots her family and travels to Caldera. There she finds comfort, kindness and support from an old friend. Katara tries to find her footing as an independent political figure. Great story & relationship dynamic of Momtara & Dadko in their early 30s (Ember island, diplomatic meeting, dancing, turtleduck pond, letters). Delicious slow burn with rewarding spicy resolution in the end (explicit open door). Titters on the side of Anti-Aang.

Here’s a link to Part I of my personal favorites.

Here’s a link to Wholesome Zutara Short Stories.

[thankyouforthememoriesworld]

(I really started this before the other anon asked ! LOL)

I made another little timeline, of the games when they played against each other, initially only before they met with the national team, and then also the games after, to conclude on some interesting stat. Hopefully I didn't miss any.

12/07/2019 : WNBA @Chicago :  SKY 99 - 83 NYL  https://youtu.be/8LArSiEV3EM?feature=shared&t=1007

07/08/2019 : WNBA @Chicago : SKY 101- 92 NYL https://youtu.be/VT6E17azVlg?feature=shared&t=1163

12/10/2019 : LFB @Montpellier BLMA 72  - 58  ASVEL https://www.midilibre.fr/2019/10/12/basket-ball-blma-asvel-suivez-le-match-en-direct,8475711.php

27/11/2019 : Euroleague @Montpellier : BLMA 80 - 73 ASVEL https://www.fiba.basketball/euroleaguewomen/19-20/game/2711/BLMA-Lyon-ASVEL

28/01/2020 : Euroleague @Lyon : ASVEL 78 - 77 BLMA https://www.fiba.basketball/euroleaguewomen/19-20/game/2801/Lyon-ASVEL-BLMA

16/02/2020 : Coupe de France @Vannes ASVEL 86 - 74 BLMA https://ancien.ffbb.com/coupe-de-france/le-blma-resiste-et-passe

23/02/2020 : LFB @Lyon  ASVEL 94 - 73 BLMA https://www.blma.fr/actualites-les-gazelles/lfb-j14-une-deuxieme-mi-temps-compliquee-les-gazelles-gardent-neanmoins-leur-place-sur-le-podium/

17/03/2021 : Euroleague Quarter finals Game 1 @Lyon  : ASVEL 66 - 94 Sopron https://www.fiba.basketball/euroleaguewomen/20-21/game/1703/LDLC-ASVEL-Feminin--Sopron-Basket

19/03/2021 : Euroleague  Quarter finals Game 2 @Sopron Sopron 62 - 75 ASVEL https://www.fiba.basketball/euroleaguewomen/20-21/videos/LIVE-Sopron-Basket-v-LDLC-ASVEL-Feminin-EuroLeague-Women-2020

19/06/2022 : WNBA @Seattle SEA 81 - 72 NYL  https://stats.wnba.com/game/1022200092/ (both on 🔥 during that game, 23 pts each)

27/07/2023 : WNBA @NY NYL 86 - 82 SEA  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoDj5JomtsY

So quick stat that I'm sure they have in mind : Gabby won 6 times out of these 11 games, and one of the times Marine won, it was for nothing as Gabby's team qualified for the semis.

NB : that WNBA stats website is magnificent, they provide the links to videos to illustrate most of the individuals stats actions 

You're incredible, thank you so much💜

[vavuska]

Elon Musk is threatening a Brazilian Supreme Court justice after the court issued a summons to him which threatens the suspension of Twitter if he does not comply within 24 hours.

To combat disinformation, Brazil gave a Supreme Court justice sweeping powers to order social networks to take down content he believed threatened democracy. Here's how the experiment led to a ban on X, the social network owned by Elon Musk.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/31/world/americas/brazil-x-ban-free-speech.html?smid=threads-nytimes

Elon Musk claims this is a censorship, because previously he was ordered to ban and close a lot of far-rights account that spread fake news and hate online by that same judge. As protest, Musk closed X offices in Brazil - which means people losing their job or their income.

When free speech is interpreted as anything which matches the law (and viceversa). Under Elon Musk's Leadership, Twitter has approved 83% of censorship requests by authoritarian governments globally. The social network has restricted and withdrawn content critical of the ruling parties in Turkey and India, among other countries, including during electoral campaigns.

Since Musk assumed control in October 2022, the platform has received a total of 971 government requests, a significant increase compared to the 338 received between October 2021 and April 2022.

Prior to Musk's takeover, Twitter had agreed to 50 per cent of such requests, as indicated in their last transparency report. However, no transparency reports have been published since October 2022, making it challenging to assess the current situation. Nevertheless, data from the technology information portal Rest of World suggests that the compliance rate has risen to 83 per cent following Musk's leadership, which again contribute to detect what Elon Musk REALLY think about free-speech: this right is granted only if comply to what oppressive governments and far-right politician approves. Discrimination and criminal behavior are allowed and protected under Musk's Leadership, because targets minorities, immigrants and political oppositors. Musk is a conservative and apply censorship, he isn't the victim of a 'woke' complot lead against him. Musk is receiving the payment for his unlawful action.

Source: El Pais English

As far I can understand, without having many clues here, this order of summon says that Elon Musk refused to appoint a legal rapresentative for X Brasil. For some typology of corporates Brazil require a % of residents in management or a legal rapresentative, with power to vote and deliberate in meetings, to operate online in the country. Yeah. Law apparently seems to be applied to everyone except him.

Summons with translation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/technology/brazil-x-ban-elon-musk.html

Edit: A legal rapresentative is more a managerial position than what do you think of. Yes, it could be an attorney or a lawyer too, but still isn't simply the guy who defend the corporate's interests in court. In Brazil you need a % of residents in management position to operate. This was a problem issued also with WhatsApp and Telegram.

Edit 2 - 31th August 2024: I was curious about the consequences of Musk's decision to close X's offices in Brazil for his employees. Have they been fired? Suspended with or without salary? I didn't find anything. However, I found this article that adds some informations, like Musk declaring he did this to "protect his staff". However, his legal rapresentative is impossible to be found.

Edit 3 - 31th August 2024: Another article of NY Times that analyzes the matter.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/18/world/americas/elon-musk-x-brazil.html

Update - 31th August 2024: Brazil has turned off Twitter. Musk’s genius is again on glorious display in losing the 7th most populous country in the world. Oh well. At least the Cybertruck is doing awesome.

Another Update - 31th August 2024: Musk is freaking out right now. He knows if he gets blocked in Brazil it is just a matter of time before other countries follow suit.

However, someone forgot to tell Musk that you get fined for using VPNs to access Twitter in Brazil before he posted this.

Also seems that for a tech genius Musk isn't very smart though, doesn't he know using a VPN will worth the same with apps as it does with a browser?

However, The Brazilian Supreme Court has moderated its first rule. First, even the VPN apps were targeted and should be banned from App store and Google Store to prevent people getting access to Twitter exclusively. Now, the Court realized that banning VPNs is too extreme, so they will only apply a 50k (about $8,900) fine for those caught accessing the platform.

Basically, you don't get fined for using VPNs, that would be too 1984. You might get fined if they FIND OUT that you're accessing X via VPNs, and this is exactly the kind of thing VPNs are designed to prevent.

Just a reminder, you can always access better platform than X, even on your phone. No app is needed.

VPNs are great tools to use worldwide to get around authoritarian and abusive government surveillance and blocking. Zero to do with Musk. And they can only catch you if you aren't savvy.

In a perfect world you shouldn't need to download any VPNs to access innocent contents, because democratic countries will never block a platform that gives informations and entertainment to people. In a perfect world you won't be stuck with platforms that are not free from disinformation and neo-nazi posts.

3rd Update - 31th August 2024:

Musk owns more of SpaceX than Zuck owns of Meta or Bezos owns of Amazon, fwiw. For all intents and purposes, Musk is Twitter, SpaceX, Neuralink and X.

I'm gonna add some technicalities here:

In Brazil there is something called "Corporate Personality" that protects the shareholders patrimony from the company's debts.

But... If you hide behind legal shenanigans in a fraudulent manner, "corporate personality" is bypassed and thus the court moves into your personal patrimony.

Elon is, personally and fraudulently, removing X office from Brazil so they don't obey Brazilian laws.

So the judges target him on his other shares: SpaceX and Starlink.

[innbo-memory]

2021-08-28

#STRUGGLEBUS BUT IT'S THE SHOWING UP THAT'S WINNING 💜

[kunamaibintangitunamamu]

My WHV Timeline

I got that WHV with my name on it!

This post is going to be super long! Jadi, karena aku termasuk tipe yang suka menceritakan semua hal secara detail dan memang sudah niat juga sih, aku pengen tulis ini sebagai kenang-kenangan karena aku berhasil mendapatkan WHV!

Here’s my timeline, each moment a small but sweet step toward the dream: 12-02-2024: The day I made a quiet but powerful promise to myself—to see my name on that WHV, no matter what. 02-03-2024: Took my visa photos. Just one tiny step, but it felt like a step toward something big. 23-04-2024: Got my SKCK done at Mabes Polri. A little closer, a little more real. 22-05-2024: Took the PTE test, butterflies in my stomach, but my sights set firmly on the goal. 08-10-2024: Prepared my bank reference letter, and then—out of nowhere—the SDUWHV opening was announced! My heart raced; it was really happening. 10-10-2024: Received that precious SDUWHV letter. Holding it felt surreal, like I was holding a piece of my future. 25-10-2024: Lodged my visa application, sending off all my hopes and dreams along with it. 27-10-2024: Completed my Medical Check-Up (MCU), feeling both excitement and calm; the finish line was in sight. 12-11-2024: The day that made everything worth it—Visa granted! I felt pure joy, knowing the adventure of a lifetime was now just around the corner.

Jadi, aku sudah mengincar program WHV ini dari tahun lalu, gara-gara orang-orang di sekitarku tiba-tiba banyak yang berangkat ke Australia. Honestly, back in 2021, aku juga sempat berandai-andai, "Asyik juga ya kalau bisa ke Melbourne," waktu itu mikirnya pengen lanjut kuliah lagi, sih. Plus, one of my bucket list items is to work abroad, dan rasanya negara yang paling potensial buat goal itu adalah Australia. Banyak orang Pontianak juga yang hijrah ke sana, jadi makin kebayang, deh. Impian itu aku pendam, sambil terus cari kesempatan dan peluang, supaya bisa mewujudkan one of my ultimate dreams.

Ternyata, di tahun 2024, aku merasakan dorongan yang kuat untuk mengejar visa ini. Aku mulai mencari tahu semua persyaratannya, dan langkah pertama yang harus diambil adalah mendapatkan surat sakti SDUWHV. Nah, untuk bisa mendapatkan SDUWHV, ternyata ada beberapa persyaratan lagi yang harus dipenuhi. Waktu itu, aku masih berpatokan pada persyaratan tahun 2023, yaitu: foto, KTP, paspor, sertifikat bahasa Inggris, SKCK, ijazah, surat keterangan bank, dan surat keabsahan dokumen. Jadi, pelan-pelan aku mulai melengkapi semua dokumen yang bisa dicicil dulu sebelum pembukaan SDUWHV.

02 Maret 2024 Sore ini, aku pergi ke studio foto untuk ambil pas foto visa. Sempat bingung karena belum pernah foto visa sebelumnya, tapi untungnya studio tersebut sudah paham ketentuannya. Mereka mengarahkan dan membantu pengambilan foto serta pencetakan sesuai kebutuhan. Aku juga sekalian print ekstra untuk bikin SKCK.

28 Maret 2024 Setelah mendaftar antre online lewat aplikasi, pagi ini aku melakukan rekam sidik jari di Polda Kalbar. Aku datang pagi-pagi sekali agar bisa mendapat antrean pertama. Staff di sana dengan cekatan membantu dan sempat bertanya, "Apa tujuannya?" Aku jawab, "Untuk ke Australia, Pak." Mereka sangat mendukung dan turut mendoakan semoga prosesku lancar hingga mendapatkan visanya.

Perekaman sidik jari ini adalah salah satu syarat untuk membuat SKCK. Awalnya, aku pikir masih bisa membuat SKCK dengan tujuan WHV di Polda Kalbar, tapi ternyata sekarang ketentuannya sudah berubah dan harus diurus di Mabes Polri. Sempat bingung juga kalau harus ke Jakarta untuk mengurus SKCK. Beruntungnya, temanku bisa pergi ke Jakarta dan mewakilkan aku untuk membuat SKCK, dan pada 23 April 2024, SKCK-ku akhirnya terbit.

22 Mei 2024 Lanjut, dokumen-dokumen yang mudah sudah berhasil aku kumpulkan. Sekarang tantangan berikutnya adalah lolos tes Bahasa Inggris. Ada beberapa pilihan tes yang bisa diambil, dan dua yang paling populer adalah IELTS dan PTE. Kebetulan di Pontianak tersedia tes PTE, jadi aku memilih PTE saja. Jadwal tesnya juga lebih fleksibel. Sebenarnya, aku sudah mulai persiapan IELTS dari awal tahun, tapi H-2 bulan ini aku mulai intens belajar untuk PTE setiap malam dari YouTube dan website PTE Study, agar skorku tidak hanya lolos, tapi juga memuaskan. Sudah lama aku tidak merasakan sensasi belajar sambil menunggu-nunggu hari ujian.

Hari itu akhirnya tiba: hari tes PTE-ku. Lokasi tes di gedung PTE Academic, Universitas Tanjungpura, persis di depan fakultas kampusku dulu—nostalgia, hehe. Jadwal tesku jam 11. Pagi itu aku terbangun dengan deg-degan, rasanya seperti menghadapi ujian akhir semester lagi. Ada skor minimal yang harus aku capai (minimal 30), dan kalau tidak lolos, berarti harus mengulang tes—yang berarti keluar biaya lagi.

Jam 8.30, aku pergi ke kafe sendirian untuk sarapan sambil mengulas tips dan trik dari setiap bagian tes. Setelah itu, aku pasrahkan semuanya pada usahaku sejauh ini. Jam 10.00 aku berangkat ke gedung ujian. Setibanya di sana, aku melakukan registrasi. Ujiannya terasa cukup formal, mungkin karena ini tes internasional. Setiap sesi hanya bisa diikuti oleh 6 orang, jadi jadwalnya memang terbatas. Aku duduk di komputer nomor 1, dan semua tes dilakukan secara komputerisasi. Jawaban kita direkam dan disimpan dalam sistem. Menurutku, bagian yang paling sulit adalah writing, haha, karena temanya tidak diketahui sebelumnya dan mendadak aku merasa blank harus menyusun kata-kata seperti apa.

Dua jam berlalu, dan tes akhirnya selesai. Kata petugasnya, hasilnya bisa keluar dalam waktu 2 jam dan akan dikirim melalui email. Setidaknya, salah satu tahapan sudah kulewati, dan aku hanya bisa berdoa semoga hasilnya sesuai harapan! Seusai ujian, aku pergi makan ramen bersama teman yang juga ikut tes. Kami sempat berandai-andai seolah-olah sudah siap berangkat ke Australia dan visa sudah di tangan—padahal waktu itu, jadwal pembukaan SDUWHV saja belum pasti.

Sore itu aku lalui dengan harap-harap cemas menunggu skor. Dan… akhirnya, malamnya, hasilnya keluar! Skorku jeng jeng jeng… 81/90! Not bad! Aku langsung merasa lega. Satu langkah lebih dekat. Salah satu dokumen penting sudah ada di tangan, dan malam itu aku bisa tidur dengan tenang.

01 Juli 2024 Jujur, di tanggal ini aku sempat deg-degan banget. Soalnya, aku pernah lihat di IG Kedubes Australia yang memposting bahwa pendaftaran program WHV tahun 2023 sudah ditutup, dan pendaftaran WHV untuk tahun 2024 akan dibuka pada 1 Juli 2024. Kupikir itu adalah hari “war” untuk SDUWHV. Ternyata, itu adalah tanggal pembukaan kembali untuk lodge visa WHV. Waktu itu aku masih belum paham, haha, jadi aku sudah ngebut mempersiapkan segalanya dari awal. Pas tanggal 1 Juli tiba, ternyata tidak ada info apa pun dari Ditjen Imigrasi.

Sebulan… dua bulan berlalu…

Tidak ada kabar dari MIDO soal pembukaan SDUWHV. Hingga akhirnya, tanggal 02 September 2024, muncul pengumuman dari MIDO yang membawa kabar gembira: pembukaan kuota SDUWHV akan segera dilaksanakan! Deg-degan makin terasa! Lalu, pada 27 September 2024, MIDO mengumumkan bahwa untuk tahun 2024 hanya akan ada satu batch SDUWHV. That means, hanya ada satu kesempatan untuk “war”—jika tidak berhasil, berarti harus coba lagi tahun depan.

Overthinking dan kalut semakin terasa. Ada ketakutan terselubung, “What if aku nggak dapat?” Pasti akan sangat kecewa, karena ini adalah impian yang sudah lama aku nantikan—satu kesempatan berharga untuk explore dunia luar, bekerja di luar negeri, dan melalang buana, melihat dunia dari perspektif yang berbeda.

08 Oktober 2024 Siang itu, aku sedang santai-santai mengurus surat keterangan bank di BCA. Ini kali ketiga aku datang ke CS untuk minta surat tersebut, sampai-sampai CS-nya masih ingat dan bilang, “Lho, Cece lagi, bikin surat referensi bank lagi ya, Ce? Kapan buka kuotanya? Btw, tadi sebelum Cece juga ada yang minta surat keterangan bank, lho.” Aku cuma bisa tertawa kecil, ini sudah ketiga kalinya aku minta surat yang sama, haha.

Di saat yang hampir bersamaan, aku melihat postingan di IG Ditjen Imigrasi yang menyatakan bahwa tanggal pembukaan kuota SDUWHV adalah 10 Oktober 2024—which is lusa ini! Hatiku langsung berdetak tidak karuan! Malam itu, aku bahkan tidak bisa tidur dengan tenang, memikirkan semua persiapan untuk “war” yang harus semaksimal mungkin. Aku cek berulang-ulang file dokumen yang perlu diunggah, membaca kembali semua ketentuan agar tidak ada informasi sekecil apa pun yang terlewat.

Untungnya, aku sudah membuat akun di website-nya sebelumnya, jadi tidak perlu repot di tahap ini. Banyak pengaju lain yang mengalami error karena terlalu banyak orang yang membuat akun di waktu bersamaan.

10 Oktober 2024 Hari war dimulai! Pagi ini aku bangun lebih awal dari biasanya. Jujur, semalaman aku hampir tidak bisa tidur. Yang ada di pikiranku hanya satu: aku ingin bisa melewati hari ini dengan tenang dan lega. Banyak cerita dari tahun lalu tentang war SDUWHV yang katanya menegangkan dan “hidup-mati”—hanya ada satu kesempatan, dan kalau tidak berhasil, harus menunggu batch berikutnya yang entah kapan diadakan lagi. Jadi, hari ini, no matter what, aku harus mendapatkan surat sakti itu.

Jam 9 teng war dimulai. Laptop sudah siap, Wi-Fi aman, website sudah dibuka, dan akun sudah login. Masih menunjukkan pukul 08.45, tapi hatiku sudah dag-dig-dug, dan waktu terasa lambat. Detik demi detik berlalu sampai jam 9 tiba. Aku berpikir, Pasti bisa kok, sudah doa dan yakin. Tapi… tiba-tiba website down, dan aku ter-logout sendiri. Panik! Aku coba login lagi, hasilnya nihil, hanya muncul pesan error! Semakin panik, aku baca di grup, ternyata banyak yang mengalami hal yang sama. Temanku juga mengatakan hal yang sama, semua orang kesulitan login ke website.

Jam 9.11 aku berhasil masuk. Pengaju sudah terisi 423 dari kuota 4.796. Panik lagi! Aku coba segala cara—refresh browser, buka incognito, buka berbagai jenis browser—supaya bisa klik tab permohonan. Jika tombol “Ajukan Permohonan” berwarna biru, artinya kita bisa masuk ke halaman pendaftaran. Setelah beberapa waktu, tombol itu akhirnya berwarna biru. Aku langsung bersujud syukur, segera mengisi biodata dengan cepat karena waktu yang diberikan hanya 15 menit. Halaman 1 lancar, halaman 2 lancar, tapi di halaman 3, tersendat! Panik lagi! Setiap file yang aku coba unggah gagal. Waktu semakin habis. Aku coba ganti Wi-Fi ke tethering HP, tapi tetap gagal. Hingga waktu benar-benar habis, dan permohonanku terpental. Aku pun ter-logout sendiri.

Lemas… Rasanya mau nangis.

Usahaku seketika runtuh. Aku coba login lagi ke website tapi tidak bisa!

Aku pikir itu satu-satunya kesempatan, dan kalau sudah terpental berarti kesempatan itu hangus. Dunia rasanya runtuh. Tapi aku baca di grup lagi untuk mencari solusi. Mereka bilang coba terus masuk lagi dan ulangi dari awal. Akhirnya, meskipun panik, aku tetap mencoba. Ter-logout hingga ratusan kali kualami saat itu. Sampai akhirnya aku mendapat kesempatan kedua. Cepat-cepat aku isi lagi dan cek semuanya, tapi lagi-lagi terkendala di halaman ketiga untuk unggah file. Dan kembali lagi terpental sama seperti sebelumnya. Rasanya dunia runtuh untuk kedua kalinya. Kesempatan berharga yang kedua kali terbuang begitu saja. Kupikir semesta belum berpihak padaku.

Namun, aku tetap mencoba lagi dan lagi hingga masuk kesempatan ketiga. Kuota sudah terisi 3.000-an orang. Angka terus bertambah, mungkin karena banyak peminat dari seluruh Indonesia. Di IG MIDO, banyak yang protes dan mengeluh, hingga MIDO memberi pernyataan resmi bahwa pemohon mencapai 12.000 orang, sementara kuota hanya 4.796. Tidak heran jika website down. Tapi aku tetap berdoa. Aku yakin, surat sakti itu akan ada di tanganku hari ini! Akhirnya, aku berhasil masuk untuk ketiga kalinya, dan entah keajaiban dari mana aku bisa unggah semua file dengan bantuan tetheringHP. Aku langsung submit tanpa memikirkan sisa waktu, berserah. Yang penting aku sudah berusaha maksimal dan mengikuti semua prosedur.

Ternyata, untuk tahun ini, SDUWHV akan terbit di hari yang sama sekitar 1 jam setelah pengajuan diterima dan diverifikasi. Meski sudah lega karena berhasil submit, aku masih harus menunggu terbitnya SDUWHV. Dua jam berlalu tanpa kabar, membuatku cemas. Aku selesai submit jam 11.59, seharusnya jam 1 siang sudah terbit, tapi belum juga. Jujur, aku takut kalau ada dokumen yang terverifikasi gagal atau ada halangan lain, bahkan takut ditolak. Overthinking semakin menjadi-jadi. Aku hanya bisa duduk diam di depan laptop, menunggu status berubah ke penerbitan SDUWHV.

Tidak ada mood untuk makan sejak pagi hingga jam 14.40 sore, saat surat sakti itu akhirnya terbit!

Mau nangis bahagia! Tidak tahu lagi bagaimana mengekspresikan perasaanku. Ini adalah langkah awal untuk bisa apply WHV. Saat aku buka dan baca SDUWHV itu, rasanya seperti mimpi. Dari bulan Februari aku memimpikan ini, dan ini hari dimana aku benaar-benar mendapatkan surat berharga ini. Terima kasih banyak, Tuhan!

13 Oktober 2024 Hari Minggu yang cerah, aku memutuskan untuk fokus lodge visa. Karena ini pertama kalinya aku lodge visa, rasanya cukup deg-degan. Untungnya, aku punya banyak panduan yang bisa diikuti. Tapi tetap saja, aku sempat bingung—gimana caranya lodge visa kalau aku belum MCU? Kebingungan pertamaku: apa itu HAP ID, dan gimana caranya daftar MCU? Blank total. Untungnya, temanku mengirimkan link YouTube yang menjelaskan langkah-langkahnya. Baru deh aku paham prosesnya, termasuk cara mendapatkan HAP ID dan daftar MCU.

Aku segera menghubungi rumah sakit yang khusus untuk MCU Visa Australia, yaitu RS Premier Jatinegara. Aku memilih jadwal MCU hari Minggu, 27 Oktober 2024. Awalnya, aku berencana MCU pada 20 Oktober 2024, tapi karena suatu alasan, aku mau rescheduleke RS Bintaro. Sayangnya, RS Bintaro tidak melayani MCU pada hari Minggu. Akhirnya, aku kembali ke jadwal awal di RS Jatinegara. Namun, karena aku sudah mengajukan reschedule, jadwalku tanggal 20 Oktober hangus, jadi aku harus mundur jadwal MCU-ku ke tanggal 27 Oktober 2024.

23 Oktober 2024 Karena belum MCU, aku memutuskan untuk save dulu permohonan lodgement visa-ku. Alurnya memang bisa lodge visa dulu baru MCU, tapi aku belum punya dokumen yang di-translate, jadi rasanya lebih baik MCU dulu. Aku pun mulai mencari penerjemah tersumpah untuk menerjemahkan beberapa dokumen pendukung, seperti akta lahir dan kartu keluarga. Sayangnya, jadwal penerjemah penuh! Aku jadi menyesal kenapa tidak mengurus terjemahan lebih awal. Tapi, sudahlah. Aku terus menghubungi beberapa penerjemah tersumpah yang menerima layanan express. Untungnya, aku dapat Pak Joseph yang menyediakan layanan express dengan waktu pengerjaan 2 hari kerja. Dokumenku selesai diterjemahkan pada tanggal 23 Oktober 2024.

Saat aku mengecek hasil terjemahan dokumen—FYI, aku hanya menerjemahkan akta lahir dan kartu keluarga karena dokumen lainnya sudah bilingual—aku baru sadar kalau nama orangtuaku berbeda antara akta lahir dan KK. Wah, ini bikin aku galau berat. Seharusnya, aku lebih teliti sebelumnya untuk memastikan dokumen-dokumenku tidak ada masalah kecil seperti ini yang bisa menghambat proses visaku. Sebagai tambahan kekhawatiranku, SKCK-ku juga expired tepat tanggal 23 Oktober 2024. Aku tahu, SKCK adalah dokumen opsional untuk visa ini, tapi semakin banyak dokumen pendukung yang diunggah, kemungkinan visa granted akan lebih besar. Sayangnya, aku tidak punya waktu untuk memperpanjang SKCK karena harus mengurusnya langsung di Mabes Polri.

Aku bertanya di grup, dan mereka memastikan bahwa SKCK tidak wajib diunggah. Tapi tetap saja, aku merasa was-was. Tidak ada jaminan pasti apakah visaku akan grantedtanpa SKCK. Di tengah drama ini, muncul lagi kabar kalau ada masalah di immiaccount—katanya banyak yang tidak bisa lodge visa karena website error. Bahkan, beberapa orang menyebarkan rumor bahwa pendaftaran visa akan ditutup sampai tahun depan. Wah, ini benar-benar bikin panik dan overthinking.

Benar saja, malam itu, setelah aku mendapatkan hasil terjemahan dokumen, aku mencoba lodge visa. Tapi ternyata, immiaccount benar-benar tidak bisa diakses. Memang, aku sudah menyimpan semua data sejak 13 Oktober 2024, tapi halaman tersebut tidak bisa dilanjutkan. Yang muncul hanya notifikasi maintenance, dan itu membuatku semakin galau karena tidak bisa memproses visaku. Padahal, aku hanya tinggal lodge dan membayar biaya permohonan visa. Rasanya frustrasi karena sudah begitu dekat, tapi masih terhalang masalah teknis.

Hari itu, pikiranku penuh dengan kekhawatiran: soal nama orangtua yang tidak sinkron, SKCK expired, masalah immiaccount, dan waktu yang terus berjalan.

Rasanya seperti drama tak berujung.

Tiap jam aku terus refresh immiaccount, berharap ada perubahan. Aku juga rajin cek grup, siapa tahu ada teman-teman yang berbagi info kalau maintenance sudah selesai. Tapi tetap saja, hasilnya nihil—selalu gagal. Mungkin karena terlalu banyak orang yang mencoba lodge WHV ini, jadi aksesnya dibatasi. Aku mulai merasa menyesal, kenapa aku tidak lebih cekatan dan mengamankan lodge visa lebih awal. Overthinking pun muncul. Bagaimana kalau benar-benar kuota tahunan ditutup dan baru dibuka tahun depan? Kalau itu terjadi, perjuangan war SDUWHV-ku jadi sia-sia. Pikiran-pikiran itu membuatku tidak bisa tidur, hati gelisah, benar-benar galau.

Sampai akhirnya, 25 Oktober 2024, sekitar jam 12 siang, aku coba login ke immiaccount lagi, dan ternyata BISA! Tanpa pikir panjang, aku langsung lodge visa dan melakukan pembayaran. Untungnya, semua dokumen sudah aku unggah dan simpan sebelumnya, jadi begitu maintenance selesai, aku tinggal klik submit. Syukurlah, pada 25 Oktober 2024, jam 12.29, visaku tersubmit dan status berubah menjadi received.

Lega banget rasanya!

Tapi, tidak lama kemudian muncul kekhawatiran baru. Aku sudah punya HAP ID yang aku request sendiri sebelumnya, tapi aku lodge visa-nya dulu sebelum MCU. Saat lodge, ada pertanyaan apakah sudah pernah MCU sebelumnya. Kalau sudah, aku tinggal memasukkan HAP ID-ku. Masalahnya, aku belum MCU, tapi HAP ID-ku sudah ada. Kalau aku tidak memasukkan HAP ID, nanti malah dapat HAP ID baru dari imigrasi, yang berarti bisa jadi double. Bingung banget! Akhirnya, aku tetap nekat lodge visa dengan menyertakan HAP ID-ku yang aku request di awal, meskipun aku belum MCU. Aku hanya bisa berdoa semoga tidak ada masalah besar karena keputusan ini.

27 Oktober 2024 Aku berangkat ke Jakarta malam Minggu, 26 Oktober 2024, dengan penerbangan sore jam 6. Pesawat sempat sedikit delay, tapi aku tetap tenang karena Sabtu sore setelah pulang kerja aku tidak perlu terburu-buru mengejar ke bandara. Untungnya, proses MCU tidak lama, jadi aku tidak perlu mengajukan cuti. Tapi tentu saja, muncul lagi kekhawatiran baru. Malam sebelum MCU, aku haid! Panik lagi, karena salah satu persyaratan MCU adalah tes urin. Kenapa ya rasanya selalu ada saja masalah bertubi-tubi?

Sabtu pagi, aku benar-benar galau. Aku langsung memastikan ke pihak RS apakah aku masih bisa lanjut MCU dengan kondisi haid. Kalau tidak, aku harus reschedule tiket pesawat dan jadwal MCU, yang mana saat ini MCU sedang penuh-penuhnya karena banyak pengaju visa yang daftar. Kebayang antrean panjang dan waktu tunggu yang makin lama, dan itu bikin aku khawatir proses visaku jadi semakin tertunda. Untungnya, pihak RS mengonfirmasi bahwa tes urin sudah tidak lagi menjadi bagian dari MCU untuk visa ini. Lega banget!!! Setidaknya, aku tidak perlu reschedule, dan proses MCU bisa tetap berjalan sesuai jadwal.

Pagi itu, aku sampai di RS Premier Jatinegara sekitar jam 6.30 pagi dan langsung menuju tempat MCU di lantai 7. Meskipun pelayanannya baru buka jam 8, sekitar jam 7 lebih aku sudah diperbolehkan masuk untuk pengisian administrasi oleh stafnya. Estimasi awal, aku dapat giliran jam 9.05, tapi karena aku datang pertama, aku langsung dapat antrean pertama.

Jam 8.30, aku dipanggil untuk cek fisik dan mata. Dokternya melakukan sedikit wawancara tentang riwayat kesehatan dan menanyakan beberapa hal seputar diri kita. Setelah itu, dilakukan pemeriksaan fisik seperti cek nafas, detak jantung, dan refleks tubuh. Kemudian, lanjut ke tes mata seperti membaca huruf-huruf pada papan optik.

Selanjutnya, aku diarahkan ke ruangan kedua untuk timbang berat badan, cek tinggi badan, dan tensi. Di sini, aku juga diberitahu bahwa hasil MCU akan dikirimkan langsung ke imigrasi Australia dalam 3 hari kerja. Hasilnya bisa mulai ditanyakan pada H+1 setelah selesai. Setelah itu, aku diarahkan ke ruangan lain untuk pengambilan darah. Sebelum tes, aku sempat disarankan untuk banyak minum air agar hasilnya lebih baik. Oh ya, seminggu sebelum MCU, aku sampai nyetok susu Bear Brand dan minum rutin karena katanya itu bagus untuk kesehatan, terutama paru-paru. Did it work? Aku nggak tahu pasti, tapi aku tetap mengikuti saran orang-orang, siapa tahu memang ada manfaatnya.

Setelah selesai di lantai 7, aku lanjut ke kasir untuk melakukan pembayaran, kemudian diarahkan ke radiologi untuk Chest X-Ray. Proses Chest X-Ray cukup cepat ternyata. Saat tes, kita diminta mengikuti arahan staf, seperti cara bernapas yang sesuai prosedur. Di ruangan ini, kita hanya diperbolehkan memakai baju luar tanpa aksesoris seperti kalung, agar tidak mengganggu hasil foto. Seluruh proses MCU telah dipenuhi. Malamnya, aku pun langsung terbang kembali ke Pontianak.

MCU selesai! Berarti, aku tinggal menunggu hasilnya di-submit oleh pihak RS dan difinalisasi oleh imigrasi Australia.

Keesokan harinya setelah MCU, status Health Assessment di immiaccount-ku berubah menjadi finalised. Artinya, hasil MCU-ku bagus, dan pihak RS juga mengonfirmasi bahwa semua hasil normal. Lega rasanya! At least, aku tidak perlu MCU ulang, dan peluangku untuk granted semakin besar.

Tapi, apakah aku bisa menunggu dengan tenang? Oh, tentu tidak!

Masih ingat kekhawatiranku sebelumnya? Soal SKCK, aku sudah tidak terlalu cemas karena membaca banyak pengalaman orang yang tetap granted meskipun tanpa SKCK. Kalau pun nanti diminta, aku pikir aku bisa memperpanjang SKCK lagi.

Namun, yang benar-benar jadi sumber overthinking setiap hari adalah perbedaan nama orang tua di akta lahir dan kartu keluarga. Tiap hari aku kepikiran, apalagi setelah membaca case di Facebook tentang orang-orang yang kena random check karena masalah data ini. Ada yang harus bikin surat pernyataan kalau nama itu mengacu pada orang yang sama, ada juga yang diminta update KK, yang jelas itu semua butuh waktu dan proses yang tidak cepat, belum lagi harus di-translate lagi. Banyak juga yang bilang kalau tahu data ada perbedaan seperti ini, jangan coba-coba unggah KK karena bisa jadi malah bikin posisi kita lebih sulit kalau terkena random check. Rasanya, setiap hari aku tidak bisa tidur tenang, hanya bisa berdoa agar prosesku berjalan mulus dan visaku tidak menemui hambatan.

12 November 2024 18 hari berlalu sejak lodge visa dan selesai MCU. Setiap hari, aku rajin login ke immiaccount, berharap status visaku berubah dari received menjadi finalised dan granted. Tapi, nihil. Aku juga cek email berkali-kali, namun tidak ada notifikasi baru. Sementara itu, di grup, banyak pejuang WHV lain yang visanya sudah granted, dan aku mulai memperhatikan polanya—ternyata waktu lodge sangat berpengaruh. Semakin cepat kita lodge, semakin cepat visanya diproses. Karena aku lodge pada 25 Oktober 2024, berarti aku harus menunggu giliran teman-teman yang lodge pada 23 Oktober 2024 selesai granted terlebih dahulu sebelum giliranku. Setiap kali ada notifikasi dari Gmail, jantungku langsung berdebar kencang, tapi selalu saja bukan email granted. Rasanya mau nangis dan kecewa setiap kali harapan itu pupus.

14.46 Sore itu, aku memutuskan untuk refresh immiaccount untuk terakhir kalinya hari itu. Aku pikir, kalau tidak ada kabar, aku akan logout dan berharap lagi keesokan harinya.

Tapi… tiba-tiba, statusnya berubah menjadi FINALISED!

Aku terdiam. Bengong. Rasanya detik itu berhenti. Tanganku gemetaran. Aku refreshlagi untuk memastikan, dan di sebelah namaku tertulis GRANTED.

Aku mengecek kembali emailku, apa ada Grant Notification-nya? Beneran ada!

Semua overthinking-ku langsung buyar. Rasanya tidak bisa diungkapkan dengan kata-kata. Aku tidak perlu lagi memikirkan perbedaan nama dokumen atau takut terkena random check. Jantungku berdegup kencang, tapi kali ini penuh dengan kebahagiaan. Hari itu, semua impianku mulai terlihat semakin nyata.

Aku baca lagi granted letter-ku, dan akhirnya aku bisa mengatakan: Yes, I got that WHV with my name on it.

Terima kasih, Tuhan! ✨

Dan di sinilah perjalanan panjang ini akhirnya sampai pada awal yang baru. Semua perjuangan, rasa cemas, overthinking, dan doa yang tak henti-hentinya kini terbayar. Surat sakti itu bukan hanya sekadar dokumen, tapi simbol dari mimpi yang selama ini aku perjuangkan. Kini, langkah pertama sudah selesai—dan petualangan sesungguhnya baru saja dimulai.

Australia, here I come! 🌏✨

[eucanthos]

Suehiro Maruo (JP, Nagasaki, January 28, 1956)

Shōjo Tsubaki (少女椿, The Camellia Girl) manga written and illustrated by Suehiro Maruo, published in 1984. An ero guro graphic novel reinventing Shōwa period (1926-1989) kamishibai (street theater) about an orphaned young flower seller named Midori who is tricked into working for an abusive freak show.

Exceptional sequences—of desperate hallucinations, twisting body parts, and limbs crawling with bugs—recall Japan’s older traditions that have reconciled violence with a strange beauty.

Film Midori (1992) Original title: Shôjo tsubaki: Chika gentô gekiga

https://pen-online.com/culture/shojo-tsubaki-a-freakshow/

https://fumettologica.it/2021/08/midori-maruo-manga-coconino-recensione/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0930902/?ref_=tt_mv_close

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Djo_Tsubaki

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“Brand safety” killed Jezebel

I'll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library this Monday, November 13 at 1830hPT to launch my new novel, The Lost Cause. There'll be a reading, a talk, a surprise guest (!!) and a signing, with books on sale. Tell your friends! Come on down!

Progressives: if you want to lose to conservatives, all you need to do is reflexively praise and support everything conservatives turn into a culture-war issue, without considering whether they might be right. Because sometimes…they're right.

Remember early in the Trump presidency, when conservatives all woke up and discovered that America's spy agencies – excuse me, "the intelligence community" – were dirty-tricking psychos who run amok, lawlessly sabotaging democracy? Progressives have been shouting this ever since Hoover's FBI tried to blackmail MLK into killing himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter

But millions of progressives forgot about COINTELPRO, CIA dirty tricks and CIA mass spying when this "intelligence community" temporarily set out to wrong-foot Trump. Remember James Comey votive candles?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/08/30/james-comey-fbi-memo-leaks-trump-inspector-general-report-column/2157705001/

Anthropologists have a name for this phenomenon, in which one side reverses its positions because their sworn enemies have done so. It's called schizmogenesis, and it goes like this: "If they hate it, we love it":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

Schizmogenesis is an equal-opportunity delusion. Within living memory, white evangelicals supported abortion, because their sworn enemies – Catholics – opposed it. Some of those white Boomer women who voted Trump because abortion was literally the only issue they cared about held the opposite position on abortion not so long ago – and completely forgot about it:

https://text.npr.org/734303135

The main purpose of the culture war isn't immiserating marginalized people – that's its effect, but its purpose is to distract low-information turkeys (working people) so they'll vote for Christmas (the ongoing seizure of power by American oligarchs). For the funders of conservative movement politics, the cruelty isn't the point, it's merely the tactic. The point is power:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/09/turkeys-voting-for-christmas/#culture-wars

Which brings me to "woke capitalism." Conservative string-pullers have whipped up their base about the threat of companies embracing social causes. They (erroneously) claim that corporations have progressive values, and that big business is thumbing the scales for causes they despise. The purpose here isn't to sow distrust of capitalism per se. Rather, it's to stampede talk-radio-addled supporters into backing the oligarchy's agenda. Remember when culture war leaders told their base to support being gouged on credit-card junk fees "to own the libs?"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

That's schizmogenesis working against the conservative rank-and-file, tricking them into taking the side of a cartel of wildly profitable payment processors who are making billions by picking their pockets (credit card fees are up 40% since the covid lockdowns), because (checks notes), Target pays these profiteers a lot to process its payments, and Target sells Pride merch (no, really):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

It's easy to point and laugh at conservative dopes when they're tricked into shooting themselves in the balls to own the libs. This is not a hypothetical example:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/28/holographic-nano-layer-catalyser/#musketfuckers

But progressives do it, too, particularly when they embrace monopolies as a force for positive social change. Remember 2019, when people got excited about playing loud pop music at Nazi rallies in the hopes that the monopoly video platforms' copyright filters would make any video from that rally impossible to post?

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/23/clever-hack-that-will-end-badly-playing-copyrighted-music-during-nazis-rallies-so-they-cant-be-posted-to-youtube/

I warned then that if this tactic worked, it would be used by cops to prevent you from recording them when they're macing you or splitting your skull with a billyclub, and yup, within a couple years, cops were blaring Taylor Swift music in hopes of preventing the public from posting videos of their illegal conduct:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/07/moral-hazard-of-filternets/#dmas

Conservatives are (partially) right about woke capitalism. It is a threat to democracy. Concentrating the power to decide who gets to speak and what they get to say into the hands of five or six corporations, mostly run by mediocre billionaires, is bad for society. The moderation decisions of giant platforms are a form of (commercial) censorship, even these don't violate the First Amendment:

https://locusmag.com/2020/01/cory-doctorow-inaction-is-a-form-of-action/

(The progressive delusion that censorship only occurs when the First Amendment is violated is a wild own-goal, one that excuses, for example, the decision by school book-fair monopolist Scholastic to remove books about queers and Black and brown people from its offerings as a purely private matter without consequences for free speech):

https://www.themarysue.com/scholastic-response-to-authors-and-illustrators-on-diverse-books/

Conservatives are only partially right about woke capitalism, though. Here's what they're wrong about: corporations don't have values. Target isn't selling Pride tees because they support progressive causes, they're selling them because it seems like a good way to increase returns to their shareholders. Individuals – even top executives – at Target might endorse the cause, but the company will only durably support the cause if that endorsement is profitable, which means that when it stops being profitable, the company will stop supporting the cause:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/23/business/target-lgbtq-merchandise/index.html

The idea that corporations have values isn't merely stupid, it's very dangerous. The Hobby Lobby decision – which allows corporations to deny basic health-care expenses for women on the basis that a Bronze Age mystic wouldn't approve of an IUD – rests on the ideological foundation that corporate personhood includes corporate values:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burwell_v._Hobby_Lobby_Stores,_Inc.

Citizens United – the idea that corporations should be allowed to funnel unlimited funds to politicians who'll sell out the public good in favor of investor profits – also depends on a form of corporate personhood that includes values:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

There are undeniably instances in which corporate monopoly power benefits progressive causes, but these are side-effects of corporate power's main purpose, namely: taking money and power away from working people and giving it to rich people. That is what monopoly power is for.

Which brings me to ad-tech, "brand safety," and the demise of Jezebel, the 16 year old feminist website whose shuttering was just announced by its latest owner, G/O Media:

https://www.metafilter.com/201349/This-is-the-end-of-Jezebel-and-that-feels-really-really-bad

Jezebel's demise is the direct result of monopoly power. Jezebel writes about current affairs – sex, politics, abortion, and other important issues of great moment and significance. When we talk about journalism as a public good, necessary for a healthy civic life, this is what we mean. But unfortunately for Jezebel – and any other news outlet covering current events – there are vast, invisible forces that exist solely to starve this kind of coverage of advertising revenue.

Writing for the independent news site 404 Media, reporter Emanuel Maiberg and former Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler go deep on the "brand safety" industry, whose mission is to assist corporations in blocking their ads from showing up alongside real news:

https://www.404media.co/advertisers-dont-want-sites-like-jezebel-to-exist/

Maiberg and Koebler explain how industry associations like the World Federation of Marketers' Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) promulgate "frameworks" to help advertisers automatically detect and exclude real news from consideration when their ads are placed:

https://www.peer39.com/blog/garm-standards

This boycott makes use of scammy "AI" technology like "sentiment and emotional analysis" to determine whether an article is suitable for monetization. These parameters are then fed to the ad-tech duopoly's ad auction system, so Google and Meta (who control the vast majority of online advertising) can ensure that real news is starved of cash.

But reality is not brand-safe, and high quality, reputable journalistic outlets are concerned with reality, which means that the "brand safe" outlets that attract the most revenue are garbage websites that haven't yet been blacklisted by the ad-safety cartel, leading to major brands' ads showing up alongside notorious internet gross-out images like "goatse":

https://www.404media.co/sqword-game-dev-sneaks-goatse-onto-a-dozen-sites-that-stole-his-game/

More than a fifth of "brand safe" ad placements end up on "made for advertising" sites, which 404 Media describe as "trash websites that plagiarize content, are literally spam, pay for fake traffic, or are autogenerated websites that serve no other purpose than capturing ad dollars":

https://www.ana.net/miccontent/show/id/rr-2023-06-ana-programmatic-transparency-first-look

Despite all this, many progressives have become cheerleaders for "brand safety," as a countervailing force to the drawdown of trust and safety at online platforms, which led to the re-platforming of Nazis, QAnon conspiratorialists, TERFs, and other overt elements of the reactionary movement's vanguard on Twitter and Facebook. Articles about ads for major brands showing up alongside Nazi content on Twitter are now a staple of progressive reporting, presented as evidence of Elon Musk's lack of business acumen. The message of these stories is "Musk is bad at business because he's allowing Nazis on his platform, which will send advertisers bolting for the exits to avoid brand-safety crises."

This isn't wrong. Musk is a bad businessman (he's a good scam artist, though). Twitter is hemorrhaging advertisers, notwithstanding the desperate (and easily debunked) stats-juking its "CEO," Linda Yaccarino, floats onstage at tech conferences:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/10/11/math-problem-for-linda-yaccarino-if-90-of-the-top-advertisers-have-come-back-but-are-only-spending-10-of-what-they-used-to-how-screwed-are-you/

But progressives are out of their minds if they think the primary effect of the brand safety industry is punishing Elon Musk for secretly loving Nazis. The primary effect of brand safety is killing reality-based coverage of the news of the day, and since reality has a well-known anti-conservative bias, anything that works against the reality-based community is ultimately good for oligarchy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

We can't afford to let schizmogenesis stampede us into loving things just because conservative culture warriors have been momentarily tricked into hating them as part of oligarchs' turkeys-voting-for-Christmas project. "Swivel-eyed loons hate it, so it must be good," is a worse-than-useless heuristic for navigating complex issues:

https://locusmag.com/2023/05/commentary-cory-doctorow-the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

A much better rule of thumb is "If oligarchs love something, it's probably bad." Almost without exception, things that are good for oligarchs are bad for the rest of us. I mean, this whole shuttering of Jezebel starts with an oligarch imposing his will on millions of other people. Jezebel began life as a Gawker Media site, beloved of millions of readers, destroyed when FBI informant Peter Thiel secretly funded Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against the publisher in a successful bid to put them out of business to retaliate for their unfavorable coverage of Thiel:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/hogan-thiel-gawker-trial/554132/

This, in turn, put Jezebel under the ownership of G/O Media, who are unwilling to pay for a human salesforce that would – for example – sell advertising space on Jezebel to sex-toy companies or pro-abortion groups. G/O has been on a killing spree, shuttering beloved news outlets like Deadspin:

https://deadspin.com/this-is-how-things-work-now-at-g-o-media-1836908201

G/O's top exec, an oligarch named Jim Spanfeller who answers to the private equity looters at Great Hill Partners, is bent on ending reality-based coverage in favor of "letting robots shit out brand safe AI-assisted articles about generic topics":

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/ai-articles-disinformation-future-g-o-media-rcna95944

Three quarters of a century ago, Orwell coined a term to describe this kind of news: duckspeak,

It was not the man’s brain that was speaking it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words but it was not speech in true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness like the quacking of a duck.

When investors and analysts speak of "content" (rather than, say, "journalism"), this is what they mean – a warm slurry of platitudes, purged of any jagged-edged fragments to render it a perfectly suitable carrier for commercial messages targeted based on surveillance data about the "consumer" whose eyeballs are upon it.

This aversion to reality has been present among corporate decisionmakers since the earliest days, but the consolidation of power among large firms – ad-tech firms, online platforms, and "brands" themselves – makes corporate realityphobia much easier to turn into, well, reality, giving advertisers the fine-grained power to put Jezebel and every site like it out of business.

As Koebler and Maiberg's headliine so aptly puts it, "Advertisers Don’t Want Sites Like Jezebel to Exist."

The reason to deplore Nazis on Twitter is because they are Nazis, not because their content isn't brand-safe. The short-term wins progressives gain by legitimizing a corporate veto over what we see online are vastly overshadowed by the most important consequence of brand safety: the mass extinction of reality-based reporting. Reality isn't brand safe. If you're in the reality based community, brand safety should be your sworn enemy, even if they help you temporarily get a couple of Nazis kicked off Twitter.

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/2023/11/11/ad-jacency/#brand-safety

[themaveriqueagenda]

it's trans+ history week, so i finally have an opportunity to make a detailed post about maverique history.

so here it is:

a detailed timeline of maverique history.

31/05/2014 — @queerascat coined maverique as "a non-binary gender characterized by an unconventional and unothodox internal sense of self and the interrelationship between that sense of self and society"

15/06/2014 — queerascat reworded the definition as: "a non-binary gender characterized by autonomy and inner conviction regarding a sense of gender which is unorthodox, unconventional and entirely independent of conventional concepts of gender". they created the maverique flag on the same day.

18/06/2014 — tearun suggested maver as an equivalent to man/woman and rique as an equivalent for boy/girl, the latter was never heard of again due to it sounding like "reek"

19/06/2014 — someone suggested mav as an equivalent to boy/girl, @whatdoesenbymean suggested Mv (pronounced "mav") as a title

21/06/2014 — after some confusion, queerascat reworded the definition one last time as "a gender characterized by autonomy and inner conviction regarding a sense of self that is entirely independent of male/masculinity, female/femininity or anything which derives from the two while still being neither without gender nor of a neutral gender"

22/06/2014 — the @maveriques blog was created

24/06/2014 — maveriques posted a CMYK analogy to explain maverique

28/06/2014 — maveriques posted a list of proposed maverique terms

29/06/2014 — someone suggested Mv (pronounced "miv") as a title

06/07/2014 — queerascat uploaded a video about their label change and the term maverique in their youtube channel

12/03/2015 — maveriques clearly defined maverique as not an umbrella term

11/10/2015 — queerascat posted a gender tag video from a maverique perspective on their youtube channel

13/10/2015 — someone suggested maveriquine as an equivalent for masculine/feminine

~2015/16 — there was discourse on aliagender and aporagender being racist, and that maverique was a good term to use instead because it was coined by a Black person, queerascat pushed back against this

31/07/2016 — maverine was suggested as an equivalent to masculine/feminine

18/11/2016 — @moonstruck-melts suggested the earth and sun symbols for maverique, and @feekins suggested pluto as a symbol

03/02/2017 — @the-christian-closet suggested the comet symbol for maverique, mistaking it for an alternative sun symbol

05/02/2017 — maveriques posted a poll asking how people feel about the sun as a maverique symbol

12/02/2017 — maveriques posted the results, with most maveriques liking it but having reservations

24/02/2017 — courage-archive-deactivated2018 / sneer posted the symbol with the two extending arms

17/07/2017 — veriquinity was suggested as an equivalent to masculine/feminine

~2021: the maverique subreddit was created

06/01/2022 — renée yoxon went on the fifty shades of gender podcast to talk about being maverique, trans, nonbinary and genderqueer

06/2022 — reddit user ChaoticStrange suggested a maverique visibility day on 31/05 and others agreed

16/01/2023 — renée yoxon briefly spoke about being maverique on the gender reveal podcast

18/06/2023 — @themaveriqueagenda on tumblr was born

20/08/2023 — themaveriqueagenda on instagram was born