#Netflix customer accounts

[whoreiaki-kakyoin]

I don’t have the spoons at ALL to call Netflix after they fucked up our account and tell them to fix it but I would like to put on something for some mindless relaxation time that isn’t an asmr or gaming stream….. gonna just start pirating shit bc I’m fed up and so burnt out.

[ur-mag]

Netflix hikes UK prices for millions of customers – is your account affected? | In Trend Today

Netflix hikes UK prices for millions of customers – is your account affected? Read Full Text or Full Article on MAG NEWS

[mothmvn]

looking for an english ebook and sighing wistfully about [website redacted], a RU/UK/BE/KK online library that illegally hosts books online for free and has done for as long as ive had access to a computer. any book, any time, read directly in browser, download as [2-3 file options], just mmmmwah it's all there.

I wish it existed for English language books, it's so fucking straightforward for a resource that I don't use that often anymore. and unlike libgen -- i do love libgen mind you, we've known eachother for almost as long as [website redacted] -- website redacted] actually feels like a unified library website, not a bin that you rifle through

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Netflix wants to chop down your family tree

Netflix has unveiled the details of its new anti-password-sharing policy, detailing a suite of complex gymnastics that customers will be expected to undergo if their living arrangements trigger Netflix’s automated enforcement mechanisms:

https://thestreamable.com/news/confirmed-netflix-unveils-first-details-of-new-anti-password-sharing-measures

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/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes

Netflix says that its new policy allows members of the same “household” to share an account. This policy comes with an assumption: that there is a commonly understood, universal meaning of “household,” and that software can determine who is and is not a member of your household.

This is a very old corporate delusion in the world of technology. In the early 2000s, I spent years trying to bring some balance to an effort at DVB, whose digital television standards are used in most of the world (but not the USA) when they rolled out CPCM, a DRM system that was supposed to limit video-sharing to a single household.

Their term of art for this was the “authorized domain”: a software-defined family unit whose borders were privately negotiated by corporate executives from media companies, broadcasters, tech and consumer electronics companies in closed-door sessions all around the world, with no public minutes or proceedings.

https://onezero.medium.com/the-internet-heist-part-iii-8561f6d5a4dc

These guys (they were nearly all guys) were proud of how much “flexibility” they’d built into their definition of “household.” For example, if you owned a houseboat, or a luxury car with seatback displays, or a summer villa in another country, the Authorized Domain would be able to figure out how to get the video onto all those screens.

But what about other kinds of families? I suggested that one of our test cases should be a family based in Manila: where the dad travels to remote provinces to do agricultural labor; the daughter is a nanny in California; and the son is doing construction work in the UAE. This suggestion was roundly rejected as an “edge case.”

Of course, this isn’t an edge case. There are orders of magnitude more people whose family looks like this than there are people whose family owns a villa in another country. Owning a houseboat or a luxury car makes you an outlier. Having an itinerant agricultural breadwinner in your family does not.

But everyone who is in the room when a cartel draws up a standard definition of what constitutes a household is almost certainly drawn from a pool that is more likely to have a summer villa than a child doing domestic work or construction labor half a world away. These weirdos, so dissimilar from the global majority, get to define the boxes that computers will shove the rest of the world into. If your family doesn’t look like their family, that’s tough: “Computer says no.”

One day at a CPCM meeting, we got to talking about the problem of “content laundering” and how the way to prevent it would be to put limits on how often someone could leave a household and join another one. No one, they argued, would ever have to change households every week.

I put my hand up and said, “What about a child whose divorced parents share custody of her? She’s absolutely going to change households every week.” They thought about it for a moment, then the rep from a giant IT company that had recently been convicted of criminal antitrust violations said, “Oh, we can solve that: we’ll give her a toll-free number to call when she gets locked out of her account.”

That was the solution they went with. If you are a child coping with the dissolution of your parents’ marriage, you will have the obligation to call up a media company every month — or more often — and explain that Mummy and Daddy don’t love each other any more, but can I please have my TV back?

I never forgot that day. I even wrote a science fiction story about it called (what else?) “Authorized Domain”:

https://craphound.com/news/2011/10/31/authorised-domain/

I think everyone understood that this was an absurd “solution,” but they had already decided that they were going to complete the seemingly straightforward business of defining a category like “household” using software, and once that train left the station, nothing was going to stop it.

This is a recurring form of techno-hubris: the idea that baseline concepts like “family” have crisp definitions and that any exceptions are outliers that would never swallow the rule. It’s such a common misstep that there’s a whole enre* called “Falsehoods Programmers Believe About ______”:

https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood

In that list: names, time, currency, birthdays, timezones, email addresses, national borders, nations, biometrics, gender, language, alphabets, phone numbers, addresses, systems of measurement, and, of course, families. These categories are touchstones in our everyday life, and we think we know what they mean — but then we try to define them, and the list of exceptions spirals out into a hairy, fractal infinity.

Historically, these fuzzy categorical edges didn’t matter so much, because they were usually interpreted by humans using common sense. My grandfather was born “Avrom Doctorovitch” (or at least, that’s one way to transliterate his name, which was spelled in a different alphabet, but which was also transliterating his first name from yet another alphabet). When he came to Canada as a refugee, his surname was anglicized to “Doctorow.” Other cousins are “Doctorov,” “Doctoroff,” and “Doktorovitch.”

Naturally, his first name could have been “Abraham” or “Abe,” but his first employer (a fellow Eastern European emigre) decided that was too ethnic and in sincere effort to help him fit in, he called my grandfather “Bill.” When my grandfather attained citizenship, his papers read “Abraham William Doctorow.” He went by “Abe,” “Billy,” “Bill,” “William,” “Abraham” and “Avrom.”

Practically, it didn’t matter that variations on all of these appeared on various forms of ID, contracts, and paperwork. His reparations check from the German government had a different variation from the name on the papers he used to open his bank account, but the bank still let him deposit it.

All of my relatives from his generation have more than one name. Another grandfather of mine was born “Aleksander,” and called “Sasha” by friends, but had his name changed to “Seymour” when he got to Canada. His ID was also a mismatched grab-bag of variations on that theme.

None of this mattered to him, either. Airlines would sell him tickets and border guards would stamp his passport and rental agencies would let him drive away in cars despite the minor variations on all his ID.

But after 9/11, all that changed, for everyone who had blithely trundled along with semi-matching names across their official papers and database entries. Suddenly, it was “computer says no” everywhere you turned, unless everything matched perfectly. There was a global rush for legal name-changes after 9/11 — not because people changed their names, but because people needed to perform the bureaucratic ritual necessary to have the name they’d used all along be recognized in these new, brittle, ambiguity-incinerating machines.

For important categories, ambiguity is a feature, not a bug. The fact that you can write anything on an envelope (including a direction to deliver the letter to the granny flat over the garage, not the front door) means that we don’t have to define “address” — we can leave it usefully hairy around the edges.

Once the database schema is formalized, then “address” gets defined too — the number of lines it can have, the number of characters each line can have, the kinds of characters and even words (woe betide anyone who lives in Scunthorpe).

If you have a “real” address, a “real” name, a “real” date of birth, all of this might seem distant to you. These “edge” cases — seasonal agricultural workers, refugees with randomly assigned “English” names — are very far from your experience.

That’s true — for now (but not forever). The “Shitty Technology Adoption Curve” describes the process by which abusive technologies work their way up the privilege gradient. Every bad technological idea is first rolled out on poor people, refugees, prisoners, kids, mental patients and other people who can’t push back.

Their bodies are used to sand the rough edges and sharp corners off the technology, to normalize it so that it can climb up through the social ranks, imposed on people with more and more power and influence. 20 years ago, if you ate your dinner under an always-on #CCTV, it was because you were in a supermax prison. Today, it’s because you bought a premium home surveillance system from Google, Amazon or Apple.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/29/impunity-corrodes/#arise-ye-prisoners

The Netflix anti-sharing tools are designed for rich people. If you travel for business and stay in the kind of hotel where the TV has its own Netflix client that you can plug your username and password into, Netflix will give you a seven-day temporary code to use.

But for the most hardcore road-warriors, Netflix has thin gruel. Unless you connect to your home wifi network every 31 days and stream a show, Netflix will lock out your devices. Once blocked, you have to “contact Netflix” (laughs in Big Tech customer service).

Why is Netflix putting the screws to its customers? It’s part of the enshittification cycle, where platform companies first allocate surpluses to their customers, luring them in and using them as bait for business customers. Once they turn up, the companies reallocate surpluses to businesses, lavishing them with low commissions and lots of revenue opportunities. And once they’re locked in, the company starts to claw back the surpluses for itself.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Remember when Netflix was in the business of mailing red envelopes full of DVDs around the country? That was allocating surpluses to users. The movie companies hated this, viewed it as theft — a proposition that was at least as valid as Netflix’s complaints about password sharing, but every pirate wants to be an admiral, and when Netflix did it to the studios, that was “progress,” but when you do it to Netflix, that’s theft.

Then, once Netflix had users locked in and migrated to the web (and later, apps), it shifted surpluses to studios, paying fat licensing fees to stream their movies and connect them to a huge audience.

Finally, once the studios were locked in, Netflix started to harvest the surplus for its shareholders: raising prices, lowering streaming rates, knocking off other studios’ best performing shows with in-house clones, etc. Users’ surpluses are also on the menu: the password “sharing” that let you define a household according to your family’s own idiosyncratic contours is unilaterally abolished in a quest to punish feckless Gen Z kids for buying avocado toast instead of their own Netflix subscriptions.

Netflix was able to ignore the studios’ outraged howls when it built a business by nonconsenually distributing their products in red envelopes. But now that Netflix has come for your family, don’t even think about giving Netfix some of what it gave to the MPAA.

As a technical matter, it’s not really that hard to modify Netflix’s app so that every stream you pull seems to come from your house, no matter where you are. But doing so would require reverse-engineering Netflix’s app, and that would violate Section 1201 of the DMCA, the CFAA, and eleventy-seven other horrible laws. Netflix’s lawyers would nuke you until the rubble bounced.

When Netflix was getting started, it could freely interoperate with the DVDs that the studios had put on the market. It could repurpose those DVDs in ways that the studios strenuously objected to. In other words, Netfix used adversarial interoperability (AKA Competitive Compatibility or ComCom) to launch its business:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Today, Netflix is on the vanguard of the war to abolish adversarial interop. They helped lead the charge to pervert W3C web-standards, creating a DRM video standard called EME that made it a crime to build a full-featured browser without getting permission from media companies and restricting its functionality to their specifications:

https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/the-end-of-indie-web-browsers/

When they used adversarial interoperability to build a multi-billion-dollar global company using the movie studios’ products in ways the studios hated, that was progress. When you define “family” in ways that makes Netflix less money, that’s felony contempt of business model.

[Image ID: A Victorian family tree template populated by tintypes of old-timey people. In the foreground stands a menacing, chainsaw-wielding figure, his face obscured by a hoodie. The blade of the chainsaw is poised to chop down the family tree. A Netflix 'N' logo has been superimposed over the man's face.]

[eightratsinatrenchcoat]

Since the bigwigs @netflix can’t seem to figure out how to run a profitable business on what should be a platform that’s raking in money, here’s some tips:

- Offer cheaper subscriptions. You are alienating potential customers, myself included, by making subscription prices so high that people can’t afford them long term and will buy a subscription to watch the shows they want and then cancel it after a month or two

- Encourage password sharing. People don’t know what’s on your platform if they can’t afford an account and they aren’t going to fork out £11 / $15 for the cheapest subscription if there’s nothing on there they want to watch. If you encourage and facilitate password sharing then people can discover content they enjoy and might be persuaded to buy their own accounts.

- Stop cancelling shows before they get a chance to take off. All shows should be given minimum two seasons with minimum 10 episodes per season or else how can people get into a show and grow an audience.

- Give a one year grace period for fanbases to grow before cancelling a show. Fandoms don’t grow in a week.

- If a show is in the top 10 for 14 consecutive days it should be automatically qualified for renewal.

- People don’t want 20 different dating shows about the same 5 generic looking people. I promise you they’re only watching them because they’re bored and it’s the only content you have on the platform.

- For goodness sake listen to your fans. You only have to spend a couple minutes scrolling through the tags for your shows on here to see how much love there is and how much fan content is being created.

Netflix is not the only streaming platform guilty of this, Prime and Max have a lot to answer for too, but Netflix is by far the worst repeat offender

[alltimefail]

Another small way to help Dead Boy Detectives that takes less than 5 minutes

This was a suggestion from the @savethedeadboys account on TikTok!

If you have a Netflix account, go to this page:

When you get there you can just type your issue in as "Chat with a representative" and then press "Chat with us."

A chat box will pop up, just like if you were private messaging someone. They will ask what you need and again I just typed in "Chat with a representative."

After that, you will be connected to someone (for me it was less than 5 minutes) and asked what email your account is associated with and what you need help with. I said the following:

"Hello! I wanted to reach out and voice my displeasure and disappointment about Netflix's recent decision to cancel Dead Boy Detectives. I know that as a customer service representative, this is not your fault and you are not involved in these decisions, but I have been so heartbroken and angry that this show was canceled by Netflix with no justifiable reason. It seems to be a trend lately that Netflix does not care to complete stories that mainly focus on the experiences of queer people and people of color, which is a great injustice to the audiences that typically are looking to be represented in the media they consume and the diverse cast who put their all into creating a fantastic, nuanced show. If possible, I would greatly appreciate you passing this message along to let someone in management know my displeasure with this recent decision that could very well lead to me ending my relationship with the streamer in the future. Thank you!"

You can use what I said as a template, but obviously, adjust it to sound like you! My representative was lovely and I had this message typed beforehand, so literally it took me 5 minutes. You can even request a copy of the conversation (a transcript) to be sent to your email if you desire (I did, I have been keeping meticulous receipts of my work regarding saving this show so Netflix cannot have any plausible deniability, at least where I'm concerned).

Remember to BE KIND. Whoever you're talking to did not make this decision and they shouldn't be treated poorly because of it!

Happy case solving, detectives! We're going to bring our boys home, have faith! 💜

[factual-fantasy]

23 asks! Thanks a bunch! :}} 🌠

@mimiocto

She does! Her name is Gloria :))

And if my motivation and health stays in my favor.. ya'll will learn a bit more about her and Bonnie soon... 👀👀👀

(Referencing this post)

The secret 9th eeveeloution, ghost type! <XD

@octonauts16

....Whelp, guess I'm canceling my Netflix account! <XD

(Monopoly post in question)

It was mostly a joke, XDD but none the less I'm sure no one would have taken it too much to heart! Its well known that Grim and V have a very strong bond so no one would have been surprised XDD

@candyglumboy

Thank you so much!! :DDD

AAAAA THANK YOU SO MUCH!! :DDD I'm glad!! :}}}

(Comic in question)

YOU!!! YOU GET IT!!!! WAHAAG THABK YOU!!! 😭😭💖💖💞

THANK YOU SO MUCH!! :DDDD💞

I just slap the watermark on the drawing as its own layer and lower the opacity :00 usually putting a back blob cloud behind it at lower opacity if more visibility is needed!

....If that made any sense at all--

@userplaysminecraft

This is amongst the highest compliments my fanart can receive. Thank you 🥺🥺🥺

:DD Thank you so much!! I'm glad you love it!! :}}

@minnesotamedic186

Alas, I do not have a good tablet or stylus.. :((

But that's ok! I think I'm getting better! <:D .. I hope so at least! <:}}

@holly-opal

I haven't really ironed it out yet.. but one thing stays consistent. It sucked.

I wanted to create a situation where Mario and Luigi both did not want to go back to Earth. Sure there are things that would undoubtedly bother them a bit that I couldn't just whisk away. Never seeing another human again, never seeing any animals again.. Never hearing human songs again.. never tasting the food from Earth again..

But what I could do is make their old lives so horrible, that they were both willing to give up what they had for this new life as the "Hero's of Legend."

I pictured Mario and Luigi both being very poor. Just barely making it paycheck to paycheck. No friends, no family. No sentimentals even. Perhaps their childhood home burnt down.. so no family photo albums or old plushies to be attached to..

I couldn't decide what kind of relationship they had with their parents.. but either way, they've passed on. They worked a crappy job as plumbers which they both hated. They lived in a cruddy apartment that was too small for them. Rotten neighbors, disrespectful customers..

I pictured them having this terrible company van or truck that always broke down and stunk of cigarettes thanks to the previous owner. They were drowning in debt and bills. Trynna pay off the van, trynna buy new clothes, trynna by food...

I even imagined some of their bills and debt were medical related. I imagined Luigi being very ill and them being unable to afford food and medicine.. So Mario stole food from his clients. Maybe even robed a store or two. Now they've got "criminal" added to their list of problems.

They hated their apartment. They hated the van, they hated their neighbors, they hated people, they hated the world. They hated their lives. The only thing they had the room in their hearts to love was each other. The only thing that didn't hurt them or make them cry was each other. The only thing that made living in this horrible world worth it, was each other.

Then the mushroom kingdom came along.. "Hero's of Legend?" Magical powers? Kind people who care about us and respect us? No more debt, no more bills, no more van or apartment, no more stealing, just.. adventure. And they get to experience it all with their most favorite person in the world?

Why would they ever want to go back?

@raven-bearden-the-interviewer42

Alas, I do not know of any. :((( But I can imagine that the crew is nerdy enough to make their own shanty! A theme song of sorts. And you can bet that Seafoam would take pride in that song and sing it loudly with the rest of the crew! XD

@neo-metalscottic (100,000 reblogs post in question) (Octo clarification post)

Awe! That's so kind! Thank you!! :DD And I've been very glad to see my condition improve too 😌 though I'm not quite out of the thick of it yet.. :(( I hope I can fully beat it soon! <:))

As for the Great green toad king and company, I have actually never heard of them before! <:0 Though it would be very easy to label them as some far off kingdom and not put much thought into it <XDD Perhaps some of the species found in that kingdom could have become wandering travelers like Wario and Waluigi? Maybe we'd see them that way? :00

Now I know mentioning Birdo was a joke XDD But I do have plans for the Birdo species! :00

I had this idea that Yoshi's used to be smaller, about the same size they are in canon. Back then they acted as these passive.. almost farm like animals..?? In a way?? The toads used them to haul carts and as a form of transportation. Like horses! But eventually the Yoshis discovered "Yoshis island". A fruitful island planted in the middle if a giant river. A large sum of the Yoshis migrated from the forest and began to live there. Eating the super fruits and veggies it produced and slowly transforming into the giant mega Yoshis that are there today.

However, not all the Yoshi's left. A fair amount of them were kept and somehow made their way to the coast near Daisy's Kingdom. After generations and generations of Yoshi's eating red cheep cheeps and living in the water, they transformed and are now called Birdos. In present day Yoshi's and Birdos are extremely closely related, though they look a bit different from each other. And while Yoshi's come in all different colors, most Birdos grow up to be different shades of red, Pink and purple due to their red cheep cheep diet. Just like flamingos! :D

Anyways- on to the Goombas. The Goombas start out as these very poisonous brown mushrooms and are brought to life by Kamek. They form mouths and the poison that they originally had becomes poisonous saliva. So when they bite someone the poison does its job.. Even if who ever they bite is somehow immune to their poison, their bites are still nasty. They're dirty creatures and they really shred you up.. So the chance of natural infection is there none the less-

And WHAAAT?? Illumination whyyyyyyy 😭😭I love Toadsworth you had no right to scrap him--

And wow! That last battle looks crazy! My only question is who's this guy?? <XDD I don't recognize him!

Anywho- thanks again for the ask! Feel free to send more Mario ones, or not, which ever you please! I'd love to read what ever you may send :}}}

8 0 0 0 P A G E S ? ? ?

@pink088

That is the most cursed creature I have ever seen- XDD

I wanna say Louis has the most wins, buuuttttt Seafoam is so much bigger than Louis.. I feel like he would have the ability to overthrow him just by using his own body weight XDD Its hard to say!

(Ask was sent in response to this post)

SKSKKDJH ACTUALLY THO XDDDD

Oh- in order to make these ask posts I take screenshots of the asks, crop them, and then compile them all together. Usually I put them together on Tumblr desktop, so they're all blue.

But recently I've been batting some health problems and have been stuck on the couch all day.. which means that I've been making my ask posts on Tumblr mobile. Which is all black themed for me :00

Aw, thank you! Though I advice eating it with a spoon actually! In order to scoop up the tears of the characters- XDD

@caronaro-flipaclip

:0 Sponchbop! :DD Its hard to feel down with him around!

@beryl-shade

I have written many stories where characters have lost family or friends to death... but as for a character that was in the main story and I actually drew them? ..Not that I can recall! :0

[gentlebeardsbarngrill]

01/20/2024 Crew Recap

TLDR; David Jenkins Message on IG; How you can help; Contacting Netflix, Prime, AppleTV; General Guidelines for Wooing Networks; New Hashtags; UK Crew Updates; Petition/Fundraiser Status; Articles; Extras; Rhys' Stiddy

=== Chaos Dad's Message ===

David Jenkins messaged us FRIENDS and gave us a new heading to steer the ship for the crew. Truly an amazing and sweet message, and helping give @renewasacrew a good place to start on new networks.

== How you can help ==

So based on Chaos Dad's tweet, what the folks over at @renewasacrew have recommended is we focus our efforts on Netflix, AmazonStudios, and Apple TV. We'll be polite menacing but also doing some more specific wooing this time so please see below for more information.

= Reach out to Netflix =

You can reach out to Netflix Here.

= Reach out to Apple TV =

You can reach out to apple tv by going here.

= Amazon Prime: Thank you @mermaid-stede for this write up: =

1) if you have an Amazon account, go to My Stuff > Settings > Help & Feedback > Provide Feedback

2) If you don't, write here

3) might as well try their customer service 888 280-4331, using the same strategy from above (though you might need an Amazon account)

4) and here's an email! complaints@amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com: AIV Website Feedback Form

DIGPRJSURVEY.AMAZON.COM

You can see more of their write ups here

=New Hashtags=

#AdoptOurCrew #RenewAsACrew #SaveOFMD

Things to remember:

Only Message 1 of the 3 networks at once. We are wooing them, they want to be enticed, not included in a crowd. If you are reaching out to one, make sure to reach out to all three (just separately)

Be Polite, this is a bit of a different strategy from max, we WANT these people to pick us up, we're not grumpy at them.

Yes you can use season 3 and beyond, use the same terminology David Jenkins did.

More specific info from folks regarding the things to remember:

=== UK Crew ===

Great job everyone! Your efforts made a difference! Thanks for the update @lamentus1!

Something else to mention for our UK and International Friends that are reaching out via social networks or email/phone:

=Daily Engagement Reminder!=

Our Flag Means Death Wikipedia Page

Google Search for Our Flag Means Death

Google UK Search for Our Flag Means Death

Our Flag Means Death IMDB

=== Petition / Fundraiser Status ===

Petition: ALMOST at 75K!

Renew as a Crew - Benefiting Rainbow Youth is fully funded at $17K!

OFFP Care for Gaza - HITS $10K!!!! Great job all!

=== New Articles ===

Fans Declare War Against Warner Bros., Light Up Times Square for Beloved Show

Our Flag Means Death’s Renewal Campaign Lands Times Square Billboard

=== Other Stuff ===

Some BTS from Vico's IG reels

=Wanna help out our fellow cancelees?=

Sign the Petition for Rap Sh!t!

-------------------------------------------------------------

So Dad's message kind of blew everything else out of the water today, there were some sightings of various crew on the web but most of them were reactions to David's reel so I figured it probably wasn't worth adding today. Thank you as usual to the @renewasacrew team, and @TheCozyPirate for all their steering and insight and helping make these pivots possible each day!

-------------------------------------------------------------

Side note: I saw a lot of really great stuff today-- people focused more on action with the renewal and starting to discuss fun things more and more, less dealing with trolls. I hope that means you all are getting some rest and avoiding some of the crazy shit going on.

Seriously, you're doing amazing. David sees it, the cast sees it, the crew sees it, we all see it. You should all feel super proud of yourself for all the hard work you're doing, whether it's just enjoying the show, being active in the renewal efforts, or just being you.

Please continue to make art, and fics, and goofy memes, and silly videos, and everything. Your creativity is so inspiring and fun and it keeps us all sane! (Also please share them with me I love them.)

On that note, here's Rhys grabbing one of those Stiddies.

Gif courtesy of ofmd-ann's post here

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

The Daily Mail has helpfully listed all the times Meghan’s rebrands and relaunches have failed.

Archived Link

Here, FEMAIL reveals the Duke and Duchess' projects that, for all the carefully constructed razzmatazz of their launch, have so far come to little.

ARO/Roop:

[L]ittle more has been officially revealed about the brand, with no Instagram posts on the firm's official account since March and the website simply offering fans the chance to join a waitlist. But what exactly are potential customers waiting for? Jam and dog biscuits? A source told The Daily Mail in June that the priority is instead the launch of a rosé wine. It's unclear when exactly American Riviera Orchard products will be available.

Archetypes:

The Duchess, who produced only one series of her podcast Archetypes for Spotify before parting ways with the company, had signed with Lemonada to develop and host a new series. However, a source told Eden that there is not expected to be any work broadcast this year. 'The relaunch of Meghan's Archetypes podcast got pushed back to 2025,' the California-based source says….Lemonada is said to be concerned that there would also be 'scheduling conflicts' between the launch of its podcasts and that of Meghan's lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard.

40x40:

It was unclear at the time as to exactly how the project would work, or whether there would be any way to measure its success. But according to The Sun, less than 10 months on, there was no follow-up on the campaign and royal expert Angela Levin said she thought the 40x40 project had been 'cancelled'. She said: 'I think it's very quietly gone into the dustbin,' added that it was an idea of the royal's that 'didn't come off'. There also doesn't seem to be any mention of the 40x40 project on the Duke and Duchess' Archewell website.

Spotify:

Last January, [Bill Simmons, Spotify’s head head of podcast innovation and monetization] blasted Prince Harry, saying it was 'embarrassing' to be affiliated with the same company. 'Shoot this guy to the sun,' he said, according to sports website The Big Lead. 'I'm so tired of this guy. What does he bring to the table? He just whines about s*** and keeps giving interviews. Who gives a s***? Who cares about your life? You weren't even the favourite son. You live in f****** Montecito and you just sell documentaries and podcasts and nobody cares what you have to say about anything unless you talk about the royal family and you just complain about them.'

The couple produced less than 13 hours of content during the three-year partnership: 12 episodes of Meghan's Archetypes show, and a 30-minute Christmas special featuring both the Duke and Duchess.

Pearl/Netflix:

Harry and Meghan signed a five-year agreement with Netflix* in 2020 worth an estimated $100million (£80million) but earlier this year there was speculation that their contract renewal was under threat.

The couple's first launch on the streaming giant was their six-part documentary 'Harry and Meghan' which was released in 2022 and caused controversy with its series of swipes at the Royal Family. … But in May, Netflix dropped Meghan's planned animated series Pearl as part of a wave of cutbacks prompted by the streaming service's drop in subscribers. All references to her doomed animation were wiped from her Archewell website after the series was axed by the streaming giant. A prior description of the series under the Archewell Productions subsection was nowhere to be found after it was cancelled.

*There’s been a lot of speculation over the years about their Netflix deal, but this is the first official confirmation in writing (that I’ve been able to find) that it’s a 5-year deal. This supports my theory that the new push for content (Meghan’s lifestyle show, her cooking show, and Harry’s polo documentary) is a final “do or die” effort to be able to renegotiate their contract and renew their deal.

[kiefbowl]

this is a random thought I had in the shower actually well over a month ago, but I've been gnawing at it in my brain...and perhaps this is going to sound pathetic and a bit esoteric.

So, it suddenly dawned on me very randomly while I was showering that I have been paying for netflix for my own account since I was a freshman in college. Back in the dvd days, I remember having Firefly sent to me disk by disk my fall semester. This is 2009. It was an important part of college because I let my friends use it on their console and we'd all go to their dorm and watch streaming, and I passed out my log in to a ton of friends. I basically provided free Netflix to more or less 10 or so people over the course of four years for not even $7 a month I think.

What hit me though was that means, this year - that will be 15 years. That's what stopped me in my shower to stare off in the abyss for like 10 minutes and what's been on my mind for the past several weeks. I've been paying netflix for 15 years, which is the longest I've ever done anything. There is no other company I've so consistently paid for like this either, not for that many of years not even close. Quite possibly my longest relationship outside of my family and 2-3 other people. Netflix, the ever constant, of all forsaken things.

And what really bothers me about it is that, uhm, not to be an American consumer but like...I don't feel appreciated by netflix. For the past few years, I've barely used it, except for a few titles I've wanted to watch. I haven't passed out my log in since I changed it not long after college to keep an ex using it for free. I've remained loyal, despite the fact that I don't feel like some sort of loyal consumerist. I don't give a fuck about brands, I try to shop as little as possible, thrift what I can. And yet, what can I say? I actually am a loyal consumerist, to netflix that is.

What a shock to realize this, and what a shock to realize netflix does not acknowledge this, no email saying thanks, no surveys, no swag, no pizza party, no invite no perk no discount no nothing. Instead they raise prices, cut services, lose licenses, and cancel barely finished products. I'm 15 years loyal to this company for this?

And I think about the days of yore, but really not long ago. The preferred shopper's catalogues of department stores, the longtime shopper promotions of industry giants, the award systems for the loyal consumerists of chains and malls. The specialty Christmas items that are today vintage and worth money for their rarity. The thank yous, the special events. The mailers that say "Come to our store loyal customer and receive a free $20 coupon for that day!" And I'm not saying this is good, and of course it's all just marketing and advertisement, and I'm not saying this is the life I want to live...

But I am saying this would be easy for netflix to do, for someone like me. Someone who went from $7 to stream and receive DVDs, who got customers onboard when the model was new and the company was pioneering, to $20 to sit unused but for a month or two out of the year. It would be easy to pull the data. It would be easy to say which accounts have been opened the longest, to actually verify who has given 180 months worth of payments to them. It would be easy to give me a year's discount to say thank you. It would be easy for them to send an email to verify my address to send me merch. Do I want the merch? No, not really. But have they tried?

Have they even sent me an email saying "We appreciate your 15 years of support! We value you!" with little confetti animation? They didn't do it at 10 years. They didn't do it at 5 years. I don't recall ever receiving emails from netflix besides "Unfortunately, our payment model is changing."

As of today, I haven't pulled my account yet. I want to finish Bridgerton, even if this season is a snoozefest. But I think I will. I feel had and used, as pathetic as that sounds. Has Hulu done anything different? I can't remember when I signed up for them but it's been many years. No, but I frankly use it more, so I'm less angry. And with netflix...it's been fifteen years. They have really banked on us being passive in our payments, and accustomed to the freedom of endless choice, and it just feels gleeful that they never even once acknowledged I've been here this whole time. Actually, act like Sears and Bloomingdales 60 years ago, or we quit I think we should say. Ask me my address to send me a glass netflix mug or I'll fuck off, because who do you think you are to think so little of me, the only reason you exist for?

[incorrectbatfam]

favorite pair of bat siblings and their favorite thing to do together

Not a pair but I'm always a fan of the Tim+Steph+Cass+Duke quartet

Alfred sends them grocery shopping. Steph and Cass race shopping carts, Duke gets a $500 parmesan wheel the size of a bike tire, and Tim negotiates his way into buying a lottery ticket underaged. They're no longer allowed to go unsupervised

They once pretended they were making each other's death row meals. Steph made a rotisserie chicken, Cass baked a Happy Death Day cake, Duke blended a smoothie bowl 'cause the girls were taking up all the stove space, and Tim opened a can of Arkham-brand slop and called it a day

The first time they meet Duke's girlfriend, Izzy, the girls hit it off instantly and within 15 minutes get all of his embarrassing We Are Robin stories. Tim takes notes. Very very detailed notes

Steph's New Year's resolution is to finish a TV show before anyone can spoil it. Tim, Cass, and Duke's resolution is to watch everything before her. Duke puts everything on 2x speed, Cass screenshots major moments, and Tim hacks Netflix to get new episodes early

Steph used to work retail and they won't let her live down the time she, as a customer, used her customer service voice on a cashier

Tim's phone doesn't have a QR reader. If he needs to access one in public, the other three will do a thing where one scans it while the rest two pretend to and they make him guess

Cass is really passionate about making tiny ballet slippers for rats so they get an equal chance to learn it and ropes the other three into her sewing circle. Damian sometimes helps too

They get an underwater speaker for the sole purpose of playing the Jaws theme while Bruce is in the pool

Alfred creates a swear jar for each kid. Everyone expects Jason to fill it first, but it's actually Duke after he stubs his toe. Second is Steph, then Cass in sign language, and finally Tim when his coffee ran out

Alfred collects the money and gives it to Selina for safekeeping, who wires it back to Tim who adds a new living room to the house. Duke blueprints, Steph and Cass pick the furniture, and they slowly build it whenever they get a break. It's not hidden or anything, but somehow no one noticed an entire room that wasn't there before

They have a shared Spotify account. Some of their playlists: POV it's 1998 and you're terrified of growing up, Songs for when you wanna bite styrofoam, How to use a stapler, and Holy Fucking Bingle

[liu-anhuaming]

Reading Chinese Ebooks on 讀墨 ReadMoo

For the past few years, I've labored under the assumption that I can't read Chinese ebooks because I just can't focus on them. However, I recently saw someone on insta mention the app 讀墨. I was intrigued, and decided to give it a try. And wow, what a shock, I can in fact read Chinese ebooks! I just have to change it to vertical text and make the font very large.

So the past couple weeks I've been trying to read more consistently using 讀墨. The book I started with was slow going at first, which almost made me give up; it was the Chinese translation of The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. This book really wasn't for me, and I didn't want to keep reading it. So instead of just giving up, I bought one more book and tried again: 《你的孩子不是你的孩子》 by 吳曉樂 (yes, it is the basis for the Netflix show of the same name).

I devoured the book in under a week. So yeah, I think Chinese ebooks work for me if I like the book.

Below is gonna be an overview of the app, and my thoughts on it so far. It's not comprehensive though, since there's a lot of things on this app I haven't explored yet (like the audiobooks).

***Please note that 讀墨 is a Taiwanese app, and as such it mainly offers books written in traditional characters. There are apparently books written in simplified available, but I haven't explored those since I'm fine reading traditional.***

Buying Books

Buying books is fairly simple. You make an in-app purchase of coins, which you then use to buy books. Note: As of writing this, I have recently recently received a notification from the app that their book purchasing system will be changing soon. Instead of being able to buy the books in the app, you'll have to log in to your account in a browser and buy the books there. The books will apparently then appear on the app for you to read.

As it stands, 210 coins costs $10.99, and the books I've bought have ranged in price from 210 to about 300 coins. That means the books cost ~$11-$16, just like a regular book. This could be pricey, but since I'd otherwise be paying for international shipping if I were buying a physical copy, this feels like a bargain to me. (For me, shipping books from Taiwan/China to the US typically doubles the price of the purchase rip)

Once you buy the book, it's in your library for you to start whenever you please.

As for browsing for books, I haven't gone too in-depth yet. I went in to 讀墨 with a TBR and went for books off that list exclusively. When it comes to buying books online, I almost always go on whatever site I'm buying from with a list of the books I'm thinking of buying. I get recommendations elsewhere (e.g., Goodreads or insta).

Reading Books

The 讀墨 reading interface is pretty typical for an e-reader app. What makes me like it way better than other apps I've used is that it has a lot more customization options.

For starters, you've got 6 options for page/text color. There's the typical black, white, and sepia, but there's also blue and green! I use the 奶綠 option, since I don't like having such a stark contrast between the text and the background when reading on my phone for long periods.

Then there's the options for changing the text size and spacing. You can make it bigger or smaller as you please, and put more or less space between each line of text.

You can also change the font. There's 8 different fonts you can choose from, including the default. There's even a font that puts 注音 next to each character! You can see a preview of that one in the photo below.

And then, there's the option to switch between horizontal and vertical text. The default is horizontal text, but I've come to prefer vertical when reading Chinese novels. If you go to your settings on your profile, you can make vertical text your default, which is what I ended up doing.

Like any good e-reader, there's options to highlight text. There's four different colors you can use (pink, yellow, purple, and blue). If you go the ToC, you can find all of your highlights and filter by color of highlight. Super convenient, since I've been using pink to highlight words/phrases I don't know or find interesting and yellow to highlight key sentences/paragraphs.

Aside from highlighting, when you select text you have the option to look the characters up in a dictionary or online. I've been getting a lot of errors with this recently, but I'm wondering if that's just my phone acting weird? It worked perfectly fine when I first started using the app. Anyways, the dictionary it takes you to is 夢典 MoeDict and it opens in a browser. This personally is a bit annoying bc I actually have this dictionary app installed on my phone, but this is a minor complaint. The dictionary opening in a new browser tab is a non-issue.

Reading Stats

Now, I'm a big dork and love to track my reading stats. To my great satisfaction, 讀墨 keeps track of some stats. The main one is time spent reading. You can set a daily goal (the minimum is 20 minutes), and if you reach it you get a nice checkmark on the calendar. The calendar doesn't update until the very end of each day, so if you've reached your goal for the day it won't show on the calendar until the next day.

Also, keep in mind time differences between where you live and Taiwan. I'm ~12 hours behind Taiwan, so the app doesn't start a new day until around noon for me.

Below the calendar, there's a chart that shows your total reading times for a week, month, or year. I normally can't be bothered to time my reading (especially not when I'm reading physical books) so this is cool to see. I think when it comes to reading in Chinese, being timed is more interesting because I'm able to more clearly gauge progress.

And below all that, there's a breakdown of the genres you read. I don't pay much attention to genre when choosing books, so I don't find this one quite as interesting.

(tfw you're reading a non-fiction book about a tutor so your main genre becomes 教育)

Overall Thoughts

So yeah, I've enjoyed myself so far. Aside from the reading interface, I find the app pretty easy to navigate. I spent a bit of time just clicking around and was able to figure out what's what pretty quick.

Like I said, this isn't a comprehensive review, but I'd recommend giving the app a try if you're willing/able to put down money for ebooks and are able to read traditional. It feels worth the money for me, since the interface is pretty customizable and easy to use.

If you're wondering where to find simplified ebooks, idk. This is my first real foray into Chinese ebooks, so I don't really know where to find them for simplified or traditional. I have heard that it is a little easier to pirate Chinese ebooks since their copyright laws are a little different than ours in the US?

[bouncinghedgehog]

BREAKING: Donald Trump gets infuriating news as titans of business like Mark Cuban, Reed Hastings, and Aaron Levine band together to launch a new initiative to elect Kamala Harris.

Business for Leaders for Harris has launched a series of slickly produced video testimonials from small business owners as well as the aforementioned prominent industry leaders to argue for a Harris presidency.

At the top of the list are Shark Tank billionaire Mark Cuban, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, Box CEO Aaron Levine, former American Express CEO Ken Chenault, and former Merck CEO Ken Frazier. They all recorded short videos in support of Harris.

"Kamala Harris brings order and innovation. Donald Trump brings chaos and fear and hopelessness. We need someone who will bring us hope in a very tangible way and that is Kamala Harris," Chenault said in his testimonial.

"In many ways, I think it will be an improvement from the current administration. And one of her differences is the level of interest that she has," said Hastings.

Business Leaders for Harris comes from the progressive Republican Accountability PAC. The super PAC received $6 million from Hoffman and $7 million from Hastings alone.

On top of that, Hoffman will be hosting the new Business Leaders for Harris podcast, the first episode of which will feature him talking to Cuban and then Hastings.

Hoffman said he has heard from "a whole bunch of CEOs, who actually feel very strongly that Harris is better for business, but who don’t feel like they can speak up as much because they’re currently in ‘the seat.'"

"They’re kind of like, ’Hey, I got a bunch of employees. I got shareholders. I got customers," he added.

[sweetviciousmagician]

If you told me that AI wrote the script for season 4 of The Umbrella Academy I’d almost believe you. But I don’t think even AI could’ve messed up it up as much as the writers did. Someone must have a secret vendetta against the fans or something because in what world was that a good season? Or even a good way to end a show? I’m so blown away by the talent that was wasted, the character growth, the hardworking actors, the fans who’ve waited so long. The only thing that comes to mind when trying to articulate how let down i felt is comparing it to the ending of Game of Thrones.

Netflix has had so many loyal fan/customers despite how quickly they cancel shows. I myself use my friends account as we are at each other’s houses quite frequently anyway. But if I had my own account still (I unsubscribed after they cancelled tv shows after the strikes) I think I’d have canceled it for sure after this. I’m no expert by any means at marketing or producing shows, but something has got to change. Or at least I think so, maybe they’re still making money by the millions and don’t care about quality? I’m just confused as to how this happened.

I myself have never read the comics, can someone tell me if this is anything similar to what happens in those? I feel like there has to be some explanation for how badly the season was handled. Let me know if I’m missing something!

[dianesdiaries]

Writeblr Intro

Hi!

Just for a little introduction, I go by dd and my pronouns are she/her. I'm using this blog page as a one shot/continued fanfic account until I can really start generating ideas for my own stories, so requests and questions are very appreciated!

(For a little background) I love cats. To death. FL.

I love playing video games, watching films, and expanding on my writing ideas. One of the main things that gives me ideas on what to write is video editing, TikTok etc. Some of my all-time favourites that will, most likely, get published onto here are The Boys, The Last of Us, The Walking Dead, and more!

Also would love to meet new writing mutuals!!

WIP(s)

So far I have to WIPs and would love feedback!!

Bewildered- Historical Western Drama/Dark Fantasy

A group of outlaws set high in the plains of north america plan the biggest heist of their life; hijack the north american railway. Ramond has waited for an opportunity like this, as the south prairies winters only grew colder his destined robbery of the railway was destined to meet him halfway. But with the love of his life waiting for him to leave everything behind and start on a clean slate, how will Ramond leave the outlaw-life behind? After all, prosperity comes with the cost of life. 

This was my first WIP that I started back in November, I never really had the chance to finish it and I've been stuck on chapter two since January (God save me). The plot and settings is so interesting but I have no idea of what makes the story itself interesting. Working on it tho!!

(Untitled Draft)

Kumiko has been a rather quiet person since highschool ended, and a year later finds herself living a comfortable life in the heart of Toronto, chasing big dreams of standing judicial someday. But until then, she works at the local gas station, meeting all kinds of new characters during her graveyard shift.  Her nights are filled with endless hours of watching netflix episodes and serving late night regulars, like any other day. But a meteor crossed the night sky in everlasting blue, and a star was born. Kumiko is reunited with a familiar classmate the same night of the meteor shower, Linari Hoshi. The two reconnect and find comfort in living in the same old, run down apartment. But something is off. She’s not as bright as she used to be, and Kumiko never knew her to be someone that stays out at graveyards’ timing. Kumiko’s regular life of invading-like customers shifts its colours, and reveals cynnical truths of the Rockafort apartments that make her blood run cold.

A new story that I might start working on to kill time, loosely holds theme inspiration from Sally Face!!

[fedoraspooky]

I haven’t been here long. What irritating changes have been made?

Credit where it's due, some changes have been good, like polls and stuff! But the big recent changes thus far that I would classify as irritating are:

- The UI change. This one may be less irritating for newcomers because it's basically the same layout as twitter and instagram, but for a lot of folks who've been here a long time, it feels cramped and like a loss of identity for the site. For many, the appeal of tumblr is that it ISN'T an algorithm hell like twitter or insta. Also, there's the annoyance of having to relearn where everything is, because it all got moved around.

- The users being lab rats for various tests the devs wanna pull out of nowhere without consenting to beta testing new site features- like the one that took away user icons on the dash for like half the site. They finally put them back after getting enough feedback that said NO, but users were so used to their feedback being disregarded that they were half expecting the change to be pushed through anyway.

- The Netflix tie-in advertising being pushed even to people who had PAID tumblr for a no-ads experience. Complete with them somehow thinking it would be a good idea to put an unescapable-by-scrolling spooky clown on peoples' dashboards that u had to use ublock to get rid of. While I'm not scared of clowns and often find them quite charming, it sucks that staff didn't take coulrophobia being a common fear into account.

- A wave of fully sfw trans posts being wrongfully marked Mature and staff doing little to nothing about it. Not sure if this is still ongoing, but it destroyed a lot of trust and good will. (LGBT+ users have been having to fight a constant war against censorship ever since the adult content ban on tumblr, so yeah... Nevar 4get the list of banned search words that would bring back no results, like 'girl')

- The site gradually moving away from customization. Tumblr is a BLOGGING site. But it seems to have lost sight of that fact, because most new users don't even know you can fully customize your blogs with css and stuff (an option that is now off by default for new accounts!), because of the in-dash viewer giving you only how blogs look on mobile, which is a lot more uniform. There, it's more like every other site- you get a banner and icon. Oh, but you can change colors and fonts from a drop-down list too, that's cool I guess. Though they recently took away custom color schemes on Message windows, just another little bit of personalization taken away.

- TUMBLR. LIVE. Basically tumblr teamed up with a skeevy dating app partner to allow for livestreams- but not the cool kinda livestreams like on twitch where you can draw or play games, no- to a site full of people who value anonymity, they decided to push phone cam only livestreams. Not only that but by agreeing to the terms, you're giving out tons of personal data including your location to said skeevy dating app partner and all of THEIR third-party ad partners. Needless to say, most people didn't wanna use it, so instead of users it's flooded by p*rn bots (which is ANOTHER issue we've been dealing with for a long time and have been getting an even bigger influx of FROM tumblr live) and scammers. And thus, since tumblr likes to put a carousel of current streams on people's dashes, you often get softcore p*rn thumbnails from the bot streams with no way to avoid it except for toggling off tumblr live entirely.

- Oh wait. That's right. You CAN'T toggle it off. Because you can only snooze it for a while until BAM, you're jumpscared by a carousel of ladies licking your screen again! But hey, at least they made the snooze 30 days instead of the 7 it used to be, right? Yeah, except for the fact that you can't get rid of the tumblr live button itself on the app anymore, and now it's front and center with a NEW notification tag on it, overlapping your dash and cramming useful stuff like the search button out of the way.

NOW- A lot of this stuff CAN be at least mostly fixed on desktop by installing ublock and xkit and tampermonkey + dashboard unfucker... But that's a lot of stuff just to make the site usable, you know?