#big gift

[purpdrawsthings]

Sending the whole thing rn because I don't have the motivation to color this whole ass thing 💀

HAH, YOU GUYS THOUGHT THE ONLY ONES WHO WERE IN HERE WERE THE ONES WHO SUBMITTED?

YOU ARE SO WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!

I want to cutely jumpscare as many people as I can =3

Everybody in here are great creators/artists, GO AND FLOOD THEM WITH YOUR SUPPORT Y'ALL!!!!!!!!

Anyways, yeetus my fellow beans =3

@bluestrawberrybunny @crystiiorcloudidk @libbytwq @echostarsys @fan-art-dom @zenith-astral @bear-boi-5 @blveblvrr @clownypillar @cookiepopcat @its-a-me-mango @coralalala64 @meg-girumi @nxva-blogz @tiredsmashbros @strange0-0storm @rr3d2y @smgx-pez

And your one and only silly Muslim =3

[dimalink]

Style and celebration. Bright, red, celebration and some mystery. And it is very stylish showcase of some store. To enter such little store – it is already like to be at celebration. So, lots of red color. And I think maybe it is such smooth material if touch it. And also, it is a new year’s ball here. So, thats for sure, it is celebration, red color and something mysterious.

From below, there are huge red gifts. They are so big, that it is idea, as fast as you can to untie this bow and node. And to see what interesting it is inside. So, winter and grey days are ending. It is start to be a bright weather. And when it is such a little dark sky, and bright but dusk, such a bright showcase – it is double time amazing spectacle! Just wow!

Style and gifts. Style and red color. As a beautiful dress. Beautifully decorated showcase.

And even more – such color a dress, it was for miss Sarah Brightman for her album Symphony and tour and photo sessions for record. And somewhere even with such a big red bow and node. Different dresses it was.

[spacee-pop]

stack

lots of friends in here lol

[tamathaatam]

[rightnewshindi]

सुक्खू सरकार का बड़ा तोहफा, न्यूनतम मजदूरी हुई 400 रुपए; अधिसूचना जारी

Shimla News: प्रदेश सरकार ने राज्य में दिहाड़ी बढ़ाने को लेकर जारी अधिसूचना मंगलवार को राजपत्र में प्रकाशित की है। बढ़ी हुई दिहाड़ी 1 अप्रैल 2024 से मिलेगी। इसके तहत राज्य में अब न्यूनतम दिहाड़ी बढ़ाकर 400 रुपए हो गई है। अधिसूचना के तहत ��कुशल कामगारों को 400 रुपए, अर्द्धकुशल को 425 रुपए, कुशल कामगारों को 464 रुपए, उच्च कुशल कामगारों को 553 रुपए दिहाड़ी मिलेगी। इसके अलावा लिपिक व गैर-तकनीकी…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

My next book is The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation: it’s a Big Tech disassembly manual that explains how to disenshittify the web and bring back the old good internet. The hardcover comes from Verso on Sept 5, but the audiobook comes from me — because Amazon refuses to sell my audio:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

Amazon owns Audible, the monopoly audiobook platform that controls >90% of the audio market. They require mandatory DRM for every book sold, locking those books forever to Amazon’s monopoly platform. If you break up with Amazon, you have to throw away your entire audiobook library.

That’s a hell of a lot of leverage to hand to any company, let alone a rapacious monopoly that ran a program targeting small publishers called “Project Gazelle,” where execs were ordered to attack indie publishers “the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle”:

https://www.businessinsider.com/sadistic-amazon-treated-book-sellers-the-way-a-cheetah-would-pursue-a-sickly-gazelle-2013-10

[Image ID: Journalist and novelist Doctorow (Red Team Blues) details a plan for how to break up Big Tech in this impassioned and perceptive manifesto….Doctorow’s sense of urgency is contagious -Publishers Weekly]

I won’t sell my work with DRM, because DRM is key to the enshittification of the internet. Enshittification is why the old, good internet died and became “five giant websites filled with screenshots of the other four” (h/t Tom Eastman). When a tech company can lock in its users and suppliers, it can drain value from both sides, using DRM and other lock-in gimmicks to keep their business even as they grow ever more miserable on the platform.

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die:

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

[Image ID: A brilliant barn burner of a book. Cory is one of the sharpest tech critics, and he shows with fierce clarity how our computational future could be otherwise -Kate Crawford, author of The Atlas of AI”]

The Internet Con isn’t just an analysis of where enshittification comes from: it’s a detailed, shovel-ready policy prescription for halting enshittification, throwing it into reverse and bringing back the old, good internet.

How do we do that? With interoperability: the ability to plug new technology into those crapulent, decaying platform. Interop lets you choose which parts of the service you want and block the parts you don’t (think of how an adblocker lets you take the take-it-or-leave “offer” from a website and reply with “How about nah?”):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

But interop isn’t just about making platforms less terrible — it’s an explosive charge that demolishes walled gardens. With interop, you can leave a social media service, but keep talking to the people who stay. With interop, you can leave your mobile platform, but bring your apps and media with you to a rival’s service. With interop, you can break up with Amazon, and still keep your audiobooks.

So, if interop is so great, why isn’t it everywhere?

Well, it used to be. Interop is how Microsoft became the dominant operating system:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

[Image ID: Nobody gets the internet-both the nuts and bolts that make it hum and the laws that shaped it into the mess it is-quite like Cory, and no one’s better qualified to deliver us a user manual for fixing it. That’s The Internet Con: a rousing, imaginative, and accessible treatise for correcting our curdled online world. If you care about the internet, get ready to dedicate yourself to making interoperability a reality. -Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine]

It’s how Apple saved itself from Microsoft’s vicious campaign to destroy it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Every tech giant used interop to grow, and then every tech giant promptly turned around and attacked interoperators. Every pirate wants to be an admiral. When Big Tech did it, that was progress; when you do it back to Big Tech, that’s piracy. The tech giants used their monopoly power to make interop without permission illegal, creating a kind of “felony contempt of business model” (h/t Jay Freeman).

The Internet Con describes how this came to pass, but, more importantly, it tells us how to fix it. It lays out how we can combine different kinds of interop requirements (like the EU’s Digital Markets Act and Massachusetts’s Right to Repair law) with protections for reverse-engineering and other guerrilla tactics to create a system that is strong without being brittle, hard to cheat on and easy to enforce.

What’s more, this book explains how to get these policies: what existing legislative, regulatory and judicial powers can be invoked to make them a reality. Because we are living through the Great Enshittification, and crises erupt every ten seconds, and when those crises occur, the “good ideas lying around” can move from the fringes to the center in an eyeblink:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/12/only-a-crisis/#lets-gooooo

[Image ID: Thoughtfully written and patiently presented, The Internet Con explains how the promise of a free and open internet was lost to predatory business practices and the rush to commodify every aspect of our lives. An essential read for anyone that wants to understand how we lost control of our digital spaces and infrastructure to Silicon Valley’s tech giants, and how we can start fighting to get it back. -Tim Maughan, author of INFINITE DETAIL]

After all, we’ve known Big Tech was rotten for years, but we had no idea what to do about it. Every time a Big Tech colossus did something ghastly to millions or billions of people, we tried to fix the tech company. There’s no fixing the tech companies. They need to burn. The way to make users safe from Big Tech predators isn’t to make those predators behave better — it’s to evacuate those users:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

I’ve been campaigning for human rights in the digital world for more than 20 years; I’ve been EFF’s European Director, representing the public interest at the EU, the UN, Westminster, Ottawa and DC. This is the subject I’ve devoted my life to, and I live my principles. I won’t let my books be sold with DRM, which means that Audible won’t carry my audiobooks. My agent tells me that this decision has cost me enough money to pay off my mortgage and put my kid through college. That’s a price I’m willing to pay if it means that my books aren’t enshittification bait.

But not selling on Audible has another cost, one that’s more important to me: a lot of readers prefer audiobooks and 9 out of 10 of those readers start and end their searches on Audible. When they don’t find an author there, they assume no audiobook exists, period. It got so bad I put up an audiobook on Amazon — me, reading an essay, explaining how Audible rips off writers and readers. It’s called “Why None of My Audiobooks Are For Sale on Audible”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

[Image ID: Doctorow has been thinking longer and smarter than anyone else I know about how we create and exchange value in a digital age. -Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock]

To get my audiobooks into readers’ ears, I pre-sell them on Kickstarter. This has been wildly successful, both financially and as a means of getting other prominent authors to break up with Amazon and use crowdfunding to fill the gap. Writers like Brandon Sanderson are doing heroic work, smashing Amazon’s monopoly:

https://www.brandonsanderson.com/guest-editorial-cory-doctorow-is-a-bestselling-author-but-audible-wont-carry-his-audiobooks/

And to be frank, I love audiobooks, too. I swim every day as physio for a chronic pain condition, and I listen to 2–3 books/month on my underwater MP3 player, disappearing into an imaginary world as I scull back and forth in my public pool. I’m able to get those audiobooks on my MP3 player thanks to Libro.fm, a DRM-free store that supports indie booksellers all over the world:

https://blog.libro.fm/a-qa-with-mark-pearson-libro-fm-ceo-and-co-founder/

Producing my own audiobooks has been a dream. Working with Skyboat Media, I’ve gotten narrators like @wilwheaton​, Amber Benson, @neil-gaiman​ and Stefan Rudnicki for my work:

https://craphound.com/shop/

[Image ID: “This book is the instruction manual Big Tech doesn’t want you to read. It deconstructs their crummy products, undemocratic business models, rigged legal regimes, and lies. Crack this book and help build something better. -Astra Taylor, author of Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When Its Gone”]

But for this title, I decided that I would read it myself. After all, I’ve been podcasting since 2006, reading my own work aloud every week or so, even as I traveled the world and gave thousands of speeches about the subject of this book. I was excited (and a little trepedatious) at the prospect, but how could I pass up a chance to work with director Gabrielle de Cuir, who has directed everyone from Anne Hathaway to LeVar Burton to Eric Idle?

Reader, I fucking nailed it. I went back to those daily recordings fully prepared to hate them, but they were good — even great (especially after my engineer John Taylor Williams mastered them). Listen for yourself!

https://archive.org/details/cory_doctorow_internet_con_chapter_01

I hope you’ll consider backing this Kickstarter. If you’ve ever read my free, open access, CC-licensed blog posts and novels, or listened to my podcasts, or come to one of my talks and wished there was a way to say thank you, this is it. These crowdfunders make my DRM-free publishing program viable, even as audiobooks grow more central to a writer’s income and even as a single company takes over nearly the entire audiobook market.

Backers can choose from the DRM-free audiobook, DRM-free ebook (EPUB and MOBI) and a hardcover — including a signed, personalized option, fulfilled through the great LA indie bookstore Book Soup:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

What’s more, these ebooks and audiobooks are unlike any you’ll get anywhere else because they are sold without any terms of service or license agreements. As has been the case since time immemorial, when you buy these books, they’re yours, and you are allowed to do anything with them that copyright law permits — give them away, lend them to friends, or simply read them with any technology you choose.

As with my previous Kickstarters, backers can get their audiobooks delivered with an app (from libro.fm) or as a folder of MP3s. That helps people who struggle with “sideloading,” a process that Apple and Google have made progressively harder, even as they force audiobook and ebook sellers to hand over a 30% app tax on every dollar they make:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell/posts/3788112

Enshittification is rotting every layer of the tech stack: mobile, payments, hosting, social, delivery, playback. Every tech company is pulling the rug out from under us, using the chokepoints they built between audiences and speakers, artists and fans, to pick all of our pockets.

The Internet Con isn’t just a lament for the internet we lost — it’s a plan to get it back. I hope you’ll get a copy and share it with the people you love, even as the tech platforms choke off your communities to pad their quarterly numbers.

Next weekend (Aug 4-6), I'll be in Austin for Armadillocon, a science fiction convention, where I'm the Guest of Honor:

https://armadillocon.org/d45/

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/31/seize-the-means-of-computation/#the-internet-con

[Image ID: My forthcoming book 'The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation' in various editions: Verso hardcover, audiobook displayed on a phone, and ebook displayed on an e-ink reader.]

[barghest-land]

drawings from paleo expedition to dagestan, done right on the trip. sometimes messy when it was cold and rainy, but i won't correct it. i think it's cool to leave it just the way it was done, and not retouch it after. there will be more drawings later, but those will be done from home

[honehonn3honey]

Birthday boy 🎂

[dykesevika]

I just wanna point out the small detail of jinx drawing a heart on her arm because it’s so cute 😭

[kimtaegis]

JIN HUGS JIN HUGS! for @jinstronaut ♡

cr. namuspromised, dwellingsouls, 0613data

[makolokgneh]

so... I have some stuff waiting

I was learning about the tango being a battle for the lead... I couldn't resist... here u go

[purpdrawsthings]

Ok what in the actual hell, did I just finish an animation in one fucking day

Hello hello as you know I make animations

And ungodly amount of fan art that I for some reason have no explanation for

So I decided to make this whole as gift in one day and I managed to finish it... At 11:20 at midnight 💀

Idk how I managed to do this but uh yeah

Got a lil lazy on the last part because GOD MY HANDS ARE SHIVERING ME TIMBERS RN

Uhhhh yeah enjoy.

And that statement up there ladies and gentlemen was me yesterday.

Ngl, I felt so burnt out and so sleepy that I couldn't for in what I wanted to say and wished I could've added this in 😭😭😭

I did this whole thing from I think 3 o'clock in the evening after I came back from school and had the crazy ass idea of doing this.

All the way from 3 to 11, I worked on this thang

So I've been working on this for approximately 8 hours max 💀💀💀

No breaks [ except for some breaks ] and absolutely almost speed running through the whole ass thing

Got way too lazy on the last part since it was literally 10 o'clock and I had to help my sister help a portion of the dishes because she just came back from a moon cake festival and didn't even shower yet like wth 💀💀💀

I absolutely wished I could've added more talented, amazing SMG4 artists in here because there's such a wide variety of them that it actually makes me go coo-coo crazy

Honourable mentions I would've added were prob Trap Sanchez, Opposol, Elis CZ and a couple of other [ which I will not tag since I felt that was way too much tbh ]

Those 3 artists were the ones who actually got me in the damn SMG4 community

And ngl, this fandom is great and is filled to the brim of artists whom I really adore.

It felt quite the missed opportunity for me to not feature them =[

But maybe I will do another huge ass gift, in the future because I have 3 animations to work on I won't be adding another one to my goddamn list like wth 💀💀💀💀

Anyways uhhh yeah! That's about the stuff I didn't get to feature before I posted this whole thing and maybe regretted it a little.

Uhhhhh yeetus =3

All people mentioned in order :

@tiredsmashbros @strange0-0storm @its-a-me-mango @libbytwq @theartistisme43 @cookiepopcat @vrynnvryxivia @lemonjuicesblog @supern0vashii @goofy-mcgee69420 @rr3d2y @meg-girumi

[canisalbus]

You could say I was horsing around.

.

[deep-space-lines]

I am inflicting, or perhaps bestowing, upon you: Garrus as various unnecessarily sexualized references that come up if you look up refs of women with guns :)

(( @milkywayes i know we’ve like almost never interacted but the silly comment i left on your post would Not leave my brain. I need to show u what you inspired ))

[purple-ravaged]

kakashi x star wars

[rightnewshindi]

PM Awas; मिडल क्लास को पीएम मोदी का बड़ा तोहफा, 8 लाख के होम लोन पर मिलेगी 4 फीसदी ब्याज सब्सिडी

PM Awas Yojana-Urban 2.0 Scheme: केंद्र सरकार ने प्रधानमंत्री आवास योजना-शहरी (पीएमएवाई-यू) 2.0 को मंजूरी दे दी है। इस��े तहत शहरी गरीब और मध्‍यमवर्गीय परिवारों के लिए 1 करोड़ आवास बनाए जाने हैं। इस 1 करोड़ घर परिवारों के लिए 2.30 लाख करोड़ की सरकारी सब्सिडी दी जाएगी। यह सब्सिडी अलग-अलग तरीके से दी जाएगी। ऐसा ही एक तरीका-ब्याज सब्सिडी योजना का है। आइए इस योजना के बारे में जान लेते हैं। योजना के…