#disable wps

[distortedclouds]

Welp! looks like i'm gonna need another writing software, because on WPS Office when I right-click:

[exquisiteagony]

well my day’s plans are fucking ruined

AGAIN

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Tesla's Dieselgate

Elon Musk lies a lot. He lies about being a “utopian socialist.” He lies about being a “free speech absolutist.” He lies about which companies he founded:

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-cofounder-martin-eberhard-interview-history-elon-musk-ev-market-2023-2 He lies about being the “chief engineer” of those companies:

https://www.quora.com/Was-Elon-Musk-the-actual-engineer-behind-SpaceX-and-Tesla

He lies about really stupid stuff, like claiming that comsats that share the same spectrum will deliver steady broadband speeds as they add more users who each get a narrower slice of that spectrum:

https://www.eff.org/wp/case-fiber-home-today-why-fiber-superior-medium-21st-century-broadband

The fundamental laws of physics don’t care about this bullshit, but people do. The comsat lie convinced a bunch of people that pulling fiber to all our homes is literally impossible — as though the electrical and phone lines that come to our homes now were installed by an ancient, lost civilization. Pulling new cabling isn’t a mysterious art, like embalming pharaohs. We do it all the time. One of the poorest places in America installed universal fiber with a mule named “Ole Bub”:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

Previous tech barons had “reality distortion fields,” but Musk just blithely contradicts himself and pretends he isn’t doing so, like a budget Steve Jobs. There’s an entire site devoted to cataloging Musk’s public lies:

https://elonmusk.today/

But while Musk lacks the charm of earlier Silicon Valley grifters, he’s much better than they ever were at running a long con. For years, he’s been promising “full self driving…next year.”

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

He’s hasn’t delivered, but he keeps claiming he has, making Teslas some of the deadliest cars on the road:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-autopilot-crashes-elon-musk/

Tesla is a giant shell-game masquerading as a car company. The important thing about Tesla isn’t its cars, it’s Tesla’s business arrangement, the Tesla-Financial Complex:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-puedo-pagar-no-pagara/#Rat

Once you start unpacking Tesla’s balance sheets, you start to realize how much the company depends on government subsidies and tax-breaks, combined with selling carbon credits that make huge, planet-destroying SUVs possible, under the pretense that this is somehow good for the environment:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

But even with all those financial shenanigans, Tesla’s got an absurdly high valuation, soaring at times to 1600x its profitability:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/15/hoover-calling/#intangibles

That valuation represents a bet on Tesla’s ability to extract ever-higher rents from its customers. Take Tesla’s batteries: you pay for the battery when you buy your car, but you don’t own that battery. You have to rent the right to use its full capacity, with Tesla reserving the right to reduce how far you go on a charge based on your willingness to pay:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/09/10/teslas-demon-haunted-cars-in-irmas-path-get-a-temporary-battery-life-boost/

That’s just one of the many rent-a-features that Tesla drivers have to shell out for. You don’t own your car at all: when you sell it as a used vehicle, Tesla strips out these features you paid for and makes the next driver pay again, reducing the value of your used car and transfering it to Tesla’s shareholders:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-autopilot-disabled-remotely-used-car-update

To maintain this rent-extraction racket, Tesla uses DRM that makes it a felony to alter your own car’s software without Tesla’s permission. This is the root of all autoenshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

This is technofeudalism. Whereas capitalists seek profits (income from selling things), feudalists seek rents (income from owning the things other people use). If Telsa were a capitalist enterprise, then entrepreneurs could enter the market and sell mods that let you unlock the functionality in your own car:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/11/1-in-3/#boost-50

But because Tesla is a feudal enterprise, capitalists must first secure permission from the fief, Elon Musk, who decides which companies are allowed to compete with him, and how.

Once a company owns the right to decide which software you can run, there’s no limit to the ways it can extract rent from you. Blocking you from changing your device’s software lets a company run overt scams on you. For example, they can block you from getting your car independently repaired with third-party parts.

But they can also screw you in sneaky ways. Once a device has DRM on it, Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it a felony to bypass that DRM, even for legitimate purposes. That means that your DRM-locked device can spy on you, and because no one is allowed to explore how that surveillance works, the manufacturer can be incredibly sloppy with all the personal info they gather:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/29/tesla-model-3-keeps-data-like-crash-videos-location-phone-contacts.html

All kinds of hidden anti-features can lurk in your DRM-locked car, protected from discovery, analysis and criticism by the illegality of bypassing the DRM. For example, Teslas have a hidden feature that lets them lock out their owners and summon a repo man to drive them away if you have a dispute about a late payment:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

DRM is a gun on the mantlepiece in Act I, and by Act III, it goes off, revealing some kind of ugly and often dangerous scam. Remember Dieselgate? Volkswagen created a line of demon-haunted cars: if they thought they were being scrutinized (by regulators measuring their emissions), they switched into a mode that traded performance for low emissions. But when they believed themselves to be unobserved, they reversed this, emitting deadly levels of NOX but delivering superior mileage.

The conversion of the VW diesel fleet into mobile gas-chambers wouldn’t have been possible without DRM. DRM adds a layer of serious criminal jeopardy to anyone attempting to reverse-engineer and study any device, from a phone to a car. DRM let Apple claim to be a champion of its users’ privacy even as it spied on them from asshole to appetite:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Now, Tesla is having its own Dieselgate scandal. A stunning investigation by Steve Stecklow and Norihiko Shirouzu for Reuters reveals how Tesla was able to create its own demon-haunted car, which systematically deceived drivers about its driving range, and the increasingly desperate measures the company turned to as customers discovered the ruse:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-batteries-range/

The root of the deception is very simple: Tesla mis-sells its cars by falsely claiming ranges that those cars can’t attain. Every person who ever bought a Tesla was defrauded.

But this fraud would be easy to detect. If you bought a Tesla rated for 353 miles on a charge, but the dashboard range predictor told you that your fully charged car could only go 150 miles, you’d immediately figure something was up. So your Telsa tells another lie: the range predictor tells you that you can go 353 miles.

But again, if the car continued to tell you it has 203 miles of range when it was about to run out of charge, you’d figure something was up pretty quick — like, the first time your car ran out of battery while the dashboard cheerily informed you that you had 203 miles of range left.

So Teslas tell a third lie: when the battery charge reached about 50%, the fake range is replaced with the real one. That way, drivers aren’t getting mass-stranded by the roadside, and the scam can continue.

But there’s a new problem: drivers whose cars are rated for 353 miles but can’t go anything like that far on a full charge naturally assume that something is wrong with their cars, so they start calling Tesla service and asking to have the car checked over.

This creates a problem for Tesla: those service calls can cost the company $1,000, and of course, there’s nothing wrong with the car. It’s performing exactly as designed. So Tesla created its boldest fraud yet: a boiler-room full of anti-salespeople charged with convincing people that their cars weren’t broken.

This new unit — the “diversion team” — was headquartered in a Nevada satellite office, which was equipped with a metal xylophone that would be rung in triumph every time a Tesla owner was successfully conned into thinking that their car wasn’t defrauding them.

When a Tesla owner called this boiler room, the diverter would run remote diagnostics on their car, then pronounce it fine, and chide the driver for having energy-hungry driving habits (shades of Steve Jobs’s “You’re holding it wrong”):

https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/

The drivers who called the Diversion Team weren’t just lied to, they were also punished. The Tesla app was silently altered so that anyone who filed a complaint about their car’s range was no longer able to book a service appointment for any reason. If their car malfunctioned, they’d have to request a callback, which could take several days.

Meanwhile, the diverters on the diversion team were instructed not to inform drivers if the remote diagnostics they performed detected any other defects in the cars.

The diversion team had a 750 complaint/week quota: to juke this stat, diverters would close the case for any driver who failed to answer the phone when they were eventually called back. The center received 2,000+ calls every week. Diverters were ordered to keep calls to five minutes or less.

Eventually, diverters were ordered to cease performing any remote diagnostics on drivers’ cars: a source told Reuters that “Thousands of customers were told there is nothing wrong with their car” without any diagnostics being performed.

Predicting EV range is an inexact science as many factors can affect battery life, notably whether a journey is uphill or downhill. Every EV automaker has to come up with a figure that represents some kind of best guess under a mix of conditions. But while other manufacturers err on the side of caution, Tesla has the most inaccurate mileage estimates in the industry, double the industry average.

Other countries’ regulators have taken note. In Korea, Tesla was fined millions and Elon Musk was personally required to state that he had deceived Tesla buyers. The Korean regulator found that the true range of Teslas under normal winter conditions was less than half of the claimed range.

Now, many companies have been run by malignant narcissists who lied compulsively — think of Thomas Edison, archnemesis of Nikola Tesla himself. The difference here isn’t merely that Musk is a deeply unfit monster of a human being — but rather, that DRM allows him to defraud his customers behind a state-enforced opaque veil. The digital computers at the heart of a Tesla aren’t just demons haunting the car, changing its performance based on whether it believes it is being observed — they also allow Musk to invoke the power of the US government to felonize anyone who tries to peer into the black box where he commits his frauds.

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/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

This Sunday (July 30) at 1530h, I’m appearing on a panel at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach, CA, to discuss the wonderful, award-winning “Ghost Post” Haunted Mansion project I worked on for Disney Imagineering.

Image ID [A scene out of an 11th century tome on demon-summoning called 'Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros. Anno 1057. Noli me tangere.' It depicts a demon tormenting two unlucky would-be demon-summoners who have dug up a grave in a graveyard. One summoner is held aloft by his hair, screaming; the other screams from inside the grave he is digging up. The scene has been altered to remove the demon's prominent, urinating penis, to add in a Tesla supercharger, and a red Tesla Model S nosing into the scene.]

Image: Steve Jurvetson (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tesla_Model_S_Indoors.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[tinystepsforward]

automattic vs wp engine mastterpost

adrienne's GitHub recap is probably the best place to see a comprehensive timeline of what's going down. it's been kept up to date. my (very out of date) previous writeup is here.

what's happened/other links

Matt has not logged off, just switched platforms, so there's lots on X/Twitter, Reddit, and Hacker News. it's really not worth wading through.

WP Engine actually filed suit.

the complaint includes some truly remarkable screenshots of Matt trying to blackmail the CEO of WP Engine.

which... personally i would not happily work for someone who just blackmailed me while not even my boss, but that's just me. he hasn't denied this at all, in fact confirming on Hacker News:

I haven't doxxed any private texts from other parties like they have. [source]

and, notably,

I even invited her to my 40th birthday on Jan 11, another text message she decided not to share. [source]

this gives me the creeps. in the context of the rest of the way he's talking to her, and the ways in which he's interacted with women in general, it's. not great.

also he slid into an ex-employee (also a woman)'s DMs asking why she was being mean to him bc he'd never been nothing but nice to her, while also making legal threats. so y'know, pattern of behaviour.

a good writeup of the social side of things

if you don't care so much about the open-source stuff, Steph Lundberg's writeup is, like her previous one on Matt's Tumblr meltdown, pretty solid and people-focused.

Mullenweg has already demonstrated egregious lapses in judgment and abuses of power, it’s just that up until now he’s wielded his power against vulnerable populations without access to high-powered lawyers and their own massive platforms.

a more technical writeup

this one is melodramatic in the same ways Matt was (uses war terminology), which i don't agree with, and which led to some... internal arguments at Automattic. that part's not my story to tell, but a little more on that later. it's a solid writeup of the actual WordPress side of things. there's some seriously dodgy trademark behaviour going on here.

of note: this blogger locked comments on his post:

and then Matt, uh, found a way around that:

wild!

10% of Automattic leaves

that's a link to Matt's blog post. here's an Internet Archive link.

in short, staff were offered a severance deal of the higher of $30k or six months' salary. while that's very generous, it's still very risky in today's tech market, especially (for the same reasons i mentioned when Matt was melting down on here) for people outside the US, people who need the health insurance, or people with young kids. despite that, 10% decided with very little notice (they had two days to decide) to leave.

However now, I feel much lighter. I’m grateful and thankful for all the people who took the offer, and even more excited to work with those who turned down $126M to stay. As the kids say, LFG!

i'm thrilled to see some of my ex-colleagues make it out. i'm keeping the rest who have stayed on in my thoughts. i don't know anyone who's wholesale shilling for Matt.

Matt's been pressuring staff to post in support of him, @-ing the entire company to vote on Twitter polls in his favor, and so on. many of the people who stayed have written blog posts about it, all starting with "I stayed". people on social media have pointed out the very clear pattern of Automatticians jumping into discourse to defend Matt, and it doesn't look good.

i don't have a lot to say about those posts, except to highlight Jeffrey Zeldman, whose "I stayed" post is perhaps one of the more honest ones. (his Rodney King reference was in poor taste, and he... i don't like his role at automattic, tbc) but like. he's nearly 70. he helped shape the modern internet and develop its accessibility standards. he has often put his neck on the line for disabled staff who don't have as much clout as he does. given the financial troubles he talks about and the state of this market and how old he is, i personally have read between the lines of what he's saying in a particular way.

fuck, man. i'm sad. i'm sad for all my friends who are creaking under the strain and watching others leave but who can't do that. i'm sad that many of them are left in teams which are half-empty or divisions where significant senior leadership are just gone, with no time to document what they had in progress.

i'm sad for Josepha Haden Chomphosy, the former executive director of the WordPress Foundation, who was dealing with a personal emergency and ended up having to miss WordCamp US (where Matt started publicly starting shit with WPE). she came back from that to a gigantic fire in the community she's invested a decade of careful, Matt-negotiating, stewardship to, and decided to take the severance offer. she deserved better.

other things Matt's been up to

mostly linking to comments or posts which compile things here, bc it's too scattered otherwise.

blocking people from the official WordPress X account if they disapprove of his actions.

publicly talking about a vulnerability in ACF, a plugin WPE maintains, which could put thousands of sites at risk. this is not normal, and he met with so much horror even from current staff that he deleted his post.

saying he comes across badly because he's "a little ASD", which is driving me personally up the fucking wall. he's never once said it before and he really is turning into Temu Elon.

generally bragging that he still has more planned. jesus fucking christ

continually saying that WPE's suit is against WordPress.org and the community, which is not true. on which note, his pinned tweet is certainly something:

his choice of lawyer is uh. the kind of guy to defend nestle against literal child slaves.

as always, while i think WordPress crumbling will disproportionately affect websites in poorer parts of the world, there are certainly tyrants who are causing much more immediate and potent suffering. if you've read this far, please do send anything you have spare to gazafunds.com.

[identitty-dickruption]

okay let's fucking go what is the social model of disability actually about?

the first thing you need to understand is the divide between disability and impairment. this is best understood as parallel with the sex/gender distinction drawn by some feminists. the social model says that impairment is medical and disability is social

impairments are understood as innate features of how your body functions (or. doesn't function). think about symptoms that are held in your body/mind. pain. fatigue. anhedonia. etc. you have an impairment when your body/mind/bodymind does not function in the ways expected of a healthy/abled human body

disabilities are more socially and culturally contingent than impairments. a disability is generated when a person's impairments are not met with adequate social structures, built environments, etc. this is where you might see claims such as "a wheelchair user is disabled by an inability to walk in the same way as an aeroplane user is disabled by an inability to fly". here we are thinking about social and cultural attitudes as well as a lack of physical accessibility

it is from this fundamental binary that the social model emerges. the social model says:

while impairments are real and can be disabling on their own, disability emerges or is worsened by a failure of society to adequately cater to differences of body and mind

there is a dialogue between bodies and environments that changes the nature of ability and disability from moment to moment

there is a coherent identity group we can call "disabled people". this group is bound together by shared social experiences, and are subject to shared discrimination/oppression

disability is contingent on social and cultural factors in such a way that someone who is considered disabled in one place would not necessarily be considered disabled in a different place (e.g. in an environment of high illiteracy and low reliance on written communication, dyslexia is less disabling than in an environment where literacy is assumed)

disability is not a personal tragedy, and disabled people do not exist to be pitied by abled people

all of these features of the social model of disability are 100% open to criticism. there is a grey area between impairment and disability that isn't well catered to by the social model. there are issues with calling 'disability' a coherent identity group for all the usual identity politics reasons. etc etc. criticisms of these nature are entirely acceptable and reasonable, and I agree with a lot of them (which is why I am not a supporter of the social model, I'm a supporter of the political-relational model)

however. criticisms that narrow down to "but not 100% of disability is socially constructed".... yeah not valid, acceptable, or reasonable. on account of the fact that the social model Does Not Say That. Michael Oliver (the creator of the social model) himself admits that it's not 100% social. which is why he isn't arguing that everything is social. he's just not

I recommend reading Tom Shakespeare's analysis of the social model of disability. the key parts of this analysis can be found in the disability studies reader 4th edition, which you can find here: https://ieas-szeged.hu/downtherabbithole/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Lennard-J.-Davis-ed.-The-Disability-Studies-Reader-Routledge-2014.pdf

sorry for the long post hope it helps

[autisticadvocacy]

Today, ASAN commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Olmstead Decision, a landmark Supreme Court case about disabled people’s right to live in the community. 

Check out our Easy Read factsheet on Community Living: https://autisticadvocacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Community-Living-Fact-Sheet-ER.pdf

[storiesfromgaza]

"A video documents the moment the occupation aircraft dropped internationally banned 'white phosphorus' bombs on Gaza"

For you all to know: White phosphorus is a chemical compound with a sinister reputation, is a substance that poses severe dangers to human life. Its utilization in various contexts, particularly in warfare, has led to devastating consequences, leaving behind a trail of debilitating injuries. In this article, we will explore the nature of white phosphorus, and the grave risks it presents to individuals and communities.

White phosphorus, often referred to as "WP," is a waxy, white-to-yellow translucent solid that ignites spontaneously when exposed to oxygen. This property makes it a highly effective incendiary weapon and illuminant.

When white phosphorus comes into contact with the human body, it can result in severe burns and tissue damage. These burns are exceptionally painful and challenging to treat. The injuries caused by white phosphorus can have long-lasting effects on individuals, often requiring extensive medical treatment, including skin grafts and reconstructive surgery. The psychological impact of surviving such injuries can also be profound.

The severity of injuries resulting from an individual being struck by white phosphorus rockets can be extremely high and is dependent on several factors, including the quantity of white phosphorus exposure and the part of the body affected. Here's an overview of the dangers associated with injuries caused by white phosphorus bombs:

Severe Burns: The primary injuries caused by white phosphorus are severe burns. white phosphorus has the ability to penetrate tissues and bones, leading to deep and excruciating burns. These burns are difficult to treat and may leave permanent scars.

Respiratory Distress: When white phosphorus ignites, it can produce a gas that, when inhaled, irritates the respiratory system and can lead to breathing difficulties.

Psychological Impact: In addition to the physical pain, the intense pain resulting from burns can have profound psychological effects on individuals, necessitating additional psychological treatment.

Long-term Complications: Injuries from white phosphorus bombs can result in long-term complications such as physical deformities and disabilities. Treatment and rehabilitation can be prolonged and costly.

Environmental Impact: Along with its effects on individuals, white phosphorus burns can also harm the environment by contaminating soil and water.

In general, injuries caused by white phosphorus bombs are among the most severe and challenging to treat. It is crucial to take all measures to prevent these injuries and to restrict the use of such weapons in contexts where they could harm civilians!

Join our Telegram channel link for the latest updates: t.me/storiesfromgaza

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/745427797079621632/so-ffn-was-my-only-mistress-for-years-but-then-i

I’m the anon that went on Wattpad for the first time, and then went “No.”

So I lowered my standards a little, and actually found a few more good fics on ao3, (my true love). Yea!

One the comments mentioned how most of the good fics on WP were just stolen from the original author. That reminded me of this smut I was reading on ao3: one day, the author took it down because she was tired of people reposting it to goodreads or something.

Thing is, she did let her readers know that she’ll be reposting the story on Wattpad. Now it was some top tier smut, in my opinion. But there’s other great smut on ao3 and I didn’t want to make an WP account for one story. So I never got to reread it again.

My question: is a story on WP less likely to be stolen than it is on ao3? I feel like it’s easier to steal stuff on WP, since on ao3, you can lock your stories.

--

WP has that shitty feature where you can't copy and paste text...

Except we all know that's easy as hell to disable, so all it actually does is annoy your fans if they want to quote a good line while reccing the fic elsewhere.

[disabled-systems]

in order for a physical disability to totally vary between alters there must be an issue in the brain: an alter not having access to some area (in this case in the visual cortex) for whatever reason.

so the line between physically and mentally disabled is blurry here.

Also here's a more recent case of dynamic blindness in DID from 2015: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/11/24/the-blind-woman-who-switched-personalities-and-could-suddenly-see/

Screenshot because I'm an anticapitalist anarchist:

The part of the article at the bottom proves the point that I made in my original post.

“…blindness wasn’t caused by brain damage, her original diagnosis. [The blindness) was instead… brain directive, a psychological problem”

A psychological problem, hence not physical, hence not a physical disability.

There is no blurriness about what is physical and mental. Mental disorders can have physical symptoms, however that doesn’t necessarily make one physically disabled. In this case, her blindness was likely some form of psychosis.

If you’re going to send me sources, at least read them first. While you are on the topic of reading, please direct yourself to our DNI and read that closer.

-Ran (they/dae)

[homestuckexamination]

I'm not convinced Mituna isn't bad representation. Of course, there is a lot of dubious stuff in Homestuck. And I'm not saying you can't consume something critically. But I can't help feeling a hypocrite for boycotting Rowling and continuing to ignore the dubious stuff in homestuck (especially the use of the r*t*** word). I guess you could say that at least Hussie developed and learnt from their mistakes (not true for Rowling is it)... Is that a good enough excuse to continue to like Homestuck?

Yeah no, I said I don't think I could say he's good rep, at all.

However, I am going to make my stance on this very clear. 'Especially the use of the r slur'.

Homestuck is an indie Fandom Internet thing, that started as a parody of CYOA comics of the era, and has humor that is very of its era, as well as inherent biases of Hussie being a white American- Including, as you mentioned, the use of slurs, or racial insensitivity, and ableist stuff through the entirety of its run.

It doesn't matter how much you hate Homestuck. It doesn't matter whether you think any of this is redeemable or forgivable. Without even looking at the Authors and what they've done with their fame, Harry Potter is a mainstream franchise to an extent Homestuck could never be. Homestuck is an Internet Meme. Harry Potter is a Cultural Phenomenon. If you find a lone Homestuck reference in some new TV show, you point at it in surprise like "WHAT?". If a series has an Entire Episode parodying Harry Potter, it's almost basically expected. Even if they were equivalent in what they do wrong- With they're not- The reach and impact of these two franchises are entirely incomparable.

But then take, also, the Authors of the content. Hussie grew up alongside their work, work which queer youth related to, and they embraced it, and even eventually came out as non-binary themself. They let WP handle the franchise, with Hiveswap and HS^2- Regardless of what your personal opinion on the WP Team and any of what they've done may be, it's a largely queer group of artists and writers and musicians, who were given an 'official' blessing by Hussie to go wild, and they brought a lot of creativity and good rep to the table and interesting talking points. Take Homestuck. Take Psycholonials. At its core, there's an inherently queer, leftist narrative, interesting conversation regarding identity and what it means to Be, and growing up in different circumstances, and being friends with a bunch of people online, and dealing with the climate of world around us.

Then take Rowling, who's used her fame to promote blatant transphobia and cause harm- Tangible, real harm in UK Politics, to trans youth, who's emboldened transphobes and strengthened the TERF Movement, and whose work is entrenched in antisemitism, among other things, whose most recent work reads like an 'I'm not owned, I'm not owned!' scream villifying trans disabled youth and painting an analogue for herself as some helpless victim, and it's like...

I'm not saying Homestuck is perfect, god no. I am not saying you have to like it. I'm not saying you have to forgive Hussie for any of the times they have fucked up, or that they're beyond criticism. But dear God they're not the same, they're on two completely different scales, and if your sense of morality makes you feel that liking Homestuck is the same as liking Harry Potter, you need to re-evaluate how you gauge morality and harmful media.

And on that topic...

'Is there an excuse?' Why are you seeking, externally, for an excuse to consume media? Why do you need external validation in order to determine whether media is 'redeemable' before you can consume it? Only you can determine how much you can put up with Something until it becomes Not For You. Personally? I think what Hussie tried to convey with Homestuck, its themes, its characters, and the kind of author Hussie has shown to be, as well as how Homestuck has developed in general over the years, is really nice, and I still enjoy Homestuck, and I am going to keep enjoying Homestuck, no matter how many prior points are framed as problematic, or how many times something Hussie said once is brought up, unless Hussie did like, a 180 turn and started weaponizing Homestuck for queer hatred and an overt call to genocide or shit like that, which... Doesn't just happen, you know- Meanwhile in that same vein, Harry Potter has become entrenched, in my mind, with all the harm Rowling has caused, its monetization is being actively used to harm people like me, and Terfs have co-opted it entirely as a Dogwhistle. Those are my values. That's what I believe. Your values and what you believe may differ from mine.

Don't look to the Internet and Popular Opinion for advice. Don't look for 'problematic points' and 'redeemability'. You can enjoy absolute trash that has a lot of problems just because you like it and you don't think it's like, harmful. You can be uncomfortable by problematic points in a series others tell you is good, because you can't handle that kinda stuff, and decide not to watch it.

There's no gauge.

This is not to mean you shouldn't trust people's opinions or anything but like... Don't look to others for morality trying to excuse yourself like it feels shameful otherwise. Inform yourself through what they say, but make your opinion yourself, once informed.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Here are just two of the corporate giveaways hidden in the rushed, must-pass, end-of-year budget bill

Yesterday, Congress finally voted through the must-pass, end-of-year budget bill. As has become routine, this bill was stalled right until the final moment, so that Congressjerks could cram the 4,000-page, $1.7 trillion package with special favors for their donors, at the expense of the rest of the country.

This year’s budget package included a couple of especially egregious doozies, which were reported out for The American Prospect by Lee Harris (who covered a grotesque retirement giveaway for the ultra-rich) and Doraj Facundo (who covered a safety giveaway to Boeing and its lethal fleet of 737 Max airplanes).

Let’s start with the retirement scam. The budget bill includes Rep Richie Neal’s [DINO-MA] SECURE Act 2.0, which gives savers with retirement funds until age 75 to cash out their retirement savings — netting an extra three years of tax-free growth for the lucky, tiny minority with substantial retirement savings. This follows on Neal’s SECURE Act 1.0 of 2019, when the age was raised from 70.5 to 72.

The tax-exempt retirement savings account is a Carter-era bargain that replaced real pensions — ones that guaranteed that you wouldn’t starve or freeze to death when you retired — with accounts that let people gamble on the stock market, to be the suckers at Wall Street’s poker table:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/25/derechos-humanos/#are-there-no-poorhouses

The market-based gambler’s pension is a catastrophic failure. Half of Americans have no retirement savings. Of the half that have any savings, the vast majority have almost nothing saved:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/chart/#series:Retirement_Accounts;demographic:all;population:all;units:have

All in all, America has a $7 trillion retirement savings shortfall:

https://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/IB_19-16.pdf

But for a tiny minority of the ultra-rich, tax-free savings accounts like ROTH IRAs are a means of avoiding even the paltry capital gains tax that you have to pay if you own things for a living, rather than doing things for a living. Propublica’s IRS Files revealed how ghouls like Peter Thiel avoided tax on billions in “passive income” by abusing tax-free savings accounts that were supposed to benefit the “middle class”:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/26/wax-rothful/#thiels-gambit

Meanwhile, Social Security is crumbling, thanks to a sustained attack on it by the business lobby and its friends in both parties. Progressive Dems had sought to amend SECURE Act 2.0 by inserting some clauses to shore up Social Security, and none of these were included in the final bill.

One of the fixes that died was the Savings Penalty Elimination Act, introduced by Senators Sherrod Brown [D-OH] and Rob Portman [R-OH]. This act would have tweaked the means-testing for Supplemental Security Income, which supports 8m low-income disabled adults and kids. Right now, you can’t collect SSI if you have $2k in the bank, a limit that hasn’t been adjusted for inflation since the 1980s (adjusted for inflation, $2k in 1980 is $7226.00 in 2022).

The $2k savings cap means that you have to be substantially below the poverty level to receive $585/month in SSI assistance — this being the only source of income for the majority of SSI recipients. Means-testing is a self-immolating fetish for corporate Dems and in retrospect, this betrayal seems inevitable:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/03/utopia-of-rules/#in-triplicate

(Notice how no one proposes means-testing billionaires when they get PPP loans or hundreds of millions in IRS “refunds” — like Trump, who paid substantially less tax than you did:)

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/21/trump-income-tax-returns-detailed-in-new-report-.html

And it was a betrayal: progressive Dems bargained with Neal and co not to publicly condemn SECURE Act 2.0 if they could get some concessions for the 8 million poorest disabled people in America. In the end, Neal rug-pulled them. Of course he did! This is Richie Fucking Neal, the best friend the Trump tax giveaway ever had:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/13/youre-still-the-product/#richie-neal

As with everything Neal touches, this screws poor people in multiple ways. First, it leaves the SSI cap intact. But it also creates a giant unfunded liability in the federal budget. Technically, there’s no reason this should lead to cuts. The US Treasury can’t run out of dollars, and giveaways to the rich are only mildly inflationary, since rich people put their money in the bank and mostly spend it on buying politicians, not goods.

But because of the delusion that currency producers like the US Treasury have the same constraints as currency users like you and me, Congress will need to come up with “Pay Fors” in future budgets to “make up for” the money they’re giving to rich people with SECURE Act 2.0. Dollars to toenail clippings, they’ll do that by hacking away at the tattered remains of the US social safety net.

Fear not, you don’t need to be a desperately poor disabled person or child to get fucked over by late additions to a 4,000 page must-pass bill! If you can afford to get on an airplane, Congress has something for you, too!

Remember when Boeing (the monopoly US airplane manufacturer that squandered $43b on stock buybacks and had to borrow $14b from the US public to survive the pandemic) told the FAA that it could self-certify its 737 Max airplanes, and then killed hundreds and hundreds of people with its defective planes?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/12/boeing-crashes/#boeing

The 737 Max was unsafe for many reasons, but one glaring factor was the fact that Boeing sold some of its core safety as “extras” — like they were downloadable content for your Fortnite character — leading to multiple crashes in which all lives were lost:

https://apnews.com/article/ethiopia-indonesia-accidents-ap-top-news-international-news-140576a8e9d4449eae646c8c479fdc3a

Boeing was forced to take the 737 Max out of service, but it eventually brought the plane back, “fixing” the problems by renaming the “737 Max” to the “737 8”:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/20/dubious-quantitative-residue/#737-8

Supposedly, Boeing has been diligently working on fixing the problems with its defective jets that can’t be addressed by a rebranding campaign. This wasn’t voluntary: the 2020 Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act required Boeing — and every other manufacturer whose aircraft were certified by the FAA — to meet new minimum safety standards by December 27, 2022.

Every manufacturer met that deadline, except Boeing, and someone amended the budget bill to give the company three more years to meet these security standards. Critically, the new security measures, when they come, will be certified by an FAA that Republicans will control, thanks to the House changing hands.

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/government-spending-bill-waives-aircraft-safety-deadline/

Boeing is slated to ship 1,000 new 737 Maxes, which will fetch $50b for the company. Many of these planes will fly directly over my house, which is on the approach path for Burbank airport. Southwest Air flies dozens of 737 Maxes right over my roof every single day.

As Facundo points out, the FAA can ill afford any more hits to its credibility. It was once the case that if the FAA certified an aircraft, every other country in the world would waive any further certification, so trusting were they of the FAA’s judgment. That is no longer the case: today, the European Aviation Safety Agency does its own aircraft testing, holding jets that enter EU airspace to a higher standard than the FAA does for US planes.

It’s just another reminder that the US doesn’t have “corporate criminals” because the US doesn’t have any meaningful enforcement for corporate crimes. In America, we love our companies like we love our billionaires: too big to fail and too big to jail:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/12/no-criminals-no-crimes/#get-out-of-jail-free-card

Image: Ryan Lee (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/190784293@N05/50862532686

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Henry Wadey (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flames_%2858765896%29.jpeg

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

[Image ID: A living room scene, featuring a sofa in the background and a sofa in the foreground. A man's hand reaches into the frame to lift up the corner of the sofa. A broom enters the frame to sweep a pile of dirt under the rug. Mixed in with the dirt are a crashed WWI biplane with Southwest Airlines livery, and an old lady in a rocking chair.]

[ghostiegamer]

Had a Steven Universe AU bounce around my brain a little bit so here's what I have so far of it

PD- Queen of a very prosperous and peaceful kingdom. Lush and beautiful. Refugees come to her kingdom to thrive. Gained the nickname Rose Queen from her subjects because of how kind and beautiful she is. Throws lavish balls as an excuse to hire refugees for new jobs within her kingdom. Her kingdom is mainly fields, forests, and mountains. Lots of farmland and mines. Main export is food and gems.

WP- Head of PD royal guard. Is PD personal knight. Used to work for WD as a part of her royal guard but WD traded her for PP. Is extremely loyal to PD. Is very good with all kinds of weapons. Also has a green thumb and if not by her queens side or training, she can usually be found in the garden tending to her roses and medicinal herbs. Is also pretty good at alchemy. Is an orphan.

BD- Is generally considered a pretty merciful Queen. Will swoop in to kingdoms that desperately need help and offer to help in exchange for them joining her kingdom and acknowledging her as their queen. If they refuse, then she doesn't mind going to war. Kingdom is fairly big. A lot of her kingdom is coastal. Main export is fish.

BP- Is BD lady in waiting/heir. Very knowledgeable in other kingdoms culture and goods. Personally attends to all of BD needs. Knows how to make other kingdoms rulers lower their guard so BD can try to sway them into giving up their crown. Knows all the stuff about kingdom relations and is very knowledgeable about trade and commonly sits in and helps lead meeting about what to do with new territory's goods. Loves painting in her free time.

YD- A war queen. She tears through kingdoms either taking them for herself or leaving them for Blue or Pink to swoop in and pick up the pieces. Her kingdom is mainly mountainous. Main export is metal. Is extremely smart and very determined. Is very good at navigating a battlefield but not so much at navigating the workings of her court.

YP- Is YD lady in waiting/advisor/heir. Knows her way around a battlefield just as well as a ballroom. Tells YD everything that goes on with the commoners and nobles of the land. Is very devious and cunning. Often sits in on war meetings offering advice. Runs the court whenever YD is away at war, which is a fair amount of the time. Is very good with handling conflict and solving disputes. Often models for BP when the diamonds get together.

WD- A distant Queen. Her kingdom is very prosperous and large. She does not make many public appearances. Her pearl makes them for her. Her kingdom has several different biomes within it but it's mainly forest. Main export is lumber and weaponry. Does not often go to war, but when she does, she decimates whatever kingdom she goes against. Very few survivors. She's very blunt and tends to not waste time dancing around a subject when she can just get straight to the point. This has earned her a reputation for being cold from those who have met her. Secretly is a big softie for the other diamonds and their pearls. PD pearl use to be apart of her royal guard. Knows that she's the reason why PP is an orphan and has a disability and that's part of the reason why she adopted PP. Feels guilty for hurting a child like that.

PP- Use to be a royal jester in PD court. WD saw her at one of PD balls and thought she looked absolutely stunning. WD traded her pearl in the royal guard to PD for PP. Is an orphan. Now is WD lady in waiting and heir. Makes public appearances for WD and handles most of the ongoings of court and day to day life. Is a very skilled blacksmith and enjoys experimenting in her forge. Is also a very good dancer. Doesn't speak much when she doesn't have to. Parents were killed in an attack on PP kingdom of birth when she was a baby. This left her with a big scar across one of her eyes and partial blindess in it. Kingdom was attacked by WD forces. She is one of few survivors. Despite her scar, she's widely regarded as one of the most beautiful women in WD kingdom. Is extremely kind.

The Diamonds and Pearls travel between the kingdoms often and the 4 Diamonds are often referred to as The Sister Queens even though they're not really related. They did all grow up together though as their parents were close friends. Their parents all died due to a mysterious illness that plagued their land long ago. They're all unmarried. Most of the world is run by them with a few small countries still existing, mainly due to treaties with one of the Diamonds kingdoms.

If anyone wants to know more, please ask. I would love to talk about this and flesh it out a bit more.

[disabilityhorizons]

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[autisticadvocacy]

Comprehensive sex ed must include info on healthy sex and sexuality for people with disabilities, and be taught to all of us. Check out our paper on reproduction and disability sex ed created with the National Partnership for Women & Families: https://nationalpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/repro-disability-sexed.pdf

[inkdrop-flags]

Meet the mods!

☀️Mod Sun(ny)☀️

☀️ Sun, Sunny, Sundrop, Sunnydrop

☀️ He/They/She/Sun/Shine (Masculine and feminine titles but tend to prefer masculine)(more of my Neopronouns and emoji pronouns are over here)

☀️ Transfem, Intersex, Bigender, Girlflux, Demigirl, Boyflux, Girlboy/Boygirl

☀️ Polysexual polyam WLW, Mlnb, mlw

☀️ Adult (mid-20s)

☀️ Fictive of Sundrop from FNAF:SB

☀️ (Note: There is a moon drop present within the system. We are brothers, however, we are aware that is not canonical. Please do not bring up sun x moon content as it feels incestuous to us, even if it canoncially isnt. (We have nothing againest people who ship sun and moon, just don't personally wanna see it or talk about it.) Although I am source-neutral, I do not wish to be treated as my source as I have no memories/origins in my source beyond my appearance and existence as an animatronic. I never knew a gregory, a daycare or any other animatronics (beyond other fnaf introjects in our system obviously) so i have no source psuedo-memories. I'm also not a particular fan of my canonical on screen attitude nor am I really a fan of FNAF 😅 I don't like scary things.)

🖌️Mod Squid/Ink🖌️

🖌️ Ink, Inky, Squid

🖌️ He/they (sometimes she/her)(Ask!)

🖌️ Intersex, Cismascline, Cis man, Genderfluid (Usually through male, third gender/two spirit, agender and Boygirl)

🖌️ Bi polyam

🖌️ Ageless (Adult)

🖌️ Fictive of Ink sans from UTMV

🖌️ (Note: there are many au sanses present within the system yet I am not in a relationship with them. (I'm only dating our common singlet partner 😘) We have an error and no, we arnt together either. Please be respectful. I am also source-neutral and do not hold any pseudo-memories. Although I do identify as my source, I don't have any desire to really explore it. Idk how to describe how to be treated beyond as an ink sans but separately from the canonical/ non-system one. I'm not sourced from underverse and do not like that portrayal of me particularly but I'm not adverse to discussing it or doing pronouns/etc based around it. I'm also not a copy of canon either so sry.)

🍀Mod clover🍀

🍀 My info can be found here.

🍀 quick bit of info for those who don't wanna click ( names clover, 23 yrs old, He/She/Ey, host, two-spirit/Bigender/Genderfluid)

🍀 I am only present on this blog to post the pronoun flags I make on the side and help with the technical side.

☀️ Both of us are dating our host's partner! We are not dating each other. We just both happen to like pronoun flags and our url was a fun combination of our names. We're friends and that's all. 🖌️

Note: the body is intersex, wp mixed indigenous and white, mentally and physically disabled. We are only three members of a large DID system with the collective Identity of two spirit and We have no collective pronouns.