#facebook is done

[jessiarts]

Was recently reminded by my friend @teeg of just how much info Facebook collects to track you, and I want to share how to make that harder for them with the rest of you.

If you still have facebook/can't get rid of it (for any reason- we're not here to judge today) then you're going to want to clear your off-Meta activity.

You read that right, Meta tracks what you do off it's apps as well. It tracks other apps and websites that you use- whether you connected them to Facebook or not, AND places you visit IRL and when you visited. This includes not just stores and other businesses, but also allegedly includes hotels, schools and hospital/doctors offices. (I'm unfortunately unable to confirm the last three for myself as I didn't look closely at mine before deleting- and it's been years since I've graduated or stayed at a hotel, and months since I've been to a doctor. If anyone cares to confirm in the notes I'll update this post.)

This post will show you how to clear your off-Meta activity. (You'll also want to toggle off Ads data permissions, but I'll make another post about that later.)

First, go to your Profile Icon, then to Settings and Privacy to get to your Settings.

Once in Settings you're going to click See more in Accounts Center. On desktop it should be in a box on the upper-left of the page.

Once in Accounts Center you're going to click Your information and permissions, then Your activity off Meta technologies at the bottom of that window.

Once in the Your activity off Meta technologies window you're going to notice at the bottom three buttons, Disconnect specific activity, Clear previous activity, and Manage future activity.

You're going to want to first clear your previous activity and disconnect future activity. This will also automatically clear any activity that would be under the Disconnect specific activity tab, as it's just for picking and choosing what activity to delete.

An added benefit to this is that it will also clear out some of the data Meta uses for its AI programs- not all, but hey- that's something.

Also, even if you can't delete your Facebook account, I urge you to please delete/uninstall the app from your phone as that's the #1 best way to keep it from tracking you everywhere you go IRL and online. That said, if you delete no other Meta app from your phone- make sure to delete FB messenger- it's literally the worst one, but that's another post, which I'll hopefully get to after the FB ads one I promised above.

Stay safe out there, and remember- fuck Facebook.

[candiedcalico]

I am deleting all Meta based apps in support of #facebookisdone. I’ll also be deleting Twitter/X seeing as Elon is just as big of a monster as the rest of them.

I encourage everyone else to do the same. WE WIN AS ONE.

Defund. Dethrone. Decompose.

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Ableist Things Autistic People May Internalize About Ourselves

Neurodivergent_lou

[markscherz]

I… do not understand tumblr live. Like, are there actually only about 50 people streaming across the whole platform at any one time? And why are so many of them just… people smoking? Or unoccupied desks? And why is nobody talking about frogs?

[hyperpotamianarch]

So, Jewish Fantasy! A very nebulous idea that tries to catch form in many different ways. I don't know much about how it works outside of Israel - I saved the recommendation list that circulated around here but didn't try anything from it yet (outside of Spinning Silver, which I read before I ever saw the list). So, if anything of what I say seems ludicrous to you because you've seen a book that does it well - don't hesitate to recommend it to me! Though I'm not sure how applicable it will be for what I'm about to say.

There are a couple of angles from which one can try to get at Jewish Fantasy: through using Jewish folklore and myth as a basis for your story, through using Jewish characters or by writing out of a Jewish cultural context. In certain stories, different angles tend to be more pronounced - Charashta is based on Midrashim and Jewish folklore, Spinning Silver has Jewish characters, and Agam HaTzlalim is written out of some degree of Jewish culture. Yeah, two of those are Israeli books that weren't translated, feel free to give alternative examples but those are the only one I can safely talk about since I've actually read them.

I could elaborate more on that, but what actually made me want to write a post on the topic was a post about how so much of Fantasy is Greek (in a way) and Sci-Fi is Roman. And that made me think, what about Jewish Fantasy? And while this is a topic I've thought of and been somewhat involved in conversations on for some time now, this is looking at it from a particular angle. An angle which could be examplified by the simple question: why is there no Jewish Disney Princess?

All right, all right, settle down. I know about the Vanollope von Schweetz thing. Quite frankly, considering the source for it is the word of the actress and that it has no effect on the story whatsoever, I think I'm fine with ignoring it. Feel free to shout at me in the comments, hopefully the rest of the post will explain this better.

You see, the problem is that Disney Princesses mostly come from stories about Medieval Europe, and in that particular time and place "Jewish" and "royalty" were inherently contradictory. A Jewish girl couldn't have been a princess, because Jewish communities were never a part of the ruling class. At least not in medieval Europe.

Now the reason what I'm saying is rubbish is because of other contradictory examples, like Mulan or Tiana, and maybe Pocahontas or Esmeralda. And based off of those examples I could probably whip up a couple of ideas on how to do an interesting Jewish Princess story - base it on the Book of Judith, for example, or offer a Jewish twist on some European folktales (which might be hard considering some of them actually have straight up Jewish characters playing as the villains), or... have a movie about Jews assimilating into European culture... Yeah, I can see why Pocahontas or the Hunchback of Notre-Dame might feel a little uncomfortable. But the point is: Fantasy is based on Medieval times, and Jews' role during that time wasn't one of royalty.

You can't really write a medieval Jewish kingdom, because there wasn't really any. And yes, many people try using the Khazarians for that. However, their kingdom was only Jewish for a century, maybe, before it was completely destroyed. Plus, we barely have any data on what it looked like, and its culture was likely very different from Jewish culture. So the medieval presentation of Jews would have to be of a persecuted minority. That, essentially, is what we see in Spinning Silver: a Jewish family in medieval times, a member of which serves as our protagonist. And Maryem is pretty much constantly angry about the antisemitism flourishing all around her. So I suppose that could be an example to follow - along with the stories about Maharal of Prague and the Golem, fighting blood libels.

So, you can portray Jews as an oppressed minority, constantly fighting their persecution. An alternative could probably be following the example of Ḥassidic stories, talking about the Rebbe, the Renter, the Trader and the Widow (regular character archetypes in such tales). You could have the antagonist be the local Pariz, nobleman, or perhaps the gentile that decided to be a robber, or occasionally a fellow Jew who out-leassed your protagonist from their home. All regular tropes in the day-to-day life of an... (checks notes) early modern Eastern Europen Jew? Huh. I suppose it's not exactly the same period.

Either way, if you want your story to be more fuly Jewish, to not always play against the backdrop of a non-Jewish kingdom, you have some interesting options. The first question would be: are you taking from the past or the present? If you choose present, well, you can choose between Diasporan or Israeli culture. In addition, this will more or less constrain you to some type of Urban Fantasy or other Hidden World stories, with not much of an option to delve into Epic Fantasy. If that's what you want to do - great! Go ahead and do that. Personally, I have some degree of a problem with how I've seen Israeli culture portrayed in stories so far, but that's a story unto itself.

If you choose past... well... Jewish history is nothing if not long. And if we're really trying to make a more Jewish backdrop, we'll probably need to pull from Jewish independant states or kingdoms. Of which there are a couple that can be used - Ancient Israel throughout the time of the Tanach, from the Judges through the first kings and the divided kingdoms of Judea and Israel; Yehud Medinta, which while it existed under the Persians had a Jewish governor for certain periods; the Hasmonean Dynasty, with all its ups and downs; the Kingdom of Adiabene, which converted to Judaism for a time; some short-lived Jewish independant states in defiance of the Romans; and of course, the infamous Kingdom of Khazar. There are also legendary kingdoms of the lost 10 tribes, which could possibly work as interesting additions. It is also important to note that in the Tanachic period I included a pretty vast array of periods, including the Judges (periodical local saviors and heroes), the House of Sha'ul (which isn't too easy to characterize), the Davidic Dynasty (Temple! Prophets! A bloodline promised to last! Evrything you might want from a kingdom), and the Kingdom of Israel (a couple of dynasties have their own characteristics, but most didn't survive for long).

Maybe I'll try my hand in suggesting what a kingdom based on the Hasmonean Dynasty could look like later. For now, let us start with: there is no medieval Jewish kingdom, so we'll take one from the Hellenistic period or from the Bronze Age to cover it up! Either that, or we'll try figuring out the structure of the early medieval kingdom that converted to Judaism that one time.

I'm not sure how much of a point I made, really. Thank you for reading, and have a good day!

[bucephaly]

It's kinda shocking to me how few people seem to know how prevalent the 'my great grandmother was cherokee' myth is and how it's almost never actually true, especially when it comes with things like 'never signed up' or 'fell off the trail' or 'courthouse burned down destorying the documentation' etc etc.

People just don't even seem to know the history like.. when the Trail happened. My great great great grandfather was 2 years old during Removal in 1838, so peoples 'my great grandmother hid in the mountains!' is so clearly wrong. And we have rolls. From before and after removal, rolls done by cherokee nation and others by the government, rolls that were not stored in one random flammable courthouse. It's not difficult to find the actual evidence of ancestry.

And just.. there are lots of ways those family stories get started. It was a practice during the confederacy to claim cherokee ancestry to show one's family had 'deep roots in the south' that they were there before the cherokee were removed. Many people pretended to be cherokee and applied for the Guion-Miller payout just to try to steal money meant for cherokees - 2/3rds of the applicants were denied for having 0 proof of actual cherokee ancestry. [We even see lawyers advertising signing up for the Miller roll just to try to get free money.] And the myth even started in some families in the cherokee land lotteries, where the land stolen from us was raffled off, including the house and everything that was left behind when the cherokees were removed. We have seen people whose families just take these things stolen from the cherokee family and adopt them into their own family story, saying that they were cherokee themselves.

If you had some family story about being cherokee and you wanna have proof one way or the other, check out this Facebook group run by expert cherokee genealogists that do research for free. Just please read the rules fully and respect the researchers. They run thousands of people's ancestries a year and their average is only around 0.7% of lines they run actually end up having true cherokee ancestry.

[best-of-theworst]

I fucking hate AI.

Especially generative.

Music

Artwork

Photos

Writing

Videos

I'm so done with it. I hate how the internet is right now. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.

[onjapiii-39]

I made this for a collab, but decided to post it here to cuz why not

[tender-rosiey]

to the lady that gave me the hummus recipe, how could you add so much garlic; my stomach is on fire

[jessiarts]

So I recently made two (long) posts about how to clear your Off-Meta Activity and how to toggle-off Meta Ads Data Permissions for those who are unable to leave Facebook for any reason. I decided it might be good to also post a short version of both together that might be easier to share. Let's just jump into it:

How to clear your Off-Meta Activity:

Profile icon ➡️ Settings and Privacy ➡️ Settings ➡️ See more in Accounts Center ➡️ Your Information and Permissions ➡️ Your activity off Meta technologies

Once in the Your activity off Meta technologies window you're going to want to clear your previous activity, then disconnect your future activity.

How to toggle off Meta Ads Data Permissions:

Profile icon ➡️ Settings and Privacy ➡️ Settings ➡️ See more in Accounts Center ➡️ Ad preferences ➡️ Manage info

Once in the Manage Info window you'll notice three categories: Information used to show you ads, Ads shown outside of Meta, and Other settings.

In the Information used to show you ads category:

Open Categories used to reach you, and disable all those options. Then, in the bottom of that same window, find Categories associated with you ➡️ View and manage, and remove them all

Disable Activity information from ad partners

Go through Audience-based advertising and remove permissions/lists there.

In the Ads shown outside of Meta category:

Disable Ads from ad partners in other apps

Disable Ads about Meta on other platforms

Then under the Other Settings category:

Click on Social interactions and disable Meta from including your social interactions alongside ads that your friends see.

* * *

And we're done!

If you'd like a more in-depth post with pictures to help you do this you can follow the links above to find those.

Also, even if you can't delete your Facebook account, I urge you to please delete/uninstall the app from your phone as that's the #1 best way to keep it from tracking you everywhere you go IRL and online.

(You may need to go into Settings ➡️ Apps to fully uninstall the FB app. I thought I deleted it years ago, but still found it in my list of apps just the other day. Turns out I only "disabled" it, and had to "uninstall" by going through settings (I assume uninstalling through app store should also work tho))

That said, if you delete no other Meta app from your phone- make sure to delete FB messenger- it's literally the worst one, but that's another post, which I'll hopefully get to later.

Stay safe out there, and remember- fuck Facebook.

[auriemma]

Moneytalks

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Autism & Asking for Help

Lil Penguin Studios/Autism Happy Place

[thedreadvampy]

Today was such a shitty fucking day and it's all Mark Zuckerberg's fault

[frameconfessions]

What I love about Warframe as a newcomer is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of shipping wars or fandom discourse at all. I've been into a lot of shooters before (ie. Overwatch, Apex Legends, etc.) so Warframe is a huge breath of fresh, clean air.

💯

[thedarklingss]

She literally tried to call the cops on the doctor 😭😭

[watermel0ns-dumb-cringe]

Time to pester my mother with the rtc production that's 4 hours away because one of the days it's being performed is legit my last day of school