#i have only 30 fucking % of the trial downloaded

[gatalentan]

I’m dying at the fact that you’re giffing Life’s work! I’ve been looking everywhere for somewhere to watch it/download it without AZ Prime. I’ve only got like four random episodes saved but I wanna watch it all. Lisa is SO good. Anyways, when I make my own gifs, the colouring is poop. What is your secret?

It's so fucking funny, I'm so glad I finally watched it! The dialogue is absolutely fantastic. I listened to a podcast ep a few weeks ago that she featured on (on the podcast "You Might Know Her From..." I think?) and she was retelling all the production drama behind it that led to it being cancelled for, truly, no reason other than the new head of ABC being a fucking dickhead, and I could tell she was SO passionate about that show that it catapulted to the top of my to-watch pile. It's fantastic. How she never got more star-vehicles into the present day off the back of it, and why it took her this long to land Abbott, I don't know. Being in the UK I had to do some absolute fucking shenanigans to get ahold of it. If you're in the US or Canada (or have a friend who is who is willing to purchase it for you and let you access it via a vpn), you can purchase most of it on Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, Youtube TV & VUDU. Unfortunately some are missing, I guess due to licensing problems? It's ~$30 for all the eps. https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/lifes-work

I don't have a secret at all! My giffing tag is literally me learning as I go - I haven't been doing it very long, so you can see my progression in my giffing tag. Some of them are already quite embarrassing to me, lol. Just a lot of trial and error. I'm also colourblind, so I have to run things by people to make sure nothing looks absolutely bonkers when I'm recolouring. I did learn a fair bit from this tutorial initially, but if you search "gif coloring tutorial" here on Tumblr there's a lot of wonderful guides with step-by-steps. Figuring out how to do leveling/curves and use high-pass was my magic bullet, personally. But it's mostly just practise! I'm still figuring out what works and doesn't.

[grazhir]

Scrivener + Machine + Zip

Been a shitty day so far. Music was skipping (sort of), so I decided to reboot, see if that'd fix it.

Machine wouldn't reboot. Cue panic, prayers... I eventually got it back up (tried it enough that it finally did a repair automatically), but then found a Scrivener project I was working on was suddenly just not opening.

So I checked the back-ups. One is too early, and the one I just made before rebooting? Corrupt. Well fuck you.

Then I'm like, maybe I should do a drive check. Well, the drive I store my writing on has corruption. Fucking fantastic. So there's another hour or so gone while Win10 does repairs (and then I started thinking I should repair the media drive, because that's where my music is stored).

So now the project opens just fine, it's just missing an entire chapter. Cue desire to have a breakdown (and, incidentally, delete the back-ups I shoved over at Drive earlier, because they're fucked).

Back-up still won't open. Off we go on a search, end up downloading WinZip, plus the command line stuff (which is trial only, naturally), and fix the back-up.

K.

I find the correct file in the repaired zip, yay. Paste in the contents. Scrivener can't save, there's a whatever missing in the underbits.

Fuck you. I ended up having to move the chapter to trash, empty the trash, and make a new empty chapter, then paste in the retrieved contents from the repaired back-up.

I swear. I may have to start manually zipping each project with 7zip, because... Christ.

And since it took so long to diskcheck/repair the writing drive, I may just set the machine to repair the media drive when I go to bed, because that did show a need for repair when I check. As it was I took a nap while it was doing Writing.

Microsoft time all the way, kids. 30 minutes quickly dropping to 5, then 3, but no, wait, it's back up to 5, now 7, now 5, now zzzzzzz. Nap!

Media will have to wait, because I freely admit I am addicted to my computer and the internet, and I go off in a tailspin if shit goes sideways.

[Somehow I doubt bitching to Literature and Latte will result in an option to choose your archive program. Because if it's already there, I haven't noticed it.]

[strinak]

Kindle Unlimited for Beginners

Ok! So yes, Amazon is The Enemy but! Kindle Unlimited is one area where they seem to give a benefit to readers without simultaneously fucking over authors and so it has become a staple of my reading life. As in, I get most of my books from there. A subscription is $9.99/month and there are lots of "3 months for $4.99" or "6 months for $30" deals available, as well as free trials that seem to reset about once a year. A subscription allows you to "check out" up to 10 books at a time, and you can return/check out books as many times as you like. Some of the books also come with free audiobook copies. All books are available for download to transfer via USB and yes, that means what you think it means. Syncing to Amazon deletes all books not currently checked out. Most authors get paid based on the percentage of their book(s) you've read, as determined by Amazon sync. Some authors have purportedly gotten different contracts whereby they get paid by the straight download instead but they seem a statistically insignificant minority. Massage files as seems fair before syncing. Kindle Unlimited is, primarily, selfpub trash. Don't get me wrong, I love me some indulgent trash romance or filthy trash porn! But there is probably a reason these authors went KU instead of a traditional publisher that would give them, like, ANY marketing support, so, uh, set expectations accordingly. Oh! Relevant point I forgot! To be KU-available, a book MUST be KU-exclusive. So that cuts out a whole bunch of your midlisters as well as your big names - though some names/publishers have cut deals to release on KU without that pesky exclusivity. Anyway! KU is fantastic for porn, m/m romance, reverse harem novels, novella serials, nontraditional doorstopper fantasy...if it will Never Be Licensed for Television, it has a place on KU. Amazon's search is only getting more garbage as time passes, so some on finding the good stuff on your own: 1) a good way to narrow things down is to find an author you like and check out the "people also liked these authors" sidebar on their profile 2) you can look at the rankings of a specific book, pick the most niche list, and scan that for ku titles; a book might be #987 in romance but #10 in 30-minute LGBT reads or whatever, and the latter is MUCH easier to browse 3) start at the kindle unlimited catalog and narrow the categories down until you're ready to start browsing The key benefit, though, is trying some fucking garbage that you'd never risk if you were straight up paying for it. It's free! The author gets paid something even if you DNF two chapters in and, crucially, they are paid via Amazon's dollars, not yours. You're just paying for the weird access card. Make the most of it! I have read thirteen books by Erin R Flynn and I don't even particularly like her! I would never pay for her overdramatic cliches! But with KU, all I'm wasting is my time, so yeah, tell me more about how hard it is being a Very Special Magic Princess with six boyfriends. You will try so many more authors you've never heard of, genres you've never touched. It's amazing. Highly recommended.

[botanyshitposts]

whats the deal with proven winners?

okay. so. this is actually how i got into botany in the first place; i got an unpaid internship at a greenhouse in high school and realized, very quickly, that we live in a jurassic park hellscape where big companies breed plants solely for their looks and performance, and i found that so fucking weird that i couldnt get enough of it and fell down the rabbit hole. i don’t find them bad per say; i find them weird and how they manage their product in terms of policing their retailers is very sketchy to me, but they’re not like, monstanto-level off the shits (yet). with mother’s day next weekend we’re coming up on one of the biggest greenhouse/ornamental plant industry sales days of the year, next to valentines’ day (which favors the rose industry especially), so this is an exceptionally convenient time to talk about this. 

proven winners is one of the biggest ornamental plant companies in the united states, possibly the world. you might know them from their patented white flower pots. they’re centered in california (as, actually, a lot of these large flower producers are) and they manage a HUUUUUUGEEE network of giant industrial flower greenhouses. 

like, you have to understand, all garden retailers have to buy their shit from somewhere, and although the centers and local greenhouses selling proven winners stuff are often small and independent (unless ur talking like...flowerama or something), a large portion of the plants themselves, like many things in capitalism, form an industry of their own dominated by a handful of oligarch corporations, of which proven winners is one. small retailers order bulk products from these companies, should it be through full-color paper catalogs (which exist, btw, and are wild in and of themselves to look at; i actually have a few back home that i keep around solely bc they’re incredibly fascinating in a slightly offputting jurassic park kind of way), online, or through a sales representative for their region. 

it depends on what they’re ordering, but they can buy seeds, plugs (the black trays of like....tiny plants you buy at garden centers to put in planters? the ones that come in, like, six packs? those are called ‘plugs’), and in the case of perennials, woody plants of various ages, among other things. these plants are bred, marketed, and sold on a goddamn industrial scale. it’s wild. 

now....this is where it gets absolutely fascinating to me. this isn’t just proven winners, but proven winners is one of the top contenders of this. some highlights of how plants are actually marketed on an industrial scale: 

-plants come out in collections. like, you have horticulturalist designer people who put their names on some stuff and they all go out as like, The New Hot Thing(tm). 

-they always promote their top selling stuff, and the plants that won awards, and like, the most popular flower arrangements and stuff. this in and of itself, again, isn’t like.....bad, it just feels weird how plants are marketed as objects rather than living things, you know?

-these plants are 100% bred and optimized for their commercial value and how they look. see the above point about how it feels like they’re treating them as objects. 

-every year, there are new plants, which are put at the front of the catalogue and like, show them off as the Hit New Products. these are all part of the year’s collective collection, so like, proven winners has their 2019 collection all ready on their site in a special little tab: 

FUN INDUSTRY SIDE STORY: looks like they have some new orange petunias this year, which reminds me fondly of the 2017 purge ordered by the USDA of a ton of illegally GMO orange petunias....

you see, orange petunias don’t exist naturally, so what companies do is either 1. systematically breed orange into them, which can take years, or 2. take red petunias and just put in some coding for yellow from the maize genome, which makes them orange. usually, you have to submit all this paperwork and go through a ton of government red tape to sell GMOs, including required trials conducted by the federal government, but what some of these large ornamental seed companies were doing was just....not telling the government and just kind of...pretending that they bred them. so in 2017, a netherlands team noticed that these were like....kind of Suspicious(tm), and started doing some tests....and accidentally uncovered like, this huge international orange petunia scandal across all these companies, over 30 varieties of illegal petunia being sold internationally. they had to alert the actual EU, which then alerted the USDA, who then gave an actual government order for these large companies to literally burn, bury, or otherwise destroy all their industrial stock of the proven illegal GMO orange petunias. 

small retailers who had bought them assuming that they were legal were allowed to keep and continue selling what they bought, but the actual producers were ordered to just fucking. violently destroy everything. the USDA informed these companies that they could sell them again, but only if they were put through the proper government channels and received proper certification. i checked the old recall list and didn’t see these, so i’m assuming they’re like...Legit, but. im 👀 somebody test these lol

AAANNNNYYway that aside, if you would like to see the Proven Winners 2019 Flower Collection Showcase(tm), they have a bunch of......weird kind of ads on their youtube channel showing artsy pics of their new shit. to this day i can’t pin down exactly what about them makes me feel slightly uncomfortable, but you really do get a sense that they’re selling an object to preform, which i guess is the point, but...idk, it’s just a very different view of plants, i think, then i personally have. very sci-fi-y, if you will. all their ads are like this; these video are essentially very similar to what you get from their print sales booklets, but in video form.

see, last but not least, my biggest beef with proven winners is the weird way they handle their company. 

you get inspected by the plant police.

im not kidding. for those not very familiar with plant reproduction, you can grow vegetative clones of plants through a process called taking cuttings, where you cut off a part of the plant and put it in a new pot under the right conditions, and it develops a root system and becomes a genetic clone to the parent. obviously, anyone can do this with a lot of the proven winners plants, especially because PW plants, as i’ve noticed, tend to be bred to be more vigorous. 

proven winners wants to ensure that there’s no Illegal Plant Downloads taking place, so they literally like....send people out to these small retailers and ask to see their stock to make sure that all the plants are going in the Patented Proven Winners White Pots(tm) with the Patented Proven Winners Information Tags(tm). you MUST plant proven winners stuff in the pots they send you, with the instructions they send you, and they will check you for this. the first time my internship mentor ordered from them, they accidentally planted the plugs in generic brown pots instead of the white ones, and the weird proven winners police rolled in unannounced for an inspection and told them that the next time it happened they wouldn’t sell to them anymore. what they’re worried about happening is that the growers will order a small amount and then just make a bunch of cuttings without paying them, and it’s just......weird. like i get why they do it but that’s always struck me as really, really shady lmao

[wtffundiefamilies]

Law student nuggestsofchicken (heh) has been summarizing Josh’s bond hearing.  I’ll be pasting that here, but you’re better off finding them on reddit yourself.  I’m finding their commentary really useful because I have no real idea how any of this shit works or is supposed to work.  Trying to keep their emphasis as true as possible, but might miss some stuff.

Prosecution’s first witness direct: Special Agent Gerald Faulkner Special agent with homeland security investigations (HSI)

Been with them since April of 2009

Since 2010 been working federal child exploitation cases

Works with ICAC task force which is Internet Child Against Children.

Worked over 1000 child exploitation cases

Vast majority involved online pornography

In May of 2019, there was an investigation of a bittorrent program that noted activity in the upper northwest area of AR involving distribution of known CP images

Explanation of peer-to-peer file sharing networks. Known by law enforcement as commonly used to distribute CP

Bittorrent is a version of peer-to-peer sharing

On May 14 and 15, detective was able to download two files

-EDITED AND REMOVED- Faulkner describes graphically what the CSA depicts. If you're really curious some news outlets have reported on it. But our members predominately felt that it was not worth reading.

Police used ISP and the geographic location of the IP address to locate the activity and it got directed to the DHS task force to address it.

Police issued a warrant to the ISP to obtain the name and account of the user.

In October 2019, the ISP revealed the account in question was owned by Joshua James Duggar with an address in Springdale.

Apparently the mapping system was out of date, and the proper address was Wholesale Motor Cars for the account associated with the activity.

DHS obtained federal search warrant to search the car lot.

Warrant was executed on November 8, 2019 at 3:15pm.

Car lot is adjacent to Highway 12, between Springdale and Siloam Springs. At the time of the search warrant there were approximately 30 cars and and RV on the lot. Two buildings, a shed undergoing remodel and a metal building the size of a toll booth which they found out was the main office.

When officers arrived on the scene they encountered Pest and two individuals.

Police approached with a soft approach, no weapons drawn, explained that an investigation was underway with suspected contraband electronically. This was not an arrest warrant, so the three people there were free to leave.

Police did not tell them case-specific facts because it could spoil statements that could be made.

None of the vehicles, none of the uniforms worn indicated that it was a child exploitation case.

Josh produced cell phone and said he wanted to call his attorney. Police said the phone was under investigation and then seized the phone to prevent any spoliation of evidence.

Josh remained on scene during the investigations. He was not guarded by law enforcement during the search.

Police seized a desktop computer, a macbook laptop inside an RV, and Josh’s iPhone.

Government’s Exhibit 1 is the photograph of the Wholesale Motor Cars main office.

Government’s Exhibit 2 is a photograph of the desktop computer. Wallpaper has a photo of Josh, Anna, and their kids but the kids have been redacted.

After securing the scene, they asked Josh if he’d be willing to discuss the issues. He agreed to speak with them.

Conversation happened inside a government vehicle. Duggar was passenger side, other officer was in the rear seat, Faulkner was in driver’s seat.

Other officer received verbal consent from Duggar to record the interview.

Duggar spontaneously asked, “What is this about? Has anyone been downloading child pornography?”

At that point, no one had told Duggar that child pornography was an issue in this case.

Officers Mirandized Duggar his rights.

Duggar said he owned and operated the car lot since June 2018, that he owned the desktop computer they found, as well as the Macbook and the cell phone they seized.

Duggar said he owned his phone but other family members could have access to it.

Duggar declined to provide the password to the desktop or the phone to law enforcement.

Duggar said that he owned the Macbook but that other family members had access to it.

He said, in response to a question from law enforcement, that he was familiar with peer-to-peer file sharing networks but did not which to comment further. He said that his devices might have been associated with peer-to-peer file sharing.

He noted that TOR might have been accessed by the desktop

TOR is a browser used to access the dark web, which is a known source of CP.

At this point law enforcement did not have reason to believe TOR/dark web was an issue in this case.

When asked if he was familiar with bittorrent Duggar declined to answer that question.

At this point, law enforcement explained that the investigation involved someone had been using bittorrent or peer-to-peer networks from that car lot to access CP involving children between the ages of 5-10

When asked whether he had any reason to suspect or had seen anyone using his computer accessing CP Duggar said “I’d rather not answer that question.”

Officers found bittorrent and TOR on the desktop.

Officers found fucking Covenant Eyes on the computer.

Information from Covenant Eyes indicated the program was registered to Josh and Anna Duggar.

On May 13, 2019 a linux-partition had been installed on the computer.

A linux partition can divide the harddrive of the computer into two isolated sections that work independently.

The linux partition was password protected and the last four characters of the password were -REDACTED- but had been used for a variety of his accounts over years.

Linux partition side did not have Covenant Eyes installed on it, so activity would not have been detected by the account.

On the Macbook there was bittorrent as well as Covenant Eyes.

Duggar had backed up his iPhone to that Macbook which allowed law enforcement to obtain texts, photos, etc. from the Macbook

Law enforcement found iChat messages from May 13-16, 2016 on the computer.

Government’s Exhibit 3 is a forensic examination summary of May 13 and May 14 extracted from Duggar’s electronic devices.

D objects to moving Exhibit 3 into evidence because of lack of foundation, and argues that it was prepared for litigation purposes but the witness was not the expert who created it.

P provides some more foundation for the Exhibit and judge admits it.

Exhibit is displayed. Basically summarizes the sus computer activity in May 2019. Linux partition was created and on the same day Tor Browser was installed on that side of the partition.

On May 14, at 4:49pm, Pest sends text that says “Got stuck here and still not free yet. Im gonna aim for tomorrow just after lunch.”

On May 14, at 4:58pm Tor browser was used to access porn sites associated with rape and files associated with CP. Video was downloaded

At 5:38pm, user accessed bittorrent. Two videos were downloaded. (Little Rock Officer was notified)

At 5:41pm, user accessed TOR directory site and website associated with bittorrent.

On May 15, 2019 at 11:35am computer user downloads 3 torrent files associated with CP.

Throughout the course of the day on May 15, Josh Duggar sends texts to 22 members of the Duggar family asking them to pray for a motorcyclist who got in an accident by Wholesale Motors. Computer also gets used to write reviews online under the name “Joshua.”

There’s also geolocations of photos taken at the car lot by Josh’s phone, but that piece of evidence doesn’t get admitted because D objects to lack of foundation regarding the reliability of geolocation data

TW: At 5:25 user of desktop downloads a file called “DD” that is known in the ICAC circle. Faulkner says that this series ranks in the top 5 of the worst CP he’s had to examine.

Josh’s screen goes black, AUSA wants to double check that he’s still present, he turns his screen back on.

At 6:56 user of desktop downloads a zip that contains 65 images of CP.

On May 16, user of desktop downloads file called “Pedomom”

The zip had been opened and the CP images had been viewed by the desktop.

Approximately 200 images of CP were located on the desktop in unallocated space, which means someone tried to delete them.

Friends and family at the time testified that Josh had a pornography addiction.

CX: Special Agent Faulkner

(I’m not gonna include information that was repeated on direct. Just getting the points that D seems to think is damning)

Faulkner was training another agent at the time of this investigation

The Detective in Little Rock was able to detect an IP address, but not one particular device.

Individual devices can be recognized by a MAG(?) address, which did not happen here

Little Rock detective did not have an Network Investigative Technique warrant

P objects on this, noting that it’s a detention hearing. Judge agrees but allows D to develop its point

D asks whether Faulkner’s first time reviewing the images at issue was in October 2019. Faulkner says it was probably June 2019.

D brings up the search warrant affidavit which suggests that Faulkner first reviewed the images in October.

D kind of tries to impeach Faulkner with the affidavit but the affidavit statement doesn’t really say that the first time he reviewed the images was in October, just that he did review them in October.

Law enforcement thinks Josh was the only one working at the car lot on May 13, 14, 15, 2019

D tries to distinguish Josh’s personal electronic (the mac and the iPhone) as being Apple while the desktop was a PC.

I know I’m kind of batting down the points D is trying to make but as someone who’s done trial work I think it’s worth saying that Justin Gelfand is really solid. Very conversational and likeable and really seems to know the case.

Re-Direct of Faulkner by P:

While Josh technically turned himself in, he had received word from his attorney who had received word from DHS that there was going to be a warrant executed and that DHS agents followed him as Anna drove him to turn himself in, as they didn’t want Duggar arrested in an area where children were

Question from the judge:

Covenant Eyes was installed on both the Macbook and the desktop.

Judge asked when Covenant Eyes was installed, but Faulkner didn’t know

Any reports from Covenant Eyes would’ve been sent to Anna. But the Covenant Eyes report wouldn’t pick up on the CP because it wasn’t installed on the linux partition side.

Prosecution’s second witness direct: Diem Nguyen - Probation officer

Probation officer for 17 years

Factors considered in determining whether someone should be released: Natures and circumstances of the case, defendant’s criminal history, place of employment, resident situation

Presumption cases are cases where an individual is presumed to be detained and the burden is on the defendant to demonstrate that they should be released

A third party custodian is someone who vouches for the defendant in federal court while their case is pending

They are basically in charge of the defendant if the defendant is released from custody and ensures that they follow all conditions placed by the court.

Mr. LaCount Reaver and Ms. Maria Reaver are the proposed third parties in this case. Mr. Reaver works outside of the home in a full-time capacity at the VA. Mr. Reaver is a pastor and volunteers with jail ministries Ms. Reaver is a full time homemaker. Ms. Reaver was concerned regarding being left alone with Duggar as she was a female and he was a male. (note: Ms. Nguyen is not a good witness. Doesn’t seem like she knows where the prosecution is trying to take this and isn’t really answering the questions) Minors would be coming into the Reaver’s residence for piano lessons where Duggar would be Ms. Reaver is close friends with Josh’s parents and they attended the same church at one point. She feels that she and her husband should help his parents and Josh. Ms. Reaver said she’s a lot closer to Josh’s parents than to Josh himself Josh’s parents reached out to the Reavers for their assistance Ms. Reaver said she was familiar with the charges in question but she did not know the details of them. Both Mr. and Ms. Reaver had concealed carry licenses and had 3 rifles and 6 pistols at their resident. Nguyen asked if they had a gun safe to keep access away from Josh and Ms. Reaver said they would lock up the guns in a master bedroom closet. Ms. Reaver did not have a plan for what to do with the minors coming to the house but said that they would always be accompanied by another adult Duggar would be staying at a side bedroom that locks from the inside so Duggar couldn’t lock it himself, but he could exit the bedroom from an exterior door Nguyen thinks the Reavers “could” be suitable third-party custodians, however the minors coming to the home as well as the firearms causes the probation office some concern. There is internet at the residence but it is password protected. During the interview with Josh, Nguyen asked whether he was suffering from any addictions. He said no. Nguyen found a statement from Josh in 2015 where he admitted to a pornography addiction, but did not ask him about it. AUSA asks about molestation from Josh when he was younger. D objects claiming these records are sealed and leaked from tabloids, and deals with his conduct as a child. Judge overrules. Judge explains that she is concerned about the safety of the community. If the previous molestation issues had been handled in juvenile court it would’ve been sealed. But Duggar and his family have chosen to be public about these activities and admissions and they’re not too far in the past to still be relevant. Minors were 11, 10, 9, and 5 at the time of the incident, and Josh was 14. Nguyen recommends that Josh be detained and the presumption apply. Even if Reavers were suitable third-party custodians it wouldn’t mitigate the risk to the community.

CX: Probation Officer Nguyen

Reavers have no criminal history

No minors reside at the Reaver home

Reavers said they would do whatever they needed to do to be Josh’s third-party custodians

“If the firearms were removed from the home and if the piano lessons cease, would that be a suitable third party residence?” “Quite possibly.” -Justin Gelfand looks forlorn-

In the 17 months Josh has been aware of the investigation, Josh has not left the country.

Re-direct of Probation Officer Nguyen:

Re-iterates the sexual abuse of minors from years ago

Re-cross of Probation Officer Nguyen:

*missed this because I was taking my dog out to pee* But the bit I caught sounds like they were emphasizing that the probation office had the authority to detain Josh if he violates any of the release conditions.

-prosecution rests its case-

Defense First Witness Maria Reaver:

She’s Asian. Did not expect that

“Are you aware of the charges brought against Mr. Duggar?” “Some”

Aware of the two charges here

No criminal history

Has a place where Josh can live in her house

Lives in Washington County

Has a mother-in-law kind of suite in her home that Josh should live in

Would be willing to abide by any conditions given by court

Would report any broken conditions to the court

(Defense attorney Travis Story is….not as good as Gelfand. Lots of stumbling and unclear wording. The reason my summary of this testimony is so choppy is because that’s how it’s being presented. Reaver giving pretty much just one word answers)

Adult daughter teaches piano at the Reaver home

A few minors come over for piano lessons

Location of piano lessons could be moved to a different place

Has a place to move the fire arms if need be

Mr. Reaver leaves for work at 6:30am and gets home at 4pm

Ms. Reaver and her daughter would be alone at home with Josh. The daughter would come and go throughout the day, possibly leaving Ms. Reaver home alone with Josh.

Ms. Reaver would be OK being alone with Josh.

Wants to be the third party custodian to help the family and “minister” to them

Story just says “That’s admirable.” and i laughed bro you’re not the one testifying here??

Ms. Reaver is willing to serve as third party custodian regardless of whatever rules the court chooses to impose.

CX of Maria Reaver:

Reavers have neighbors, but each of them have about 5-10 acres of land so they’re pretty spread out.

Known the Duggar family for 5-6 years. From time-to-time would interact with Josh.

They’ve been inside the Duggar home. And been to a couple of weddings.

Never had a one-on-one conversation with Josh.

Never been alone with Josh.

Attended church them in 2015 when the sexual abuse allegations first came out, but wasn’t fully aware of them. Is aware of them now.

AUSA asks “Can you tell me what you know about the allegations?” Reaver pauses, is silent, and then says “Give me a minute.” Story objects, judge overrules.

“I don’t fully know everything but from my understanding there was some, uh, when he was younger, I’m not sure how old, maybe a teenager, that there was inappropriate touching of some of the minors.”

Was not aware that one of the minors was 5-years-old

“Does knowing that there was a 5 year old involved change your decision to serve as a third-party custodian?” “I’m looking at is as we are here to be as help, to the family, to Josh and Anna. To minister to them.”

Jim Bob called her husband and asked them to be the third party custodian because her husband and Jim Bob are good friends.

“Did you feel any pressure or obligation to serve as the third-party custodian?” “My husband has made the decision and I’m here to support that decision.”

More talk about ministry and serving others

If the conditions were violated she would alert the court before notifying her husband

Would not leave her adult daughter alone with Josh

“We don’t have internet-internet, our internet is in our phone, it’s like a hotspot. There’s no wifi. We don’t have cable. There is no hard wiring.” (side note: wtf?? It’s 2021)

Phones are password protected

Understands that if Josh is released to her home he could be there for 6 months.

Redirect of Maria Reaver:

Re iterates that she would alert the court directly if the conditions were violated

Questions from the judge:

First call if the conditions were violated would be to the US probation office (“Not your husband, not Jim Bob Duggar, not elders in the church”)

Daughter has been spoken to regarding relocation of the piano lessons

“This case has gotten a lot of publicity. And the last thing Mr. Duggar needs is an incident with a firearm.” Reaver says she’d remove firearm

Defense second witness: LaCount Reaver

Has firearms in the house, but would be willing to relocate them outside the house

Willing to serve as third-party custodian along with his wife

????THAT’S IT?? Literally 3 questions

CX:

Was aware of Duggars’ charges specifically

Was not aware of all the details, such as that toddlers were involved

But does not change his opinion of being the third party custodian

Jim Bob Duggar was the one who reached out to them first

JB asked if it was something he could think about, pray about, being a part of

JB referenced Reaver’s involvement with prison ministry as making him a potentially good third-party custodian

Has known the Duggars for 6-8 years

Knew them in 2015

Didn’t know the exact details but was familiar with “some charges” related to him

Knew that the minors resided in the house where Josh resided

Was not part of the church in 2005.

No hesitation about leaving his daughter or wife alone with Josh

No implication that he would get anything in return for housing Josh

He’s a volunteer chaplain at Washington County jail but that’s been halted because of COVID-19

Not necessarily interested in offering counseling for Josh

Willing to call US Probation directly if Josh violates conditions

Has “phone internet” and “uses that for the computer.”

Says he’s a “3 or 4” on a scale of 1-10 of tech savviness

Phone is locked with a pin

Did not know Josh is tech savvy

Last time he spoke with Josh one-on-one was more than a year ago

Not sure if his wife has ever had a one-on-one conversation with Josh

“Is it common practice in your marriage that when your wife interacts with men that there should be a chaperone there?” “I think that would be best.”

Says that his wife should be around Josh with another person, not necessarily a male, could be a daughter

Is a family, they discuss things, they both prayed and decided to do it

“When a family is in need and they ask you for help, I think that’s something anyone would do”

Questions from the judge:

Willing to remove firearms if Josh is released to his custody

Will under no circumstances reveal his password to his phone or computers to Josh

“If you or your wife or your daughter observe or learn about a violation by Mr. Duggar I need to hear you say that your first call will be the US probation officer who’s supervising this case?” He says yes.

Judge: “The time for prayer, and conversations with Jim Bob, and with the elders of the church, that will happen after calling the probation office.”

Defense closes case. Closing arguments now.

Judge asked both sides to keep closing arguments to ~5 minutes since it was getting late.

Prosecution closing:

Nature and circumstances of charges:

Josh intentionally used Bit Torrent to receive CP.

Intentionally used linux partitions to hide what he was doing

Covenant Eyes does not pick up on what’s going on behind the partition

Josh took steps to conceal his activity by doing it on his work computer and avoid the recognition of Covenant Eyes.

-description of how horrific the CP found on Josh’s computer was-

Emphasized that the partition was password protected using a password linked with Josh’s other accounts which indicates that Josh, and not another employee, was behind the partition

Timeline in Exhibits 3 and 4 demonstrate that Josh was the one using the computer in May to download CP and throughout the day texting his family and using the computer for other uses

Discussion of Josh committing sexual abuse when he was a teenager.

Josh’s lack of movement in the past 17 months does not necessarily mean he wont be a flight risk now that circumstances are different

Nature and seriousness of the danger to the community:

We know the extent and the steps Josh will take to hide his actions. We know the kind of material depicted in the CSA that Josh had. We know he has a sexual attraction to children.

Not sure if the Reavers, Ms. Reaver in particular, understand the task that she would have to take on as third-party custodians.

Ms. Reaver doesn’t generally wanna be alone with a male. They have guns. They have minors at their place for piano lessons. Doesn’t make sense that they’d want turn their entire life around to do a favor for a family friend.

We know Josh has a history of “hands on” abuse, we’ve seen how sneaky he can be, AUSA asks that he be detained.

Defense closing:

Josh is presumed innocent of what he’s accused of. A detention hearing is not the place to try this case.

Two prongs under Bail Reform Act: 1) Flight risk

DHS executed search warrant in November 2019, 17 months ago, but Josh has not fled since then. Voluntarily surrendered without issue.

Not a danger to the community. If law enforcement thought that he was a danger they could’ve detained him back in 2019, but they didn’t.

Probation officer Nguyen testified he has been fully compliant since he’s been arrested.

Judge asked the Reavers point blank if they were willing to report to the probation office first, and they said yes.

Law unambiguously points against detention, and the facts point against detention.

Court taking brief recess to collect thoughts and look through evidence. Asks Josh if he’s doing OK, or where he is in the detention center. He says “Sitting on a metal stool, Your Honor.”

Judge's thoughts:

Nature of circumstances of charges against Josh: Presumed innocent. But count 1 carries a mandatory minimum 5 year sentence. Count 2 could carry sentence of 20 years based on the evidence admitted at trial. Court views these charges as very serious. Court is concerned about the evidence describing those charges. It is concerning that that DD file is "some of the worst sexual abuse child pornography that he has seen in over a thousand cases." That concerns the courts.

The number of images concerns the court. The prepubescent age of the victims concerns the court. The sophistication of the person who downloaded the images concerns the court. It is not the average defendant who can access the Dark Web, who can use partition devices, and who can bypass significant surveillance programs.

Children are involuntary victims of pornography and sexual abuse. They're subject often to human trafficking and other circumstances we don't have time to address. The demand and download of child pornography fields the market for the production of this material. The forensic evidence suggests that a significant amount of effort was made to download a significant amount of child sexual material. The weight of the evidence is not insubstantial. That also weighs against Josh.

History and characteristics of Josh: Josh has a long history in Northwest Arkansas, he's married, has children. He has no drug or alcohol history. It seems that Josh has been involved in various businesses in Arkansas. Josh turned himself in and does not appear to have a history of other crimes. Josh did not seem to obstruct any investigation.

The court does not need to treat Josh differently than anyone else similarly situated. However, Josh's family has chosen to make their family life public. Although Josh has never been convicted of any crime, he has admitted to in the past touching children, which concerns the court. That was a public admission, and everyone at this hearing knows it. This concerns the court. What's particularly concerning is the age of Josh's sisters and the age of the children involved with the charges against him.

The court is mindful, however, that this conduct happened a long time ago. And it happened when Josh was a child. That fact, and that fact alone, are in Josh's favor. It is concerning to court that Josh has committed that he has an issue with pornography; that is different than child pornography. But what the court has heard is that prior to images being downloaded to Josh's computer, Covenant Eyes was installed which is a program that acts as a deterrent. The court has also heard testimony that Josh's wife may have been his accountability partner on that. The court is not making a determination on that, but it concerns the court.

The court is concerned that the ages of the children involved are very similar to the age of Josh's children and the ages of his nieces and his nephews. The court keeps coming back to the age of the children Josh interacts with on a daily basis and is concerned.

Seriousness of the danger Josh poses to the community: The court does not know. Josh has not been convicted of being a danger to anyone. There is no criminal history that suggests Josh has displayed a pattern of violence to anyone. But Josh's children, his sibling's children, and his minor brothers and sisters are all part of the community that need to be protected from him.

This is a very close call. The U.S. Attorney has not met its burden.

Josh Duggar will be released on very strict conditions:

- Cannot be returned to his guest house or TTH

- Court is not interested in second chances. Don't fuck up with the Reavers. (paragraphsed)

- Tomorrow Josh will be released to the Reavers with close GPS monitoring. Restricted to this residence except for working, education, church, medical services, meeting with lawyers, court ordered obligation, or other activities approved IN ADVANCE by the probation office.

- May not possess or view pornography or erotica of any kind

- Court does not think it has the technology to limit Josh's use. Josh cannot have computers, phones, smart TVs, gaming systems, etc. He may not ask for the passwords from the Reavers or her daughter.

- Josh can get a jitterbug phone to contact counsel as long as it's approved by a probation officer.

- Josh cannot leave the Western District of Arkansas.

- Josh can have unlimited contact with his children as long as their mother is present. Josh cannot have contact with any other minor children including siblings, family members, piano students, etc.

- Not a requirement but a recommendation: Plan activities based on who he might run into. Avoid birthday parties, etc.

- No substances, drugs or alcohol

- Cannot actually or constructively possess a firearm

- Must surrender passport and not obtain a new passport

- May not violate any state or local law

- Must provide a DNA sample

- Must appear in court as requested

- Tomorrow must sign an appearance bond

[self-excellence]

FIX YOUR SLEEPING SCHEDULE (1-2 months)

Try to wake up earlier every day. Like 5 - 10 min earlier than the day before. Until you wake up any time before 8am or so…

If you struggle with waking up & snooze button is your bff:

Put your alarm clock as far away from the bed as possible.

Drink a glass of water right after you wake up.

Pour another glass of water on yourself right after you wake up.

Prepare some coffee the night before (try the cold brew method), leave it by your bedside, drink it after you wake up. Alternatively, buy some caffeine pills and take one right after waking up with a big glass of water.

Have your blinds/curtains open the night before, so that it’s bright after you wake up.

Try to go to bed 5-10 min earlier than the night before.

Track how many hours of sleep you’re getting. Aim to get at least 7h per day or 49h per week. 

Increase your sleeping hours incrementally. Aim to get at least 1h of sleep more than the previous week. For example, if this week you slept for 41hrs, aim to get an extra hour of sleep next week, so it’s 42h. Once you get enough hours of sleep and wake up early-ish:

Try to keep your sleeping schedule consistent. It is really important to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. Even if it’s weekend. Or even if that means getting less than 7hrs of sleep that day. I’d say waking up at the same time everyday is the most important step, which will help you the most with fixing your sleeping schedule.

START EATING HEALTHY (1-2 months)

This step really depends from person to person, but firstly I suggest you take some blood tests to see if you have any deficiencies, etc. Especially, if you struggle with cravings.  

Try intermittent fasting, if you struggle with binge eating or overeating. As it will help you to learn to listen to your body better: when it’s hungry, when it’s full, etc. It’s really simple, there are many methods of Intermittent fasting, but I’d suggest 16/8 for the beginners. (Google it for more info)

DRINK ALL THE WATER. Again, if you’re not drinking enough water, try to level up your water game incrementally. Download some water tracking app on your phone to help you. Drinking water will make you more energetic, increase your metabolism, and decrease you appetite (among many more benefits). If you really struggle with meeting your water intake:

Reward yourself when you meet your daily/weekly goals.

Drink through the straw - idk why, but you are going to drink much more if you use a straw. Trust me.

Get a nice water bottle. 

Flavour your water with fruits etc.

Check this video for more tips

Track what you eating. I would really suggest tracking your meals for around a month. Because, most of the time people have no idea that what they’re eating is unhealthy. Again, download an app to your phone for that.

Make your own meals once in a while. Not only this will save you money, but it’ll help you to see what’s really going into your body. Start by doing that once a week and build it up depending how much time and energy you have.

Eat less meat and more veggies/fruits. Go to your local market and buy some veggies/fruits, you have never tried before. I’m sure you’ll find your new favs. Eat/buy less meat. Not only it’s good for the environment, but it is good for you, too. Get a veggie burger instead of the beef one, etc.

Cut dairy. Find your new favourite milk substitute. Advice: Oat milk is really good with the tea and oatmeal/porridge; hazelnut milk is amazing on it’s own; cashew milk goes well with cereals.

Learn more about nutrition in general. It will help you to make better food choices and it will make eating healthy much easier in general, because once you understand all the chemistry behind the food and what it does to your body, you kinda don’t want to make yourself feel worse. Here are some free resources: - Human nutrition course from Alison.com - Crash course Metabolism&Nutrition: Part 1 and Part 2 - The Health Nerd’s YouTube Playlist about nutrition - What I’ve Learnt YouTube Playlist - Human nutrition course from Alison.com - Crash course Metabolism&Nutrition: Part 1 and Part 2 - The Health Nerd’s YouTube Playlist about nutrition

GET PHYSICALLY FIT (2-6 months)

Define your goals. Do you want to lose weight, do you want to get stronger, gain weight, be able to climb the stairs without losing your breath, run 5k?

Remember - you’re half-way through. Being physically fit has a lot to do with what you put into your body. So, if you fulfilled the previous step of eating healthy - you are halfway through!

Make a plan. A Reasonable plan. Be honest with yourself. Alternatively, there are many already-made plans if you’re feeling lazy. Like, Couch to 5k for running,  Beginners 30-day exercise guide, 30 days of yoga, etc.

Start small. Like, 5 min exercise in the morning. Or doing 10 sit ups per day. Don’t do anything overwhelming, like running 5k everyday if you haven’t run for the past 5 years.

Make sure that you kinda like what you’re doing. If you absolutely hate running - don’t do it. Hate doing sit ups in the morning? Try some yoga instead.

Explore until you find what you like. You don’t have to go to gym to get fit, especially if you hate it. Find a type of exercise, which you actually like. Maybe it’s dancing or hiking, taking your dog for a walk. Sign up for several trial lessons of various sport clubs. Ditch ‘em if you have them until you find something that you love. Stick with that.

Do the small changes in your everyday life. Stairs>Escalator, Walk>Drive, Do some squats while brushing your teeth, switch from regular desk to standing desk, etc…  Find ways to incorporate being active into your everyday life

Track your effort instead of your progress. You cannot really control your progress that much (especially if your goal was to lose weight). However, you can always control your effort. So track it instead. This will leave you more motivated. As you will be able to see that you can do more and more everyday. Whereas, if you tracked your progress, you may not always get the result you hoped for, which might demotivate you and make you upset, wanting to quit.

BEAT DEPRESSION

Do the previous 3 steps and you’re halfway through as mental health depends a lot on the physical health.

See a therapist/doctor. Depression is an illness requiring medical treatment. So, get it. Remember:  there is absolutely no fucking shame in having a mental illness.

Get some extra support. Talk to your friends or family. Or maybe someone on the internet.

Write it out. If you don’t want to talk - write down your thoughts. It can be just as helpful. It’ll help you to understand yourself better, see problems in your thinking, etc. Buy a cheap notebook (or expensive one, up to you) and start a journal. Try being consistent by writing every morning or evening or both, but DO NOT BLAME YOURSELF if you miss some entries. Read through your past entries. Analyse them. Extract the lessons.

Distract yourself from yourself. Get someone/something to take care of, so that you can, for a moment, stop thinking about yourself. E.g, get a plant, or a dog, or a fish and focus on keeping them alive and well.

Self-care day. Dedicate at least one day per week for self-care. Take yourself out to a museum or some fancy cafe, do some stuff you like, whatever your hobbies are, do some physical self care: bath, face mask, manicure, etc., listen to some nice music, watch a film…..

STOP PROCRASTINATION

Celebrate your victories instead of mourning over your loses. So the only thing you’ve done today was write one sentence for your 20 page essay? Amazing! Buy yourself a candy for that!! I mean, you could’ve done nothing, but you didn’t - you wrote that one sentence and that’s worth celebrating.  Redefine the success - doing something is a hundred million times better than doing nothing.

Do it for only 2 minutes. If there’s an important thing you’ve been putting off for a while, tell yourself that you will only spend 2 minutes on doing it. If after 2 minutes you don’t want to do it anymore, great, stop it. However, after 2min. you actually might want to do more. No pressure either way.

Track your productivity. Track how much time you’ve been productive that day. Try to increase that time by a little bit every day.

Always forgive yourself. So, it’s been a week and you’ve done nothing? Don’t sweat it. Let it go. Blaming yourself will bring you absolutely nothing. Nothing good will come out of your negativity on yourself. So stop it. Forgive yourself and start again. And again, if you need to. Never stop trying. Always pick yourself after you fall. Beating procrastination and increasing your discipline is a skill. And all skills can be build on. There is nothing in you stopping you from changing. Remember that.

LEARN HOW TO DO TAXES (1h - 1 day)

Go to google.com.

Type in: “How to do taxes *the name of the country you’re living in*”

Read the results.

Alternatively, if you like socialising, ask some adults, whom you know, about it. Trust me, older people love teaching us youngsters. Learn all the lessons you can from them.

GET MENTALLY STRONG ENOUGH TO MAKE PHONE CALLS

Remember that just as with beating procrastination, making phone calls is a skill. And, again, skills can be learnt.

Get a new SIM card.

Top it up.

Dial some random numbers and pretend to be a salesman, selling whatever you like.. E.g., trying to sell broadband, cable tv, trying to get people to donate for some charity… Or whatever really… Me and some friends used to pretend we’re selling kittens or wood logs. Alternatively, you can pretend that you dialed a wrong person and talk about whatever, e.g. “Hey, Jess!! You wont believe what I saw today!! *start telling a made-up story*…”

If you get uncomfortable - just drop the call. No consequences whatsoever.

Repeat until you build up your game and your phone-call anxiety starts to diminish.

SLAY THOSE BITCHES Congratulations, now you’re ready to take over the world! Got get ‘em!!

(before reblogging, check the updated version of this post here)

[sirfrogsworth]

Criminal Empathy

I just read a story about a pre-trial jail in Georgia that is treating the prisoners inhumanely. There is dangerous mold they are breathing in. Their skin is breaking out. And they don’t seem to be getting fed properly. 

The comments on the story made me furious. And I very rarely get angry. The vast majority of commenters were not only lacking empathy, but they were downright cruel. 

First of all, they all thought pre-trial jail is the same as a prison that holds convicted inmates. A pre-trial jail is mostly poor people who couldn’t afford bail. And it is predominantly people of color. And even when that was explained, very few seemed to care. 

Our system considers them innocent until proven guilty. And apparently, only about 30% of the people will actually be convicted of anything. It’s curious that the only time people say “innocent until proven guilty” is when some white guy is being accused of sexual misconduct. 

Just as in those cases with the white guys, we are actually allowed to make personal judgments about innocence and guilt. Innocent until proven guilty is just a trial standard. But they know nothing about the people in this jail. They have no information to make any judgment like that. But if our system sees them as innocent at that point, they should be made as comfortable as possible. We don’t get to pre-punish people. And even if we do end up punishing people, this is not the way to do it.    

A lot of the comments were “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.” But many were much more cruel. 

One person said they should stop complaining about the food because you can survive 40 days with just water. Which isn’t true for most people (3 weeks is the common number), and, OH YEAH... that’s fucking torture. 

Others were glad the jailed folks were breathing in mold. They “deserved it.”

A lot of people were saying, “I’d rather give their food to the homeless.” Which is ironic because a lot of homeless people end up in jail. 

Also, not everyone who goes to prison is a murderer or a pedophile. You can go to jail if you don’t pay parking tickets. And you can go to prison for years for non-violent offenses. 

To these people, it seems the second you step foot in any kind of jail or prison, even if you haven’t been convicted of anything, you forfeit your humanity. 

Every person deserves the necessities of life. Even the murderers. 

Especially since our justice system is far from perfect. 4% of people on death row were innocent. It is believed about 1 out of every 20 or 25 that are executed probably didn’t do it. And many more in prison for lesser crimes are wrongfully convicted. 

Is it worth torturing and killing innocent people just because some folks have this weird need to make bad people suffer more? Should someone who carried an ounce too much weed have to breathe in toxic mold? 

We have all committed crimes. We’ve driven too fast. We’ve taken a hit. We’ve downloaded a song. These pre-trial jails are the same place we’d go if we got caught and didn’t have enough for bail. I’m willing to bet all those awful commenters would be pretty pissed if they got locked up next to mold. 

I’ve actually been planning to write a much longer essay about our prison system. But I just couldn’t keep this in. 

This was quite the test of my faith in humanity. 

I honestly think some of those commenters were worse human beings than most of the people in that jail. 

[bloodydamnit]

Heyyyy. I feel kinda bad asking for your help for free. But how did you make King’s fur colourful and textured? I have the millennium cat in Daz and it doesn’t actually have any colour/fur options and I can’t find any in the store.

Hello there! I am SO SORRY for responding so late. This is actually a really good fucking question, that took me FOREVER to find an answer to when I was trying to figure King out. 

So, you actually cant do it with millennium cat :/ I don’t think? I’m sure there are ways, but honestly, millennium cat is not the best cat you can get. 

I 10/10 recommend investing in Hivewire House Cat. It’s 30 USD, which is fucking expensive for just a model. I got mine on sale, which they do every so often. If you put it in your wishlist on Renderosity, sometimes they do wishlist sales. Where everything in your wishlist they put on sale. So you can wait around for that, or you can just buy it. I recommend the hell out of it. 

***Very important. Downloading files from Renderosity and other websites that do not use the Download Manager from Daz’s own shop, can be v confusing. I have a MAC. There are a shit ton of tutorials on youtube on how to download these files on a Windows computer. But from a MAC, it took me for fucking ever. So if you would like a tutorial on how to download assets from other 3D rendering websites like Renderosity, please let me know! I’ve figured out a really simple way of doing it and I would be more than happy to help and the same goes for finding those files once you have them correctly situated in DAZ!***

Here’s why I recommend Hivewire. 

Millennium isn’t as detailed as Hivewire is. Millennium is a v old cat model, with only a few bones and no really helpful sliders in ‘Shaping’ and ‘Parameters’.

Just as a visual, here are these two side by side. On the right is Millennium and on the right is Hivewire. Millennium, for some reason, comes ridiculously oversized. Whereas Hivewire is automatically at the proper size for a common housecat.

Here are the Millennium ‘Parameters’ options:

And the Hivewire ‘Parameter’ options:

Even just looking at the size of the sidebar, there’s a big fucking difference. Hivewire is 10x more customizable. And everything that it comes with is already IRAY compatible. 

With all that being said, lets get into Hivewire House Cat. Because really, although Millennium is cheaper, I really don’t think it’s worth it. 

HHC (hivewire house cat) comes as a Tabby. The Tabby option comes with several different color options. You can also buy Black/White (which I used for King), Calico, and Orange Tabby as well. 

Here’s my black/white and gray tabby options:

However, the colors are not the long hair. In the promotional photos for some of these color options, the cats have long hair and it took me FOR FUCKING EVER to figure out how to do it. LUCKILY IT’S FREE THANK FUCKING GOD. 

So, lets get into that!

HHC comes with a LAMH (Look At My Hair) option! What does that mean? It means that you can easily add fur to these creatures. 

You can buy LAMH or you can get the free version. I recommend the free version. It’s what I have and if you’re only using it for this, then you gucci. Pretty much, to use LAMH, you have to download it from the website. Once that is done, in Daz you go to 

It should pull up this window. You can drag it anywhere on your workspace. 

Change the color of your kitty BEFORE you go onto the next steps. Unless you want to mix and match, which we’ll get into later!

So what do you do next - good question. 

Now you have to download the LAMH Presets from the Hivewire website. 

This. was so. fucking. annoying to figure out. with a lot of trial and error. 

Once you have LAMH presents for HHC downloaded (which comes with Short, Short 2, and Long) you can start attaching them to your cat. 

Make sure you have your cat selected. I HIGHLY recommend putting this in a new ‘document’ (?) so nothing else can interfere. I swear to god, this makes my program crash unless I don’t have it in a new field. Your program may crash. It’s annoying but the harsh reality of this thing. It’s about as finiky as dforce. So just keep that in mind and don’t give up. 

After your cat is selected, hit ‘Attach LAMH Preset’. It’s going to pull up your files. Find the LAMH presets you downloaded from the hivewire website (they can remain in a folder all on their own without being integrated into the program) and select how long you want the hair to be - Short, Short 2, or Long.  

I chose Long

It’s going to load and then all this green stuff is going to cover the HHC and in ‘Scene’ it’s going to have a new selection called HHC LAMH Group.

The next steps are really simple, but also really fucking important. 

Now, you are going to choose the hair quantity. Online you can find in different  forums, the hair quantity that people have chosen. I’ve seen the standard 250,000, 600,000, all the way to 2,000,000. YOU DO NOT NEED 2,000,000. Not even 1,000,000! I nearly always go with 600,000. The cat looks nice and full that way. I say, stay between 250,000 and 600,000. Don’t go any higher or your program will surely crash. 

***also, you can pose your figure with this. It will move with it. But, some poses will not work v nicely with LAMH - especially if it’s long haired. Anything too tightly curled, probably wont work.***

I’m going to go with 500,000 and hit ‘to OBJ’. I recommend saving this as you go. Like with every step, just hit save. Like I said, this crashes all the time and it’s extremely annoying to have to redo the steps over and over. So just save it and in turn, save yourself the headache. 

Once you hit ‘to OBJ’, this dialogue is going to pop up. Click ‘Yes’ then ‘OK’

Cool cool cool. everythings loaded, now wtf do you do? Use the eyes under HHC LAMH Group to make the green stuff disappear. DO NOT. I REPEAT. DO NOT DELETE. 

This is just so you can see your kitty with their little fur!!

Okay, you did all these steps. now fucking what? I think this is important to be said, but pose your cat BEFORE you attach the hair. It makes the hair fall more organically that way. Otherwise, it can not only make your program crash but just look weird. So, pose and position your kitty beforehand. So when you merge it into your original file, it’s already in place and you can go straight to rendering. (Leave LAMH for last. Always.)

Cool cool cool you did all of this. You can now pull up the AUX Viewport tab and see what your kitty be lookin like.

Now. I said earlier that you can mix and match. I didn’t know this was a thing, until i made a mistake and REALIZED it was a thing. For King, I wanted her to be black and white. However, homegirl forgot to do that. so after I had all of her fur already on and finished, I clicked one of the black and white options, and all of a sudden it mixed?!?! So I think what happened here, was that I had King as a tabby, or maybe mainly white. I don’t know. And when I attached the fur, the color from her original ‘skin’ also attaches to the fur, in order to give it color. Well, when I changed it afterwards, it ended up mixing her up. So instead of her turning out like this (which is what I originally had her as):

She came out like this:

Unfortunately, I have NO IDEA HOW I GOT TO THIS. So although King is looking fucking FIRE here, I couldn’t use it. :( 

Ugh, anyway. Another really important thing to keep in mind, is that you don’t want the hair to be too thin. I’m almost positive for both of these models, I used 600,000 hairs. I went lower than that for a picture of king in the office, and her hair came out extremely thin and you could see her body through it. It wasn’t a good look for her (Sorry bb girl). So if your number is too low, it will look off. Like a mangey cat lol. 

Example: 

250,000

500,000

This is a small difference, but they look far more filled out. And you can really tell when you have a stronger light source!

Heres one with King when her fur was literally just too thin. I think this was 250,000 as well. 

ANYWAY.

I hope this helps!!! And I’m sorry this came so late. I know it’s really long so anyone reading this going what the fuck, ignore it lmfaoo. 

If anyone would like an indepth tutorial on how to download external files and where to find them, please let me know! I’d love to help!

[zerolympiustrife]

OK! So...

I’ve got some good news, bad news, and “silver lining” news.

Good news? I’ve got my computer back! HOWEVER...

Bad news? All my SFM pics, my Twitch Livestreams, my Smash Ultimate videos that I HAVEN’T UPLOADED YET, my fanfictions, Adobe Photoshop, and Microsoft Word are all gone.

All.

Fucking.

GONE.

I’ve never been this fucking devastated since...well, anytime my parents would scream at me until they’re red in the face. Definitely gonna have to re-purchase Adobe Photoshop because it is a VERY important tool in my life.

But...silver lining news? I was able to reinstall XSplit and Source Filmmaker. Not only that, but any models I’ve downloaded onto SFM that had texture issues (such as black eyes, large ERROR models, or light green skin) have been fixed! That just gives me more wonderful ideas for SFM!!! Unfortunately, certain models have now been struck with this problem when they weren’t before (such as an X and Zero model from MvC:I) and I now have to redownload a 30-day WinRAR Trial to get me the Smash models for Zero Suit Samus and Mega Man. But...I’ve got a surprise for you all! But that will have to wait “tomorrow” since I am typing this post down at 3 in the morning.

But hey, at least I can work on SS/AAs again!

[mikumutual]

answers aa themed questions nobody asked because i’m cool and sexy

also i havent played the 5th or 6th games so

YOUR FAVOURITE…? 1. Favourite Ace Attorney game? honestly? phoenix wright ace attorney! everything’s fresh, there aren’t many weak characters, and the plot is remarkable (especially the fifth case). the whole trilogy is really good as one unit though 2. Favourite case? 1-4, 1-5, 2-4, and 3-5 are tied lol, i can’t make a decision to save my life. 2-1 is really really funny tho 3. Favourite defendant? as a defendant, lana skye. as a person, edgeworth 4. Favourite prosecutor? as a prosecutor, franziska von karma. as a person, edgeworth 5. Favourite ship? wrightworth obviously... ive probably put more thought into them over the last 3 years than any other ship 6. Favourite victim? probably mia fey or gregory edgeworth... but for non-relevant victims, neil marshall :( 7. Favourite murderer? shelly de killer, i LOVE that guy. but dee vasquez was very cool as well 8. Favourite assistant? maya fey!!!!!!!!!! but i like kay faraday a lot too (im so sorry ema) 9. Favourite witness? adrian andrews... or maybe iris? i mean i didn’t like iris but god what a person 10. Favourite quote? “It doesn't matter how many underhanded tricks a person uses... The truth will always find a way to make itself known. The only thing we can do is to fight with the knowledge we hold and everything we have. Erasing the paradoxes one by one... It's never easy... We claw and scratch for every inch. But we will always eventually reach that one single truth. This I promise you.” - Miles Edgeworth i made this one of my senior quotes :]

YOUR LEAST FAVOURITE…? 11. Least favourite Ace Attorney game? uh fucking apollo justice. literally what the hell was that 12. Least favourite case? turnabout visitor wasn’t very strong? i guess it’s fine as an intro, but it’s also wonky with the timeline of aai 13. Least favourite defendant? max galactica. he’s better in the anime though 14. Least favourite prosecutor? manfred von karma, obviously. i like every other prosecutor (who i know of) though, even winston payne is pretty funny in hindsight 15. Least favourite ship? “miles edgeworth/female oc”. there are a lot of bad ships though, mostly involving phoenix & his assistants. dont do that please 16. Least favourite victim? zak gramarye for kickstarting that shitty, shitty game 17. Least favourite murderer? again mvk... but also fucking frank sahwit LMAO 18. Least favourite assistant? i guess trucy 19. Least favourite witness? fuck everyone from turnabout big top unless it was the anime episode 20. Least favourite memory of Ace Attorney? repeatedly trying and failing to download the emulator for aai2 hbjsjhdb i eventually got it but someone had to send me the download fully pre-patched and i felt kinda useless DO YOU PREFER…? 21. Phoenix Wright or Apollo Justice? phoenix wright. fuck that “GOTCHA!” mechanic jesus christ 22. Maya Fey or Trucy Wright? maya fey. nothing personal against trucy but i just dont like aj hbjsdjhsdb also maya is really sweet and fun and she has the best sprites. she seems like she’d be a good friend, it’s too bad that she doesn’t have the time for them as a spirit medium and all :( if maya ema and kay got to hang out together itd be wild 23. Investigations or trials? trials are easier in my opinion because investigations have several things you could be doing without such a linear style, so if you miss something, you won’t really know until you wander around forever 24. College Phoenix or Hobo Phoenix? college feenie!!!!! he’s like trilogy feenie but more emotional and less witty. i like to pretend that hobo phoenix doesnt exist 25. Klavier Gavin or Kristoph Gavin? who would say kristoph 26. Ace Attorney or Ace Attorney Investigations? ace attorney but only because phoenix is in it lmao. im actually rewatching a playthrough of aai now, and playing aai2 at the same time, so while it is on the mind, i feel like the cases characters and mechanics - while loved - don’t hold up to the OGs 27. Apollo’s perceive, Phoenix’s magatama, or Athena’s Mood Matrix? i actually kinda like the mood matrix more than anything because it has a really good UI and the magatama is kinda grating. but FUCK the gotcha mechanic it is SO FUCKING STUPID and IMPOSSIBLE TO USE.  where is logic chess 28. Ace Attorney trilogy or Apollo Justice and Dual Destinies? you already know my answer to this one 29. 3D models or sprites? i do like the 3d models a lot but i like the original sprites more! imo original pixel sprites > 3D models > HD sprites. mostly bc the hd sprites are garbage (see here, here, and here) 30. Ema Skye as she is in Rise from the Ashes or Ema Skye as she is in Apollo Justice? rfta !!!!!! shes actually really nice as an assistant, esp considering the fact that we actually see her interact with her sister, which is something maya didn’t have very often. also her random appearance in aai was well appreciated by me

MISCELLANEOUS 31. Did you like what they did to Phoenix in Apollo Justice?

NO I AM SO FUCKING MAD WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT TO HIM ISN’T HE A LAWYER WHY COULD HE NOT JUST DEFEND HIMSELF FROM THE FACT THAT HE “FORGED EVIDENCE” IT WASN’T EVEN HIS IN THE FIRST PLACE SOMEBODY ELSE FORGED IT AND HE DIDN’T KNOW THAT, MANFRED VON KARMA GOT AWAY WITH A FUCKLOAD OF NONSENSE AND SO DOES EVERY OTHER LAWYER SO WHY IS IT THAT PHOENIX CAN SURVIVE EATING A POISONED GLASS NECKLACE AND GETTING HIT OVER THE HEAD WITH A FIRE EXTINGUISHER AND FALLING FROM A BURNING BRIDGE INTO A RUSHING RAVINE AND BEING HIT BY A CAR BUT HE CAN’T FUCKING DEFEND HIMSELF LIKE HE DOES IN EVERY OTHER CASE BECAUSE THAT’S THE POINT OF THE GAME AND ALSO HIS ENTIRE CHARACTER

32. Your opinion on Dai Gyakuten Saiban? haven’t played it! it looks pretty cool though

33. Do you think Dai Gyakuten Saiban and/or Miles Edgeworth Investigations 2 will get localised to the West? doubt it, since the creators have said that it won’t be. but the fan translations are pretty good, so i think it’s okay

34. Do you think Miles Edgeworth should get another Investigation-game or do you think another character deserves a spin-off? i mean he already has two, so i guess he doesn’t need another? like i love edgeworth but he’s not as fun without phoenix around. ngl i would play a franziska game. or a maya game, or any spinoff revolving around a side character. hell i’d play hotti game if it meant it took place in the trilogy era

35. Opinion on the soundtrack of the Ace Attorney-franchise? REALLY good. really really good. i love how each game of the trilogy has different composers but each track has the same theme and feel!!!

36. Do you like where the franchise is heading or did you prefer the atmosphere in the original trilogy? seriously absolutely completely prefer the trilogy. i’m sorry but the rush of youth and trust is way, way more enjoyable than whatever “i’m 35 and therefore middle aged” nonsense is happening in the 2020s

37. Capcom suddenly announces that Phoenix will no longer appear in the Ace Attorney franchise! Your reaction? He’s been replaced by Penny Nichols. Fuck you.

38. Capcom suddenly announces that the Ace Attorney franchise has ended for good! Your reaction? it was me i ended it

39. Would you like there to be another Ace Attorney/Professor Layton crossover game? i didnt play it but i really like the idea!!!!!! aa crossover games are really funny to me, i mean have you seen edgeworth in project x zone 2, lmao

40. Would you like an Ace Attorney anime? we have one now! honestly i don’t think it did a very good job of representing the cases, but it did do a good character remix of turnabout big top so that they’re not creepy anymore. they also did a really good job with the anime-specific cases, like the one on the train! it feels a lot better paced when it’s intended for that medium rather than just adapted.  also the childhood episodes made me cry

41. Opinion on anime cutscenes in Ace Attorney? like in 5 and 6? mm, the art style is kinda weird, and i don’t really like the voices, but i guess not everything can be pachinko and prozd

42. Would you want to play an Ace Attorney game where you take on the prosecutor’s role? YEAH ACTUALLY!!!!!! it might be kinda weird being on the right side of the screen though lmao

43. Do you like having DLC in Ace Attorney-games? uhhh i hate having to buy extra things, but i’ll admit that they are pretty funny

44. Opinion on Lamiroir’s storyline? i only played aj so if shes in other games idk but i thought she was fine

45. One thing you think the Ace Attorney games can improve on? stop having creepy characters please. also jesus christ if phoenix and edgeworth arent wearing rings in aa7 i will become the ceo of capcom myself

46. Capcom suddenly announces an Ace Attorney movie! Would you like it to be based on an already existing case or would you like an all new storyline? i mean the musical did a pretty good job of adapting existing cases, so it might as well be new. it would be kinda hard to balance the games’ timeline & character development without being repetitive or an au

47. Capcom suddenly announces an Ace Attorney movie! Would you prefer it being live-action, 3D animated or 2D animated? stylized 2D animation, probably? i would want it to feel more like into the spiderverse than an anime, though. in my dream ace attorney movie, they’d just need a high art budget, several plausible deniability wrightworth scenes, and prozd to voice edgeworth

48. If there could be an Ace Attorney crossover with whatever franchise you’d like, which one would you choose? (Does not need to be a video-game franchise) your turn to die is probably closest in characterization, although its premise is more “locked in a room” than the open-world investigation of aa

49. Opinion on recurring witnesses? (Wendy Oldbag, Lotta Hart, Larry Butz, etc.) honestly, i like them a lot! i don’t know why people hate them so much - i mean, i know lotta lied, and wendy is a horrible old flirt, and larry just kinda sucks all around. but they’re also pretty funny to have around! larry is a constant comic relief who reminds you how much better nick & edgey are in comparison, lotta is likeable as a general character (like in 2-4, although yeah, not remarkable), and wendy oldbag is really funny. she’s so fucking funny. none of you appreciate wendy oldbag’s quirks and you are SLEEPING ON IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

50. Do you think Dual Destinies deserved its M-rating? no idea, holy shit, it got an m-rating? i mean every game before it has had blood violence and very mild swearing, and since DD probably doesnt have anything too sexually risqué, i doubt it deserves a rating any harsher than the rest of the series

okay thanks thats all

[wumblr]

how to mash up

this is for full-track beatmatching, or changing the length of a whole song to match another. there are absolutely other techniques to make mashups, and automated processes, but this is the old fashioned way, kind of like stretching out two tape reels until they’re exactly the same length. (or, until the measures are the same length, or until the “beats match,” if for instance the songs have a different verse/chorus structure.)

what you need:

files of each song

key and bpm of each song (ideally)

audacity (it’s free)

strength of will to calculate a percentage and/or be wrong

let’s say you have two songs, one that is 139bpm and GMajor, and one that is 170bpm and Eminor. let’s gloss over the fact that Em is a sympathetic minor to GM, so we don’t have to change the pitch, and let’s not worry too much about music theory, or how to immediately know that, because in most cases you can just change the pitch of one track by +1 or -1 until you find a good match.

drop the tracks into audacity. you can do this in any order you want, but make sure you apply transformations to the correct track. the most important thing you need to know about audacity is these little fuckers!!

the cursor icon selects portions of a track. the two arrows move tracks around. i don’t know what the others do and honestly fuck them, but if you don’t make sure have the right type of “select” selected, you’re going to struggle. for most of this tutorial you will need the double arrow, because we’re moving tracks around to match the beats, but if you want to select a portion to cut and paste (see end) you will need the cursor.

for most of this tutorial, you want to have only one track selected, but the entire track. to do this, click the empty area below the volume/pan sliders on the left.

you need to either speed up the slower track, or slow down the faster track. i think you can use the same number for both but i might be wrong about that because i usually have to do a lot of fine tuning. this could also be because key/bpm sites are not always accurate. you can always try tapping out the tempo with a tap metronome, but i usually just proceed with guesswork.

let’s slow down the faster track. i just google “139 is what percent of 170″ (smaller tempo is what percent of bigger tempo), and i use geteasysolution because it provides enough decimal points (we need 3). the answer we’re looking for is 81.764. subtract that from 100. 100 - 81.764 = 18.236. that’s all the math, i promise.

select the faster track (if you don’t select a track, audacity will transform all tracks, so be careful), and select effects > change tempo. (don’t select “change speed” because that will change the pitch as well, which you could do, but it’s much harder.) enter the number we calculated above, and because we’re slowing down the faster track, make it a negative number:

if you wanted to speed up the slower track instead, use the same number, but as a positive value. (i could be wrong about this, and maybe you should calculate the percentage differently depending on which transformation you want to make, but really any number that’s close enough is good enough.) you can can change either track, or a little bit of both (cut the number in half,  speed up the slower track by the positive half-number, and slow down the faster track by the negative half-number). however, some songs are occasionally just too gosh darn different to mash up without degrading the audio quality. sometimes you have to double or halve one of the tempos before you start calculating the percentage. (i.e. for 80 & 180, you might want to calculate “80 is what percent of 90,″ depending on how you want the measures to match.)

at this point you probably need to zoom in at the very beginning and match the first downbeat, unless you’re very lucky and they happen to occur at the same point in each file. the first downbeat might not be the first spike in the waveform, so you might need to mute each track, and look at and listen to each individually, until you can tell which spots need to vertically align. i’ve added red lines (in mspaint, audacity doesn’t have red lines) surrounding the alignments we’re looking for:

they are not always obvious and it’s easy to lose hours doing this. these are the first beats of each measure and (because both songs are in 4/4 time signature, which most but not all songs are), you could count them to ensure there are 4 beats per measure in each track and they’re matching up correctly, but i usually just sort of go by feel more than by precisely counting beats.

if they’re a little bit out of alignment, you need to figure out which one’s faster and slower, and make small adjustments. it’s easy to hear and see, over the course of a four minute song, a difference of as little as 0.01%, but it’s not always easy to make the correct adjustments. sometimes i change a song, in tiny increments, by as much as 2% or something, in addition to the original number calculated. i know i said there wasn’t any more math because this is, uh, applied, audio engineering?

there are any number of ways you can match the beats, and none are necessarily more correct than any other, but you might want to zoom out and look for the biggest spikes and drops in the waveform and try to match those. these usually correspond to verse/chorus transitions, and not all songs have verses and choruses that are the same length, but more often than not, if you get the tempo right, it sort of falls into place, even if the larger structure is made of different shapes.

let’s assume for the purpose of this tutorial you’ve picked two songs that have  the same verse/chorus structure, that are the same time signature, that don’t have any tempo or key changes -- although you can work around all of these things using the same basic tools (cut and paste, change pitch, change tempo)

i’m really sorry if these verse/chorus transitions aren’t immediately obvious, but it gets easier after you make like 150 of them, i promise. you can go back and listen to this mashup to compare if you like, and you can even probably form a reasonable argument that i’ve put them in the wrong place, and the mashup would be better if i rearranged them. you might be right. you might also notice there’s 30 seconds of silence at the end of the bottom track. the actual mashup has a third track (tracks > add new > stereo track), where i copied & pasted the first 30 seconds of the shorter track to fill the gap:

because the 21 pilots track just sort of cuts off at the end, i was able to pretty easily just cut it off at the end of the measure, but for other songs you might need to add a fade out (also available in the effects menu).

you probably want to get the tempo transformations finished before you start doing any cutting or pasting, because if you have tracks split up into multiple pieces, or if you try to apply transformations to multiple tracks, they may not maintain the alignment you had before you applied a multiple transformation. audacity works best if you keep the track whole; if you want to split it up into 64 pieces for each 2 bars and apply transformations after dropping markers, use a different program. audacity’s split track (cursor-type select + ctrl + i) does not work like markers. ableton would be great for that kind of control, and you can get a free 30 day trial, or if you’re willing to fork over $99 you can get the basic version (i did, but i don’t use ableton for mashups).

in order to match pitch (and really most of the time you should do this first, but the example in this tutorial was an example that already matched pitch), it can get complicated quickly but basically the rule is, if both songs are in major, or both or in minor, the letter needs to match. (i.e. for GMajor and CMajor, you need to change them to be the same letter. you can raise G +5 semitones or half-steps (the unit audacity uses in effects > change pitch) to match C, or you can lower it -7 semitones. you can raise C +7 semitones to match G, or you can lower C -5 semitones to match G. this is actually a bad example because that might be too large a transformation to avoid audio distortion, and if the two songs were that far apart i might split the difference.

if one song is in minor and one song is in major, you need to make the major one’s letter be two later than the minor one. in the example here, Eminor is two earlier (in the alphabet) than Gmajor. Aminor is two earlier than Cmajor. Emajor is two later than... surprise. C sharp (#) minor. good luck! learn the circle of fifths lol. (again, close enough is good enough to start fine tuning -- if your pitch is 1 semitone off it will sound obviously wrong, and you can try some +1 or -1 guesses until you find something that sounds right.)

audacity exports to .wav -- i use an online mp3 converter but you can also download an... encoder library...? to make audacity capable of exporting to mp3

audacity also might be how some of the (bass boosted) or (playing from another room) remixes are made. i also have an entire blog dedicated to simply slowing songs down, which never caught on, but i did all of them in audacity too

[grahamstoney]

How To Make Your Toshiba Laptop Run Like A TRS-80 Model I

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How To Make Your Toshiba Laptop Run Like A TRS-80 Model I

I’ve been going completely crazy lately at the glacial speed of my Toshiba Satellite P50t laptop running Windows 10. My virus scanner kept reporting that the 10+ minutes that it took just to boot up was slower than 100% of computers like it, and hitting the “tune up” button wasn’t helping.

They don’t make ’em like this any more

For goodness sake, my TRS-80 Model I running NEWDOS/80 back in 1984 could boot faster. Not to mention all the waiting and spinning icons actually using the damn thing. It’s 2017 for your-chosen-deity’s sake, and a machine with a 2.8GHz processor should be just a bit speedier than that.

So after ruminating for ages on the decline of modern technology and how things “should” be, rather than how they actually are, I decided to suck it up and upgrade the hard drive in the laptop to a Solid State Drive (SSD) to save my remaining mental health.

This also took ages, since the first few USB-to-SATA adaptor cables I bought on eBay to clone the bastard either didn’t work, or weren’t compatible with the first few hard drive cloning software packages I tried. So I thought I’d write this article to help anyone else in similar situation reduce their mental distress.

My SSD of choice is a SanDisk Ultra II 960 Gb, which I found on eBay for about A$400. I chose it because it’s a reputable brand, reasonably cost-effective, is almost as big as the hard drive I was replacing, and has quite high data transfer rates. Certainly a lot higher than a conventional hard drive with all the head seeking required to load the billions of crappy software components that fucking Microsoft Windows 10 needs just to launch the goddam desktop screen. Not to mention the software apps I want to run on it.

The first trick is to get a USB-to-SATA adaptor with an external power supply, because the low-cost cables you find on eBay won’t be able to supply the 5volts at 2amps from a USB port that the Ultra II requires in order to function externally while you clone your internal hard drive to it. After trying 2 other dodgy cables from eBay, I found the Unitek USB Converter3.0 to SATA Adapter from Kogan.com worked for me. Kogan is great because they only sell shit that works. It might still be made in China, but they don’t stock all the cheap electronic crap that eBay has which doesn’t actually work, but is too expensive to mail back once you’ve ripped it open in Australia.

The next trick is to find cloning software that works. This took me a few goes, including trying the Acronis True Image WD Edition software that SanDisk recommend; which wouldn’t detect the drive initially and always failed with a spontaneous reboot mid-cloning.

Eventually I found the free trial version of EaseUS Todo Backup (I don’t know if it’s pronounced too-doo or toe-doe) worked for me, provided I plugged the USB adapter into the front-most USB port on the right hand side of the machine. Download the trial version, fire it up, hit the Clone button on the main screen, select the “Optimise for SSD” checkbox, select Drive 1 as the target, and give it a couple of hours to work the magic. You don’t need all 30 days really, provided you don’t take a month off between installing it and getting a working USB/SATA adapter, like I did when I attempted to use Macrium Reflect.

Then all you have to do is pull the laptop apart and swap the SSD for the internal hard drive. Here’s a video a really helpful mute with poor taste in music created to show you exactly how to do it:

Here’s to speed and sanity!

[harryspouse]

Neighbour anon. Seeing your reply made my day/night/morning whatever its 2:30 am so.. i didn’t see your msg asking for me cuz :( thats so sweet!!I’m alright just a bit exhausted. Uni is going alright, i got into a bit of a heated argument with one of the professors cuz she was being a fucking misogynist. I was thinking about joining arts club or maybe the media club. We also have a law society so i was thinking about joining that too since I’m a law student. There are like 6 small cafes in our uni and they all serve chai but i haven’t tried it cuz I HATE TEA. Nothing has changed since we last talked i still don’t like tea and find mohit chauhans voice irritating. Favourite song hmm I’ve been listening to ‘Out of System’ and ‘Unholy’ on repeat. Also ‘tujhe sochta hoon’, have you heard this song its an old song but i love it. Anyway enough about me, OMG YOUR’RE LEAVING THE COUNTRY? That’s so exciting!! I’m so happy for you! Living somewhere new would might be a difficult at first but i hope you have a lot of fun. What country are you leaving for btw? I’m nosey too so i wanna know where you’re going and be jealous. Have a safe flight!

hello hello, had a safe flight and some very due but very distressing repercussions 😮‍💨 anyway arts and media club sound interestiiiiing though tell me more about the law society, do they have a moot court? mock trials?

good job handing the professor's her day's work ten stars and a half moon for you

or that.

not happy about the "nothing has changed" part, no need to take louis songs so seriously man come on chai is SOUL FOOD 😤

but anyway moving on thank you for the songs, don't mean to be a boast but i had them all downloaded already ;). aaand im currently still in India right now though, i'm in Banaras, for Diwali at longest. after that america 😔. im not very excited for that part to be honest, i don't like that place in the least degree of the word im only going for some formal details should be back by mid november so no reason to be jealous here i don't think, not for me at least. okay let me be a geography tours and travel worksheet here and ask uncomfortably formal questions. have you any opinions/experiences/tips of travelling in america i can use? have you ever been to any other country except your own? please let me know as much in your next ask(s) hope you have a good day <3!! happy diwali 🌷

[socially-introverted-blog]

Things I Feel Anxious About All of The Time: (in no particular order)

1. Keeping the office alive

2. Knowing that the office is growing but always worrying about every little detail

3. Keeping money in the bank account

4. Knowing that I "have more money in my bank account than most people our age" but still constantly feeling worried

5. Wondering why my hobbies aren't fun anymore

6. How the fuck to download a drawing app onto the new tablet

7. How to set up the tablet to my laptop

8. How I started my 30 day free trial on Skillshare but haven't had time nor motivation to start learning or enjoying

9. Mom's stuff - her laundry, her clean sinks, her clean floors, her office, her shirt that I don't have the energy to get the wrinkles out of

10: Dad commenting on my hair being everywhere when I don't have energy or motivation to vacuum every day

11. My hair falling out from stress

12. Being "sensitive" and "always crying"

13. Wanting to say no, but when actually refusing to do something, getting guilted by either the person themself or someone else for not helping

14. My family members dying and me leaving them a last impression of not wanting to help them

15. Losing my family in general

16. Wanting space and time away from my parents but afraid of how they'll take me moving out when rent here is free

17. Feeling like if I'm not doing something to help someone or move something or myself forward, that it's a waste of time

18. Trying to find out how much money it'll take to get a good therapist

19. Trying to find a therapist that isn't doing telehealth because I can only have therapy sessions in the same household as my parents

20. Compulsive picking at my skin (peeling off chunks of my toenails, pads of my feet, acne on face, etc.)

21. Feeling like no one I trained can do anything without me at the office

22. Feeling like a whining, complaining, ungrateful daughter when I still accept gifts from parents like flight points to go on vacation (to get away from them)

23. Wanting to go running but not feeling safe enough to go alone (even with pepper spray)

24. Wanting a buddy to go running with but have no one to go on a regular basis with me

25. Driving, all the time

26. Dreams -- always about work

27. Having to tell people how to do simple things that they just won't do on their own and I have to take care of for them

28. Feeling too tired to do something and then someone else ends up staying up late and doing it for me

29. Negative reputation from potential part time jobs due to their own unclear reputations

30. Comparison to highly successful people in family and friends circles

31. Trying to keep things clean, in general because of family expectations and also because it's the only thing I feel shows that I have something put together

32. Feeling like I've wasted my last years of my life being a dutiful daughter and not doing what I wanted to do abroad

33. Feeling like I no longer even know what I want to do

34. Feeling like a stupid ungrateful girl for not making the best of my situation and just complaining (not seeing the past 3 years as growth)

35. Feeling out of control for my career, what I do day-to-day, unable to find peace

36. Trying "too many things" and being "escapist" and "putting too many things on my plate" but it's just NOTHING IS STICKING, I'm trying!!!

37. At work and at home, making people unhappy and internalizing it

38. Me, internalizing things as a thing at all?

39. Wanting to watch Korean dramas because they make me feel something. But can't start any because we can't watch together every day until we have a place together which we are hoping to get by December 2022, which I'll have to pay rent for with an income I'm not sure I'll have because what job will I even have after June 1st (can I even leave???)

40. Wanting leave work but worrying about killing the office by leaving

41. Afraid they won't let me leave work without another job in tow

42. Wanting to just not have a job for a little bit to regain any inkling of who I am and what I want to do

43. Wanting to (TRY) to down certain career paths that take years of commitment and student loans

44. Wanting to just have peace and quiet and get away from it all (but work is on Fridays and Saturdays so weekend retreats are out of the question)

45. Being alone at the yoga studio with no students in a dark parking lot

46. Wanting to learn self defense and how to use a gun but imagining the actual intruder and attacking me

47. Not wanting to make anyone unhappy, ever

48. Being unhappy for years and then guilty because these people all love me

49. Being afraid and paranoid about everything in general

50. Sometimes Googles forums on what meaning there is in life and not contemplating death but contemplating a point to life

51. People who talk down on me, even as a joke (upholding this "idea" of a Caitlyn that's a big baby, a loser, clumsy and ditzy)

52. Looking in the mirror and wanting to perfect everything, squeeze out every impurity but regretting it later with broken blood vessels on my face and deep scarring

53. Feeling useless, worthless

54. Feeling empty, sometimes sadness

55. Wanting to sometimes cease existing in a world where anyone knows me or wants something from me

56. Just wanting to cry all the time

57. Humor and hiding in the bathroom to bite it back

58. Just wanting to feel peace and happiness and not like I have SOMETHING ELSE TO DO

At least this puts into perspective that I'm probably just always ON and I want to get away because I'm losing touch with whoever I think I am

[juuls]

I love Calibre and I love my ebooks (anyone want a link to 30+ GB of ebooks? Message me or search my blog for ‘juulna recs’) especially because of my hand pain and holding books. I know that there’s always the risk I’ll lose the ones I paid for, but there’s always a chance my house will flood or catch on fire, and the tradeoff of carrying thousands of books and fics in a single device is awesome. And the chances are that if I can’t find a torrent for an ebook, or find it at my library, I can at least still find it at a bookstore or Amazon or through the Kindle (or Kobo, etc) store. There are options.

What REALLY bothers me, though, are tv shows. Do you know how fucking impossible it is to find seasons of basically any shows as a dvd or bluray set anymore?? Even on Amazon they’re like “oh durrr the only option we can find is buying individual episodes or the season on Amazon Prime but whoops you can’t access that in your country so joke’s on you, hope you have a streaming service that has (all of the seasons of) the show you want, or that you can find it on Cable TV—if you still have it buahahahaha!!”

Fuckers.

For example, I got Disney+ in Canada, and at first they had Dr K’s Exotic Animal ER which I LOVE and really soothes me when I’m at my most anxious. Then it disappeared and chatting with them unveils some rights issue, and apparently it’s on Amazon Prime.....’s Stack TV, which you pay $10 more for. So I try the free trial with our account.... and it only has the first season.

What. The. Fuck.

So I decide I’ll just pay for the damn seasons themselves, by themselves, because that and Dr. T is all I want.

Are there DVD collections of it?

Yes.

Are they available?

Hahahahaha fuck no you’re joking right?

....

That.

That is the thing that pisses me off about the digital content age.

(And actually, never mind messaging me, here’s the link to my Google Drive with 30+GB of ebooks, more of some audiobooks, and a fairly large, but still incomplete collection of fanfiction I’ve downloaded the “physical”—not cloud—copy of. Still working on adding to that and keeping things updated and tidy, but it’s still a bit messy. Can’t find something easily? Just search it. It’s honestly probably there, especially if it’s Sci-Fi/Fantasy or, for whatever reason since I don’t much read them, Romances. Please enjoy and feel free to share! ....and yes I do end up buying the copies of books I really like for authors I want to support. Good thing to do, peeps.)

Oh and now there’s Discovery+ coming out and I love Discovery and that’s great but my whole life I’ve had the pleasure of an awesome Discovery channel in Canada compared to the US and now some of our favourite shows are going to be streaming only!?!?

Fuck you guys.

Sometime you’ll realise that we will ONLY buy/be able to afford (especially Americans and the pitiful support they receive from their government at most times buy especially now, with Covid) a certain amount of streaming services.

I suggest cage matches. Loser merges with winner. Disney is not allowed to win 1st place, however. No higher than 2nd. Preferably there are 4 ultimate winners and the cost remains $15 or under. MAX. For one. And with all 4 you get what you had under Cable for the same cost.

Uuuuugh this just makes me so mad I need to go. -_-

(Enjoy the books!)

P.S. OH ALSO NOT BEING ABLE TO JUST LOAN YOUR FRIEND YOURS OR RENT A VIDEO GAME AND ALWAYS NEEDING TO BE CONNECTED TO THE BLOODY FUCKING GODDAMN INTERNET TO PLAY A SINGLE PLAYER GAME!?!? God I hate the digital age sometimes so much.

I don’t hate the concept of ebooks per se but what bothers me is how our society is shifting from actually owning entertainment in tangible forms like books and CDs and DVDs and game discs, to having to download everything so basically we’ll get to the point where everything is intangible and all of our property can be taken away by a website crash.

[erizee]

I posted 17.224 times in 2021

398 posts created (2%)

16826 posts reblogged (98%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 42.3 posts.

I added 1.051 tags in 2021

#supernatural - 235 posts

#tma spoilers - 224 posts

#naruto - 161 posts

#saw franchise - 115 posts

#spiral spoilers - 96 posts

#l8r - 74 posts

#eurovision - 44 posts

#tw gore - 40 posts

#prev tags - 35 posts

#saw iv - 27 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#i knew before that hoffman was an apprentice but i didnt know how it would all happen and the hints in the flashback before its revealed was

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

this is like 2 years late but do u remember that scene in s1 of wwdits where laszlo puts on the cursed hat in the hospital and guillermo's heart monitor flatlines and when he takes it off his heart starts beating again. literally 4 episodes in the show is saying guillermo is super important and thats before he ever starts doing vampire slaying stuff

also nandor calls guillermo his friend one scene earlier and then hypnotizes him to forget it which a) just like w meg 👀 and b) hypnosis doesnt work on guillermo soooooo

140 notes • Posted 2021-09-26 22:06:21 GMT

#4

the trial episode,,,,,,,,

guillermo confesses he killed the baron to save nandor, which is already super gay of him, but then NANDOR LIES to save guillermo and almost gets killed because of it and this happens SEVEN EPISODES INTO SEASON ONE

151 notes • Posted 2021-09-27 21:28:58 GMT

#3

john kramer is homophobic he just has no idea all of his apprentices are gay

hoffman will mention grindr in a conversation & john will be like "im glad youre appreciating your life by doing sports"

amanda will mention her ex girlfriend and john thinks theyre gal pals

lawrence will literally just tell him "im gay" and john says "im glad youre happy, this is proof that my traps are working. anyway this man is an f-slur put him in the bone-crusher"

181 notes • Posted 2021-07-06 10:51:27 GMT

#2

godddd this year was fucking good

1. so many fun fast songs? two rock songs?? a folk techno song???? Fucks. that alone makes it one of the best eurovision years the past few decades

2. most of the ballads lost in the semi finals and there were only FIVE of them in the final

3. FOUR TIMES ZERO POINTS FROM THE PUBLIC. definitely makes sense considering the amount of 100's & 200's but Fuck what a way to start the public votes

4. the disappointed face from the hosts during almost all the public vote was so fucking funny lmao

5. the german commenter was sooooo disappointed italy won fjsnfndnxn

6. SIX of my top 8 were in the top 10????? holy Shit this literally never happened before

7. ITALY WON. A ROCK SONG. WITH GNC AF HOT PEOPLE IN IT. NON-ENGLISH. ITS SO GOOD

easily the best year in a WHILE

im downloading so many of these songs

209 notes • Posted 2021-05-22 23:10:59 GMT

#1

that one scene in s2 where nandor asks guillermo to stay with him until he falls asleep because hes scared,,,,,, meanwhile guillermo is COVERED IN VAMPIRE BLOOD,,,,,,, i have soo many thoughts about that scene im

235 notes • Posted 2021-09-30 17:56:44 GMT

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