#i'm also censoring the other users' names just in case! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

crowcryptid · 2 days ago

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I'm sick and tired of YouTube VPN sponsorships so here are the facts presented in an easy to understand way.

For the purposes of this post, assume everything I say is in relation to being connected to your home router, unless stated otherwise. Businesses have a different use for VPNs.

What is a VPN? A VPN is a virtual private network. Think of it this way, imagine you are trading notes in class but they are encoded. The teacher takes a note but can't read it, but the teacher still sees you passing them. In this case, you are your PC or phone, the other person is the VPN server, the teacher is your ISP. ISP stands for internet service provider. It's whoever you are paying for your connection.

What does that mean? It means that your ISP doesn't see what you're doing. They can only see that you are connected to a VPN and how much data you're using.

Why would I use a VPN? If you are torrenting and have an annoying ISP that sends scary letters in the mail, it will stop them from sending a letter. Assuming you are doing things correctly and bind your VPN to your torrenting client and using a kill switch. Also, should you be accessing content that is censored, it can help to bypass that. Whether that works or not depends on how strict the censorship is. You can also use it to access another countries version of a product. For Example: Netflix in the US will have different content than Netflix in Australia. Keep in mind not all VPNs are equal in this regard. Some of them may not be able to stream from every country.

As a normal home user, the most a VPN is going to do for you is as follows: Accessing content from other regions, avoiding your ISP snooping in on what websites you look at, torrenting, and possibly accessing censored content. That's literally it.

In the event you are doing some illegal shit that gets law enforcement involved, this is not going to help unless you are truly covering your tracks. I will not explain beyond that because the people who need to do that are either: Irrationally paranoid, doing some terrible things, or are journalists/whistleblowers etc in hiding. So not the people reading this.

Businesses use them too, but I'm only talking about home users here. All that other stuff you hear in YouTube sponsors is either a lie or something you don't need.

What is an IP? It's like your networks address. Think of your router and IP as the same thing, this isn't accurate, but I'm simplifying here. The router is like the mail room in a building. The requested data comes to the mail room, your router/public IP, and then gets sorted into the correct mail box. Similarly, any data you send out is being placed in the outgoing box in the mail room and everything has a return address on it. So anyone receiving your data knows where it's coming from. Each individual mail box is a device connected to the router. The mail box is your local IP and isn't important for this topic, just thought I'd mention it. Your public IP reveals your general location (it is not exact and can be off by a considerable distance) and what ISP you are using. This is only what is revealed to the internet as a whole. Your ISP still has your address, name, billing info, etc, all tied to your IP.

What about my location? When using a VPN your IP will be whatever the VPN provider gives you. So this can mean your location changes and any website you access will not see your home router's IP. KEEP IN MIND. VPN server IPs are not a secret. Your ISP and any website you visit knows you are using a VPN. Some sites will block you entirely due to this. You will also get way more captchas in general. Because hiding yourself is inherently seen as suspicious or possibly malicious to companies.

Does it help with privacy? YES AND NO. Prepare for a long one here. Excuse the use of caps. If you use a VPN but are logged into your usual account, using your usual device, with the same browser you always use, basically what I'm trying to say is that Everything you're doing is the same but your IP is different, then NO. It will only serve you for the usual purposes of torrenting, hiding activity from your ISP, or streaming from other countries. Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc still know it's you. I cannot describe to you just how much you are being tracked, always. Ok not always, but most of the time. Someones personal website built from the ground up with no ads probably isn't tracking you much.

Yes, your ISP is only seeing encrypted data but they and every website you visit knows exactly who you are and they can tell you're using a VPN.

ALL TRUST HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE ISP AND PLACED IN THE VPN PROVIDER INSTEAD. If you are using a VPN because you do not trust your ISP or government, you still have to trust the VPN provider.

THE DATA YOU SEND TO WEBSITES IS NOT "HIDDEN" FROM THAT WEBSITE.

This. Literally doesn't make any sense. But YT sponsorships will insist that everything you do is encrypted and safe from "hackers" and "all forms of spying". THAT'S NOT HOW THIS WORKS. A VPN will only encrypt data between YOU and the VPN server. Once it LEAVES THE VPN SERVER it is NOT ENCRYPTED BY THE VPN ANYMORE. It's up to the website/database/server owners to keep your passwords and personal info safe. You do not have any control over data leaks or breaches.

The only encryption from that point on will be from HTTPS which means that any sensitive data is hidden.

Here is a visual to help you understand.

You [encrypted stuff] -> your ISP [sees encrypted stuff but doesn't know whats inside] -> VPN [server decrypts the data and sees everything you sent] -> Website you accessed

Ok. Now. This sounds scary and dangerous. But every website that uses HTTPS (the little lock icon on your browsers url bar) is ALSO encrypting things. This is why you can login to something on public wifi and not have your login info stolen immediately. A website that's only using HTTP is NOT encrypting anything and most browsers will warn you of this. No social media site or really any modern site is using HTTP. HTTPS is the standard.

So that whole ad read about "protecting you on public wifi" is not as important as it sounds. Yes, some things would be visible, but do you really care that someone can tell you loaded up Instagram at a coffee shop? That's for you to decide. If you use a VPN you could hide that, but it's not doing much else. If anything, you should be more concerned that the router is what it says it is. By that I mean that the router actually belongs to the coffee shop you're at and that isn't a decoy pretending to be the real one or that the real router is compromised. You really won't be able to check this if there's no obvious sign like there being 2 networks both claiming to be the coffee shops guest network. Even if that is the case, HTTPS is still encrypting things. They can pull some other tricks though like sending you to a fake website that looks like the real one to see if you type in your login info. Or try to distribute malware or exploit your device. But, this isn't really something you should lose sleep over. It's probably not going to happen lmao

If you are still paranoid about public wifi, just use the VPN or your phone's data plan.

Now for the other included BS that sponsorships will spew.

Does it increase security? No. Unless you are trying to avoid an IP grabber I suppose. If your connection was unencrypted in the first place, especially not. This means the website is transmitting everything in plaintext for anyone to see or modify along the way. The VPN would only encrypt the data between your device and the VPN server. Afterwards it become unsafe again. If your connection was already encrypted via HTTPS and is presumably not compromised, then no it does not help either as you were already secure. VPNs do not block malware or malicious websites. Those are added features that may be included in you VPN plan. I wouldn't place all my trust into a feature like that. You should always have multiple layers of protection, the most important one being common sense to not click things randomly. The other layers being: Up to date OS and software, an adblocker, a firewall, and antivirus software.

Does it protect me from data breaches, hackers, or whatever else? Again, no. Any data breach monitoring, password management, malware or malicious website blocking is not what a VPN does. Those are just added features that some VPNs throw in to make them seem more important than they are.

Can I trust the VPN providers?

Depends.

Many are dishonest and lie in their advertisements. In addition, a lot of the biggest VPNs are owned by the same companies, giving an illusion of choice. For example you've probably heard of Express VPN or Private Internet Access. They are owned by Kape Technologies, who used to be called Crossrider. It's owned by Israeli billionaire Teddy Sagi, the 4th most wealthy person in Israel. Crossrider was a platform to develop browser extensions that was used to spread ads and malware to users. Crossrider directly profited from harming users until they shut the platform down and pivoted to buying up VPN companies. Yes there were legitimate extensions made with Crossrider, but it's reputation was forever tarnished by allowing malware for financial gain. The companies name was changed to distance itself from these controversies. The Chief Information Officer for Express VPN, Daniel Gericke, was part of a team that hacked accounts of human rights activists, journalists and rival governments for the United Arab Emirates. Lastly, Kape Technologies own VPN reviewing sites: vpnmentor.com and wizcase.com and push their products with these reviews without mentioning the relation.

Does this seem trustworthy to you? That's up to you to decide.

Other big names like Surfshark VPN and Nord VPN operate under the same parent company now, but the relation between the two goes back farther. The founder of Surfshark revealed that Tesonet helped create Surfshark and Nord, this relationship was hidden, and now they are together again. Also Tesonet and Nord security were both co-founded by Tom Okman. There is no controversy in this case, it's simply dishonest in my opinion for these big name brands to market themselves like separate services when they are both in the same pocket. It also does not favor users to have their data controlled by ever growing tech corporations, especially those spouting their "privacy" services.

Anyway, this next bit is more on the paranoid side, but I think it's worth mentioning. Some VPNs can be thrown out the window simply because of their location. Most notably the "5 Eyes" countries. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. No VPN hosted in any of these countries should be trusted as they can be forced to comply with investigations. Allies of the 5 eyes that assist in surveillance are Singapore, Israel, South Korea, Japan, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden. You don't really need to worry about this as a normal user, but I'm just mentioning it as VPNs in these countries can be compelled to give up their users data, should there be any data to begin with, as they claim to "keep no logs". I'm just trying to prove a point here that true privacy is difficult if not impossible to achieve.

TLDR: Here's a summary

At the end of the day it will hide your activity from your ISP, but reveal it to the VPN provider instead. It will hide your real IP address from any website you visit. It will NOT hide your activity from that website, as they need to serve you the content you access. It will NOT hide your identity from websites you are logged into or even if you aren't logged in as you've been uniquely identified by browser fingerprinting or other methods. If you use Google but suddenly are in another country, Google is not fooled.

Everyone can see that you are using an IP that belongs to a VPN company. The thing is ultimately most websites don't really care. Netflix doesn't care that you want to watch a show that's available in Canada but not in the US. So if that's what you want it for, then yes it's fine. Just make sure your VPN works for streaming as not all of them do. You are not increasing your privacy or security if you are logged into your personal Netflix account that has you name, email, credit card, etc. It's just common sense. Your ISP doesn't care that you torrent, they send you those letters to appease copyright holders.

Your data on public wifi is being encrypted even without a VPN. Unless you are using a non encrypted website for some reason. The only thing a VPN would do is hide what websites you are accessing from anyone who is monitoring that. Also it would hide the public wifi's IP from whatever website you access. You are secure without the VPN because modern websites use HTTPS, which means your connection is encrypted by default.

It does not protect you from malware or otherwise, though some VPN providers add protection. This really has nothing to do with VPNs and implying it's the VPN itself that protects you is misinformation.

Recommendation for security: Bitdefender. There is a free option.

Recommendations for VPNs: Mullvad, Proton, IVPN.

Recommendations for browsers: Firefox (Best choice for the average person. Don't use default settings if you care about privacy. Look up how to harden Firefox), Tor (slow and not very convenient but its more private than Firefox), or Mullvad broswer (Honestly this is too far for the average user and will be very inconvenient.)

Specifically for iPhones and iPads: you will want to use safari with adguard. Other browsers on IOS are just safari with a different look due Apple's rules.

Specifically for Android: Mull or Cromite

Anyway. Just sayin' if you use Google or anything owned by Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, or own a smart phone, which is most people, privacy isn't really a thing. But you can minimize tracking I suppose.

#this did not really come out how i intended it to #but its too big so im leaving it as is #good lord.#sorry if there are any typos or awkward sentences im at work LMAO

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theragamuffininitiative · 2 months ago

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Hey so for the record: I don't live in the area affected by Helene. I've heard a lot of rumors about stuff regarding FEMA assistance but struggle to find the actual sources of actual people explaining actual things (other than vague "We were turned away!" aka the officials, who may not have even been FEMA, already had too many volunteers under their responsibility "they are refusing donations" yeah bc they don't have anywhere to safely store them for distribution and people aren't communicating with them to coordinate). So here's what little I do know.

I highly recommend Samaritan's Purse and checking with local churches to see if you can assist them with their efforts if you find you cannot trust certain agencies for any reason.

I wandered around some local FB pages to see what folks are saying.

(I did not censor people's names bc these are all posted on public pages, and for the ability to verify, so please do not antagonize these individuals or attack them in any way.

[This post has multiple fact checks in it that are helpful but cursory (not citing specific sources each time) - this is not an endorsement of the page itself, I'm sure there are better ones, i just happened to see it near the end of my scrolling.]

I also happened upon this list of local churches randomly and thought I would add it in case people wanted to reach out to them to see if they are still taking donations/assistance:

Anyways.

I'm not saying FEMA is perfect, or saying I know what is going on. But all I am seeing is a lot of rumors and misinformation and unsubstantiated reports that are upset and vague, and more likely from probably well-meaning folks who tried to step into a situation they weren't prepared for and didn't understand.

But, like I said, there are ways to help (specifically churches and ministry-based disaster relief agencies bc they are not federally funded) for anyone who doesn't trust FEMA or the government or whatever. You can still help! Keep your convictions but look for ways to help instead of ways to just make everyone feel more angry and frustrated and miserable by focusing on what is wrong rather than what can be done right now to aid people who don't care about elections or sides or narratives when they don't have food or water.

This post does not reflect all the amazing efforts various aid agencies, ministries, churches, and local organizations and families and friends are doing for their communities right now. These stories are also being shared on local pages and in trending tags if you're looking for them. 💛

(I reserve the right to ignore and delete any asks/replies/reblogs and block users based on attitude or obvious misinformation. I'm no expert. But neither is pretty much anyone, and yeah that includes people in the middle of it bc sometimes when you are in the middle of the mess you can't see the full picture, and that's ok.)

#ragamusings #in the news #hurrican helene #anti misinformation #fema aid #hurricane relief #the one link didnt work at first so i have update it #also the amount of people flooding the comments with 'but we know the truth!' without ever being able to actually prove it...#gah

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snarp · 11 months ago

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Long support request about my "Blocked Blogs Get Un-Blocked" Bug

(Note: Example usernames are censored below because they're just blogs that annoy me. If you want the names for experimental purposes, DM me; if you want them because you trust my judgment, don't. Don't trust my judgment.)

"I have an ongoing issue wherein blogs I have blocked on my main blog ("snarp") will become un-blocked without any action from me. This in some cases requires me to re-block nuisance blogs multiple times per day, which is extremely frustrating and unpleasant.

If this is a known bug with a known cause, please disregard the below. (If it isn't, I apologize for the length of this report.)

While it could be selection bias, this bug APPEARS to occur most often with blogs falling into one of two categories:

1) Posts by the blog frequently appear in a "dashboard-view" Tumblr feed: the dashboard (because someone I follow reblogged them, the post was blazed, etc), the For You feed, a tag I frequently view, etc.

Example: Several people I follow reblog frequently posts by the blogs "X" and "Y," and I find that I have to re-block them every few days.

2) The blog frequently replies to popular posts with large numbers of replies from others.

Example: User "Z", who makes many replies to many heavily-replied-to posts, has to be re-added to my blocklist at least once a week.

If what I'm seeing here is a genuine pattern and not just selection bias (which I know is likely), it COULD suggest that these blogs are being removed from the blocklist as a side effect of pagination bugs:

As I'm sure Support is aware, a long-enough consecutive sequence of hidden replies (due either to individual user blocks or the site-wide spam-flagging/"shadowban" state) will cause the mobile app and browser dashboard replies views to stop paginating, often incorrectly appearing entirely empty. This is also true of posts from blocked/shadowbanned blogs on the dashboard and tag views.

(Ex 1: If a post receives 20 spam replies in a row, and OP blocks all the spamblogs, all replies past that point will be unviewable.

Ex 2: If a blog I follow reblogs 20 posts in a row from a blog I've blocked, my dashboard "ends" just before these reblogs begin - I can't scroll any further in the mobile app, and the "Next" button is absent in-browser.)

(Digression: I think this is likely the cause of the bug which can make tags for controversial political issues appear empty to some users but not others, leading these users to believe the tag to have been intentionally censored: people with strong opinions on these topics are likely to block/report and be blocked/reported.)

Since I most often seem to encounter the blogs-become-unblocked bug in contexts wherein Tumblr is attempting to paginate, I think it's possible that some background process is un-blocking these blogs to allow for pagination, then failing to re-block them.

The main reason I suspect that this might be related that (1) I've never seen anyone else complain of blogs being removed from their blocklist, and (2) I block unusually-heavily and -frequently, which causes me to encounter blocking-related pagination glitches unusually-frequently.

Again, apologies for the length of this report."

#tumblr #tumblr bugs #tumblr glitches #tumblr api

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cloudcountry · 5 months ago

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Heya auburn :3 wanted to share a bit of a wild danganronpa related story bc holy SHIT

(This is a mutual of yours I’m just going anon bc it was a public discord server and idk where any of those people are atm, I mainly wanted to get this off my chest

(It ended with me and a few other discord users on the black list of a danganronpa roleplay server).

Basically this danganronpa discord server had a black list a mile long, which is, in theory, well and good but…what was on the list…?

- strict parents

- running water

- the name “bryce”

- stickers

- bandages

- death

- blood

- cults

- I’m pretty sure Angie yonaga and teruteru were on the list

- school

- bandages

- car accidents

Essentially, if you can name it, it was on the list. And it like….you had to censor the triggering part of your message, and also warn about the trigger, and I think also you had to censor the warning about the trigger???

Now I completely understand wanting to make sure people aren’t triggered don’t get me wrong. I completely understand and realize that it can be a very good thing. But with my experience in the server, it was….not.

See, I need to give a bit of context. I had an original character from a fan game my friend and I have been working on since 7th grade when he introduced me to danganronpa. I’m leaving her name and talent out bc I wanna talk about her a bit more but anyway! At the time, strict parents and school weren’t on the trigger list, so in her backstory (bc it is royally messed up), I simply put that “her parents were strict and forced her to study extremely hard.”

Long story short, I was soon no longer allowed to roleplay as my character because….she was too triggering and I was scaring potential members.

I wasn’t allowed to edit her in order to make her work, and I tried a new character but I was careful and censored her entire backstory just in case…and that led to the character being rejected and me not being allowed to edit the backstory in order to work

It was a very creatively stifling place to be in, so I eventually decided to leave, I left a note in the general chat, caused chaos, and then my username was on the blacklist. A few other people had a similar thing happen to them, as well.

And then I made a new server without any sort of limitations whatsoever and it ended up with a really wild plot- one cult, two students auctioned on the black market for their organs (one was sold for like I think 25 million yen and like ten people, Junko made that bid I remember), and also like. More than one cannibal

THEY CENSORED MY HUBBY??? MY POOKIE??? THE MAN WHO WOULD COOK ME DINNER EVERY NIGHT??? MY SWEET COUNTRY BUMPKIN??? MY PUMPKIN PIE??? MY CINNAMON APPLE??? MY LOVE MY LIGHT MY STARS???

anyways.

guys do you understand how astronomically down bad i was for teruteru like yes baby i'll be your wife in a heartbeat

ANYWAYS.

...woah holy shit anon after reading past the mention of my shnookums i am shocked but also not shocked at all...that's very quotev culture and i'm not surprised you ran into that in the dgr fandom :((( im sorry my beloved mutual i hope you can express your creativity freely now <3

#moots <3

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patchworkcowboy-archive · 6 months ago

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Just an fyi -- I'm going to be very selective on what bg3 blogs I follow due to a writer I had issues with seeming to be active once again. Story/screenshots under the cut. I don't think any of this should be an issue. Said writer and I have each other blocked and just don't interact with each other... But just in case I want the info/context here.

Back when the live action ATLA came out I wrote a few characters from the show. I had the following rule:

At the time (and as far as I'm still aware) it is highly debated and unclear whether or not Ian is native. Out an abundance of caution I chose to not interact with anyone who used him as a fc. I even asked for advice from multiple native people in an rp help server run by multiple native peoples. Said people were a neutral party in the sense they were neither ATLA fans nor were they my friends.They tried to help me research whether or not Ian was native. They ended up being just as confused as I was.

Despite my good intentions, I got the following DMs from a blog that I was not mutuals with/had not been writing ATLA characters with. I am not sure who "reached out" to them bc we had no mutual friends/rp partners at the time.

The user's name and personal info is censored out of respect for their privacy as as recommended by folks in the native help rp help server.

It was clear my conclusion on the research regarding Ian was different than theirs. It was also clear from looking at their reblogs that they really liked Ian as an actor. I saw no reason to engage in discourse since were weren't active rp partners. I also felt like no matter what I said they were going to get upset.

I do not blame this person for wanting to speak about native issues as a native person but it made me very uncomfortable to have a random stranger not only come basically yell at me through dms but when I chose not to respond then make a bunch of vent posts talking about "performative activism" and other comments that were clearly referring to their interaction (or lack thereof) with me (aka vague posting about me). It was clear they also talked about me to their friend bc their friend made a post that said something along the lines of "I stand with them and if white ppl are going to get uppidty of Ian being used as a fc then I guess I'll use a different fc"

If anyone wants to unfollow me bc of this I understand. Just know that I, as a white person tried my best to be respectful with what little and contradicting info I had on Ian.

#ask to tag #rules update

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astercontrol · 7 months ago

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So I just saw someone reblog a frantic PSA about a proposed law that was (supposedly) going to cut off millions of people's access to online fandom within a few weeks if we didn't stop it right away.

There were tons of details that looked not quite right about this story. So, of course, I skimmed through the reblogs to see if anyone else had added more context...

I'm gonna say right off: I did not get to dive very far into the many red flags, because the main disqualifier turned out to be that the law already failed to pass years ago and the post was half a decade old.

Always look at timestamps.

But also:

You gotta be careful of assertions that some law is about to pass and that it will immediately ruin a lot of lives in some way. There are cases where that's true or nearly true (I could name some anti-abortion decisions from the past few years). But that's not the norm.

First of all: When a law is "passed" that does not mean it instantly goes into effect. Passing a law (in the US but also lots of other places) is a multi-step process, and VERY often a news story will say something "passed" or "is about to pass" when it actually just means passing ONE of those steps, and not the final one.

Then, even once something is signed into law, it almost always has a period of time before it actually gets enforced. Especially if it's a law affecting a complex system, like how websites are required to moderate their posts or manage the accounts of their users.

Even assuming absolutely everyone tried their hardest to obey such a law right from the moment it passed... they literally couldn't, until they had time to restructure entire systems. So the law probably contains something like, "every organization affected has 9 months to make the required changes."

(And during those months, there may very well also be protests and movements to repeal or amend the law... and they might succeed. So it's not even guaranteed to be fully in effect after the stated timeframe.)

Also: please think for a little while about the logistics of how a law would or COULD be enforced, once fully in effect.

Suppose, like this one I saw the post about, it's a copyright law targeting potentially infringing material. What would a social media platform have to do in order to comply?

Would there need to be a team of moderators vetting every post in real-time as it was posted to make sure it didn't violate anyone's copyright? Or an automated piece of software making that decision as things are posted? (YouTube seems to do that, and it sucks.) Or would moderation only happen if someone reported it for violation? And how does it happen then? (Will it follow Tumblr's model, where if a poster has enough enemies maliciously reporting their posts, the moderators will just go "oh I guess there MUST be something wrong with these posts" and ban them?)

You'll notice I mentioned a couple of bad systems that are already in effect. Both of them exist at least partly because of legislation that passed at some point. But neither of them appeared instantly after such legislation was signed. And neither of them cut off the whole population of a country from fandom.

In fact those systems of moderation are hugely ineffective even for their intended purpose -- in both directions. They unjustly censor a lot of stuff that DOESN'T actually break their rules, but at the same time they let through a ton of stuff that DOES. If you were gonna investigate whether the legislation behind these policies had "cut people off" from being able to access any particular type of content... you'd have very mixed evidence to analyze.

Which is not to say that you shouldn't protest such legislation when it's in process! In many, many cases you absolutely should! I wish to hell that more people already had!

BUT when people go around sharing these calls to protest worded in such a panic-inducing way-- "we'll all instantly lose access to everything!"-- that is harmful to the cause even if it is a good thing to be protesting.

Firstly, because when the people opposed to a bill are spreading inaccurate information about it, this obviously erodes respect for valid protests and weakens them.

Secondly, because after the fact-- if the harmful legislation does pass-- the people who feared it are going to be dreading some immediate apocalypse.

And if that doesn't happen (which usually it doesn't, since real-world change tends to be slow!) ... they'll lose their fear of the legislation.

Over time, they'll forget what they were even afraid it would do.

And, months or years later, they'll start seeing things happen that are scarily close (though probably not identical) to what they were once fear-mongering about...

...and they will not realize where it came from! The bill they were scared of before, that's so long ago it isn't even on their radar anymore!

They'll go looking for something recent to blame. And of course it'll be something much too recent to have actually caused the problem.

But it'll get all the attention (because attention spans work that way). And the actual culprit will go on doing its damage, undisturbed. I have seen this happen. We all have.

So just.... think, when you're reblogging calls to action about something that scares you, okay? Pay attention and think about it for a few minutes. Please.

#notron anyvirus #userworldproblems

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rot8erconex · 8 months ago

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Yet another case where Google is enshittifying the internet.

For those of you unaware, Relic Castle, a fan site for Pokémon that allows users to share fan games and developers of those same games to create resources to help in making them, was given a takedown notice by a legal firm hired by The Pokémon Company. The current understanding is that the order for this takedown did not directly come from TPC, but because the law firm does work for them, the takedown does need to be treated as legit.

So, as someone trying to make a fangame and who would regularly peruse the developer resources section - I was literally in the middle of downloading alternate summary screens when the takedown hit - I was looking for alternative sites. I think I googled literally "relic castle replacements".

One of the results was "The controversy surrounding the Relic Castle takedown". Which, as displayed on the Google page, was not quite what I was looking for, but still something that might be an interesting read.

So I click on it, and the actual website is called "V*r*is*fy: The controversy surrounding the Relic Castle takedown". Which immediately sets me off. See, the word that starts with V, is a YouTuber whose whole schtick is "Anyone who is better than me at the game must be cheating, and I can prove it because look at how many shiny Pokémon they have. Trading anyone a hacked Pokémon is just as bad as giving someone an STD and should be punishable by death". Absolutely no nuance. Most other PokeTubers hate him because he steals their content, and then when they make a video showing why they dislike him and what content they had stolen, he responds with "they just hate me because I'm a furry" and the other person has to spend the next month or so with all their videos getting hate-bombed by his viewers - I've actively censored his name because it's likely some of his viewers are on here just to harass others. But he's also the most well-known PokeTuber because he does actually know how to do the content grind - he actually releases 10+ videos a day, all around the right length for the algorithm, so he does flood out the competition. He knows how to optimize for the search engine, so you'd think that a company writing an article about his (really bad) video about the takedowns would want to include his name in order to get more algorithm optimization.

Anywho, I back out to Google in order to see if it was my mistake, and nope! The search result is actually called "The controversy surrounding the Relic Castle takedown", no mention of the YouTuber in question. And I think "I could maybe fix this" and decide to report the search result.

There's options to report because the description reveals personal information, because the site is illegal, etc., but the most similar option is "the description is outdated". It's not quite right, but there wasn't an option for just clickbait. I just want the search result to match the title of the actual article. Since the YouTuber in question is so good at SEO, you'd think the article poster would want his name in there to increase their SEO. And it would also have allowed me to properly assess that the article was not worth my time.

I click the option and it takes me to a brand new page where I confirm the website that I am reporting the link to, and then it asks me (because I said the description is outdated) to provide words that appear in the description but not in the actual site. This is a mandatory step - I can't skip it - so I don't know if there's a step later that asks the reverse, which is what I want to provide. After all, there's a very prominent word that shows up in the article title but not in the search result title.

I consider the idea of just typing the YouTuber's name anyway, but decide against it because I realize the report system likely is automated, and Google's spiders would probably see that the name does appear on the site in question, and throw out my report.

So then I decide, what if I report this problem itself as a bug - after all, there is a link that says "provide feedback". And I click it, and it takes a screenshot. Which is fine - that is a reasonable thing to do, show the page that I'm providing feedback on - but it doesn't let me show additional images, so I can show that the titles do not match but the way they don't match is opposite the way they want.

TL;DR: had an issue with Google search results, tried to report the issue and couldn't because the form presumed the opposite of what the actual problem was, and I couldn't even send proper feedback about the form because it doesn't let me send images beyond the screenshot of the form itself.

#relic castle #pokemon fangame

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vasyas-tie-clip · 2 years ago

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Arestovych's government work before the full-scale invasion: a writeup

See my previous writeup on Arestovych's military resume here. I was originally hoping to cover the entirety of Arestovych's time in government in one post, but there's really so many layers, and so much more info you can find from him and others about this era, that 2/24 makes for a natural stopping point.

Disclaimer that I don't know Russian and I only know the tiniest bit of Ukrainian, so I'm getting almost all my info through MTL. I probably got overzealous with censoring user names this time, but since I already went to the effort I'll keep it that way. I'm going to try to cover this period in more detail than I did the military period, which also probably means running into more of my limitations regarding knowledge of Ukrainian politics and governance. As usual, corrections and additions welcome!

A note to start

Recently, this interview with Arestovych came out, containing one particular passage that I promptly added to the writeup on his military career:

One of my military specialties is an information counteraction officer. There is even an educational task there: to bring public opinion to certain indicators on a certain issue in a particular region. This is a task for novice lieutenants. A separate town is taken, and you must, on a separate issue, bring it to certain indicators in one or two months.

With the caveat that I can't access most of his video material, since his speaking style doesn't work well with auto-subs, this is the most direct confirmation I recall from him of what seemed likely the case: he was trained in his intel officer days in not just analyzing information, but putting it out, public-influencing work that sounds an awful lot like what he's doing now. This fits in with the 2015 interview where he mentioned he was a type of military specialist that couldn't normally be called to the front involuntarily, and Budanov's striking decision to interview with him in the wake of Wagnergate back when he was ostensibly just a glorified milblogger.

I think that gets at a larger point when it comes to trying to figure out Arestovych--I hadn't initially wanted to dig into his pre-OP military career, because I knew I'd be falling into a deep rabbit hole, but you're going to get a very different impression of him if all you know about those years is the accusations by his haters that he's just a talking head making up his military cred for the sake of his ego. (Really, with maybe one early exception, I'm not sure he's publicly gone into any of his personal heroic deeds unless someone else made it public or raised a fuss first. The "33 combat outings" meme was from a conversation he thought was off-camera, people were spreading nasty rumors about the minefield incident, and it's actually one of his former enemies who first revealed his role in the defense of Kyiv.) He might not resemble most people's idea of a soldier (then again intel spooks have a whole different set of stereotypes), but his military background is an important part of him. Even as he's ostensibly just a hot Youtuber and (ex-)official in civilian government these days, he's in fact still using a lot of the skills he got from the GUR, he has a lot of military ties, and I really do think that a sizeable part of his self-conception (and self-romanticization) is that he's an officer sworn to Ukraine, with a duty to the state as a whole, above any personal comfort or political faction. You can argue over his interpretation of that duty, but not that he's put his life on the line for it. It's relevant context to this part of his life even as he, uh, proceeds to thoroughly torch his reputation in military/volunteer circles for god and country I guess.

Backstory

The start of this writeup overlaps chronologically with the end of the previous one--Arestovych was serving in the army through Zelenskyy's presidential campaign, election, and first months in office in 2019. While some people now claim he used to be a full-on Poroshenkobot, that's something of an overstatement. He said a lot of rude things about Zelenskyy and his supporters, and pushed various narratives against him during the election, but he still generally gave credit where credit was due; meanwhile, he had considerable criticism for Poroshenko, freely admitted Poroshenko was corrupt, and considered Poroshenko's own policy failures to blame for Zelenskyy's rise. But he considered Poroshenko the only viable candidate in terms of national security, and lost friends over the names he called anyone who'd vote for anyone else (including Yuriy Romanenko, the journalist he's currently doing his Alpha and Omega roundtables with, whom he only made up with years later). In his words, a surgeon has a cemetery behind his back, until he learns, and a commander-in-chief has ten. He fully expected a Russian escalation within the next president's term, they didn't have the time to train up a new president, and corruption wasn't going to matter if they got overrun.

That year and a half between early 2019 and mid 2020 swings between measured analysis, snarking at Zelenskyy's early blunders, cautious optimism, and profanity-laden personal attacks on Zelenskyy and everyone who voted for him. He maintained from the start that Zelenskyy had personal virtues and the potential to learn, but he was clueless and squeamish, and his original team was a mix of similarly clueless idealists and cynical players in the pockets of oligarchs who'd rapidly turn on each other once in power. He consistently pushed back against narratives that Zelenskyy personally was a Russian agent, in a somewhat "don't attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence" way, but considered him beholden to Kolomoisky, and suspected pro-Russian and "anti-Maidan" elements in the team.

You can definitely look for ulterior motives in Arestovych's takes (certainly, people joked he'd been paid off by the other side in the comments every time he wrote something kind of nice about Zelenskyy or vice versa), but at the same time...this is basically the reaction you'd expect for someone who's interested in deeds over politicians, but also genuinely believes the leader society chose might get people killed and just has to live with it. Regardless, after commenters went "instead of bashing Zelenskyy for what he did wrong, how about you do something about it," he openly announced early on, in July 2019, that he'd work for the Ze team if they had the willingness to take on a vocal critic. And apparently, for some time that summer, he actually got in touch with them and tried to offer them advice. The arrangement was likely informal, I don't think he ever met Zelenskyy himself at this point (based on things he later said), and it's unclear whom among the team he met--at that point, Bohdan was still head of the OP, Yermak was only a presidential aide, his old GUR friend Mashovets wasn't yet in, and the OP would suffer heavy turnover between then and his actual appointment as advisor over a year later. But by October 2019, he'd apparently given up on cooperation after seeing all his advice go ignored. By June 2020, he'd been banned by Zelenskyy's Facebook page, probably because he kept tagging Zelenskyy in his snarky posts (he later said that the OP read everything he wrote about them, and seemed quite impressed that they had the fortitude to invite him anyway.)

August 2020 appears to have been a turning point for him. He sounded genuinely happy at Budanov getting appointed to head the GUR in the aftermath of Wagnergate; while it's unclear how much of his initial attempts to clean up the scandal was to help him and how much he would've done regardless out of principle, that experience, combined with other dramas around the same time, seemed to leave him increasingly disgusted by the willingness of some "patriots" to spread dubious narratives beneficial to the Russians just out of hatred for the Zelenskyy government. While he continued to criticize the government for perceived missteps, he acknowledged that it was making actual strides in national defense issues, while the opposition was growing increasingly toxic and delusional. But it seems like few people expected that Zelenskyy's team would offer him actual positions, or that he'd accept.

Trilateral Contact Group (TCG)

There seems to be a lot of confusion around Arestovych's precise government titles in general. Articles often refer to him as spokesperson of the Ukrainian delegation to the TCG, but in fact, in the words of the official document, on October 28, 2020, he was appointed advisor of information policy by Leonid Kravchuk, first president and head of the Ukrainian delegation. While his role resembled that of a spokesperson from the outside, this seems another one of those advisor positions that's more influential than the title suggests.

The background info as I understand it: The Trilateral Contact Group was the main venue of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine (mediated by the OSCE) over the Minsk-2 agreements, which had established a ceasefire and laid out a series of steps toward peace. Signed effectively at gunpoint by Poroshenko, while Ukrainian troops were in danger of encirclement, Minsk-2 was unfavorable, hastily written, and had ambiguities that needed further negotiation; an interpretation acceptable to Russia would require concessions unacceptable to most Ukrainians, but perceived unwillingness to work with the agreements would discredit Ukraine on the world stage, and meanwhile other subgroups within the TCG could accomplish smaller-scale results like prisoner exchanges and opening checkpoints.

So the meetings and negotiations went on, even as progress was stymied and the TCG was suspected domestically of being a platform for selling out Ukrainian interests. Earlier in the year, Yermak's attempt to push negotiations forward had sparked a scandal (that may have resulted in Podolyak joining the OP, incidentally--Podolyak wrote a snarky op-ed about how Yermak's respectable motives couldn't salvage his clumsy handling of the situation, the public now considers him a "dark demon" who tried to betray the state to Russia, that's what happens when you don't have any good media speakers but your opponents do...and three weeks later Podolyak was made an Advisor to the Head of the OP.) September 2020 ended with another scandal, as Vitold Fokin (who'd been Prime Minister under Kravchuk and was now the first deputy head of the Ukrainian TCG delegation) capped off a string of concerningly Russia-friendly statements at odds with the official Ukrainian position by saying that he didn't see a war between Russia and Ukraine in the Donbas. Even before Fokin's firing, Reznikov (who was deputy head of the Ukrainian delegation to the TCG, before getting appointed Minister of Defense in November 2021) had announced the need for a spokesperson to express a unified position to mass media (which might account for some of the confusion around Arestovych's precise title.)

Around that time, from the sound of Arestovych's account, he'd warmed up enough to the current government, and experienced enough secondhand embarrassment at the Fokin scandal, to offer himself up to prevent a repeat. He was invited to observe at several TCG meetings, alongside other candidates, where he provided enough worthy advice to eventually receive a formal position.

The appointment sparked outrage on the internet. There were those who thought the position was too good for Arestovych, the self-declared lying propagandist who'd said spectacularly rude things about the current government and its supporters. And then there were the ones who'd thought that Arestovych was too good for the position, who now saw him as a treacherous sellout for joining a suspect organization within a suspect government that he'd previously criticized harshly.

Responding to the first group, Kravchuk stated that the decision was made after a month of evaluation, and no one in the delegation objected to Arestovych ultimately being chosen; he had military experience and proven ability to "provide in-depth informational communication of everything related to the war in Donbass," and Kravchuk considered his ability to hold and defend distinctive opinions a feature rather than a bug.

Responding to the second group, Arestovych said that he expected he'd be considered a traitor just for being involved with the TCG, but this work was too important not to do for the sake of the country. He freely admitted that before he joined the TCG delegation, he'd misunderstood about 70% of its aims and policies; if he'd misunderstood so badly despite being a military-trained analyst, what chance did the average person have? Even if Minsk-2 might be fundamentally unworkable, perception management was critical. He needed to show Ukrainians that the negotiations were necessary and not going to betray their interests, while showing the world that Ukraine was working in good faith toward peace, and it was the Russians being unreasonable and obstructive, while the Russians schemed to show the opposite.

So he did the expected work of a press secretary or spokesperson, putting up social media pages for the delegation, making the framework documents available to the public, writing updates, giving interviews and comments, explaining what the TCG was doing (or not doing), debunking Russian claims, defending the need for even a flawed ceasefire. Arestovych's work in the TCG seems to have been somewhat forgotten these days, given the full-scale invasion made it obsolete, but it actually made up a sizeable portion of his media output in those days.

But in addition to that, he personally attended negotiations, he's mentioned something about Kozak reacting to what he said that might mean he could speak at them, and he helped develop the unified position he voiced. Before his appointment, the delegation already seemed to regret its old policy of commenting on events only after the OSCE's statement--this was the initial agreement, but the Russian side had started breaking it, so that their version of events got out first and hijacked the discussion--but Arestovych implemented his new policy with particular aggressiveness. In his words, "in the information space, there is only one mistake - not to be in time. And then, whether they praise you or criticize you, people are already simply serving your narrative, if you managed to voice it. And if you didn’t have time, you “trudge” behind someone else’s narrative." He framed it in military terms, going on the offensive and getting inside the enemy's OODA loop, and reported with pride that by the fifth day of his tenure as advisor, their speed and quality of presentation had forced Putin's press secretary Peskov to personally intervene, and that, where Russian narratives around the TCG had previously dominated the Ukrainian media space, his constructions were starting to show up in Russian statements.

The strategy seemed to also have its hazards. In one incident that might sound familiar, in December 2020, the delegation's Facebook page initially incorrectly reported that a Ukrainian soldier had wandered across enemy lines while intoxicated and died from alcohol or drug intoxication, when it turned out the soldier had in fact been strangled. Arestovych apologized personally the next day, saying that in a technical error, he'd mixed up the version of events from the Russian side and the version to be given to media.

But his work was overall such that Podolyak defended him in the scandal, confirming that it was a technical error and calling him "absolutely competent in what he does." In a later interview, he sharply disagreed with a claim that Arestovych was only good for scandal and hype, crediting him with successfully "imposing his agenda" and rattling his opponents in a field where Russian propagandists had once "absolutely dominated." Importantly, his skills also caught the eye of Yermak.

Office of the President

There's also a lot of confusion over Arestovych's position in the OP. A September 2022 document lists Arestovych as an unpaid freelance adviser to the Office of the President, and Podolyak has stated that this has been his position from the start, and it's a technical error that official sources have called him adviser to the Head of the Office of the President.

Arestovych says he first met Yermak briefly upon his appointment to the TCG (and met Podolyak two weeks later--as the head of the OP's information policy, Podolyak was also in charge of the TCG's, but gave Arestovych basically free rein there). A month later, on December 1, 2020, Yermak appointed him an advisor on "strategic communications in the field of national security and defense".

Yermak's made his attitude toward people who insult the president quite clear, so one imagines that he must've seen considerable need for Arestovych's skills--in his words (according to Arestovych) "Well, you're such an expert on fakes, you've bred so many of them, that no one but you would know how to deal with them." He was Arestovych's direct superior and task-setter in the OP, whom Arestovych worked with daily (in comparison, before the full-scale invasion, Arestovych says he met with Zelenskyy about once a month,) while he worked with Podolyak, a fellow advisor, as more of an equal. While Arestovych has said he kept to a strictly work relationship with his bosses, he quickly made genuine friends with Podolyak--interestingly, a later comment of his suggests that he didn't like him at first, but somehow that turned into meming about them destroying patriotic consciousness together a week into his time at the OP, and let's just say that you have to be really good friends with someone before posting a picture of yourself with a gun and joking about shooting them. He also seemed to work with his old GUR friend Roman Mashovets (deputy head of the OP, in charge of national security and defense as a whole).

Arestovych's communications work encompassed coordinating between the OP and other groups, including the TCG; and between departments in his field on behalf of the OP--he cites helping mediate a conflict between the head of Ukrboronprom and the Minister of Strategic Industries. But naturally it's the public-facing work that people remember. The mysterious friend-of-a-friend Ukrainian officer from that military forum gave an uneasy assessment of Arestovych's new position--take with as many grains of salt as you think you need, but it's certainly intriguing:

Arestovich, perhaps in good faith, found himself in very bad company, and in the most unfortunate place, on public relations. Now whatever he says will be used against him. And any punctures destroy the reputation he has built up over the years. A position that is not to be envied. Time will tell if his decision to go there, albeit at the invitation of people he trusts personally, was justified. P.S.: I do not agree with his assessment of the situation and some personalities so I look at his attempt skeptically.

Because the immediate reaction to Arestovych blogging for the government was a wall of insults, accusations, shaming, threats, and memes of Lyusya the political whore. While everyone from the OP inevitably met with a wave of internet hate, Arestovych happened to have previously been a prominent member of military/volunteer circles alienated by the Zelenskyy administration's early actions (and heavily courted by Poroshenko.) There was an element of personal betrayal to the reaction. A volunteer friend replied to one of his anti-Poroshenko posts with "Lyosh, if you've been kidnapped and tortured, reply in capslock"; a good chunk of his existing following was...considerably less charitable.

The poster observed TV appearances where (in their opinion) Arestovych combined 90% of perfectly sound explaining and analysis with 10% thinly-supported attacks on the opposition. They generally seemed to think that he was destroying his reputation in his circles for the sake of unworthy leadership:

No, everything is fine with him with the level of knowledge and skills, IMHO, they just cut unsolvable tasks for him, and even change them once a week for opposite ones …

(It's worth saying, since this write-up is for English speakers who may only know his content from his obnoxious shitposting, that he comes across quite differently if you actually watch his military/political long-format videos. He is in fact capable of being professional and laying out topics in a clear engaging way and providing measured analysis in his fields of specialty and more subtly steering an argument or provoking thought. This is most of what he does! But people remember the rest of what he does a lot better!)

In countless panels, programs, and interviews, Arestovych informed about--and defended--basically everything the Zelenskyy administration did within quite a broad interpretation of "national security and defense", encompassing everything from international politics to COVID response, sometimes contradicting or downplaying things he'd said before his advisorship. And while he'd had harsh words for political figures in the past, it was never to the extent to which he went Poroshenko delenda est as an advisor. (For what it's worth, Podolyak's blogging was similar--he'd despised Poroshenko from the start, even if he was initially unimpressed by Zelenskyy, but there's a major difference in the consistency and forcefulness of his anti-Poroshenko posts pre- and post-OP.) Arestovych has talked about how he'll subsume his interests to a team's, he would've gained new information in the OP, and he said, recently, that he received some piece of information about Poroshenko before the public did, and "drew conclusions very quickly"--but regardless, it looked rather like selling out to many.

(Interestingly, he actually seemed to go on the attack against the OP's enemies in November 2020, after he was appointed to the TCG but before he was appointed to the OP, to a notably greater extent than his usual level of criticism, for example against Poroshenko and Butusov. One wonders if it was his initiative, or a trial period.)

He didn't help his reputation with his frequent scandalous statements on TV and profanity-filled arguments on social media. He said that the country should be renamed to Rus'-Ukraine, and defended accepting Afghan refugees by saying they were better educated than Ukrainians anyway. His telling a commenter who asked him to write in Ukrainian instead of Russian to go fuck himself (though he says the user was actually a troll that had been hanging around his Facebook for some time wishing death on his family) rose to the level of a parliament vote. He challenged another commenter to fight him at Bankova, only to postpone it indefinitely because it was beneath the dignity of a representative of the country on an international platform, wait until he got kicked out of the government in disgrace first.

The thing is--he's trolling. We know he's trolling. People know he's trolling. A popular theory is that he deliberately made himself into a hate lightning rod, so that enemies waste their media efforts attacking him instead of the rest of the OP. Every time he says something outrageous, social media users joke about the OP needing a diversion; one interviewer remarked to his face that people wound up discussing his statements instead of serious politics, though he denied that he was trying to distract from serious issues. Podolyak offers a slightly more dignified explanation in one of his own interviews:

Yes, Oleksiy often goes for deliberate provocations, draws out the negative, and then calmly, carefully, and subtly works with it. It may sound paradoxical, but I believe that it is Arestovych who cures our society of traditional media hysteria, giving it the opportunity to talk through difficult things like in a psychotherapist's office. And it's very difficult to take on a lot of public hype, to personally conflict with a big machine of the same "powderbots." If we fairly assess Arestovych's work in the medium term, he is definitely a positive character.

So basically: he's trolling, but in a constructive way, with the OP's blessings.

Much of the time, it's hard to figure out exactly what game he's playing. It's been long enough since the original scandals that the context and reactions are tricky to investigate (if the necessary context is even publicly known), but he's made fun of actual "insider" "expert" "analytics" Telegram channels and their abysmal success rate at guessing the OP's motives and strategy, so I won't feel too bad about throwing up my hands here instead of trying to evaluate individual incidents in earnest. On the one hand--he's talked in an older post about deliberately swearing at an interlocutor to test their reaction. He's joked about all the engagement and views he was getting from the porobots. Gordon's called him a swindler to his face live without getting a rise out of him. I don't believe that he was actually getting that mad at all those internet randos. On the other hand--his old post history on a certain august forum demonstrates that he's fully capable of getting that mad at some internet randos. Exactly when and why he started fake scandals, and when he got into real scandals, will probably remain between him and the OP for the foreseeable future. It's just clear that he's playing 5D chess, but also sometimes he eats a piece.

On the other end of the respectability spectrum, as an advisor, he did in fact give actual advice! He's talked about how, while the OP strictly observed "functional zones" when it came to what areas he could discuss, he had some say in the OP's information policy, and could advise on national security and defense, including directly to the president--and some of those meetings belied the claims that Zelenskyy was surrounded by a "warm bath". However, he said in late 2022 that "maybe only 2 or 3 or 5" items of his advice were ever accepted.

First resignation

Arestovych and Yuriy Romanenko, with whom he'd had a falling-out during the 2019 elections due to their support of opposing candidates, seemed to gradually reconcile over the course of 2021. On January 15, 2022, with the threat of Russian military escalation hanging in the air, they streamed together for the first time in years...upon which Arestovych went on an epic rant about his frustrations with the OP--they weren't accomplishing enough, the people meant to change the system were becoming part of it, he feared the country was sleepwalking into disaster. His worst fear was that Russia would invade just the Donbas, so that the rest of the country would be torn between continued apathy and finger-pointing instead of uniting, the world would continue to turn a blind eye, and Ukraine would end up like the proverbial boiled frog.

A commenter later speculated he'd get into trouble over the rant, but Arestovych answered that funnily, some people in the OP actually liked it. Instead, on January 19th, he posted to Facebook that he'd quit. Opening a treason case against Poroshenko, yet failing to detain him when he returned to Ukraine, had been the final straw for him: "I can forgive many things including personal meanness towards me (that's politics, we're all Machiavelli, cynicism, cold-settling and so on). But I can't forgive weakness."

There's a lot of theorizing over whether he had some unstated motive for leaving, and to what extent he actually left. He definitely stopped participating in the TCG; one of his former coworkers was asked about him in an interview, and lamented the fallen standards and loss of communication channel with the OP in his absence. But an anonymous OP source claimed on the day of the resignation that Arestovych didn't actually tell the OP directly or sign the corresponding documents in his ragequit, and he'd since agreed to meet with Yermak. However that meeting went, Arestovych has said he remained in active communication with the OP the whole time after he quit, and certainly, regardless of what he personally believed, he continued the OP policy of downplaying the military threat to the public all the way up to the evening of February 23rd.

But he didn't seem to plan to return to the OP. He'd pledged to go to the front himself if anything happened, and in fact made arrangements with friends before the full-scale invasion. On the morning of February 24th, he was en route to the military commisariat when a call from Yermak came, telling him the OP needed him.

In his words, there were 2000 majors in the AFU, but only one Arestovych. "Chasing a Russian tank is a pleasure, but conducting information policy and fulfilling certain assignments is a duty. And as an officer, I chose duty."

People have naturally called bullshit on that story, but one of the friends he invited actually wrote a post about their plans very early on. He ribbed Arestovych for leaving the others "orphaned", but acknowledged he was in the right place at the OP.

The next (hopefully last) post will get into that wild second advisorship stint and beyond.

#oleksiy arestovych

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griffinmcleod · 2 years ago

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Experts Review and Rank the Best Cougar Dating Apps and Sites for 2022

Local Hosted Dating Events that Introduce You to Special People. Some people flood their Instagram feed with pictures of themselves and their sweetie, while others have a bad case of mention-itis, i.e., they can't stop mentioning their loved one's name! I would put up a tough front, but secretly feel bad for them. You can register for free, have a browse around, put up pictures and check out the other singles. But nowadays, if you really want to know if someone is in a relationship, check their Facebook page. Do you know what sucks about dating? If you’ve never used Christian dating apps before, though, you may have a lot of questions. How long have you been dating? You may want to know how we pick out the 2022 best herpes dating sites list. נערות ליווי בהרצליה When two people who are dating change their relationship status from "single" to "in a relationship", this action is known as "going Facebook Official", because it lets your family, friends and acquaintances know that you're no longer interested in dating other people.

So yeah, he may be denying it, but there's something going on here. Leave that to dating -- you know, that casual, noncommitted time spent together doing things like going to movies or out to dinner. How can apps help users pre-filter the global user census in a more intelligent way than just selecting database fields like a spreadsheet from 1985? The ability to communicate privately with the match can make it relatively easy for the user to find a potential partner. However, Woodwind did not meet my requirements for being both easy-to-use and allowing the user to host their data on their own server. But what’s more troubling, and the reason that we simply cannot use the phrase any more, is that it is being used by politicians around the world as a weapon against the fourth estate and an excuse to censor free speech. The website is free to join and most of the features are accessible to free members. Are you ready to finally meet the kind of person who can fill your heart and keep your mind active? I only flirt with one person at a time. There's also the emotionally unavailable types, the guy with too much baggage and the person who's looking for an immediate relationship after their recent breakup.

I'm afraid of loving too much. In addition, because sediment deposition is not continuous and much rock material has been removed by erosion, the fossil record from many localities has to be integrated before a complete picture of the evolution of life on Earth can be assembled. Dragons get a bad rap in Western culture, but they are viewed much differently in China. But all of these guys can be broken down into one of two categories: the nice guys and the bad boys. On the other hand, the bad boy is more mysterious, assertive and unapologetic for his actions. I expected this film to have a simple premise: Boy sees pretty girl, due to some curse he must defeat her seven erstwhile lovers, and finally at the end she falls for him. I acknowledge these limitations as they pertain to this chapter and have attempted to mitigate them by combining this chapter’s analysis with more ethnographic and qualitative analyses elsewhere in this dissertation.

The time it takes for your relationship to hit this seemingly trivial milestone can actually say a lot about how you and your partner feel about each other, your personal boundaries, your commitment issues and more. We will figure out whether CCTV footage was leaked or if there was illegal filming and take strong legal action against the disclosure of personal information and invasion of privacy. Throughout history, there have been many ways to indicate that you're in a relationship with someone, from bluntly announcing "I'm dating so-and-so" to tucking your hand into the back pocket of their jeans. But on a deeper level, these two types of guys may have more layers to their personality than meets the eye. After all, if your relationship ends, you'll have to change that status back again, which can be a daunting prospect! The reason it can be so rocky is that the top 10-15% of guys are usually getting all the attention from the top 70-80% of women. They are the great enthusiasm for not only for youngsters but also for old persons. The isotopes are respectively 12, 13 and 14 times as heavy as the common hydrogen atom (the base unit by which the weight of other elements is measured).

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ghostietoasty · 4 years ago

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Why Sherlock Holmes FGO is Sus: Theories and More

Before I begin, I’d like to give thanks to my wonderful friend for all the points, art, and info searching that have been made to produce this piece, I can’t appreciate you enough for the effort you put in. 🥺🙏💕

Alright now on to it!

INTRODUCTION: Humble Beginnings (Identification of the Abnormal)

If you’ve played the app Fate/Grand Order for a while you’d know about the Heroic Spirit we first encounter in a hole within Camelot’s dessert whilst going to the Atlas Institute. Smart, handsome looking, and sharp enough to discern our True Name, this man of mystery has been seen as an oddball by many long time players of the game. There are many aspects about him that raise doubt about his credibility, is he truly what he wants us to think he is? That servant is Sherlock Holmes (Ruler) and there are many theories about him having some secrets, about him either being a Foreigner class, Beast class, or something else entirely. We are attempting to catalogue all this information in one place for maximum clarity.

SECTION 1: Other Character’s Reaction (First Impression is the Best Impression) *WARNING LOSTBELT 1 AND 2 SPOILERS AHEAD*

From the first encounter in Camelot right until the end of Lostbelt 2, there are many instances of characters reacting to his presence in….interesting ways.

Bedivere, when first coming in contact with Holmes in Camelot says that "I suppose I've never really been good with people like him. He reminds me of Merlin."

It could refer to the mysterious manner in which both Holmes and Merlin conduct themselves, but better to keep in mind that Merlin is a Grand Caster, and that he manifests as a servant due to specific circumstances (he is not dead).

In Camelot, Mash assumes that Holmes must be Caster class and that the original novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle must have been biographies penned by Dr. Watson under a pen name. Holmes corrects her, saying that: "My true identity, my essence, is slightly different from what you may think. And sad, but that is not the purpose of our gathering here today."

This dilemma is also present in the Sherlock Holmes Trial Quest (which mostly tackles the debate of whether he's a fictional character or someone who actually existed). Holmes has a line where he says:

"Ah, yes. I mentioned I was a Caster. Forgive me, I lied."

This is however immediately followed up by:

"A jest. My apologies. I couldn't help myself."

This sort of backpedalling raises a doubt as to whether he was really Caster class before, so the nature of his former class is still a mystery. He later mentions that his Ruler class is the World telling him that not all illusions and dreams need to be laid bare.

When meeting with Salieri in Lostbelt 1, Holmes introduces himself as such:"I'm Sherlock Holmes, Chaldea's administrative advisor. I became a servant through unusual means, just like you."

Salieri was only summonable as a servant because of his reputation caused by the fact that he killed Mozart. He is under the effect of Innocent Monster. It can also be said that Salieri is a lostbelt servant and is significantly more sane than he would have been in a normal summoning, that was the unusual summoning that Holmes was refering to. Does this mean Holmes is not from Proper Human History?

Sigurd (who's under the control of Surtur), while attacking us in Lostbelt 2 says this: "So, a human and two Heroic Spirits. No, wait. Neither of you are pure Heroic Spirits, are you? You've both got something else mixed in. Hehe, hybrids then. Interesting"

This is in reference to Holmes and Mash, who are alongside the master at this moment. Mash is a demiservant (human+servant) hence the "Hybrid" comment makes sense, but Holmes? What is the "something else" mixed in with Holmes?

Later in LB2, Holmes requests the assistance of Scáthach-Skadi in beating Surtur. Skadi says that normally she would never pay mind to what a mere Heroic Spirit had to say but: "...but in your particular case…I sense wisdom in those beautiful eyes. You remind me of Baldr, god of light." Quite a bit later, she also has this to say:"Perhaps those piercing eyes of yours in fact surpass Odin's? Mystic Eyes, perchance? ….No, that's not it. They merely reflect your wisdom born of human history's cumulative accomplishments."

She says that's not it, but the fact that it was the first thing she thought of shouldn't be ignored.

Baldr is the god of light. Holmes' attacks consist of beams of light, and his cane lights up when he's using it in battle.

In Norse legends, Odin is said to have sacrificed one eye to the spring of Mimir in order to get ancient wisdom, the ability to perceive everything in the world.

SECTION 1.5: More Reactions (From JP Only)

Since it is JP only and there is no official translation for NA yet, this information cannot be 100% confirmed in any way. (Most of this is from Reddit translation done by fans). But as these are also important, it's best to put this information separate section.

Moriarty's interlude involves him finding a micro-singularity in London. At some point the transmission between Chaldea and the master gets cut and Moriarty reveals he created this scenario, made the singularity and everything to get one on one time with the master. He tells us not to trust Holmes. When the time comes, we as master should choose Moriarty over Holmes.

It has to be kept in mind that Moriarty is not a good guy, he is a character created entirely to oppose Holmes so it is natural that he doesn't trust him. For all we know, it is just emotional manipulation.

Moriarty's very nature is tied to being the antithesis of Holmes. Holmes might theoretically go against us for the sake of humanity while also trying to keep us safe (the master is in a way, a Watson replacement to him after all) while Moriarty would gladly let humanity burn for the sake of us but also for the sake of being completely opposite to Holmes and keeping his identity as such.

However he does raise valid points, how was Holmes able to rayshift? This part was never explained, and he also mentions that his hypothesis has a fatal contradiction in the fact that Holmes risked his life to save ours. What can be inferred from this is that Holmes is a good man and is on our side, but there is something very weird about him that should not be ignored.

In Lostselt 5 it is mentioned at one point that Zeus called Holmes dangerous, he mustn't look at Zeus or the other gods and that his eyes are enemies of the world.

It has to be mentioned that this is some heavy emphasis on Holmes' eyes (Skadi mentioned Holmes' eyes twice, and she was a god as well). Is it because of the nature of Holmes that he is the one that reveals all truth? Is that in some way detrimental to gods, magic and the world in general?

Recently, from Holmes' skill upgrade interlude there was a section about Holmes saying that he is always an ally of justice and that while he may be on our side, he is still capable of evil but it doesn't change the fact that he is our ally. Even then it seems he has some secrets that can't be understood by himself.

By now with the presence of Dr. Jekyll and Helena and their recounts on what happened, it is confirmed that Holmes was actually "alive"(?)

Some of the adventures penned by Dr. Watson were actually censored versions of the original happenings, which were magical in nature.

Holmes was traumatised(?) by Helena's death back when they were both alive. He swears he would never let that happen again. (remember what happened in lostbelt 2…)

It seems that Holmes himself is not fully sure of what is secret about him. Since he utterly dislikes talking about something without being 100% sure about it (this tendency of his has gotten us in trouble before) plus his general secretive nature, it can be said that this is why he wouldn't talk about that.

SECTION 2: Weird Things That Holmes Does (And Other Questions)

Heroic Spirits are anything but normal, but there are few servants who break the norm even further, and Holmes is one of them.

Holmes is able to Rayshift (presumably) from London, to Camelot, and then to Shinjuku. There are very few servants who are able to manifest themselves.

Musashi also appears here and there, but it's not a deliberate choice on her part. She is not able to predetermine her next destination.

Arthur travels from a parallel world to this world, but this is due to "chasing after a certain powerful antagonist, evil omen" - so he tells.

Beast class has the skill of Independent Manifestation which would allow the servant to manifest anywhere they'd want. Merlin, Tamamo Vitch and Shiki possess it. However, it has to be noted that Holmes' rayshifts have a significant toll on his saint graph, as he is unable to fight or defend himself by the time we meet him in Camelot. While normal Independent Manifestation shouldn't lead to the depletion of the user's saint graph. Holmes' class is unknown at the time of his rayshifting.

At the time of summoning, Heroic Spirits usually reveal their class and True Name (there also are exceptions to the rule). At the time of his summoning, Holmes doesn't reveal his Class: "Are introductions necessary? I am a detective. If you were expecting a hero, my apologies...But if you wanted a detective or an investigator, you drew the right card."

In the case of EOR Servants whose names haven't been found, they reveal their class.

Who summoned Holmes? The only thing we know regarding his presence was that it was first clearly there when he tampered with information in London.

Holmes' illustrator is Yamanaka Kotetsu, who was also the illustrator of the beasts Tiamat and Goetia

The artists who design and illustrate the characters tend to do it in groups of servants who are related to each other in some way (Pako with Arjuna and Karna Chacha and Nobunaga; Miwa Shiro with Brynhildr and Sigurd). It is strange that Kotetsu designed only Holmes, Tiamat and Goetia.

(NEW ADDITION) It should also be noted that as an illustrator Kotetsu has had previous works in a Lovecraftian Guidebook and is also the artist to the Alien God Preistess, somewhat showing how their work leans more to the outerworldly.

SECTION 3: The Design

It is a very commonly noticed fact that Holmes' coat in his third ascension has a very similar shape to that of the Foreigner card artwork.

The pattern work on the coattails of the foreigner art and the inside (blue) part of Holmes' coattails have a very similar, if not exactly same pattern running down the entire length of it. The sphere summoned in Holmes' Noble Phantasm also has the same pattern on its sides and front.

There is a "fog" around Holmes in his third ascension, which is reminescent of the smoke in the card art. (Also can be the London smog).

The glowing section of the abdomen of the being reminds one of the metallic corset that Holmes wears.

There are 4 notches of smoke on either side of the being (total 8), under their cape. If we stretch our interpretation, then it could mean Holmes' arms and the metal arms that he has is also equal to 8.

In that tangent, the shape of the coat is also similar to that of Saver class Buddha, the fantasy trees from Lostbelt 3 and 4, and the Shadows made by the 6th imaginary element.

The Endless Knot / Shrivatsa symbol on his shoulders is one of the many references of his connection to Tibet (faking his death after the Final Problem). It is an important symbol in both Jainism and Buddhism.

Some of its interpretations include:

The eternal continuum of mind.

The union of wisdom and method.

Since the knot has no beginning or end it also symbolizes the wisdom of the Buddha

the endless cycle of suffering or birth, death and rebirth within Tibetan Buddhism.

The cane that Holmes wields has a pattern on its handle in the shape of a Prayer Wheel.

However, we are not able to find the meaning behind the script on the cane. Both of us attempted to translate it but failed. If anyone can translate the meaning it would be greatly appreciated.

The holographic books in the base of the unidentified sphere have a pattern on their front that greatly resembles a lotus.

In Holmes' third ascension, there are a number of magical circuits on his coat.

The circuits are almost only on his left side, with very few circuits on his right side. It's not like it was woven into it, were that the case the circuits would have been all over his coat in a more even distribution. It's almost like an impact radius.

The circuits are very similar to the ones visible on the title screen of the lostbelts, as well as the patterns seen on the fantasy trees.

CONCLUSION SECTION: Something's Up (It's Big Brain Time)

It's clear that something is very strange about Holmes, from his interactions to his design, it's clear that there is too much effort into throwing these hints that it's not just a red herring.

Is he a Foreigner? Beast? Counter Guardian? Some other unknown extra class? It cannot be said at the moment. Holmes' role as a revealer itself is dangerous to mystery and magic, so it can be anything.

It is also not necessarily true that just because Holmes has all these abnormalities, that he will betray us, or is on the side of evil. When has there been a clear cut side of good or evil anyway? It can be argued that we are the villains in some way, as we bring about the end of these timelines to safeguard our own proper human history.

Holmes has always been on the side of humanity and will continue to be, the question is what the reveal will be, why and how. That, only time and future chapters can answer, all we can do is speculate.

#fate #fate grand order #fgo #Sherlock Holmes #lostbelt spoilers #foreigner theories #fuccyoutumblrfuccyoutumblrfuccy #hope yall enjoyed!! feel free to give yalls thoughts!!#and again thank you soso much fremd🥺🥺🥺🙏🙏

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