#internet whack-a-mole]

[sepdet]

Pity the fool who wasted money scraping all of Tumblr.

Discovered: December 26, 4PM MST.

I reported this to Tumblr help, but I dunno how long it'll take @staff to see it they don't have the staff to play whack-a-mole. so it's up to us.

Update Dec 27:

WHOiS turned up CloudFlare as their webhost, but that's just a domain name registar. (It's more complicated than that, but nevermind.) Today, I received a reply from Cloudflare giving me Tumgik's real host & contact info (abuse@digitalocean.com).

Update Dec 28:

Some folks in replies are finding their blogs on tumbex.com instead. I found their host is ovh.com, no cloudflare to hide behind this time. Here's their abuse report form.

Here's What To Do:

Put your blog url into Google search and see if a non-tumblr.com version comes up.

If it doesn't, go back to what you were doing. Otherwise:

If it's Tumbjk, File a DMCA notice with abuse@digitalocean.com.

If it's Tumbex, File a DMCA notice with ovhost.

If it's a different URL, plug it into WhoIsLookup at myip.ms to identify the Web Host, then go to that host's URL and look for a "Report Abuse" "File DMCA" or "Support" link, usually in the footer.

If the Web Host shows as Cloudflare, docontact them, but check your emall after a day. They'll usually tell you the real webhost if your abuse report looks legit.

Report the scraped site to Google. If Google removes it from search results, that kills most of its traffic

Share this post.

When reporting abuse, (a) list the URLs of the copycat (b) list the corresponding URLs to your real blog(s). If there's a box asking for more explanation, try something like "they scraped pages from tumblr'" and/or "these are my personal blogs hosted on the tumblr platform which I started in (year xxxx)].

It doesn't have to be much. The webhost just needs to verify one site is copying the other, which came first, and who is the probable owner— which the thieves admit they aren't, since their "About" page admits they're reposting stuff from Tumblr.

Fly, my pretties, fly!

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Trying to get people to realize birds are full on actual no holds barred dinosaurs on the internet is like playing a constant game of whack-a-mole

The game never ends there's just another mole to whack

whack whack whack

[monakisu]

about saiki kusuo...

he's a leo.

he's incredibly tidy. if his parents leave the house in a mess, he'll complain but proceed to deep-clean it anyways.

he's a stickler for other people's safety. if he notices someone's shoelace is untied, he'll tie it for them, regardless of the circumstances (ie. smack-dab in the middle of a sports game)

on another note, he seems to have a fixation with tying people's shoelaces for them.

he's weak for sweets in general, not just coffee jelly. sweet tooth saiki!

he has a huge soft spot for kids. this probably stems from his failed childhood friendship with akechi.

he's scared of bugs because he can't read their minds. this implies that powerless!saiki might be a lot shyer, more anxious, and even pricklier, since he doesn't know what anybody's thinking.

he's totally a mama's boy. he learned his moral compass from her, does whatever she wants, believes he was born an esper to protect her, etc.

also, the notorious zebra print blazer was because of his mom.

he's so much of a people-pleaser that he'll sacrifice his desire for anonymity and normalcy; he'll insert himself into situations, stalk people, and use his powers even if it means the spotlight will fall on him.

not only is he a people-pleaser, he's a drama queen. he'd rather concoct elaborate plans to avoid somebody instead of simply rejecting them.

he's a one piece fan.

his favorite arcade game used to be whack-a-mole, and he thought destroying all the moles meant he'd won. he was banned because of this.

his glasses are colored glasses from his childhood toy box. wording implies that he's been wearing this same pair his whole life.

he likes baking/cooking, mostly because he gets to eat the sweets that he made. (househusband saiki... heh.)

he smiled a lot more freely as a kid. when he wasn't wearing a dazed expression, he looked like quite the cheerful child.

he helps kaido out with classwork by simply handing him his own work.

he rarely gets sick, and when he does he can cure himself by turning his body into an inferno through pyrokinesis. however, this means he knows next to nothing about medicine.

similarly, he's tragically naïve about the internet.

he's good at singing and likes karaoke (preferably singing by himself).

like kaido, he gets seasick. however, he fervently denies this. he seems to think himself impervious of the maladies regular people suffer from.

he has a bit of a girly run.

he likes using takahashi as a joke. "it's everyone's favorite, takahashi." he also hates takahashi because of his strong resemblance to akechi's childhood bully, takashi.

he likes hot baths.

when he walks home from school, he follows this routine: he stops at the convenience store, picks up coffee jelly, puts it back on the shelf, then continues home. ...incredible. he seems incapable of not staring at any nearby coffee jelly.

he may be willing to downplay his smarts/talents to avoid trouble, but he'll get competitive when he's with akechi or kusuke.

he's hesitant to cause his friends any harm, but will freely maim toritsuka, so long as the damage is immediately reversed.

he won't hesitate with kusuke, though.

lastly, and most importantly:

he's a cutie patootie <3

[scientia-rex]

I remember what it was like when I was 16, 19–I’d see the current genocide (Darfur, or Serbia, or or or…) and that would be the thing I’d use as a litmus test. If you’re not caring about this atrocity, right now, you’re a bad person.

But the thing is, these don’t stop. There’s always some new unprecedented horror. We need to be able to respond and then keep responding, today, tomorrow, a year from now, the rest of our lives. There will never come a point when justice has been accomplished and we can rest. That’s a fantasy. But we have to rest. So in the meantime, we need to carve out space to exist, to be happy, in a world that has been trying to eradicate whole peoples since long before either of us were born.

The Palestinian genocide is the worst horror I can remember in my lifetime. It needs to stop. What can I, personally, do? What power do I have alone? How do I integrate caring about this genocide into the life I’ve built where I’m an activist for different things? If I were to slit my wrists today, as one Internet rando suggested, what happens to the patients for whom I provide gender care and abortions? You’re free to dislike me, but do you hate me so much you’re willing to sacrifice my patients’ access to gender-affirming care in a county where I was the first out primary care provider ever? How do I balance the demands of activism against my need to live a life with room for emotional regeneration?

If we separate doing something from feeling something, we can construct that space. Your morality is not about developing superpowers in a rigged system. It is not about devoting every waking moment to misery. That is not sustainable, and you need to be able to sustain activism over the long haul, because the atrocities don’t stop. They never stop. We play Whack-a-Mole with them, and hopefully some lives are saved in the meantime.

Morality is about what you do, not what you feel.

[violainebriat]

It's a bit weird typing out a full post here on tumblr. I used to be one of these artists that mostly focused on posting only images, the least amount of opinions/thoughts I could share, the better. Today, the art world online feels weird, not only because of AI, but also the algorithms on every platform and the general way our craft is getting replaced for close to 0 dollars. This website was a huge instrument in kickstarting my career as a professional artist, it was an inspiring place were artists shared their art and where we could make friends with anyone in the world, in any industries. It was pretty much the place that paved the way as a social media website outside of Facebook, where you could search art through tags etc. Anyhow, Tumblr still has a place in my heart even if all artists moved away from it after the infamous nsfw ban (mostly to Instagram and twitter). And now we're all playing a game of whack-a-mole trying to figure out if the social media platform we're using is going to sell their user content to AI / deep learning (looking at you reddit, going into stocks). On the Tumblr side, Matt Mullenweg's interviews and thoughts on the platform shows he's down to use AI, and I guess it could help create posts faster but then again, you have to click through multiple menus to protect your art (and writing) from being scraped. It's really kind of sad to have to be on the defensive with posting art/writing online. It doesn't even reflect my personal philosophy on sharing content. I've always been a bit of a "punk" thinking if people want to bootleg my work, it's like free advertisement and a testament to people liking what I created, so I've never really watermarked anything and posted fairly high-res version of my work. I don't even think my art is big enough to warrant the defensiveness of glazing/nightshading it, but the thought of it going through a program to be grinded into a data mush to be only excreted out as the ghost of its former self is honestly sort of deadening.

Finally, the most defeating trend is the quantity of nonsense and low-quality content that's being fed to the internet, made a million times easier with the use of AI. I truly feel like we're living what Neil Postman saw happening over 40 years ago in "amusing ourselves to death"(the brightness of this man's mind is still unrivaled in my eyes).

I guess this is my big rant to tell y'all now I'm gonna be posting crunchy art because Nightshade and Glaze basically make your crispy art look like a low-res JPEG, and I feel like an idiot for doing it but I'm considering it an act of low effort resistance against data scraping. If I can help "poison" data scrapping by wasting 5 minutes of my life to spit out a crunchy jpeg before posting, listen, it's not such a bad price to pay. Anyhow check out my new sticker coming to my secret shop really soon, and how he looks before and after getting glazed haha....

[mlembug]

Your take on Kakao going after Tachiyomi?

Briefly mentioned it here before, but honestly: it sucks.

They went for an easier target (than the pirate sites that actually host manwha), they threaten legal action (which obviously will result in complying by Tachiyomi devs even though Kakao has no case) and spread a bunch of misinformation for purpose of scaremongering.

My take on piracy in general is that it happens when getting your product legally is significantly more difficult than getting it illegally. As a result you can either make the former easier, or make the latter more difficult. Kakao is going for the latter.

In the end all of this will achieve nothing in long-term perspective except making initial setup of Tachiyomi slightly harder (you will have to add extension repository separately), and/or make Tachiyomi harder to find on the Internet (no big deal, Tachiyomi's existence was already spread through word of mouth), and the usual pirate whack-a-mole will go on.

[somewhatstacey]

No one ever tells you chronic health conditions flock together like particularly shitty birds.

Sometimes one will be set off by the meds of another. Sometimes the way you move to accommodate one condition will flare up or even create a new problem altogether. Sometimes they’re just bros - inviting every one of their crappy friends to the BBQ.

Often, it’s like playing whack-a-mole with symptoms - trying to prioritise the worst ones while knowing there’s every chance one of the smaller issues is the key to fixing the one you’re currently focused on. But you can’t approach things holistically because every specialist is… well, a specialist and trying to find a GP who’s a) available b) accessible c) competent and d) not burnt out is like stumbling upon a unicorn.

(And this isn’t even taking the horrific expense of all this into account.)

Anyway, this has been your random text post from a human on the internet who can’t sleep because yet ANOTHER ovarian cyst just burst inside her.

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

zapax /zˈapaks/: to attack (physically)

Negative Action. Present tense. Formal.

📖 Definition & Synonyms

→ Definition: To play "Whack-a-Mole" with someone who didn’t know they were playing. → Synonyms: assault, assail, rush, set upon

🗨️ Example Usage

→ Romanised: Bob'zapax Mark! Pann, timyoa. Qi'ca juwa. → English: Bob is attacking Mark! Nah, wait. It's a hug. → Audio:

→ Sollifreyan Font (v1):

🧩 Modifiers

→ Tense (simple): N-zapax (attacked) | zapax-N (will attack) → Negative: zapax-o (not attacking) → Slang: zapp

🔍 Advanced

Etymology and Morphological Breakdown

Zap (Root): From "zap," meaning "to attack (physically)."

Ax (Suffix): Utilised as a common suffix for actions in Gallifreyan.

Usage and Additional Notes

Conceptualisation of 'Zapax': The term "zapax" can be understood as 'to attack (physically),' encapsulating the action of engaging in physical aggression or violence. It denotes a negative and aggressive action, distinct from verbal forms of attack.

Differentiation from 'Stax': The term "stax" means 'to attack verbally,' derived from "sta" (attack verbally) + "x" (action suffix). It is important to distinguish "zapax" (physical attack) from "stax" (verbal attack).

(GIL Gallifreyan Conlang Guide)

Gallifreyan Word for Wednesday by GIL

More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →😆Jokes |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired 😴

[garbageday]

Last month, after the release of DALL-E 3, there were a whole bunch of stories about how the AI was pretty good at creating pictures of Kirby doing 9/11. And soon after, there was another news cycle about 4chan users figuring out how to make racist Pixar movie posters. Except, all of those stories could have been written — and were actually — about Photoshop on Reddit 15 years ago. That’s because all of this, everything from Biden’s AI executive order to the new mealy-mouthed platform policies to the endless stories asking us to pretend to be scandalized over pictures of Kirby flying United 93 are based on the same incorrect assumption that generative AI is unique in any way.

There’s an old journalism joke that reporters cover every new election according to the rules of the previous one. But I think the tech press does the same thing. Which explains why most of the stories you read about AI right now use the same whack-a-mole content cop strategy most news outlets and research groups spent the 2010s using to cover platforms like Facebook or Twitter. Now they’re breathlessly writing up every instance of an AI producing A Forbidden Image. And what’s worse is this attitude helps tech companies continue to undermine labor and consolidate lobbying power, allows politicians to keep dragging their feet on writing real legislation for the internet, and provides fantastic cover for online platforms that still don’t know how to moderate themselves. I have yet to see anything produced by generative AI you couldn’t do with Photoshop or After Effects or, like, Wikipedia. And if everyone stopped being ridiculous for five minutes, we’d all realize that this tech hasn’t introduced a single new problem. We still just have same old ones we refuse to deal with!

And so, my big hot AI take here is that there’s actually nothing new to moderate. I mean, my god, OpenAI is literally using the same Africa-based third-party moderation contractors that Meta and Google use. It’s all just the same stuff with a new Sci-Fi coat of paint.

[Read more at Garbage Day]

[hillsofuhhtennessee]

ngl the serial kiss art thief/reposter/tickle person is so baffling to me. I blocked them ages ago and when they started putting bathroom related captions. No clue if they ever got to my art but I don’t even think I could get that mad, I’m just too baffled by how detached from everything they seem to be. It’s so hard to tell if it’s a language barrier thing, major mental disabilities, some kind of bot thing, some combo of those things, or something out of left field. Some of their language is so immature and they sometimes almost come off as some kid on the internet unsupervised, but then they also use some decidedly dated internet terms/mannerisms (lulz).

They’re so widely disliked I don’t even care if they steal from me because I don’t think anyone’s even following them to find new kiss work and they’re just so transparently posting crap they found on google images (often VERY poorly screenshotted). I’m just so damn curious about WHAT their deal is because I haven’t seen people like that since deviantart.

edit: and I guess they might have some alt blog where they actually seem to have put out coherent sentences???? The links between them seem tenuous but if true, this raises more questions than answers. It was also one-word replies and XD and stuff on reddit/tumblr but there’s actual coherent responses on that account and vastly more self-awareness. I have a SIGNIFICANTLY lower opinion of them if that’s true, since it’s clear that they shouldn’t be so blinding stupid to dump uncredited art and blatant fetish captions everywhere… just wtf was that supposed to be some social experiment??

another edit: seems like it was just a dubious link between them sharing a pretty generic online name. So it’s back to a big ol’ ??? Unless there’s any harder links I’ll just say that deplatforming and playing “report for art theft” whack a mole with future alts seems like the only way to actually stop them.

[keepcalmandcarriefischer]

I am a 36 yo white male. This makes me the "key demographic" among those selling things like weight loss equipment, penis enlargement supplements, and onlyfans subscriptions. You guys should seeeee some of the targeted ads I get.

Anyways, I have an ethical question about online sex work.

See, because I fit the stereotype of a guy who spends all his disposable income on porn, I often get friend requests on various socials from young attractive women looking for subscribers.

The thing is, no matter how hot the girl is, or how nice her sales pitch goes, I will not be doing that. And even if I wanted to, I share a bank account with my wife, and I am pretty sure she wouldn't believe me if I told her I was buying cooling units from a specialized online wholesaler.

But I do like talking to people. That little red notification on Snapchat is a dopamine hit that I crave.

Is it wrong if me to string them along with the polite conversation of their cold call? Am I wasting their time? Or do they enjoy talking to someone who says something other than "you have great tits! Wanna see my cock?"

As I have mentioned before, I really do enjoy accepting every friend request I get and then reporting bots. It's like internet whack-a-mole. But occasionally I get a real live person, and I am never really sure what to do about that...

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

Well hello there, Dash this is a surprise to see you here

Poppin up everywhere like whack-a-mole. Brand new niche internet microcelebrity. Nice to see you too though :]

[roboyfriend]

very amused by this person on their laptop in the uni library fighting for their life playing popup whack-a-mole while trying to watch a movie on one of those shitty pirate streaming sites. do people really live like that? rawdogging the internet without ublock?

[jaskierx]

Your post was good, sorry these ghouls have been yelling at you for it. I joined tumblr pretty recently and it’s been so weird to see how many terfs are on here. I know they’re everywhere on the internet but I feel like I see them ten times as often on here.

yeah they're fucking everywhere apparently. blocking people in my notes like it's a game of whack a mole ✌️

[f0point5]

Idk about you but personally people in general hating on women or men for liking a tweet years ago and stuff is pathetic to me. Cancel culture is stupid. People like offensive TikTok comments all the time but then go ahead to hate on a celebrity for doing so 6 years ago. People need to get lives tbh who even scrolls down on someone’s likes THAT far 😭 insane imo but you do you I guess. Sure liking a racist tweet ain’t it and having a sponsorship from a homophobic author isn’t the most moral thing to do but it’s not the end of the world as a lot of people make it out to be. Often times people put celebrities on such high expectations like they’re gods that need to do the right thing all the time/ need to use their voice on every single topic. Sorry if I offend anyone but also the war between Isreal and Palestine(🍉).Obviously it’s important to be educated and stuff but people go ahead and expect every single celebrity to comment on it. People need to remember that those people have a platform built for entertainment not politics. Using your platform to educate people is awesome but no need to shame someone for not speaking up about politics when their content is about beauty and stuff yk. Cancel culture is embarrassing as HECK and then those that claim to have ”cancelled”someone act as if they’re saints. I wonder what kind of jokes they laughed at in their lives or what tweets they liked etc. cancelling isn’t even real. The ”cancelled“ celebrity will disable their comments and keep going with their content because the era of being cancelled lasts at most 1 month and then everyone keeps supporting them again.

I’m pretty sure cancel culture is not real because when was the last time the internet successfully cancelled someone? They come back like a whack a mole 😂

But anyway, yes I agree that making discussions out of the likes tweets or Instagram stories of women who date boys that drive cars is pretty sad behaviour. Because trust me the people submitting this nonsense to gossip pages would not pull their boss/family members up for the same thing. They like to talk when there’s no consequences. It’s the same theory as “punch down” humour…you’re too scared to say it when saying it might actually affect you. So you say it about people who don’t care about your opinion. It’s just so…exhausting.

And yes, people really be expecting the world of these people for why? Where were they educated, what are their qualifications, where did they sign up to be UN ambassadors, that you expect so damn much from them? They’re people who do a job that means a lot of people know who they are, that doesn’t make them more “ethical”, educated, informed, or interested, than anyone else. In most cases it makes them far less educated than the average person. So you’re holding them to these arbitrary standards on what basis? Idk man.

Personally, I like it when celebrities stfu about politics. Because I simply don’t believe they are educated or informed enough for their opinion to be necessary or adding to discourse in a positive way. Just because 5 million people like to watch you get ready for a night out, doesn’t mean you know shit about shit. And frankly, most of them aren’t interested. Which is FINE. It’s totally fine not to be interested in every world event, but just hold your hands up and say you don’t know, or just leave it alone. Don’t have your assistant collect 4 infographics from Google and then repost something on your story just to pretend you know what you’re talking about. You recommend foundation for a living? Stick to that please. The amount of celebrities and influencers that spout political/economic jargon when it’s clear they don’t have the slightest understanding of the terms they are using or the principles behind them never ceases to depress me (and 99% of the time their “ideologies” are incredibly hypocritical, which they don’t realise because they don’t actually know what they’re saying).“Political” celebrities give me the ick.

[abecedarienne]

Media literacy

"Libraries are important in today's society because they give people access to information they wouldn't have otherwise!"

Is it possible to talk about the importance of libraries without a facile invocation of "morals"--aka economically-validated liberal platitudes? Libraries are one of the last standing institutions that prevent the American public from seeing all forms of media as products that are trying to sell them things, or as legs that hold up the structure that tries to sell them things. Like cute animal videos or newly released HD photos of space or weekend plans or the weather, libraries are a cultural reference that serve as lubricant for a conversation that wants to be more than just small talk but doesn't know how (and is too afraid to try).

A few months ago I was standing around in the apartment of a friend thrice removed. Being in the city, the living room felt more like a hallway. It was 80% guys, most of whom had girlfriends (where these girls were, I don't know). At one end of the hallway was a TV blasting some football game that captivated almost everyone in that tiny space. At the other end was the kitchen with a few awkward stragglers. I grabbed a drink and camped out there.

Some sweaty, drugged out guy started talking to me. Two of his friends jumped in and out--a conversational gang bang. Someone brought up the climate change girl "owning" the slimy podcast guy on Twitter. "It was awesome," they said, hoping they wouldn't end up with a similar fate after talking to me. The sweaty guy brought up that he's from "that school district in Texas" that's trying to ban gay books. "I can't believe they're actually trying to do that" he said. "I can," I told him, with an eye on being entertainingly inflammatory. I started to explain myself but stopped once I saw that his attention had wandered over to the TV that everyone was yelling at. He turned back to me: "so what do you do?" I gave him my canned answer. We got to talking about social media (again), AI, ChatGPT. His friends are still jumping in and out, calling things "crazy" and "out of touch." After that point, I don't remember who said what, what anyone said to me, nor what I said to them. It was limp conversation that went nowhere and meant nothing. Throughout the night the sweaty guy kept trying to talk to me, slinking away every time he realized he'd humiliated himself. But he'd just come back to do it again. A whack-a-mole that wanted to be battered. No one slept with me that night. I went to a party full of guys and all I got was a bukkake of sanctioned outrage.

I saw a stack of paperback books next to the bed of one of the hosts. Probably the only books in that three-person FiDi apartment. It was a prime selection from the self-help list of NYT bestsellers. When he fucks his girlfriend in that bed, and she closes her eyes as she forces out the moan she heard in an "real amateur couple making love real" video last night, he can look over and pride himself on the stack of Thinking Fast and Slow, and pop science books from PhDs and PsyDs and MDs and BSs, and shit with "Habits" and "Mindset" and "You" in the title. None of the spines had creases.

I'm being a snob, I know. But reading is reading, right? "At least he's reading something." This is why we have books and libraries and e-readers and the Internet, so that people have access to information. But more importantly: so that we can impress people we want to fuck with smart media choices. "What did you think about it?" "What? Sorry, I can't hear you. Everyone's too loud in here."