#this isn’t me trying to say that trying to fund tumblr is a morally superior position I’m just like.

[clannfearrunt]

I think the most tiring type of response from any time we get reminded that tumblr is hemorrhaging money is the people being actively and vitriolically hostile to any user even considering paying for the site. Like yes this stupid fucking website has legitimate issues that haven’t been solved in years. No one’s denying that. Anyone is completely entitled to not paying the website jack shit. However, it is also true that websites cost money to exist. Like that’s not an excuse or corporate speak or whatever the hell else it’s just the plain truth.

It’s weird as hell and imo an embarrassing display of a lack of understanding of the reality of the current internet landscape to look at the other users going “well I like using this site / I depend on this site for my livelihood, I would like to try to help keep it existing” and treat them like the scum of the earth. You can just keep freeloading it’s FINE it is true we don’t owe this company jack shit but if you feel so strongly about tumblr, a website you use, never getting any money whatsoever to the point you’re harassing users making a desperate attempt to theoretically help continue letting you have a platform to freeload off of, maybe like. Idk. Don’t use the site you want gone so much? Move to one of the many new places trying to set up shop or whatever if you feel that strongly about it. It’s so bizarre. What are you trying to accomplish there, other than feel self righteous about yelling at someone that feels within your reach?

[figjelly]

About .io Domains

Okay, so I have a friend who I’ve been working with on a project. Friend made a decision to host on a .io site. I’ve been seeing this crop up a lot, so I was curious: What is the .io domain? Let’s start with the basics: the internet is simply a way to describe how a bunch of devices are connected via a particular protocol (communications and networking is a weird beast). To describe where devices are in this complicated space, hierarchies of domains are used. Top-level domains just mean the highest and, therefore, biggest umbrellas in the Domain Name System (just a system that is used for naming things connected to the internet). If you live in the United States, .com, .gov, and .edu are examples of top-level domains. .io is a country code top-level domain. All this means is that the domain is for use in a particular area. Which area? .io = British Indian Ocean Territory

From Wikipedia: “The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom situated in the Indian Ocean halfway between Tanzania and Indonesia. The territory comprises the seven atolls of the Chagos Archipelago with over 1,000 individual islands – many very small – amounting to a total land area of 60 square kilometres (23 sq mi).[6]  The largest and most southerly island is Diego Garcia, 27 km2 (10 sq mi), the site of a joint military facility of the United Kingdom and the United States. The only inhabitants of the territory are US and British military personnel and associated contractors, who collectively number around 2,500 (2012 figures).[4]  The removal of Chagossians from the Chagos Archipelago occurred between 1968 and 1973.  The Chagossians, then numbering about 2,000 people, were expelled by the British government to Mauritius and Seychelles to allow the United States to build a joint UK/US military base there. Today, the exiled Chagossians are still trying to return, arguing that the forced expulsion and dispossession was illegal.[9][10]  The islands are off-limits to Chagossians, casual tourists, and the media.” [All the hyperlinks and bold and pretty much any formatting I kept from the original text.] Oh, gee golly. None of that looks particularly good. So, there I am, wondering why this domain has gotten so popular. First use seems to be in 1997 by Levi Strauss. Wikipedia gives me a lot of info but this part is particularly useful: “One reason given for the TLD's popularity is that it stands out by being shorter than other TLDs. Also, the .io TLD is less occupied than other TLDs, so it's more likely that a given term is available there.” TLD = top-level domain, so it’s talking about .io here. It’s less occupied so that means lots of catchy site names are available. One example we might all be familiar with is pillowfort, the forerunner after the Great Tumblr Apocalypse of December 2018. The network information center describes .io’s as thus: 1. .io is a new domain and therefore many more names are available. 2. Registrations are accepted quickly and efficiently. 3. Fast access to your domain from anywhere in the world. (source: nic.io as of 12.29.2018). Tagline for .io domains? “the domain powering the next generation of social websites” [copied straight from the site so all capitalization and punctuation is original] Okay, so it looks like it’s popular with start-up companies because of the the shortened TLD (.io) and the availability of names one can use for a site. Granted, I don’t do anything with networking. But, pragmatically speaking, it sounds like this area might not be the greatest at handling a lot of traffic and there might be a lot of DNS (Domain Name System) outages. Which is, um, saying, if too many people try to do too many things on it, there might be outages so no one can use it. If someone is more familiar with the particulars of networking when it comes to generic vs country use domains, please chime in. Okay, but then there’s the part where my own personal ethics/morals/values are kinda at play here: Okay, thanks wikipedia for all that info on the .io domain! I’ll be-- Wait. According to a Gigaom interview with Paul Kane, chairman of the Internet Computer Bureau, the domain name registry is required to give some of its profits to the British government, for administration of the British Indian Ocean Territory.[13] After being questioned as a result of the interview, the British Government denied receiving any funds from the sale of .io domain names, and argued that consequently, the profits could not be shared with the Chagossians, the former inhabitants forcibly removed by the British government.[14][15]  Okay, okay, so don’t take wikipedia’s word for it. Go read the article. Aptly titled: “The dark side of .io: How the U.K. is making web domain profits from a shady Cold War land deal.” It does sound a little biased but I look into Gigaom and they’re a technology research and analysis firm. Our focus is on helping business leaders understand the implications of emerging technologies and their impacts on business, media, and society. I don’t know much about it. I go back to wikipedia. “The blog offers news, analysis, and opinions on startup companies, emerging technologies, and other technology related topics.” I decide to trust the article and go ahead and read it. Written in 2014, not new. It sounds well-researched and historically-grounded. First two paragraphs: “The .io country code top-level domain is pretty popular right now, particularly among tech startups that want to take advantage of the snappy input/output reference and the relative availability of names — Fusion.io, Wise.io and Import.io are just a few examples. But who benefits from the sale of .io domains? Sadly, not the people who ultimately should. While .tv brings in millions of dollars each year for the tiny South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, and .me benefits Montenegro, the people of the British Indian Ocean Territory, or the Chagos Islands, have no such luck. Indeed, profits from the sale of each .io domain flow to the very force that expelled the Chagossian or Ilois people from their equatorial land just a generation or two ago: the British government.“ So, hmm. Okay. I’m learning a lot about country-code top-level domains today (aka ccTLDs). Looks like the snappy TLDs we’ve been seeing are actually just ccTLDs that companies use to be cute and standout but, yanno, it seems only right to compensate people who live in that area since they’re domain is being used and not by them. Except, the people of the .io domain: the Chagossian. Here’s an article I found of a .io company that learned of the problem with the domain and immediately backtracked This looks like an interesting site (.io domain) but looks dedicated to making sure the way British and U.S. governments are treating the Chagossian are known This article does a great job at connecting modern networking and British involvement in the area. Looks like another perspective talking about why .io is popular with start-ups.

An article from independent.co.uk

So, yeah, my takeaway is that .io is being used by people with money to give to a couple of really bad governments and, surprise, second verse same as the first. I’d be really curious as to what the makers of pillowfort have to make of this as it seems like a lot of start-up companies don’t know this is going on. Mind you, this isn’t some X vs Y thing I’m starting about the superiority of Tumblr (tumblr sucks ass). I just worry about making sure I ethically consume crap or whatever (despite being poor and living in the United States).

[italicwatches]

The Good Place - Season 2, Episode 01

Okay, so, we’ve got a few things to run down the line.

First and foremost, you might notice the lack of image. Real talk, I delayed this by two entire series, just trying to find a way to screenshot or screen grab or somehow get a fucking image out of Netflix on mobile.

I have, as you can see, failed to do so. There might be a way to force it that I haven’t figured out yet, and if any iOS or Android wizards are reading this and can help me figure out a way to do it, I’m all ears. Until that point, we are kicking this old school.

Secondly, if you are reading this on the RPGNet forums, you might know that we are about to undergo a mega upgrade that will put us on lockdown the whole weekend.

I am not stopping for that weekend. While posts will go up after, I also post these to a tumblr blog, Italic Watches. Check in and see what’s going on, follow, reblog, annoy your friends, click on anything bell-shaped, I think that’s how it works.

Oh, and thirdly, if you’re reading this on Tumblr…We’re about to super spoil this show’s first season, which I haven’t had a chance to get up here yet. Make sure you’re caught up first, got it?

With those things said, let’s get this show on the road. It’s The Good Place, season 2, episode 01! Here we GO!

-LAST SEASON on the Good Place. Eleanor died, woke up, was told she was in the Good Place, met Chidi, revealed she wasn’t intended for the Good Place. Met the couple Tahani and Jianyu, and Jianyu is really an idiot DJ named Jason from Florida. I am not fond of him having my name. She ultimately revealed that she was a liar…And then figured out that this was all an experiment by the Bad Place crew, and this WAS the Bad Place from the start! And so, the man in charge, Michael, realized the one answer was to reboot and start things over…And Eleanor had one single chance to hide a clue…

-Chapters 14 & 15.

In his office, Michael prepares for his latest meeting with his boss who I forget the name of. He’s made a bunch of little tweaks, like how now there’s no fresh coffee, it’s JUST pod machines. And new soulmates, trained actors. He won’t let you down! Yes you will. You most absolutely will fail, and be truly infamous for the next round of eternity.

-So Michael frantically has a company meeting with his staff crew. Various demons have lots of questions, including Vicky really wanting to get to play Real Eleanor again. Now she’s stuck playing Denise, and she doesn’t get Denise, and yeah there’s a lot of uncertainty…

-But, okay. Listen, guys. The opening salvo from version one was SOLID. They’re gonna re-use it. Get Eleanor drunk as hell at the welcome party, and then get her to make mistakes so they have material for the next morning’s chaos sequence! And he gets it, that humans with their mouths and elbows suck and are the worst. Sure, you’ll be tempted to do this the easy way, the old way. But this is going to work, and it’s going to be better. Now, say it with him. One, two, three, TORTURE!

-So hey, back with Eleanor, she’s trying to figure it out and also remember Janet’s name. Which is not working. But now she has a name. Chidi. But who, or what, is Chidi? Is that a type of soup? Okay, whatever it is, it’s gotta be in this town.

-Into the town! Where she meets Nina and Bart, soulmates, and tries to figure out how to find people…And also learns there’s no phones. No phones. At all. …Fork. So that didn’t work.

-And then she runs into ‘Jianyu’, silent monk, who passes her a sprocket…? Is, is he…?

-Cue Michael! Who quickly lets her know about Jianyu, the Taiwanese monk who never speaks. Might not be the first person you should get to know, what with a barrier that big. And look, they both know you’re not like everyone else here…

-S-She isn’t?

-Your work as an environmental activist was amazing, truly amazing! “Yes, well, I loved…Mushrooms. I can honestly say that.”

-Pop quiz do you think she’s referring to the ones other people put on pizza or the magic kind.

-So of course, Michael wants her to say a few words at the welcome party…By which he means an hour. And she gets a special little something to wear.

-A sash that declares her BEST PERSON. Which she has on at the party with her new man, whose heart is in the pope, his liver in the Dalai Lama, and his teeth are a necklace for a child king. And then he immediately ditches his tux to go get ripped. I kind of like his character. Very charming meathead.

-So who’s running this amazing manor, what with it no longer being Tahani? It’s Jessica, who wants to hear her big speech! And also she brought a very full glass of wine for Eleanor…Eleanor who tries to refuse, because can you imagine being drunk right before a big speech? “Getting kicked out of your niece’s christening…And only later, once you’ve sobered up, realizing you don’t even a niece? It’s like, who was that kid?”

-The whole party, of course, is full of people trying to offer her drinks, trying to line up that first shot. The problem is, it’s not working…She eventually tries to sneak a quick shot and a few shrimps, just trying to clear her head a little, and it’s looking like things might get back on track…

-Then she hears a woman arguing with a man.

-By the name.

-Of Chidi. SHE KNEW HE WASN’T A SOUP! Listen. They need to talk. Privately.

-Flashback to the moment Chidi awoke, rebooted. And learned that all of his heroes, all of the great philosophers, are in the Bad Place. Where they go naked to a class they’ve never been to on quiz day, every day. …And then they get smashed with hammers. That part’s not as clever as the rest. But you beat all of them at actually living by the principles you spoke of…

-And where things got interesting, is that Chidi was set up with multiple soulmates. See, normally, you get matched with one person. A perfect match to your core personality, the single best person across all things for you. But every so often, you get two paired matches. And so you have a choice!

-Here. Meet Pedro, Angelique, and Pevita. So, you four have a paired match. Any one of you, would be happy with any one of the other three. So all you have to do is someone has to make the call. Have fun! Chidi, did not have fun. He did not have fun with this at all. Because if you know Chidi, well, you know how badly this was gonna be for Chidi. The man who once had a moral panic attack at a make your own sundae bar.

-Sidenote, listen, buddy, the answer is simple. Chocolate pallet. Chocolate pallet, with creamy, and some of those little cheesecake bites.

-I’d fight somebody for some of those little cheesecake bites right now. Like, just so we’re clear.

-So he started trying to get to know them both, and an incredibly obvious answer was set before him with Angelique being so much more obviously better…But literally the instant he said that, Michael came racing in, and showing that there was a calculator error from one four-hour gap in mid-2003, and with that deviation taken into account, there was a deviation somewhere deep in the decimal points that DEFINITIVELY showed that Pedro should be with Angelique and Chidi with Pevita!

-…Shit. He’s good.

-And Chidi immediately buckled under the pressure and went with it instead of standing up for himself.

-So of course, they all ran into each other at the party. Which sent things even more sideways…Oh, and to make things even messier, right after he went to the bar to try and clear his head, up came ‘Denise’ to throw an additional wrinkle…I mean until Angelique stepped in.

-Basically what I am saying is that Chidi has had a very bad day.

-Which swings us back to the Now, and to Eleanor pulling Chidi aside to have a long, serious conversation. And she takes him to a side room, and shows him the note…At some point, before she woke up here, this note, in her handwriting, was in do-not-say-her-name’s mouth. And everyone’s been trying to ply her with liquor at this party.

-Something is not adding up. Her soulmate won’t spend more than two seconds with her. And a weird monk guy gave her THIS mysterious magic bracelet. …Eleanor now that I have a better look at that I am about 95% sure that is a bicycle gear, and most of the remaining 5% is taken up by the phrase Spacely Sprocket. She can’t hear me, this is linear fiction.

-…And then Chidi takes it all off the track because he is too consumed with his own shit to help her. And then, it’s speech time!

-Actually it’s time to get back to the start point. Tahani’s waking up. …And I’m just gonna add her name to the dictionary so I don’t get a super racist autocorrect error. And she gets to meet her soulmate, Tomás, whose medical work was ultimately funded by her tireless fundraising! Such perfect pairings you’d almost think some twisted, vindictive devil was setting it all up.

-Especially since Tomás here is about a head shorter than her. And it’s just getting from bad to worse, as we see her new house with him. It’s a…

-Actually shit I kind of love this place. It’s this little cottage out in the middle of nature, comfy and cozy and I’m getting real warm vibes off of it, good job lighting team on that one. Tomás then declares that they don’t need anywhere near all this space, so, bye-bye second floor! …Listen I know he’s playing a bit to dig under all of Tahani’s unexamined superiority issues but I would fucking love this cottage.

-…Oh fuck her sister’s paintings are all over the walls. Jesus, Michael, there’s torture and then there’s just cruelty. And Tomás is just gonna go in his usual digs to this swanky shindig, so…

-So that’s how Tahani ends up at the party in the inverse of her soulmate’s clothes. He’s in jeans and a green jacket, she’s in green pants and a denim jacket. And she’s really not handling it well. “I’m just not used to dressing like a plumber-ess!”

-You know, I’d feel bad, but literally everything Tomás’s character is presenting to fuck with her is kind of my jam so mostly I’m just rolling my eyes at her…her-ness.

-They are really digging in just how bad of a person Tahani is at the zero-point, though. …Also okay I will grant, I’m not a fan of Crocs unlike Tomás here. More of a flip flop man, comes with the Californian territory.

-So he’s off to the bar, and Tahani gets a chance to talk with Michael…And of course he puts the doubt in her head, reminding her that the system is Never Wrong. And if she wants, they can change the house! Do you want a mansion like this? Bigger? How about a moon? They can put you on a fucking moon Tahani, if that is how much space you need, to be in literal space. Is that what you need? Do you need your own personal moon, Tahani?

-Still not feeling bad for zero-point Tahani.

-Like, not even a little bit.

-So we get back to the encounter point, as Tahani ends up being the one left with Eleanor’s drinks when she races after Chidi…Just in time to run into another guy wearing the same green cargo pants as her. They’re cargo pants buddies! He was a garbage man in Winnipeg, what did you do in life? …Right, time to down them shots!

-And then it’s speech time. Eleanor gets up in front of the crowd, and tries to get to work on something akin to a speech, frazzled enough to actually be trying to take this seriously—

-. . .

-o o o

-I don’t know what I expected.

-But a drunk Tahani shoving her out of the way to vent about the bullshit of her first day, was not exactly at the top of my expectation list. So she’s…Not doing great. And Michael quietly tries to encourage Eleanor to get things back on track.

-Which is when Tahani is drunk enough to demand the mansion, and so Eleanor tries to take her aside to get some coffee and Tahani is not having it. “Is this your first time ever wearing a sash?!” …Well good job, Tahani, you made me sympathize with and feel bad for (nearly) zero-point Eleanor. That is not an easy task.

So that’s how Tahani…

-Um…

-…Oh boy.

-Oh dear.

-She rips the sash off of Eleanor. Stumbles back over the shrimp table. Knocks over a candelabra. And sets the curtains on fire.

-…Not a great day for Tahani.

-Back to the zero point, for our final man. ‘Jianyu’ woke up, and got handed his chance to just keep his mouth shut. And learned that his own soulmate connection was more deeply forged on a spiritual level than a romantic one. Which is how he met Luang, a fellow Buddhist monk. Binary souls, a perfect reflection of the other!

-And indeed, they spent all their time together, with lots of action mirroring, much to Jianyu’s frustration…Which led to that encounter with Eleanor. Right when he was taking the gear and wheels off of Luang’s bicycle to better ditch him. Which is how Eleanor ended up with that gear, right off the bike, before Jianyu rode off in a flash, finally on his own…

-Only to find Luang waiting for him back at their shared hut. Because of course.

-So to their point in the party, where Jianyu got introduced to the whole Janet situation. And got a pair of heaping glasses of yak’s milk. Jianyu did not do well with it, to say the least.

-So back into the Now, Tahani goes down hard as the fires burn furiously, and Jianyu books it, and right about when Tahani is sobbing about an excessive amount of pockets, Michael realizes shirt is off script.

-Back to his office, to the zero-point for him, and to all the lining up the details. Setting up Eleanor for the speech. Torturing Tahani in her little ways. Setting up Jianyu with the one character who would be of no help to him. Chidi’s hellish situation…And then ‘Denise’ pulling him aside.

-Vicky’s still not liking this situation one bit. Even if Denise runs the best pizza place in town and has a cat, and Michael insists those are pretty cool. …I mean, he’s not wrong there, but Vicky adored playing Real Eleanor! She got to break Chidi’s heart like 20 times, and really mess with him, but now Angelique is playing the game?! She’s a Ferrari stuck in the garage while some little Smart Car put-puts around!

-Listen, listen listen listen. You’ve got a great part coming up in just a few decades, and it includes Chidi. He’s gonna accidentally kill your cat. And it’ll TORTURE him. …Just give her a bigger part! A character bit! You know what, give her a limp! Just SOMETHING to act with!

-Which explains Denise’s whole circus-injury thing when she ‘ran into’ Chidi. I’m not gonna lie I might be more invested in Vicky the bristling actress than in a lot of the other hooks for the actual main characters.

-And things were starting to line up, as Michael checked in with some of the others…And learned that Eleanor wasn’t drinking. Eleanor, who snuck a flask into the car with her during her driving test. But okay, just start moving it forward, aim for the speech…

-And then, well, you know the rest of how that went. And Chidi pulls Eleanor aside, because he’s realizing things aren’t lining up. That note, it was on a page of a book he used to teach. He’s getting…Some kind of feeling off of her, one of those deja vu ‘swear I’ve met you before’ vibes. …Eleanor is pretty convinced that that’s some kind of pickup line. And she’s not entirely turning the idea down, either.

-You know, there was a lot of speculation on whether Eleanor might be bi or such given her attraction to Tahani bubbling up through the first season, but real talk I think she’s just horny.

-Anyways, Michael pulls some core cast into another room to talk, because things are off the rails. You can’t build a chaos sequence for Tahani because Tahani isn’t in here on the “mistaken identity” fiction! They need to get something going with Eleanor, where is she?

-…Good question, Michael.

-Great question.

-Superb question.

-Nobody knows.

-Also Chidi and Jay are also missing.

-Michael is…Shall we say…Displeased. And then Eleanor’s ‘soulmate’ comes to check in because it turns out he’s been claiming he’s off to the gym literally every time Eleanor tries to confess to him. So he really is a meathead.

-How. Many. Times. Have you claimed you were going to go to the gym, or work out, or otherwise used exercise to escape. “Five…No, nine!” Listen, he liked his old job! It was simple! He was a twister! People came in, he twisted them until they snapped in half, he moved on to the next person! But this job is weird! It’s all talking, and emotions, and nobody’s getting twisted! Now he’s REALLY going to the gym!

-Okay. Okay. Deep breath. They need the four humans so they can get back on track. …MOVE YOU IDIOTS! MOVE!

-Cut over to Chidi and Eleanor, who’ve caught up, and Chidi’s…Not handling it well. They clearly met before. But not in life. But she’s not supposed to be here. And this is their first day here. Is he also not supposed to be here?! Did they meet in the Bad Place, or some other cosmic metaphor?!

-And what do they DO?! Eleanor has no idea, but they need to figure it out…!

-Late at night, all on his own, Jay calls up Janet. And in need of someone to talk to, confesses you know everything he’s confessing. So Janet listens, and Jay just wants to be less confused and lonely…And so Janet has somewhere he can go, and so he hugs her, as their ship starts to build back up.

-Back at Eleanor’s place, Chidi’s…Well he’s gotten it to two possibilities. This book this is from is not exactly a 101 text. It’s something he taught at the grad-school level. So, they must have had a lot of time to discuss and study the material…Or, you know, you just tore it out of the first book you found. But still, it’s something.

-And that’s when Michael finds them! Here to apologize for the commotion at the party, and to escort Chidi back home. Which is when Tahani drops by to return the sash after everything that happened…And she’s feeling things aren’t right!

-And that’s when Tomás finds them, and also Pevita. And Janet brings Jay on by and Eleanor is still convinced that that bicycle gear is a magic amulet and Luang comes to get Jianyu and…

-…And Jay breaks character openly and in front of everyone and then Eleanor’s man shows up and, seeing things are off the rails, he just rips his suit off once again to go back to the gym. Again.

-And Eleanor can tell you one thing right here. This is NOT what Michael there’s saying it is. This is NOT the Good Place. This is some…Some prank show! And then she reveals the note, and Michael can’t help but laugh. Very clever, Eleanor! This does explain how things went off-script immediately. But okay, another loop, and without any tricks or built-up materials this time!

-Tahani tries to talk to his boss and SNAP

-Fresh meeting with the crew. You know the human saying, third time’s the charm, right folks? Listen, it was a false start, but Eleanor has no note…He calls up Janet, and checks her internals all the way shoulder deep. …Hey, Michael, did you check with Shawn the boss-man? Of course! And he thought it was very funny and is very supportive and don’t call him he’s a busy man.

-Any other questions? Vicky has one! Michael is not acknowledging it. At all. Then it’s back to his office, where…Shawn calls in and what is going on, Michael? And Michael just starts lying through his god damned teeth about how attempt number 2 is going. You will not be getting an attempt number three if this goes awry, Michael. …Riiiight. Right right right.

-Credits!

…Well that did not go how I expected.

[fairyhaven13]

Why is it that on every wholesome post on the internet, be it Tumblr or Reddit or what have you, there always has to be some putzes turning it into a ridiculous fight?

And, no, I don’t meant things where an animal is obviously being abused and needs to be called out. At the moment, I’m frustrated with a cluster of “moral vegans” that invaded a cute clip of a puffin looking at a camera. 

Look, I get when people have to go vegan because they’re allergic to meat, or to the way meat has to be cooked, or even if they’re squeamish about where meat comes from. But don’t take a stand of moral superiority over people who do eat meat. Eating meat is not evil. Killing animals for food is not evil. And I know this is a tired topic, long ranted about, but I’m frustrated and I want to vent.

Not every vegan is like this, I know, but the way every group of people works is that the negative ones are the loudest, so that’s who I’m referring to, not to the majority that are sensible. But, the first thing the loud ones always say is, “plants give you all the protein you need, you don’t need meat!” and list a bunch of vegan-biased nutritionalist articles saying so. They ignore the fact that plant based protein does not, in fact, come in the same form as meat based protein, and that this actually is specifically what kills animals. Cats go blind without it, iguanas get intestinal poisoning with it. Humans are creatures like any other that need specific nutrition, and we need meat protein.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/animal-vs-plant-protein#section2

That’s an article describing how meat based protein has already been processed into amino acids, and is “complete” while plant based is not, and does not have all the amino acids our bodies need. Additionally, vitamins B12, D, and DHA, Heme-iron, and Zinc are all much more prevalent in meats than plants. There are indeed some few plants that have them, which vegan-biased sites will list emphatically, but they are more obscure and harder to get a hold of than just eating some fish or chicken.

The article also says that there are plenty of plants that have nutrition that meat does not have. Which is why you eat both of them. This is not a debate of meat vs. plants, but a complete diet of meat and plants vs. eating only plants and hoping to stay healthy.

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/ann-hathaway-talks-eating-meat-after-being-vegan-what-diet-experts-think

https://medium.com/@rachel.inberg/why-i-returned-to-meat-after-16-years-of-vegetarianism-c6936077f44c

There are tons of articles like these two, tons, with vegans having to go back to eating meat for a number of reasons and suddenly, magically, feeling human again. Their skin clears, they have more energy, they get sick less often, etc. Moral vegans will often say that people have lower risk of health conditions by eating vegan, but as the previous article (and many like it) conjecture, this is more likely correlated to their actual lifestyle than what they eat, because most vegans also switch to exercising more and meditation as part of their diet. People who do that and eat a complete diet of both meat and plants reportedly feel much better by doing so, and almost every time I have heard of a vegan going back to eating meat--unless they had a previous health condition that made meat make them sick, as I said before--has said they felt alive again.

The second big point that moral vegans give is the treatment of animals. One guy on Reddit linked me the documentary, Dominion, which is an absolutely horrific film that I do not recommend you watch. It’s about the awful conditions many farms will put animals under, akin to Concrete Jungle. As if every single livestock farm in existence is like this. As I said before, in any group of people, the negative will be the loudest and most visible, and that is how it works for groups of livestock farmers as well. One article I read said that grass-fed free-range cows are “worse off” because they “produce more methane” than confined, grain-fed cows. Seriously? They’re worse off because they’re farting more?

Near my house, which is in the Ozarks, I have dozens of neighbors with chickens. The chickens have a coop and generally have free reign over the yard. They don’t keep many chickens at a time so that the roosters don’t fight and the hens don’t peck each other to death or cannibalize due to stress. This is normal here. Yes, there are tons of animals being abused in the industry, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to do it. If you think that there’s no way to keep animals as livestock without abusing them, then that shows poorly on your part.

https://certifiedhumane.org/

http://ethicalfarms.org/

These companies makes it their mission to survey farms and safeguard humane practices in the care of animals. They help route out farms that mislabel “cage free” as a big box of dying chickens and try to keep those ones from giving the rest a bad name.

The bad reputation thing is a big problem, because so many of the vocal negatives have put up articles about the bad ones, which absolutely need to be dealt with, that the good ones are getting no publicity or support. The good ones need support in order to share their practices with other farmers. Whatever you do, do NOT ascribe to PETA’s hyper-biased sites. PETA is notorious for their radical slaughter of animals they deem “tainted” by humanity, but this is not about them. If you want a giant list of PETA’s evils, there are tons of articles out there with tons of sources.

https://www.fws.gov/refuges/hunting/hunters-as-conservationists/

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/593001800/decline-in-hunters-threatens-how-u-s-pays-for-conservation

http://magazine.outdoornebraska.gov/2017/08/109097/

These articles are why hunters are necessary, how much of the conservation funding that programs use to protect wildlife and animals comes directly from hunters, and how a decline in hunters leads to a rapid increase in environmental decline and dying and starving animals. PETA (again, they’re vile, don’t ascribe to them) tells you that the suffering of wildlife is necessary to ensure “only the strong animals survive.” Which is exactly what hunting does, but without the suffering part.

This, combined with the nutritional articles above, shows hunting as a necessity because we need food and the animals need that part of their food chain. Moral vegans will tell you that “the world has survived for thousands of years without us,” which is not true, because we aren’t aliens. Humans are of the Earth. We are part of the environment, we are predators like any other predator out there, just with sentience and thumbs. Our sentience does not make us any less part of this planet. Unless you think that, again, the suffering of animals is better than us doing our part.

That’s not to say there aren’t disgusting poachers out there, that trophy hunting isn’t bad, or that humans have not had an extremely negative impact on the environment. There are, it is, and we have. But, we cannot take the opposite radical extreme and say “let’s remove ourselves from the planet!” We are not aliens. We are not parasites. We have problems, but we also have an obligation to the planet, to fix our problems, and to protect the environment. And, once again, as someone who lives in the Ozarks, I can see this impact. The years when people have not been able to hunt as much are the years when we find many more diseased deer, starving and sick deer, and deer that run out and get hit by cars. Hunting does not eliminate them or drive them to extinction, that’s why we have rules. That’s why we have seasons. That’s why we have limits. We are meant to be responsible.

And, once again, if you are uncomfortable with all this, that’s one thing. You are allowed to be squeamish and not want to eat meat. You are allowed to have health conditions. Acknowledge that plenty of other people have health conditions, too, that plenty of people are allergic to nuts, legumes, or gluten, or a variety of other plants, and sometimes meat is one of the only things readily available for them to eat. Acknowledge that not everyone has the resources to dedicate their lives to not eating any animal products. Acknowledge that not all livestock farming or hunting is evil. Acknowledge that we are human, too, and stop trying to say you’re morally superior. You aren’t. Humans are omnivores for a reason. Please, just let us have our meat without screaming about how evil we are.

And to the vegans who this doesn’t apply to at all, to the ones who are sensible and respectful of other people’s lifestyles and opinions: I respect you, too. You guys are my bros. More power to you. That’s how all lifestyle choices work. We respect each other’s opinions, respect that other people are not me and have their own lives, and we all get along.

[colorisbyshe]

I'm glad at least one person on my dash is positive about Dream Daddy! I don't want to invalidate anyone's feelings, but I'm having such a fun time with it and it's making me smile a lot (which, I'll take what I can get). I also love the relationship between Amanda and "you" a lot.

I really think the way “social justice” works on tumblr has created this atmosphere where no one is open to compromise or being realistic about things. So it sort of forces people to “prove” how progressive or whatever the fuck they are by claiming nothing is good enough. If you reject a diverse game for MLM that represents different body types, features many characters of color (including your ex and your own child), and even MULTIPLE trans characters because it’s not perfect, that just means YOU are more progressive than the game! Because... obviously you are superior than what you reject. If you boycott something for being mildly associated with bad politics, well then, you’re ideologically pure, right?

When really nothing and no one is ideologically pure. The people you associate with aren’t either.

But when you reject things that try to be good and do their best to accommodate as many people as possible, you can at least pretend you’re striving to be pure.

And I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I’ve gloated about rejecting shit because if you squint and hold your left leg over your right ear, it’s actually a wee bit misogynistic and all it did was... make me miss out on content I would have otherwise enjoyed.

Realistically, nothing is ever going to be good enough. And if this game’s biggest flaws are... being associated with a couple people who ultimately are very positive but are still cishet white men so they do ignorant shit sometimes and has  A SINGLE gay “villain” (according to the code, not even the game)... then I’ll fucking take it. GG didn’t make the game, a team of 30+ LGBT folk did. And like... the problem isn’t gay villains, teh problem is the ONLY gay representation we get being either victimizers or victims. This game offers us other options... gay people are the heroes, the layman, the anything we want them to be, not JUST the villain.

The second we go burn the witch on all the content made for us is the second we lose. Because that means LGBT people can’t fund their project because we’re all holding our money behind our backs waiting for them to fuck up. And that means cishet people see us as not worth even attempting to accommodate or understand. Because when we don’t support projects like this, projects like this stop happening.

I think if you’ve actually researched the game or like have spoken to people who have played it and you can’t get over the GG association or maybe there’s another problem (I’ve only dated Craig so far, so idk), then yeah, sure, don’t play it.

But I can’t pretend to be holier than thou over a game that literally brought me to tears over how sincere it is about small life lessons.

Because I can’t name any other gay content I consume and enjoy that’s better? I have my “templars and genocide is morally ambiguous if not sometimes good, also every WLW we make is gonna be treated like garbage” bullshit over on Dragon Age, my “Gay men are promiscuous and also cheaters and also this all is all biphobic as hell why won’t Annalise say she’s bi” bullshit over on HTGAM, my “Lucasfilm just wants me dead lbr” shit at Star Wars, like??? People are trying to drown YOI in accusations of fatphobia when like?? No one has EVER been able to name me a show where a fat character is treated kindly and humanized without being sidelined. EVER.

Ever fanon shit is fucking garbage.

We’re all knee deep in garbage and I’m not here to pretend I’m pristine and smell like roses. Dream Daddy is the sweetest smelling thing in my vicinity, I’m not gonna pretend I hate it and then go back to reading Bucky/Steve fanart and hoping someone doesn’t erase Bucky’s physical disability... again while pretending representation is A+ outside of DD anyways.

Nothing is perfect. But some things are good.

Dream Daddy is good. I know some peopel want it to be horrible because... [insert some way you can explain wanting this game to fail that DOESN’T sound homophobic] but it’s not. It’s cute. And means so so well.

And I honestly love it.