#this network is mean for free

[sugar-grigri]

I've just seen some people's reactions to CSM's analyses on Twitter: I think it's the best decision I've ever made to never post on that network 🤭

[2nd-mushroom-circle]

hey everyone i’d love if you could support this gfm for a member of my local community’s family who are trapped in Gaza. They’re currently raising money for food and essential supplies, as well as trying to evacuate as many people as they can once the borders are passable.

I first learned of this fundraiser at a local event, so I will vouch for its trustworthiness, and they update regularly with progress.

[news4dzhozhar]

[flashbcaks]

Making a new post for s5 to reflect all the changes we've had, but I run a What We Do In The Shadows Discord server!

Some points about us:

We're 18+

290+ members, as of this post

LGBTQIA+ friendly

Designated channels for Season 5 content, Food Crimes, pet-sharing, and much more!

Notification roles for gaming sessions and new S5 content

Fun color roles, and occasional commemorative roles

Channels for companion properties ( Good Omens and OFMD, in particular)

50+ custom emojis and stickers

Fun server events (including art collaborations, and streaming parties)

We're listed on Disboard [x], but here's the direct link to the server, as well [x]. (Please Note: In order to stay in the chat, you must pick a minimum of one role from our available lists in #the-server-protocols; It can be applied by asking an admin.)

And to finish up this post, here are three of our more popular server memes:

[nicolegendary]

.

[daisywords]

the worst part about being a pianist is that you can't just...simply take your instrument with you

[no1ryomafan]

Yknow for most of my tumblr rants I like to keep stuff vague even when it’s apparent what thing I’m aiming at because I don’t like to trash talk people openly who I don’t know or formally knew especially on the most mundane subjects but there’s one particular thing that has been bothering me about fandom culture that I’ve noticed as of late that I gotta rant about:

And that’s the whole ordeal of “you need to consume this series in a certain way” mindset as apart from leading into general bad traits fandom culture has-toxicity and gatekeeping-I feel this is just another reason why some people get easily scared off by getting into certain things.

To further elaborate I wanna first say there’s nothing particularly wrong with advising a set order of things to consume in a series under the context of either:

<someone asked to begin with what order to watch/read/play something <a series has multiple sequels that are connected in some capacity so advising the correct order because sometimes it’s not the “chronological” that’s the correct way

Those cases you are making sure the person gets into a series by following the story the way it’s intended, that’s fine, I’m more so talking about how a handful of certain fandoms are centered a series with multiple canons and they don’t really overlap yet fans try to act authority over how you should consume the media when at that point it’s just a matter of “which series looks the most interesting too you”.

I’ve seen this behavior pop up a bit in getter fandom and while it’s not anything toxic-thankfully-I really don’t agree to the notion of you need to read all of the mangas JUST to understand the Animes when they’re ALL in their own canon. But this post isn’t actually about Getter because the general atmosphere I’ve seen in my own circle is “we really don’t care where you start as long as you’ve seen Getter” which I appreciate and can’t really get too upset over the series discourse, I’m more so noticing this happening in a different older anime fandom I was kinda apart of being Soul Eater.

Now I’ve only seen this said by two people so I’m not gonna claim this is a general thing by the fandom-fuck knows how many soul eater fans there are anymore even if it’s more recognizable than getter-however I get the vibe this is something fans when newbies get into the series advise: To not get super into SE as it be unnecessary, for those who don’t know it’s one of those animes that was unfortunately cursed with “starting off a solid adaption for the first half but by the second half it completely diverted from the manga and the anime content is not only different but inferior from its source” which from what I seen, had a lot of old SE fans advise newer fans to watch the anime up to a certain point aka right where it changes from the manga and than going to read the manga with the stuff the anime didn’t adapt, and than after you finish the manga you can go back to watch the anime if you so choose.

I really, really, REALLY do not like this approach and despite what I said early about “different iterations” this one even worse given the context SE doesn’t have that many canons outside of these and a spin off series.

Literally this entire process could be avoided if someone just said “don’t watch the anime because it’s not a good adaption, read the manga” because even if that sounds gatekeepy it’s at least not a unnecessary back and forth process with the anime being CLEARLY redundant. Sure, SE like 100+ or so chapters but even if watching the anime adapt the first half is faster than reading it, it just makes things needlessly complicated to newer fans.

It’s also not the end of the world if someone watches the show and never reads the manga because guess what? We all like stuff that is FUNDAMENTALLY flawed. People are too worried about their media being perfect when no series is and there’s nothing wrong with liking something that’s a bit messy because people still keep up with series that are hella fucking messy. If they complain about the anime sucking but refuse to read the manga that’s on them, not your issue because they knew what they were getting themselves into if someone was warning them. We also just gotta deal with people not giving stuff we like a second chance after the first time because needlessly shoving a “order” in their face isn’t gonna make them feel inclined to check it out again.

My only advice I can give from this long messy rant of a post that went too far on tangent about something I don’t even know is said by many fans-and if anyone finds this and is active in the SE circles please feel free to correct me-is NEVER advise someone a order of getting into a thing unless there IS canons that do connect with each other by being direct follow ups. Don't get mad at someone for getting into a series from the most confusing or hated iteration, because if they are actually interested they'll want to consume more of it even if they have a weak first impression.

Never force anything onto ANYONE and just welcome new fans with open arms, thats a way to make a safe space even in some of the worst fandoms.

[thedevotionaltour]

idk why i think i can be an artist for a career when i can barely get myself to do it in my free time *curls up and dies*

[coochiequeens]

Ireland went from sending single mothers to be sent to work for Catholic run laundries to this in an amazingly short amount of time.

ByGenevieve Gluck

July 17, 2023

Ireland’s leading trans lobby group will be participating in an event aimed at “supporting children and young people with transgender identities.” The discussion will be led by Tara Hewitt, the CEO of the Trans Equality Network Ireland (TENI) and a self-professed BDSM fetishist. Hewitt has ties to a trans activist organization that has called for the release of all trans-identified prisoners regardless of conviction.

The event, titled “TENI & Tea,” is scheduled to take place on July 19 and is being supported by the Donegal County Council. It was organized by Bród na Gaeltachta as part of a “community-organized Pride festival” held in July, and is categorized as a “health class” on Eventbrite. According to the registration page, the discussion, led by Hewitt, will “provide up to date information, knowledge and allow for discussion on how best to support trans and non-binary young people.”

Though the Q&A session involves advice regarding the bodies of children, Hewitt has a disturbing history of pressuring health authorities to ignore safeguarding measures.

In his previous role as the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead at the Northern Care Alliance NHS Group, Hewitt requested that medical personnel ignore a guidance put forward by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) preserving single-sex spaces for women receiving health services.

In April of 2022, the EHRC issued a new guidance assuring that it was lawful to exclude men from women-only spaces, provided the reasoning is “legitimate and proportionate.” The statement was a reassertion of the law, which was being questioned due to misrepresentation by trans activists and lobbying organizations such as Stonewall.

Hewitt promptly condemned the ruling as “transphobic” and urged his colleagues within the NHS to ignore its guidance. 

“This guidance is highly likely to be found unlawful at Judicial review & is incredibly transphobic … When will attacks on trans people end in UK? I urge my equality professional colleagues to give this guidance the credibility it deserves by putting it in bin & continue as usual,” Hewitt said.

With his statement, Hewitt deliberately ignored a widely-publicized incident that had occurred one month prior wherein a woman who had been raped in a single-sex hospital ward by a trans-identified male was told her assailant was a “woman.”

While serving in a role that saw him advising NHS Trusts across the UK and giving lectures to health care students, Hewitt stated in a March 2019 tweet that “trans women’s bodies are not male bodies.”

Hewitt has been politically active in both Labour and, more recently, the Conservative Party, for which he stood as a councilor. During his campaign it emerged that he had an interest in BDSM and dressing up as an animal during sex, euphemistically referred to as “furrydom.”

He is also known for openly having discussed the acceptance of men with sexual fetishes at events focused on healthcare.

During a 2016 presentation for the LGBT Cancer Support Alliance, Hewitt spoke about men who cross-dress for sexual pleasure, and clarified that men who wear women’s underwear to satisfy a fetish are included under the trans umbrella.

Speaking to a room filled with women, Hewitt claimed: “You’ve got people that fetishistically cross-dress and wear clothing to get a sexual desire out of the clothing of the opposite gender. It generally tends to be associated with men wearing women’s underwear.”

At the same presentation, Hewitt revealed that he had also worked with Action for Trans Health, an organization which published a manifesto demanding the immediate release of all trans criminals from prison.

“We demand that trans people are immediately freed from police, military, and government contracts without repercussions. We reject the system of blackmail that corporations and governments engage in, whereby trans people who can work are ‘rewarded’ with slightly less mistreatment in exchange for the exploitation of our labor,” read the document.

The manifesto, which has since been deleted, was published on Tumblr in 2018 and also demanded tax-payer funded access to all forms of plastic surgery and body modification without any questions asked by medical professionals.

“We demand the freedom to alter our bodies without justification. We demand an end to all surgical prerequisites — nobody should have to prove life experience, health, or have to be taking hormones in order to exercise bodily autonomy,” Action for Trans Health stated.

“We demand that these surgeries can be highly customized to meet our individual and unique needs. We demand the right to multiple surgeries, including reversal of previous surgeries if desired, so that we do not have to fear regret.”

Speaking with Reduxx on the event, local women’s rights campaigner Jennifer Kimmel slammed Bród na Gaeltachta and TENI for targeting minors and “vilifying” concerned parents.

“Any person or group with good intentions does not vilify parents, purposely mislead the public nor regard themselves as above reproach. These are clear red flags,” Kimmel said.

“When it comes to child safeguarding, everyone and every group is accountable, whether they cloak themselves in a ‘progress flag’ or not. Parents seeking to protect children from harmful ideologies need community support every bit as much as anyone else.”

[bravevolunteer]

i know no one asked but here are my updated thoughts on mimic

[awek-s]

my new Uni has an institute for social justice while my old Uni gave me a known transphobic supervisor for my masters without thinking that may be a conflict of interest (i transitioned the summer before my second year of my bachelors at the same Uni)

[party-gilmore]

I’m sorry but if you don’t want your kid to be on a fucking [electronic] all day… maybe don’t give your kid their own [electronic]?

[notalexhorne]

I found the reg key for the DVD ripper I forgot I used to use. Oh, this is magnificent, because I have so many old TV shows backed up on DVD. Old, obscure shit which is so fantastically weird I can't even find active torrents of it on the trackers that usually specialise in old, obscure shit.

I am going to watch so much weird television this month

[invisiblerambler]

Netflix putting out a good TV show for the first time in years is genuinely shocking but I am low key SEATED. This is your sign to go watch KAOS it is genuinely excellent

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”

20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired. I'd publicly noted my disappointment with glowing Wired reviews of DRM-encumbered digital devices, prompting Anderson to call me unrealistic for expecting the magazine to condemn gadgets for their DRM:

https://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2004/12/is_drm_evil.html

I replied in public, telling him that he'd misunderstood. This wasn't an issue of ideological purity – it was about good reviewing practice. Wired was telling readers to buy a product because it had features x, y and z, but at any time in the future, without warning, without recourse, the vendor could switch off any of those features:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/12/29/cory-responds-to-wired-editor-on-drm/

I proposed that all Wired endorsements for DRM-encumbered products should come with this disclaimer:

WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.

Wired didn't take me up on this suggestion.

But I was right. The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations. Inkjet printers were always a sleazy business, but once these printers got directly connected to the internet, companies like HP started pushing out "security updates" that modified your printer to make it reject the third-party ink you'd paid for:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Now, this scam wouldn't work if you could just put things back the way they were before the "update," which is where the DRM comes in. A thicket of IP laws make reverse-engineering DRM-encumbered products into a felony. Combine always-on network access with indiscriminate criminalization of user modification, and the enshittification will follow, as surely as night follows day.

This is the root of all the right to repair shenanigans. Sure, companies withhold access to diagnostic codes and parts, but codes can be extracted and parts can be cloned. The real teeth in blocking repair comes from the law, not the tech. The company that makes McDonald's wildly unreliable McFlurry machines makes a fortune charging franchisees to fix these eternally broken appliances. When a third party threatened this racket by reverse-engineering the DRM that blocked independent repair, they got buried in legal threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Everybody loves this racket. In Poland, a team of security researchers at the OhMyHack conference just presented their teardown of the anti-repair features in NEWAG Impuls locomotives. NEWAG boobytrapped their trains to try and detect if they've been independently serviced, and to respond to any unauthorized repairs by bricking themselves:

https://mamot.fr/@q3k@hackerspace.pl/111528162905209453

Poland is part of the EU, meaning that they are required to uphold the provisions of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive, including Article 6, which bans this kind of reverse-engineering. The researchers are planning to present their work again at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg this month – Germany is also a party to the EUCD. The threat to researchers from presenting this work is real – but so is the threat to conferences that host them:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/researchers-face-legal-threats-over-sdmi-hack/

20 years ago, Chris Anderson told me that it was unrealistic to expect tech companies to refuse demands for DRM from the entertainment companies whose media they hoped to play. My argument – then and now – was that any tech company that sells you a gadget that can have its features revoked is defrauding you. You're paying for x, y and z – and if they are contractually required to remove x and y on demand, they are selling you something that you can't rely on, without making that clear to you.

But it's worse than that. When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by Act III. Selling a product that can be remotely, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that there are no penalties for doing so makes it impossible for the better people in that meeting to win the ensuing argument, leading to the moral injury of seeing a product you care about reduced to a pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

But even if everyone at that table is a swell egg who wouldn't dream of enshittifying the product, the existence of a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature makes the product vulnerable to external actors who will demand that it be used. Back in 2022, Adobe informed its customers that it had lost its deal to include Pantone colors in Photoshop, Illustrator and other "software as a service" packages. As a result, users would now have to start paying a monthly fee to see their own, completed images. Fail to pay the fee and all the Pantone-coded pixels in your artwork would just show up as black:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

Adobe blamed this on Pantone, and there was lots of speculation about what had happened. Had Pantone jacked up its price to Adobe, so Adobe passed the price on to its users in the hopes of embarrassing Pantone? Who knows? Who can know? That's the point: you invested in Photoshop, you spent money and time creating images with it, but you have no way to know whether or how you'll be able to access those images in the future. Those terms can change at any time, and if you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.

These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." Adobe chose to design its software so it would be vulnerable to this kind of demand, and then its customers paid for that choice. Sure, Pantone are dicks, but this is Adobe's fault. They stuck a KICK ME sign to your back, and Pantone obliged.

This keeps happening and it's gonna keep happening. Last week, Playstation owners who'd bought (or "bought") Warner TV shows got messages telling them that Warner had walked away from its deal to sell videos through the Playstation store, and so all the videos they'd paid for were going to be deleted forever. They wouldn't even get refunds (to be clear, refunds would also be bullshit – when I was a bookseller, I didn't get to break into your house and steal the books I'd sold you, not even if I left some cash on your kitchen table).

Sure, Warner is an unbelievably shitty company run by the single most guillotineable executive in all of Southern California, the loathsome David Zaslav, who oversaw the merger of Warner with Discovery. Zaslav is the creep who figured out that he could make more money cancelling completed movies and TV shows and taking a tax writeoff than he stood to make by releasing them:

https://aftermath.site/there-is-no-piracy-without-ownership

Imagine putting years of your life into making a program – showing up on set at 5AM and leaving your kids to get their own breakfast, performing stunts that could maim or kill you, working 16-hour days during the acute phase of the covid pandemic and driving home in the night, only to have this absolute turd of a man delete the program before anyone could see it, forever, to get a minor tax advantage. Talk about moral injury!

But without Sony's complicity in designing a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature into the Playstation, Zaslav's war on art and creative workers would be limited to material that hadn't been released yet. Thanks to Sony's awful choices, David Zaslav can break into your house, steal your movies – and he doesn't even have to leave a twenty on your kitchen table.

The point here – the point I made 20 years ago to Chris Anderson – is that this is the foreseeable, inevitable result of designing devices for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades. Anyone who was paying attention should have figured that out in the GW Bush administration. Anyone who does this today? Absolute flaming garbage.

Sure, Zaslav deserves to be staked out over an anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup. But save the next anthill for the Sony exec who shipped a product that would let Zaslav come into your home and rob you. That piece of shit knew what they were doing and they did it anyway. Fuck them. Sideways. With a brick.

Meanwhile, the studios keep making the case for stealing movies rather than paying for them. As Tyler James Hill wrote: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing":

https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kflw2lvam42n

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

Image: Alan Levine (modified) https://pxhere.com/en/photo/218986

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[recents]

idk i think what is interesting about astarion to me is the fact that you have a guy who started out an asshole (normal type) and then spent two hundred years in a very carefully and specifically crafted (by the writers of the game) Become A Terrible Person Or Die nexus. like it wasn’t just a Torment Nexus, he wasn’t just in hell, i feel like this is very important not to forget, he was in hell but it was specifically a hell designed to, over time, kill the empathy of anyone trapped in it, kill their brain’s ability to prioritize other peoples’ survival, to numb one’s conscience.

and then he gets yanked directly out of that nexus and despite that the fact that he spent, again, two hundred years in a situation that was sort of a rock tumbler for the human soul, there’s still a pebble left in there. and it’s a pebble that can be grown if placed in the right environment and provided with a support network.

so i think it becomes interesting because it really does i think force you to start thinking about the limits of free will even on as basic a level as the human personality. i think the fact that he becomes such a different character based on player choice, that his end morality is so hugely dependent on player choice, is uhhh. a big part of what the devs were going for probably.

it makes a lot of people really uncomfortable to acknowledge some bad people would be good people if literally nothing changed except they had a good support network and different circumstances. especially because it means the opposite is also true. which is even more uncomfortable.

you know that part in the beginning of fellowship of the ring where gandalf is talking about how gollum is ultimately only like that because of the ring and gandalf thinks his story is sad? astarion is kinda like if they sexualized gollum.