#thunderbirds text post

[laughing-moonlight]

[reelmegabyte]

ever wonder why spotify/discord/teams desktop apps kind of suck?

i don't do a lot of long form posts but. I realized that so many people aren't aware that a lot of the enshittification of using computers in the past decade or so has a lot to do with embedded webapps becoming so frequently used instead of creating native programs. and boy do i have some thoughts about this.

for those who are not blessed/cursed with computers knowledge Basically most (graphical) programs used to be native programs (ever since we started widely using a graphical interface instead of just a text-based terminal). these are apps that feel like when you open up the settings on your computer, and one of the factors that make windows and mac programs look different (bc they use a different design language!) this was the standard for a long long time - your emails were served to you in a special email application like thunderbird or outlook, your documents were processed in something like microsoft word (again. On your own computer!). same goes for calendars, calculators, spreadsheets, and a whole bunch more - crucially, your computer didn't depend on the internet to do basic things, but being connected to the web was very much an appreciated luxury!

that leads us to the eventual rise of webapps that we are all so painfully familiar with today - gmail dot com/outlook, google docs, google/microsoft calendar, and so on. as html/css/js technology grew beyond just displaying text images and such, it became clear that it could be a lot more convenient to just run programs on some server somewhere, and serve the front end on a web interface for anyone to use. this is really very convenient!!!! it Also means a huge concentration of power (notice how suddenly google is one company providing you the SERVICE) - you're renting instead of owning. which means google is your landlord - the services you use every day are first and foremost means of hitting the year over year profit quota. its a pretty sweet deal to have a free email account in exchange for ads! email accounts used to be paid (simply because the provider had to store your emails somewhere. which takes up storage space which is physical hard drives), but now the standard as of hotmail/yahoo/gmail is to just provide a free service and shove ads in as much as you need to.

webapps can do a lot of things, but they didn't immediately replace software like skype or code editors or music players - software that requires more heavy system interaction or snappy audio/visual responses. in 2013, the electron framework came out - a way of packaging up a bundle of html/css/js into a neat little crossplatform application that could be downloaded and run like any other native application. there were significant upsides to this - web developers could suddenly use their webapp skills to build desktop applications that ran on any computer as long as it could support chrome*! the first applications to be built on electron were the late code editor atom (rest in peace), but soon a whole lot of companies took note! some notable contemporary applications that use electron, or a similar webapp-embedded-in-a-little-chrome as a base are:

microsoft teams

notion

vscode

discord

spotify

anyone! who has paid even a little bit of attention to their computer - especially when using older/budget computers - know just how much having chrome open can slow down your computer (firefox as well to a lesser extent. because its just built better <3)

whenever you have one of these programs open on your computer, it's running in a one-tab chrome browser. there is a whole extra chrome open just to run your discord. if you have discord, spotify, and notion open all at once, along with chrome itself, that's four chromes. needless to say, this uses a LOT of resources to deliver applications that are often much less polished and less integrated with the rest of the operating system. it also means that if you have no internet connection, sometimes the apps straight up do not work, since much of them rely heavily on being connected to their servers, where the heavy lifting is done.

taking this idea to the very furthest is the concept of chromebooks - dinky little laptops that were created to only run a web browser and webapps - simply a vessel to access the google dot com mothership. they have gotten better at running offline android/linux applications, but often the $200 chromebooks that are bought in bulk have almost no processing power of their own - why would you even need it? you have everything you could possibly need in the warm embrace of google!

all in all the average person in the modern age, using computers in the mainstream way, owns very little of their means of computing.

i started this post as a rant about the electron/webapp framework because i think that it sucks and it displaces proper programs. and now ive swiveled into getting pissed off at software services which is in honestly the core issue. and i think things can be better!!!!!!!!!!! but to think about better computing culture one has to imagine living outside of capitalism.

i'm not the one to try to explain permacomputing specifically because there's already wonderful literature ^ but if anything here interested you, read this!!!!!!!!!! there is a beautiful world where computers live for decades and do less but do it well. and you just own it. come frolic with me Okay ? :]

*when i say chrome i technically mean chromium. but functionally it's same thing

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Down in the (link)dumps

On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine. On October 2, I'll be in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab.

Back when I was writing on Boing Boing, I'd slam out 10-15 blog posts every day, short hits that served as signpost and public notebook, but I rarely got into longer analysis of the sort I do daily now on Pluralistic. Both modes are very useful for organizing one's thoughts, and indeed, they complement each other:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

The problem is that when you write long, synthetic essays, they crowd out the quick hits. Back in May 2022, I started including three short links with each edition of Pluralistic, in a section called "Hey look at this" (thanks to Mitch Wagner for suggesting it!):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/01/reit-modernization-act/#linkdump

But even with that daily linkdump, I still manage to accumulate link-debt, as interesting things pile up, not rising to the level of a long blog-post, but not so disposable as to be easy to flush. When the pile gets big enough, I put out a Saturday Linkdump:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

All of which is to say, it's Saturday, and I've got a linkdump!

First up, a musical interlude. I've been listening to DJ Earworm's amazing mashups since 2005 and while I've got dozens of tracks that shuffle in and out of my daily playlist, the one that makes me wanna get up and dance every time is "No One Takes Your Freedom," a wildly improbable banger composed of equal parts Aretha Franklin, The Beatles, George Michael and Scissor Sisters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaboIeW1A_4

I defy you to play that one without bopping a little. I think it's the French horn from "For No One" that really kills it, the world's least expected intro to a heavy dance beat.

Moving swiftly on: let's talk about fonts. I remember when Wired magazine first showed up at the bookstores I was working at in Toronto, and my bosses – younger men than I am now! – complained that the tiny, decorative fonts, rendered in silver foil on a purple background, was illegible. I laughed at them, batting my young eyes and devouring the promise of a better future with ease, even in dim light.

Now it's thirty years later and I'm half-blind. Both my my decaying, aging eyes are filmed with cataracts that I'm too busy to get removed (though my doc promises permanent 20:20, perfect night-vision, and implanted bifocals when I can spare a month from touring with new books to get 'em fixed).

Which is to say: I spend a lot more time thinking about legibility now than I did in the early 1990s, and I've got a lot more sympathy for those booksellers' complaints about Wired's aggressively low-contrast design today. I'm forever on the hunt for fonts designed for high legibility.

This week, Kottke linked to B612, a free/open font family "designed for aircraft cockpit screens," commissioned by Airbus. It's got all the bells and whistles (e.g. hinting) and comes in variable and monospace faces:

https://b612-font.com/

B612 arrived at a fortuitous moment, coinciding with a major UI overhaul in Thunderbird, the app I spend the second-most time in (I spend more time in Gedit, the bare-bones text-editor that comes with Ubuntu, the flavor of GNU/Linux I use). A previous Thunderbird UI experiment had made all the UI text effectively unreadable for me, causing me to dive deep into the infinitely configurable settings to sub in my own fonts:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/UserChrome.css

The new UI is much better, but it broke all my old tweaks, so I went back into those settings and switched everything to B612, and it's amazeballs. I tried doing the same in Gedit, but B612 mono was too light for my shitty eyes, so I went back to Jetbrains Mono, another free/open font that has 8 weights to choose from:

https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/

Love me a new, legible font! Meanwhile, a note for all you designers: the received wisdom that black on white type is "hard on the eyes" is a harmful myth. Stop with the grey-on-white type, for the love of all that is holy. This isn't 1992, you aren't laying out type for Wired Issue 1.0. Contrast is good, actually.

Continuing on the subject of software updates: Mastodon, the free, open, federated social media platform that anyone can host and that lets you hop between one server and another with just a couple clicks, has released a major update, focusing on usability, especially for people unfamiliar with its conventions:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/09/mastodon-4.2/

Included in this fix: a major overhaul to how you interact with posts on servers other than your home server. This was both confusing and clunky, and the fix makes it much better. They've also changed how sign-up flow works, making things simpler for newbies, and they've cleaned up the UI, tweaking threads, web previews and other parts of the daily experience.

There's also a lot of changes to search, but search still remains less than ideal, with multi-server search limited to hashtags. This is bad, actually. Thankfully, we don't have to wait for Mastodon devs to decide to fix it, because Mastodon is free and open, which means anyone with the skills to code a change, or the money to pay techies to do it, or the moral force to convince them to do it, can effect that change themselves:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/

Case in point: Mastoreader, a great new thread reader for Mastodon:

https://mastoreader.io/

Every time that guy who owns Twitter breaks it even worse, a new cohort of users sign up. Not all of them stay, but the growth is steady and the trendline is solid:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/of-course-mastodon-lost-users/

It's the right call: while there are other services that promise that they will be federated someday, promises are easy, and there's world of difference between "federateable" and "federated." As GW Bush told us, "Fool me twice, we don't get fooled again":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/06/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again/

One big difference between the kind of blogging I used to do in my Boing Boing days and the long-form work I do today is the graphics. When you're posting 10-15 times/day, you can't make each graphic a standout (or at least, I can't). But I can (and do) devote substantial time to making a single collage out of public domain and Creative Commons graphics every day:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/25/a-year-in-illustration/

I am not a visual person – literally, I can barely see! – but my daily art practice has slowly made me a less-terrible illustrator. I got in some good licks this week, like this graphic for the UAW's new "Eight-and-Skate" work-to-rule program:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/21/eight-and-skate/#strike-to-rule

That graphic was fun because all the elements were from the public domain, or fair use. I love it when that happens. I've spent years amassing a bulging folder of public domain clip art ganked from the web and this week, it got a major infusion, thanks to the Bergen Public Library's Flickr album of high-rez scans of antique book endpapers. 86 public domain textures? Yes please! (Also, the fact that Flickr has one-click download of all the hi-rez versions of every image in a photoset is another way that it stands out as a remnant of the old, good web, not so much a superannuated relic as an elegant weapon of a more civilized age):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bergen_public_library/albums/72157633827993925

Speaking of strikes: there are strikes! Everygoddamnedwhere! After 40 years in a Reagan-induced coma, labor is back, baby. The Cornells School of Industrial and Labor Relations' Labor Action Tracker is your go-to, real-time observation post as hot labor summer turns into the permanent revolution. As of this writing, it's listing 968 labor actions in 1491 locations:

https://striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu

There's no war but class war and it was ever thus. Brian Merchant's forthcoming book Blood In the Machine is a history of the Luddites, revisiting that much-maligned labor uprising, which has been rewritten as a fight between technophobes and the inevitable forces of progress:

https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/

The book unearths the true history of the Ludds: they were skilled technologists who were outraged by capital's commitment to immiseration, child slavery, and foisting inferior goods on a helpless public. You can get a long preview of the book in Fast Company:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90949827/what-the-luddites-can-teach-us-about-standing-up-to-big-tech

Merchant also talked with Roman Mars about the book on the 99 Percent Invisible podcast:

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/blood-in-the-machine/transcript/

If that's piqued your interest and if you can make it to Los Angeles, come by Chevalier's Books this Wednesday, where Brian and I are having a joint book-launch (I've just published The Internet Con, my Luddite-adjacent "Big Tech Disassembly Manual"):

https://www.eventbrite.com/o/chevaliers-books-8495362156

Where is all this labor unrest coming from? Well as Stein's Law has it, "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop." 40 years of corporate-friendly political economy has lit the world on fire and immiserated billions, and we've hit bottom and started the long, slow climb to a world that prioritizes human thriving over billionaire power.

One of the most tangible expressions of that vibe shift is the rise and rise of antitrust. The big news right now is the (first) trial of the century, Google's antitrust trial. What's that? You say you haven't heard anything about it? Well, perhaps that has to do with the judge banning recording and livestreaming and not making transcripts available. Don't worry, he's also locking observers out of his courtroom for hours at a time during closed testimony. Oh, and also? The DoJ just agreed that it won't post its exhibits from the trial online anymore. You can follow what dribbles of information as are emerging from our famously open court system at US v Google:

https://usvgoogle.org/trial-update-9-22

If the impoverished trickle of Google antitrust news has you down, don't despair, there's more coming, because the FTC is apparently set to drop its long-awaited suit against Amazon:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ftc-poised-sue-amazon-antitrust-163432081.html

Amazon spent years blowing hundreds of millions of dollars of its investors' cash, selling goods below cost and buying up rivals until it became the most important channel for every kind of manufacturer to reach their customers. Now, Amazon is turning the screws. A new report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance details the 45% Amazon Tax that every merchant pays to reach you:

https://ilsr.org/AmazonMonopolyTollbooth-2023/

That 45% tax is passed on to you – whether or not you shop at Amazon. Amazon's secretive most favored nation terms mean that if a seller raises their price on Amazon, they have to raise it everywhere else, which means you're paying more at WalMart and Target because of Amazon's policies.

Those taxes are bad for us, but they're good for Amazon's investors. This year, the company stands to make $185 billion from junk-fees charged to platform sellers. As David Dayen points out, Amazon charges so much to ship third-party sellers' goods that it fully subsidizes Amazon's own shipping:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-09-21-amazons-185-billion-pay-to-play-system/

That's right: as Stacy Mitchell writes in the report, "Amazon doesn’t have to build warehousing and shipping costs into the price of its own products, because it’s found a way to get smaller online sellers to pay those costs."

Now, one of the amazing things about antitrust coming back from the grave is that just the threat of antitrust enforcement can moderate even the most vicious bully's conduct. Faced with the looming FTC case, Amazon just canceled its plan to charge even more junk fees:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/amazon-drops-planned-merchant-fee-ftc-lawsuit-looms-bloomberg-news-2023-09-20/

But despite this win, Amazon is still speedrunning the enshittification cycle. The latest? Unskippable ads in Prime Video:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-22/amazon-prime-video-content-to-include-ads-staring-early-2024

Remember when Amazon promised you ad-free video if you'd lock yourself into shopping with them by pre-paying for a year's shipping with Prime? The company has fully embraced the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further."

That FTC case can't come a moment too soon.

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/2023/09/23/salmagundi/#dewey-102

[squiddokiddo]

As promised, here's the oc ask game.

I've tried to make the questions fit all Thunderbirds universes and all types of OCs while trying not to make it too generic, I hope you have fun playing.

Under the cut I have added some Picrew links incase you wanted a picture of your character if you can't draw them, please make sure to add the credits for the picrews you use on your posts.

I've also added a plain text version of the ask game incase anyone needed it.

Thx for reading, Happy March of the OCs.💛💛

Picrews:

Hunbloom's Picrew

Bananah Kim's Picrew

Makowka's Picrew

Nuggt's Picrew

Lunevani's Picrew

Ask game questions:

🐚 • Give us a brief bio for your OC(s). Add things like name, age, gender, pronouns, sexuality, ethnicity, occupation, religion ect.

🪐 • Is your OC connected to any of the Tracys or IR? Are they a friend? Family member? Colleague? Love interest? Enemy? Ect.

🌩️ • What's your OC's favourite Thunderbird/IR vehicle?

🌊 • Can your OC swim? Are they comfortable in space? Or do they prefer to keep their feet on the ground?

🌺 • How would your favourite character describe your OC? Physical features, personality ect.

🌟 • Is your OC disabled, neurodivergent or mentally ill? Do they use any disability aids? What does support for their disability look like in the 2060s?

🍂 • Does your OC have favourite clothes or outfits? What kind of aesthetics do they like?

🫧 • Name a character and I'll tell you what my OC thinks of them/their opinion on them.

🛟 • Has your OC ever needed rescuing before? If so, what happened? Why did they need saving?

🌿 • Does your OC live on Tracy Island? If so, what do they think of it? Have they always lived there? If not, what would they imagine living on Tracy Island would be like?

⛵ • Whaw would a fun day out look like to your OC? Where would they go? What would they do? Who would they bring with them?

🩹 • Is your OC squeamish? Do they have any phobias? How do they deal with these feelings?

🪵 • Send me a character and I'll tell you if they'd share any interests/hobbies with my OC(s).

[katblu42]

Hi @edutainer2022 thanks for the ask!

Apologies for the screenshot, but I got the notification and the email, but nothing appeared in my inbox for this one.

🍬 ⇢ post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character

The main one that springs to mind for this one is that I don't think Virgil is hooked on coffee as much as the popular fanon suggests.

My belief is that he can survive perfectly fine if he does not have a cup of coffee first thing in the morning (let alone those who seem to think he needs two or three to be fully functional!).

Granted, he's not really a morning person, and barring emergencies he prefers to stay within the comfortable confines of the bedclothes until he gradually feels awake enough to face the day. But he's not coffee dependent!

❄️ ⇢ what's your dream theme/plot for a fic, and who would write it best?

Hmm. I'm not sure I have a theme or plot I've ever dreamed about someone else writing. At least, not one that hasn't been dreamed up by other writers, who have then written it!

I do have a Thunderbirds/Gatchaman crossover fic that I dream of one day writing, but I know it will be a very large undertaking and I don't want to do either franchise any disservice!

🧩 ⇢ what will make you click away from a fanfiction immediately?

Incest. Thankfully it doesn't happen often, but I have stumbled on one or two and essentially hit escape quickly once I realised what was going on.

There are some ships I just can't do, and I avoid those when they are tagged.

Most other annoying things I can usually tolerate as long as I have the mental energy on the day - bad grammar, lots of typos, block of text paragraphs, steamy scenes (not so much annoying as I just need to be forewarned and in the right frame of mind to read) - that kind of thing.

[skymaiden32]

Hi everyone! This isn't a very happy post, but it is very serious. Something happened yesterday and I just need somewhere to vent.

(No members of the Thunderfam are involved; it's about people I know IRL.)

I used to have this friend. My closest childhood friend. Our parents were also friends and had the two of us around the same time. I remember he used to have a lot of Thunderbirds toys. I guess that makes him the first friend I ever had in the fandom, even if we had no clue what fandom was back then. 

Something I should get out the way is that we grew up in a religious background, and we were in the same congregation as kids. Later on when we were teens, we had a trio with another boy, who beta-read my stories for me for a while. During COVID, all our religious activities moved online, and we drifted apart. I’ll call my former bff ‘Z�� and our other friend ‘J’. 

The longer the isolation went on, I started noticing that Z was no longer attending the online meetings, and whenever his parents were there they had these weird looks on their faces. Well, one day Z organised a Zoom call between the three of us and told us he’d moved out of his parent’s house and had converted to Islam. Me and J supported his decision, there were no hard feelings, and we promised to keep in touch.

Well, we did keep in touch for a little while. Z and I met up a couple of times, but that’s pretty much it. When the pandemic ended, me and J stayed in our congregation without him there. J got baptised and Z was there. J left for university, and my communication with him broke down as well, but that’s another story. At this point, I decided to change congregations for reasons unrelated to Z and J, which I’m not gonna get into here but let’s just say there were issues. I’m happy in my new congregation, but back to Z.

My mum and her husband are still in that old congregation to this day, and once I was there visiting them. That’s when I saw Z. He must’ve come with his dad. His mum wasn’t there for health reasons, which I’ll get into in a bit. That’s when he told me that he’d met someone at university. Mind you, he’d been at university for just about a year, and they were already engaged, talking about having kids, the works. He even told me they were planning on moving to another country. He showed me a picture of his fiance, and told me I’d be invited to the wedding. That was last April.

Now, I’m already annoyed at him because we’ve barely talked up until now, and any conversation we do have is by text, extremely short, and initiated by me. Honestly, if I hadn’t seen him in person, I doubt he would’ve told me he was engaged. I’m even more annoyed.

We get to his mum now. Z pretty much cut his parents off when he left, and his mother was understandably beside herself with worry. His mum is a lovely person. I adore her and when we were younger, she was like another mother to me. When I’d come round to his place she made me feel like part of that family. Hearing that Z’s hurt her so much really drives the wedge further.

Fast forward to yesterday. I wake up early because I had a congregation meeting at around ten. I open up TikTok. I see that Z has posted something, so I click on it. It’s a slideshow post with him and his fiancee goofing off. I look at the caption. It says, “marriage has changed me”.

…

She’s not his fiance anymore. She’s his wife. 

He said, to my face, that I would be invited. I wasn’t. I was heartbroken. I still am. Not because I was interested romantically, but because I’d realised I’d lost one of my best friends. I went to that meeting, because I needed to be around people I trusted after what I just saw. But I kept thinking about it over and over. Eventually, I decided that it was a lost cause, so I sent him a congratulations on TikTok, and blocked him. I made a vent post on TikTok too. It’s still up, but I may set it to private at some point. The bridge was already burnt; I just cut the rope because there was no way to repair it.

20 years down the drain. No one ever mentions how painful friendship break ups are. He was like a brother to me, but I can’t be friends with someone who treats me like that. Like those two decades didn’t happen. I honestly think I'll be upset over this for the rest of my life.

Z, if somehow you’ve found this post and are reading it, I want to thank you for the friendship we had while it lasted, and wish you and your wife the best. May you have many happy memories together...

[birdy-the-tweet]

Knighton

The Realm of Storms.

For as long as man walked the precarious paths of this chaotic domain, the storms have served as a crucial part to the circle of life. The thunder awakens sound, wonder, and fear in man. The lightning sparks wildfires and paves the path for new beginnings. The rain rejuvenates the land and all that follow the river’s current. The wind carries seeds and words for the next generation to care for what the clouds have carefully crafted.

When traversing the realm of Knighton, the most noticeable feature of its geography is the weather pattern. Storms persist through many days, sometimes weeks of endless downpour and drizzle. Due to the lack of sunlight and dry periods, temperatures rarely ever surpass 70 degrees. Many buildings are designed with signal sensors and electronic candle posts not just to stay connected with Knightonia but also to provide light in the gloomy nights.

Painted on many stained glass windows, banners, loading screens, and crests of honor is the ominous symbol of a magnificent bird with its wings outstretched. Historians will tell you of the Order of the Eight, how the great heroes and the first king of Knighton were honored by the great bird’s presence and given a precious gift in gratitude of their honor and justice. Ancient texts refer to it as the “Thunderbird”, the enforcer of the rain and thunder. Though it is unlikely the beast truly exists, most people in the realm of Knighton have knelt before its idols and recognized it as a creature of worship. Even the Halberts and Richmonds bow to the shrines found in almost every town. Some believe there is even a monastery of scribes who devote their faith to understanding the bird’s intentions for the land.

But it’s all religious bullshit at the end of the day, isn’t it?

[tracybirds]

Okay for the first time I'm posting a fic as a link and making this an AO3 only fic! The reason is purely the formatting - this story takes place partially as prose and partially as text messages. It was a lot of fun to conceptualise and I had to do a fair amount of research into coding the work skin and then the html of the fic itself and I'm very grateful to the AO3 authors who've shared their expertise so willingly <3 The end result is super cool (in my unbiased opinion!) and I'm very proud of it :D

@gumnut-logic very patiently read it through and calmed my nerves and honestly everyone who listened to my coding grumbles (too many to count both in AND out of the fandom) you all rock :D

So this is the final Gordon fic I have for you all - posting as his birthday comes to an end in the far far west of the planet <3

WARNING FOR GRIEVING A PET (one of his beautiful fishies :( )

Gordon's lost a beloved pet and going through the initial grieving process. Ft. Penelope and Alan with some Pen and Ink.

[laughing-moonlight]

more sillies <3

[r6shippingdelivery]

I posted 7,676 times in 2022

495 posts created (6%)

7,181 posts reblogged (94%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@leevila-today

@n3ongold3n

@gigacat

@thefishychicken

@kendrene

I tagged 1,673 of my posts in 2022

#r6s - 1,298 posts

#rainbow six siege - 412 posts

#rainbow 6 siege - 411 posts

#sgtnicoloff - 160 posts

#anonymous - 144 posts

#shameless self-reblog - 66 posts

#r6e - 65 posts

#kapkan - 44 posts

#rainbow 6 - 35 posts

#mah bois - 31 posts

Longest Tag: 135 characters

#so wait if he's descended from aliens and is associated with neptune in some way... does that mean wamai is that universe's aquaman? xd

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Made this for Twitter, realised I forgot to post it here. Nothing special going on, just a Spetsnaz bbq! If you’re wondering why Fuze is missing, maybe they’re waiting for him... or it’s because it was for a question of what 2 ops you’d invite for dinner, and I snuck an additional one making Tachanka the chef 😄

84 notes - Posted January 19, 2022

#4

See the full post

102 notes - Posted April 1, 2022

#3

I have no excuse for this, your honor, I just... I love him

107 notes - Posted May 30, 2022

#2

A high-res image of Harry’s new board just dropped, and I’m gonna analyse and transcribe as many of the notes as I can. There are parts I couldn’t decypher, so if you want to zoom in the image yourself and help me fill out the blank, I’d me more than grateful!

Under a cut cause it’s going to be a really long post.

The yellow post it above everything else says: The most practical application of my skills is to determine who works best with who. I eliminated interpersonal friction as best as I could so we can move forward efficiently.

We see that some of the names in the teams are circled in red, probably the ones who cause interpersonal friction... with the team leader, I assume? Below, I’m gonna detail the operators in each team, followed by the text on the first note (written by Harry, presumably), and at the end the text of the note under the picture of each team leader (this one signed by Zero).

Thermite’s team

Kaid Gridlock Tachanka Fuze Kapkan Buck Sledge Ash Oryx Thorn Goyo Amaru

Harry’s note: Some profiles are best suited for high-risk missions, and I’m not one to keep people from their calling. [REDACTED] is the cavalry - caution thrown to the wind get the job done at any cost

Zero’s note: Trace is motivated, and he’s seen more explosions than most, the years have been good to him despite going through hell and back. This squad needs to be led by a bad motherfucker

Hibana’s team

Thatcher Alibi Blackbeard (in red) Mute Dokkaebi Jäger Echo Jackal Blitz Maestro Kana/Flubber (hint of a new operator?) Mira Rook

Harry’s note: Members of [REDACTED] are the careers. A wide range of skill sets can be adapted to any scenario. They can lead their own missions or they can assist one of the other squads as required

Zero’s note: Imagawa is a (??) soldier and a fantastic leader. She’s been a reliable player in the past. I think it’s time we put her connections to good use and I’m sure she’d agree

Doc’s team

Lion (in red) Clash Montagne Twitch Nomad Bandit Frost Ying Castle (in red) Thunderbird Melusi

Harry’s note: A humanitarian unit was an idea I had a long time ago and I’m glad to have found a (??) that fits the bill. [REDACTED]  will be perfect for sensitive operations where collateral is not an option.

Zero’s note: Illegible

Caveira’s team

Maverick Vigil Zofia (in red) Lesion Valkyrie Glaz Nokk Warden Iana Mozzie Zero Flores

Harry’s note: Every good organization needs a covert espionage unit and for us it’s [REDACTED]. Caveira’s team is the best in the world at infiltration, surveillance, intelligence and elimination.

Zero’s note: Illegible

See the full post

170 notes - Posted February 22, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

There’s been a lot of talk about AO3 and censorship lately, due to one of the candidates to the OTW board. And I realised I have very strong Opinions:tm: about censorship and the freedom AO3 stands for.

Censorship is not a solution. It doesn’t work and it’s not even easily agreed upon where the line should be drawn. What some people might deem as immoral or reprehensible is not the same others will consider so. For example, you and me can agree that sexual stories about minors turn our stomach, yet other people would also include LGBT+ content there, even the sfw ones, and others might decide that any sexual content at all is immoral. So, how do we agree about what to ban, when nothing of it is even illegal?

because let’s be honest, it’s all fiction. As in, not real. Things like incest, rape and pedophilia are illegal irl, but not in fiction. Cause they’re not harming anyone. Really. You can find it disgusting, I certainly do, but I also recognize no person, no actual human, is harmed in the making of those stories. Because they’re made up and about made up characters. I won’t seek it out, and if I see someone making that kind of content I will most probably avoid them/block them (without harassing them), but they have the right to create any kind of fiction they want.

It always baffles me how readily understood that is when it comes to murder and violence in fiction. Nobody thinks that someone who writers murder mysteries or procedural shows really wants to go out and kill people. However, as soon as it’s about sex, people are up in arms ready to believe that those make believe scenarios are an indicative of someone’s real desires. Why is that? And since we’re on the topic of double standards: why are people clutching their pearls about fanfic, but literature gets a free pass, more or less? You go into a library and you’ll find lots of books with shocking and distasteful topics, including those that contain pedophilic content (like Lolita, to put a famous example), incest (Game of Thrones, among many others), rape, murder, etc. But they want me to believe that fanfic, the medium with severely impaired social acceptance and magnitudes smaller reach, is the actual problem that will “normalize” those ideas? Nah fam, I smell a moral panic, and people finding fanfic writers easier to bully into submission. Because this is all about controlling what forms of creative expression are deemed acceptable. Fanfic IS a form of art, popular art if you will, but still art. And by virtue of how AO3 is designed, it’s ridiculously easy to never see the kind of stories that you find objectionable.

Tags are a wonderful thing. I can specify what I want and what I don’t want in my story results when searching! Tags are the author being responsible and giving due warning. Especially the “dead dove: do not eat” tag, it lets you know that the content of the story will have questionable content, proceed at your own risk or keep scrolling. Same as the “chose to not use archive warnings” that one is a warning in itself that the story might contain triggering/upsetting content, and it’s the prerogative of each reader to decide whether they’re comfortable continuing reading or not. Ultimately, it’s all about taking responsibility for one’s decisions. People who are in favor of censorship in AO3 either don’t know how to control and curate what materials they access, or feel entitled to everyone else taking their morals into account instead of taking responsibility for their own experience in the archive.

None of the stories on AO3 is illegal. Fictional stories are not illegal, not even those dealing with unsavory topics. The archive makes people agree to continue reading whenever you click on a story with a certain rating (or without any rating at all, just in case!), so the reader is giving their consent to continue reading, they’re making an informed choice. Same as with the tags. They’re there, they’re a warning. If someone reads the tags, finds them displeasing and still continues reading, that’s on them. If I find a story with tags about rape/non-con, for example, I keep scrolling. Cause I know I will find the story displeasing and upsetting. The people clutching their pearls and going “but think of the children!” are, mostly, people who refuse that responsibility and ask the world to accommodate them and their morality. And then throw around words like pedohilia and accusations of “kiddie porn” careleslly, watering down the seriousness of such accusations. No, an explicit fanfic of twin, underage siblings going at it is not CSA. Cause there’s no real children involved in it. It might be disgusting for a lot of people (me included), understandably, but you can 100% avoid reading it and interacting with the people who write those. 

Finally, let’s not forget the recent history of fandom spaces, shall we? LiveJournal and Fanfiction.net both had purges of content, after some campaigns for censorship gained traction and popularity. So now everything relating to certain topics is eliminated! Well, except that also includes communities of support for survivors of sexual abuse (it happened in LJ). Well, except that the people pressuring for censorship weren’t happy with the gay smut either, so a lot of LGBT related stuff is now also gone! (happened both in LJ and ff.net). Except, in some countries anything sexual at all, is frowned upon, so why not ban that too? Censorship supporters will always move the goalposts, forever shifting their aim whenever they accomplish something. Because it’s easier and more comfortable to make others conform to their standards than accepting some artistic expressions will be uncomfortable to some people. And trust me, none of them will care if the dark fic in question was written by a survivor of similar experiences trying to cope with their trauma or raise awareness, or if it was done simply for titillation or to safely explore different scenarios in fiction. And the topics that were banned in those websites didn’t disappear at all, they just weren’t properly warned for/detailed in the summaries, so anyone could stumblre upon them by accident. The complete opposite of what happens in AO3.

AO3 was created by people who lived through those censorship events in different fandom spaces, as a response to it. To seeing whole communities and swathes of fan content being unceremoniously deleted overnight. AO3 is an archive and an online library, not a social media platform. It’s a safe haven for anyone to host their fan creations, but that doesn’t mean it’s a safe space as people understand the term in other platforms. In AO3 you make your safe space by using the tags. Because that is the only real way we can have a safe haven for EVERYONE. 

The thing about freedom of speech is that sometimes, you have to defend things you dislike (that, I repeat, are legal in this case), because experience has shown time and time again that as soon as you give an inch to the censors, they take more and more. And today they’re up in arms about “pedophilic fanfics”, but once that is done? It might be all nsfw content, it might be trans related content, it might be something else. But it will happen. 

4,391 notes - Posted August 14, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[edutainer2022]

Water and sand ? 💕💕🏖

@onereyofstarlight Thank you!

I think I answered "Water" previously. I started writing and publishing fic for Battlestar Galactica (2004 series - although I caught up with it later). It's easy to guess who my favorite character is (*cough* a pilot with blue eyes, Daddy issues, grief issues, self-worth issues, and angst *cough*). I was in a post doc program and fic was something that wrote itself far easier than my research. Keep Breathing, my first vignette, is still a little text I'm not ashamed of.

My first ever Thunderfic is Yet - to My Frugal Eye, back in the series run - a little character study to help myself make sense of Pen and Ink (still hasn't quite worked for me, but not for the lack of trying).

Sand: What’s the softest scene you’ve ever written?

Oh my... I mostly trade in angst, but Thunderbirds and Thunderboys, specifically, made me write more fluff than I have ever in years of fandom. I haven't written many Thunderfics and several are still WIPs, but I'd say the softest scenes so far are, probably, Jeff and toddler Scott in Shield of Proof; the closing scene with Scott, John and Gordon in We Can Build and Island. I'm of course tempted to refer to the Tracy pile in Sweet Chariot, because I wrote it out to comfort myself, but there's a hefty angst undercurrent there.

[greywake]

New chapter!

Should I post the text here too or is it better to just stick with the ao3 link? I don't know. It gets a bit whumpy in places. What do people think?

[zaccariacombat]

I started headcanoning Gordon as gay for no reason other than a friend and my dad both independently saying he seemed gay despite them having minimal to no exposure to Thunderbirds that point. That friend had never seen Thunderbirds, only a few pictures I had posted, and my dad hadn't either. However, as they were saying that, I felt it too. Funnily enough, my dad did end up watching the two TOS Thunderbirds films later on, and texted me about "the gay one," since he didn't know Gordon's name, but I still knew exactly who he was talking about. I don't even ship Gordon with anyone. He's just gay

[goombasa]

What's Your Default Software Spread?

This is a quick one to sate some curiosity I've had. With so many large software developers alienating their audience as of late, I'd love to know what sort of software people are using in their day to day lives or in their creative pursuits. Do you still use larger, well known brands or are you using smaller, more  independent or open software? Just be aware, I'm not interested in something that is ‘better’ than what I or other people use, I'm just curious what you use, and why you use it. So to start us off, I figured I'd give a quick list of some of the stuff that I use with some relative frequency, and maybe some of the other stuff I use occasionally. 

(Unless otherwise noted, the programs I use are totally free)

Librewolf: I've been in a position where I've been taking browser privacy really seriously lately, and so far, Librewolf has been my answer to that. It's basically a pre-hardened Firefox with everything that could be used for tracking and fingerprinting disabled by default. This does lead to some issues; anything requiring webgl basically won't work with this out of the box, and so websites that have a lot of interactivity don't always work, so I have to keep another browser on hand for those at times, but as it stands, Librewolf out of the box is really, really good if you are pretty privacy conscious.

Freetube: Youtube sucks. Or at least a lot of the corporate ideology behind it sucks. So I've taken to using Freetube for basically all of my youtube viewing. While it does keep me from engaging in the social aspect of Youtube (I can't post comments, for example), I can view my videos and subscriptions without ads and without an algorithm constantly telling me what to watch next. It isn't perfect (there are times when an update temporarily breaks its ability to play videos) but I vastly prefer it and the huge swath of customization options it offers to any of the official apps or the website itself.

Discord: This is one I wouldn't mind replacing down the line if a better option became available, but Discord is basically where all my friends are, and it's voice and text chat options make communicating with my friends very easy. It's also one of the few non-open source softwares I still use.

OBS Studio: While I would love to start streaming at some point down the line, I primarily use this as a means of recording footage on my computer, and at least on my system, it does so without taking up a lot of my system's resources, and let's me play around with a bunch of different layouts and building a fun looking visual, and keep different layouts for different uses.

Thunderbird: I prefer using a client to keep track of my email, and Thunderbird has made some really good strides forward in terms of layout and usability, and while I was using it beforehand, it's become one of my favorite email programs, especially after switching away from using Gmail as my main email client.

Web Apps: This one kind of straddles the line a bit. It's an app that comes pre-installed on Linux Mint and I've found it very useful for turning websites into standalone applications. Any time I want to scroll through a web feed or use a video-centric site like Twitch, I turn it into a web app so I have the site as a standalone app, which helps in making it much easier to focus on it if I need to. Sadly, much like Librewolf, it isn't fully compatible with every webiste, especially ones that are heavier on interactive elements, like virtual tabletops and the like, but it works decently well otherwise.

Audacity: Can't get much better for open source audio editing. It's not as powerful as other DAWs, and I do find it very clunky trying to edit together multiple audio tracks in it. However, when it comes to recording and editing voiceover and apply effects, I find this to be a very dependable, easy to use program, powerful enough to make my voice sound halfway decent.

KDENLive: As a Linux user, video editing is a bit difficult. Yes, you can use Da Vinci Resolve on Linux, but it's a pain to get working and an even bigger pain to keep working, and I prefer stuff to work out of the box if possible. There are a few native video editors for Linux, but when it comes to ease of use, learning curve, and doing what I need it to do, KDENlive is the best from my perspective. If it did have a native version, I'd probably rather use Hitfilm, as that was what I used back on Windows, but with how simple my videos tend to be, this one works just fine, at least for now.

Retroarch: It's one of the most versatile and wide-ranged suites when it comes to emulation you could ask for. Not entirely 100 percent, there are still some other stand-alone emulators that I have to use for certain systems, but Retroarch makes working with my older systems really, really easy to work with rather than having to have a bunch of individual programs for it, and pretty much anything I would want to play runs perfectly through here.

Solanum: It's a pomodoro style timer. There are a ton of timing apps like this out there, but I find this one to be the most helpful for me. I actually don't use it very much for working. Instead, I use it as a way of keeping track of how much time I've spent sitting, and when I should get up and actually stretch my legs a bit.

Onlyoffice: Office software is a must, because I generally don't like to store a lot of my stuff on microsoft or google servers. Only Office is the only software I've found that is open source and gives me the option to work on a document or spreadsheet cooperatively with a friend without having to sign up with a bunch of guff that I don't need, while also giving me some very solid Microsoft Office alternatives for when I prefer working on something locally instead of putting something on a server.

Trillium Notes: When I'm not working on a story or a video script, I've taken to using Trillium Notes to working on documents. Heck, I'm writing out this (along with all of my blog posts) in Trillium right now. It uses a tree structure that makes formatting and organizing my notes and sections of a document really easy, it lets me export my notes as HTML or Markdown, it easily lets me nest my documents together and group them based on topic so that I casn very easily organize and find what I'm looking for if I'm, say, doing worldbuilding for a D&D campaign or such, and probably my favorite feature is that it constantly autosaves. I've been spoiled by this program in that I have never once had to hit CTRL + S at any point while using it. It's fantastic.

GIMP: I'm aware that there are other Photoshop alternatives out there. I actually used Affinity Photo back on Windows, and really liked that, but Affinity doesn't run well on Linux, even under compatibility layers, and I don't really like using web-based applications. If you haven't noticed, I prefer local software, so while Photopea is really giving Photoshop a run for its money, I don't really use it that much. GIMP is a good image manipulator, and it works great for the simple tasks that I need it for, though I am under no illusion that it is the best. My biggest criticism for it is that it is very beginner unfriendly and fairly unintuitive in the way its tools and features are laid out. However, after some practice, it's easy enough to wrap your head around, and it works great for everything that I need it for, which is usually just putting together a basic video thumbnail or editing together a simple stream background or layout.

Krita/Inkscape: I'm putting these two together for right now because for me, they both are serving a similar purpose, which is learning how to do some proper art. I'm very early in my journey, but both Krita and Inkscape have proven invaluable for starting programs in learning how to properly art. While yes, they focus on two different kinds of art (Krita is more traditional raster images while Inkscape is for vectors), making some basic stuff in both has been really helpful with getting to grips with the fundamentals.

Blender: Much like traditional art, I've started learning some basics for 3D modeling as well, and of course Blender was going to be my starting point, it's free, it's powerful, and it basically has everything that's needed for every step of the process, with its newer versions being far more user friendly than it was before. I did actually try to use it back before version 2.8 came out, and boy was it a struggle.

Had to split the list because of the character limit for blocks of text.

Godot: If it isn't obvious already, I'm trying out a lot of different new hobbies and mediums, always slowly and perpetually moving forward with them, and game design is one of them. I chose godot mostly because of its open source and visual building capabilities, giving me the ability to learn how to make and build a simple game and ease myself into how to code a game as I go rather than having to learn to code right at the start, which, as someone who has not really had any experience in coding, makes me feel more at home with the environment, and with a lot of learning material cropping up for the engine as of late, I'm enjoying my time with it.

VSCodium: While I might not be much of a programmer, I do want to learn, especially as I get more into the weeds of game design, but this program is more for me to freshen up a passion that I had back in high school, which was building simple web pages with HTML, and this program is purpose built for viewing and editing code. I could use basic VS Code for this, since it does have a native Linux version, but VSCodium is basically the same program, just without the Microsoft telemetry. Yes, there are some add-ons that don't work outside of the Microsoft version, but honestly, any add on that I want to use is available for this version, so at least for me, I haven't lost out on much by keeping Microsoft's spyware off my system.

Tellico: I collect a lot of stuff. Books, games movies, I love going bargain hunting and coming back with a big armful of things that I didn't have before, whether they're rare or common, interesting or banal, I just like physical media. But sometimes it's tough to keep track of everything that I have. Tellico allows me to create and maintain a collection database that is pretty versatile and easy to work with and lets me enter in everything in my collection and keep track of it.

Calibri: As much as I love physical media, sometimes it's easier to just keep hold of a digital collection, and Calibri is fantastic for digital books in this regard, mostly because I don't have to worry about the file format or having it locked down to a single service. I can also use it across multiple devices, which is great when I have a very large library to maintain.

Handbrake: This one is lumped in with KDENlive somewhat, as I use the program primarily to compress the videos I edit since KDENlive doesn't have a built in compressor itself. It's also really useful as a DVD and blu-ray ripper.and that about does it, apart from basically listing out every program that I use for viewing or listening to the files on my computer, like Elisa for music files for example, but I don't really have a lot different to say on those, and I don't think they're worth listing out here at the moment. I'm interested to hear if you guys use anything similar to these, or if you use something totally different.What are the applications that you tend to use the most, and why?

[wilkers1]

here's a reminder that RSS still exists and is still widely available.

if you avoid doom scrolling or if you worry about having to catch up to specific places for a webcomic or another kind of regular update, set up an RSS feed.

Thunderbird is pretty good for the task on a desktop (and you can set it up to add tags according to the posts own), whereas Feeder is a good option if you're on an Android device.

if you're browsing on Tumblr and want to set it up for a blog, configure your reader to start monitoring this address:

https://the-target-blog-name.tumblr.com/rss -- where clicking the link in your browser will show a bunch of unformatted text and an error that an XML file couldn't be read. this is just a bunch of unformatted table of contents which will be formatted by your reader program.

include variations of this link for each blog you wish to follow. not every blog will work, specially those hidden for non registered users or similar.

when browsing anywhere else on the internet, watch out for this icon:

whenever you encounter this symbol or any variants of it, that usually means an RSS feed is available for that website, and the button should direct to a file similar to what was described earlier.

[gjordan15forccc]

Episodes 3-5 ANGELASHES MUSKMARS AFTERANGEL

[ANGELASHES]

We return to the Universe, post-ALCATRAZAPOCALYPSE. The Earth is destroyed. ANGEL drifts through space, descending onto a platform of rock. ANGEL enlightens the platform, revealing a decapitated FREEDOM. Her eyes are empty. Both Nina and Thomas are free now. ANGEL grew brighter and brighter until they were 17 different men, the 17 men the ANGEL was comprised of. A figure stood nearby, CTHONAUT A., the Cthonaut, told in ALCATRAZAPOCALYPSE to transmit data to our Universe through the YouTube channel itself (Confusing, right?)

"We're sorry." The ANGEL spoke all at once. "At least everyone is free now." CTHONAUT A. replied. "WE DO NOT FEEL FREE! We want another chance…" ANGEL shouted. "You had your chance. You cheated death in Egypt. (ROCKEFELLERREVELATION). All I have is a suggestion for you, ANGEL. Divide yourself until you no longer can. Some of your particles will trickle randomly through the fabric of time in every direction. Your own personal division can change the Past, Present, and Future. Perhaps your ashes will give you the third chance you have asked for."

We then cut to the Planet Earth, normal. The date is below "2/22/22". It suddenly changes to "2/23/22", signaling that the Earth wasn't destroyed. The ANGEL changed time. ---

[MUSKMARS]

2023. Elon Musk has landed on Mars. We cut to the South Ice Cap on Mars, the video telling us, "MUSK MARS MINE: The Largest American Monument." We cut to Elon on Earth, presenting "MartianGlass." We then jump to Mars and see CanyonCrowns, people who're decapitated by (presumably) MartianGlass, tethered together. The music is manic. Match cut to a TWTTR post by Elon, "You can now write by hand on TWTTR!". Another post, "FUCK YOU ELON." Another: "mr. musk your doing GOD's work. keep it up!!!". Another: "[crude drawn male genetalia]."

Another post: "@ELONMUSK I HOPE YOU ROT IN HELL WITH ROCKEFELLER" We see another Elon post: "I'm on Mars LOL." The music kicks back in, and we cut to a Pyramid, presumably on Mars due to it being, well, orange. Elon tweets, "Let's nuke some ice caps," and we see a simulation of a nuke going off on Mars. Elon tweets, "We do not know Mars." We see images [presumably Elon attached, same handwriting] of a Before and After the picture, the first being that of a normal, standard Pyramid, and the after being that of the same Pyramid, just in an ascending staircase of pillars. [STARRYSPHIYX is somewhat true, now???]

We cut to Mars, in space. We pause on it before the camera starts pointing downward, revealing that a red, elongated Serpent has been freed from Mars. The music is manic again. The camera shows the entirety of the Serpent as text appears: "THE MARTIAN SERPENT EXITS THE GLASS MINE LIKE A BURST INTESTINE HEADING TOWARDS EARTH." ---

[AFTERANGEL]

The episode begins with an intro, DWIGHT COMICS, signaling that we're about to see a comic in some form. We're shown a black and white background, "BABYLON FOREST, FEBRUARY 2022", the same place where Operation Thunderbird was going to take place, where FREEDOM and the ANGEL destroyed the World.

We see the ANGEL, in ben-day dots, approach FREEDOM. Suddenly, we see FUTURE ANGEL's ashes sprinkle on top of PAST ANGEL, the video telling us, "FUTURE ANGEL's ashes slip through time, shifting the neurons of PAST ANGEL." Instead of the ANGEL attempting to destroy FREEDOM with their heat ray, the ANGEL utters, "Please kill me."

And FREEDOM does just that, decapitating the ANGEL, "blood" squirting out. The rest of the video, ~20secs is just distorted music. And a supposedly black screen. ANALYSIS Cthonaut A. gave us Season 3 by somehow surviving the Great Divison and told the Air Force One Angel to divide themself to mess with time, undoing the Great Division. Elon Musk does a bit of trolling as he does in real life. Some information from MONUMENTMYTHOLOGY is proven real. AFTERANGEL shows us what happened in ALCATRAZAPOCALYPSE in this new timeline. Freedom kills the Angel. The World continues.