Geología for the win. Tolkien es mi guía espiritual y Lovecraft un señor con nombre de impresora. Carmen de Mairena es mi animal totémico. Soy un intento fallido de señora feudal. Si es folk, mola. My headboard comes and belongs here: http://zerrnichter.deviantart.com ¡Denle sus dies a él! ¡Mirad mi segundo blog sobre geología! geocuriosity.tumblr.com
“I don’t do math because I’m gay” “the gays can’t do math” “If I explain math on tumblr I’ll lose my gay card” all of you apologize to Alan Turing right now
It’s literally been years since anyone added something slightly clever or original to this post, so I would like to congratulate you and maybe even bestow some kind of award. I don’t have anything to give you though
It kind of fucks with me that somebody killed ötzi the iceman because ötzi himself is like whatever but the silent presence of human hands that drew back the string of the bow that shot the arrow that killed him is crazy. the idea that there were various people involved in that situation and while one of them has had his last hours painstakingly reconstructed and studied to no end, the others now only exist insofar that an arrowhead had to get into his shoulder somehow. imagine killing someone and then suddenly your entire existence is only a vague shadow implied by the fact that you killed them. much to consider
Testing the mummified bone marrow of ötzi to figure out his ancestry whole time there’s definitely another person, maybe more than one, standing in the room with us but I can never see or speak to them because I only know them through the assurance that they were there too in the form of one single arrowhead. I hate prehistory so much it’s unreal
fyi the point of fucking up your data patterns isnt to avoid suspicion. it’s to make EVERYONE suspicious. same logic as the bloc, pals. protect your comrades, be suspicious. ESPECIALLY if you aren’t doing anything likely to get you arrested.
the state is less omniscient and significantly more incompetent than you’d think. overextend their resources at every possible opportunity. make them cry wolf repeatedly. run their data analysis agents fucking ragged. and strike. attack.
YES
i’m a postgrad statistics researcher and i can tell you that the state honestly has NO IDEA what to do with the data it collects, it has an obsession with big data but it’s almost impossible to work with in practice. the traditional statistical approaches that are used can’t be scaled up, the adapted approaches are substantially weakened, and the machine learning approaches have the same problems and often tell them nothing. data scientists are only just coming around to these issues too, most still just push on with it anyway - incompetence is the word.
above all this though, like you say, the biggest issue for the state is at the point of data collection. they will NEVER get anything useful if they’re collecting shitty messy data. they will eventually figure out that the real solution is working how to collect accurate and meaningful data, we should make it as difficult as possible for them to do that
Ad Nauseum is an adblocker that stores the ads it blocks and continuously generates fake clicks, fucking with analytics and costing the ad companies money
TrackMeNot automatically does randomly generated searches on a variety of search engines to obscure your real searches and fuck with analytics, and you can set it up to work with anything that has a search bar (including facebook, twitter, amazon, youtube, etc)
WhatCampaign replaces analytics parameters in links with the string “FuckOff”. I thought there was a similar extension that used random strings, but I can’t seem to find it
Privacy Possum is a fork of Privacy Badger with a focus on costing tracking companies as much money as possible, and idk if my limited tech knowledge is enough to understand what it does but the description does say it falsifies some data so that’s good enough for me
Computers are so scary what if I accidentally hit F12 in a steam game and it takes a screenshot. What if I press shift + F12 while in word and accidentally save my document 😖
If you had to learn what the F keys on your computer do through me reblogging this post, then I'm glad you did. Computer literacy is not a skill that gets taught anymore, and it is absolutely one that needs to be taught in order to be learned. Don't ever feel bad for not knowing something, but ☝️ don't ever stop learning learning about your environment, the tools you use, and especially the people around you
@sherbertilluminated there's a line somewhere in Ursula Vernon's Digger that goes something like "it is difficult to be metaphysical around the truly geologically minded"
The Outbursts of Everett True was a comic strip that ran in papers from 1905 to 1927, wherein the aforementioned Everett True regularly beat the everliving shit out of rude people as a warning to anyone else who might consider being rude. Men have not only been taking up too much room on public transport for about as long as public transport has existed, but the people around them have been irritated about it for at least a hundred years. The next time someone tries to claim that manspreading is a false phenomenon, please direct them to this strip so that Everett True can correct their misconceptions with an umbrella upside the head.
I have never before heard of Everett True, but if he “regularly beat the everliving shit out of rude people as a warning to anyone else who might consider being rude,” I have a strong spiritual connection with him.
I’m very lucky to own a book that’s a collection of most of these comics (sadly not all of them) and would highly recommend hunting these down if you can. Sorry for the lack of a scanner but phone photos will just have to do.
He was a enjoyable cuss who didn’t care for war mongering.
Especially profitable war mongering and excuses for it!
He certainly didn’t like selfish husbands and fathers!
Politicians who turned on their words once they got theirs weren’t safe.
He said fuck the police!
He absolutely didn’t like people ruining little things for kids.
He stood up for foreigners. Especially those doing their best to communicate with limited second language knowledge.
He was not having any tomfoolery when it came to gun safety and laws. Especially with youth involved.
You had better not abuse a animal with him nearby. He’d right that wrong real quick!
And best of all him and his wife were both prickly cusses together. Relationship goals.
@sherbertilluminated there's a line somewhere in Ursula Vernon's Digger that goes something like "it is difficult to be metaphysical around the truly geologically minded"
Steam, Itch.io and the banning of explicit and LGBT+ Content. What can we do?
[All images in this post have alt/id text if you need it or want to copy paste anything]
With no warning, Itch.io, a site where many host their indie games, comics, books and more, has started purging and shadowbanning explicit and LGBT+ works. Creators got no warning. And if they were still owed payouts from these works, Itch.io is saying they won't give them their money as they 'broke the rules'. Rules that were only just set in place, with no warning, and therefore no way for creators to try and draw out their money or delete these 'offending' works before they got banned under the new rules.
So Itch.io has been the most recent to fall to the demands of a group that's been contacting Visa and Mastercard and convincing them to threaten sites/businesses with 'stop selling what we consider to be explicit content on your sites of we'll stop allowing your site to have transactions with Visa and Mastercard'. Steam folded, and now Itchio has too. And a reminder earlier this year Gumroad also stopped allowing explicit content, further back than that Patreon banned some kinks and fetishes even if it's depicted in fiction not real life, and I don't have to explain to you guys the great Tumblr explicit content ban of 2018.
And as always remember this doesn't stop with sexually explicit work as LGBT+ stories and people are often labelled as explicit and already we're seeing works being taken off Itch.io that are about LGBT+ and especially trans stories. Other non-sexually explicit works I've seen already getting shadowbanned, delisted or deleted are SFW games featuring furries/anthros, SFW dress up games (because when you take the clothes the model is nude), and the aforementioned SFW games that include LGBT+ characters and stories.
I'm compiling here information I've seen around various social medias, mostly Bluesky, because I haven't seen all these things shared over here.
I don't personally have explicit content on itch, but I had been considering one day selling things on there and I do currently have explicit content on my Patreon, my main source of income, and am terrified that Patreon is going to fold next (if anyone knows alterative for hosting audio content behind a paid subscription service please let me know so I can start maybe making a back-up in case the worst happens). Because for me personally if Patreon goes next, it's not like I can go out and easily get another job. Not only because in general finding and getting a job is difficult enough, but I'm autistic and have chronic pain and have been constantly getting sick or new pains over the last few years and don't feel safe being trans in the UK right now and all of that combined rules me out of a lot of jobs and makes me feel unsafe to apply to any. I'm so grateful I've been able to make a community around my work, but if Patreon caves next and I just leave my SFW posts on Patreon... 10% of my Patreons are signed up to the SFW tier, 90% are signed up to the explicit tier... I know if Patreon caves I will go from someone living comfortably who's searching to move out of my parents so I can live in a safer environment to someone who can no longer even afford the rent I pay to my parents. I'll try and get an alterative found and set up in case that happens and I can only hope you guys will follow me to whatever other site I have to set up... but it feels unlikely that people will get a whole new account on a whole new payment provider just to support me on a website they might never have heard of...
But what can we do right now?
A petition you can sign (international but you do have to give your name, email, and postal/zip code):
Mastercard's new policy unfairly targets the adult content industry, making sex workers more vulnerable, especially Black trans women. It mu
Get calling:
Mastercard (US): 1-800-627-8372
MasterCard (UK): 0800 964 767
Mastercard (International.): +1-636-722-7111
Visa (US + Can): 1 800 847 2911 / 1-800-VISA-911
Visa (AUS): 1 800 125 440
Visa (UK) : 0800 891 725 or use their international call collect +1 303 967 1096
Visa (International): (call collect - it costs them $): +1-303-967-1096
PayPal (US): 1-888-221-1161
PayPal (UK): 0800 358 7911 from landline, +44 203 901 7000 mobile
PayPal (International): 1-402-935-2050
(numbers gathered from these posts X X X )
Don't know what to say on the phone? Here's a script written by timidtanuki:
Creators have had their work removed off Itch.io with no warning and since it's been removed for 'breaking the rules' (rules that were suddenly in place with no warning) they aren't entitled to get their payouts. Just like other sites such as Youtube and Twitch and Etsy, Itch.io hold onto money from their users in a wallet and then give them payouts. So there is money creators have made, are owed, that Itch.io is not giving to them.
People are recommending that if you still have works on Itch.io to turn down the revenue sharing to 0% so that Itch.io no longer takes a cut or your money if you no longer want to support Itchi.io finically but don't want to remove your works from their platform. X
Other Bluesky posts and calls to action I've seen:
radiantg.bsky.social is asking for anyone on Itch.io who got their game deindexed, removed , or payouts turned off to reach out to them (espeically if you make explicit and/or LGBT+ games) for a piece of journalism about what is happening.
sleepyhart.bsky.social is making a thread of all the games that Itch.io has censored/removed from their site search function. Obviously be aware this will include 18+ only games, games with sexual content and other dark or heavy themes.
thetransfemininereview.com wants you to reach out to them if you're a trans creator on Itch.io who is being affected by this so they can make an accurate report. they say 'authors' in their post and I'm unsure if they also want game devs to reach out.
dropdownbear.bsky.com wants you to reach out if you have purchased things on Itch.io that you can now no longer access because of this ban. they can include them in a report being filed with the Australian Consumer Commission as this may be a violation of Australian Consumer rights. If you are Australian you can no longer access things you purchased of Itch.io you can report directly with this guide.
It's a scary time for adult creators and sex workers. It's a scary time to be trans. Support creators. And if anyone knows of any alternate payment providers that allow explicit work, and/or alternate websites to Itch (and in case things get worse, also give me Patreon alternates please) where people can host, sell and/or offer paid subscriptions to writing, images, videos, audios, games and more please leave them in the replies. And please help share this post, the posts I'm linking too, and any other resources you can find.