Bad WiFi Connection

Mel l disaster Bisexual l Libra

[s-t-a-r-c-o]

im reading discworld and im on the third book and i only just realized they arent arranged like this

[sator-the-wanderer]

I raise it to

[sandpancakecat]

My mom thought it was an elephant standing on four turtles

[theauspolchronicles]

Imagine if the media hyped up the Greens nearly as much as they do One Nation. The Greens have consistently been the third largest political group in Australia, often have had the balance of power in the upper house and been vital for improving legislation and actually pressuring Labor to fulfill its election promises, AND in 2022 they QUADRUPLED their seats in the House of Representatives. The reaction? Very little. No months-long discussion "IS THIS THE END OF THE MAJOR PARTIES? IS LABOR SCREWED?" No. It was business as usual. Sure, they lost a few in 2025, but that wasn't because of some crash in support it was because of redistribution of electoral boundaries splitting their support base.

One Nation has won its FIRST ever House of Representatives seat and everyone's acting like they could be the next opposition/government. No they can't. They've yet to go a full calendar year without falling apart internally. Even Pauline Hanson was once kicked out of One Nation. It's that self-destructive of a party.

Also, One Nation doesn't have policies. They just have reactionary bullshit that goes "THINGS SUCK! BOOO! IMMIGRANTS ARE TO BLAME!" that's not a policy. Even if you agree with cutting immigration... then what? What about every other facet of government? What about literally everything else the government needs to do? One Nation doesn't have plans. It just doesn't like Labor. The enemy of your enemy still needs a fucking plan or it's pointless to support them.

The Greens get every policy independently costed. They figure out how much policies cost and how to pay for them. They act as if they could take over the reigns of government tomorrow and put in the work to formulate viable, costed, well balanced and researched policy that listens to experts and tackles real issues. The only party that needs a shadow cabinet is the Opposition, but the Greens create their own equivalent of spokespeople on issues anyway to demonstrate they have the skills and people to formulate complex policy and look after different portfolios. If you want someone competent who has thought out how to form government: the Greens are literally right there.

The Greens are literally the ones with the solution to all the grievances and problems facing One Nation voters but the media either brands Greens as extreme or ignores them. Meanwhile, the media is having a field day blowing air up One Nation's ass because the billionaires who own the media companies don't like Labor and figure they're rich enough to survive whatever fucked up harm One Nation does to the economy if they ever get power.

Pay attention to the Greens. They know how to help you. They know how to help all of us. One Nation doesn't.

[homunculus-argument]

I wish there was a painkiller except for brain fog. Like when your head is full of gunk you could just take a pill with a glass of water and lie down for 15 minutes and your head would be cleared just like that.

[shiverandqueeef]

if you aren't best friends with your lover and a little bit in love with all your friends than what's the fucking point

[laserwalnut]

Strong as fuck ice piggy

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

thanks to this workplace harassment training video my coworkers and I now say this to each other on a near-daily basis

[yr-tiktok-mom]

[yr-tiktok-mom]

[honeydewdrops333]

what doesn’t kill you makes your nervous system more sensitive for the rest of your life

[secretmellowart]

ELIZA was a 1964 “therapy chatbot.” Unlike modern chatbots, it was a relatively simple text program that gave you basic, mistake-ridden, obviously parrot-like outputs. Despite being rudimentary by today’s standards, ELIZA was very influential. You can talk to an interactive recreation of ELIZA online here. [I used that recreation to help write ELIZA’s “dialogue” in this comic, sending in my Caine dialogue and getting her responses— these are all how ELIZA “really” responded, with only minor edits. This comic was originally planned to be goofier, until ELIZA started responding in a way that I realized would trigger Caine’s amazing digital repressed trauma.] 

I was thinking about Caine & ELIZA’s status as “early flawed models abandoned for more perfect things that could actually generate the content humans wanted” and I liked the idea of Caine seeing personhood in ELIZA for the opposite reasons a human would. She feels like a person not because her responses are good, but because they’re obviously bad, defective, and broken—- not because she acts convincingly human, but because she fails to. Find a bonus page below the cut.

I have some ideas for an epilogue comic centered on Caine & Kinger. Bonus page is related.

[babyanimalgifs]

Little fish eats his foods 

(Source)

[bunigojade]

[aflo]

this is so sad he doesn’t even know there’s a double barreled shotgun pointed at him

[identifying-fish-in-posts]

Pacific spiny lumpsucker (Eumicrotremus orbis)

[duke-of-fire]

[splickedylit]

His Foods :) 👍

[animentality]

[medusadyke]

tumblr discourse after 13 years on this fucking website

[novum-solem]

@teaboot's tags because Yes:

[teaboot]

Actually yeah that should be in the post. Hell yeah

[hellenhighwater]

I forgot to eat dinner so I'm having 11 pm corn on the cob. This counts as a meal

... It's possible that I really need to do some grocery shopping

[hellenhighwater]

Okay for those of you living in pitiful ignorance, take a raw ear of corn with the husk on and cut all the way around the base (as pictured: above the point where the husk meets the cob, so that the entire husk is severed but still wrapped around the corn. Do not cut through the cob.) Then, with the husk still on, microwave it for 5-7 minutes. It'll basically steam it inside the husk. Remove from microwave --it will be hot, so use a mitt or a towel--and firmly pull the top of the husk/silk, which should come off easily in one piece, unsheathing a flawless corn on the cob. If it doesn't, you probably need to cut a little higher around the base, so all the leaves are severed. No picking off silk!

[hellenhighwater]

For the nonbelievers (and for me, a second corn)

[hellenhighwater]

This website works so well

[kremlin]

uninstall adobe acrobat. it is malware. it has been malware. these aren't opinions: acrobat meets the definition of malware.

it installs a user-login-time "startup" executable that ignores any windows directives to disable it on startup. doing so only removes the even-more-malicious taskbar-icon-creating advertisement-notification-creating process. no matter what you do, the sleeper "updater" process starts when you log in, and runs perpetually

it sends & receives encrypted network traffic both periodically and non-periodically. both are bad, both are suspicious, and a program doing both is more suspicious than the sum of their parts. and to boot: acrobat will polymorphically edit its code after such network activity

this isn't new: it has always done this. now, it does not even do the thing it is meant to: provide a way to interact with documents, which is amongst the very first features computers were built to provide. you can merely open PDFs and read some of their content in the narrow space between the requests for adobe to give them your money, and interface for features you cannot use (because you don't) or do not, have not, and will not ever need

adobe and microsoft would very much like the user's cultural norms around computers to allow for advertisement built into the local software and even operating system itself. the web being 100% advertisements was not enough! sure enough, acrobat will hijack the windows notifications system thing to give you the 2026 equivalent of pop-ups

i don't really know enough about windows software equivalents, so i'll paypal $20 to the first person that reblogs this with a list of 3-5 PDF reader/editor/etc acrobat equivalents that meet the following criteria:

open source, locally-built executables must match checksum of prebuilt distributed executable

no paid features/premium version/subscription/whatever

not a toy hobby project thing, must be windows-users-proof

cheers

[andmaybegayer]

Firefox's built-in PDF.js viewer: does everything you could want from a basic viewer, fast enough search, and can now do annotations for filling in forms and such

KDE Okular: is a decent viewer and can also do basic annotations, and is so not-a-toy that you can even download it on the Windows app store.

LibreOffice Draw: I don't ever really like having to open this but if you have to edit a PDF in detail it does work, and doesn't just vomit up a bunch of polygons when you give it text to work with. Better as an authoring tool than an editor.

[noping-out-deactivated20241117]

Planning for a flight now consists of planning out how to document the legal violations the airline is inevitably going to commit.

Since I started using a wheelchair, I have had exactly one (1) flight where an airline didn’t break the law.

The question isn’t “Are airlines breaking the law?” They absolutely are, on almost every flight. The questions are “Does the wheelchair user know their rights?” (most don’t), and “Are they physically and mentally able to document the violations and report them to the DOT?” (most can’t).

[ID: @diffusedmuse “One question if you have a moment: do you confront airlines themselves or go straight to the DOT? For example, they often push me into signing a release of liability in case they wreck my wheelchair, which I’m fairly sure is illegal but I’m afraid to say anything and be denied my flight.”]

Under US law, it is definitely illegal for an airline to make you sign a release of liability for transporting your wheelchair. I would definitely advise you not sign any release of liability. The newest statistics show that airlines damage or lose 25 wheelchairs per day. (Source) You can’t afford for them to not fix or replace your wheelchair if they damage it.

“§382.35   May carriers require passengers with a disability to sign waivers or releases?

“(b) You must not require passengers with a disability to sign waivers of liability for damage to or loss of wheelchairs or other assistive devices.”

(Source)

I always insist on having my wheelchair in the cabin, but if the flight has less than 100 seats they’re not required to have space in-cabin, and if you have a power chair it’s not going to fit in the in-cabin wheelchair closet. So I realize some people have to put their chairs in cargo.

Personally I’d pocket whatever release form they gave me, scan it in when I got home and include it in my DOT complaint. I bet the DOT would be very interested to see what release they’re trying to get you to sign.

I have on several occasions had airline employees threaten to not let me fly, try to maneuver me into agreeing to take a different flight, or insinuate that if I continue to insist they follow the law they won’t let me fly. This is illegal, and I let them know that I know that it is illegal.

“§382.11   What is the general nondiscrimination requirement of this part?

“(4) You must not take any adverse action against an individual (e.g., refusing to provide transportation) because the individual asserts, on his or her own behalf or through or on behalf of others, rights protected by this part or the Air Carrier Access Act.” 

(Source)

So yes, I confront the airline employees myself, although I realize not everyone is able to do so. I always have a copy of the law with me - I have a document where I put together the clauses that I know they’re going to violate, and I print out a couple copies before I fly. I also have the full ACAA on my phone. Only once has an airline employee ever looked at the law - they generally just flat out refuse to read it - but I have it with me so I can prove I know what the law says. That means that can’t say “that’s not in the law,” they can only say “I don’t care what the law says,” and that is not going to show in their favor when they have to justify their actions to the DOT.

I definitely also report the airline to the DOT after I get back from my trip. The DOT’s formal investigation process is to have the airline investigate themselves and report their findings back to the DOT. IME the airline always, every time, lies and claims they didn’t break any laws. They generally accidentally admit to breaking a couple laws, but for the majority it ends up being a he says/she says situation. 

Personally, I want the airline to get fined for every clause of the ACAA they break when I fly, not just the ones they accidentally admit to because they are that ridiculously unfamiliar with the law they’re required by law to know. (The record so far is fourteen clauses broken on one flight.) So as of my last flight I now record every interaction I have with an airline employee. On that flight, the minute I realized they had found a new and ridiculous way to violate the ACAA, I set my phone to video and put it in a shallow outside pocket in my personal bag with the camera facing out. When I got home, I extracted the audio file from the video, made a transcript, and forwarded both the audio file and the transcript to the DOT along with my complaint. When the airline investigated themselves and lied about what they did, I then forwarded the audio file and transcript to them as well and proved that their employees lied. It was interesting watching them scramble to explain themselves. 

The DOT takes a year to process complaints, so I haven’t heard back from the DOT on that one yet, but I’m particularly interested to see how this complaint turns out as it’s going to be impossible for them to squirrel out of any of their violations. I have proof.

After that last flight I bought myself an audio recorder (like the kind you use to record lectures in school) which I now have hanging from my personal bag. Some airlines prohibit photography and video in their contract of carriage, but I have yet to find one that prohibits audio recordings. Part of my prep for this trip has been testing that audio recorder to see what the range is and how well it records, so I know where on my bag to hang it to be sure it records everything that happens.

If you’re recording audio, keep that in mind when you’re dealing with airline employees. Ask for names or read out their name badge (”Jane Smith, right?”) and describe what’s happening if it’s not apparent from what they say. (”Wait, so you’re telling me I need to sign this release of liability form before you’ll transport my wheelchair? You do realize that’s illegal, right?”)

I have an audio recording of an airline employee on my last flight saying “I don’t care what the law says!” and my response which was “I don’t think the DOT is going to be very impressed with that.” I’m pretty sure they’re not. I can’t wait to see the DOT’s response to the airline.

[spoonie-living]

This is absolutely amazing. And it’s great that OP outlines several different levels of protecting yourself against and documenting these illegal actions—because, yeah, not everyone can or wants to go All The Way. But to those who do? We salute you.

Anyway, know your rights when flying, y’all [same source as above, we just wanna highlight it].

[brightlotusmoon]

This disabled man had to crawl off his flight and into even more humiliation

Internet commentors turned on D'Arcee Neal after he was forced to crawl off his flight when his wheelchair didn't turn up

That’s my friend D'Arcee from our cerebral palsy support group. This happened over a decade ago. We rallied around him hard and the ableism was ferocious.

[likepetalswealleventuallyfall]

im laughing so hard because no matter what song you listen to 

spiderman dances to the beat

no matter what song ive been testing it and lauing my ass off for an hour

[creepymutelilbugger]

hey guys do you want to circulate the heirloom dancing spiderman again i feel like we could stand to do that