saw someone promote a book with a collage of out of context negative reviews recently, and i thought it'd be fun to do for some of the older lgbt sci-fi books i've read
Hey. If people aren't aware, Microsoft admitted they know who you and where you are at all times and will give your info to the police.
They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.
Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.
You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.
This article specifically notes:
For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.
GDID is the persistent Windows ID that helped FBI trace a Scattered Spider hacker despite VPNs. Here's how it works and how to limit it.
Other important quotes:
What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.
Two things back that up:
There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.
Then there’s activation. Massgrave, the group behind Microsoft Activation Scripts, notes that Windows setup sends hardware info to Microsoft and gets identifiers back, the same tokens later used for Store access and licensing: “It’s impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].” Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.
Ravings and urges get miscoded over time. Let’s say you’re thirsty, and you live in a strawberry field. Strawberries contain some water and a bunch of sugar so, over time, you may start to crave strawberries when you are thirsty because you get a reward and some relief in shorter time from the need starting than the trek to the stream. This can happen for every need: sleep, food, whatever.
Trevor Noah has a great tip, that when he craves ice cream at night he breaks it down into parts: I want something cold, I want something sweet. He drinks a glass of cold water then waits to see if he still has the ice cream craving. Usually he doesn’t.
So listening to your body isn’t “follow every urge” but “decompose the urge to discover the underlying need.”
If you always feel like getting cozy in bed you may be: cold, dehydrated, and/or malnourished (maybe a need for high calories that are bioaccessible…not processed).
If you do not feel tired at bedtime you may: need to eat dinner earlier because your body is still digesting, need to exercise or go outside more during the day, get the fuck off your screen for an hour so your brain can enter sleep mode.
Hope this helps someone.
P.S. notice i said nothing about neurodivergence. Not that it’s not a likelihood but the over-pathologization of behaviors prevents us from taking simple actions to improve our wellbeing. Also, these tips are pretty accessible and applicable to most brain variations.
ublock origin is pretty funny. oh? you want to show me an ad? damn buddy that sucks. L + ratio + assets.tumblr.com/pop/src/assets/images/house-rightrail-premium-with-patio-47ce20b6.gif$image into my filters immediately
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
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.
im currently completely losing it about the great stalacpipe organ. are you fucking kidding me they made an organ out of a CAVE???? IT TAKES UP THREE ACRES??? i legit am about to lose it
this is a comment left on a recording of moonlight sonata played on an organ that is literally made out of a cave and its making me so emotional its not even funny
[image id: a youtube comment that reads ‘wonderful…and the moon has never shone there…’ end id.]
According to Wikipedia, it works by hidden rubber mallets on the naturally-musical stalactites that tourguides have been knocking on for over a century. The guy who made the organ may have gotten the idea when his son whacked his head on a stalactite.
You are aware that a fictional character is just a rhetorical construct designed to fulfill a narrative/thematic purpose right? That their actions are written by an author who wants to use them to explore complex ideas and moral gray areas within the safe confines of fiction right? That they aren't a real person who has killed real people right?
i am of the sincere belief that if ur on ur computer a lot you should visually customize it to high hell and back not just for funsies but also because it has literally made me less depressed before. its kind of like how rearranging your bedroom is good for your brain, yknow. i do stuff like this every few months
LIVE WALLPAPER: wallpaper engine. only thing on here that costs any money (its like 5 bucks on steam). im sure theres free alternatives but this one has a lot of presets and stuff so its less hassle and its what i use. might be a bad idea for lower end pcs tho
CUSTOM TASKBAR: retrobar on github (lots of different options)
CUSTOM CURSOR: theres a lot of places to find these, but rw-designer open cursor library is a good place to start
DISCORD: betterdiscord, im using the clearvision v7 theme with a custom background
EXTENSIONS (these are for firefox, might or might not exist on other browsers):
tabliss for the new tab theme
stylus for tumblr -> specifically the 'tumblr - custom dashboard pallette' theme for colors + bg, and this for the pre-twitterifcation layout
enhancer for youtube for custom youtube colors
the browser theme is just one i found on the firefox theme 'store'
baratheonpilled
vaporwave
germansingergirl
kianamaiart
gracieabrams
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
ellievsbear
