In which Phi rambles about things, 29, New England, i try to tag for triggers etc but if its a necessity for you maybe don't follow me bc I'm v forgetful, i do post adult content so use your best judgement
Reading the new checks that might come in due to the Online Safety Act in the UK and this is actually bullshit
[Image Transcript:
And how will I prove my age?
There’s a number of methods a site or app might use to ask you to confirm your age. They might do this check themselves or use another company to do the check. These methods include:
Facial age estimation – you show your face via photo or video, and technology analyses it to estimate your age.
Open banking – you give permission for the age-check service to securely access information from your bank about whether you are over 18. The age-check service then confirms this with the site or app.
Digital identity services – these include digital identity wallets, which can securely store and share information which proves your age in a digital format.
Credit card age checks – you provide your credit card details and a payment processor checks if the card is valid. As you must be over 18 to obtain a credit card this shows you are over 18.
Email-based age estimation – you provide your email address, and technology analyses other online services where it has been used – such as banking or utility providers - to estimate your age.
Mobile network operator age checks – you give your permission for an age-check service to confirm whether or not your mobile phone number has age filters applied to it. If there are no restrictions, this confirms you are over 18.
Photo-ID matching – this is similar to a check when you show a document. For example, you upload an image of a document that shows your face and age, and an image of yourself at the same time – these are compared to confirm if the document is yours.
End Transcript.]
Not only is this such a fucking breach of privacy, but this is going to hurt adults in vulnerable and abusive situations. Some adults don’t have bank accounts or credit cards or even a fucking phone. I’m one of them. I could not give half of this information even if I wanted to. What the fuck is this. Fuck the UK government. This isn’t going to protect kids, this is just going to hurt adults, and I know full well when they say “sites that allow pornography” they’re going to be going after sites that have huge amounts of queer content, like tumblr and Ao3. Queer kids are gonna lose their fucking communities because of this shit. Abuse victims are going to lose online support systems because of this.
I’m genuinely fucked off about this, and worried about whether I’m going to lose every single one of my online friends. Anyone in the UK, please email your MP and sign this petition. It needs to reach 100k signatures to pass through Parliament.
I’m only hoping the backlash will be big enough for them to stop implementing these measures.
We want the Government to repeal the Online Safety act.
Anything we Yankees can do to voice our displeasure at this? This absolutely is violating and it's creepy. It absolutely will be used as a test run for implementing something similar here if it doesn't get loud pushback, and even before it does, we all share the same Internet, so it will, in some way, affect us even across the pond.
As far as I know, the best thing non-UK people can do is simply share the petition around, because it’s not possible for anyone outside of the UK to sign it (otherwise the petition can be deemed invalid). But definitely keep your eyes on American laws, because it’s likely they’ll attempt to implement them there too. The UK itself is basically copying what Australia has been trying to do with their under-16s ban.
“I’m getting tired of your deliberately innocent-looking manipulative behaviour. You say you aren’t undermining me but I know that’s not true. Do you realize-“
We work at a mall, man. Have you ever taken a minute to think about that? Rome is burning. Rome is burning and we work at a mall. A hundred thousand years ago you and I would have sat side by side and scraped animal skins with a shard of deer rib together. A hundred years from now both of us will be buried and forgotten. Today we are three feet away from an Auntie Anne’s Pretzel stand and we work at a mall. Can you fucking believe it
The world is so vast and alien and wild. The human animal has grown and spread so rapidly. Mushrooms speak and trees have eyes and stars older than our species die and become benders of space and time and you are standing here before me in your limited flashbang moment of borrowed self-awareness to yell at me for not saying hello to you correctly. What the fuck are we even doing here. I am an ape in polyester pants trembling with the feral need to return to the sea. Who are we, Janice. Who are you. Do you know where you are. Do you know what we are, Janice. Do you Know
Someday I’m going to be sitting in a shabby back room office space in a room full of people in plastic clothes at a plastic table with a plastic tray of grocery store muffins to share and someone is going to turn on a projector to play a PowerPoint video about synergy and upholding company values and I’m going to stand from my seat with a mighty shriek rending my uniform asunder and leap naked from the nearest window to run barefoot and wild into the forest and it’s gonna be on the news and like three months later they’ll find my skeleton scattered across a square mile of woodland being consumed by moss and it will be frightening and tragic and inexplicable and it will be the most honest and true that I have ever been with myself
It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!
It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.
PITCH: We call it Moon Day, and then every 7 years when it falls on a Monday, that's an even BIGGER deal and we call that Moon Day Monday and go absolutely apeshit about it (the next Moon Day Monday is in 2026 so we have a couple trial runs first)
hobbies include: close reading the Redwall series to answer my most burning questions. such as:
- can I replicate any of these delicious-sounding foodstuffs and would they in fact be delicious if I was able to
- corollary to the above: are we just supposed to read “oat cream” and “nut cheese” every time we see the words “cream” and “cheese”? I think so. bc if not, what tha hell are their livestock animals
- what is Society like? I don’t think we ever see a Mouse City or even Mouse Town though we do see castles and obviously an abbey. are we supposed to believe that most creatures are either in wandering bands or these societies based around a single structure (castle/abbey?)
- they appear to have an idea of what currency is (the bad guys always want treasure — maybe just to have, not to sell? but less ambiguous is some dialogue I just read, “acorn for your thoughts?” “you can have them for free”) but again, we never see anyone using money or making goods for the market. is this after the fall of Mouse Capitalism? are the bad guys (the idea of rat pirates gives me a headache, vis a vis the political/economic systems needed to power piracy) raiding preindustrial mouse societies for treasure/meat?
- corollary to the above: the abbey creatures have oats and wheat but we don’t see anybody farming or trading for farm goods on a large enough scale. is the abbey “orchard” really a like an indigenous forest farm of mixed foodstuffs? is that possible if you live in the same place the whole year or only if you travel each season? I have to do some googling
- both the lack of mixed-species families and the idea of mixed-species families give me a headache. has a squirrel never fallen for a handsome otter? what is the culture shock like if you marry into a subterranean mole family?
- this is the least “important” question but this read through I’ve been desperately trying to figure out What Size Everything Else Is. i’ve come to the conclusion that everything other than animals are at mouse scale, given that they can make seaworthy vessels their own size (a mouse sized vessel with real-world-sized waves seems impossible) and pick and eat apples and plums. but so far it seems like they’ve avoided mentioning how tall trees are — like a person compared to a tree or a mouse compared to a tree?
[standing outside of brian jacques’ grave with a megaphone] most societies that have had large scale ships and shipping have needed to develop a concept of insurance. is there Mouse Insurance
People straight up do not realize that part of the reason manufacturing is not returning to the United States in massive waves is because we have things like “OSHA” and “environmental laws” and “minimum wages.”
It’s not even just about fair wages. It’s literally about the fact that you can’t dump industrial waste in a river here anymore.
Our cheap goods are so cheap because South American and Asians environments are being destroyed so you can buy a $40 pair of shoes every 3 months.
Cutting granite countertops has lead to a rapid increase in silicosis in the lungs out in California. All the working men and women in my family have died from pulmonary fibrosis. They were carpet layers, Post office workers, floor tilers. Staying safe in manufacturing jobs is annoying but also very, very expensive. Real manufacturing factories belch smoke and dust and grime that causes asthma and birth defects in surrounding communities. Everyone wants their manufacturing jobs back until they realize their kids are living directly under the Asthma Plant.
There will come a time when the workers in these countries rise up and demand better and things will start to even out, but if you want to honestly “do your part,” you gotta stop buying cheap shit for no reason.
Not every event needs to be celebrate with a baseball cap or a coozie or a t shirt or a keychain. Not every wall in the house has to have a picture or a cute phrase on it. The knickknacks are killing people.
so perforated batons are a type of paleolithic tool that was in use for THOUSANDS of years. weve found hundreds of examples across Europe and Asia of these. theyre typically made from antler or ivory, and are long batons with at least one hole thats been drilled through
at first they were called "batons of command" and the assumption was that these were ritualistic or symbolic items that represented strength or status in a group of individuals.
more modern interpretations include that they couldve been used as spear throwing tools, or that the holes couldve been used in spear or arrow making to pull them straight.
in a more recent study done on this mammoth ivory baton, which was found in Hohle Fels cave in Germany, they were specifically interested in the spiralized carvings feeding into each perforation
they studied small pieces of organic matter that were found inside the holes, and they were found to be FULL of plant fibres in way higher concentration than the other nearby soil, indicating that this baton at least was a tool used on plants. the idea came up that it could be a rope making tool
so they made a replica, and wove rope.
these tools were likely multipurpose, and we can never know the motivations of the ancient people who made them, but we have at least proven that these tools are capable of making rope very efficiently!
here you can watch a video demonstration of a group using a replica to make rope!
Oh this is FASCINATING! Mod A and I were recently on a conference on prehistoric clothing - this is one aspect of textile working in the broader sense that I definetely missed!
Fun fact, also: The specific finds that lead to this discovery were made at the Hohe Fels by Professor Nicholas Conrad and his team and published in 2016, in collaboration with Dr. Veerle Roots - here's a link to the original paper about ropemaking, and another one to the Archäologie Online article about the discovery. The Hohe Fels and neighboring Vogelherd caves are some of the most important prehistoric sites in all of Europe - you might be more familiar with them as the sites that turned up these ivory animal figurines, amongst others!
calling myself babe when I'm talking to myself. in a pitying but loving way. like babe you gotta get up. babe why are you doing this. babe you're giving me nothing here
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