Protect Dinosaur Valley — Put Guardrails on Massive Data Centers in Texas
Dinosaur Valley State Park in Texas is one of the few places where you can walk the same path as the prehistoric animals did millions of years before you. The tracks there, thought to belong to Acrocanthosaurus and Sauroposeidon, have survived the test of time for 113 million years. Anyone is able to visit this trail, and walk alongside the ancient footprints, forever cast in the now dried mud. However, the park and its surrounding wildlife may be threatened by a large AI data center planned to be built near the park. The byproducts of AI facilities poisons the air, uses up the water, drives up electricity, and negatively impacts the animals, plants, and people living nearby. The area is even home to the endangered Golden-cheeked warbler. Even more unfortunately, the request to postpone the operation has been denied by Texas courthouses. Please sign the linked petition above to help push back against the construction of this data center.
All of my friends that work at wildlife rehab centers have had to untangle animals from this stuff, or had animals brought in that died in it. This is especially nasty for small owl species.
Why would you put fake spiderwebs outside your home anyways?
Do what my family does and use them as indoor decorations, it's easier to clean up that way and it makes the living room look cool.
The classic Halloween decor can be a silent threat to furry friends if displayed unsafely.
"As autumn advances, leaves begin to fall from trees and a chill runs through the air, making it increasingly clear the spooky season is upon us. But as people decorate for Halloween, they may be setting up a trick rather than a treat for surrounding critters: That fake spider webbing commonly seen across the country every October is just as effective at trapping critters as a real web is.
Kathryn Dudeck, the wildlife director at Georgia's Chattahoochee Nature Center, told Snopes via phone that fake spider webbing, normally made out of a synthetic, fiber-like polyester, is similar to tightly woven fiberglass.
"The webbing actually adheres to the skin of a toad," she said. "For raptors and songbirds, it sticks to their feathers and then settles in between them, almost like velcro." ...
Dudeck said that animals most at risk with fake cobwebs are small birds, including hummingbirds and small owls, bats and reptiles, like toads...
The danger of fake webs doesn’t immediately go away after Halloween, either. A 2019 article from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation explains that if not properly disposed of, birds might use the material to build their nests. In a worst-case scenario, the webbing could catch and trap any chicks in the nest. The solution to all of this is fairly easy: stop using fake webs outside.
Instead, consider moving the webbing indoors, perhaps behind a window so it’s still visible. If you are set on creating a web outdoors, Dudeck recommended making one out of rope and ensuring you've left ample space between strands to mitigate the risk to wildlife."
We may have a new way of protecting against COVID-19 that checks almost all the boxes: It's effective, it's affordable, it's easy to apply,
We may have a new way of protecting against COVID-19 that checks almost all the boxes: It's effective, it's affordable, it's easy to apply, it's already approved as safe for public use, it's available without prescription… and it's called azelastine.
This nasal spray has been available over the counter for decades now, under a variety of brand names, in over 70 countries. It's used to treat several allergies, including hay fever, and a new trial into its effectiveness at preventing COVID-19 was launched after promising results in lab tests and people with a SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Some ant queens can produce offspring of more than one species – even when the other species is not known to exist in the nearby wild.
Some ant queens can produce offspring of more than one species – even when the other species is not known to exist in the nearby wild.
No other animal on Earth is known to do this, and it's hard for even scientists to believe.
"It's an absolutely fantastic, bizarre story of a system that allows things to happen that seem almost unimaginable," evolutionary biologist Jacobus Boomsma from the University of Copenhagen told Max Kozlov at Nature.
It's so, SO important to share success stories like this. I know an actual JPL engineer who doesn't believe in climate change because, "you never hear about acid rain anymore."
He thinks climate change can be lumped in with acid rain and the ozone layer of "things that were overblown and not really important because no one talks about it anymore."
It didn't even occur to him that we actively fixed the problem. Here's the EPA page on acid rainfall.
From the page:
It's also important to talk about success stories tonfuel hope that we can overcome current and future conservation and environmental issues.
I wanted to share this: WE FIGURED OUT HOW TO BRING BACK DEAD CORAL!!! By using sounds of living coral to attract fish.
Coral can be saved!!! This planet is way more resilient than we give it credit for. And we don't give humans enough flowers for stopping the harm billionaires cause.
Signal boosting because public radio and television are so important for kids and adults to get access to culture, education, news and even emergency alerts. I was a Sesame Street kid, and have fond memories of listening to NPR programs like This American Life when I got older.
If you’re in a position to step up and help out your member stations financially, now’s the time.
On April 16th 2025 the US federal government has proposed to change the interpretation of the endangered species act so that it no longer protects habitat.
This is open for public comment until the end of May 19th. Please comment and make your voice heard.
Wildlife need their habitat. If the ESA redefines harm so that habitat is no longer protected, the implications for wildlife would be catastrophic.
Please take a few minutes to add a public comment. Excluding habitat destruction from the definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act is incredibly disingenuous, intellectually dishonest, and flies in the face of the reality that habitat destruction is a main driver of stress for the majority of endangered and threatened species.
Make your voice heard and let them know you disagree that endangered species can somehow be preserved separately from their environment. Protecting them means preserving their habitat, full stop.
i understand we cant be perfect in this, and microsoft has wormed its way into almost every aspect of our lives so its not like we can just cut all ties with a single mouse click, but like. you dont need that that video game.
BDS is specifically focusing a target on XBOX and is requesting people participate in the following tiers of engagement:
1. cancel game pass subscriptions
2. avoid spending time/money on candy crush, Minecraft and call of duty
3. boycott all Microsoft gaming products, including Xbox branded consoles and accessories AND any Microsoft owned publishing labels
Bare minimum you should be able to cancel a game pass subscription, but I think we can all try to push for a level 3 participation. BDS specifically requests people avoid Bethesda in their list of Microsoft owned publishers.
This is a specific request of a targeted boycott, which has a higher chance of success. It's nearly impossible to avoid products from all companies involved in the genocide, but we can focus on specific targets with specific demands and help push Microsoft to divest.
Leaf your leaves on the ground (no, seriously.) They provide so much for bugs, places to lay eggs places to hibernate. This comic does a great job at showing WHY we don't see our little friends as often, because our systems and social expectations are anti-earth and anti-life. Don't eradicate your friends (maybe just that one) let the leaves lay
{ID: Two screenshots with white text on a black background. The two screenshots together have the following message:
From sociologist Jennifer Walter about what is happening in this country right now and what to do about it:
"As a sociologist, I need to tell you:
Your overwhelm is the goal.
1/ The flood of 200+ executive orders in Trump's first days exemplifies Naomi Klein's "shock doctrine" - using chaos and crisis to push through radical changes while people are too disoriented to effectively resist. This isn't just politics as usual - it's a strategic exploitation of cognitive limits.
2/ Media theorist McLuhan predicted this: When humans face information overload, they become passive and disengaged. The rapid-fire executive orders create a cognitive bottleneck, making it nearly impossible for citizens and media to thoroughly analyze any single policy.
3/ Agenda-setting theory explains the strategy: When multiple major policies compete for attention simultaneously, it fragments public discourse. Traditional media can't keep up with the pace, leading to superficial coverage.
The result? Weakened democratic oversight and reduced public engagement.
What now?
1/ Set boundaries: Pick 2-3 key issues you deeply care about and focus your attention there. You can't track everything - that's by design. Impact comes from sustained focus, not scattered awareness.
2/ Use aggregators & experts: Find trusted analysts who do the heavy lifting of synthesis. Look for those explaining patterns, not just events.
3/ Remember: Feeling overwhelmed is the point. When you recognize this, you regain some power. Take breaks. Process. This is a marathon.
4/ Practice going slow: Wait 48hrs before reacting to new policies. The urgent clouds the important. Initial reporting often misses context.
5/ Build community: Share the cognitive load. Different people track different issues. Network intelligence beats individual overload.
Remember: They want you scattered. Your focus is resistance."
Thanks and a tip of the hat to Barbara Carrellas for passing this on." end ID]
Recommend reading the whole thing, but here’s the short version: Your power and impact lie in focus. Pick 2-3 issues where you can make a difference. Share the rest with your network (friends, family, community) to spread out the cognitive load.
For general graphics: use GIMP
For vector graphics: use Inkscape
For drawing and illustration: use Krita
For print and web publishing and design: use Penpot
For PDF authoring: use LibreOffice
For PDF reading and form filling: use Okular
All are free, open source and cross-platform. None use AI.
Hey do y'all remember several years ago when we were all freaking out about net neutrality being overturned? Well despite net neutrality's win in 2024, a federal court just overturned it.
For those who aren't aware, net neutrality is the simple principle that companies like Verizon and Comcast should treat all web traffic equally – not pick and choose based on who is willing to pay more or who they like best. Big Tech companies obviously don’t like that – which is why they spent millions lobbying against it over the years.
Now, these megacorporations will be able to seize control back over our Internet. The likely result? Throttled access to streaming services, monopolistic pricing that cuts out competition, and a slower, walled off, and less free Internet for all of us.
And unfortunately, rulings like this will only get more common now that the Supreme Court has overturned the “Chevron deference” – giving judges, rather than qualified public servants, a blank check to toss out protections like net neutrality, environmental safeguards, or food safety standards.
When Trump’s FCC repealed net neutrality back in 2017, they gave big corporations total control over our Internet – putting free and open access at risk.
Internet providers responded by exploiting their newfound power to speed up certain websites, and slow down – or even block – others. They failed to provide crucial Internet infrastructure in rural areas, low-income communities, and communities of color. They even slashed firefighters’ Internet access during severe wildfires.
But over 126,000 people spoke out and we were able to reinstate net neutrality – until now.
The time has come again to take action: please sign this petition from Common Cause so we can reinstate net neutrality.
I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.
IN SHORT
Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.
When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using
his dyslexia;
his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and
a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,
as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.
When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer listed.
THE TAKEAWAYS
1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain;
2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and
3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again.
THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)
Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):
This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)
I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:
Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.
I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice.
I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted—and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.
After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.
While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:
And then I went to bed.
By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:
@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.
That response came only an hour or so later:
Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.
I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.
A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)
A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.
Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.
Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :
Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):
which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)
... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)
After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether.
It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:
And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.
That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:
They were completed works;
They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and
They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.
If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!
I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.
I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.
Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***
That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.
Sooo—
We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them.
This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:
Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.
Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.
THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):
*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that.
**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation.
***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.
Again, please, please PLEASE reblog this post instead of the one I sent originally. All the information is here, and it's driving me nuts to see the old ones are still passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.
The billionaire has become one of the most prominent supporters of President-elect Donald Trump.
While Christmas Day is the last day anyone should ask for you to spend more money, I'm asking you to spend more money. A dollar. Five dollars. Whatever you've got. Elon Musk wants to own Wikipedia - one of the last reliable sources out there, and the only one not owned by a billionaire or corporation.
If you can't donate, this message isn't for you and you should not feel bad.
If you can donate to Wikipedia to keep it out of Musk's filthy, blood-stained hands, please do.
I have donated this year and encourage everyone who can to do so. Protect one of the last bastions of the non-corporate-owned internet so it can remain freely accessible to all.
Some of you may have heard about Monarch butterflies being added to the Threatened species list in the US and be planning to immediately rush out in spring and buy all the milkweed you can manage to do your part and help the species.
And that's fantastic!! Starting a pollinator garden and/or encouraging people and businesses around you to do the same is an excellent way to help not just Monarchs but many other threatened and at-risk pollinator species!
However.
Please please PLEASE do not obtain Tropical Milkweed for this purpose!
Tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica)--also commonly known as bloodflower, Mexican butterflyweed, and scarlet milkweed--will likely be the first species of milkweed you find for sale at most nurseries. It'll be fairly cheap, too, and it grows and propagates so easily you'll just want to grab it! But do not do that!
Tropical milkweed can cause a host of issues that can ultimately harm the butterflies you're trying to help, such as--
Harboring a protozoan parasite called OE (which has been linked to lower migration success, reductions in body mass, lifespan, mating success, and flight ability) for long periods of time
Remaining alive for longer periods, encouraging breeding during migration time/overwintering time as well as keeping monarchs in an area until a hard freeze wherein which they die
Actually becoming toxic to monarch caterpillars when exposed to warmer temperatures associated with climate change
However--do not be discouraged!! There are over 100 species of milkweed native to the United States, and plenty of resources on which are native to your state specifically! From there, you can find the nurseries dedicated to selling native milkweeds, or buy/trade for/collect seeds to grow them yourself!!
The world of native milkweeds is vast and enchanting, and I'm sure you'll soon find a favorite species native to your area that suits your growing space! There's tons of amazing options--whether you choose the beautiful pink vanilla-smelling swamp milkweed, the sophisticated redring milkweed, the elusive purple milkweed, the alluring green antelopehorn milkweed, or the charming heartleaf milkweed, or even something I didn't list!
And there's tons of resources and lots of people willing to help you on your native milkweed journey! Like me! Feel free to shoot me an ask if you have any questions!
Just. PLEASE. Leave the tropical milkweed alone. Stay away.
TLDR: Start a pollinator garden to help the monarchs! Just don't plant tropical milkweed. There's hundreds of other milkweeds to grow instead!
