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An investigative journalist infiltrated three white supremacist platforms, including the dating site WhiteDate, exfiltrating over 8,000 user

arabbitbeingfiredoutofacannon

bogleech

When she says it had a smurf village gender ratio, it's possibly even funnier and sadder than you could have thought. The article doesn't specify, but I keep hearing that out of 8000 users, less than 50 appeared to be women.

flammableengineering

Root said she contacted a hacker who helped to exfiltrate the data. However, no hacks were required – all it took was a simple URL trick of adding “download-all-users/” to the top-level domain.

Holy fuck, I’m dying. Imagine being this bad at cybersecurity. How is the rest of 2026 supposed to compete?

maxofs2d

There’s a certain kind of person who’s becoming extinct. You’ve probably met one. Maybe you are one. Someone who actually understood the tools they used. Someone who could sit down at an unfamiliar system, poke at it for twenty minutes, and have a working mental model of what it was doing and why. Someone who read error messages instead of dismissing them. Someone who, when something broke, treated it as a puzzle rather than a betrayal.

That person is dying off. And nobody in the industry seems to care. In fact, most of them are actively celebrating the funeral while billing it as progress.

This isn’t an accident. This is the result of two decades of deliberate, calculated effort by the largest technology companies on earth to turn users into consumers, instruments into appliances, and technical literacy into a niche hobby for weirdos. They succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. Congratulations to everyone involved. You’ve built a generation that can’t extract a zip file without a dedicated app and calls it innovation.

The average person who grew up with smartphones has a fundamentally broken mental model of computing. Not broken in the sense that they can’t operate their devices — they can, with terrifying efficiency. Broken in the sense that their understanding stops at the glass. They know how to use apps. They do not know what apps are. They know files exist somewhere, in the cloud maybe, or possibly inside the app itself — the distinction isn’t clear to them and they’ve never needed it to be.

The concept of a filesystem — of hierarchical storage that you own, that lives on hardware you control, that persists independently of any company’s servers — is genuinely alien to them. Not because it’s complicated. A child can understand that files live in folders. But they’ve never had to understand it because the platforms they grew up on hid it from them. iOS shipped without a user-accessible filesystem for over a decade. Google Drive abstracts away the folder metaphor entirely if you let it. iCloud will “optimize” your local storage, which is a polite way of saying it will silently move your files to Apple’s servers and give you a ghost of them on your own machine, and most users have no idea this is happening or what it means.

Ask a twenty-two-year-old to connect to a remote server via SSH. Ask them to explain what DNS is at a conceptual level. Ask them to tell you the difference between their router’s public IP and the local IP of their laptop. Ask them to open a terminal and list the contents of a directory. These are not advanced topics. Twenty years ago these were things you learned in the first week of any serious engagement with computers. Today they’re exotic knowledge that even a lot of working software developers don’t have, because you can go a long way in modern development without ever leaving the managed abstractions your platform provides.

And that’s the real damage. It’s not just end users who don’t know this stuff. It’s developers. People who write software for a living who’ve never had to think about what happens between their API call and the response. Who’ve never had to debug something at the network layer. Who’ve never had to read a full stack trace and understand every frame of it. Because the frameworks handle all of that, and the frameworks are good enough, and figuring out how things actually work is optional.

Optional until it isn’t.

(Read the rest at the link.)

cocklessboy

The other day I told a friend of mine that I never forget to take my ADHD meds because I fucking love my ADHD meds. I'm in my late 30s, I didn't finally get a diagnosis and meds until less than two years ago, and they have changed my entire life.

And he raised his eyebrow at me. We'd been discussing addictive medications a few minutes before, like the Tramadol I finally got from the pain specialist to take once a week or so to give me a break from my chronic pain, so I reassured him that methylpenidate (Ritalin/Concerta) is not addictive (at least not in people with ADHD).

His response? To raise his eyebrow even harder and say "Well it sure SOUNDS like it's addictive!"

And I had to explain to this man - who works in a healthcare related job by the way - that just because medication makes you feel good and helps you, just because you look forward to taking it, that doesn't make it addictive or dangerous. And he wasn't convinced.

The simple fact that I was excited to take a daily pill that has literally changed my life, after decades of fighting to get that medication, made him think I shouldn't be taking it so often. That it must inherently be dangerous.

I'm not even in America, but I'm pretty sure this attitude began there and then spread over here to Europe. This Puritan idea of "if something feels good, you must beware of it. Pleasure is dangerous, it is sinful, it is addiction, it is evil."

I know too many people who subconsciously believe that pleasure = addictive = dangerous = bad. Joy is a slippery slope to hell.

So here is your reminder for today that you don't need to be afraid of feeling good. If something improves your life, use it. Even if it is addictive - learn what that addiction means, whether the addiction is inherently dangerous or not, and whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks and risks.

My ADHD meds are, in fact, not addictive. But I will take them every day because they make my life orders of magnitude easier. I will enjoy them every time I take them.

My tramadol is addictive. I will still take it. I will keep it on a schedule to avoid becoming addicted, primarily because addiction in this case would mean reduced effectiveness. But I am not afraid of my painkillers. They are life changing.

Take your meds, everyone. Don't let anyone scare you away from doing something that improves your life.

luulapants

If you're in the US, now is a great time to talk to the young people in your life about the US military:

The recruiter is not your friend. The military employs child psychologists to learn how to make you think the recruiter is your friend.

The recruiter is allowed to lie to you and makes more money if they do.

The recruiter is paid a commission to groom children into cannon fodder.

The recruiter will tell you you're special and will go into special smart soldier programs instead of combat. They're lying.

The recruiter may tell you they can tell if someone can get PTSD or not and only recruit people like you, who won't. They're lying.

The recruiter may tell you you'll be too busy attending free college (!!) to go overseas. They're lying.

The recruiter may ask what countries you want to travel to and promise you bougie placements on military bases in those countries. They're lying.

Even "It's just four years!" is a lie - the government is allowed to hold you past your enlistment period with a stop-loss order.

The recruiter actually has zero power to decide anything that happens to you after you enlist and they more importantly don't care what happens to you.

If you enlist, you will be brainwashed to make you willing to do things to other humans that you would never be willing to do today.

You will be ordered to do things that will kill children. And you'll do them.

The military is not the only way or even the best way for you to go to college or start a career.

Military brainwashing will actually make you into a terrible university student because it degrades your ability to think critically and question your sources.

Having PTSD and/or a TBI will make it harder to be a student and keep a job.

Veterans' benefits suck these days.

Being a veteran drastically increases your risk of homelessness, suicide, alcohol and drug dependence, prison time, and becoming an abuser to your loved ones.

The military will expose you to chemicals that will drastically increase your chances of developing cancer.

The military will withhold information about your rights to conscientiously object after enlisting.

A lot can change in four years.

c4bl3fl4m3

All of this!

If you want an organization who WILL tell you the truth about your rights to conscientiously object, how to legally get out of the DEP (Delayed Entry Program) or about any of your other rights in the military (whether you’re enlisted, thinking about enlisting, or a family member or friend of someone enlisted (or thinking about enlisting)), who will do it confidentially & for free, you want the

GI Rights Hotline

run by NGOs & non-profits, which has been counseling folks for DECADES now:

Are you in the military or thinking about joining? Are you unsure of where to get reliable answers? Call the GI Rights Hotline at 1-877-447-

Or by phone:

1-877-447-4487

ms-demeanor

Even if all the person you're speaking to cares about is the money, the money sucks.

Minimum wage in California just went up to $16.90. You need to be rank E4 or be E3 with at least 3 years of service before you're making more than the CA minimum wage in the military.

You will literally get better pay and benefits working at a costco. (And that's not even accounting for the fact that the military isn't a 40 hour work week, your entire life is on the clock)

I cannot emphasize this enough, if you're a desperate young queer person you will make better money, get better healthcare, and have more affordable options for school if you move to California, get a job at costco, live with roommates, and go to community college than you will have if you join the US military.

onlytiktoks

aniseandspearmint

Asdfghjkl her perfectly straight face and even tone throughout should win an AWARD

robertreich

Tech billionaires want to force data centers on us with little to no regard for water usage, energy price spikes, environmental harms, or basic democratic decision-making. We must rein in AI before it's too late.

arvalis

Link Loadout

I've wanted to paint a Zelda piece for years but I had to wait until I had an idea truly worth doing.

Prints and playmats available here

art-and-anarchism-deactivated20

Practical Organising

“Only the Organised Survive”: A Rebel Worker Handbook

Direct Action in Industry by the Direct Action Movement

Weakening the Dam by the Twin Cities branch of the IWW

How to Hold a Good Meeting and Rusty’s Rules of Order by the Industrial Workers of the World

Community Control of the Poor community

A Practical Guide to Anarchist Organisation – Compiled by Andrew Flood

How to Fire Your Boss: A Workers Guide to Direct Action

The Bosses Need Us… We Don’t Need Them: Common Sense Reasons for Worker Self-Management

Organising in the Workplace

Organising Communities by Tom Knoche

Anarchist Agitation & Community Building by Ronald A. Young

A Rebel Worker’s Organising Handbook

isuggestrevolution

this is my suggestion

isuggestanarchism

I like this, I suggest this

rederiswrites

There used to be a lot of activities that took place around a populated area like a village or town, which you would encounter before you reached the town itself. Most of those crafts have either been eliminated in the developed world or now take place out of view on private land, and so modern authors don't think of them when creating fantasy worlds or writing historical fiction. I think that sprinkling those in could both enrich the worlds you're writing in and, potentially, add useful plot devices.

For example, your travelers might know that they're near civilization when they start finding trees in the woods that have been tapped, for pitch or for sap. They might find a forester's trap line and trace it back to his hut to get medical care. Maybe they retrace the passage of a peasant and his pig out hunting for truffles. If they're coming along a coast, maybe your travelers come across the pools where sea water is dried down to salt, or the furnaces where bog iron ore is smelted.

Maybe they see a column of smoke and follow it to the house-sized kilns of a potter's yard where men work making bricks or roof tiles. From miles away they could smell the unmistakeable odor of pine sap being rendered down into pitch, and follow that to a village. Or they hear the flute playing of a shepherd boy whiling away the hours in the high pasture.

They could find the clearing where the charcoal burners recently broke down an earth kiln, and follow the hoof prints and drag marks of their horse and sledge as they hauled the charcoal back to civilization. Or follow the sound of metal on stone to a quarry or gravel pit. Maybe they know they're nearly to town when they come across a clay bank with signs of recent clay gathering.

Of course around every town and city there will be farms, more densely packed the closer you are. But don't just think of fields of grains or vegetables. Think of managed woodlands, like maybe trees coppiced-- cut and then regrown--to customize the shape or size of the branches. Cows being grazed in a communal green. Waiting as a huge flock of ducks is driven across the road. Orchards in bloom.

If they're approaching by road, there will be things best done out of town. The threshing floor where grain is beaten with flails or run through crushing wheels to separate the grain from its casing, and then winnowed, using the wind to carry away the chaff. Laundresses working in the river, their linens bleaching on the grass at the drying yard. The stench of the tanners, barred from town for stinking so badly. The rushing wheel-race and great creaking wheel of the flour mill.

If it's a larger town, there might be a livestock market outside the gates, with goats milling in woven willow pens or chickens in wooden cages. Or a line of horses for the wealthier buyer or your desperate travelers. There might be a red light district, escaping the regulations of the city proper, or plain old slums. More industrial yards, like the yards where fabric is dyed (these might also smell quite bad, like rotting plant material, or urine).

There are so many things that preindustrial people did and would find familiar that we just don't know about now. So much of life was lived out in the open for anyone to see. Make your world busy and loud and colorful!

alexanderwales

You mentioned coppicing:

The coppice and pollard systems are one of my favorite pre-modern things, it's just so visually unique and sensible, but most people haven't heard about it.

When you coppice, you cut the tree close to the ground, so only the trunk is left, then the tree puts out fairly straight shoots that are great for firewood. They would typically have these trees harvested on rotation so new trees would be ready every year.

This is a coppiced tree:

When you pollard, you cut the tree to the trunk, but higher, and let the branches grow for longer. They'll be be nice and straight (depending on species) with fewer knots, and suitable to various crafts without much need to work the wood. Sadly seems to be etymologically unrelated to "pole", though the branches from these trees were used to make poles. Part of why you do this instead of coppicing is that the shoots are out of reach of animals.

This is a pollarded tree:

It's very likely that you'd see something like this as a sign of civilization as you came toward a town or village, depending on the species of tree that they have available, though note that this is something you do when you have a timeline of many years, rather than something you set up for the year after.

hope-for-the-planet

From simple storm drain traps to swimming robots, “trash traps” are capturing litter before it can wash into streams, rivers and oceans.

Over the last nine years global trash trap projects have collected at least six million pounds of litter and likely significantly more than that since not all trash-trapping projects report to centralized organizations. These can be everything from low tech floating barriers to underwater trash-hunting robots or giant wheels like Mr. Trash Wheel and his companions.

In addition to removing trash, these traps also provide useful data on what type of litter is ending up in waterways so efforts to stop it can be more targeted. Or they can help determine how well local laws banning certain practices or types of plastic are working.

blignick

teaboot

BESPOKE

so-much-for-subtlety

in 2015 we didn’t have AI psychosis so people had to make do by believing a dress was white and gold

thickness-protection-program

Because it was

queer-as-city-folk

Is the gold in the room with us right now?

thatoneliquidbicricket

yes. the dress is gold.

...

the dress has always been gold

r u saying this doesn't look white and gold to u???

...

queer-as-city-folk

what.

estrogenesis-eeveeangelion

it's a white and gold dress in cool blue dim lighting w/ bright warm light behind it, making an optical illusion. we're not fucking doing this again

im-mender

estrogenesis-eeveeangelion

oh god fucking damn it

kaban-bang

I know tumblr likes to exclusively make it about bloody hospitals but this is what Color Theory is about

theflowergrrl

HOW DID THIS DISCOURSE COME BACK IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 2026!???

marzipanandminutiae

when I tell you people were shouting up and down my dorm's hallways about this when it first happened

(the dress was by Roman Originals and it was in fact blue and black. but they made a one-off white and gold one for charity later)

headspace-hotel

I remember when this happened lol

Some people see the photo as showing a white and gold dress, some people see a black and blue dress. What colors you see has nothing to do with "understanding" how color works in a photo, it's perception that differs.

headspace-hotel

tags from @mnemonomancy

Yes! It's actually very interesting. The Dress was such a huge phenomenon because people genuinely perceived different colors for no obvious reason

Saying "its just color theory" doesn't completely capture it, as per the wikipedia page, we still don't know exactly why this photo of a dress Does That. The meme actually kicked off quite a bit of scientific research into how the brain creates this grand hallucination we call perception. It's not trivial or stupid at all

dragonengine

It's really funny cause when I first scrolled through and looked I saw white and gold. Then went back after reading and looking at the color comparison with lighting and I can see blue and black but I can kinda still see it both ways. That feels weird.

#the dress

pekingopera

Solange Knowles’ Saint Heron Library digitizes rare and out-of-print works by Black and brown artists, preserving them for future generation

"The Saint Heron Library is home to our archival collection of primarily rare, out of print, and 1st edition titles by Black & brown authors, poets, & artists," she captioned on Instagram.

Throughout time, when certain aspects of physical media aren't accessible, a digital archive library is crucial in a society driven by fast-paced media consumption, where the depth and nuance of marginalized voices can easily be overlooked or forgotten.

...

In our digital age, where much of our interaction with media is limited to clicks and reposts, Knowles’ digital archive provides a safe space for scholarly and artistic work that might otherwise be lost. Saint Heron’s library aims to foster a space where the wisdom and creativity of these “great minds” can thrive, supported by an infrastructure that champions preservation and accessibility. The library will not only serve as a place of significant works but also act as a catalyst for more conversations around artists, scholars and enthusiasts. "As the market and demand for these books, zines, and catalogues rises, we would like to play a small part in creating free access to the expansive range of critical thought and expression by these great mindsss," Knowles said.

Saint Heron Community Library; a growing media center dedicated to students, practicing artists and designers, musicians and general literat

reportsofagrandfuture

remanence-of-love

sunsetandfun

This.....

canary-prince

Do yourselves a massive favor: practice asking for help BEFORE it's an emergency.

I am a social worker. I have worked in community mental health and in home-based healthcare. And it is much, much easier for me to help you when the situation you're in is not yet a full-blown crisis.

"I'm out of money and have been for a while and now I haven't eaten for three days." This is a crisis. A crisis where I'm likely going to have to put you in the car and take you to the nearest food bank--except food banks require appointments now, and the next opening is in four days, so you're staring down the barrel of a week with no food. That's obviously not going to work, so, let's call eight different food banks until we've found one that has an appointment the next day...except it's in the neighboring county and you can't drive. So now I'm calling your doctor to try and brow beat an emergency plan of care update out of him so I can come back the next day and drive you to the food bank. And we haven't even started on the "constantly broke" part of the problem.

"I don't think I have enough food to make it to my next paycheck. I have (xyz) in my house and that will only last until (date)." This is bad, but not a crisis. We have a few days. We make you an appointment at the food bank and contact your brother to make sure you have a ride there. Now we can spend our visit talking about what bills are causing you the most problems and make a jump on a long-term solution, like looping in a community action agency to cover your utilities and getting you an OTC card from Medicaid to cover some of your groceries every month.

"I'm ten months behind on rent, and my landlord said I have a week to get out, or the cops will throw me out. I don't have the money, and if I get evicted, I have nowhere to go." This is a crisis. Every single thing we do here is going to be some version of a Hail Mary. In Michigan, we have the state emergency relief fund for rent issues, but process time is well over one week. There are community action agencies that we can call to assist you with payment, but they are unlikely to have sufficient funds to cover nearly a year of back rent. We can contact legal aid clinics to try and prevent your landlord from evicting you, but they may look at your case and determine that too much "fault" lies with you. Most likely, I'm going to have to put you in touch with homeless shelters and the public housing office.

"I'm two months behind on rent and I don't think I'll be able to pay next month either." This is bad, but not a crisis. This is solvable. We have time to apply for SER, or put you in contact with community action agencies. We have time to review your finances and see if you qualify for a public housing wait list or other forms of ongoing rental assistance. We have time to talk about a million possible adjustments to try and ease the burden of your rent.

"I am the sole caregiver for my elderly parent who has dementia and is emotionally volatile and fully dependent on me. I have not slept through the night in weeks and I have not had an actual break for over a year. I am having screaming meltdowns multiple times a week and I am threatening self-harm unless someone comes to collect my parent and take over all caregiver duties." This is a crisis. This is a crisis where the ethical code of my profession demands that I call 911 and report the conversation to them. They will likely come to the house and interview you. If they determine your threats were serious, they will have you forcibly committed to a psych ward. Your parent will either be dumped into a random hospital or rehab center, or left in the house on their own. Upon release from your psych hold, you will be expected to resume caregiving duties as though nothing happened. Except, now, adult protective services is actively investigating you, because it was determined you may be an ongoing danger to your parent.

"I am the sole caregiver for my demented parent, and I have not had a break in a couple of weeks, and I feel angry and weepy most of the time." This is bad, but not a crisis. We can get you in touch with volunteer groups for respite, and apply for state funded programs to get more day-to-day help, and talk about long-term planning for when the dementia symptoms get worse. We can get you the phone numbers for crisis lines and enroll you in a support group.

Obviously, you can ask for help at any point. Don't use this an excuse to never ask for help. If you always wait until it's a crisis, fine, you have free will. But you are ALLOWED to ask for help BEFORE you're in a blind panic, and it is always easier to get help when you aren't screaming and sobbing because you think your life is over.

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