castles may stand but they dont last forever, save what you can let the rest of it slide. hang onto your friends and you’ll get through whatever, soon you’ll be coming out the other side
Scooby-Doo (2002) had an incredible animated intro that was cut from the final film due to length constraints, and it’s still wild that something that good didn’t make the theatrical release
everyone tells me that ADHD isn't an excuse for being lazy and that there are people with ADHD who have overcome their symptoms and are successful but every day I drag around an invisible dopplegänger of myself who is horrible and listless and always complains. and he is so heavy. I'm ambitious and I'm passionate but he isn't and the problem is that to get anywhere in life I have to grab him by the leg and pull him along the whole way, kicking and screaming, and sometimes it gets exhausting. sometimes he pulls me down with him. and it gets a bit difficult to explain to people why I'm lying down on the floor in pain when they can't see him.
Even if you don’t live there, if you still live somewhere in the states, please, listen up.
“The MA legislature and governor just proposed dangerous social media surveillance legislation that would require everyone in the state, including adults, to upload a government ID or submit to a face scan to create a social media account. If something like this passes here, it will spread to other states faster than activists can fight back.
I have an op-ed out in today's Boston Globe explaining why this legislation would hurt kids and help Trump attack LGBTQ youth and undocumented folks. You can read it here (no paywall) https://archive.ph/rAK4P
If you're in MA, please send this to your state senators and the governor! They need to read it! You can also use this tool to easily call the key lawmakers who will be making decisions about this: https://www.stoponlineidchecks.org/ma “
- Fight For the Future Signal chat
I encourage reading EFF’s article linked below as it goes into the greater details of the legislation aside from this, but key notes:
• Forces everyone (not just kids) to upload a government ID or submit to a facial recognition scan to create a social media account or post online, even on educational sites like Wikipedia
• Force parents to send even more sensitive information to Big Tech companies to “verify” custody in order for a minor to create an account (think: sending a birth certificate to Mark Zuckerberg to let your teen create an account)
• Allow unsupportive parents to lock queer and trans youth off the Internet, restricting access to life-saving community and information with zero recourse
• Expand the Trump admin’s surveillance capabilities, making it easier for them to persecute people organizing protests, monitoring ICE, and criticizing the administration
• Cost Massachusetts tax payers enormously, as the legislation is clearly unconstitutional and would face legal challenges.
• Specifically harm undocumented folks who use social media to warn communities about ICE activity and raise money for family members
• Fine smaller and non-profit tech platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky out of business, further expanding the monopolies of Big Tech platforms
It is one of many of the worst pieces of digital surveillance legislation right now in the states.
If you’re in MA, please call and write to your state senators and governor through EFF’s article below, and if you’re not, either spread the word or call them too, but, don’t give them your ZIP code so they don’t know where you are.
Another thing about light pollution and adjacent things is. They threatened my area with rolling blackouts last winter. Now this was of course largely because the AI datacenters are hogging all the electricity, but in the notifications about it they always specified that that residential areas would be the blacked out areas. Not offices. Not businesses. If you're at home and freezing, well, you can just go loiter in a McDonald's I guess. Never mind that this is extremely difficult for disabled people and often not allowed for pets.
Well, as winter turned into spring, I started biking home from work. A long, circuitous route that took me through residential areas, and past offices and businesses. Offices and businesses that were closed for the day. And yet their signs were still lit up. The lights were still on inside. There were TVs playing in empty breakrooms. All the computers in the school district offices stayed on, their monitors not even going to sleep, all night. Paused to take a break in an empty strip mall once and when I leaned against the glass of a restaurant I could hear the music still playing inside.
Like. There's something deeply rotten about the priorities here. These places that are so flagrantly wasting electricity will never be subject to the rolling blackouts that could freeze you out of your home. Not even at night, when no one is there, when they don't need their lights on. Their waste is prioritized over normal people's life.
i feel like people aren't getting how dire ai is. we are running out of drinkable water. our brains aren't engaging as much with what we see and hear. people near data centers don't get clean water and experience electricity blackouts. it's being used to make pornography of underaged people and women. it often just lies. it affirms everything. it lies. it has made people kill themselves. it lies for gods sake. and people act as if im dramatic for being staunchly against it. 'now i KNOOW you hate ai and whatever, but look at this cute video' this isn't me being a new age puritan about internet videos, this is about the fucking earth and our future living on this planet. people are suffering now, people will suffer more, and my friends and parents will roll their eyes and think im annoying for despising ai so explicitly. we need to wake up because we cannot live like this
I've realized that I do a lot of complaining but I actually love this game so much. So can we just appreciate how the first thing your first permanent companion says to you is "You know, one good thing about the Blight is how it brings people together"??
Because why does it PERFECTLY establish one of the core themes of the game?? EVERYTHING you do after Ostagar is bringing people together. Running around, gathering the most unexpected allies you can get just to end the Blight. You have a witch of the wilds, a chantry sister who is secretly an assassin, yet another assassin who actually tries to kill you, a soldier from this completely foreign nation who just went there because his boss got curious about the blight, an old lady who's somehow still able to stand on her feet just by some spirit miracle (even a literal spirit was like "damn, I have to come help those idiots") and an angry drunkard dwarf (okay, that last one is kind of typical fantasy companion but I love how they subverted the idea. Oghren is the most stereotypical dwarf to ever dwarf and yet all the other dwarves despise and mock him for it). And also don't forget a literal stone statue that hates all humanity (and birds)
All the major quests revolve around bringing different groups together to fight the Blight. The Landsmeet is, at its core, about bringing the Ferelden nobility together to finally do something about the Blight. Heck, you can even recruit the MAIN ANTAGONIST because more men fighting the darkspawn is ultimately more important than revenge. And also if you agree to Morrigan ritual it also brings a whole new being into this world, just to have a greater chance at surviving the final battle.
And also don't forget the Warden themselves. In the intro cutscene Duncan talks about how Grey Wardens recruit anyone who wants to fight darkspawn. Nobles, beggars, humans, dwarves, nobody cares. That's the whole running theme of this fraction. The whole Origin system, the main gimmick of the game and the literal title just highlights that anyone from any background can help to fight this world ending thing together. If that isn't some beautiful thematic consistency then I don't know what is
I mega love dragon age and I also do critique dragon age a lot. Some of these are like real things i believe could improve the experience, or like "oh this cant be fixed now but its interesting to think about it." Sometimes i wish for things that are just not realistic to implement. Sometimes i talk about wanting a completelly different game. Sometimes i will say things that contradict each other. Such is the nature of the dragon age fan
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