i went in to get a bra fitting today and I had a big conversation with the woman who runs the boutique i go to about her advice for trans women re:underwire bras and fittings, so I'm gonna pass that along!
she said that underwire bras aren't typically made with trans women's' ribcages in mind, but that if you have smaller boobs a soft bralette or sports bra is totally fine. it's also possible that bras made for drag will fit, but she wasn't sure how helpful that would be and neither was I, since we're not talking about a boob plate here. i was asking on behalf of some of my friends who have naturally big boobs after horomones though, and she told me that if your breast tissue feels unsupported or you're getting new back pain that you think is coming from there, your best bet is to get fitted at a small boutique, and that there are higher band sizes that you can try.
I told her some of the girls I know are scared to do this and she reccomended to have someone call the place for you and ask outright, being upfront that you're nervous about it, and then base your decision on how they react. but also that most independent bra stores are probably friendly because they're being run by hippies. At a chain like victoria's secret or something they're not going to carry higher band sizes at all, plus you're never gonna be able to tell who you'll get at a chain, so she recommends calling a smaller place where you can really get a read on the people there from talking on the phone.
disabled ppl we need to start lying to nosy people okay? you tell me i'm too young to need a cane and i will tell you point blank that maybe you should tell that to the guy who ran me over. you don't get an explanation of my health issues you get lies and depending on how much of an asshole i want to be that lie will be anything from a humble car crash to a 1 billion lions attack. mind yr business.
"i could never live like that" well maybe you'll have to because this happened overnight. yeah you heard me i was the most able bodied man in the world but then one morning bam i woke up disabled. yeah you could have that too. there's no cure either you'll just wake up one morning and now you have to live like me
If the trash pickup people stop doing their job for two weeks you'd be throwing a fucking tantrum. Same for the janitors who keep your office spaces and bathrooms clean. (And that's before the various illnesses start to spread all over your city from the build up of pathogens.)
The people responsible keeping our spaces clean (and thus, mostly disease-free) should both be paid more AND thanked more.
If some tech billionaire who makes a million an hour stopped doing his job for two weeks, nobody would notice... well, some might notice because things would suddenly improve across the board.
Come to think of it, it really is insane that my entire country is burning alive and literally no one in the rest of the world cares. Thousands of Indians are dying every day from the heat, it's 45+ degrees in multiple areas, the government couldn't give two fucks, we're getting severe warnings and red alerts, and not a soul outside of South Asia is speaking about it because why would you ever care about brown people
USA folks, that is a consistent temperature range hitting 113°. Death Valley temperatures. In Banda, it hovered between 116°-118° (47°-48° C) for a week straight.
This has been happening all month with little to no international media attention. Here are a few organizations you can check out for resources or to support:
I would also like to mention that Banda has significantly higher humidity than Death Valley even during the dry season so if those numbers aren't heat index adjusted, it probably felt even hotter than that.
Really really REALLY really really not here to hang out with anarchists who are against communism.
Be against specific ways of approaching it all you want. Be against particular instances of communism that were carried out badly. Be against the abuse of the very concept of communism by cynical state actors (i.e. all state actors).
But don't be anticommunist. You're doing the work of the enemy for them.
Many of the most successful anarchist projects in the world have either had significant communist influence or participation.
Many of the most successful communist projects in the world were created by anarchists.
I haven't seen anyone talking about this and just wanted to make a quick post on here.
Akihiro Miwa recently passed away peacefully june 20th, and was not only a drag queen and a queer icon, but also the japanese voice of Arceus in the movie Arceus and the jewel of life, as well as the witch from Howl's moving castle and Moro from Princess Mononke.
Rest in peace and thank you for the wonderfull impact you made in this world.
This is what I meant by how a lot of white supremacy is projection.
"I feel like my penis/my Manhood as a symbol is smaller than Black man's" becomes "Black men have oversized penises and are sexually insatiable beasts."
"I am sexually attracted to, fetishizing, and feel entitled to Black women's bodies" becomes "well she's asking for it, look at how she looks, Black women are always more openly sexual."
"I am afraid of approaching Black men" becomes "Black men are a threat."
"I am afraid of approaching Black women" becomes "Black women are always angry."
"I am not smart enough/not qualifed enough/can't beat my white counterparts professionally" becomes "DEI and affirmative action are letting those Blacks steal my position in school/jobs!"
Your own fears and insecurities about yourself somehow become a reflection of my humanity, when it had nothing to do with anything. And somehow enough people think that and now it's systemic instead of the made up nonsense it always was. Ijeoma Oluo called it mediocrity, James Baldwin called racism the white man's problem, and they remain correct.
This has been my main argument against "AI" from the very beginning.
OpenAI scraped the entire web. All of which had been a labor of love from humans. Wikipedia is the backbone of a lot of LLMs, and that was volunteer human labor. They stole it and now they're selling it back to us.
And worse, they're trying to destroy the free sources that they stole from. It's destruction of human knowledge on an unprecedented scale. The burning of the library of Alexandria has nothing on this.
Being asexual and racist is embarassing as fuck. Being racist at all is obviously embarassing as fuck but the amount of racism and especially antiblackness i have been seeing from asexuals recently is obscene.
One of the only asexual activists is Yasmin Benoit, a Black woman. She has raised so much awareness for the community. She was the first asexual person to lead Pride in London, she started the #thisiswhatasexuallookslike movement and is THE leading voice for the community.
And you all will celebrate international asexuality day on April 6th but we wouldn't even have that if she hadn't cofounded it.
Edit: why are you all too scared to repost this. Cmon. Be vocal about being against racism
So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.
Pro GenAI websites/Programs:
Facebook
Instagram
X/Twitter (Remember, Grok gives people cancer)
Threads
Pro Writing Aid
Grammarly
Duolingo
Google Docs
Microsoft Word/all Microsoft products Takes from and will feed their machine.
Youtube (taking advantage of people who are hearing impaired. ==;;)
Adobe Products. All of them. If you HAVE to use them (Some businesses require it), save offline because there is a film of at least some privacy protections there, so if you have to sue, you can say it violates US privacy law. Remember, contracts do not circumvent US law.
Corel won't feed the machines, but still uses AI stolen from other artists. Which sucks since Corel Draw is the second best overall for vector programs. (Plus I love Painter, but I bought the offline version to avoid AI). (Canadian company)
Canva Takes and feeds their machine.
Deviant Art Not only supports AI, but put a tool in and said they are going to steal your work if you like it or not for their machine.
Sketchup went Pro-GenAI. The thing is that you can do the same thing in Blender these days with precise measurements.
Autodesk has stated they are Pro-Gen AI here. It is not clear if they will use your models to feed their machine. But be on guard. They make Maya and 3Dmax. You can replace it with Blender.
Neutral ground:
Tumblr (there is a way to opt out [Link] and they don't have an active AI machine.) https://www.tumblr.com/dookins/743519550598987776/heres-how-to-disable-third-parties-like-ai
Etsy allows GenAI, but still has some (minor) restrictions. I'd still be cautious. (Also be cautious of drop shippers). Complaints about too much AI and AI images+patterns made by Ai still exist on the website. They lean slightly more pro-AI, but still won't let it run completely amok, say like Facebook. They won't feed your work into a machine, but also don't ban it through robots.txt.
Bluesky They don't use an AI algorithm except for in the "Discover" section of their website, but while they are anti-GenAI strongly, they don't seem to block the Gen AI bots from entry, so you'd still have to use Nightshade or Glaze (links below). There is no opt-out because they don't need an opt out. (Leaning towards strong position on AI, but I wish they would block GenAI bots).
Searxng- If you super want to screw over Google, in general, and have some tech savvy, you can set up your own search engine through searxng. It's easier on Windows and Linux than it is on a Mac. (Mac you need Docker), but if you're determined on privacy, Searxng adds a layer of privacy. Some of it sometimes uses bits of AI, but most of it doesn't and you can fuss with the settings so it doesn't spit out AI results. At sheer minimum Google will stop spitting out weird videos on Youtube at you because in your private browsing, you searched for the origin of ball bearings while not logged in for a book and Google likes to break privacy laws.
Strong positions against AI:
Scrivener (Creator vowed against AI) Writing program. There is an active forum, and versions for Mac, Linux and PC. It is paid, but at ~60 USD, it's cheaper than most programs. There is usually a holiday sale around Christmas. It has a learning curve, but with an active forum with the programmer of it there to ask obscure questions it's not a dead zone. They often take suggestions and implement them over time. (Especially if you rank the importance, applications, etc) US company.
LibreOffice Open source and free Spreadsheet and Word processor program that can replace Microsoft Word. Some people might have seen older versions where it was called Neo Office (now extinct) and Open Office. LibreOffice is still populated, plus the forums are super helpful if you get stuck. The UX is pretty intuitive if you've used Microsoft Word. Scrivener, BTW, supports exporting to odt (the native file) as well as .doc, and this can open both. The slight thing is that sometimes it doesn't export to .doc smoothly. And I DO wish more magazines, and agent (big clue here) supported .odt files since it is free. Part of the reason .odt isn't as supported is because Microsoft and Adobe have a deal with the devil with each other, so Adobe's Book formatting program InDesign doesn't support ODT. (BTW, if you have a good open source replacement for InDesign that supports ODT, let me know.)
Dabble (as suggested by SF stories, see reblog) is a writing program. Similar to Scrivener. Has vowed against AI and to resist it. 108 dollars a year for Basic. It is almost twice the price of Scrivener who lets you update for fairly cheap. 29 dollars a month, v. 59 dollars for the whole program (Scrivener) for the same features of Premium. You choose.
yWriter is a free Writing program and like Scrivener, and has vowed against AI Last I looked it had some UX issues, but some people swear by it. The learning curve is higher than Scrivener which is saying something.
Ellipsus is an online writing program and vowed against AI. The main feature I like (which Scrivener doesn't have) is the ability to change spellcheck based on region/language. It is a requested feature of Scrivener, but lower priority. So if you have a Brit, you can get the spelling for the character. They are a British-based company.
Cara.app (The creator of the website sued GenAI there is no chance they'll convert) is an artist website. Cara is trying to institute an auto Glaze/Nightshade into the website if given enough funds. People see it as a soft replacement for deviant art. (which went fully AI) If you believe in human art, please donate if you can. Zhang Jingna, the Creator,is Chinese-Singporean. She lives in Singapore.
Clip Studio Paint added AI, but saw the light and decided to protect artists instead because of protest and removed it. There are tutorials and a good forum if you get super stuck. Based in Japan, so the UI and UX is really clean.
Davinci Resolve Pro is a film editing software that's super good. There is a free version and a paid version. The forums are responsive. The programmers aren't always present. There is a healthy group of tutorials. US company. Clean UX. It does take a little bit of time to remember the shortcuts.
Tahoma2D is anti-AI and open source animation program. Takes a little getting used to, but is good for animations and doesn't crash as often as Animate. Programmers are in the forums and some bugs are fixed within hours. The forums are super responsive and helpful.
Krita open source and free, no AI. I'd rank it secondary to Clip Studio Paint (which is paid) I haven't tried the forums, but it's pretty intuitive and can stand for a lower level replacement for Painter, and do a lot of the basics of Photoshop. It's usually ranked higher than the equally open source Gimp.
Writer P AKA Writer+ (app for when you're on the go) is a simple word processor app for your phone that doesn't use AI. The original programmer stopped updating, so Writer+ person took over and isn't out to make a profit since it's free in the spirit of the original app. It has subfolders you can use. Since it was programmed before GenAI it doesn't have AI. Intuitive, easy to use. Fairly easy to upload the files through three dots->share. The files can save to your card or phone with some settings fussing. Simple word processor.
Inkscape is a free vector program and no AI. It is harder to use than illustrator and has less features. But if you're doing smaller vectors for one-offs with less complexity, it'll do you after some learning curve. Best of the lot. I hate Affinity Designer which is the same thing, only paid. (Neither Affinity program was worth the money paid)
Affinity (Designer, etc) swore to be AI-free and does Vector and Photos. The UX is messy, I dislike the program and regret paying for it. Inkscape and Krita are better UX and do the same thing. The forums aren't as friendly since there has been an onslaught of people seeing it's supposed to be a replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator, but the programmers aren't present. The people on the forums are often on edge about this assertion. And the capabilities of the program don't outshine basically Krita or Inkscape capabilities (both free). What is usually intuitive is not. UK company. If you're going to pay for a program, go for Clip Studio Paint which rivals Corel Painter.
Blender is a 3D art program and does not use GenAI. It can do 2D animation, but Tahoma is easier to use in this regard. It's open source and free. Plus there are plenty of tutorials. The forums can be touch and go sometimes, but there are plenty of sub Blender communities that might be responsive. It can also do animation.
Handmade vowed against AI and promised to never sell itself for stock prices to prevent AI (as a replacement for Etsy.)
Discover a world of creativity and craftsmanship through Handmade, an innovative platform connecting passionate artisans with discerning buy
Proton (to replace Google Suite) as suggested by SF Stories (see reblog) Vowed against AI. They are missing a spreadsheet, but have online and offline capabilities, plus a built-in VPN.
But you need a pro website...
Look up robots.txt and AI bots: https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/block-openai-bard-bing-ai-crawler-bots-using-robots-txt-file/
Use cloudflare:
Use Nightshade:
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
which will poison the algorithm
Use Glaze:
Take Away:
The thing is you think you doing it alone will do nothing, but the more AI feeds on itself, AI images, the worse they become, and the less detailed so, denying it the images, adding poison or not being able to read the human text is eventually going to lead to an AI collapse.
Analysis shows that indiscriminately training generative artificial intelligence on real and generated content, usually done by scrapi
And why not help that along?
I don't want to give cancer to poor people [Link] or make the planet burn faster [Link]. So GenAI collapse is everything I dream of. GenAI apocalypse is not.
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