A Stitch Away From Making It

Random Weirdness at Semi-Regular Intervals

[apoemaday]

Upon the Hearth the Fire Is Red

by J.R.R. Tolkien

Upon the hearth the fire is red, Beneath the roof there is a bed; But not yet weary are our feet, Still round the corner we may meet A sudden tree or standing stone That none have seen but we alone.

Tree and flower and leaf and grass, Let them pass! Let them pass! Hill and water under sky, Pass them by! Pass them by!

Still round the corner there may wait A new road or a secret gate, And though we pass them by today, Tomorrow we may come this way And take the hidden paths that run Towards the Moon or to the Sun.

Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe, Let them go! Let them go! Sand and stone and pool and dell, Fare you well! Fare you well!

Home is behind, the world ahead, And there are many paths to tread Through shadows to the edge of night, Until the stars are all alight. The world behind and home ahead, We’ll wander back to home and bed.

Mist and twilight, cloud and shade, Away shall fade! Away shall fade! Fire and lamp, and meat and bread, And then to bed! And then to bed!

[tiktoks-i-enjoyed]

Clip of Lucy Dacus on the Las Culturistas podcast.

[dduane]

Nasty and sophisticated scam: BEWARE of this!

That "Pending PayPal Charge" Email Is a Scam — Even Though It Really Came From PayPal

If an email recently landed in your inbox with a subject line like "Pending charge of USD 987.90 for account activation. Questions? Call 855

Don’t get caught off guard by this. It’s quite a slick one.

[kerryweaverlesbian]

What to actually do If you get one of these, the answer is boring and it works every time: Don't call the number. Don't reply. Don't click links in the email — not even the unsubscribe link. Open a fresh browser tab, type paypal.com yourself, and log into your account. Check your activity. You'll see either nothing, or a tiny incoming payment from a stranger that you can ignore. Then forward the original email as an attachment to [email protected] and delete it. If you want to go a step further, report the phone number to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov — every report makes it slightly harder for these operations to keep running. And if you've already called? Don't beat yourself up — these scams are designed by professionals to fool smart people. Hang up, run a malware scan if you installed anything they asked you to install, change your PayPal and bank passwords from a different device, and call your bank's real fraud line (the number on the back of your card) to flag your accounts. Move fast, but you don't need to panic.

from the above linked article. For the UK the email to forward phishing scams to is [email protected], texts can be forwarded on to 7726 (for free!) and as a victim of fraud you can report it here (or here for Scotland)

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

— If an email recently landed in your inbox with a subject line like "Pending charge of USD 987.90 for account activation. Questions? Call [phone]" — don't call that number. Don't click anything. And whatever you do, don't panic-dial to "stop the charge."

You're being targeted by one of the cleverest scams going right now, and the reason it works is uncomfortable: the email genuinely came from PayPal.

The trick is in the subject line, not the email

When most people think "phishing email," they picture sketchy senders, broken English, and links to weird domains. This scam is the opposite. The email passes every authenticity check — SPF, DKIM, DMARC, all green. It comes from PayPal's actual mail servers. The fonts are right. The footer is right. The unsubscribe link works. If you forwarded it to a security expert and asked "is this really from PayPal?" they'd have to say yes.

So how is it a scam?

Scammers have figured out that PayPal lets anyone send small amounts of money to anyone else, and that PayPal will dutifully email the recipient a notification. The scammer sends you a payout of, say, one Hungarian forint — about a quarter of a cent. PayPal's system then automatically generates and sends you a real, legitimate, fully-authenticated email confirming the transaction.

Here's the catch: the email's subject line is whatever the scammer typed when they set up the payout. PayPal doesn't sanitize it. So they write something terrifying like "Pending charge of USD 987.90 — call this number with questions" and PayPal's servers cheerfully deliver that subject line straight to your inbox, wrapped in a perfectly legitimate-looking notification.

The actual transaction in the email body is for 1 forint. There is no $987.90 charge. There never was. But by the time most people read carefully enough to notice that, they've already dialed the number. —

[cheaphalloweencostume]

not to be insensitive but some of the salem witch trials were so funny bitches like “i saw her at the devils sacrament!!!” girl... what were YOU doing at the devils sacrament 👀

[cheaphalloweencostume]

happy birthday devils sacrament. i wish you were never born

[nasa]

That's us, together.

While we're looking up at the Artemis II astronauts journeying to the Moon, they're looking back home at us. 

In this image, Earth peeks through the capsule window, reminding us that a view like this relies on the ingenuity and hard work of countless people back home.

In the second image, we see our home planet as a whole, lit up in spectacular blues and browns. A green aurora even lights up the atmosphere.

Follow the Artemis II astronauts on their journey to the Moon:

[kim-jong-chill]

i need feminism because when jesus does a magic trick it’s a goddamn miracle but when a woman does a magic trick she gets burned at the stake

[mattheuphonium-blog]

fabulous 

[tockthewatchdog-deactivated2020]

i mean they did also kill jesus. that was a pretty significant thing that happened. like i understand where you’re coming from here but they very much did kill jesus.

[counterpunches]

#HAPPY GOOD FRIDAY

[pusheen]

[s-lycopersicum]

Oh, you think you're safe now?

Nothing can deliver you from these paws!

[skimmer-vode]

Reblog to animatedly boop your followers

[d3sertfisher]

WET

BEAST

WENSDAY!!!!

*soggy boiiiii*

[transformativeworks]

Spotlight on Omegas at AO3

In a society that values alphas and betas, omegas can often be overlooked. This April 1st, we're placing omegas front and center at AO3. Check our latest news post for details: https://otw-news.org/7ehh7trb

[thekeymonster]

No kings.

[tumblr]

Reblogs in a chain now get their own notes

The reblog chain is one of the things that makes Tumblr unlike anywhere else. All the notes on reblogs are attributed to the original post, no matter which branch people actually liked or reblogged. We want to keep encouraging conversations, and give contributors the recognition they deserve. 

Soon, you'll be able to like, reblog, or reply to any part of a reblog chain, and that note will go to that reblog's author. Each reblog will have its own counts, instead of one aggregated number from every version of the post. And yes, you’ll be able to like multiple posts in one chain.

If a reblog doesn't add anything, the love flows up to the last person in the chain who did. Your post doesn't lose notes just because people spread it quietly.

Past notes will stay on the original post — we're only changing what happens from here on out. Retroactively re-attributing all of them would be... a lot.

This is just the beginning. More changes are coming as we keep building this out – stay tuned!

[tumblr]

Let's talk about reblog notes.

We rolled out a significant change to how notes work on reblogs, and the reaction has been strong. We're not going to pretend otherwise. 

First things first: We're reversing the change. Your feedback in comments, emails, and especially reblogs, made clear that the rollout created problems we need to address before moving forward. We also should have communicated this differently from the start, and we didn't.

We still believe there's a better version of how reblogs can work. One that gives every voice in a chain the credit it deserves. But we want to get there with you.

In the coming days we'll share more on how we plan to do that,  including ways to work directly with some of you on this and future changes before they ship.

Keep an eye on @staff for updates to come soon. 

[ngalitzine]

[seananmcguire]

Okay, so...why? Why does every contributor to a post need to get the "credit they deserve"? We're building something collective here, absolutely, but the first person to say that they could get a good grade in something it was normal to want and possible to achieve started this. Nine thousand derivative jokes don't deserve the "credit."

It's easy to follow a blueprint. Glory to the architect.

[innerimp]

Also, that was already a thing you could do. I can tap on the area next to that person's name and it would take me to the post where they made that addition, and I can like/reblog it from there. And if they want to keep track of it they can subscribe to the post and get notifications for it. (That's still a thing, right? Unless they nuked that at some point.)

And ironically, if this is about people getting proper attribution for their addition, why severe it from the original poster? Does that person no longer deserve their credit, or the interactions it can drum up? This will just discourage people from making any posts. Why bother at all if someone else can come along and basically steal your notes?

This doesn't even touch on the horrible potential as a breeding ground for harassment and abuse.

[sapphling]

bigots can now reblog your selfie or personal post, mock it, and block you, and if you don't see it the second it happens, it can spread to thousands of their ilk with literally no possible way for you to know, unless you happen to be on one of their blogs and come across it. are you comfortable with this? i know i'm not.

[staff]

we fucked up

[estel0903]

Tumblr every march 15th

[robertreich]

The state of Trump's union.

[ayeforscotland]

ICE now tackling press.

Source.

[lostinhistory]

[stele3]

Interview where he talks about what happened.

[flavinbagel]

A photographer for Getty isn't even a journalist so much as an archivist. ICE violently disrupted the apolitical documentation of what they were doing, violating any and all rights that might flimsily stand in their way. It would have been just as wrong had they done this to an MSNBC reporter hellbent on a spin, but now Abernathy's neutral action as a photographer has been rendered necessarily political by ICE's violence.

They know what they're doing is objectively evil. They have no intention of stopping.

[blaka-smoko]

previous tags from @nihilisticspacequeer, which provide a bit of context for why Abernathy threw his (extremely expensive) camera