Heyo, I'm Kichi Kumaboshi! Come hang out with me when I stream on my Twitch page! I use #RakugaKichi as my fanart tag, if you want to browse that! Member of VTUC: VTubers Under Construction
If you're in LGBT friendly spaces and someone introduces themselves and cautiously says they're fine with any pronouns, it is your duty to notice which pronouns the people around you tend to default to for them and ensure that you refer to them with any and every pronoun under the sun except for that one. You must.
The way I see it, there are two situations where you'll encounter this:
1) this person is secure in their gender identity, and genuinely does not care what pronouns you use. In this situation, it'll probably appreciate the diversity in pronouns you're using for xem and honestly probably won't even notice that you're not using one of the more common options
2) this person is NOT secure in their gender identity and does not know what pronouns fae'd actually prefer to hear, and most likely does not want to be referred to using the pronouns typically associated with their gender assigned at birth but is too afraid to say this aloud - in which case, by avoiding this you let zer actually experiment and hear a variety of pronouns that it may otherwise miss out on - and you are doing faer a favor
In either case, you are doing zero harm by avoiding the commonly used pronouns and are possibly helping. So why not give it a try?
'dating rules' are so fucking stupid btw. "don't talk too much about your hyperfixation on a first date, it'll scare them off!!" it'll only scare them off if they're a coward. Someone worthy of my affections will listen to me talk about my goal of visiting every whale exhibit with a life-sized effigy of a whale in it in the world for a solid half-hour and come away from that experience desiring me carnally.
One time I went on a date with a guy who stared at me with raised eyebrows while I told him about my plan to go to ComicCon as Daphne Blake, and then he scoffed and said it was weird for me to be so into Scooby Doo at the age of 19. Last year I told my boyfriend (before he was my boyfriend) that next time I got ComicCon tickets I wanted to go as Rapunzel, and he gasped and said "NO WAY I WANTED TO GO AS FLYNN RIDER". So, like, not only is talking about your hyperfixations on an early date a good way to learn quickly if someone is going to treat your whole personality with respect or not, you might also find a kindred spirit.
This doesn't just apply to dating btw. Any platonic acquaintance who acts like you're cringe for having a lot of enthusiasm about something is not someone you want in your life. The people who matter will do things that you want to do with you because they love you and like when you are happy. Case in point I could not have paid my high school official-best-friend to spend four and a half hours in London's Natural History Museum taking photos in the whale gallery but my adulthood best friend agreed in a heartbeat despite knowing the bare minimum about whales.
So yeah. Be openly enthusiastic about the things you love and the right people will love you for it.
Please be aware that the "opt-out" choice is just a way to try to appease people. But Tumblr has not been transparent about when has data been sold and shared with AI companies, and there are sources that confirm that data has already been shared before the toggle was even provided to users.
Also, it seems to include data they should not have been able to give under any circumstance, including that of deactivated blogs, private messages and conversations, stuff from private blogs, and so on.
Do not believe that "AI companies will honor the "opt-out request retroactively". Once they've got their hands on your data (and they have), they won't be "honoring" an opt-out option retroactively. There is no way to confirm or deny what data do they have: The fact they are completely opaque on what do they currently "own" and have, means that they can do whatever they want with it. How can you prove they have your data if they don't give everyone free access to see what they've stolen already?
So, yeah, opt out of data sharing, but be aware that this isn't stopping anyone from taking your data. They already have been taking it, before you were given that option. Go and go to Tumblr's Suppport and leave your Feedback on this (politely, but firmly- not everyone in the company is responsible for this.)
Finally: Opt out is not good under any circumstance. Deactivated people can't opt out. People who have lost their passwords can't opt out. People who can't access internet or computers can't opt out. People who had their content reposted can't opt out. Dead people can't opt out. When DeviantArt released their AI image generator, saying that it wasn't trained on people who didn't consent to it, it was proven it could easily replicate the styles of people who had passed away, as seen here. So, yeah. AI companies cannot be trusted to have any sort of respect for people's data and content, because this entire thing is just a data laundering scheme.
IN ADDITION, THIS ISN'T HOW AI WORKS.
You can't just "remove some of the training data." This is part of the big problem OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT) has that led to comments about how being forced to share all their training data would ruin them. Of COURSE there's the fact that then others could ALSO use that training data, but the bigger issue is that the training data only matters to, as the name implies, train the AI. The AI doesn't have a database of all the training data that you can just remove a couple pieces from and say it's no longer an issue. Those pieces were already used to train the AI, and the training remains. They could technically throw out ALL their training data without affecting the current iteration of chatGPT at all! The training is already done, they don't need that data anymore unless they want to refine it's capabilities or update it in anther way that would require them to retrain it.
Similarly, if Tumblr already sent the data, it doesn't matter if they remove the data from the training set anymore if Midjourney don't fully retrain the model on the updated dataset with items removed. That's not how AI works, you can't just remove a few things, the whole model has to be retrained on the new data, potentially multiple times if things go wrong. It's one of the big problems with the AI market as it exists now, and why as many others have pointed out, it needs to be opt in instead of opt out. Because if opting out can be done at any time, that means constant retraining of their models, something just about no company will do because it would be truly prohibitively difficult in terms of time, effort, and resources. In fact, given how long it takes to train models on datasets of this size, it's not even really possible to do on more than, at best, a week basis, which isn't exactly obeying the spirit of opt out statements.
tl;dr: By making it opt-in instead of opt-out, they're basically hoping they can use your data for all it's worth while simultaneously tricking you into thinking they didn't. It's a super scummy move.
it gets worse: funi had an option to buy anime outright. but, it was bought digitally, and now CR has said that they're not going to honor that, so if you bought anything from funi digitally, CR are taking that away from you
This is absolutely insane but the part that I find funny is that there isn't a community on earth more dedicated to piracy than western anime fans. For ages the only way to even get your hands on anime and manga in the west was piracy. I literally don't think Crunchyroll could have picked a worse group to try the "we're a monopoly so we can charge you whatever we want" play on. I doubt there's a person over the age of 25 who saw that and thought anything other than "welp, okay, piracy it is then!" like honestly the Crunchyroll executives are out of their fucking minds with this one.
What I think a lot of new fans miss is that... there used to be rules.
I have now run anime cons for 20 years. I got into anime in the period where the internet was rising, and legal access to this stuff was sparse, and generally limited to the biggest titles. I bought Fruits Basket on four. Separate. DVDs. I got each ON SALE for around 20.00. I paid EIGHTY PLUS DOLLARS for 4 DVDs of Fruits Basket.
But most of my early access was on blank DVDs with names and episode numbers written clumsily in sharpie. Handed over by friends, traded at con meetings, mailed to me by a friend via media mail. Fansubs and bootlegs, torrented and copied endlessly.
But there used those be a rule. A covenant. Unbreakable. Once a property was licensed, all illegal distribution stopped. Instantly.
The last episode of Fullmetal Alchemist I saw involved Hughes in a phone booth. The series was licensed right after that, and all access stopped. Fansubbers closed their listings, torrents dried up.
Because the end goal was licensing. We wanted nice, physical copies. We wanted professional, properly coded subtitles. We wanted an English Dub cast. We wanted to make anime a viable industry in the West.
So we bought Fruits Basket for eighty goddamn dollars.
So as I reach bitterly for my DVD burner yet again, it's time to remember. We upheld our part of the bargain. We bought it legally from them. We paid to see this industry grow and thrive.
Something that gave H.P. Lovecraft nightmares is the work of my favorite artist. In "At the Mountains of Madness" he specifically mentions "the strange and disturbing Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich."
It genuinely never occurred to me that there could be an actual real-world artist that he was referring to. Holy shit. Those are... extremely not horrifying.
Good question right? Well, last life post I talked about how I had gotten very busy then sick. Well...the truth, to put it bluntly, is that I was basically sick for 3 months straight.
The tl;dr on this is that ultimately, I had to leave Japan for health reasons, and come back to America in hopes I would get better. I have now returned, and within a week I am feeling almost completely better, so I'm gonna be getting back to streaming while I work on finding a new job. But for those who want more details, feel free to go through the read more.
That problem with my lungs didn't go away. They ran multiple tests on me, and found no allergies, or any other kind of sign of what was causing the inflammation in my lungs. It got a little better for a while, then gradually got worse again. For a few weeks, I was able to ride my bike to get places here and there. But, not long after I made that last update, my bike actually ended up getting stolen, and I never got it back, or any compensation for it, despite the place I left it having security cameras for this exact reason.
Not that it mattered much. The following week, I found myself barely able to climb stairs. I had an upcoming trip to Tokyo, for which I'd already paid, so I decided to go. Surprisingly, on the trip, I found my lungs feeling way better, and my legs and feet ached from all the walking and running I did, though I did still have some lung issues. By the last of the 4 days in Tokyo, I was tired, but my lungs felt pretty good. Then I came back to my city I lived in, and before even getting to my apartment, I was feeling worse.
On another trip to the doctor, I talked about this and basically got told "Well we can either do some intensive testing which could take months, or you could move away." At this point, with a doctor recommendation, and my chest almost always exhausted from just the effort of breathing, I looked into returning to America.
So that should give me more free time, right? Not really, sadly. I was still working for another two weeks while starting my preparations to leave. Despite repeated requests for help, neither my school nor any sort of management really helped me out, so it was mostly me and whatever help I could get from friends, none of whom had familiarity with the departure process.
During this time, my wife came to visit, and was a huge help, but after seeing me in person, was increasingly worried for my health. She was having to slow down her walking speed to that I could keep up without running out of breath, whereas normally it's very much the opposite for us. We had a good time while she was around, and she really helped lighten my load in moving back. She returned about a week and a half before I was scheduled to, and it was only after that that I started getting help from much of anyone locally. My last 3 days there really ran me ragged, especially since I had sold my car and had to get places by walking and busses.
So, I finally came home, with a desperate hope I would feel better, and as said, within a week, I'm able to exercise again! I can run, I can play beat saber, and work up a sweat without running out of breath too bad. So, the bad news is "so much for my job and life in Japan" but the good news is I am healthy again!
That said, from months of not playing Beat Saber, my stamina and capability have taken a hit, so I'll probably be streaming a lot of that for a while, so look forward to the Beat Saber Recovery Arc! Anyways, that's all from me for now, I'll hopefully see ya'all soon!
I Need you all to stop and watch this fucking video in its entirety. Even if you have seen clips of this scene, you need to watch the full thing. This is the most batshit thing ever put onto tv and it’s how the fucking season STARTS
i know the 'is mcdonalds a date' questions making its rounds but i feel kind of insane bc thats never even been a metric for me. a date is just when someone says its a date. i went on a date w someone to smoke in a building w a caved in cieling in the rain, shoplifted from a gas station paranoid as hell to get them a soft pretzel and then we chased a rat around. where is your sense of adventure people
also ill be honest now in a relationship w my bf for almost four years and living together for two... the person whos gonna stick w u is the one that even a mcdonalds date sounds fun with. theyre the person whos gonna understand when youre tired from work and just want to watch a movie together. or understands when u cant do something grandiose and just wants to be with you.
if you cant learn to like the person you're with and not the expectation youve built in your mind for who they SHOULD be, you'll never love like that. you'll miss the person right in front of you, and thats the saddest thing of all.
Hey everyone! I know I said I'd be around here and there, and then promptly didn't proceed to do that, so lemme give ya'all a quick recap of what's been going on, but the tl;dr is I've been sick for most of a month, and was ridiculously busy before that.
So, pretty soon after my last short stream, I had a LOT of work happen at once. To be fair, this is partly my fault. I had offered to go for an activity a few weeks ahead of time. This happened to line up badly. I won't go into details (as I've said, no talking about work details publicly for both my coworkers' and students' safety), but long story short, I had a mad dash of work stuff that kept be busy for about 2 weeks before things evened out again. (Worth noting, this was not unfair. I was properly compensated, and part of it was due to a choice I actually made myself, so do not think the school forced anything on me please.) This left me with close to no time, so no stream during that period.
So then what? Well...I had bad sushi that's what. I was out for 3 days with food poisoning. Then then the next week my throat and nose decided it was their turn, and I was out for most of that week too. Though my dead voice recovered, and I could breathe more easily, so I could work the next week, the cough and runny nose have persisted, and I didn't want to stream like that and push my throat harder.
Today I've gone to the doctor over trouble breathing, and have been told my lungs are clearly inflamed. Tests have shown I don't have COVID or flu, so they are assuming it's a dust allergy, but I have only ever had a reaction anything close to like this once when I was working unloading the truck for a retail store. (That dust is real bad guys!) If I'm having a reaction like this, there must be something causing it. They still have tests that are gonna take time to give results, so I will see how those come back next week, but as is I am in no shape to stream. Even walking across my apartment sometimes has me gasping for breath. They've given me meds, which hopefully will help out, but for the time being, expect me to still be low activity till I recover...whenever that is.
Anyways, sickness aside, I have really enjoyed my time here, but I'm not gonna lie that this sickness is testing the limits of my patience. We will see how things go from here!
In the meantime, I may do some posts with pictures to show you all some of the cool things I've seen and places I've been, as I can do that without straining my throat, so keep an eye out for them!
the wonderful thing about spell card duels is that you just have to actually have some idea of how to participate in a spell card duel. and then no matter how badly you get your ass kicked your opponent isn't allowed to kill you. it's quite handy
Per the draft rules, there doesn't seem to be any such specification there.
On the other hand, I don't think anyone's going to care too much about "an outsider threw a rock at me technically starting a spell card battle but I killed them anyway"— so it just depends on whether you're really funny about it. If you have the "vibes of Gensoukyou" so to speak.
In practice, likely correct. However, it is really funny.
(Notably, the villagers don't seem to be aware of the spell card rules, otherwise they'd run around willy nilly outside of the village doing things like using Rice Sign "I'm A Normal Rice Farmer")
As a Jew, seeing what's going on, I'd like to say that this is super important. Many say condemning Israel is antisemitic, but that is far from true. We agree these are atrocities and wish to stop them too.
The phrase, "Never again for anyone" is literally something we, as Jews, regularly say about what we learned from the Holocaust. That it was a tragedy and we should prevent anyone from having to go through something like that again. Israel, on the other hand, has decided to just do it to someone else. Suffering a holocaust and then turning around and saying "holocausts are fine and reasonable sometimes actually" is so horrific I don't even know where to start.
"Palestinians should be FREE" is directly playing off of something we say every year at Passover: "In Egypt we were slaves, but now we are free. Not everyone is yet free, may next year all people be free." Palestinians are people, and this includes them.
The history of Jews is riddled with oppression, discrimination, and atrocities. Most of our holidays we spend remembering this, celebrate that we still persist and exist, and use these to remind to us make a better world for all, where no one has to suffer like we did. Yet Israel has decided that to just perpetuate these atrocities. It is not antisemitic to condemn what Israel is doing, most Jews outside Israel agree it's horrible.
Please help us put a stop to it. Please stop silencing people who point out how horrific it is. No peoples deserve this. Please save the Palestinians.
Delaying stream by a half hour! I thought I'd get back from my morning run faster than I did! Need to shower cause I am a ball of sweat and I'm not streaming like that xD
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