So, I assume most of you don't know, but there is a bit of drama inside the Paralives community. It's funny because this whole thing is revolving around The Sims 3.
TwistedMexi made his first paywalled "early access" mod called Sims 3 Camera, and I've been working on the same thing as he was.
1. Let's get the "clone" allegation out of the way first.
(Source: TwistedMexi's discord server)
TwistedMexi is accusing me of cloning his mod, but let’s look at the facts. Thankfully, I always use GitHub, so the commit dates are there to prove it.
(2026-05-26 22:27:02 +0200) is a timestamp of the first commit with hash d82ddd909e06833b0f8d5d439ad602d04a4f3e08
(2026-05-27T19:57:44.000+00:00) is a timestamp of the publication date of his Patreon post.
Honestly, I didn't know I could see the future, but ok.
2. The second thing I want to address is that currently there are a lot of awful comments directed at Tmex. PLEASE do not harass other creators.
3. Regarding early access and paywalls: My mods are developed in my spare time as a passion project. I believe in keeping my work accessible to everyone, which is why all of my content will remain completely free, forever. I believe the community should play a role in maintaining projects if the original creator steps away, which is why I always share the source code for my projects
Free mods are a pillar of a healthy community, whereas paywalls only lead to gatekeeping and unnecessary drama. My hope is that more creators choose to release their mods in a way that prioritizes community growth and shared resources.
A reblog would be greatly appreciated to help spread this message.
Thanks for reading,
xoxo, Arro
Ps. If you want to see a broader discussion on this topic, I recommend this Reddit post that goes way more in-depth than I do. It's a good read.
paywalling mods for an early access game is in poor taste. it's tacky. gauche. but to then accuse someone of cloning your mod when they've released there's for free? i'm looking at you like you've just cropdusted at a funeral
Doing small render projects here and there and Aevie is just very photogenic no matter what I do so naturally I picked it as a model again. I also believe this is the first time I post its human disguise, which I am ALSO very fond of 😌🧡
(this list is mainly ways non-locals can donate but by extension offers a lot of resources and places to volunteer in the Twin Cities + there are specific ways to donate time under the cut which can be adjusted to your local neighborhood)
full credit to cataloo from r/minnesota [x]
🩵Immigrant support
Immigrant Defense Network – coalition of 90+ groups organizing rapid response and collecting evidence.
Immigrant Law Center of MN – free immigration legal representation to low-income immigrants and refugees.
COPAL – advocacy, organizing, phone hotline. Focus on Latine community.
Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) – education and protest organizing.
Interfaith Coalition on Immigration – advocacy, aid, events.
Monarca MN – training and phone hotline.
Unidos MN – education, protests, advocacy.
Center for Victims of Torture – advocacy and mental health services for immigrants and refugees.
International Institute of Minnesota – refugee resettlement group that provides support and legal help to vulnerable new-to-country families.
Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota – offers services to refugees, including legal aid to non-citizens.
🩵Food support
If local, food donations are welcome, otherwise monetary donations help these types of orgs source what is most needed
VEAP
Second Harvest Heartland
Every Meal
The Food Group
Meals on Wheels MN
Find a local food shelf
🩵Mutual aid funds & community support
Community Aid Network
Twin Cities Trans Mutual Aid
Leo's Tow (Venmo @leostowingmn) is towing cars back to families if a car is stranded when someone is detained.
🩵More links
MN50501 Mutual Aid Linktree – well-organized list of various Twin Cities groups.
Mplsmutualaid Linktree – many neighborhood and individual GoFundMes listed here.
Mpls.St.Paul Magazine – see Food Drives and Fundraisers.
Stand with Minnesota – extensive list of organizations, mutual aid, and crowdfunding campaigns.
🩵Donate blood
Memorial Blood Center declared a blood emergency on Tuesday, Jan 13. MBC is the blood supplier for both tier 1 trauma hospitals in the metro area (Hennepin County Medical Center and North Memorial Health).
American Red Cross
🩵Donate food or other goods
Mpls.St.Paul Magazine – see Food Drives and Fundraisers.
Volunteer your time (under the cut)
🩵Mutual aid
Reach out to your neighbors – especially if you know they are staying home right now – and ask if they need groceries or toiletry items. Offer to pick up prescriptions, give rides, or shovel their driveway. If you know them well, bring them a treat that you know they'll enjoy. Or just ask them how they're doing and let them know you are there to support.
Connect with any of the orgs above and see if they are looking for volunteers.
Connect with a church or mosque in your area. From u/MuddieMaeSuggins: "I know a lot of regular Redditors are not religious (myself included) but like it or not this is a where a lot of community organizing happens, especially in immigrant communities."
Connect with your local school's admin office and/or their PTA. It's ok to reach out even if you don't have kids at the school. PTAs are organizing mutual aid for school families, safe rides, school observers.
🩵Activism
Find an official protest or other event via Indivisible, 50501, FREE AMERICA, or MIRAC. Students at many high schools are staging walk-outs; if your local school is doing this, reach out to school leadership or the PTA and ask how you can support as a community member.
Join the effort to stop Hilton from housing ICE by booking hotel rooms and then cancelling at the last minute. This action can be done from home! The effort is being organized by Sunrise Movement, who are telling activists to target specific hotels one-by-one. More info: SHUT DOWN HILTON
Find people in your area who are actively monitoring ICE and/or stationing themselves in high-traffic areas and ask how you can help. Check for local FB events where people are organizing and just show up.
At minimum, read the COPAL Handbook before you go out to observe. The DFL, Monarca, and other orgs have been hosting online trainings for constitutional observers (though these fill up quickly).
When you see ICE in action, start recording. Be as loud and as disruptive as possible: honk your horn, set off your car alarm, blow your whistle. Let people know that ICE is in the area. If you see someone being detained, try to get their name and a phone number to call their emergency contact.
If you do not feel comfortable observing ICE in person, there are ways you can support from home. Just ask the people who are organizing in your area. I have social anxiety, and I had never participated in any kind of political action before this past Saturday. If I can do it, you can!
Local organizers are requesting that people who help monitor ICE DO NOT participate in 1-to-1 mutual aid efforts, as these can put the families you are helping at risk.
If you have friends/acquaintances who are sympathetic but not politically active, reach out to them. Show them that they're not alone in feeling helpless. Pick a few low-commitment actions from this list and do them together.
hey if this storm ends up being as it looks, you need to take it seriously, particularly if you're in a southern state and not used to storms like this. i'm not a professional but my new england experience for losing power/etc is:
fill your bathtub with water before the power goes out. in an emergency where the pipes freeze, you'll have semi-clean water. you can use this water for your pets, to wash dishes, flush your toilet, and other small important stuff. if you have no bathtub, fill as large a bin/pot/etc as you can find.
air is the best insulator. if you can tape plastic over your windows and major drafts, it will genuinely help. (they have kits for it, but i've used trash bags and duct tape). blankets/tarps/etc also work. leave space between the covering and the window - the layer of air protects you. shove towels under your doors.
in a true emergency, you can ball up newspapers and shove them into your coats/pants/etc between your base layer and your coat. it won't be comfortable but it does insulate a little better.
have an emergency plan for your pets, particularly animals like reptiles that need constant heat to survive.
the weight of the snow and ice will be an issue. plan accordingly.
black ice is a bitch. if it looks "wet", assume it is frozen. actually just assume everything is frozen for a little while.
if you do not have a generator or other emergency power source, DO NOT bring outside-use heat sources (like propane stoves) inside. you can gas yourself and die.
instead, if you truly have no heat source: focus on insulating a small amount of space in your house - a few rooms - and bring as many bodies and supplies in there as possible. do not break insulation if you can avoid it. you are a ~100-degree object. make your safe space into a blanket fort. you may go stircrazy but it is better than freezing.
if you have a fireplace you never use, check the flue and the chimney before the storm holy shit. i am not kidding about this. do not just start a fire willy nilly. you will burn your house down.
relatedly, if you start a fire and notice smoke is billowing back into the house: stop the fire immediately. your flue is closed or your chimney is backed up. you will burn your house down.
keep the fridge closed as long as possible; it lets the air out. but honestly like, my family has used snow as a fridge a lot. stuff that needs to stay cool will be less of an issue than things that need to get warm. plan accordingly.
most canned things can be eaten cold, but check the label. if you have a little sterno fire, it can go a long way.
if you develop a headache and feel weirdly sleepy, you may be forced to open a window. you might have carbon monoxide poisoning.
every year people die while shoveling snow. it is actually not very safe as a chore tbh. you need to go slow and take lots of breaks. you should also 100% wait until the snow has actually passed, only because when it starts shifting and undoes all your work, it will piss you the hell off.
have drinking water somewhere easily accessible. a lot more of it than you think completely necessary tbh.
fill your gas tank. it will help prevent your lines from freezing.
if you have a battery-powered light that's not very strong, put it under a water jug, it'll throw more light. idk why it works but it works.
just because you know how to drive in the snow doesn't mean other people know how to drive in the snow. better to just not.
your device probably has a "low power mode". probably best to just keep it on asap rather than be taken by surprise tbh. the battery will last longer.
great news to fanfiction writers: it really is better if y'all take one bed and huddle together for warmth. do not strip out of your clothes, though, i have no idea who the hell decided that was the smart thing to do. you want to keep at least a layer of leggings and a tight shirt on. the goal is to find the fine line between "warm" and "sweating" - you want to stay as dry as possible for as long as possible.
your hair, eyelashes, and nosehairs can freeze. just from personal experience: try not to rub or touch them, it can snap your hair off and then you'll be very sad.
hypothermia is a lot faster and more evil than most people expect. watch for shivering, confusion, and unexplained exhaustion. if someone stops shivering, that is not always a good sign. if you think you/someone you love has hypothermia, warm them up slowly. often this is through rubbing/friction (or a heat source if available). keep them awake and try to feed them something.
same for frostbite: don't just shove your hands into a fire. warm any affected area slowly. fair warning, as the blood recirculates, it will hurt :(
those blue rubber examination gloves under other gloves can help even very-cold hands stay warm.
liquor is not a good idea to drink right now, sorry beloved. but vodka/rubbing alcohol does work as an excellent de-icer if you need something small done quickly (like a lock/door handle). it's just, like, expensive in comparison to other things lol
"i don't eat that much anyway i'll be fine" that's the devil talking. you will not be. you will also probably be burning way more calories than normal. let the soft animal of your body eat a bunch of delicious snacks.
So, if you didn't know, EA is going to be introducing some kind of subscription service to the TS4.
Here is my prediction as to what this is and what's going to happen:
Right after the pre-order bonus period of Royalty & Legacy ends and they've tricked as many people as they can into impulse purchasing what leakers have claimed to be the last expansion pack, they are going to announce a new subscription system in which you can access all the packs you don't own for a (very expensive) monthly fee.
They'll probably also provide "cheaper alternatives" in which you can subscribe for specific dlcs at a (slightly) smaller price. Bonus points if you don't even get to choose which specific dlcs you want, and you have to pick and choose between different bundles. Example: You have to subscribed to the "supernatural bundle" to get Vampires, but you'd also have to subscribe to the "family bundle" to get Parenthood and Growing Together.
EA is going to try to spin this as: "If you want to own your dlcs permanently you can always still buy them! We're just making the rest of the dlc ~*more accessible*~ to those who can't afford it!"
This is how they are going to continue to milk TS4 for money even after they've stopped pumping out dlcs for it in order to focus on Project Renee, Project X, and whatever other spinoff slop they're cooking up.
Whenever I think it can't get any worse, it somehow does.
PLEASE reconsider and educate yourself before you succumb to GenAI to enhance your sim screenshots. It does more harm then good & overall, makes your photos, art etc look like dog shit. Art created by humans is so much more powerful than art made by a machine that steals & harms people & the world
MIT News explores the environmental and sustainability implications of generative AI technologies and applications.
Written by Office of Sustainability student associate, Meghan Jachna, Class of 2027. Generative AI (artificial intelligence) tools such as C
Please stop being ignorant & learn something new. People don’t even think anymore they’re using AI to write their essays, grocery lists etc etc. it’s getting SO bad & there are more consequences to than good outcomes. I think we’re already at the point with GenAI where if you use it, people are going to think you’re dumb as shit. I understand in the beginning when everyone was learning the true harm, but not that all this information is out…yea!! Please educate yourself on GenAI.
No one cares about us anymore. I say this honestly. We are hungry and desperate in Gaza. Please donate, share, and speak about us before it is too late.
Sokoto state, a majority Muslim state in north-west Nigeria was bombed on Christmas day.
It is still unclear how many bombs were dropped and where. Confirmed is a bomb dropped on a Mosque in Jabo, killing 5 people.
Trump has claimed that this is in retaliation of the "Christian genocide" happening in Nigeria, committed by "radical Islamists" of the ISIL (ISIS), and the specific choosing of Christmas day was to reify that this is a religious based retaliation.
This Christmas, I am in Nigeria. My family is majority Christian. We are without fear of being persecuted on the basis of our religion. So, what is going on?
There is no Christian genocide in Nigeria. Nigeria is a complex country that faces a lot of violence, exploitation and subsequent neglect from our government. But it is not Christians being targeted in our country. This insidious piece of misinformation has been dutifully organised by US officials for months and gained steam on platforms like X and Truth Social.
I do not believe though, that this action was done to fight Islamic terrorists or protect Nigerian Christians. The reason being:
Sokoto state is not a state with ISIL activity.
This is another display of US throwing its weight around, conveniently, onto the most oil-rich country in Africa.
Do not believe everything the US tells you about its foreign affairs. The US will gladly spill blood on the flimsiest of justifications just to continue gorging its empire.
Please keep love in your hearts for the Nigerian people.
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