We didn't talk before or since that prom. In fact, I'm pretty sure you blocked me on socials after. That's fine. I want to apologize.
I put you in an incredibly weird spot, one that makes me cringe in hindsight. You and I had basically never spoken, and I just thought you were really pretty and nice. I still resent being left alone all evening but I do get it.
I was no one to you.
You were younger than me, so the inherent American high school power dynamic was there, and I think you felt like you couldn't say no. I dearly and foolishly hope that wasn't the case.
I have spent several - frankly, too many - pathetic, self-loathing years fuming that you had half a dance with me and had the nerve to turn and walk away from me at the afterprom. But, you know what, I showed up in a top hat so I think you had good judgment.
I'm sorry for embarrassing myself, I'm sorry for embarrassing you, and most importantly, I kind of hope you never see this. It's been over a decade and I still cringe sometimes thinking about it. I just want to let go.
fyi the point of fucking up your data patterns isnt to avoid suspicion. it’s to make EVERYONE suspicious. same logic as the bloc, pals. protect your comrades, be suspicious. ESPECIALLY if you aren’t doing anything likely to get you arrested.
the state is less omniscient and significantly more incompetent than you’d think. overextend their resources at every possible opportunity. make them cry wolf repeatedly. run their data analysis agents fucking ragged. and strike. attack.
YES
i’m a postgrad statistics researcher and i can tell you that the state honestly has NO IDEA what to do with the data it collects, it has an obsession with big data but it’s almost impossible to work with in practice. the traditional statistical approaches that are used can’t be scaled up, the adapted approaches are substantially weakened, and the machine learning approaches have the same problems and often tell them nothing. data scientists are only just coming around to these issues too, most still just push on with it anyway - incompetence is the word.
above all this though, like you say, the biggest issue for the state is at the point of data collection. they will NEVER get anything useful if they’re collecting shitty messy data. they will eventually figure out that the real solution is working how to collect accurate and meaningful data, we should make it as difficult as possible for them to do that
Ad Nauseum is an adblocker that stores the ads it blocks and continuously generates fake clicks, fucking with analytics and costing the ad companies money
TrackMeNot automatically does randomly generated searches on a variety of search engines to obscure your real searches and fuck with analytics, and you can set it up to work with anything that has a search bar (including facebook, twitter, amazon, youtube, etc)
WhatCampaign replaces analytics parameters in links with the string “FuckOff”. I thought there was a similar extension that used random strings, but I can’t seem to find it
Privacy Possum is a fork of Privacy Badger with a focus on costing tracking companies as much money as possible, and idk if my limited tech knowledge is enough to understand what it does but the description does say it falsifies some data so that’s good enough for me
Sometimes I look at multi-million dollar houses in my area and dictate which one I would set up to be the "D&D room." My favorite was a wine cellar conversion but any sort of existing game room works great.
My name is Saja. I’m a wife, a mother, and a woman who once believed her story would be simple. I thought my days would be filled with watching my daughter grow — from her first smile to her first steps — surrounded by the small joys of everyday life.
But life had other plans.
War has returned to our home. Again.
And once again, we find ourselves living under skies that never seem to rest.
There was a moment — a fragile, breathless moment — when the bombs paused and the world seemed to remember us. It gave us hope. We thought maybe, just maybe, we could start to rebuild. But now, we are back in the dark — hiding, holding on, praying.
I’m writing this not as someone seeking pity, but as a mother who has no other choice but to speak.
Imagine holding your baby in the middle of the night, not because she cried, but because the world outside roared too loud for either of you to sleep. Imagine whispering bedtime stories not to lull her into dreams, but to keep the fear from settling into her tiny bones.
This is my life.
This is my daughter’s life.
And even now — especially now — I believe in softness. I believe in kindness.
Because when everything else is taken from you, hope becomes the most valuable thing you have.
Why I’m Reaching Out
Our home has been damaged. Our lives changed. But through it all, my daughter wakes up every morning with a smile. She reaches for me with trust, with love, with faith that I will keep her safe.
That’s why I keep going.
I’ve launched a campaign to ask for help — not because it’s easy, but because silence is no longer an option. I am asking for support not just for me, but for my baby, and for the quiet strength of so many mothers like me who are fighting, every single day, to hold their families together.
How You Can Help:
🤍 Help us restore parts of our home so we can live with dignity
🤍 Support women and mothers in Gaza with access to care and resources
🤍 Keep the light of hope alive for a generation born in the shadows of war
💛 If you can, please support our journey here:
My name is Saja. I am a wife, a mother to a precious 8-month-old girl, and I am writing this in a moment that I wish I didn’t have to live t
If you can’t give, please consider sharing.
Your voice might be the reason someone else hears ours.
From My Heart to Yours
Maybe our lives are worlds apart. Maybe you’ve never lived through war.
But if you’ve ever held a child and wished the world could be better for them — then you understand more than you know.
I don’t want my daughter to grow up thinking the world turned away.
Please, if you’ve read this far — thank you.
Thank you for seeing us. Thank you for caring.
We are still here. Still hoping. Still holding on to every kind act like it’s a lifeline.
This is child abuse. Trump's rhetoric is creating anxiety for every child. Anything that makes children feel 'less than' is pure evil. Students and teachers/nurses do not need hateful conspiracies for shitty parents to weaponize.
Having a child is great for a myriad of reasons but the one that stands out to me so far, without said child having entered the world yet, is the fact that it’s helped me personally figure out how to accept help. Every gift someone has gotten me, every favor, I’ve thought “I’ll find a way to repay you, somehow.” But it’s in this moment, the evening after my mother bought my wife and me a fairly pricey travel system, that she probably had something fairly similar happen for her. Any friends expecting a child got help from their people, and so on and on.
My friend sends us videos on random little hacks to help with baby, and shares that she intends to help with chores because of course we want to spend time with our baby and not waste time with menial tasks like cooking and dishes and laundry.
I can accept help. After a lifetime of I can do it myself, I feel so much lighter with the knowledge that I can accept help.
I think I know why I try so many creative pursuits and ultimately abandon them for the next big thing. I do have gifted kid syndrome to a degree but I do not think this is the root of my creative constipation.
There is something inside of me, my brain, my very heart of hearts that is dying to be released and at the turning point of every new hobby, be it music, writing, model building, wood carving… something starts to emerge and I crush it like a bug. I crush it so fast and with such fear and hatred that the fact I do anything creative at all is a miracle. Am I scared of it? Is it scared of me? Do I hate it, does it need to be free and I hold it captive in the one place it can’t stand to be? I seem to be my own prisoner but that’s just fine, there’s plenty to do.
