Being a calm, gentle, non-reactive person is really hard work, which is probably why many people are none of these things. Personally I think it’s worth it but sometimes one does want to just roll around on the floor wailing at the top of one’s lungs
People in my notes who think I’m repressed or dissociating: you will feel better when you learn emotions are not a binary of Not Feeling It vs Being Overwhelmed By It
Hey. If people aren't aware, Microsoft admitted they know who you and where you are at all times and will give your info to the police.
They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.
Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.
You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.
This article specifically notes:
For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.
GDID is the persistent Windows ID that helped FBI trace a Scattered Spider hacker despite VPNs. Here's how it works and how to limit it.
Other important quotes:
What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.
Two things back that up:
There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.
Then there’s activation. Massgrave, the group behind Microsoft Activation Scripts, notes that Windows setup sends hardware info to Microsoft and gets identifiers back, the same tokens later used for Store access and licensing: “It’s impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].” Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.
I had a friend a while back who was an old guy who worked for the city of Austin and one time I brought up all the billboards in town and he told me that actually there was a law against building new billboards in the city limits but the billboard companies found a loophole by buying old billboards and moving them into the city so they weren’t technically building new ones.
Anyways I think they ought to really run local ordinances by a business major genie or something first before they vote on them.
So, this scene is specifically a fuck off to famously anti-union Disney. But it goes beyond the dialogue.
Look at Puss on Shrek's shoulders. Puss's movement is counter balancing Shrek's so that he stays up there. It's a lot of movement, a lot of animation, for a character who isn't talking. Every time they have to animate that feather in his hat, that's extra work, extra care, extra money, and that's just one element of the work, there. The animators could have chosen to put Puss on Donkey- look at Donkey's relatively small amount of movement compared to Shrek or Puss. But they didn't, they put him on Shrek's shoulders and they animated him.
Why might they do this as a fuck-you to Disney?
Well. Disney is not only anti-union, they are cheap as fuck. There's a lot of recycled rotoscoping in Disney movies in the 1970s because they were cheaping out on the process so they didn't have to pay rotoscopers. There are probably other examples, but, they recycle their own work a lot, and I assume most Tumblrinas have probably seen that video of the scenes from Robin Hood and Jungle Book and 101 Dalmations directly compared with scenes from Snow White and several animated cartoons that the rotoscoping was taken from.
The reason that Don Bluth left Disney to start his own company (not Dreamworks, but, this is the example that I have) was because on The Rescuers, there were a lot of examples of the whites of eyes not being painted in- you can see it a LOT with Bernard, especially in action sequences. Don was told that the reason for this was that it was too expensive. He thought it looked like what it is, unprofessional and unfinished for a company that's allegedly got Disney money and Disney quality, so he went off and did the math and was like, "It doesn't cost shit." And Disney told him to shut up and stop colouring in the whites of the eyes.
So he left. And you can see the kind of "needless" art he did in movies like The Land Before Time and The Secret of NIMH where there's a LOT of attention to detail in the art and in the animation.
We're seeing the same thing here with Shrek and Puss. While talking about union protections for union workers, in a nod intended to stick it to Disney, they are showing animators, "Look. We didn't need to animate this scene like this, you know this. But we did. We spent the money. We're pro union and we didn't cheap out."
What always gets me about learning about settler colonialism is how once you learn about it you cannot unsee the violence to the land itself. My home state was previously nearly 100% wetlands, apart of the wider Ohio river valley whose biodiversity supported such large populations of hundreds of different species that many contemporary source from settlers describe it as like the garden of Eden.
The Indigenous people who farmed and hunted here (and still farm and hunt in what land they have been able to keep and reclaim) were able to grow miles of upon miles of crops with multiple harvests a year, encouraging this biodiversity by creating forest gardens with incredible amounts of food from staples like corn and squash to local fruits like pawpaws to European imports like apples alongside controlled burns which allowed fields and buffalo ranges to expand.
Nowadays my state is known almost exclusively for its fields of nothing but corn and soy beans. Driving through in between the comparatively small cities you'll see nothing but fields where the plethora of different trees and plants were chopped down mile by mile, the remaining wetlands drained and flattened, and the rich black soils robbed of their nutrients through decades upon decades of monocrop agriculture now preserved through the life blood of petrochemical fertilizers which destroy the surrounding environment.
This process was done mile by mile as the tens of thousands of Indigenous people were killed and displaced by settlers and the US army, the land measured and sold acre by acre to white settlers who raped the land as described, filling the pockets of wealthy land speculators (like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) who bought the land directly from the government in schemes so corrupt historians have dedicated entire careers to mapping out their dramas.
It's like learning about commodity fetishism and suddenly seeing hundreds of strangers in the products that surround you. Once you learn how the land was destroyed for profit you'll never look at the miles of fields or the cracks in the concrete of buildings built on wetlands or the stench of now obsolete canals built solely for a once boat-dependent economy with no care for the environment the same.
the response to "your demographic is full of people who are ugly and weird and undesirable" should not ever be "not true! some of us are in fact hot and normal and desireable." you should stand with weird ugly bitches bc otherwise you're just playing a losing game with bigots.
I’d say this is the most dangerous decade to be a refugee or immigrant. Everywhere is becoming more regressive. Whether in the semi-peripheries or the imperial core, it doesn’t seem to matter. We have failed everyone and fallen for the false promises of borders and land-based ideologies.
THE US AND ISRAEL ARE TRYING TO BUILD A DATA CENTER IN THE PHILIPPINES. THE US AND ISRAEL ARE TRYING TO BUILD A DATA CENTER IN THE PHILIPPINES. THE US AND ISRAEL ARE TRYING TO BUILD A DATA CENTER IN THE PHILIPPINES. THE US AND ISRAEL ARE TRYING TO BUILD A DATA CENTER IN THE PHILIPPINES. THE US AND ISRAEL ARE TRYING TO BUILD A DATA CENTER IN THE PHILIPPINES. THE US AND ISRAEL ARE TRYING TO BUILD A DATA CENTER IN THE PHILIPPINES.
The Pax Silica initaitive is a joint plan involving the participants such as the UK, US, Israel, the EU to secure rare earth minerals for the silicon supply chain. This plan will involve opening up huge swaths of the island of Luzon to mining and special economic zones, displacing farming communities and threatening the food and water security of thousands.
Primer on the initiative from Philippine social movements:
like i know venezuela is going through a huge humanitarian crisis right now and their political regime is low in the list of priorities when tallinmg about it obviously it's just it shocked me to read trump congratulating his secretary of energy on how well he's running what used to be a sovereign country until a few months back you know
Does anybody remember when back in January Trump kidnapped the Venezuelan president? Well the American government proceeded to place someone else in charge and is directing them via text message. They are telling him who to appoint into office and allowing US businesses into the country.
They are "not looking to instate democratic elections at this time."
Occupation is a hassle. Large countries have many new ways to control small ones.
