I love art (and apples)

Egyptian dude , graphic designer , writer, colorization artist, dreaming that one day everyone will have food, shelter and safety.

[free-my-mindd]

[phantomrose96]

Dealing with burnout is sooooooooooooooo easy all you need to do is operate at 40% indefinitely and be kind of mad at yourself the whole time.

[unconventiononthelawofthesea]

coworker today was talking about how she tries to drive less to reduce her carbon footprint, so instead of ordering takeout she orders delivery. when I pointed out that this actually results in the exact same amount of emissions because the same amount of driving happens she said "yeah but it's not me driving." and I feel like any critique of progressive individualism I could make based on this would fall flat because like. what else is there to say? she summed up the flaws of individualist environmentalism better than most critics could, without intending to.

[dogpuppy]

[grendel-menz]

It makes me sick to my stomach to see the worsening famine in Gaza, not only because it’s such a vile and hateful thing to be happening in the world – but also because of how going hungry as a child can leave permanent physical and psychological marks on people. I work with infants and small children, and even toddlers need at least 1000 calories a day and on a consistent schedule.

[grendel-menz]

Kids really do need to eat every few hours AT LEAST or they can get sick and experience horrible mood swings and anxiety. It’s difficult to manage in the best of circumstances, I can’t even imagine what the parents in Gaza are going through.

[grendel-menz]

I’d just like to share Nader’s campaign really quick. He’s a teenager in Gaza raising money for his family’s survival. Please consider donating to or boosting his campaign – anything helps!

Donate to Help Nader Al-Anqar and his family overcome this war in Gaza, organized by Nader Alanqar

I am a young man who loves my studies very much and I drea… Nader Alanqar needs your support for Help Nader Al-Anqar and his family overc

[abdalsalam2000]

We have been suffering from genocide, deportation and ethnic cleansing for almost two years and a deadly famine is consuming our bodies. I ask you to donate to me and my family at least so that we can protect our bodies from the deadly famine. Please donate to us and do not leave us alone. We need your support and help to stay alive and not die of hunger. Please donate to us.

[grendel-menz]

Please circulate and donate to his fundraiser! Nader's still just a kid, and so is his niece.

[hotvampireadjacent]

What Gaza is going through is something that cannot be described in a few words. It is horrific, terrible and frightening. Nader from the Gaza Strip needs care, food and support. Please help him and donate to him now. Your donations will make a big difference to Nader. He can eat through this. Please donate.

[u3pxx]

please continue to aid nader and his family by donating to him, every bit of help makes a difference.

[abdalsalam2000]

Unfortunately, for 4 hours we have not received any donations. Please, my friends, donate to us and do not ignore us. We are in dire need of your support. We are suffering. Please donate to us now.

[abdalsalam2000]

No one has donated to us yet. Please donate to us.

[abdalsalam2000]

Please donate to us so that we can buy food for me and my family. Please donate. Please donate to us. Please share this post and donate.

[abdalsalam2000]

Why don't you donate? More than 2,400 people participated and only 20 people donated. Don't ignore us, please. Come on, donate. Please don't leave us like this.

[hotvampireadjacent]

Please donate to Nader. Many have participated, but only a few have donated. Please help Nader and donate to him now.

[n1pt]

The entire Al Jazeera crew in Gaza City was assassinated, including its reporters and cameramen:

Reporter: Anas Al-Sharif

Reporter: Mohammed Qreiqah

Cameraman: Ibrahim Zaher

Cameraman: Mo’men Alwiyeh

Crew driver: Mohammed Noufal

[lonelyvampx]

Anas’ last message to the world

[solarpunkcast]

Angela Davis & Ursula K Le Guin, visionary women for a hopeful future

[bitchesgetriches]

Companies That Tried to Save Money With AI Are Now Spending a Fortune Hiring People to Fix Its Mistakes

Companies that rushed to replace human labor with AI are now shelling out to have IRL workers to fix the technology's screwups.

Delicious. We love to see it.

[tobaeus]

@ralfmaximus

[ralfmaximus]

Ultimately, she spent 20 hours redoing the copy from scratch — and with her $100-per-hour rate, that meant her client was shelling out $2,000 for copy that likely would have ended up being far cheaper had a human just written it in the first place.

I love stories like this.

[tacofriend]

Get peer reviewed!

[mysharona1987]

He forgot to say: “to make music fundamentally scary and evil and instantly make your victims associate music with evil for the rest of their lives.”

“Otherwise the uncivilised world might win.”

[bloglikeanegyptian]

hearing officials and public figures criticize biden openly on talk shows and seeing newspaper headlines sharply decry israel killing aid workers is making me feel kind of crazy. like it could've been like this the whole time. before 40,000 palestinians were killed and the infrastructure of gaza destroyed. it could've been like this when people gathered their children in plastic bags at al-ahli hospital, when a poet and his family were assassinated for a joke, when journalists buried their families on air, when children were targeted by drones on camera, when a little boy holding his grandmother's hand in one hand and a white flag in another watched her get shot and die in front of him, when a cameraman was left to bleed out with a live counter for hours while his rescuers were shot, when patients were bulldozed in their tents in the courtyard of a hospital, when four babies were left die and decompose alone in their hospital beds, when six year old hind rajab was crying for help trapped in a car with the corpses of her family on the phone with the red crescent for hours until she and the rescuers sent to get her were killed too.

[bloglikeanegyptian]

wrote this a year ago, now thinking about officials criticizing famine and concentration camps and no longer denying israel is committing a genocide when starvation has already killed hundreds, when rafah is completely destroyed, when every university has been bombed, when every hospital has been bombed, when a hospital director who buried his child under siege from israeli forces has been held hostage for months now, when at least sixty-five palestinians have been killed under torture in israeli prisons, when khaled nabhan's granddaughter was killed and he held her in his arms and called her the soul of my soul, when he was killed a year later wearing a t-shirt with that same phrase, when medo halimy was still alive, when hossam shabat was still reporting, when over a hundred other journalists were still alive including ahmed mansour who was burned alive, fatima hassouna whose documentary made it into cannes, when shaaban el daou' was burned with his iv line still attached, when alaa el najjar received seven of her dead children while working a shift as a pediatrician at a hospital (two of them she could not receive because they were still trapped under the rubble). every minute that passed was paid in blood and these motherfuckers won't stop it yet

[bloglikeanegyptian]

the genocide is now as bad as it has ever been and more undeniable than it has ever been. israel is doubling down on starving every gazan and destroying every remaining piece of infrastructure until they leave. and humanitarian workers who have had access to gaza before - including WFP, WCK, UNICEF are being prevented from gaining access by israel. if you've ever seen images of kids with pots clamoring at kitchens that usually accompany articles on "looming famine in gaza" (as though it is a natural disaster and not an imposed famine by israel in gaza) then you should know that those kids have been showing up and finding nobody there, because the stores have run out and the volunteers are being prevented from access. now is the time to talk about gaza, and more importantly now is the time to point the finger at the state of israel that is committing genocide openly, audaciously, hatefully

[oneheadtoanother]

[cosmonaut775]

Hey do y’all remember when Boeing fucking killed a guy last year. And we all said “huh I guess Boeing fucking killed a guy” and then went on with our lives. And everybody knew that Boeing had fully just fucking executed a guy and nothing came of it. Like there was no police investigation no justice no nothing. Like literally EVERYBODY knew that Boeing had full on murdered a guy to silence him and there wasn’t any consequences for them. Kinda crazy.

[flamiemoonfox]

and there was even less talk when openai did the exact same thing more recently

[flamiemoonfox]

So for those who are, very understandably uninitiated on this story:

On 23 October last year (2024) the New York Times published an interview with former OpenAI researcher Suchir Balaji who worked on organising and gathering data for OpenAI until 2022 when he begun thinking about the morality of it. He eventually came to the conclusion that what OpenAI is doing blatantly violates copyright law and decided to leave the company altogether in August 2024.

After he came out with this accusation he was set to appear in court to testify against OpenAI’s data-gathering practices, something which had the potential of being a complete disaster for the company and the generative AI industry as a whole.

That was until 26 November, just days before he was due to appear in court, when he suddenly and mysteriously was found dead inside his own apartment. Investigators concluded that the death was self-inflicted, something which his family has disputed.

There was also “sign of struggle in the bathroom and looks like someone hit him in the bathroom based on blood spots”, and his apartment showed signs of having been ransacked for evidence: “The pin drive is missing. His computer was messed up.”.

Overall it feels pretty clear-cut what happened, that is to say that OpenAI had him killed because he was a legitimate threat to their business, indicating that they are fully aware that the way they’re gathering data is completely illegal.

Sources:

Alys Davies, 14.12.2024, OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment. BBC News

Barney Davis, 16.1.2025, Suchir Balaji’s family demand outside investigation into OpenAI whistleblower’s death. The Independent

Cade Metz, 23.11.2024, Former OpenAI Researcher Says the Company Broke Copyright Law. The New York Times

[thegaylibertarian]

[liminalweirdo]

I am once again begging you to get your hands on physical media and/or save your fave stuff OFFLINE.

[ryttu3k]

How to remove DRM from Kindle with Calibre.

I use Kobo, which uses a slightly different method. Some publishers already don't use DRM. Great! You're good to go. Most others will be listed as using Adobe DRM. For that, you'll need Adobe Digital Editions.

Download the DRM file. This will be an ASCM file (Adobe Content Server Message) called 'URLLink.ascm'. This isn't an ebook, it's basically just a link.

Open in Adobe Digital Editions. It should automatically download the ebook.

Locate the actual file location. By default, this is Documents > My Digital Editions. This will give you the epub file, with DRM.

Follow the above instructions to install DeDRM in Calibre.

Drag the epub file into Calibre. If you've installed DeDRM correctly, there'll be a button up the top labelled 'Convert books'.

Up the top of the window, there'll be 'Input format' on the left, and 'Output format' on the right. Input will default to EPUB, select whatever you like (including EPUB again) for output. Select 'OK' (bottom right).

Locate your Calibre file. For me, this was Documents > Calibre. By default, books are listed in subfolders by author, then title. Open the folder for the book you converted, and you should have four files - a cover, an OPF file with metadata, your new EPUB file, and an old version with the file extension of .original_epub.

Not necessary, but I prefer to do this for organisation - you can now place the DRM-free EPUB file wherever you like. I have folders for my own library that I can back up as I wish.

You may want an ereader not tied to a particular platform. I use one for my phone called Moon+ Reader. It has a free option with unobtrusive ads (which only show when you close a book). Otherwise, using Calibre on my PC has its own epub reader.

Anyway. Not hyperbole. Microsoft closed its ebook platform in 2019 and people lost their entire libraries. Back your books up.

[lynmars79]

Amazon is ending the ability to download/transfer ebooks from Kindle devices via USB connection on February 26 2025!

You should still be able to use the PC and mobile apps, and in browser reading, but your device will be entirely reliant on WiFi (which isn't always available or reliable!). Here's 1 article on it.

I've been using Epubor Ultimate to remove DRM from all of my ebooks so I can convert and save them, able to read them either in Kobo or Kindle, or in Calibre. I can save them as Epubs, PDFs, or what have you.

Also keep in mind Bookshop.org, an online store that interacts with independent booksellers, now has an ebook app and options from those indie stores. You can even set it specifically to your own favorite local bookstores if you want.

I get a lot of ebooks due to space issues, being a rental/apartment dweller. So the cracked and converted books are saved to my PC and external backup drives. I bought them. They're mine. I ought to be able to read them, and not worry about them being "updated" or removed on some whim*.

-

(*I noticed that Jim Butcher's The Aeronaut's Windlass has a different cover than when I first downloaded it, not sure what else has changed yet. Good Omens also went from the classic black cover to the TV show tie in cover.)

[tamarrud]

A very normal Israeli minister of national security tweet 👍🏽 what the fuck

[effervescentdragon]

a reminder that captain america 4: brave new world (which was supposed to be called captain america: new world order btw, if you didnt know) is officially on the bds boycott list because of its revival of anti-palestinian character sabra, so lets not watch or engage with it in any way! and always remember: free palestine 🇵🇸

[sail-not-drift]

Specific calls for action are:

Cancel (or refuse to sign up for) Disney+ subscription

Boycott all Marvel merchandise

Refuse to attend screenings of Captain America: Brave New World

Sources:

Official BDS boycott guidelines, including against Disney and Marvel (posted December 6, 2024)

Specific information on BNW boycott (posted July 25, 2024)