if you want to experience life more deeply you have to find more beauty. stop training yourself to dismiss, to mock, to assume the worst all the time — when you do this you build walls between yourself and the world. and after a while you stop feeling the warmth of it entirely.
beauty requires openness. it asks you to let things reach you, to soften enough to be moved. it’s not naive to see beauty everywhere—it’s a skill, a form of intelligence, a kind of quiet bravery. because it is so much easier to critique than to create, to detach than to engage, to dismiss than to love.
let yourself be affected. let yourself find things beautiful and let that be enough. life is not asking you to be cool, sitting on the sidelines and nitpicking everything. it’s asking you to see life and experience it fully.
Oh wow so me saying "no government documentation should ever include a gender marker for any reason" has been right all along. For exactly the reason I stated when people were giving me shit for not supporting x markers on documents.
On this, the anniversary of the lunar landing, let us also celebrate the greatest post-mission achievement by a crewman.
I refer, of course, to the time Buzz Aldrin (age 72 at the time) cold-cocked a moon landing conspiracy theorist straight in his smug face after being accused of being a coward, liar, and thief.
Yes, someone was indeed dumb enough to tell a man so unafraid of death that he was willing to go into the void on a fragile explosive rocket, a coward.
Said dumbass was filming this confrontation as some sort of proof of moon fraud, but has instead captured this glorious moment of near-cosmic justice for us to loop for all time.
Aldrin was not charged with any crime. He should have been given another medal for public service.
Said dumbass tried to take Aldrin to court for assault and was thrown out on his metaphorical ass, being cited as the instigator of the incident after luring Aldrin into a meeting under false pretenses (telling the former astronaut he was being interviewed for a children's program).
Please save and share this info where possible. This report has since been removed by Amnesty International due to legal threats of libel from JK Rowling. This information is no longer easily accessible.
guy on the subway with one ear pierced, little gold hoop. other guy on the subway very quickly and subtly googling "which one is the gay ear". it is not the gay ear. visible disappointment on his face as he puts his phone away.
I think about The Man of the Hole so often. 27 years alone. 27 years with no one to speak to but strangers to wave to. Survived a genocide, a massacre that killed everyone he had ever known and later, an assassination attempt. He still tried to warn researches about the traps he built. He was only about 60 when he died in 2022. The people who tormented him in life later desecrated his grave.
I do think it is important to share the stories of the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island and Ishi and the countless other indigenous people who experienced the profound trauma of being the last survivor but it is important to remember that the last Aboriginal families in Australia to be contacted by Europeans were resettled in the 1980s and the Indian government has proposed a plan that will mean total genocide for the Shompen people. The total eradication of indigenous peoples, their cultures, their languages, their ways of life, is not something which occurred in a distant ugly past but an ongoing progress.
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.
The backlash was a major lawsuit from 9 tribes alongside other lawsuits from advocacy groups like NDN Collective. You can support NDN Collective by donating to them here.
This is the situation outside Gaza: hundreds of thousands of tons of humanitarian aid, medical equipment, and medicine are being held and prevented from entering by the Israelis, while we in Gaza are dying from the lack of medicine and medical equipment.
The situation in Gaza is dire due to shortages of food, medicine, and medical equipment. Hundreds of thousands of wounded and sick people are suffering because of the siege, and my father is one of them. He suffers from many problems: arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure, back pain, and cancer. My father is fighting for his life under the siege and the lack of all medical supplies. I don't want to see my father die before my eyes because of this.
I'm trying desperately to get my father out of this hell and to get my whole family out of here, but I can't do it alone. I need your help. Please donate to us. I swear your donations are what give us hope to survive and fight for our lives. I beg you to donate now.
I will not stop trying, even though I see dreams shattered before my eyes. The immense pressure I'm under to save my loved ones is overwhelming. I truly need every dollar you can give. Please, please, please donate.