Perpetually cuddled under several blankets. Call me Doom. They/them. Adult.
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My AO3 | my fics | my memes | my queer banners | my art. Icon by my darling girlfriend and I, header by @maruti-bitamin.
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My fandoms include Heartstopper, She-Ra, Helluva Boss, Hazbin Hotel, Adventure Time, Omori, The Last of Us, Epic: The Musical, Steven Universe, Hollow Knight and The Good Place.
One time I came home from uni very upset and my younger siblings asked what's wrong. I said that mutated flies in our lab escaped because someone broke their jar. I didn't even realise how scary it sounded to them until I saw their faces lmao. I was upset because we were short on said flies (they don't reproduce very well) and my siblings thought that some crazy radioactive fly monsters escaped and we are all fucked now. Love being a mad scientist in their eyes lowkey
Perhaps this is an obnoxious take on my part, but video games should, above all things, prioritize the ability of being paused. At any point. Regardless of whether it's during a cutscene, a special animation, or a time-based puzzle. You never know when you're gonna get a phone call, or someone will need you in another room, or you get a sudden urge to go to the bathroom, or you hear your cat licking plastic, or whatever. Other entertainment mediums like books, movies, and music can be paused whenever you want. Why do some games not give you the same luxury??
so one of the largest open source data communities on the internet, data.world, got bought out by a company called ServiceNow, who has decided to fucking delete all of it by July 11th. they've given users barely any notice, no emails, just a fucking banner at the top and a blog post from June that gives barely a month to download your data before they fucking delete it all.
a bunch of archives of incredibly important government datasets like maternal mortality statistics are about to be deleted forever. in a regime where they're known to fudge numbers, we can't trust a lot of the data coming from them to not be altered. open source backups like those found on data.world are vital to being able to verify that the data coming from our government is still intact and not altered. and they're about to delete all of it.
i don't know if we need to start a petition or what. nobody seems to fucking care. there are millions of users on data.world and yet nobody is raising the alarm bells and it makes me feel like I'm going insane. somebody needs to do something. i don't know what to do. it feels like more and more of this world is being destroyed and dismantled. it's not only US centric data, either! it's all sorts of countries from around the world! and they're about to fucking delete everything.
the only things that won't be deleted are private companies who happen to use the paid version of their platform (which isn't accessible data to the open source community; some people have just been using their service to host their own data on privately)
and the kicker? this announcement was made... via an AI generated blog post. so not even any sort of human touch. just a generic, soulless announcement made by a soulless human about to take a wrecking ball to one of the more important websites that exists on the internet.
an example of some of the things that will be deleted on July 11th:
I haven't, I don't really have a reddit anymore. if somebody else would be willing to do that, that would be great. I'm pretty sure it only lets you post with a certain amount of karma now which is annoying
It looks like this has gotten onto Reddit and people are saving the data - but I can imagine researchers who uploaded assets won’t know this, so hopefully can reach some.
There are over 3500 respectable data repositories on one respectable global registry; to a researcher there’s no point in data existing if not findable; if you’re trying to find a new home for your dataset, start there
I’ve been emailing folks at my university about this today, and no one that I have talked to has been previously aware that this is happening.
Here are some of the scripts I’m using to email University Research Librarians and department chairs/assistant and associate deans who I know oversee faculty who use resources from data.world for their lessons:
Email for a Research Librarian: To find a research librarian try running an internet search like: “[College Name] Library Staff Directory” and see who may be a good fit.
Subject: Data.world public archive private purchase and deletion
Hi [Research Librarian or Data Preservation Specialist],
I recently ran into news that data.world has been purchased by ServiceNow, and that ServiceNow is ending public access to these archives July 11th. This is a very large public data archive that I personally used in my undergraduate work several years ago. I don't know much about digital preservation, or how it works at [College Name], but I thought it might be worthwhile to try reaching out.
I wanted to let someone in Libraries know in case current [College Name] students are using data in this archive for their research and need to be notified to save the data elsewhere, and to see if there is anything that [College Name] can do to help with greater preservation efforts.
The archive can be accessed here for now. A login is required, but it is free to set up.
https://data.world/_all/w/datasets
Here is a screenshot with the announcement of the closure of the site. Site users were not notified that access will be ending and would have to be looking at the page regularly to know that access will be terminated.
Please let anyone know who may need to use the site (or who would be interested in trying to preserve it).
Thanks,
[Your Name]
[Your Job/College Affiliation]
[Your Contact Information]
If you know a current department or school within a college that is using data.world archives, this is a template that I am using to contact department chairs or assistant/associate deans of research within specific schools.
Subject: Loss of public data.world access 7/11/26
Hi [Dr. Last Name]
I recently learned that the public data archive data.world has been purchased by ServiceNow and that they are closing public access 7/11/26. [Sentence about how the data is or was used by the department/school you are contacting].
I wanted to make sure this was on your radar in case any students are doing research with this data and need to act quickly to retrieve the data sources they need for their work, similarly for faculty using this data in their research or teaching.
The archive can be accessed here for now. A login is required, but it is free to set up.
https://data.world/_all/w/datasets
Here is a screenshot with the announcement of the closure of the site. Site users were not notified that access will be ending and would have to be looking at the page regularly to know that access will be terminated.
Please let anyone know who may need to use the site (or who would be interested in trying to preserve it).
me holding a gun to a mushroom: tell me the name of god you fungal piece of shit
mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters
me cocking the gun, tears streaming down my face: I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU
if you have to use ai, make sure you... wait a second. why do you have to use ai? what possible situation means you cannot write it yourself? is there a gun to your head? 'have to' use ai. that's a good one. fuck off
it's very funny to me that the advice in the notes divides cleanly into two camps:
Actually actionable advice (break it down into smaller pieces, leave and come back later, find somebody to do it with you so you aren't doing it alone)
People who are Jared, 19 and just say something that's fundamentally a variation on "just do it scared"
Warning: advice that "you have to leave your comfort zone to grow" is meant for people who are IN their comfort zone the majority of the time. If you rarely/never feel comfortable and safe, you actually need to get more comfortable and safe before you can grow 👍
Art installation idea: "perfectly comfortable chair"
A chair that has blunted spikes sticking out the backrest. When the user weighs over 90kg, their weight on the seat pushes a lever that retracts the spikes, making the chair comfortable to sit on.
Just a little something I came up with from a bus station bench where the gap between the armrests is slightly narrower than I am.
Spin the wheel again. That’s who’s trying to protect you.
(If you have zero idea about a name you got, spin until you see someone you recognize.)
Are you safe?
Absolutely not. I'm dead. 100% dead.
I might stay alive, but it'll be a really close thing.
I'll take some hits, for certain, but I should be okay in the end.
A few attacks might get through, but nothing concerning.
The attacker might be able to get in one lucky hit. If that.
I am the opposite of worried. I'm 100% safe.
…Look. I've tried picturing this. But I honestly don't know how to answer.
Remaining time: 5 days 1 hour
(I've run this poll twice before, expanding it significantly for the second run. With about a year passed since that second run, I thought it was time to add another couple hundred names to the list and have another go.)