The Citrine Witch @thecitrinewitch - Tumblr Blog

PRACTICAL MAGIC (1998)

At 1 PM on a Friday I get an email from my boss. I'm busy as hell so I don't check it immediately. Then I get a phone call from my boss, which has almost never happened before. I'm a white collar worker, a historian. There's never a 'historical emergency' requiring a phone call to kick me in the ass and get to work.

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

good fucking god, jesus tap dancing goddamn christ, I'm glad I was asked to look at it and then find a real map

the-murmuration-project

My fear has never been that AI would replace human intelligence. My fear has been that the people who Know Things and the people who Make The Decisions are almost never the same people.

We’re throwing real intelligence out on the street to starve while worshipping the shambling Frankenstein-ed corpse of knowledge puppeteered by those who see us as disposable assets.

anarchistmemedistro

Attackers explain how an anti-spam defense became an AI weapon.

megaceros

love that energy

sapphireh3arts

i know folks are gonna call me a pedo for this one, but i grew up seeing my mom and grandma naked. they had health issues and at times needed care and help showering. and i truly think more kids need to be shown the nonsexual reality of naked women at a young age. there is nothing sexual about my grandmothers breasts, they were simply body parts. more women die of heart attacks because people are too afraid of breasts to do real chest compressions, because they are scared to touch their breasts. the sexualization of our bodies literally kills us. i need people to be more normal about naked bodies and i'm 100% serious.

scarsofmybliss

I grew up around naked old people who weren't even my family! Gasp! And it was a good thing. I grew up around old-school hippies at a place called Lothlorien (in Indiana) and one of my friends dads held a sauna day every Sunday in the middle of the woods (like you cannot drive to their house, you park about a quarter mile away and walk into the woods kind of woods). All day random old people came to get naked, high (pot), and sweaty. Just random old peen and boobs swaying with the leaves. No big deal. These are things that I believe made me more at home in my body, made me more excited about aging, made me more willing to fight for my security and safety.

dee-the-red-witch

Bodies are just bodies. Nothing sacred and nothing inherently shameful or sinful either. The fact that we still can't get that through everyone in however many years it's been is just fucking idiotic.

freakcircusofhorrors

AMA 2 – Answers Part 15 2/2

Check out the first part of this entry here!

Neko: Heyoo! Thank you so much! I hope you're getting some rest too! You've got some interesting questions here!

If you want to ask questions that might be featured in the AMA series, or if you want to catch all the answers several weeks before they're published to tumblr, subscribe to Neko's Patreon!

freakcircusofhorrors

AMA 2 – Answers Part 15 1/2

Hello everyone!

I'm halfway through fixing the code so I can finally start the update!

And here's some good news: I finally managed to get the app removed from the Google Play Store! The Apple version is still up, but we're working on that as well. I'm looking for ways to prevent this from happening again! --- E aí pessoal? Estou na metade da correção de código para finalmente começar a trabalhar na atualização! E uma boa notícia! Eu finalmente consegui remover o app falso da Google Play Store! O da Apple Store ainda está lá infelizmente, mas estamos trabalhando nisso. Estou checando maneiras de evitar que isso aconteça de novo!

Neko: Thank you! That's so kind!! Questions 2 and 3 have already been answered

Neko: Oh my gosh, I'm curious to know when else this happened xD Thank you so much!!

Neko: Hello!! Thank you so much! And welcome!! x3

Neko: Heyo!! Thank you so much! That's so kind of you! I hope you continue to enjoy your time here!

For the first one, a very similar question has already been answered for Pierrot

Neko: Hello!I'm glad you're enjoying it!

Neko: He took it in a different direction…

Neko: Hello! Thank you for your kind words!I hope you had an amazing holiday!

Neko: Not as late as I am! Wow, there were so many questions before I got to yours, haha thank you so much!

fipindustries

ok this looks ultra mega based, are you kidding me? can you imagine the bullshit i could get up to with this bad boy? fuck yes i want ten

mint-corset

Wait are iPhone bros coping because Apple has to be more universal? Lol.

such-justice-wow

Boo hoo i'll be able to add more physical storage to my phone and be able to change out batteries if they degrade as well as all these other optional features I won't have to touch

lectorel

Continuing in the trend of political cartoons depicting milquetoast moderate positions seem so much cooler and more badass than they are

domina-honoribila

I love how they add totally absurd things no one is asking for to make the idea look crazy. And still, I must emphasize, failing to make this look like a bad idea.

teaboot

"Is this what you want? Is this ugly stupid bullcrap what you want??" the biggest loudest idiot in the room asks, holding up a picture of the hottest looking shit I've ever seen

estro-boi

we gotta get back to torrent distribution, i just watched someone eat eight grand in bandwidth charges because they ran a direct-download piracy site with local file hosting through cloudflare. torrents were invented literally for this exact reason

estro-boi

torrents work like this

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

please learn to torrent

macleod

An expert guide to get started using torrentsTorrents are one of the most popular forms of file sharing on the internet, accounting for over

always use qbittorrent, do not use bitorrent or utorrent.

freakcircusofhorrors

I saw on a tik tok that the TFC day 3 will be released in June/July they confirmed it with google search. Is that real?

Mod Destiny here!

TikTok and a few other forums (even some blogs/youtubers) are CONSTANTLY spreading misinformation about the game, especially in regards to the release date or the character's being related by blood (they aren't). As of now, there is no set time for day3, but any updates will be found on Neko's Patreon or HERE first!

Please ONLY get your news from here, as this is the official site.

Don't listen to ANY TikTok that claims to have info about the game or connection to Neko: they're ALL lying.

doomsday-dj

There was recently a copyright infringement case in YA and I need everyone to know that the following sentence was in the legal decision:

“Hot, sexy, dangerous boys, central to virtually all young adult romance novels, cannot be copyrighted.”

kuttithevangu

“Regarding setting, the court held that both works taking place in Alaska high schools was not protectable because Alaska is a public place and setting a teen novel in a high school is a common genre convention.”

Freeman v. Deebs-Elkenaney | Loeb & Loeb LLP

kogiopsis

I've read the entire decision (skimming over the purely legal precedent/definitions bit) and here are some of my favorite bits:

eldritchdilf-deactivated2025061

Contrary to popular belief the biggest beginner's roadblock to art isn't even technical skill it's frustration tolerance, especially in the age of social media. It hurts and the frustration is endless but you must build the frustration tolerance equivalent to a roach's capacity to survive a nuclear explosion. That's how you build on the technical skill. Throw that "won't even start because I'm afraid it won't be perfect" shit out the window. Just do it. Just start. Good luck.

insertusernameici

unicornempire

I love that Leverage really goes out of it’s way to show us that just because you break the ‘rules’, it doesn’t mean you’re breaking the rules. Rules and laws and society are all made up, at the end of the day, and all you really have is your own moral compass and sense of justice; is this just to you? Is it right? Should it be OK for companies to put people in insurmountable debt for the rest of their lives just because our medical care is so expensive in this modern day and age? No law or rule should change what you know in your heart is right and wrong, and I think that’s the key thing that makes someone a good person in my eyes.

theheroheart

#there was a time when parker wouldn’t have noticed, #not because she lacked the capacity to care, #but because she had narrowed herself, #to stay alive she cut off as many unnecessary things as possible, #watching her get them all back, #is one of the glories of this show (via @seananmcguire)

jack-the-bear

Leverage hands down has the best character development I’ve ever seen.

lets-go-steal-an-ot3

This scene hit me like a brick. My parents were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt when I was 16 bc I’d had cancer the year before (my treatment ended up being free but the initial ER bills and such were not).

But somewhere along the line they just… Disappeared. My mom says they’re not being paid and they’re not in collections. It’s almost as if someone out there did…exactly what Parker did.

Ever since I saw this the first time, I’ve imagined it was Parker doing it. That she and Hardison had a free weekend and decided to take it out on a collections agency. That I was one of the lucky ones who got a little Leverage.

gay-jesus-probably

Okay but like yeah, that is actually a thing that happens, albeit not exactly like this. I don’t remember the exact process but basically there’s a booming industry to sell peoples debt - the business you owe money to sells it to someone else for a fraction of the money owed, wipes their hands of the whole affair, and now whoever bought your debt is riding your ass to get you to give the money to the. But it’s also entirely possible for people to just… buy up massive amounts of debt for pennies on the dollar, and then just. Forgive it. Because capitalism is a living nightmare, but the system is broken enough that it’s possible to exploit it for good sometimes.

Like, the main reason I know about this is because John Oliver did a piece on debt buying a few years ago, and ended it by revealing that he’d bought 15 million dollars worth of medical debt just so he could forgive all of it. Both to expose how broken the system was because some random fucker like him could buy millions of dollars in peoples debt with zero regulations, and also just to take the record for biggest TV giveaway in history.

mikkeneko

A charity where you can do this, right here.

Be Parker! Be somebody else’s Leverage!

melyzard

Reblogging for the website.

nianeyna

yes! if you want to help with the medical debt crisis in the US and have some extra money please donate to RIP Medical Debt if you can. They’re completely legit and really do what they say - you really CAN relieve an incredible amount of debt for the needy with even a small donation. I’m a monthly donor and receive a quarterly report of the debt they’ve abolished, and it truly is amazing. Based on those reports the average amount of debt abolished per person is actually I would say about $600 - which means, if you’re doing the math, that with a $6 donation to RIP Medical Debt, you can potentially pull one person out of a poverty spiral - maybe even one family. For six dollars. that’s a pretty good deal, I think.

bethanyactually

RIP Medical Debt is now called Undue Medical Debt!

Undue Medical Debt makes it easy for donors to make an impactful difference in the lives of those struggling with medical debt.

gwydionmisha

A judge appointed by Gov. Laura Kelly said Kansas likely violated parental rights by restricting gender-affirming care for trans minors.

vaspider

The judge found 349 individual facts supported the continued provision of gender-affirming care.

Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach brought forward a litany of anti-trans witnesses familiar from litigation defending these bans. Among them was James Cantor, a Toronto psychologist who has built a career testifying for states defending care bans despite no clinical experience treating transgender minors—and who was once quietly dropped from a Florida Board of Medicine hearing after it emerged he had served on the advisory council of the Prostasia Foundation, a group that has worked to destigmatize pedophilia. Folsom wrote that Cantor "has not conducted any original scientific research on the efficacy or safety of gender dysphoria treatments," and noted he is not licensed to treat anyone under 16 and has never diagnosed a minor with gender dysphoria. [...] "The Court gives Dr. Cantor's testimony little weight," Folsom concluded. The judge turned next to Farr Curlin, a Duke University doctor and theologian who was an author of the Trump administration's HHS report on pediatric gender dysphoria ... By his own admission, Folsom noted, Curlin's views are "radically counter to current medical orthodoxy." The judge found his opinions "appear motivated by his personal views as opposed to a methodology applicable in the field of medical ethics," and gave his testimony "little-to-no weight." ...

And then there was Jamie Reed, the self-styled "whistleblower" who built a national profile on lurid, largely unsubstantiated accusations against a St. Louis gender clinic and who has gone on Fox News to describe being transgender as a delusion. Reed also did not testify and could not be cross-examined. Folsom gave her affidavit "little weight,” and had scathing remarks towards her lack of expertise: “The Court gives thus Jamie Reed’s affidavit little weight, given that she is not a medical provider or mental-health professional. In addition, her affidavit primarily addresses her experiences with a clinic operating outside of Kansas—thus, it does not rebut or refute the credible, uncontroverted testimony about clinical practice within the state of Kansas,” read the order.

This decision is 117 pages long, and if you want to actually feel good about something a judge has had to say recently about trans rights, this is legitimately a good read. (I understand that some people do not read legal decisions for fun. You should still try reading this one. It's really good.)

Given how thoroughly and completely he eviscerates the supposed qualifications and relevance of the same tired grievance actors that the right totes from case to case like a basket of moldy oranges, I hope that this decision will not only act as an example for future judges, but save them a bunch of work, because they don't have to then go do all of the writing themselves on how much these people suck, they can just cite this decision.

thesituation

i don’t feel like debating that topic much farther bc truthfully if it comes down to “women will lose to men in every sport bc they don’t have as much testosterone!!!!!” my elite feminist response is honest to god “ok we will lose with honor as equals instead of having our own special Easy Mode Female category so we can win amongst ourselves” like i’m sorry i just can’t be persuaded. i’m a brick wall. i want co-ed sports

thesituation

i bring a sort of “women can lose at some sports against men if it means being regarded as equals” vibe to the debate that “testosterone objectively increases performance” people don’t really like

pocketgalaxies

truly genuinely honestly for real i DON'T get why so many grown adult people stopped using google search for simple questions and just go straight to chatgpt now. it's not like google ever stopped working??? we've been googling things for decades without any issues why would you stop??????? to ask a program that lies half the time??????????????

k-wame

memewhore

bananahomo

I reblogged this last month, tagged it, and said “might as well see if it works.” I used this video as a reference to find all the forms that i needed (which is A LOT, especially if you’re a dependent) and sent them through the mail, not really allowing myself to hope.

dude.

$2,714 of medical debt from my top surgery - gone. im shaking this was such a weight on me for 2 years and it fucking worked. what the fuck.

minakittengaming

This is huge. Sharing for my US friendos.

zillyblog

Hospitals like to hide these policies under a lot of successive links in obscure places, so if you don't see anything right away, keep looking! Get friends to help! Make it a scavenger hunt. A game where you're assassins sent to slit capitalism's throat

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