Eli - 27 - they/em
nonbinary butch lesbian, white, tme
Fandom Content:
The Locked Tomb, Baldur's Gate 3, Dragon Age, The Legend of Zelda, Skyrim, The Magnus Archives, Dungeon Meshi, Steven Universe, Doctor Who, D&D
Tune in daily for activism, gay things, and memes. Feel free to shoot me a message!
Two of my closest friends, a disabled trans couple who were already unemployed, struggling financially, and at risk of homelessness, recently survived a car crash that totaled their vehicle and destroyed one of their phones. They're in desperate need of support right now
If you're in a place to give financially, please consider donating to their GoFundMe. If not, I would ask that you please reblog this post to signal boost it so it can reach someone who can. I don't want to see them lose their home
Two Denver-local queer, trans folks and their cat are facing a severe … Blue U needs your support for Help Diabetic & Trans Family Avoid Hom
uninstall adobe acrobat. it is malware. it has been malware. these aren't opinions: acrobat meets the definition of malware.
it installs a user-login-time "startup" executable that ignores any windows directives to disable it on startup. doing so only removes the even-more-malicious taskbar-icon-creating advertisement-notification-creating process. no matter what you do, the sleeper "updater" process starts when you log in, and runs perpetually
it sends & receives encrypted network traffic both periodically and non-periodically. both are bad, both are suspicious, and a program doing both is more suspicious than the sum of their parts. and to boot: acrobat will polymorphically edit its code after such network activity
this isn't new: it has always done this. now, it does not even do the thing it is meant to: provide a way to interact with documents, which is amongst the very first features computers were built to provide. you can merely open PDFs and read some of their content in the narrow space between the requests for adobe to give them your money, and interface for features you cannot use (because you don't) or do not, have not, and will not ever need
adobe and microsoft would very much like the user's cultural norms around computers to allow for advertisement built into the local software and even operating system itself. the web being 100% advertisements was not enough! sure enough, acrobat will hijack the windows notifications system thing to give you the 2026 equivalent of pop-ups
i don't really know enough about windows software equivalents, so i'll paypal $20 to the first person that reblogs this with a list of 3-5 PDF reader/editor/etc acrobat equivalents that meet the following criteria:
open source, locally-built executables must match checksum of prebuilt distributed executable
no paid features/premium version/subscription/whatever
not a toy hobby project thing, must be windows-users-proof
Firefox's built-in PDF.js viewer: does everything you could want from a basic viewer, fast enough search, and can now do annotations for filling in forms and such
KDE Okular: is a decent viewer and can also do basic annotations, and is so not-a-toy that you can even download it on the Windows app store.
LibreOffice Draw: I don't ever really like having to open this but if you have to edit a PDF in detail it does work, and doesn't just vomit up a bunch of polygons when you give it text to work with. Better as an authoring tool than an editor.
I've 100% replaced free acrobat with the firefox built-in and it works wonderfully for general office use and research/reading/viewing. It doesn't have robust redaction capabilities, but if you need to fill and sign and highlight a form it's actually much more intuitive than acrobat reader.
Hey kids, have you heard of the hot new spring trend everyone is doing? It's called "listening to the birds sing and feeling joy swelling within your heart." Give it a try!
i get so emotional every time i think about fanfic culture. it's just so beautiful that people are writing and anonymously posting these thousand-word stories about characters we all love and not even getting any money or public fame from it. it's literally just for the love of the game.
shout out to everyone who participates in fanfic culture, be it reading or writing fanfics. you are contributing to such a lovely thing <3
Update: Emergency Help my friend Calli family in motel due to domestic violence . Need $125 to help daughter with medical problems , its daughters birthday!
please Help them get water and meds for chronic pain ,insulin, and more. was unable to renew healthcare✅vetting below
July 3 2026
Thank you so so much for all the help, we would have loved to use the funds on other basic needs but most got used up in motel rooms, meals and water. We were also able to pay rent, thanks so so much.
Yesterday our daughter showed bleeding while peeing, we're afraid the surgery she had last year might have been b[o]tched or there are new complications.
We really need to get her a specialist, the appointment is $125, already considered paypal fees+ instant transfer.
9:00 or 9:10 PM CDT generally time to go to bank or store before it closes due to walking (
Meds :$65 for son’s hormones, $150 for week of Calli's meds or $540 for a months worth. Meds are half-off on mondays Jun 27 $20 collected 3 days ago
Help survive lack of water, replacing moldy insulin ,domestic violence, and get meds and T-shots for son! ✅Vetted below.
update back from hotel (a reblog of this thead by them)
Need bottled water update back from hotel had to flee to after Father in law got dangerous (a reblog of this thead by them)
✅vetting: above vouched for by @/transgendz who is vetted by scam-buster kyra 45 (pictures below). transcript below cut
And another campaign vouching, (ignore misgendering as English not first language)
3 ways to donate Donate by PAYPAL or KOFI or THRONE
Spanish lessons available!
dm @chingaderita to int title "offering spanish/english conversation classes, for $12 usd an hour one of us can be your conversation partner so you can practice." Most similar classes generally between $15 and $50 usd per hour
UPDATE JUNE 27TH
We've been 2 days in a motel, my father-in-law snapped again, he smashed some dishes. I got out with my kids for our safety.
We got enough for rent and other things but im regrettably using most of it to stay at the motel until my partner ends the arrangements so his dad visits his family 3 states away.
Im keeping this post up because we may need help affording transportation so we can be finally safe and back home and rent since living in a motel/hotel is more expensive than at home.
Someone got us the phones from our throne, thank you so much, i asked for a delayed delivery, hopefully things will be calmer so we can go back home.
UPDATES Jun 11
we're back home but [father in law] keeps pressing and screaming, we had to take refuge in the mold room with our kids, he kept screaming at me outside the room until way past 3am idk how safe we are with him around the worst is we have to check before going out of the room to either go eat/drink or if we need to use the restroom we also ran out of water, we can't flush the toilet or wash our hands he made my partner, his son, fall down after he pulled his cane from him, now his ankle hurts we have had no peace since we came back still unsure what we'll do we don't want to leave our home
June 10: we're still in need of help to afford breakfast, taxis and any extra support, our housing situation is still in the air things got pretty bad here idk what prompted this my partner i
May 23May 13, May 12
my last post, last emergency june 5 version of last thread before hotel, post of time in hotel Reblog at time of hotel
My artist friend Calli needs money for OVERDUE RENT Son's hrt , chronic illness medicine, taking care of family and and more (also had food trouble), and cat food and diabetic in-laws./ Spanish lessons also offered, . They have boosted many other people’s own fundraisers in solidarity. may 23 update they usually earn $12 a day from spanish lessons
my last post on this blog, my last post on other blog while shadowbanned last emergency june 5 version of post before hotel, post of time in hotel Reblog at time of hotel
chingaderita June update
Trying to afford trans care for our trans son this pride month and bracing for the upcoming bills, plus got to get June's rent too.
😔 I'm so sorry
Thank you all who helped Barely make the overdue rent but now being asked for Junes rent.
Commissions
1)A friend has offered to help them raise funds to keep them afloat if you're interested in art commissions.
Friend is taking time off to finish commissions and rest
2)EDIT Update from May 3rd : dm @chingaderita to int title "offering spanish/english conversation classes, for $12 usd an hour one of us can be your conversation partner so you can practice." Most similar classes generally between $15 and $50 usd per hour
May 23 May 13, May 12
May 1, 2026, 01:52:55 PM (Friday) “Still trying to afford testosterone and my meds Need help getting adult diapers, my partner hurt his back so bad he can’t stand up. No one here has the strength to lift him. Uh… Might also need help taking him to the doctor.”
Below past documentation of blog posts and background info, along with vouching transcript.
June domestic violence link
still has debilitating tooth pain. put on hold due to flue emegency
June 7
Hola, just updating that we're safe still at the hotel, we overslept after managing to fall asleep around 5-6am
I made a call to my partner back home, he says it might be better if we stay here one more day or even two
Right now our kids have only eaten cookies and I need to either buy food here or get them something ready to eat since there is no kitchen in the room.
The room tonight is $110 considering paypal fees, i might just order a pizza for them I can eat the pineapple out of it
We got some donations while we were asleep, thank you
$150/$300
maybe a haircut for our girl since her grandpa managed to cut off some strands of hair in his attempt of making her a boy again fucking monster
transcript about time zones
hello do you mean 9:00 pm of your time zone or the chicago time zone I use?
Uh my timezone sorry I should have made a clarification
so what time zone are you in?
sorry my head is not doing math right
I think it's UTC
Center México
Sorry I'm dumb I always forget my timezone Dx
ok so my usual message is probably right given time it takes for you to walk.
Yep
Feb 9 1:39 PM
need money to deep-clean house so safe for MIL return post-surgery (mold still here)
Repairs for toilet needed
Son suffering dysphoria
Nov 23 My eldest son had one of the worst nights in his life. All I can say is we managed to keep him safe through the night, he is safe at home. He thought he could keep raw dogging his dysphoria but he clearly needs to start HRT and transitioning. He is very avoidant of asking for anything because knows we barely get the money for food and other basics. I don't want to lose my son because of money. I want him to have access to a happy life. What if I'm not there next time to stop him?"
about medicine
quote
"Usually I would just endure until next week to try to get my meds but every time I go without them I notice I don't last as much as before until I have to make a run to the hospital. [I remember their hospitalization, it was really scary]... I needed $125 to get them [monday] half price but every other day I need $250... We need $50 to take our eldest to the doctor for an abdominal pain after carrying grandma. $35 for the laundromat. $300 to cover food expenses for all 9 of us and the cats. $110 for my healthcare renewal. Everything else for clean supplies and other necessities....
Transcript: vouched for by transgendz
transgendz is vetted by scam-buster kyra 45
"I can vouch for Calli @chingaderita! Ive known the family for several years now and they’ve consistently shown proof, was vetted by Kyra on my request when they first messaged, I’m quite sure, the search function on blogs is just awful and I’m having a hard time finding such an old post. But I talk to Calli often, we’ve had conversations in English and Spanish, and everything they say tracks with the proof provided. I just thought I’d say something bc I know you’ve been helping them too. Thank you for all you do.
About Calli
Calli, is a nonbinary parent dealing with chronic illness, chronic pain, unemployment and severe depression taking care of children, in-laws, and rescue cats . Calli is a kind person constantly boosting other people’s campaigns despite their families situation and limited time at compute cafes Calli in posts has discussed: has tumors, problems with gallbladder and liver, chronic joint pain. And a horrible pain in jaw that
We really need meds soon, has not been able to afford them in weeks, and we don’t want another hospitalization
“My gallbladder and liver need constant medication to not get further fucked up, I have a bunch of untreated tumor/growths I hope my healthcare will deal with at some point, I have chronic pain which affects my hips, back and left leg and sometimes my leg dislocates at random, just this August I’ve had two periods in less than 28 days, this is a common occurrence almost every month, and I’ve been dealing with teeth pain so intense it causes headaches, hurts my jaw, neck and now I have pain inside my right ear I suspect it’s related to my teeth pain.”
Summary of problems overall
dec29 It's late, I'm exhausted, haven't had a good night sleep in ages. We have a bunch of chronic panic, chronic illnesses, the most able bodied at home is probably me even tho my left leg dislocates at random, my left leg has jolts of pain at random too and my gallbladder and liver are actively trying to kill me. Oh, did I forget to mention the tumor and the many growths on my legs? Or the tooth pain I still have, I need that molar removed or im going to do it myself. Just, help us get a bed, the one we got is too moldy I'm tired of having to cover it with plastic so we can take turns to sleep on it at floor level. Also, urgently need funds to get my son the his next appointment at the trans clinic see if we can get him HRT or we'll have to get him DIY. We need to get more adult diapers too considering all the mobility issues our elderly are going through. If I dare to ask also for $10 so I can get nuggets and a treat for our son, he turned 9yo 2 days ago and he just wanted some nuggets please.
*They have been helping boost many campaigns, gaza and otherwise (and have asked me to boost these three while their internet is unreliable):
(1) AHMED’S [campaign] IS VERY FORGOTTEN, PLEASE, KEEP SHARING!!! – @/chingaderita on Tumblr 2)Donate to Trapped Family in Gaza Appeals for Help to Survive, organized by Abdallah Alanqar
(3) Hani €5,688/€25,000 – @/chingaderita on Tumblr
“We really REALLY need help with the court fees and paperwork [get done before aAugust.], we just want to ensure our kids will be safe from my family in case I die, due to my deteriorating health.”
now Personal health problems
Sep 7 tooth pain, Couldn’t rest with this damn tooth pain pain pain soainIsbsk,ndl .zlz
Maybe I should have added this to the main body of the post but I’m on my second period in less than 30 days, cause my liver and gallbladder trying to kill me isn’t enough I have many tumors growing in different parts of my body.
Latest post aug 24
Thank you I did pay my healthcare!!! I was hoping with the extra I could get my meds but we ended up using it for food and taking my MiL to the hospital because of gastrointestinal pain, she had to stay under supervision for a whole night and is scheduled for more tests on Tuesday. We’re pushing her healthcare services to schedule her for a gastroenterologist as soon as possible, she has been unable to eat which has been a terrible combination with her diabetes. Can we ask for help affording her ensure bottles so she can at least eat that? We’ll need to do something about the humidity and mold soon, we get trapped in the rooms often, last night it took us over an hour to be able to reopen a door even with both my partner and me pushing. We need to get adult diapers btw. Please, anything helps!!!!
You know, it’s real nice that we got help to pay the vet bills and help my kid keep his cat safe and healthy but wow. It is obvious we do not matter at all. The moment our cat needed help we got the goals, both times But I’ve been trying to get my meds for weeks or months at a time and nothing. It’s real hard not to fucking cry
I know it’s hard for everyone but please, keep sharing, anything ANYTHING helps. We’ve been getting a bit of food and paying little by little what we owe at the corner store but the upcoming card payment is $190 and my meds are $130 and then let’s not forget my healthcare renewal. I also bring bad news, we’re starting with water shortages just like last year, we’ve gone from having 4 days of water a week to 1-2 if we’re lucky. Our only toilet is busted and there are 9 people here who use it. My kid still needs attention for a UTI he’s had for a couple of months now. And my partner has 3 ingrown nails and 2 big cuts on his feet he’s kept unattended for weeks. I’d hate to up the goal but we need every help we can get!!
more documentation from 2023.
Went back on my blog to find proof of the fire where my in-laws lost everything, this other one with pictures and proof that I’ve been sick and struggling to get my medication since August 2023. Just felt like having things organized and maybe make another blog to keep all proof I can save since we lost a lot of information and pictures/videos when we sold our phones and lost the computer.
June 16 update
Can't possibly help carrying water today cause im in incredible pain and we haven't got any money except for a class I gave yesterday I would love to get my medication so I can be more functional and in less pain, water so we can shower AND WE NEED TO REPLACE THE INSULIN THAT SPOILED BECAUSE OF THE BLACKOUT PLEASE!!!!
update june 15 night
Got water for today, we still need help with testosterone, meds, our daughter's gender affirming haircut and water tomorrow until the water supply starts again, I'm sorry we still don't know how long this shortage will be
jesus fucking christ we ARE dying more. i thought i was just being pessimistic. usamericans age 25 to 44 are dying more than we should be. like MEASUREABLY more than our peers in other developed countries. like there were 700,000 excess deaths in 2023 and its not getting any better.
School of Public Health researcher coleads study that finds sharp increase in excess deaths largely due to drug overdoses, alcohol use, traf
Millennials and older Gen Z in the U.S. are dying at alarming rates, with 62% of deaths among 25–44-year-olds considered preventable compare
whats killing us:
drugs (especially opiods), deindustrialization (we cant find fucking jobs), we have piss poor healthcare and no social safety net, overly permissive gun laws, and higher rates of chronic disease. also suicide because of the previous shit and our mental health is a shithole.
this is the bleakest fucking shit i have ever seen.
i knew my friends and i had buried too many people. one of my friends died YESTERDAY of a heart attack and he's younger than me! i have to take blood pressure medication! im 33!!!
jesus fucking christ i want to *scream*
we're fucking *dying* as they slash the system and make it even harder to survive.
fellow millenials and gen z, hold eachother close because tomorrow isnt guranteed. reach for as much joy as you can.
Oh, guys, we just need a little to get to the middle of our goal We are close to 15,000 We need less than €820 Come on, guys! We just need 2% To reach 50% of the target.
Movie about a depressed and rather morbid autistic man planning to commit suicide and picking up a number of odd jobs in an effort to raise enough money to meticulously plan and prepay for his funeral so his mother doesn’t have to worry about it after he is gone. He begins to connect with people and enjoy life for the first time while working part time as a greeter in the funeral home, helping an eccentric old lady organize her basement, walking 7 dogs and maintaining a feral cat colony for a guy with a broken foot, playing a number of bit parts in local ads and stocking the shelves at the convenience store at night. In the end, he has befriended many of his neighbors and he decides he does not want to die and goes back to school to become a funeral director instead.
He is popular at his funeral home gig because he keeps accidentally saying things that are very reassuring and death positive. Because he wants to die. He eventually donates his funeral fund to the old lady’s granddaughter after her sudden death so she does not have to sell her grandmother’s prized possessions to pay for her funeral.
The old lady gifts him one of her ceramic cats at the beginning of the film which he reluctantly accepts out of politeness. Near the end of the film, he adopts a friendly cat from the cat colony that looks remarkably like the ceramic cat and names it after her, signaling his commitment to surviving and caring for his cat the way the old woman lived for her ceramic collection.
Elliot Page does not play Achilles in The Odyssey like transphobes were preemptively angry about but Homer just told me he updated the Iliad and Achilles is canonically transgender now and not just subtextually transgender like in the first draft.
I don't know if I've expressed this but part of the thing that has been making me bugfuck insane about discussions around AI image generation is knowing people who have worked with computer vision for decades.
Look. I understand that people are concerned about training models. I really do get that, that people have intense feelings about their photos or drawings or image being used to train AI. I even kind of get wanting to weaponize copyright against that because you don't know what else to do with those feelings.
I am currently building a multi-decade chain of papers on computer vision and image generation to have this discussion, and I would like to do so in a moderately calm manner.
Unfortunately if I want to cite a journal article from 1983 in a tumblr post, the copyright holders of this article about image restoration and pixel randomization want $248 per section of excerpted text (<500 words).
Anyway. The flesh pit guy appears to be an asshole but I'm very frustrated seeing people react to photoshop compositing tools as an unethical use of AI tools that undermines the craft or artistry of a project.
This is a 2024 paper by one of the Adobe developers who worked on those compositing tools going over how the tools work. For the record, this model was trained on licensed and public domain images only and the tools are run on device, so the copyright and environmental complaints that people frequently make about AI don't apply to these specific tools.
That paper uses research from this 2015 paper on AI detection of composited images. That paper uses the ImageNet dataset.
ImageNet's dataset is a combination of images sourced from image searches starting in 2009 and description tags generated by Amazon Mechanical Turk workers. The images are not owned by ImageNet, but were scraped from various internet sources in the late 2000s.
That project uses algorithms and processes described in this 2007 paper on the utility of a general image database and image segmentation.
This 2000 paper on image segmentation developed some of the models used in the later paper, based on a collection of 1000 Corel stock images.
That segmentation was based on statistical models in this paper from 1994, which used a small training dataset collected by the researchers.
That 1994 paper made use of the model in this foundational paper from 1984 on predictive pixel selection for algorithm-based image restoration.
That paper helped to refine the boundary-finding methods used in this 1986 paper, which was an improvement on methods from the 1980 Hildreth paper.
Both Hildreth and Canny cite this 1971 memo from the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab, which describes the process of using a computer to find lines in an image.
Personally I like this note from a revised version of that 1971 memo that shows that we are still currently dealing with some of the same problems in computer vision that people were 50 years ago.
"This program has no idea what a reasonable line-drawing should look like when it represents an image of polyhedra. Instead it is very general and will find arbitrary line-drawings. Observing the particular way in which things sometimes go wrong, one quickly comes to the conclusion that higher-level understanding of the scene being analysed could greatly improve the line and vertex creating phase of this program. As thing stand now this understanding comes only after the line-finder has done its work."
Okay so what's my point?
My point is that there is a long chain of models, statistics, and research that, stretching back to the beginning of computer vision, has been centered around figuring out the likelihood that one pixel next to another pixel is black instead of white. The computers have never been very smart, they have never understood context, and the improvements we have made from the line finder in 1971 to "harmonize" in photoshop in 2026 is a very traceable chain of refining how the statistics are calculated.
They hallucinate extra elements, they don't know what shadows are.
Computers are still stupid, they just do math a lot faster than they did in the seventies.
Harmonize is apparently a new "AI" tool available in photoshop that is capable of matching lighting, texture, and other qualities in photos that are composited together. One of the things that the flesh pit guy is currently being dragged for (aside from really seeming to be a pretty tremendous asshole) is using this particular type of AI tool as a time saver on his ongoing art project.
I want to have a conversation about this, by which I mean I want to make some arguments about this.
I'm writing this specifically about the harmonize compositing tool in photoshop (and similar tools like upscaling). This is not about using grok or generating whole images or whole elements of images, this is not about whether or not the flesh pit guy is an asshole. I will grant that he is an asshole and I personally find whole images generated with AI tools like grok to just kind of look bad and be really boring.
Work with me on this, and let's accept the premise that adobe's Firefly is an ethically trained model (up to 5% of the images used to train firefly may be midjourney images that were licensed to adobe as stock images after being generated by midjourney, but adobe pays creators standard licensing fees to train data and does not train on client data), and that the tools are run on-device and do not consume any more resources than creating a 20-layer document in photoshop would.
(Also I acknowledge that training a model uses a lot of power and resources but creating a video game or an animated movie uses power at a much higher level than playing the game or watching the movie on your own machine; i've got to limit the scope somewhere so I can actually ask the question I've got)
Again, we are granting the following before you respond to the poll:
If the model was trained on ethical data and
If the tool runs locally and does not use more power than your computer uses and
The art the tool is used on is a personal, individual project and does not lead to poor treatment of workers
With that context I think those AI Tools
Are unethical and reduce the artistry of a work
Are unethical but do not reduce the artistry of a work
Are ethical but reduce the artistry of a work
Are ethical and do not reduce the artistry of a work
Editing a photo with only the AI tools (predictive image processing tools developed from models trained on large imagesets) included as a part of the 2012 CS6 license (and the autofocus on my phone camera from 2020).
Direct from cellphone, Autofocus
Posterize (edge-finding like the tools in the original linked master’s thesis)
HDR Toning (photorealistic high contrast preset)
Selective Color Adjustment
Glowing Edges (again, another edge-finding tool)
Rendered lighting effects (spot, high intensity, high angle)
Color halftone
Gaussian Blur applied to the color halftone (similar to how AI upscaling works, and is based on the 1986 paper listed above)
Selective color replacement
Cutting backgrounds 100% with tools that use the AI included in my 2012 CS6 license
I think the last two images here and the edge-finding images do a really good job of demonstrating how AI/Machine Learning image processing tools are statistical tools.
The cut-out on the left was done hastily with a magic wand selection tool with a color selection threshold of 20. What that means is that you click on the image and the tool picks all of the pixels that are contiguous with the pixel you clicked on and are within the tolerance. If you broke down the image pixel by pixel you'd be able to get the exact count of what percentage of the image is what color, you could, in theory, remake the image as a barcode of just the proportions of each color using this kind of image analysis. The image is math, the computer sees it as math, the algorithms see it as math, the models see it as math.
The cut-out on the right demonstrates how the "AI computer vision" makes educated guesses (predictions) about the image. That was cut out using a magnetic lasso tool, which you guide around the vague shape of the image with your mouse. The program creates a selection line that follows color variations in the edges of the image that you're cutting out. On a very high contrast background (so if I was standing against a white wall) this can be very accurate. On a lower contrast background, there's more variation as the program guess wrong about which way to move the selection line.
The program doesn't see the photo as a picture of a person being cut out, it sees a collection of pixels of various colors and calculates what the probability is that a pixel of one color is likely to be next to a pixel of another color based on the the difference in color of the pixels.
There are very, very accurate selection tools in modern editions of creative suite - when I used the sky selection tool in my photography class in 2023 I was *stunned* by how accurate it was and how much time it saved. But all of that is just a more complicated form of the line finder in the 1971 memo that had trouble distinguishing between solids and shadows in areas of reduced contrast.
This is the story of Toni and Charlotte who escaped the Nazis. It's the first Trans+ History Week article of 2024
Prague, 1942. A refugee Jewish couple light Shabbat candles as night falls. The words of their Shabbes prayer ignite the Friday night darkness, alongside the hesitantly kindling flame. Together they create a holy space of rest in the middle of an increasingly hostile world that persecutes them: for their faith, their sexuality, and because both women are trans.
AO3 does not live in “the cloud” because that is other people’s computers, and other people’s computers are vulnerable to censorship.
AO3 is on its own computers. It does still have to be housed somewhere, and I suppose a determined enough hater could try to find that place and go after it, but it’s a lot harder than sending spurious complaints to Amazon or whomever going “BadWrong things are hosted on your cloud service!”
When people involved with AO3 talk about “the cost of servers” they don’t mean “the cost to pay Amazon for space on their servers.” They mean, like, the cost to physically own them, and eventually replace them with new ones. And the operating costs to run them.
AO3 is not “in the cloud.” AO3 is stored on physical machines that the OTW owns.
While this is not a solution that can work for everyone who wants to deal with controversial content, it is why AO3ple sneer at alt-righters who complain about getting thrown off hosting platforms.
Because I want us to own the goddamned servers, ok? Because I want a place where we can’t be TOSed and where no one can turn the lights off or try to dictate to us what kind of stories we can tell each other.
