We are no longer in early access! 1.0 just released~
Come see what all we've been up to! If you've been holding off, nows the time to catch up on Bea's latest adventure and build a new Ranch on the mysterious Rainbow Island
We are no longer in early access! 1.0 just released~
Come see what all we've been up to! If you've been holding off, nows the time to catch up on Bea's latest adventure and build a new Ranch on the mysterious Rainbow Island
I've joined the Tech Workers Coalition (TWC) and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
It's way outside of my comfort zone, but we can't fight fascism without a little discomfort.
Please sign up for and lend support to local organizations in your area. If you're unsure about which org to join, join one and you'll definitely find other orgs through them.
Even if you feel like you can't contribute, there are myriads of ways to get involved. Red card translations, art support, button pressing, mutual aid supplies, even just spreading the word and helping recruit.
And of course join protests if you're able. I went to my first protest on President's Day. Me: the agoraphobic, socially anxious shut-in. It was great! We even made national news, and this isn't one of the major city hubs.
Take care of your self, of course, don't destroy your mental health in the process. Take breaks, keep enjoying things (although, dont cross picket lines). But also push through the discomfort a little because we need all the support we can get
Okay but for real if you live in Maricopa County and voted by mail PLEASE go check the county recorder's webpage to make sure you didn't get flagged for a signature issue!! Apparently something like 12k are still waiting to be cured and we need every single one of those votes to send Kari Lake back to the fucking shadow realm where she belongs and also REPLACE Kyrsten Sinema with someone who's not going to do a stupid little curtsy while they tank progressive policies in the Senate!!
THERE IS STILL TIME PLS CHECK IF YOU LIVE THERE!!! Also maybe check even if you don't live there, I made sure mine got counted in Pima, we can make Blue Arizona happen!!! Check your ballots!!!!
MAJOR TWs: Death, family loss, guilt, depression, suicide
Real talk, don't read if any of that would bug you. I just. Need to get this out somewhere.
If you're prone to self harm or suicidal ideation / tendencies,
Do Not Read This Post.
USA: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
TrevorLifeline: 1–866–488–7386.
Please call one of the above hotlines if you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts about self-harm.
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It's been almost a month now since my younger sister died.
I'm emphatically not doing ok.
We were really close. She was living with me for a year up until 3 months ago when our parents came to take her to live with them and, hopefully, get mental health help. Then a month ago she took her own life.
I know coulda-shoulda-woulda's don't accomplish anything. I know what's done can't be changed, that we made decisions that were supposed to help her.
But I also know for certain that if we never had her go to live with our parents, she would be alive right now. If I'd pushed back, took a firmer stance, got my own shit together and ensured she stayed here - I could be having late night game design chats with her right now instead of writing this.
That guilt is wrecking me.
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How I Know
My younger sister had serious mental health struggles.
She came to stay with me, on the opposite side of the country, after a particularly bad breakdown when our parents moved to their new property.
The house they were leaving was the only house she'd ever known - she was born after we'd moved there. Leaving that place was a major sticking point for her, as she couldn't stand the thought of losing what seemed to her like her whole world. So she ran away.
Out of fear that she'd do something reckless on her own, I invited her to stay with my partner and I to get her somewhere stable. It was an even bigger change than what she would have had, moving completely cross-country, but we had a second bedroom that was only being used as an office at the time and it gave her separation from the source of her anxieties.
Plus, she was trying to get into game development, and that's the main reason I moved so far away! To be closer to the industry. So there was an upside for her here.
She got here, we got her settled in, tried to make her feel at home. She got close to the cats, found restaurants she liked, learned the joys of living somewhere that's actually baseline Walkable.
We were trying to get her mental health care, but ran into roadblock after roadblock. I have my own mental health struggles, and my partner wasn't equipped to help her, so we squandered months of time at each step.
Meanwhile my parents' fears were boiling over, regularly asking if she should go back to live with them so they can get her back into care. Things were becoming strained on our end, too, with trying to provide support by ourselves away from any kind of support network of our own.
I Knew It Was a Bad Idea -
- but I caved to the pressure and stress.
We weren't making progress towards getting her care. On the other hand, our mom works in healthcare, our dad is full-time stay-at-home, AND they've gotten her to see care providers before. They're antagonizing, grating people, but at least she'd get care with them, right?
A plan was laid out. We had two steps left to get her seen; if we didn't get those steps knocked out by X month, she would go stay with our parents to get help instead.
I Shouldn't Have Let That Happen
- for so many reasons.
She was still having outbursts, but at least here she had stability and some kind of support. She never said as much to me, but she, unsurprisingly in retrospect, didn't take that plan to heart well. Our parents' house situation was the largest stressor for her, given the circumstances that lead her to be with us, so sending her back could only rekindle that anxiety. Most importantly, while she was here, we took away her access to her gun.
Yeah, we were surprised to learn she brought it with her too.
An image that keeps resurfacing in my mind is the adamant look on her face when we were helping her get packed and she demanded, "You better give me that key back."
It struck me as weirdly aggressive in the moment; I should have taken the clue then. It was so obvious.
But I didn't.
I failed her. I didn't have my own shit together, and couldn't help her get hers together. I didn't have the spine to push back against pressure, to make sure she stayed here, and that I, personally, guaranteed that she got help.
Reminders
Everything here has some memory of her.
That bedroom, the kitchen, the couch, the cats, our usual restaurants. I was confused by a random strand of long hair in my car two days ago; it was hers.
She's pinned in my Steam friends. Her online partners are coping with the news by lashing out there. Discord still has my DMs with her near the top.
Her last message to me was about Twenty One Pilots and Bring Me the Horizon.
When I'm watching anime or playing games, the temptation to send her random screenshots is still strong. Memes, video game news, music; things I would spam her with before are all just reminders now. Anything sci-fi adjacent, "She should have watched / played this..."
Work makes me feel guilty because I got into the industry she poured her soul into and never was allowed a chance. Focus and energy at work prove fleeting. She was honestly incredibly skilled as a 3d hard-surface prop artist and level designer, and deserved to be at any one of her favorite game studios.
Things that didn't faze me before are now extremely triggering. Suicide and family member deaths in media especially. It's actually obscene how prevalent they are. Anime are especially bad with the casual suicide, I've had to stop watching certain things entirely. Was finally watching the new Trigun as a distraction when they had one such scene, and that's what sparked me writing this whole post...
It's inescapable. The memories, the guilt, the anguish.
It's My Fault
There's no denying that fact.
We can dress it up with pretty platitudes about how I "did my best", but I know I could and should have done more. It's not that I didn't notice signs; I hoped they would resolve themselves without incident on their own because I didn't have the energy. Or I let my conflict-avoidant tendencies hold me back from bringing up hard discussions or from being assertive when required.
If she was still staying with us, my younger sister would still be alive.
I hate myself for that.
And I'm not doing ok.
But I plan to move forward with her memory. With this guilt.
I am going to fix everything I should have fixed while she was here, to atone. And then some.
First, I'm going to get my own mental health under control.
After that, I'm going to get involved in some way. Advocacy, political action, whatever means possible to get mental health care reform. Namely around the sign-up process; there is no reason to require insurance, proof of residence, or a particular state ID - and we need more mental health facilities with new patient availability that don't operate on limited first-come first-served twice weekly early morning walk-in time slots to facilitate that.
Similarly, I'll get involved with fixing the game industry. New talent onboarding is abysmal, and the industry's mass layoff cycles are unconscionable. The industry's behavior is not blameless in any of this.
Will salvage the projects she had in the works. Maybe not soon, but at some point in the future.
Plus more.
I'm going to be living with these phantasms for life. These memories, and triggers. That's going to be my atonement.
Quite frankly, it's not enough.
...
She should be here right now. That thought has burned itself into my skull, alongside the images of her in her final moments.
See, we did a family video call while she was in the hospital at the end. Since I'm on the other side of the country. The sight of her like that haunts me.
My voice cracked when I got the initial news call before that. All I could say was a distressed, confused, "WHAT?" That sound has been echoing in my ear ever since.
When I went down for the viewing, our older sister laid out the full details of the moments that lead up to that. She wasn't there when it happened, but heard all about it at the hospital. My mind pieced together a recreation of exactly how that would have played out, and it refuses to stop playing. Over and over.
They later found a note and sent photos of it. My younger sister wrote at one point amid the anger and sadness, "[@tratane], I'm sorry." She'd only written "sorry"s for her two long distance partners, and me... She'd been planning it for a while, probably since before she left here. I still see that note when I close my eyes.
I recall how much she was crying on the day she moved out of here. She was very insistent on giving us the full rundown of how to do the chores she did, even though we did them before she got here. Now I can only wonder how much of that and her tears were because she was planning for that to be her last chance to do that.
Tumblr is selling your content to train Machine Learning models in order to line their pockets while making the world a worse place.
Don't trust a checkbox to keep your art / DMs / post content safe. Especially given they're using the "opt out" dark pattern to trap as many people as they can - and opting out after your data has been handed over is unlikely to remove it from their partner's servers (assuming the checkbox actually does anything at all). The only real defense against it is not giving them content at all
Go to Cohost, Mastodon, anywhere else. It sucks having to rebuild networks, but take that out on investors and corporate boards the only way we can in this rigged system.
I refuse to stand by this and let it become the norm.
Hi, Tumblr. It’s Tumblr. We’re working on some things that we want to share with you.Â
AI companies are acquiring content across the internet for a variety of purposes in all sorts of ways. There are currently very few regulations giving individuals control over how their content is used by AI platforms. Proposed regulations around the world, like the European Union’s AI Act, would give individuals more control over whether and how their content is utilized by this emerging technology. We support this right regardless of geographic location, so we’re releasing a toggle to opt out of sharing content from your public blogs with third parties, including AI platforms that use this content for model training. We’re also working with partners to ensure you have as much control as possible regarding what content is used.
Here are the important details:
We already discourage AI crawlers from gathering content from Tumblr and will continue to do so, save for those with which we partner.Â
We want to represent all of you on Tumblr and ensure that protections are in place for how your content is used. We are committed to making sure our partners respect those decisions.
To opt out of sharing your public blogs’ content with third parties, visit each of your public blogs’ blog settings via the web interface and toggle on the “Prevent third-party sharing” option.Â
For instructions on how to opt out using the latest version of the app, please visit this Help Center doc.Â
Please note: If you’ve already chosen to discourage search crawling of your blog in your settings, we’ve automatically enabled the “Prevent third-party sharing” option.
If you have concerns, please read through the Help Center doc linked above and contact us via Support if you still have questions.
The "Except those we've partnered with" is a huge deal yo like. I dont understand how you can type those words, as a PR person.
That, and making the option an Opt-Out is a literal dark pattern designed to ensure the most bang for your buck by relying on people not noticing. That is beyond shady and unforgivable.
I also have my doubts your partners will remove data they've already stored and trained on if a user opts out after the fact. They don't exactly have a great track record of transparency here.
snowghoul
pixelskylines
dailybridgerton
