lurking around here since 2010, she/her Art, poetry, music (mostly Tom Waits), X-Files since '94 , SotL, Good Omens, Our Flag Means Death and some other shows Somewhere on the aroace spectrum I think, definitely neurospicy ♏ artsy blog: daydreaming-realist
buy me a coffee?: https://ko-fi.com/feuerkindjana
If someone can add a few coins for my dear colleague who’s getting screwed over by contractors & on top of that has now a broken car, it’d be great. She and her wife (and their 3 cats) are super nice people and working in disability care pays shit, lemme tellya.
hey! donate to uk trans charities today because it’s gonna be a rough one
Folks in the UK, could we have some trusted links to charities?
There’s Mermaids which is always a great option, and then Scotland-specific there’s LGBT Youth Scotland, to give you just a couple. There will absolutely be more that other people can suggest though!
A couple I donate to: TransAid Cymru, to support Welsh trans people, and The Outside Project, which helps queer people in London struggling with homelessness (and as trans people make up a disproportionately large number of unhoused people, it feels very relevant.)
Goes without saying, but don’t donate to Pride Cymru, because they’re complete shit.
Plugging the Belfast Trans Resource Centre who are a social space for all trans/non-binary/intersex and folks otherwise identifying with the trans umbrella in Northern Ireland who offer support and resources as well as running fun events. Like a lot of queer charities, covering costs and doing what we need to do is much trickier now than ever before. 🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️
There are a lot of really dog shit things in the world of tech that can be solved with a bit of time, some stubborn googling and maybe some special hardware and piracy is only the tip of the iceberg.
Printers are notorious for claiming they’re out of ink when they haven’t come close to the suggested number of prints, and their cartridges literally still have ink in them. So after a bit of googling I found out how to ‘reset’ a cartridges automatic stopping system (its literally 1 physical wheel on the cartridge that you gotta turn back). The only downside is that I don’t get a digital ink monitor, but since it told me it was empty when still half full, I don’t mind.
Like, you can just jiggle with some shit and solve one of the biggest money making scams in the post-industrial world and I don’t think people realise its that easy.
Or, like, repairing your own technology. A few months ago, I swapped out my sister’s laptop screen. Did it myself, I removed maybe 4 screws, no vital parts were exposed and it cost me $40. I even got a choice of matte or glossy.
My point is, any walls that capitalist technology presents you with will be a false one. And one already broken by a dedicated community of interesting people working hard for free to break down that wall.
kids these days will be all “be gay do crime” and dont even know how to watch a cartoon without paying for it smh
IN FAIRNESS
piracy was definitely leagues easier a decade or so ago when thepiratebay was functional, megaupload was still running, and YouTube and Google made only the most cursory attempts to block copyright content. like let’s not pretend that the internet hasn’t got a lot more corporatised in the past decade or so. piracy is still possible and you can and should do it but it’s a LOT harder to do safely and reliably than it was.
^thank u
Sorry, this is all wrong.
1) ThePirateBay is still functional. (It’s not the same pirate bay that it was back in the day, but let’s not get into Theseus’ ship territory. It’s still here and it still works, that’s all that matters.) There are plenty of torrent sites around, more than there were 10 years ago – although overall traffic has plummeted. Now as then, it’s a whack-a-mole game.
2) Why was it “leagues easier” a decade ago? Some countries, not all (not north America, for example), now mandate ISP blocking of torrent sites, but this new complication can be bypassed with one (1) step: a google duckduckgo search for proxies. No government agency or ISP can possibly keep up with proxies, it’s yet another whack-a-mole game. So yes, it was technically easier before, but I don’t see “leagues” anywhere.
3) It was safer before? Are you shitting me? Have you lot forgotten that the legal departments of MPAA and RIAA sued torrent sharers (not even uploaders) and asked for millions of dollars for damages? AND GOT THEM? (By which I mean they didn’t actually get millions since the people they sued didn’t have any, but said people were convicted and ruined and that was the goal in the first place. It was a deeply amoral and cynical scare tactic.) Well they stopped doing that at some point, and focused on hunting P2P and torrent sites. Running a site is certainly less safe today. Using one, though? Depending on where you are, the ISP may be allowed to block you after repeated instances, and that’s it. You’re not getting in trouble with the law or into crippling debt. And either way there’s only a minuscule chance that any of this will come to pass, which becomes zero (0) with a VPN. (Safety of course depends on the country, and in some cases piracy is the least of your concerns. Let’s not get into that.)
4) Ten years ago there was no Sci-Hub, and Library Genesis was in its infancy. If today it’s harder to find PDFs on google, it is orders of magnitude easier and more reliable to find them elsewhere. People just have to unstick their minds from the notion that stuff is either on google or doesn’t exist at all. Geez.
5) P2P still exists. IRC (the sharing channels in particular, #bookz and the like) still exists. Torrenting functions like it always did. All these methods are exactly as easy to use as before, i.e. not necessarily a piece of cake, there’s a learning curve. But it’s the same learning curve it was 10 years ago.
6) So what have we lost? Only YouTube (meh, the film/tv quality was appalling anyway, and music is still there) and direct downloads (at least the permanent ones: there are plenty of them still around, but files expire and you need to keep track of what goes up when. So this goes beyond knowhow, it’s about internet communities. Let’s not get into that either, it’s a huge subject.) It’s a loss, sure, but I wouldn’t call it a terrible blow.
7) And in exchange for that loss, we got streaming sites. This is piracy, too, and it’s much much easier than torrents, and tons of people do it. Any “piracy has declined” narrative either implies that we’re excluding streaming from the discussion for some reason, or is flat out wrong. Ten years ago, grandpa couldn’t possibly torrent a film, and it’s debatable if he even knew how to open the file you helpfully sent him. Now, as long as someone has set up kodi or similar, grandpa can watch it on his tv and it just feels like cable.
8) On why torrents in particular have declined in recent years, see here. It’s a big subject and I didn’t cover all of it, but the main reason is that people had access to easier methods to get what they wanted (some legal and affordable, some illegal and free), so they didn’t need to learn how to torrent. Ergo, they never did. There’s more of course, and there’s definitely a cultural shift too, but that’s a very long story so let’s not get into it. The linked post also includes some thoughts on why torrents aren’t dead and doomed just yet, and ooh, I forgot a very important one: you can’t stream photoshop.
To summarise, internet piracy is NOT more difficult, unreliable, and unsafe today than it was 10 or 20 years ago. For reasons why people (young or otherwise) seem less versed in it, please look elsewhere. I have thoughts on that too, but this is already a very long post, so I’ll just leave you with the best kind of thought. I’ll leave you with a doubt:
ARE people less versed in piracy? Are they really? Or is it simply that 20 years ago, internet users were computer geeks by definition, whereas now everyone’s online? Perhaps the percentage of skilled pirates in the general population remains more or less the same, and the only thing that’s dropped is the percentage of skilled pirates to total internet users. I can’t be sure without statistical evidence, but it’s a possibility.
You can literally google “watch _____ free online” and find most movies but the third result just download Adblock or popup blocker and you’re golden it truly couldn’t be easier
I’ve been meaning to make a piracy masterpost for awhile and what better time than now?
Materpost: A curated Githup tutorial of links to more torrent sites, software, VPNs, uBlock origin filters, ect. Basically everything you could ever want starting out. Do be warned though it doesn’t appear to have been updated in awhile so a few of the links are dead.
GAMES:
Vimm’s Roms: NES era->ps3 era roms and emulators to play them. Has user ratings on games. Cons: slow download speeds.
nsw2u: More switch roms. Check here if nxbrew doesn’t have the game you’re looking for.
Hshop:3ds games/updates/dlc. Very well organized and sorted by console region. Bonus ability to generate QR codes to scan with homebrew to begin download directly on your console.
Oldgamesdownload: Old 90’s-2000’s PC games and some gamecube games. Technically, all of the games here are abandon ware, meaning the original company/creator doesn’t sell nor make money from the games anymore period. If you’re into that.
Fitgirl repacks: Heavily compressed PC games, and other various consoles. Small downloads and faster speeds for the size of the games. Somewhat limited game selection.
Steam unlocked: Steam games with easy-to-use installers. Check here if fitgirl doesn’t have what you’re looking for.
Steam Underground: A user forum for piracy support, usually about installing cracked games. Does have some scattered PC game downloads.
Amiibo life: Amiibo bins, can be loaded with some homebrew to load in games without any external source, or, if you buy writable NFC cards, you can make your own free amiibos.
Books:
Library Genesis: a good all-in-one ebook finder. Has books, magazines, scientific papers, ect. Well organized and able to sort by Author, Genre, ect ect. Almost all books in .epub format
Calibre: Not piracy but a free software for reading said .epub files, and other ebook formats. Good for sorting your books.
Sci-Hub: Research papers, academic books, pdfs, ect. Helpful for collage students.
IT ebook: eBooks about learning programming languages.
getintopc: Wide selection of pc (mostly windows) software of all sorts, and different versions. Can personally vouch for the site, I’ve gotten Photoshop, Maya, and Sony Vegas from here over the years.
Other:
the eye: An archive of old roms, OS systems, roms (non nintendo), comics, books, ect, ect. Cons: No search function and slightly hard to navigate.
1337x.to: Torrent site for movies, shows, games, comics, ect.
Finally someone actually posted links instead of just bitching or saying “it’s easy”
Ok just want to plug the eye a bit more considering I lost a few hours in their yesterday.
the eye has been up since 2017 and in the last four years have accumulated 140TB of data (according to their own reports). Part of their growth is just their own work, part of it is absorbing other archives/open directories that were having issues: I know rpg.rem.uz used to be its own archive - gave way to The Trove, which is having its own issues right now unfortunately… - but now most-all of their content can also just be found on the eye. Same with a few dozen other archives.
And they have ‘old roms, OS systems, roms (non nintendo), comics, books, ect, ect’, but massively more than you might think just based off how this sounds. Like…
They have it all.
If you want to try and homebrew alcohol, go check their stuff. If you want to try and read books that are out of print or otherwise in public domain (and some that aren’t yet in public domain), go check their stuff. If you want to run a campaign and can’t pay for expensive print tabletop books, go check their stuff. If you want to fuck off into the woods to live off the land (or research how that would work for a writing project), go check their stuff. If you’re trying to learn shit about drugs - any drugs, almost - go check their stuff.
Hell, if you want to go read what looks like literally every research paper on coronaviruses from 1968 up to Feb 2020, you can do that too!
As
chickenmcnuggies
said its a mess and a half to navigate through their collections, partially with how large it is and the fact quite a few folders were once whole other archives since absorbed by the eye…
But goddamn you can lose an afternoon just going through all the stuff they have.
Notable omissions on ebooks: Z-Library has a different collection than Libgen (and possibly larger? I tend to have more luck with weird stuff there); Anna’s Archive is a link aggregator with what seems to be a larger collection than either, albeit also a less easy to use one.
Notable omission on music: Firehawk52’s guide has plenty for learning how to download, but these days, I just use a cracked Spotify client.
Y’ALL HAVE TIME TO REBLOG THIS. IT TAKES LESS THAN FIVE SECONDS.
My kiddos are everything to me, but good lord people should only ever have children if they 100% want them - living a childfree life is not, in any way, a lesser life. You are valid and whole and perfect as you are, with or without reproducing.
Love to all my wonderful childfree moots 🥰❤️
I’d always wanted to be a mom, and have a wonderful kid, but motherhood isn’t for everyone. You are enough, and you are perfect just as you are. A woman should not have kids just because it’s expected.
I decided for myself that I don’t want children, but what about people not being able to? Do they have to feel incomplete just because it doesn’t work?
As a woman who desperately wanted children and couldn’t have them, I will forever defend every woman’s right to choose whether they want children or not.
And anyway:
Your children are not there for you. Your children are not there to complete you. They’re their own people and you’re your own person, please don’t use your children as an extension of yourself.
Children are just small underdeveloped humans. Humanity as a whole needs some for the continuation of our species. Individual people certainly don’t need to pop out one or two just because they are biologically able.
Those things cost money you know.
I wanted my kid more than anything, I’m desperately sad that he’s an only child, YET ALSO it’s just as fucking well he is because he needs the entirety of my energy as his carer.
I strongly believe that only people who want kids much and feel their lives will be incomplete without them should have them. AND EVEN THEN, ONLY HAVE THEM IF YOU’RE OK WITH THEM BEING DISABLED OR QUEER OR HAVING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT POLITICS TO YOU AND IF YOU ARE GOING TO REMEMBER THEY ARE HUMAN BEINGS AND NOT HERE TO FULFIL THE DREAMS YOU NEVER DID.
Finally a good argument for why I’m actually a man
if you told diogenes the cynic about being trans he’d be like “lol that’s a sick troll you’re epic” and you’d be like “diogenes no i’m serious” and he’d be like “lol that’s even better lmao those guys are so mad about it” and then he’d start going by new original neopronouns every single day specifically to piss off the whole symposium
I just had an idea for a really dumb comedy sketch where a transphobe starts ranting about what really makes a women a woman, and diogenes returns each time with a different cis woman or outwardly femme intersex person that doesn’t meet the criteria saying “behold, a man!”
“a woman has XX chromosomes”
*Diogenes with an androgen insensitive XY cis woman*: behold, a man!
“Nono, a woman can bear children!”
*Diogenes with someone who has medical complications associated with pregnancy*: “behold, a man!”
“nono, a woman produces the large gamete”
*Diogenes with a postmenopausal cis woman* “behold, a man!”
The little Mastodon server half of the OFMD fandom flocked to back in 2023, when we briefly thought Twitter was about to die?
That little server is shutting down at the end of this month (announced by @unicorndeathrace last week), and I’m here tourge everyone who has an account there to migrate that account to a different Mastodon server, even if you’re only semi-active or abandoned your account long ago.
Mastodon lets you keep your follower & following lists – if Bluesky and/or Tumblr ever go down or fully enshittify, it’ll be good to have your Mastodon account as a backup, with as many of those connections as possible still intact. The more people do this, the easier it will be to find your fandom friends in the next social media apocalypse!
It’s actually a pretty simple process, and I wrote a step-by-step guide to explain how it works. You can read the whole thing here, but I’ll share an abridged version here, aimed specifically at folks who aren’t super familiar with Mastodon!
Reminder they want to increase the budget for ICE from 3.5 to 45 billion dollars.
Reminder the majority of that will be for building new detention centers.
Reminder ICE are *currently* detaining tourists who can pay for a plane ticket home and people with visa issues that were already resolved, because they have to make quota so Trump can brag about the numbers going up.
Reminder most of these people were already in the immigration system - that’s why they were easy to detain.
Reminder this is all at taxpayer expense.
Reminder these are people.
Reminder that deportation under the Nazis was highly efficient and “ like Amazon but with humans”.
STOP no more live-action remakes. We’re going the other way now. Animated Casablanca. Animated The Godfather. Animated Oppenheimer. Animated Fight Club.
Animated Goncharov.
Definitely that one.
unless, hear me out…
Muppet Goncharov
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Look at these idiots who haven’t seen Gonzorov (1993).
Anonymous Asks:
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