canceled my prime membership today
Translation:
You aren’t going to get in my way today?
Ah, it’s a new type of attack.
Source: twicomi.com
more people need to give themselves permission to write and draw pornography
it is virtuous and necessary that you write, draw, and distribute pornography
can we start with not conflating "erotic/sexual art or writing" with pornography
no lmao
@thoughtscout "Erotica" was first coined by people wanting to get around censorship laws that would ban pornography under the legal classification of Obscenity, but would not ban romance novels, or Literature, as that was "of artistic worth" and therefore protected speech. Here is the USA Legal definition, pulled from Wikipedia, of "Obscenity":
United States obscenity law deals with the regulation or suppression of what is considered obscenity and therefore not protected speech or expression under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In the United States, discussion of obscenity typically relates to defining what pornography is obscene.
It's important to understand that key idea, that "obscene" is a legal classification that marks something as not protected by Freedom of Speech, The Press, and Free Expression, which is the First Amendment.
There are several ethical problems with having a way to exempt something from protection, and therefore censor it. It encourages people who want to censor things to try and get them legally classed as exceptions to any Freedom of Speech laws on the books. Now, with art, there are exemptions that should exist--art that harms people in the making of it, for example, which is what Child Sexual Abuse Material is, and why we call it that. We also classify filmed evidence of murder done for the film's sake as an exception. But the way people define the word "obscenity" is extremely different depending on who you ask, and because definitions in this country are set by precedent, i.e. judges ruling on court cases, the definition of things like "obscenity" keeps changing.
In 1873, for example, the Comstock Act said that birth-control information and condoms were "obscene" and banned sending them through the mail, which meant a lot of people were cut off from being able to learn about birth control (because nobody was learning about it in school--most people at the time didn't go to school after learning basic reading skills, if that; children worked, just like their adult relatives, to support their families). Do you think a book like this one that educates about puberty and sex, including birth-control, is obscene and pornography? Well it was, at one time, and BANNED. And I don't tell you this so you can go, "Well people were backwards then, we're Enlightened now, we'd only ban the RIGHT things" People have always been people, just as wise AND just as foolish as we are now, and progress has never been a straight line.
Our point is that pornography is an important thing to make, and to fight for, and to CALL "pornography". It's important to hold the line and not let people begin to call WRITTEN and DRAWN things the same as PHOTOGRAPHED and FILMED things. For MANY DECADES, people have been trying to ban and censor pornography that has involved no one but the author or artist in the making, and is therefore HARMING no actual human beings. A photograph involves real, live, breathing human beings; a drawing involves a piece of paper and a pen and the artist.
Whatever you think is "just erotica" or even "not erotica at all" is going to be called porn and obscene by a malicious and controlling person like say Warriors For Innocence, who successfully scared LiveJournal into banning a whole lot of writing and drawing and also queer and survivor support communities and users in 2006. These same folks are behind the Purity/Anti culture on Tumblr, and members successfully lobbied to pass FOSTA-SESTA and the subsequent "Titty Ban" on any website that relies on an app. FOSTA-SESTA, btw, has made human trafficking and harm to sex workers WORSE, not better.
So you need to start fighting WITH pornographers who are fighting censorship, because the people you think are on your side about only banning and censoring "the REAL bad stuff" are going to turn around and call YOUR stuff just as bad. They're already calling queer people obscene just for existing. They are calling us child abusers again, just for breathing. I don't think you want to be on the side of that rhetoric, because it will come for you and call YOU obscene and worthy of arrest, in the end.
10 Things I Hate About You but make it butchfemme?! I mean?! A type of bad boy loser butch gets paid to take the "mean" femme out, but ends up falling in love with her? The shaggy hair, the dark clothes, the whole nonchalant but charming vibe??? The chasing, the groveling... all for the hard to get femme... a 2000's classic, but better, butchfemme!
Not particularly my type for a romantic partner, mind you, but the "tough guy" personality sure is a turn on in the big screen. And the famous scene? "But mostly, I hate the way I don't hate you. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all." ???
Quite literally moving the goalpost so they can wash their hands of any preventative action (which they still haven't done despite covid being high or very high in the majority of the US for the past three or so weeks.)
I don't mean to say I love the CDC and think they're perfect and arent being influenced or biased by the current government, but I do want to share some insight on data analysis to help people understand why they're doing this (and it actually IS for a very good reason), because there are some not-common-knowledge statistical principles in play here that make this make MUCH more sense. TL;DR at the end.
(Firstly, I want to add in a small piece of context that you can't actually do percent change calculations if starting from 0 cause like. Well "it's like 5 times the original value" so 5 × 0 = 0 so no change? It just doesn't work.)
Updating these baseline values gets us an incredibly more accurate measurement, because they are in no way measuring the amount of covid in a community. They are measuring the *rate of change over time*:
Note that they here list "overall levels of the virus in wastewater" as a SEPARATE value, which is used IN CONCERT with the rate of change data, and not being REPLACED by it.
Using the baseline of zero for rate of change tracking gives the information: how much more covid virus is in here as compared to no covid? Which can give you one piece of information: how much total covid virus is in here right now? That's important but is easily covered by their separate data category, How Much Covid Is In Here Right Now, which they already have because that's what they measured in the water. Finding this value using analysis would just be using this data point to find itself. It's redundant and doesn't give us any more information than we already had.
Using the baseline of the measurements from 2024 gives us this information instead: how much are the levels of covid virus changing in this location? This gives us a TON of important information. Some examples of this could include early warning of a major outbreak in an area; identifying which communities are are most in need of extra support; tracking gross transmission rates; tracking rates of breakthrough infections (could indicate a new variant that current vaccines aren't effective for); and so many other things.
Even more importantly, doing this STANDARDIZES and EQUALIZES the data and keeps small numbers from slipping through the cracks and being eclipsed by bigger numbers. The CDC had some info on that same page about this:
I want to expand on another aspect of percent change calculations to make it a bit clearer.
As an imaginary example, say that wastewater samples taken from a city in December of 2024 had enough virus to indicate about 1000 infected people were in that city. Then say they took two more samples which indicated 1050 and then 1200 infections.
Using 0 as a baseline, the percent rate of change from 1 to 1000 is a 99,900% rate of change; 1 to 1050 is a 104,900% rate of change from baseline, 1 to 1200 is 119,900% change. It's all urgent, but it's pretty close. Nothing is making it SIGNIFICANTLY better or worse. The clearest thing we can learn from this is just: there's lots more covid than there was when there wasn't covid. And that's a good point but unfortunately isn't new information. We already know there's more covid than when there wasn't covid.
Using the first value of 1000 instead: 1000 vs 1050 is a 5% rate of change from baseline; 1000 vs 1200 is a 20% change. That is a really significant difference! What was going on when the second sample was taken??
Ultimately, at this point, 0 cases of covid can be considered an outlying value. It's so different from any number we've seen since 2020 that it makes it extremely difficult to get the kind of specific, detailed information needed to form any meaningful, actionable insight. We KNOW there's an enormous gulf between when there were 0 cases and now. We don't need to measure that, for the same reason data tables tracking covid over time don't start in 1973. There is a massive quantity of potential useless data between now and 1973, and it only makes our data more watered-down and less useful to include that.
I made an example with graphs. Dataset:
Using 100,000 as a baseline we get a lot of good information about how the numbers are changing:
Using the "objective number zero" as a baseline:
Hmm. Not really getting much out of that one if I'm honest with you.
Tl;dr This is good data practice. They are not redefining what is considered "low" as compared to not having any virus because they are not trying to determine how much virus is present. They are redefining "low" to mean "the lowest extreme recent data value" in order to narrow their focus, because they are tracking rate of CHANGE, not rate of INCIDENCE. The updated baseline makes it possible to gain specific, detailed information about how covid transmission is changing over time, which can give them - and us - actionable insight. Using zero as a baseline for this is utterly useless.
Reblog this one!
Calling scam victims stupid, much like cult members, serves to do nothing but make you feel superior, blame victims for the wrongs done to them, and in turn actually makes you more vulnerable to scams (and cults, and so on). "Look at these people! Morons! I could never be one of them because I am smart, unlike these people who fell for them because they are stupid. It is not about vulnerability and luck, both of which are factors that could affect me, it is all simply a matter of in-born intelligence, which is why I, a better human, don't have to worry about falling for them."
And boom, you have already let your guard down - you would never fall for a scam (or cult, etc.) so you can safely click on that link or read that pamphlet because if it was a scam you'd have identified it as such immediately, because you are smart. You don't need to stop and question. You're too smart. And, really, if they didn't want to get scammed they shouldn't have gone out dressed like that.
We're all potential victims. Every single one of us has been at one point or another been at vulnerable to a scammer, or a pickpocket, or any other number of external force trying to harm you for their own benefit. Blaming the victims feels good but it doesn't help shit in the long run.
Being Cautious makes life really hard...everybody wants me to scan a QR code for some shit or click a link or sign in using an account or put information into a google form etc etc etc just for basic stuff and being like "I don't trust it" makes you seem weird
Recently ive been involved in projects and stuff for work and school where everybody is like "And you can scan a QR code to access this..." or "You can sign up with your instagram account..." and I have to be the person thats like What If They Dont Have Instagram. What If They Dont Have A Smartphone With them.
Not to mention that the important way to not get scammed is dont click links just go to the website yourself, but everything is always changing their system 3 times a year to a new URL and something you have to navigate differently, so half the time I ignore hte emails then I have to call them on the phone to be like "Ok how do i do this thing"
And my school is sending me a thousand actual legitimate emails a week anyway like "You have to do this thing or you will explode or something" expecting me to click the link in the email
And freshman orientations are always expecting kids to download some sketchy app called Goox or some shit that Accesses Your Everything Conveniently. Well what if I don't want to access my everything conveniently
oh yeah also during covid the school i was going to made me download literal actual malware to monitor me during test taking. lockdown browser, that thing that can access your camera at any time and use it for god knows what?
the line between scam and legitimate is too tenuous thats why we have all these problems
Anonymous asked:
Do you think people who are virgin should write smut? I feel like most of them don’t even know what they’re writing and just write what they think sex is
the implication this ask suggests that people who write about murders, cannibalism, politics, magic, royalty au, sci-fi, wars, supernatural, time travel, medieval era, werewolves, vampires, mermaids or goblins must be murderers, cannibals, presidents, wizards, royalties, astronauts, ghost hunters, soldiers, time travelers, knights, werewolves, vampires, mermaids or goblins in real life is so funny to me
…And to Ursula Le Guin as well, it looks like.
As for “Write what you know,” I was regularly told this as a beginner. I think it’s a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 22002. I know these things. I know them better than anybody else possibly could, so it’s my duty to testify about them. I got my knowledge of them, as I got whatever knowledge I have of the hearts and minds of human beings, through imagination working on observation. Like any other novelist. All this rule needs is a good definition of “know.”
So there you have it.
...And me? I know about wizards, too. And about the Powers that Be. And about worlds where relationship comes in some unusual shapes. I know about adventure. And starships. And found family. And swordsmanship. And sex. And making love. And being young. And being centuries or millennia old. (Sometimes both at once... like the sex and the making love.) And about taking good care of other people's universes, when I wind up on their turf.
(shrug) So find out what you know. Take as much time as you need. Then write about it… because, trust me, no one else can do it the way you will.