Gonna go to space

master and commander but Jack can't play for shit

AS A FIDDLER THIS IS ACTUALLY THE FUNNIEST THING I'VE EVER SEEN

The tik tokification of 'bad words' like sex/seggs suicide/unalive pedohile/PDFile grape/rape only originally censored because of moderation rules but now in colloquial (online) speech is going to send me to an early grave

Idk there used to be the sex pistols saying fuck on tv and now randos won't type out rape in a youtube comment. Not that time is linear but it's a weird purity(?) moment looking back.. If you're 17 you should be saying bad words that's supposed to be ur whole thing come on

There's this really obscure forgotten DC hero named the Heckler, who's basically buggs bunny as a superhero, not having any powers or physically strong, but just really good at pissing people off until they accidentally deal with themselves.

Now they're interesting, but the REAL star of the show is one of his villains, John Doe the Generic Man, who's this guy in a stark white suit with flat pink unshaded, untextured skin with no features or anything who talks like chatGPT and has black text over his face that explains what he's feeling at the moment. That guy is fucking fascinating.

this some doom patorl type beat

Javert who?

the authority is truely the most leftist comic cause theres like 10 fans on tumblr and i agree with 90 percent of what everyone else says but that other 10 percent makes me wanna bite shit like a rabid coyote

Saw a post the other day ay about Midnighter and was like "Yes ... hell yeah ... YES! ... wait what the fuck?"

giving birth sucks tbh. not only do you and the baby you’re birthing almost die, usually you shit yourself and often you tear your taint. then you have to push an organ out of your body (placenta) and if even a little of that remains in your body, you can hemorrhage to death or develop an infection that essentially rots your body from the inside out. even if you had a relatively “easy birth”, you bleed for weeks on end. even after that stops, your body and brain is changed for the rest of your life, the pregnancy leeched minerals from your bones, that can cause osteoporosis later. minor urinary incontinence is not uncommon, brain scans of people who gave birth show permanent changes in their brain, you’re never quite the same.

I say all of this not to say giving birth is disgusting but it is a harrowing and visceral experience. society downplays how fucking awful it is and makes it out to be a ~magical~ experience but it isn’t a magical transformative experience for everyone. it can be an extremely traumatic experience for someone who wanted to carry a pregnancy to term, much more so for someone who did not want to be pregnant in the first place or someone who knows their baby won’t survive the birth. anyway, abortion is a right. pregnancy and birth aren’t just inconvenient, it’s fucking awful.

How is it that in this entire post you didn’t say the word “woman” once? Only one sex gives birth. Only women have these experiences, only women are at risk for everything mentioned here, women are the only people this applies to. Erasing the word enables the problem.

I’m an evil trans man with a big fat pussy and it’s my life’s purpose to erase women by using inclusive language. Everyone I make a post a random woman disappears off the planet. Clean vanishes. They’re renaming all maternity wards labor & delivery wards because of me. The word breastfeeding no longer exists in the dictionary. It’s all chestfeeding now. Many world powers are trying to stop me. They can’t. They’re too slow. I’m always two steps ahead.

also (advice to ppl across the world) if u guys have a lot of family members that seem to be getting radicalized lately because they're following elon musk on twitter or whatever i really recommend taking their phones and following some people you consider regular so their algorithm balances out, and involving them in less radicalizing communities like a book club or kdramas or actively engaging them with videos and articles you like.

it's really difficult to continuously expose yourself to people who parrot hateful rhetoric (even to people who don't realize they are parroting hateful rhetoric because they see it normalized all around them) but it is not possible to isolate yourself from everyone in your life, and i know many of you can't move out or don't want to. the next four years are going to be very difficult and you're going to want to put yourself in a place where you do not burn out. and while this is primarily directed at americans it also isn't because people all over the world watch and are affected by right-wing content, particularly misogyny, transphobia, homophobia and antisemitism. in fact i would say it travels even better than you think

but if you're serious about organizing and reaching out to people, and if you're serious about gearing up to "fight" or whatever you'd like to call it, you're going to need to meet people where they are. i also recognize that family is usually the most difficult place to start and not the easiest (contrary to what most people assume) so don't necessarily put yourself in a confrontational position because you will burn out quickly if you don't have your own space. in general don't put yourself in a confrontational position as a matter of habit. the key is to start conversations that can later allow for people to exit the current rabbitholes they descend into. you don't have to win any arguments, but you need to just keep conversations going, otherwise they accept their perspective as the truth. keep yourself safe but don't let yourself be cowed into silence, and recognize where people are cruel or just ignorant and remember that you can also be cruel and ignorant. and read! you're going to need to read.

Go Girls Go! | First Dyke March in Washington DC, 1993

I attended Pride in 1995 in Atlanta and "Dykes on Bikes" was marching directly behind "Dykes With Tykes". This immediately created a huge stir among my group of onlookers! Because we all wanted them to join forces as "Dykes On Bikes With Tykes On Trikes".

These two groups were followed by Digital Queers--"We're here, we're queer, we have EMAIL!"

I doubt there was a single person at that march who hadn't been called a homophobic slur--and that includes our straight allies! But we defanged those words. We changed what they meant to us, because even gay or lesbian is a slur when someone screams it in your face.

This. This is solidarity in shared reclamation. "they can't say it"

They're SAYING IT TOGETHER as part of a UNIFIED FRONT. Rather than letting others tear them into disparate little bickering subgroups.

deeply amusing to me how the term "minicomputer" was coined very prematurely

^ this is a minicomputer fyi

And these are microcomputers. Yeah we really weren't expecting just how small we'd be able to shrink things down.

I think you can tell a lot about how rigorous and committed someone's belief in a human right is by how quickly they are able to name people who they think could or should have that right taken away.

Like "X is a universal human right. (This doesn't include Y people though)"

Either you think X isn't actually a human right, or you think Y aren't people.

Some folks really did go straight to the replies to prove me right.

"to get treatment for adhd you (person with untreated adhd) need to schedule and then show up for several appointments" is the kind of shit the greek gods would inflict on a guy who ate his son

I've seen a number of people worried and concerned about this language on Ao3s current "agree to these terms of service" page. The short version is:

Don't worry. This isn't anything bad. Checking that box just means you forgive them for being US American.

Long version: This text makes perfect sense if you're familiar with the issues around GDPR and in particular the uncertainty about Privacy Shield and SCCs after Schrems II. But I suspect most people aren't, so let's get into it, with the caveat that this is a Eurocentric (and in particular EU centric) view of this.

The basic outline is that Europeans in the EU have a right to privacy under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an EU directive (let's simplify things and call it an EU law) that regulates how various entities, including companies and the government, may acquire, store and process data about you.

The list of what counts as data about you is enormous. It includes things like your name and birthday, but also your email address, your computers IP address, user names, whatever. If an advertiser could want it, it's on the list.

The general rule is that they can't, unless you give explicit permission, or it's for one of a number of enumerated reasons (not all of which are as clear as would be desirable, but that's another topic). You have a right to request a copy of the data, you have a right to force them to delete their data and so on. It's not quite on the level of constitutional rights, but it is a pretty big deal.

In contrast, the US, home of most of the world's internet companies, has no such right at a federal level. If someone has your data, it is fundamentally theirs. American police, FBI, CIA and so on also have far more rights to request your data than the ones in Europe.

So how can an American website provide services to persons in the EU? Well… Honestly, there's an argument to be made that they can't.

US websites can promise in their terms and conditions that they will keep your data as safe as a European site would. In fact, they have to, unless they start specifically excluding Europeans. The EU even provides Standard Contract Clauses (SCCs) that they can use for this.

However, e.g. Facebook's T&Cs can't bind the US government. Facebook can't promise that it'll keep your data as secure as it is in the EU even if they wanted to (which they absolutely don't), because the US government can get to it easily, and EU citizens can't even sue the US government over it.

Despite the importance that US companies have in Europe, this is not a theoretical concern at all. There have been two successive international agreements between the US and the EU about this, and both were struck down by the EU court as being in violation of EU law, in the Schrems I and Schrems II decisions (named after Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist who sued in both cases).

A third international agreement is currently being prepared, and in the meantime the previous agreement (known as "Privacy Shield") remains tentatively in place. The problem is that the US government does not want to offer EU citizens equivalent protection as they have under EU law; they don't even want to offer US citizens these protections. They just love spying on foreigners too much. The previous agreements tried to hide that under flowery language, but couldn't actually solve it. It's unclear and in my opinion unlikely that they'll manage to get a version that survives judicial review this time. Max Schrems is waiting.

So what is a site like Ao3 to do? They're arguably not part of the problem, Max Schrems keeps suing Meta, not the OTW, but they are subject to the rules because they process stuff like your email address.

Their solution is this checkbox. You agree that they can process your data even though they're in the US, and they can't guarantee you that the US government won't spy on you in ways that would be illegal for the government of e.g. Belgium. Is that legal under EU law? …probably as legal as fan fiction in general, I suppose, which is to say let's hope nobody sues to try and find out.

But what's important is that nothing changed, just the language. Ao3 has always stored your user name and email address on servers in the US, subject to whatever the FBI, CIA, NSA and FRA may want to do it. They're just making it more clear now.

Fun fact! You don't currently have to worry that a US spy agency has taken your data from AO3. (Have they spied on you in other ways? Eh, probably.)

AO3's parent nonprofit, the Organization for Transformative Works has a neat thing on their website called a warrant canary.

This thing. It's hard to read on my screenshot, so I'll copy the text here.

"The Organization for Transformative Works has not received any National Security Letters or FISA court orders, and we have not been subject to any gag order by a FISA court."

What's that mean? National Security Letters and FISA courts are how US security agencies secretly subpoena data from US-based websites. They send the website owners and order to turn over data and NOT TELL ANYONE that they've done so. That's called a gag order. Disobeying this gag order is big time illegal and the US government WILL ruin your life over it. You cannot tell people, "The US government gave me a secret order to turn over my data."

BUT! The government cannot compel you to lie. A FISA court order cannot make you say on your website, "We have never received a FISA court order." So websites put the warrant canaries on their sites, and if they ever get an order for data that they aren't allowed to tell you about, they take the order down. Like a canary fainting from gas in a mine, the warrant canary stops singing.

So right now, we know that the OTW, and therefore AO3, has never had to secretly turn over data to the US government. Keep an eye on that canary. Check in on it occasionally. As long as the little bird's singing, don't panic.

https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/privacy/what-is-warrant-canary/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/warrant-canary-faq

From the Wikipedia article linked above:

and

I'm not saying don't trust the OTW with your data. (The OTW themselves say in the TOS we all had to check a box last week saying we'd read and understood it, before we could go back to that comfort reread we were finishing while trying to go to sleep, that they will cooperate with US law enforcement and that they decide whether to cooperate with non-US law enforcement on a case by case basis and are not in favour of cooperating with oppressive laws, but also that they don't fight every legal battle.) I'm just saying, don't trust a warrant canary.

Those skeptical statements were made ten years ago, when warrant canaries started to become popular. In the years since, several high-profile warrant canaries (Reddit, Pinterest, etc) have been taken down, and both the websites and the administrators responsible for the canaries are still around. No one has been charged, sued, or otherwise sanctioned for removing a warrant canary. There have been no reports or even rumors of warrant canaries being forcibly kept up or forcibly removed. All evidence so far suggests that warrant canaries are viable.

“Annie & Albert” comic strip, by american cartoonist J. Michael Leonard, in Playboy magazine (october 1979).

It's all fun and games and laughing at BookTok until you can't get on AO3 anymore, as someone who likes both romance and fanfic.

Readers, make sure you have all your favourite Ao3 fics downloaded.

Writers, make sure you have copies of all the fics you have posted on Ao3.

I don’t want to be alarming, but things could get really bad really fast. OTW shared this today on Twitter, and I'm a bit worried about it 😅

Ao3 is a non-profit organisation. If they have to start paying taxes, I have no idea what will happen.

Um sure and like yea thanks for the tip will do and stuff but like… what will we do if ao3 goes down for good? Like is there a plan in place? How long would it take it for them to set up shop somewhere else, worst case scenario? Will they have to start functioning out of europe or smth? With that in mind, should all writers be downloading their fics too so that we can all migrate when the nest is ready? IS there gonna be a new nest, even, if it comes to that? If yes, what kind of grace period does the OTW have between this bill passing or whatever and it shutting down, so that they can send out mass emails to people to pack up shop before its too late? ( @ao3org tag u maybe?)

This bill passing (which is not guaranteed yet, it still has to pass the senate) doesn't mean ao3 would be shutting down. It's just not great for any nonprofit to have the government have the ability to remove its nonprofit status at will. It doesn't mean that they are going to remove that status: it just means they could. I get that folks are on edge but please don't panic. I assure you that Ao3 has lawyers to protect the site, people who are thinking ahead about potential issues, and backups (including backups outside the US). It never hurts to back up your favourite fics at any time, but this isn't a "omg the site is going down, man the lifeboats" situation.

I live outside America, my donations are not tax free. I still donate.

This bill is intended to criminalize bail funds and anti-genocide protests. That's why Democrats have joined Republicans in sponsoring and voting for it, and why "Sponsors of Terrorism" is in the name. The OTW isn't a primary target.

Look, it MIGHT be used against AO3. It's a loaded gun that can wind up being pointed at anyone. That's why you should oppose it even if you love the police and think Israel should be able to ethnically cleanse the entire Levant. But if your first thought on seeing this become law is "Oh no, my fanfics are in danger!", I am begging you to try giving a shit about real people for a change. Who knows, you might like it!

bit odd to center this conversation around ao3 when it seems pretty obvious by the language being used that this bill is mainly going to target leftist antifascist and pro-palestine orgs. which is both much worse and much more likely than republicans going after ao3. but yeah sure guys. what if we lose access to our fanfictions. that's clearly the matter of highest priority here

Whatever reason gets people to oppose HR 9495 is good with me, but yeah. It's a bipartisan bill to criminalize protesting against genocide. It's not coming for your fanfics first.