To reduce my screen time, I have weaponised my overactive and entirely impractical levels of empathy for inanimate objects. Wym you’re picking it up again? While it was sleeping? You complete and utter monster, let it rest!!
And it works. It works like a CHARM. Silly problems require silly solutions!
[ID: a phone tucked in very cozy in a perfectly fitting wooden doll-size canopy bed with floral motifs. it has a little dishtowel as a blanket /End ID]
The Aromantic Union for Recognition, Education, and Advocacy is now a registered nonprofit!
A huge thank you to everyone who contributed time, knowledge, and donations to our registration process. We couldn't have done it without your support!
[Image Description: A square graphic that reads "AUREA Is Officially A NonProfit!". The text sits within a green diamond that's surrounded by a square green border. The space between the diamond and the square border is white, with a heart in the colors of the aromantic flag in the top left corner, and the AUREA logo in the bottom right corner.
My brain can be so exceptionally bad sometimes.
Endless short video feeds are completely inescapable for me; i can't use tiktok, i couldn't use vine, I can't watch youtube shorts. It's the same way I can't play video games - if I engage with them it is impossible to disengage until something physically forces me to look away. I sat for seven hours last night watching videos thinking to myself "I should go get my coffee that I left in the kitchen; I should go to bed; I should go to the bathroom" and I couldn't make myself move until tiny bastard had to go outside.
Anyway. uBlock origin is great because it blocks ads but you can also use it to totally block elements that are tar pits for your brain. The youtube shorts player has now been banished from my firefox.
This is yet another reason that I prefer stuff that can be used in-browser rather than in exclusively in-app. Way too easy to have a stream of content projected directly into my eyeballs with no action or choices needed on my part when I'm looking at the app passively instead of looking at a website where I have to choose the next video to watch.
How do you ban shorts
I am on FF and have ublock
please
please
I added these two filters:
www.youtube.com##ytm-shorts-lockup-view-model www.youtube.com##ytm-shorts-lockup-view-model-v2
And I can still see the shorts logo at various places on the homepage but I can't see the shorts displayed to click on. It's worked for about five hours so far.
I also use Leechblock and I've got a few things set up to block at all times and I added www.youtube.com/shorts/ to that list with the tab automatically muted and a blur over the videos so if I open that page i just get a silent blurry mess. But right now, I can't see any thumbnails to click on from the main page and if click "shorts" in the sidebar FF is set up so that I have to take multiple steps to see anything.
I got literally zero hours of sleep last night so if any of this is broken or fucky it's because my brain is too.
So it seems like some of you might be interested in learning more about Dreamwidth.
Listen, here's the thing: Dreamwidth is not slick. It is not fancy. Its base code was originally put together some two decades ago or more, and it looks like it. It can't do much with images and definitely not with video—like, I think there's some way to embed video, but I have no idea how to do it, and hosting it on Dreamwidth is, uh...
The point is! Dreamwidth is a lot different from Tumblr. It's closer to Tumblr than it is to Facebook or Instagram, but it's a lot more old-school internet than Tumblr is. And that means that, for anyone who wasn't on the internet some ten, fifteen years ago, there's probably going to be a steep learning curve. It can take more effort to post things there, and more effort to find your people, its image hosting capacity can charitably be described as both "limited" and "poorly organized", and overall it may still never be the kind of website where you, personally, will want to spend a lot of time or do a lot of things. Dreamwidth does not and will never have an app, for pretty much the same reasons as AO3.
But there is one thing I can guarantee, and that is that Dreamwidth is willing to fight for us and our rights. They're already doing so.
If you've ever thought to yourself, "I wish AO3 were an actual social media site," consider checking out Dreamwidth; it's not too far off from that as an idea.
You can host media on squidge.org, which is specifically for hosting fandom media.
While we're on the topic, Proboards is still around, and still free, and still customisable, and still WORKS. Neocities has replaced geocities and is also pretty great (and you can host things from there too if you want).
The old infrastructure is there. We don't have to rely on for-profit social media companies that censor everything all to hell. The tradeoff is YOU can't be a for-profit social media company either. There's no 'reach' there's not 'like and subscribe' there's no 'i want my socialising space to also be my job' nope. It's just socialising.
A green anole is a member of the iguana family btw. If you even care.
It’s not, though. It’s in the infraorder Iguania, but the anole family is now called Anoliidae (formerly Dactyloidae, but Anoliidae was recently discovered to be an older name). And due to the total disaster that is anole taxonomy (because people are lazy and conservative, and have forgotten that higher taxonomy is supposed to be useful), family Anoliidae and the genus Anolis are effectively synonymous.
This is from Animorphs #1: The Invasion, published in 1996, and the character narrating is a 13-year-old boy who was just drafted into an alien war, so maybe it's okay if Jake is a little inaccurate.
Just reinforces that we should be teaching taxonomic literacy from early education. Understanding the structure and hierarchy of Life is incredibly useful, for everything from medicine to farming. The earlier people get it, the more it can shape how they understand the world around them. And in the context of an alien war, even better to understand how things do or do not fit into the system that we know terrestrial life evolved under.
No but the 1996 bit is important this might have been accurate when it was published.
That said, there's always a moment when I read that passage sans context where I wonder *what* he did Monday morning. Like, I read the book. I know. But I'm still thinking "that's maybe not information yous should volunteer, buddy"
Well, by 1996, the anoles had been resting in the family Polychrotidae for a happy seven years (they didn't move over to their own family until like 2011). But I suppose if Applegate had been reading somewhat out of date literature as her source, or had commenced writing before 1989, she can be forgiven for this oversight. It takes a long time for many taxonomic changes to trickle down, even today.
(for clarity, I did not know this was a quote from Animorphs, or its publication date, for my original response)
ive read the first 6 murderbot books in the last three days is this accurate
"The doctors I consulted advised my child go through a specific treatment and/or procedure. Should we go through with it?
Some intersex conditions do require medical interventions so that the person with them can remain healthy. However, all too frequently, doctors focus on getting rid of visible intersex traits without any regard for whether these are health-threatening or not, nor any regard for how the person with them feels about them...While some intersex conditions can be dangerous, intersex traits are rarely the problem. Growing unexpected breasts is not a health concern. Unexpected body hair is not a health concern. A bigger clitoris than average not a health concern. Focusing on getting rid of intersex traits without investigating what caused them to appear in the first place is actively dangerous, as it means underlying health issues might go ignored....
As a parent, it’s important for you to do what you can to advocate for your child or teen in medical settings. Make sure you understand why doctors are suggesting this or that treatment.... Once you are suitably informed, you can explain to your child what treatment has been suggested, what are its intended effects, and what might be the side effects. If that treatment is a medical emergency, then being transparent with your child in a developmentally-appropriate way will lessen the stress of receiving a procedure. Knowing what will happen to them and why will help your child feel less afraid about their treatment.
If that treatment is not a medical emergency, then it should be your child’s choice whether they want to go through any treatment or not. They might want to postpone receiving a procedure, or refuse to get it at all. You will have to respect that. Intersex variations rarely, if ever, require immediate action. Do not let doctors pressure you and your child into making uninformed irreversible decisions."
Though, this latest piece by Verse Atoui on how to support intersex children going through puberty was written as a parenting guide, this is a fantastic and informative piece for anyone! This piece also focuses on how to provide emotional support and how to best advocate for intersex children and teens in medical settings.
[Connecticut, USA] Found these gorgeous friends absolutely thriving on a tree in a grocery store parking lot! Didn't even notice the demure gray growths at first because these fluffy suction-cuppy beauties were so flashy, but they're all so pretty.
Oh yeah, Ramalina lichens will do that to you. This is a common problem in lichen surveying--it is really easy to get distracted by the big, showy lichens and totally miss out on the cryptic diversity of smaller, crustose, conspicuous lichens.
She discovers that the house has been beset by salamanders. But in addition, there is a tradition of a shadowy drowned figure, who tears down curtains and who chills warm food even as the plate reaches the table.
“The thing is,” she explained some years later to the visiting accountant, “it actually all works out. You know. Thermodynamically.”
This explanation had seemed, in Mel’s head, perfectly sensible. She had adjusted her life around it, after all; she’d been living like this for years; and Mel was a sensible person.
But now, as she looked at the accountant’s single raised eyebrow, she felt for the first time that maybe this was a weird way to live.
A significant part of the problem was that Mel liked women; and the accountant was one of those extremely beautiful self-contained confident women who can be very hard to look at directly, let alone explain things to. Especially if the things are complex, with lots of moving parts, like the drowned ghost/flaming newt situation.
“Thermodynamically,” the accountant echoed, making it sound like thermodynamics was a thing that only occurred in particularly poorly run households. The accountant probably didn’t have to worry about forces of nature. She was one of those women who understood things like makeup and hairstyles; she definitely had some kind of deliberate, paid-for hairstyle. She was a force of nature herself.
Mel realised that she’d been staring again. “Yes - look. Salamanders are hot,” Mel said, pulling her welding glove back on and grabbing a wandering salamander as it scuttled past the table. After this many generations, the infestation had naturalised and now the salamanders roamed freely around the house, waddling side to side like plump rats and dragging their fat tails behind them - not exactly hard to catch.
Upon being seized, the creature squealed and flared up. When they were excited, salamander flames turned blue, like an acetylene torch - extremely useful to keep around the house. Now, Mel held the creature up hopefully, as a useful visual aid to explanations.
The accountant slowly inched her chair backwards. “That’s why they’re a Class A controlled animal,” she said coldly. “Yes.”
“They can kinda be a fire hazard,” Mel admitted gruffly. The blue flames kicked off heat, but she was used to it.
“Yes.” The accountant weighted the word down with all sorts of criticism.
“Well, and the ghostie thing is good and damp, plus she cools things down.”
“I noticed,” the accountant said, rather glacially herself. She looked down into her teacup with an expression that said this is a carefully controlled facial expression, the kind that women like me learn how to do at school.
Okay, so … sometimes the drowned ghost got things wrong. Usually she just did her “damp chill” thing, but sometimes she froze stuff. Not dangerously! Just small stuff. Grapes. Salad leaves. Mel had been trying her on sorbet.
The ghost had never frozen a cup of tea before. Mel wished she hadn’t started on this one.
Me plunged bravely on regardless. “So you see - it’s all in balance. You know. Thermodynamically.” Mel set the little salamander back down on the floor. It burned a small patch in the threadbare Persian carpet and trundled off angrily.
“Dame Melville, I hope you can understand that this is not exactly what insurance companies like to hear.” The accountant turned her teacup upside down and slid the frozen dome of tea onto the table. “Besieged by flaming salamanders, haunted by freezing poltergeists - this is a shambles. It needs management.”
“It is managed,” Mel said. “It manages itself. Thermodynamics. Hasn’t fallen down yet. And it’s Sir, by the way - different kind of knight.”
The accountant looked at her, and in her precise and orderly mind, she regretted her deep unspoken attraction to this precise type of bewildered, disastrous butch woman. She said to herself: No, Cynica. You cannot fix this. You should not try. This poor magnificent trainwreck of a landknight doesn’t need someone to move into her sprawling haunted country manor and sort her stupid life out. She needs to pull herself together, sell the disastrously encumbered property to a nation that will look after it properly, get a proper job, wear shirts that fit without revealing so many of her stupid muscles, and STOP THINKING SHE CAN LIGHT CIGARETTES OFF SALAMANDERS.
“Don’t do that,” Cynica snapped, “it’s unhealthy.”
Mel looked bewildered. She looked at the salamander, which offered no advice whatsoever, and looked back at Cynica. “No - the flames only go white when they’re happy,” she said.
Oh no, Cynica thought, she’s so my type.
Cynica is self-aware enough to know this about herself and it never saves her
Oh my goodness @virtrice that’s brilliant I didn’t realise myself that I was setting up a cold ghost/flaming newt situation IN THE SHIP oh my GOD the dynamics we can get out of this!!!
I’m quite fond of this so I’ve backed it up here!
My mom got phished in an EXTREMELY refined scam that pretty much anyone could fall for-- basically her account was already pre-hacked and they spoofed the bank's number exactly, called her pretending there was fraud, and read back legitimate and fake transactions and personal info so she wouldn't suspect they weren't the bank. Then discouraged her from logging in claiming the account was locked so they could investigate the fraud-- all so she wouldnt catch them making massive purchases using her stolen info.
We have the same boss and when she told him what happened he recommended she call the bank directly, so she did and they managed to catch it in time before $20k of transactions went through. Very scary
I guess the lesson here is never ever answer your phone, I love that fraud is so rampant an entire form of mass communication is now useless
ANYONE can fall for phishing scams- my mom is extremely smart and we discuss common scams that target her age demographic and she still fell for this. If it happened to me I may have fallen for it too. Always be careful!
that's EXACTLY what happened to me last spring. it's dire out there....
that’s EXACTLY what
happened to me last spring.
it’s dire out there….
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
If you EVER get ANY call from ANYONE claiming to be a bank or other important group asking you for anything, tell them you will call them back and call them yourself. Do not call a number they give you, look it up yourself.
Banks don't call people, IME. They send emails and texts and put notices on your online account. Credit cards sometimes do I believe, but in that case, just call the number on your card back.
Never take a call from anyone and assume they are who they say. Period. These people are skilled at social manipulation. They will always tell you there is a crisis.
And don't just google the number, use your bank's official site! A lot of search engines are now providing phone numbers of scams instead of legit ones. Also make sure the url of the site matches the one available on cards and other papers you've been given by your bank because fake sites can look VERY convincing.
FYI: the U.S. government will not call you. Is someone calls and says they're the IRS? They're lying. They say they're the sheriff? Lying. ICE? Lying.
The United States will mail you information. If the government needs to reach you, check your mailbox.
The IRS are generally pretty forgiving and will accept that humans make errors. They will never demand immediate payment for back taxes, ever. They know that's not feasible for most people, so they'll usually make a payment plan and help you out. (This is, of course, assuming you're an individual who fucked up their taxes, not someone running a massive tax fraud scheme.)
There’s also a scam going around right now for folks in the USA who use toll roads. NONE of the texts are real, the EZPass website has a huge banner on the site saying they’re all scams.
I think I've reblogged this a few times because I work in bank fraud. And the thing is, sometimes the bank does call! I have personally called tons of customers. And while it makes my job harder, I would STILL prefer if every one of them told me, "I can't prove you're really my bank," hung up, and called the number on their card. Don't worry about being rude by accusing a real bank agent of being a scammer. It's fine. Hang up, and call back.
The only way to know who you're talking to is if you make the call. And before sending a lot of money somewhere, run it by someone you trust--no one is immune to a good scam, but a friend will be in a different headspace, and more likely to recognize emotional manipulation.
Your bank, the IRS, and any legitimate person calling for non-scam reasons will NEVER EVER throw a fit about you hanging up and calling back. Scams don't work because people are stupid, they work because they stress you out, put you on edge, and prime you to not trust people who can actually help. People do not make smart decisions when they think they're in trouble, and above all else what they need to do is keep you on the line with them, so they will try to convince you that you are in trouble, you cannot trust the cops or your bank/credit union/ect., and if you hang up something really bad will happen to you. If you suspect you're being scammed, just say that they caught you at a bad time, or something came up, and ask if it's okay to call them back later. A legit employee will be understanding and agree, a scammer will immediately start doing everything they can to make you way too scared and stressed to hang up.
My fiance worked at a credit union for 8 years and they were trained to notice and intervene if they suspected someone was being scammed, and he told me the number one thing that signals a scam is a member coming in looking fucking terrified while on the phone with someone who is essentially screaming at them that the credit union staff cannot be trusted and that if they hang up the world will end.
It's a scam, every single time. They work by trapping you with fear. Just tell them you need a minute and will call them back, and then contact the bank/credit union/ect. yourself with the number on your card or their website. If they respond to you saying you need a minute and will call back with hostility or by upping the stakes, especially if they say you can't trust the authorities and that hanging up will cause something bad to happen, you're talking to a scammer, and you can safely ignore anything and everything they have to say.
There we go! First finished cross-stitch in ten million years, give or take! I still have to cut a mat and figure out framing, but this was a delight. I am excited to be free of rectangle hell and picking back up my irregular shapes again, but this really reminded me how much I love this hobby
I've noticed more and more in public bathrooms that people skip the handwash and just take a squirt of hand sanitizer from wall dispensers on the way out. hand sanitizer is NOT effective against most things that come out of your ass. i cannot stress this enough. i'm begging y'all. please. please please please please please use the soap.
i'm out here immunosupressed fighting for my life to not get naturally selected while people around me touch a public toilet handles and walk back to their tables to immediately eat a burger
Thank you for bringing this up! Many hand sanitizers and household cleaners proudly claim to "Kill 99.99% of germs."
In fact, this does not mean that the product kills 99.99% of all germs known to exist.
It means that, during product testing in a controlled environment, the product killed 99.99% of the germs it was specifically tested against. As you might imagine, Lysol isn't testing its kitchen disinfectant spray against millions and millions of unique microbes.
In the U.S., labeling laws usually require that companies actually identify somewhere else on the label which germs are being tested and killed. Next time you see a "kills 99.99% of germs" label, check out the rest of the label, and you'll find the small print which specifies that it kills 99.9% of one type of flu, or Covid, or E. Coli, etc. This is why many labels even include an asterisk, i.e.: "Kills 99.99% of Germs!*" Look for the companion asterisk elsewhere on the label for more info.
There are different kinds of germs, like Viruses; Bacteria, Fungi, and Protozoans.
The way we kill these germs to prevent infections varies based on the germs' structure. Essentially, we need different "weapons" (cleaning methods) to fight different microbes. A product that kills Flu Viruses and E. Coli can't necessarily destroy Norovirus or Giardia.
No product is effective against every type of germ, even common germs which regularly cause illness in households and communities.
Hand washing is effective against more germs, not only because it can destroy germs which hand sanitizer cannot, but because it simply washes them off your hands.
Since making my last post about handwashing, I read the comments & tags and learned that many people believe handwashing is only necessary to remove visible dirt from our hands. This surprised me!
Handwashing is a vital component in preventing the spread of infections & disease! : )
Since it's come up again I will once again remind you that it's a good idea to make a habit of washing your hands with soap + warm water whenever you come home because hand sanitizer does not kill some unpleasant and dangerous germs like Norovius (as just one example).
You cannot rely on only washing your hands after you've been around someone visibly ill or touched something that looks dirty. Germs are microscopic and can exist on apparently clean surfaces. People can continue to shed Norovirus for weeks after they were sick, and Norovirus can survive on surfaces for as long as two weeks.
Imagine getting sick from someone a month after they've recovered because you both use the same doorknob! This is only one example of a highly contagious illness spread by germs which cannot be killed by hand sanitizer.
Please practice handwashing when you arrive home, before you prepare meals, before you eat, etc.! We cannot mitigate every risk, nor should we live in fear, but if you have access to soap and water, handwashing is a simple way to dramatically decrease risk of infection!
We live in a world where healthcare is largely out of our hands for many, maddening reasons. This is something you can do to protect yourself and others that is genuinely worthwhile.
Submitter comment: The simply wonderful Cover image chosen for R. E. Dinnebier, Q.-H. Xu, J. J. Vittal et al., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2020, 59, 959. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201914872
Transcription: A Cover image for a scientific paper. A low-quality image of two tiger jumping over two mountains, one significantly higher than the other. Two rays of light shine onto them. They are surrounded by floating Molecules. A textbox on the bottom reads:
“A baby cheetah leaps several feet more than the cheetah mom” is an old saying in Tamil. In this case, an 8-fold interpenetrated MOF shows a giant enhancement of the second harmonic generation (SHG) as compared to the parent 7-fold interpenetrated MOF. As shown in the Research Article on page 833 by R. E. Dinnebier, Q.-H. Xu, J. J. Vittal et al., the 8-fold interpenetrated MOF results from the removal of DMF from the channel in a single-crystal-to-single-crystal transformation.“
