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@bunnnyhannny

I like a lot of things
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The town of Hay River and the Kátł'odeeche First Nation (KFN) in Canada's Northwest Territories are under evacuation due to an out-of-control wildfire that began on Sunday (May 14, 2023) and has already destroyed homes.

Visit NWT Fire Info for up-to-date information.

Images retrieved through Cabin Radio.

How to help:

  1. Spread awareness about the fire! The more people know and the more media coverage there is, the more resources are likely to become available.
  2. Live (or know someone who lives) in surrounding communities? Consider hosting evacuees! You can use this Google form if you live in Yellowknife.
  3. Donate to United Way NWT to aid in emergency relief efforts!

>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.

>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.

>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.

>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.

>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.

>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.

>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.

>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!

>Lemmings problem now solved.

>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.

>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.

>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.

>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.

>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.

>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.

fastest reblog in the west

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Yeppers. :)

reblogging for study later AND to spread the info.

[Image description: a tweet from Alysse Dalessandro @ReadyToStare that says, "Today, I launched Secondhand Stare, a plus size vintage and resale shop that carries sizes large - 7X and most everything is under $40. This is a full circle moment for me and here's why."

Attached is a graphic with the store's name in a funky, 70s style font. The background is a black and white racing flag pattern, with rainbows in the top left and bottom right corners.

End description.]

Wow, this is amazing! I haven’t bought anything from this shop yet since it literally just opened, but here’s some quick facts about the shop for anyone who wants more information:

  • As already stated, the sizes go from a large to a 7X (size 6 through 40). I’m assuming everything is in American sizes since the shop is based in Ohio. The website allows you to shop by size too. There’s no measurement information other than the size that is written on the tag.
  • The shop is run by the fatshion blogger “Ready to Stare” who used to post photos of her outfits on Tumblr, which also means the shop selling clothes for mid-size and fat bodies is run by a fat person who is familiar with fashion and styling for diverse body types!
  • The shop is basically an online thrift store, so that means essentially every item only has one size since it’s a single item being sold. However, this means as well that the clothes are way cheaper than clothes bought new. 
  • Not only are most of the items modeled in pictures, which is a feat in itself since every photo is for a single purchase, but the store has ACTUAL! FAT! MODELS!!!! There’s already a good amount of diversity in the models used, and this is with the store just starting! Imagine how many types of people can be represented in the item photos as the shop earns more funds! And when I say actual fat models, I mean that the shop includes models across their entire range of sizes instead of only showing items on the smallest models possible, so there are even models with very fat bodies that never get represented in usual plus size stores!
  • The owner of the shop aims to post new items every Friday and also stated that if you’re straight sized but still want to support the store, you can always buy a purse or the other accessories they sell (Wow, usually I’m having to stick to accessories as my thin friends shop. I’ve never experienced this twist before.)
  • Sales are final since they’re secondhand items. Local pick up is available too, and they can bring the items outside to anyone who can’t use the ladder to get to their second floor studio. Other FAQ answers are written here.
  • Shipping is a little expensive, but it’s still way cheaper than buying new clothes. I added a sweatshirt and sweatpants that were in a set to my cart and it calculated the shipping as about 10 dollars despite me living in the same country as the store. However, that was still about $34 for both a top and the matching bottoms. Since the website says shipping is calculated based on weight, I thought adding a shirt to the cart would make it a lot more expensive, but for whatever reason the shipping cost only increased by $1! When I took the two items out of my cart and just added a pair of shorts, the shipping was about $9 and adding a random shirt increased the shipping by $1 again. So it seems like the shipping might always start around $10 and be more worth the purchase when buying multiple items. Though, of course, this is just based on me messing around with the website and not on any officially released information.
  • All of the clothes are very feminine, but the owner of the shop said that she plans to include masc styles soon. There’s also pride-themed items available! (A lot of the shop’s branding is very rainbowy, I love it!) The clothing options offered on the website looked really great, and as far as I know some of the clothes sold are secondhand from the fashionable fat owner herself!

Here’s also a video by the owner explaining some of the background about the shop. The video features the models as well as brief footage of the website’s layout. (Her YouTube channel I just found through this is actually updated pretty often with videos about fatshion and traveling to different places around the world as a fat person, so I might watch some of her other videos too.)

Thank you @fatgirldangerousworld for this great information!

-Mod Worthy

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Please note that $10 shipping for sweatpants and sweatshirt is MARKET RATE USPS SHIPPING.

Shipping is not "expensive" at that rate. Stores like Amazon have been rolling their shipping costs into the price of the item for so long that customers are not used to seeing what shipping actually costs.

That's about what it actually costs to send two bulky (and heavy) clothing items domestically, including the price of the envelope, the label, and the time of the person packing your order.

Please, folx, if you're going to write about shipping, I beg of you, read up a little bit on how much it actually costs to ship things, or ask someone who knows.

This is kind of a sore spot for me because we've never hidden our shipping costs and people think NerdyKeppie is expensive on that count as a result. Nope! We're just up front about the actual costs.

What you're seeing isn't expensive shipping, it's honesty about cost.

This kicks ass. Disabled activists are protesting for their rights in South Korea by literally just riding the train during rush hour.

I mean, if you have so few accommodations that a wheelchair user can seriously affect train schedules just by using the train, then I think they’ve got a problem.

Well done, Korean disability activists, for making your point clearly and bravely.

Remember kids, Nazis don't deserve their kneecaps.

Also if any of these are incorrect pls lemme know

i didnt see anyone saying any of this is wrong in the notes so im gonna reblog-

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additional helpful resource:

this is the anti-defamation league’s hate symbol database. it’s massive and includes details about what symbols mean and where you might see them.

i’m a tattoo artist and use this all the time when i see a symbol i don’t recognize—better safe than sorry. it’s saved me from working with white supremacists a few times.

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I'm glad to see the arrow cross (last one( there! It originates from Hungary and was used by the nazi party here, but it was banned after WWII. It barely shows up in guides/warnings like this and idk if they still use it but better safe than sorry.

So what I’ve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this site do not understand that some of the stuff they’re saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I never meant to say that.”

Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”

So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it. 

That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and  unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender. 

When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.

And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.

But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.

But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I was also saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”

And that? That gives me hope for the future.

Similarily: “Dyke/butch/femme are lesbian words, bisexual/pansexual women shouldn’t use them.”

When I speak to them, lesbians who say this seem to be under the impression that bisexuals must have our own history and culture and words that are all perfectly nice, so why can’t we just use those without poaching someone else’s?

And often, they’re really shocked when I tell them: We don’t. We can’t. I’d love to; it’s not possible.

“Lesbian” used to be a word that simply meant a woman who loved other women. And until feminism, very, very few women had the economic freedom to choose to live entirely away from men. Lesbian bars that began in the 1930s didn’t interrogate you about your history at the door; many of the women who went there seeking romantic or sexual relationships with other women were married to men at the time. When The Daughters of Bilitis formed in 1955 to work for the civil and political wellbeing of lesbians, the majority of its members were closeted, married women, and for those women, leaving their husbands and committing to lesbian partners was a risky and arduous process the organization helped them with. Women were admitted whether or not they’d at one point truly loved or desired their husbands or other men–the important thing was that they loved women and wanted to explore that desire.

Lesbian groups turned against bisexual and pansexual women as a class in the 1970s and 80s, when radical feminists began to teach that to escape the Patriarchy’s evil influence, women needed to cut themselves off from men entirely. Having relationships with men was “sleeping with the enemy” and colluding with oppression. Many lesbian radical feminists viewed, and still view, bisexuality as a fundamentally disordered condition that makes bisexuals unstable, abusive, anti-feminist, and untrustworthy.

(This despite the fact that radical feminists and political lesbians are actually a small fraction of lesbians and wlw, and lesbians do tend, overall, to have positive attitudes towards bisexuals.)

That process of expelling bi women from lesbian groups with immense prejudice continues to this day and leaves scars on a lot of bi/pan people. A lot of bisexuals, myself included, have an experience of “double discrimination”; we are made to feel unwelcome or invisible both in straight society, and in LGBT spaces. And part of this is because attempts to build a bisexual/pansexual community identity have met with strong resistance from gays and lesbians, so we have far fewer books, resources, histories, icons, organizations, events, and resources than gays and lesbians do, despite numerically outnumbering them..

So every time I hear that phrase, it’s another painful reminder for me of all the experiences I’ve had being rejected by the lesbian community. But bisexual experiences don’t get talked about or signalboosted much,so a lot of young/new lesbians literally haven’t learned this aspect of LGBT+ history.

And once I’ve explained it, I’ve had a heartening number of lesbians go, “That’s not what I wanted to happen, so I’m going to stop saying that.”

This is good information for people who carry on with the “queer is a slur” rhetoric and don’t comprehend the push back.

ive been saying for years that around 10 years ago on tumblr, it was only radfems who were pushing the queer as slur rhetoric, and everyone who was trans or bi or allies to them would push back - radfems openly admitted that the reason they disliked the term “queer” was because it lumped them in with trans people and bi women. over the years, the queer is a slur rhetoric spread in large part due to that influence, but radfems were more covert about their reasons - and now it’s a much more prevalent belief on tumblr - more so than on any queer space i’ve been in online or offline - memory online is very short-term unfortunately bc now i see a lot of ppl, some of them bi or trans themselves, who make this argument and vehemently deny this history but…yep

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Or asexuality, which has been a concept in discussions on sexuality since 1869. Initially grouped slightly to the left, as in the categories were ‘heterosexual’, ‘homosexual’, and ‘monosexual’ (which is used differently now, but then described what we would call asexuality). Later was quite happily folded in as a category of queerness by Magnus Hirschfeld and Emma Trosse in the 1890s, as an orientation that was not heterosexuality and thus part of the community.

Another good source here, also talking about aromanticism as well. Aspec people have been included in queer studies as long as queer studies have existed.

Also, just in my own experiences, the backlash against ‘queer’ is still really recent. When I was first working out my orientation at thirteen in 2000, there was absolutely zero issue with the term. I hung out on queer sites, looked for queer media, and was intrigued by queer studies. There were literally sections of bookstores in Glebe and Newtown labelled ‘Queer’. It was just… there, and so were we!

So it blows my mind when there are these fifteen-year-olds earnestly telling me - someone who’s called themself queer longer than they’ve been alive - that “que*r is a slur.” Unfortunately, I have got reactive/defensive for the same reasons OP has mentioned. I will absolutely work on biting down my initial defensiveness and trying to explain - in good faith - the history of the word, and how it’s been misappropriated and tarnished by exclusionists.

Worth noting here is a sneaky new front I’ve seen radfems start using:

Yeah, okay, maybe older LGBTs use queer and fag and dyke…but they’re cringey, and you don’t want to be cringe, do you?

I’m not even joking. They strip the loud-and-proud aspects of our history out of all context, remove every bit of blood, sweat, and tears the queer community poured into things like anti-discrimination laws and AIDS research funding, and use those screams of rebellion to say we’re weird, and you wouldn’t want to be WEIRD.

Stop and think about that for a minute.

Yeah. They are not the arbiters of our community and they never were, and it’s important to not give them the time of day.

Being an activist demands that you kill the part of you that cringes. If you want to make the world safer for LGBTQ+ people, you cannot let normal “straight” society set the limits of acceptable speech and behaviour.

Because if the best, most respectable queers in all creation went out and had calm collected discussion that never pushed straight cis people into areas of discomfort, never inspired disrespect or derision, we would still be back in the 1950s, where yes homosexuality was a crime but that shouldn’t be an issue unless you FLAUNT it in PUBLIC. Don’t hold your life partner’s hand where other people can’t see it, and you won’t go to jail! See? Gay rights!

Each of us in the LGBTQ+ world are going to make straight cis people uncomfortable in a million different ways. This has always been true. And the only way we can move forward is to assert our rights in defiance of that discomfort.

Arguments against gay marriage I heard 20 years ago included bangers like, “When I see gay men kissing, I want to vomit. It grosses me out.” That was it! That was considered a decisive argument that stood on its own! “I think it’s cringe” was a major reason given to deny us basic civil liberties!

And honestly, “calling yourself queer is cringe” just sets people up for a lifetime of false hopes and self-blame, because it makes them think there is a level of respectable enough you can achieve to be “one of the good ones” and safe from bigotry. And that’s just not true. You don’t actually have control over how bigoted somebody else is!

Also… Shocked pikachu face. People think being queer is bad, actually? No fucking way! Here was us self-identified queers being blissfully ignorant of the fact that there are queerphobes out there who will treat us with contempt and derision! This is entirely new information we are hearing now for the very first time! Thanks for that advice, Ms. Radfem Lady! No fucking shit!

At its base, “queer is cringe” is just a mask-off moment. What people generally mean by it is, “If you’re queer, I will treat you with contempt and derision, and then blame you for my own actions as if I wasn’t treating people like shit long before I ever met you.”

Hey I’ve noticed that more and more people have been talking about Wendy Carlos recently, so here’s a friendly reminder that Wendy Carlos has her own website. It’s ancient, but very informative and charming, with her art, photos of her pets, and her interests including color theory and astronomy.

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT that if you want to know anything about her to please use this as your source!! The website includes her biographical notes, a list of all her approved interviews, and has an archive of all her music. It also has a list of publications that are false/bigoted and that she does not approve of.

IT IS ALSO IMPORTANT that Carlos does NOT want her legacy to be “the trans woman who changed music”. She is a very talented musician who contributed to a rich history of music, but she makes it clear in this open letter that she is not a superstar, and in this message that she does not want to be known only for her gender identity, or defined by it.

Please please show her the respect she is due.

I’d best be seeing that anti JKR energy for this twilight show too bc Smeyer continuing to profit off the Quileute tribe is not cute

I keep seeing people on Twitter being all "I'm sure they'll be more respectful and mindful of the Quileute tribe this time around."

Except, they won't be. Even if they get actual Native American actors to play these characters, even if they bring on a Native American to serve as a cultural advisor, it wont matter. Why? Because Smeyer appropriated a real Native American tribe and twisted their culture and history in her fantasy books for her own profit.

This fictional Quileute Tribe is and always will be disrespectful to the real life Quileute tribe.

The Quileute Tribe is still taking donations to move out of the immediate tsunami zone as of April 2023. Instead of directing attention to this TV series if/when comes out (and even if it doesn't honestly), please consider supporting the tribe financially here if you can afford it.

“There is a copy of the NES game Golf in the firmware of every Switch system”

Me: Oh haha, what a weird thing, probably some remnant from the debugging process -

“Since that was a game that Satoru Iwata programmed himself, this could have been intended as a way of saying that Iwata is spiritually a part of every Switch and is watching over and protecting every system.”

Me:

On July 11th*, the date of Iwata’s passing, doing Iwata’s “directly to you” motion with the Joy-Cons on the home screen will play a sound clip of Iwata and launch the game.

(* Before you try this yourself, note that simply changing the date on your system will not work, as this runs off the Switch’s internal internet-synced clock, meaning that changing the date manually will only work if the system has never been connected to the internet)

I… I can’t…

It goes even further than that.

Firstly, opening the game like this person is in the video is only possible with a brand new unit on system version 1.0.0 that has never been connected to the Internet. Because of this, opening it is pretty hard to replicate, unless if you have a completely brand new Switch. So, even if the system’s internal date is on July 11, it still won’t open if the system version is up to date.

The thing is, it’s not supposed to be opened.

The hidden Golf game has been described as an omamori, which, in Japanese culture, is a charm usually bought at shrines that offers spiritual protection and good luck if you keep it close to you. Sometimes they’re made of cloth, and look like a tiny bag, which can contain a written prayer. People often tie them to something like a purse or a backpack, so that it’s always with them. Here are a bunch of different ones:

Omamori are not supposed to be opened, as doing so is said to remove its blessing.

Seeing as the hidden Golf game on the Switch is so difficult to run under normal circumstances, it’s probably not supposed to be opened in the first place. It’s likely meant to represent an omamori in Iwata’s honor. Its very fitting, because of how portable the Switch is, since people are likely to take it with them like they would with an omamori strapped to a purse or backpack.

Hey, everyone. Since we’re now in July and this post is still making the rounds, I’m sure there are people who are going to want to try to activate the Golf game on their Switch on the 11th. So I wanted to provide an update to this:

As @lunarhalo24 helpfully pointed out, this inclusion of Golf in the Switch system was meant to be an omamori, a blessing from Iwata. And there’s another important cultural thing about omamori to note here:

An omamori’s blessing is only good until the end of the year, after which it expires and the omamori is traditionally disposed of in a sacred fire. So the files being deleted at the end of last year seems as though it was symbolic of the blessing’s time expiring.

So yes, there is now almost no way to actually access it. Because it was never meant to be accessed.

Reblogging because this is a really interesting way of combining tradition and technology in someone’s memory and as a good luck charm.

Applying for jobs is a hell designed specifically to torment autistic people. Here is a well-paying task which you know in your heart and soul if they just gave you a desk and left you alone and allowed you to do it you would sit there and be more focused and enthusiastic and excellent at it than anyone else in the building. However, before they allow you to perform the task, you must pass through 3-4 opaque social crucibles where you must wear uncomfortable clothes and make eye contact while everyone expects you to lie, but not too much (no one is ever clear exactly how much lying is expected, “over” honesty is however penalized). You are being judged almost entirely on how well you understand these very specific and unclear rules that no one has explained. None of this has anything to do with your ability to perform the desired task.

It is hell! I want to acknowledge that the original point of the post is NOT fixed by my providing solutions (the way jobs are filled makes no sense), but also I want to leave some notes for folks struggling with these unspoken rules. 

Some brief notes on the correct kinds of “LYING”:

  • Always use “I” expressions, instead of “we”:
  1. eg “I created a solution to a recurring problem by doing [x].”, even if it was really you and two others in a group
  2. If you LED the group (or did project-management), you can say, “I led a team to create a solution to a recurring problem by doing [x].”
  3. This is because employers like to know that YOU can do, and they also value team-leadership. If you say “we”, they may stop you and ask what You did specifically. You can avoid this by just saying “I”.
  • Someone asks if you have experience in a program (like excel):
  1. If you feel confident using it:  “Yes, I am very proficient.”
  2. If you have used it a few times, and could at least google what to do next: “Yes, I have good experience.”
  3. If you don’t have any experience: “I have used it before. I generally pick up programs very fast, and I’m a quick learner.”
  • Mistakes (some interviewers may ask about a time you made a mistake, or a weakness of yours):
  1. Good answers are those with solutions.
  2. Bad answer examples:  “Sometimes I don’t catch mistakes before sending things.”  OR  “I don’t like working with other people”
  3. Good answer examples:  “I had a problem catching typos, so I implemented steps that force me to check my work.”  OR  “I prefer to do things on my own so I know it’s done right, but I’m working on trusting my teammates to take on pieces as well.”
  • Someone asks if you’ve ever led a team / managed a project:
  1. Try to say YES to this question (even if it is a lie)
  2. If you have, say yes, and say how many people were on the team. 
  3. If you haven’t, but you played a large role in a group of people, say yes, and talk about your primary role on the team. 
  4. If you haven’t, but you worked solo on something that needed input from other people, say yes, and say what the project was about. 

Additional:

  • Misc Rules
  1. You can ask people to repeat interview questions
  2. You can write down interview questions while they’re asking (write the basics of the question down for yourself, like the top things you have to answer). People will wait for you to finish writing, you don’t have to answer Immediately.
  3. Try to keep your answer to questions somewhere between 30 seconds to 1 minute and 30 seconds. You don’t have to time it, but if you find that your answers are taking 3 minutes, you might lose interest.
  • Have a list of projects / bragging points to talk about in advance
  1. Try to make sure they at least answer the core question asked, don’t just bring up a completely unrelated topic
  2. Example: if you are really excited to talk about a program you wrote, and someone asks about balancing projects, you can say you are good at AUTOMATION, and an example is this program you wrote
  • “Do you have any questions for us?” (A question asked at the end of most interviews.)
  1. “What has been your favorite part of working at [company]?”
  2. “What’s been your favorite project to work on?”
  3. People like talking about themselves
  • Thank you emails
  1. Some employers care if you send them a thank you “letter” (email). Sometime by the end of the day (you can do it right after the interview if you think you’ll forget), send a thank you email like this (you can look up other templates, or ask a friend for help):
  2. Subject Line:  Thank You
  3. “Hi [interviewer name], It was great speaking with you. Hearing more about the role, as well as what you said about [their answer to a question you asked them] has made me even more excited for this opportunity. Thank you for your time today, [Your Name]

Good luck!!

Im gonna need this in 2 years!

Honestly the “applying and interviewing for a job” is harder and more stressful than actually doing the job 999% of the time for me. I hate it so much.

Wait they ask about mistakes and weaknesses because they want to hear about solutions?! That makes so much more sense! Why dont they just verbalize the solution part!

Tonight at sundown Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, is commemorated around the world.  

If you want to to honor the memory of one of the victims by lighting a candle, you can do that at the Illuminate website.

It will give you the name of one person for who you can viritually light a candle. If you want, you can also learn a bit about their life and share a small message.

Currently, there are over 800.000 candles lit. The goal is to reach 6 million to honor each and every vicitim.

[Image description: a round photo of an Illuminate candle being lit against a black background. /End description.]

I wish kinky sex ed wasn't so stigmatized even among left-leaning "sex positive" circles. Everyone's all "uwu I'm a sub I'll do anything you ask" okay mommy wants you to read The New Bottoming Book so you learn how to sub without hurting yourself since your sex ed up to this point is porn and your ex boyfriend Jared who liked to choke you incorrectly

I’m so glad you asked! Let me list off what I’ve got for you:

Books I personally recommend:

- The New Topping Book and The New Bottoming Book, by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy

If you’re having kinky sex at all, you need to read at least one of these two books. Point blank. They’ll teach you the very basics of negotiating properly (which is critical!), and help you identify what you are and aren’t into.

- Mindfucking Mindfully, by Sir Ezra Where this book really shines isn’t actually in helping you “mindfuck” people, it’s in taking a close look at how to do so ethically. It’s a great answer to the question “how do I get someone to consent to something and still surprise and shock them with it?”

- Real Service by Raven Kaldera and Joshua Tenpenny This is a slightly niche pick but there simply isn’t a better book on the subject. It’s written from a 24/7 M/s perspective, which is not what I do, but the book itself is an indispensable guide to giving and receiving service. The phrase “if the Master doesn’t want it, it isn’t service” will be burned into my psyche for quite some time. I love this book a lot. Maybe my favorite out of all of these.

- Enough To Make You Blush: Exploring Erotic Humiliation, by Princess Kali This one’s high on my reading list; I’ve heard it recommended by a number of people whose opinions on these things I trust.

- Pretty Much Anything Midori Has Ever Done Midori is a great resource for this stuff - I haven’t personally read much of her work, but she’s a well known sex educator and great at what she does. She’s known for bondage, but has a lot of range beyond that.

- This Negotiations Worksheet from Bex Talks Sex This is what I default to using a lot of the time for negotiations. Forget BDSMtest, you don’t need that, it’s no good. Just look through this worksheet’s wordbank with your partner. Big fan especially of the “how do you want to feel?” section.

Books I can kind of recommend:

- The Ultimate Guide to Kink, edited by Tristan Taormino This book is weird. There’s a lot of good info for experienced players, but some of what’s written here skeeves me out. I think if I had a top that thought the way some of the tops in here think, they would not be topping me for long. But there’s some good techniques and so on to pick up that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I liked the distinction one of the authors makes between being sadistic in the sense of inflicting pain and being sadistic in the sense of doing something your sub doesn’t “enjoy.”

- The Ritual of Dominance and Submission, by David English Man, this book fucking sucks. The writing and editing are garbage, and the fear and protocol play described need way more careful negotiation than he ever lets on, let alone recommends. This is some 50 Shades bullshit. The only time I recommend this book is to tops like me who tend to be very affirming to their partners and need a guide on how to really scare them - when their partner consents and when you negotiate it, which this book sucks at teaching you. Really good content on fear, punishment, and protocol play, really terrible presentation of the topic though. Don’t read this if you don’t already know what you’re doing.

- Paradigms of Power, by Raven Kaldera I love this book. Great book. Very focused on 24/7 M/s play though, and, being an anthology, some chapters are better than others. If you can’t read something and pick out what is and isn’t for you, don’t bother. But some really great inspiration, and generally pretty well written. Big fan of the discussion of leather throughout the book.

Hope some of these are helpful for people ^-^ for the average person reading this I recommend New Bottoming/Topping, but they’re all important parts of my library and I’ve recommended all of them to friends at some point or another.

May I also suggest Hell on Wheels and Kneeling in Spirit by Raven Kaldera, d/s companion books that address kink with a disability. They're a should read for everyone, imo. You never know when you or a partner are going to have changes in your body that affect what you can physically do. Temporary illness/injury and even just age can affect your sex life.

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I will mash that Reblog button every single time this shows up on my dash. I spent a lot of years martyring myself for “the needs of the business.” Young people? Don’t fucking do it. They don’t care about you, you are a “resource,” not a human being. I can’t say this strongly enough: see to your self-care!

We talk a lot about how to tell if you have a bad boss... Here is how you know you have a good boss:

My boss would verbally kick my ass if I logged in or communicated voluntarily about work while on vacation. And if I had to log in, absolutely no one else could do my thing and it couldn't wait? He would refund my time off and make me take it the following week.

Time off is Time Off. Take it. Unashamedly. Unabashedly.

Time off is Time Off.

Take it. Unashamedly.

Unabashedly.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

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Someone needs to inform the (rightly) pro-piracy tumblr users that it is no longer 2014 and some of the services they are recommending will turn ur computer in a broken microwave that serves bitcoins to shitheads.

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Do NOT EVER use uTorrent. Be VERY CAREFUL on tpb.

someone said utorrent doesnt mine anymore but honestly dont use it anyway given its history, and it being proprietary closed-source adware. theres literally no reason to use utorrent, its only used because its already well known.

in comparison, programs such as qbittorrent and transmission are entirely free and open source and ad free. the great thing about being open source is you yourself (or other people who know more about security) can check the safety of the code, vulnerabilities get patched quickly, and if some bullshit does happen you can always compile it without the bullshit yourself. just make sure youre getting it from official sources, no doubt theres probably 1 or 2 fake sites with modified versions thanks to it being open source

there is literally 0 reason to use utorrent in 20fucking23, theres better options

i personally recommend qbittorrent especially if youre moving off of utorrent as its ui is explicitly designed to feel familiar to utorrent users. provided transmission as another option if you want something different, theres plenty more free opensource options out there though im sure

(I also swear by chia pudding! It’s very low effort, delicious, healthy, and always helps when my sleep and fatigue issues are, well… being issues. You can add as much milk/water as you want. I personally also make it with maple syrup and cinnamon, then eat it later with berries and nuts.)

We have more followers here so… here ya go!!

Saving all of this for when my depression and chronic pain get sucky. At least I’ll still be able to eat!

When a comrade gets arrested

If you’re new to actions with an arrest risk and you don’t have experienced protestors with you, there’s stuff you can find online about having a legal team, writing the name of a lawyer on your body, saying NOTHING to the cops except the name of your lawyer, etc. That’s all good advice.

But let me give you a bit of advice that is just as essential as all that:

If one of your comrades gets arrested, and you know they can be held for 6, 9, 12 hours, depending on where you are, you get a group of people together and you wait outside the police station.

You may be tired, you may be stressed, it may be freezing, you may need to take turns, but you take whoever can still physically and mentally bear it and you go to that police station and you wait for your comrade. You can spend the time taking care of each other, drinking hot drinks, doing whatever gets you through, but you wait.

And when your comrade gets out, you make sure they do not walk home alone in the dark thinking about the fucked up experience they just had, you make sure there’s a big fucking crowd of their comrades there to greet them with hugs and hot drinks and a cigarette if they smoke.

And whether the arrested comrade that just got out is happy or sad or pissed off, you take that for what it is and give that space and you support that. And you get them a hot meal and you hang out with them and you offer to let them stay at your place or you stay with them so they don’t have to spend that night alone with their thoughts.

You do this every damn time, regardless of whether you really like that comrade and regardless of how you feel about the thing your comrade got arrested for, regardless of how often they’ve been arrested. Because you never know how shitty their experience is going to be in there this time. 

Trust me. This is absolutely essential. Once you’ve been arrested and have felt the difference between walking home alone or having your friends waiting for you, you’ll understand.

Be good comrades

I can’t stress how important this is. When my father and I were arrested in Seattle some years back for agitating for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, we were greeted outside the jail by the event’s organisers. They cheered us, had cokes and munchies for us. They drove us to our car and, during the drive, asked if we wanted to stay the night in Seattle with one of the organisers, they filled us in on what had happened after our arrests, they asked about and listened intently to what we experienced from arrest to release. They did so much so well that when another call went out for potential arrestees, we were amongst the first to raise our proverbial hands.  Read the post. Re-read the post. Remember it. And, when the chance comes, do it.

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When I was arrested at a Black Lives Matter protest a few years ago, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice were doing Jail Support when I was finally let out of One Police Plaza at around 6am. 

They had gotten a klezmer band to stand along the hill you have to go up to leave the jail, and as I walked to where the volunteer lawyers were waiting (they were there to make sure all 200+ people who were arrested that night would be represented at their later hearings. They also were surrounded by volunteers who had food, phone chargers, directions to all the nearby subway stops, and one of them let me borrow her phone to call my mom when I got frustrated with how slowly my phone was charging) the band played music, cheered and applauded. 

Honestly? That band playing klezmer for me as I left jail, cheering me on and making me laugh… it’s a memory I really treasure. 

It’s also one of my mother’s favorite stories. Before I told her about that band, she got so upset and agitated whenever anything reminded her of my arrest. She’d freak out, cry, start fussing over me, and so forth. After I told her about the klezmer band though? It became something she’d tell her friends about, over and over again, laughing each time. She stopped calling me to beg me not to go and protest every time she knew a big one was happening, and instead would call to make a joke about how if I want to listen to klezmer she has some CDs I can borrow.

When I think about that night, rather than any of the many many terrible things that happened from the moment the cops grabbed me onward, the first thing I remember is the klezmer, and how it made me laugh, and the popcorn someone gave me as I gave the lawyers my name and info, and the kindness of strangers.

After the dehumanization of even a few hours in police custody, those volunteers made me smile, and gave the night a new fun and funny angle to be remembered from. I actually laugh when I think about that night, thanks to them.

Jail Support is a beyond vital part of protesting. It really really is. 

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the one time i was arrested it was with occupy chicago in 2010, during a mass attempt to set up a camp in grant park. previously, for weeks? months? occupy chicago had been on the sidewalk outside a federal reserve building, no permanent camp to better organize, just constant shuffling as the CPD harassed the protestors. so…we tried to set up a camp.

i was among the first in the van, and we were held at the first precinct from about 1am to 4am. none of us inside the cell had any idea how long we’d be there, but we joked about getting breakfast together if we got out. we were all sitting side by side in a holding cell for hours, hundreds of us, overwhelming the jail. so…they let us out. in the dead of night, pre-dawn. and on the other side of that door? hugs. and cookies. and coffee. and celebration that we were getting out. and the national lawyer’s guild. i will never forget the hug from a stranger that night.

years later in my home town i have attempted jail support two times for political actions. the first time, folks were pretty green to experiencing this, and they listened to an old head who was single-handedly handling the situation. the one guy with a lawyer connection, said they’d go to court at 11am and we should go home. i, on the other hand, knew they’d be let out in the dead of night when no one was around. cell phones dead, no coats, no buses running. but no, this guy was the authority, he said they’d have to go to court at 11am and we should go home. we shouldn’t have listened to him because the police did exactly as i predicted.

people put a lot of emphasis on having a lawyer’s info on your body if you get arrested for political action, but sometimes they don’t even hold you long enough. just let you out at the dead of night to make you feel alone and scared. it’s like they want you to feel traumatized for taking action.

the second time i knew we needed jail support, i had to work the next morning, and i went home after coordinating as much fundraising and legal support as my community could. i regret not being able to stay for my friends. because i knew what it felt like to be greeted with hugs and cookies after staying awake all night in a cold cell not knowing what would happen to me. and i knew what happened to a friend of mine who was let out at 3am with a dead phone, no buses running, just walking home in the dead of night, alone, pissed off. so if you can, i strongly suggest, fucking camp out at the jail your comrades were taken to.

it’s like they want you to feel traumatized for taking action.

Yeah. They do. This shit is strategic. The amount of times I’ve seen people get out just after public transport shut down… it’s intentional. They also let people out with random 15+ minute gaps between each release in the hope that people won’t wait for each other to walk home together.

people put a lot of emphasis on having a lawyer’s info on your body 

To be honest, it is very important to say the name of the activist lawyer in custody because they can try to hook you up with a bogus cop lawyer even if you only spend an hour in custody. But it’s also very important for jail support:

After you report who your lawyer is, that lawyer will - if the cops are doing their job - hear that they have a client at location X waiting for them. (or 2 clients, or 5, etc). They can then pass that information on to jail support, who know where to meet people and how many to expect. If the police spread arrested people out over multiple locations, only a lawyer can find out where they are and only if people have said the name of that lawyer. So without that name, you might still walk home alone.

meal ideas!

low energy ("do not ask me to do any prep work at all, so help me god")

  • mozzerella cheese wrapped in pepperoni ("pizza tacos"!)
  • hummus and pretzels or naan (putting the naan in the microwave for like 10 seconds...heavenly)
  • canned chili (with shredded cheese and sour cream if you have it! boom done!)
  • instant miso soup (warm and lovely!)
  • cheese and cured meat, olives, canned fish, crackers, dried fruit, or whatever easy "charcuterie" type items you like
  • alternate bites of apple and spoonfulls of peanut butter (mixing honey or chocolate chips to the peanut butter is my favorite)
  • a "deconstructed sandwich": bites of lunch meat, pickles, cheese, cherry tomato, etc (I love roast beef and white cheddar for this)
  • yogurt and granola or fruit

medium energy ("I'll boil water but don't ask me to chop shit")

high energy ("I don't mind chopping some things up!")

other tips:

  • whenever you think of a meal you'd like to make, take 3 seconds to google search it, take a screenshot of the image results, and put it in a "food ideas" folder. instant visual menu!
  • if you're on instagram, there are a bajillion different recipe accounts that post videos! a few of my favorites: jipsoon_kitchen, eatwitzo, cordandthekitchen, chungeats, tiffy.cooks, two_plaid_aprons
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This is all great!

I got this website from a nutritionist and it’s become my absolute favorite way to find new recipes. The search filter options are fantastic! Sorting by method really helps me because I think that’s what makes the biggest difference in how much energy you need.

And here are some other ideas for low/medium energy meals:

  • Cottage cheese with crackers, fruits and/or veggies.
  • Guacamole with veggies and/or tortilla chips
  • Chickpeas/garbanzo beans with tzatziki. You could add rice, lettuce/spinach, and/or pita.
  • Buffalo cauliflower with yogurt dip. You can roast or microwave the cauliflower, top it with hot sauce, and add bleu cheese or shredded cheddar on top.

Here is a link to the US Restrict Act (commonly known as the TikTok ban) as it is currently written.

Please read the actual bill and share even if you do not live in the United States. The precedents this piece of legislation would set would have far reaching impacts on how the internet is used for everyone in the future.

We've got a problem here. I know most people here probably hate tiktok, and for some good reasons, but believe it or not there's actually a good amount of good on tiktok too.

But this isn't about banning tiktok. That's just a cover for this, given power thanks to Meta (Facebook) lobbyists pretty much paying the United States Government.

For the tldr: This act, while saying it's to insure American's personal information will be safe from foreign powers, it goes much deeper than that.

  • It will give the United States Government the power to remove and ban ANY online service they deem "a security risk" while making it so they do not need just cause and do not need to clarify or release a public statement.
  • It allows them the power to gather American's data without our knowledge or consent and even force us to submit documentation for anything they wish.
  • It protects the government from scrutiny on this, and if you try to speak about it and inform people on what it ACTUALLY allows, they can claim it to be false information and charge you.
  • It prevents you from using a VPN as it's seen as a breach of information security, thus they can charge you.
  • Failure to abide by these "guidelines" can lead to a fine up to ONE MILLION DOLLARS and/or 20 YEARS in prison.
  • And above all it does NOTHING to prevent AMERICAN companies from collecting and selling your data.

And that's not even everything it does. This isn't about banning tiktok. It's about control, taking away our freedom of speech, censorship, and selfish monetary gain. This doesn't just affect tiktok users. This affects ALL Americans, small businesses, communities, and even those that use American online products, like Tumblr.

The US is turning into a fascist regime, where they are slowly but surely stripping away our rights and freedoms even more than they already have. And it terrifies me.

If you're not an American, please share this. We already have a hard enough time knowing what goes on with those in other countries. This could make it all the more difficult.

And if you are an American, share this, then contact your state representative and your state senators. Email, phone, even mailing a physical letter for crying out loud. You can search "who is my representative and senators?" on Google, bing, duck-duck-go, or whatever, and it'll take you to where you can find that out and even how to contact them.

Calmly and professionally tell them that not only do you NOT support the TikTok ban(since that is the cover they are using), but you DO NOT support the Restrict Act.

And let them know that if this bill is to pass, you will be spending all your time and energy supporting their opponents in the PRIMARIES. They do not expect Americans to contact them about this, so not only will they see us going out of our way to contact them, but by saying you'll be supporting their OPPONENTS, they'll have to either listen or have to spend thousands of not millions of dollars in campaigning so they don't lose their nice day paychecks, and to them this is all about money so it'll hit them where it hurts.

It doesn't matter what political party you're on, because BOTH parties in office want this. This is not about sides. This is about the ENTIRE government stripping our rights away so they can keep lining their own pockets.

And while we're at it? Review bomb anything related to meta it Facebook. Meta started all this because they couldn't compete with tiktok or buy it, so they paid lobbyists to convince congress to ban tiktok so they didn't HAVE to compete.

And here's the kicker... Many people of congress actually bought stock in Meta RIGHT BEFORE this all started. They are LITERALLY trying to manipulate the market for themselves. So let them burn.

Read this Twitter thread... (partly because Microsoft doesn't want you to.)

screenshots of the tweet below 'read more'; twitter is going down at some point

tl;dr:

the minecraft ending is public domain now.

this is because the rights were never signed over.

microsoft made no comment, journalists refused the story because microsoft has a ton of lawyers, but this twitter thread by the ending's orig. author blew up and now people know that you can use the minecraft ending. (also at the end you're advised to check out this fellow's substack)

TL;DR : Please report any adverts or blaze posts you see that contain flashing images to tumblr.com/support 

After my blaze post about disability access in media was rejected due to reasons ungiven, I got in contact with Tumblr and pointed out their irony in rejecting my post but continuing to promote adverts that contain dangerous levels of flashing imagery, high contrast colours, and glitch effects. 

They told me to screenshot/screen record any of these adverts I saw and report them to tumblr.com/support along with the approximate date and time and the website they redirect to. 

Of course, for Photosensitive people who have been forced to witness these adverts, this sort of thing is nearly impossible. How can you have the wherewithal to report an advert whilst suffering from a seizure or migraine? 

This is where Allies come in! Please can you collect any and all adverts you see that contain flashing lights at a rate of 3 Flashes Per Second or higher/Glitch Effects/High Contrast Colours? Then, on 26th March (Epilepsy Awareness Day) I suggest that we all send these adverts in on mass! It’ll help to get our point across that this is a REGULAR OCCURRENCE that affects an entire community of people, and hopefully we’ll be able to enact some actual change to make this website more accessible for disabled people! 

If you are seeing this after 26th March, or worry you’ll not remember to do so by then, fear not! You can send the posts to Tumblr Support year round! It’s just useful to have a date to organise these things around for maximum impact.

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@thebibliosphere i know you’re hurting right now so no pressure but this could use a signal boost if you have the spoons

Oh fuck yeah. Jesus Christ, the number of times I’ve been made ill by a flickering ad or a post, even with add-free is too damn high.