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Pepper

@drpepper-spokesman

any pronouns | i like a lot of stuff | minor | aroace 💪

URGENT: 🚨🚨EARN IT ACT IS BACK IN THE SENATE 🚨🚨 TUMBLR’S NSFW BAN HITTING THE ENTIRE INTERNET THIS SUMMER 2023

April 28, 2023

I’m so sorry for the long post but please please please pay attention and spread this

What is the EARN IT Act?

This is the third time the Senate has been trying to force this through, and I talked about it last year. It is a bill that claims "protects children and victims against CSAM" by creating an unelected and politically appointed national commission of law enforcement specialists to dictate "best practices" that websites all across the nation will be forced to follow. (Keep in mind, most websites in the world are created in the US, so this has global ramifications). These "best practices" would include killing encryption so that any law enforcement can scan and see every single message, dm, photo, cloud storage, data, and any website you have every so much as glanced at. Contrary to popular belief, no they actually can't already do that. These "best practices" also create new laws for "removing CSAM" online, leading to mass censorship of non-CSAM content like what happened to tumblr. Keep in mind that groups like NCOSE, an anti-LGBT hate group, will be allowed on this commission. If websites don't follow these best practices, they lose their Section 230 protections, leading to mass censorship either way.

Section 230 is foundational to modern online communications. It's the entire reason social media exists. It grants legal protection to users and websites, and says that websites aren't responsible for what users upload online unless it's criminal. Without Section 230, websites are at the mercy of whatever bullshit regulatory laws any and every US state passes. Imagine if Texas and Florida were allowed to say what you can and can't publish and access online. That is what will happen if EARN IT passes. (For context, Trump wanted to get rid of Section 230 because he knew it would lead to mass govt surveillance and censorship of minorities online.)

This is really not a drill. Anyone who makes or consume anything “adult” and LGBT online has to be prepared to fight Sen. Blumenthal’s EARN IT Act, brought back from the grave by a bipartisan consensus to destroy Section 230. If this bill passes, we’re going to see most, if not all, adult content and accounts removed from mainstream platforms. This will include anything related to LGBT content, including SFW fanfiction, for example. Youtube, Twitter, Reddit, Tiktok, Tumblr, all of them will be completely gutted of anything related to LGBT content, abortion healthcare, resources for victims of any type of abuse, etc. It is a right-wing fascists wet dream, which is why NCOSE is behind this bill and why another name for this bill is named in reference to NCOSE.

NCOSE used to be named Morality in Media, and has rebranded into an "anti-trafficking" organization. They are a hate group that has made millions off of being "against trafficking" while helping almost no victims and pushing for homophobic laws globally. They have successfully pushing the idea that any form of sexual expression, including talking about HEALTH, leads to sex trafficking. That's how SESTA passed. Their goal is to eliminate all sex, anything gay, and everything that goes against their idea of ‘God’ from the internet and hyper disney-fy and sanitize it. This is a highly coordinated attack on multiple fronts.

The EARN IT Act will lead to mass online censorship and surveillance. Platforms will be forced to scan their users’ communications and censor all sex-related content, including sex education, literally anything lgbt, transgender or non-binary education and support systems, aything related to abortion, and sex worker communication according to the ACLU. All this in the name of “protecting kids” and “fighting CSAM”, both of which the bill does nothing of the sort. In fact it makes fighting CSEM even harder.

EARN IT will open the way for politicians to define the category of “pornography" as they — or the lobbies that fund them — please. The same way that right-wing groups have successfully banned books about race and LGBT, are banning trans people from existing, all under the guise of protecting children from "grooming and exploitation", is how they will successfully censor the internet.

As long as state legislatures can tie in "fighting CSAM" to their bullshit laws, they can use EARN IT to censor and surveill whatever they want.

This is already a nightmare enough. But the bill also DESTROYS ENCRYPTION, you know, the thing protecting literally anyone or any govt entity from going into your private messages and emails and anything on your devices and spying on you.

This bill is going to finish what FOSTA/SESTA started. And that should terrify you.

Senator Blumenthal (Same guy who said ‘Facebook should ban finsta’) pushed this bill all of 2020, literally every activist (There were more than half a million signatures on this site opposing this act!) pushed hard to stop this bill. Now he brings it back, doesn’t show the text of the bill until hours later, and it’s WORSE. Instead of fixing literally anything in the bill that might actually protect kids online, Bluemnthal is hoping to fast track this and shove it through, hoping to get little media attention other than propaganda of “protecting kids” to support this shitty legislation that will harm kids. Blumental doesn't care about protecting anyone, and only wants his name in headlines.

It will make CSAM much much worse.

One of the many reasons this bill is so dangerous: It totally misunderstands how Section 230 works, and in doing so (as with FOSTA) it is likely to make the very real problem of CSAM worse, not better. Section 230 gives companies the flexibility to try different approaches to dealing with various content moderation challenges. It allows for greater and greater experimentation and adjustments as they learn what works – without fear of liability for any “failure.” Removing Section 230 protections does the opposite. It says if you do anything, you may face crippling legal liability. This actually makes companies less willing to do anything that involves trying to seek out, take down, and report CSAM because of the greatly increased liability that comes with admitting that there is CSAM on your platform to search for and deal with. This liability would allow anyone for any reason to sue any platform they want, suing smaller ones out of existence. Look at what is happening right now with book bans across the nation with far right groups. This is going to happen to the internet if this bill passes.

(Remember, the state department released a report in December 2021 recommending that the government crack down on “obscenity” as hard the Reagan Administration did. If this bill passes, it could easily go way beyond shit red states are currently trying. It is a goldmine for the fascist right that is currently in the middle of banning every book that talks about race and sexuality across the US.)

The reason these bills keep showing up is because there is this false lie spread by organizations like NCOSE that platforms do nothing about CSEM online. However, platforms are already liable for child sexual exploitation under federal law. Tech companies sent more than 45 million+ instances of CSAM to the DOJ in 2019 alone, most of which they declined to investigate. This shows that platforms are actually doing everything in their power already to stop CSEM by following already existing laws. The Earn It Act includes zero resources for proven investigation or prevention programs. If Senator Bluementhal actually cared about protecting youth, why wouldn’t he include anything to actually protect them in his shitty horrible bill? EARN IT is actually likely to make prosecuting child molesters more difficult since evidence collected this way likely violates the Fourth Amendment and would be inadmissible in court.

I don’t know why so many Senators are eager to cosponsor the “make child pornography worse” bill, but here we are.

HOW TO FIGHT BACK

EARN IT Act was introduced just two weeks ago and is already being fast-tracked. It will be marked up the week of May 1st and head to the Senate floor immediately after. If there is no loud and consistent opposition, it will be law by JUNE! Most bills never go to markup, so this means they are putting pressure to move this through. There are already 20 co-sponsors, a fifth of the entire Senate. This is an uphill battle and it is very much all hands on deck.

  1. CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES.

This website takes you to your Senator / House members contact info. EMAIL, MESSAGE, SEND LETTERS, CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL. Calling is the BEST way to get a message through. Get your family and friends to send calls too. This is literally the end of free speech online.

(202) 224-3121 connects you to the congressional hotline. Here is a call script if you don't know what to say. Call them every day. Even on the weekends, leaving voicemails are fine.

2. Sign these petitions!

3. SPREAD THE WORD ONLINE

If you have any social media, spread this online. One of the best ways we fought back against this last year was MASSIVE spread online. Tiktok, reddit, twitter, discord, whatever means you have at least mention it. We could see most social media die out by this fall if we don't fight back.

Here is a linktree with more information on this bill including a masterpost of articles, the links to petitions, and the call script.

DISCORD LINK IF YOU WANT TO HELP FIGHT IT

TLDR: The EARN IT Act will lead to online censorship of any and all adult & lgbt content across the entire internet, open the floodgates to mass surveillance the likes which we haven’t seen before, lead to much more CSEM being distributed online, and destroy encryption. Call 202-224-3121 to connect to your house and senate representative and tell them to VOTE NO on this bill that does not protect anyone and harms everyone.

There’s this weird culture of telling kids when they stress about school “u ain’t seen nothin yet hun! Wait till u do tax returns! Hahaha adulthood is fucking hell!” And i hate it b/c 

 1) it’s flat out untrue. Adulthood is a breeze compared to school. I have time to myself to do what I find fun and can make my own choices. Like, yeah, I’m poor and have to take care of myself, but the central activity of my life– work – is waaaaaay easier than school, mentally and emotionally. 

 2) Part of the reason school made me anxious to the point of considering suicide is that I had this wrong idea, drilled into my head by YEARS of people saying this, that if I didn’t do well in school, I would be a useless member of society, unable to be productive or do anything meaningful. Failing a class meant I might as well be dead. That’s the false equivalence this culture creates. But grades don’t mean SHIT in the workforce unless you’re trying to become a college professor or do something that requires a hella advanced degree. 

 3) it helps no one to say this! All it does is give mentally ill children, most of whom are already struggling to get through the DAY, the idea that it will only get much, much worse. I know I couldn’t cope with that thought. Any future planning past my 20s was blocked out in a haze of terror at the thought of having to persevere that long, only to get a shittier situation at the end. But it’s not shittier. I have to be more responsible, but this is a piece of goddamn cake compared to even High School. The only reason to say this to a teenager is to inflate your own sense of superiority over someone who is still learning how the world works.

 So like. Can we kill this culture? Please?

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!

If I go into one more restaurant and see a qr code menu I'm gonna puke like sorry but nope! No! That's not easier! Menus are already reusuable just give me one! Easy five second interaction. What if my phone is bad at qr codes? What if I'm on a low battery? Paper, paper, paper. A hard copy. Physical objects lets get this bread. Ordering through the app when you're sitting at the restaurant is even worse!!! The boomers are right about this one.

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🌺🏵️🌸…!

[Image ID: Fanart of Zuko and Sokka from Avatar: The Last Airbender. They are pictured from the waist up against a white background, standing side by side with their backs to the viewer. Zuko wears a medium-length regal hairstyle and a red hanfu-style robes, while Sokka wears a blue and white jacket. Their hands are on each other’s backs. Sokka reaches over behind his back to touch Zuko’s hand. There are white and orange flowers around their shoulders. /End ID.]

breaking my silence Zuko and Sokka should never have been in that sun/moon poll to begin with there is not a celestial bone in those bodies. dating the moon doesnt count thats like moon nepotism. "Sun and Moon pairing" girl thats not Sun and Moon thats Tabasco Sauce and Beef Jerky. thats Legos and Fidget Spinner. idc I stand by this.

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pov you’re sokka who’s got woken up by soft sobs seeing zuko who’s sitting on the edge of bed in the darkness of night only illuminating by moon’s (yue) light

we love good husband comforting his other half after nightmare

I like zukka as a ship but I cannot go into the tags for content about it. why is everyone so insistent on making zuko a little femboy. so many people just see a long haired man regardless of culture/time period and call him femme. And they make sokka hypermasculine like hello????? he’s so fucking flamboyant ?? he wrote poetry, loved arts and crafts, wore a gay little purse, and did DRAG. in CANON. In a modern setting sokka would fix your car and then say SLAYYY do a death drop

if anyone else tries to insinuate zuko’s long hair inherently makes him androgynous/less masc I’m gonna start going around saying iroh has nonbinary swag

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To be fair Iroh does have Nonbinary Swag

i think broad spectrum insecticides should have to show dead bumble bees and monarch butterflies alongside the "pest" insects on the bottle and in advertisements

So people know what the product actually does

The mosquito spray people got in hot water here a couple years ago because they sprayed right as the butterflies were returning and the sidewalks were littered in dead monarchs like confetti. It was during lockdown too so it was extra bleak.