well anyway. the copyright system exists to commodify art and expression and process it into more money for larger companies, and it is actively detrimental to efforts for preservation, open education, and creation. everyone reading this is morally obligated to hoard and share data because we live in a world that is hostile to the idea that books or music or movies or scholarship have inherent value independent of a DRM stamp and ticket price. btw fuck hachette, harpercollins, wiley and penguin random house.

Learn to torrent

Z Library

12ft.io and alternatives

Get yourself an external hard drive or two and just start saving. The internet is not forever. Things are going to disappear, or (more likely) become harder and harder to search for, and more and more costly to access.

When did you last go looking for an older movie, only to realise it was unavailable on any streaming service and unavailable to buy? Restricted access and false scarcity are the only ways corporations can inflate and justify prices for digital content. In an era when we can carry entire libraries around on a phone, there is no reason to let these for-profit organisations control access to the wealth of human culture.

1TB of storage costs about $30-50 depending on the drive. Let's say an average high quality movie rip is 1.5GB. That's space for nearly 700 movies. The average ebook is around 2MB. That's space for 500,000 books. The Library of Alexandria was generously estimated to house 400,000 manuscripts. You can beat the Library of Alexandria, in your apartment, for $30-50. Start right now.

if this isn't enough to convince you, consider the satisfaction you will get from being the fucking chad in your group chat who's like "yeah I can get you that" any time anyone is looking for anything. it's real and it gets you maidens, take it from me.

Ruby Bridges is 68. This is not ancient history. Not even close.

I know Ruby. She's a really nice person. The idea that they would try and write what she did as a girl out of history is shocking to me on so many levels, the simplest of which is just, but don't they know how lovely she is?

“got snap?” i have an address where you can send me roses and love letters mf act grown

So I got called into jury duty…

And I was put in the seat instantly, of course. I said, “your honor, I can’t be a juror on a two week trial, I have opera rehearsal.” And she said, “opera huh, well, sing something for us.”

And I did. In a federal court of law, in front of the judge, 75 jurors, the lawyers and the fucking DEFENDANT, I sang o mio babbino caro.

And the judge excused me.

@districtswiftie13

YO I DIDNT EMBARRASS MYSELF IN FEDERAL COURT SO YALL CAN DOUBT ME.

I know a lot of opera singers, and singing a full-on aria in a court room with only a hint of provocation is EXACTLY what they would do.

I know a lot of judges, and demanding an impromptu opera solo on a whim is also something they would do.

(And also one of the main reasons you can be excused from jury duty is economic hardship–basically, it would cause you unreasonable financial damage. If you’re a professional singer, a two week gap in your rehearsal schedule could do that for sure.)

As a muso, I absolutely believe this. I’ve got my accordion out of my carry-on and played a tune when airport security couldn’t recognise its weird mass of levers. Singers and musicians are just Like That.

Accurate.

My friend got stopped at the Canadian border coming back into the US. Border patrol took one look at his tattoed, ear-gagued, mutton chop wearing, hipster self, and said “I don’t believe you’re an opera singer. Sing something for me.” His wife immediately put down her knitting and plugged her ears, because Matt’s a contrabasso, and he does NOT sing quietly. Every other booth along the border stop had a head poking out of it within twenty seconds. And they let them pass without further contest.

The unwillingness of some people to believe that literally anything remotely interesting happens in other people’s lives is truly astounding.

Can we all please just take a moment to appreciate that OP’s url is literally @melodramaticsoprano and yet she still was doubted?  

God invented winter so girls could exchange body heat

you were raised in comparison.

it wasn't always obvious (well. except for the times that it was), but you internalized it young. you had to eat what you didn't like, other people are going hungry, and you should be grateful. you had to suck it up and walk on the twisted ankle, it wasn't broken, you were just being a baby. you were never actually suffering, people obviously had it worse than you did.

you had a roof over your head - imagine! with the way you behaved, with how you talked back to your parents? you're lucky they didn't kick you out on your ass. they had friends who had to deal with that. hell, you have friends who had to deal with that. and how dare you imply your father isn't there for you - just because he doesn't ever actually talk to you and just because he's completely emotionally checked out of your life doesn't mean you're not fucking lucky. think about your cousins, who don't even get to speak to their dad. so what if yours has a mean streak; is aggressive and rude. at least you have a father to be rude to you.

you really think you're hurting? you were raised in a home! you had access to clean water! you never so much as came close to experiencing a real problem. sure, okay. you have this "mental illness" thing, but teenagers are always depressed, right. it's a phase, you'll move on with your life.

what do you mean you feel burnt out at work. what do you mean you mean you never "formed healthy coping mechanisms?" we raised you better than that. you were supposed to just shoulder through things. to hold yourself to high expectations. "burning out" is for people with real jobs and real stress. burnout is for people who have sick kids and people who have high-paying jobs and people who are actually experiencing something difficult. recently you almost cried because you couldn't find your fucking car keys. you just have lost your sense of gratitude, and honestly, we're kind of hurt. we tell you we love you, isn't that enough? if you want us to stick around, you need to be better about proving it. you need to shut up about how your mental health is ruined.

it could be worse! what if you were actually experiencing executive dysfunction. if you were really actually sick, would you even be able to look at things on the internet about it? you just spend too much time on webMD. you just like to freak yourself out and feel like you belong to something. you just like playing the victim. this is always how you have been - you've always been so fucking dramatic. you have no idea how good you have it - you're too fucking sensitive.

you were like, maybe too good of a kid. unwilling to make a real fuss. and the whole time - the little points, the little validations - they went unnoticed. it isn't that you were looking for love, specifically - more like you'd just wanted any one person to actually listen. that was all you'd really need. you just needed to be witnessed. it wasn't that you couldn't withstand the burden, but you did want to know that anyone was watching. these days, you are so accustomed to the idea of comparison - you don't even think you belong in your own communities. someone always fits better than you do. you're always the outlier. they made these places safe, and then you go in, and you are just not... quite the same way that would actually-fit.

you watch the little white ocean of your numbness lap at your ankles. the tide has been coming in for a while, you need to do something about it. what you want to do is take a nap. what you want to do is develop some kind of time machine - it's not like you want your life to stop, not completely, but it would really nice if you could just get everything to freeze, just for a little while, just until you're finished resting. but at least you're not the worst you've been. at least you have anything. you're so fucking lucky. do you have any concept of the amount of global suffering?

a little ant dies at the side of your kitchen sink. you look at its strange chitinous body and think - if you could just somehow convince yourself it is enough, it will finally be enough and you can be happy. no changes will have to be made. you just need to remember what you could lose. what is still precious to you.

you can't stop staring at the ant. you could be an ant instead of a person, that is how lucky you are. it's just - you didn't know the name of the ant, did you. it's just - ants spend their whole life working, and never complain. never pull the car over to weep.

it's just - when it died, it curled up into a tight little ball.

something kind of uncomfortable: you do that when you sleep.

Just found out my facebook birding group is public because my cousin (a lawyer who is not into birds) casually said to me “saw you couldn’t identify a willet the other day… pretty embarrassing”

killing myself in a tesla and just leaving it on autopilot so my corpse is in there jostling around while it crashes into things

It would almost be funnier if the AI was like in sci-fi and was functional enough to drive like a menacing asshole without actually hitting anything and periodically recharge itself.

Local shitty driver buys a Tesla

Programs the AI with his schedule

AI learns from his aggressive driving habits

One Friday Rush Hour he road rages so hard he has a heart attack and dies at the wheel

Car drives home unknowing

Next monday it leaves for work like nothing happened

Someone eventually notices but dead guy has been in the car for a few days so no one really wants to be the guy to take him out

Every day at precisely 7:55 AM the car leaves the garage, drives itself to this dude's office, and drives home 8 hours later still parading his decomposing body around the city while it swerves, cuts people off, honks, zooms through yellow lights, and stops just short of innocent pedestrians while honking rudely

Eventually the company gives his assigned parking spot to someone else so the car just starts parking somewhere else or roaming the city aimlessly. This is the only thing anyone actually does about it.

This goes on for months until there is nothing but a skeleton in moldering clothes haunting the freeways as it mindlessly commutes to and from work every monday thru friday

Legends spread of the Ghost Rider of I-45. Some genius superglues a Starbucks cup to the roof of the car so people are more likely to approach it while it's parked.

The anti-theft devices prevent anyone from removing the skeleton. Muskrat refuses to remotely disable them because he's an asshole and thinks his car continuing to commute months after its owner's death is a great publicity stunt.

The Ghost Rider's reign of terror finally ends after 2 years when the car's degraded tires blow out at 85 mph, causing it to swerve into the front of a semi and carry the restless spirit of the nameless office worker to Valhalla in a pyre of toxic lithium battery smoke

But the legend lives on

They say that every evening M-F around 6:30 PM, if you watch closely beside the off-ramp of Exit 76A, you can see the afterimage of a red sedan fly past at well over the speed limit, the ghostly skeletal figure of its passenger, too much of a dick for heaven but not cool enough for hell, still raising its bony middle finger at other motorists. Leaving no trace of its existence except a faint smell of burning batteries and plastic.

In the 1960s sci-fi writers were already like “what if your self driving car locked you inside and you couldn’t get out of if there’s a problem. Would that be Fucked Up Or What. Don’t create the torment nexus” and then Elon Musk was like “look at my exciting new self driving car that you can’t get out of if there’s a problem. I call it the Torment Nexus”

ALT

don’t forget during the WGA strike that animation is not covered under the WGA deals and as a result animation has gotten the shortest possible end of the stick in under-staffing, under-paying, and generally turning the field into gig employment.

please sign the petition here for Disney to recognize animation production workers as a union and reblog this post!

Hey mutuals friendly reminder that

• I am drowning

• there is no sign of land

• you are coming down with me

• hand in unlovable hand

I can't continue the bit I've decided I want to be loved now

i have to get rid of half a pack of cigarettes by april 14 and "get rid of" cannot mean "smoking myself." but why would you throw away something so expensive

greatest website in the world

i know ive reached insane levels of autism when im pacing around my room waving my hands around pretending to explain my new fixation to a group of VERY invested VERY silent people for half an hour straight

Fuck that post going around saying "you can have coffee in your story without justifying it :) you don't need to explain everything :)" I want, no, I DEMAND a fully researched ethnobotanical paper on every single food item in your work, if you don't explain to me where did potatoes come from in your fantasy setting or don't explain how the industry of coffee works over interstellar distances with full detail you are doing things wrong and I personally hate you and I hate your stupid story, fuck you

Why are your stupid little wizards and knights eating potato stew in your dumb European middle ages fantasy world. Where did they get potatoes from. Where is the center of domestication of potatoes, do you have a fantasy Andean civilization? What are the social and economic consequences of having such a calorie rich crop in cold climates. I don't care about "themes" or "enemies to lovers with found family", I didn't ask about that. Where does your idiot space captain gets their shitty coffee from. Is it imported from Earth? Are there coffee growing worlds? Is it an alien species replacement with the same name? What are the social consequences of that? Don't try to change the subject, I'll stop pointing the gun when I want, I'm trying to have a conversation here,

gold in them there tags

when i liked this post it brought up the app store page for solitaire

sorry I make this post frequently but apple really doesn't get enough hate

so if you don't like them it's fine. I know a lot of people who are really mean to picky eaters about their preferences, and it doesn't actually help.

However, some people only think they hate apples because they've only tried the horrible mealy Red "Delicious" variety. If that's the case, you might be surprised by how much you enjoy a tastier variety. Honeycrisp and Cosmic crisp are some of the most popular apples and they are really good.

https://applerankings.com/ is a great, and wittily written, trove of apple reviews and information and will help you find nice apples. It is focused on apples available in the US, and idk where you are. I really miss discovery apples, which don't seem to be a thing this side of the Atlantic.

They can be a little pricey though. Obviously I don't know your personal situation, but if that's an issue, there might be local programs that can help. I don't know where you live, but here in Seattle there's a program called Fresh Bucks that gives people $40/month to spend on fruit and vegetables at local farmers markets. There might be something like that near you. Or, if you just really wanna try a really nice apple and it's not accessible to you, dm me and I can PayPal you something. I just want everyone to have the chance to have a nice apple from time to time.

Anyway, like I said, if you just truly don't like any apples, you are 100% valid and you shouldn't force yourself to eat something you don't like. Body autonomy includes not having to eat foods you hate. But I'd hate for you to go through life not knowing how much you could enjoy a high-quality apple, just because you've only experienced the worst apples.

oh snap I just realized op meant the phone company

no no keep talking

FUCK RON DeSANTIS!!! I AM PISSED TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When I say editing software is getting dumber, this is what I mean.

In what world is "What dinnered?" more legible than "What happened to dinner?" I just... what?!

So poor people don’t deserve to have money?!

THEY’LL JUST WASTE IT ON SURVIVAL! 

Also, if you’ve taken more than a high school economics course taught by someone who has never stepped foot in a college economics class,

Giving $500 to poor people multiplies it REALLY FAST. That $500 immediately goes into the economy and ripples more purchases until it hits a rich pocket.

Giving $500 to a billionaire takes $500 out of the economy permenantly. You could have set it on fire and made no difference.

That is such an important part of the conversation that rich people seem to purposefully misunderstand whenever it’s brought up

Money exists to be spent, not hoarded. Yes, people should have saving, but no one should be sitting on a pile of money too big to spend in a single lifetime. “The economy” as a concept only works if people are spending money, and the people hoarding the money are so quick to blame the people who barely have any when the economy starts to fail

Having a big string of numbers in an offshore account doesnt make you an economic genius, it makes you a parasite that is ruining the economy for everyone else

Cartoon with identical looking boy/girl twins that's self-aware of the fact this implies one is trans, and keeps the audience guessing as to which one it is.

The girl laments that her friends are buying bras and her chest is still flat. The boy keeps his t-shirt on the whole time at the beach. Neither of them like using public toilets. The girl always seems to be eating pickles. The boy is giving himself an injection... But it turns out he's diabetic and it's his insulin. Oh look, one of them has a trans flag pin! But so does the other one, because the cis sibling is a very enthusiastic ally.

Bonus points if the twins are aware of this and confusing people on purpose.