A lot of folks are responding to the whole Reddit situation by calling for the return of decentralised forums, and I think it's important to remember that, contrary to certain popular narratives, the reason early 2000s forum culture has fallen by the wayside is not because people are Just Lazy. Certainly, ease of use is part of it, but a much larger part of it is how vulnerable self-hosted forums are.

Basically, the problem is that even the largest and most carefully managed self-hosted forums can be rendered unusable more or less indefinitely by a single sufficiently determined hostile actor. This can take the form of both attacks on the forum's social infrastructure (i.e., via sock-puppet accounts, botting, organised "raids", etc.) and attacks on its technical infrastructure (i.e., via hacking, DDoS, etc.). In either case, a self-hosted forum has effectively no defence, and the majority of decentralised forum communities survive only by virtue of their relative obscurity; once a self-hosted forum manages to attract the attention of That One Guy who's willing to devote his life to shitting the place up over some microscopic slight, it's effectively game over.

Right now, there are essentially only two mitigation strategies:

To be clear, these are not intractable problems; other solutions may well exist. However, any proposed plan for bringing decentralised public forums back needs to address them; if you're going in operating under the assumption that forums have become marginalised simply because corporations are evil and people are lazy, you're just setting yourself up to learn the hard way why self-hosted forums no longer seem to be capable of growing beyond a certain point.

Things I learned in an American supermarket

Wait what?

I’ve never realized about this.

Well, isn’t this exactly what USians are supposed to be the best at? Get your shit together US and don’t come back until you have, at least, ham-flavored chips

in switzerland we get fucking limited edition caffeinated fajita flavored chips and they even taste great even though somethign thats “caffeinated fajita flavored chips” should not taste great

Don’t you lose the potatoness with all that flavoring though?

Yes that’s the point

There’s no sourcream and onion chips???

We definitely have sour cream and onion, as well as barbecue and cheese and sour cream being just about every where. What we don’t really have are much in the way of limited time novelty flavors. Lays did it once years ago and I dream of those biscuits and gravy chips.

OK i guess i will continue to macrodose birds

an antidepressant

christians: what could possibly be in that evil book…. what horrible spells does it hold within its pages… what black magic does it propagate….

the talmud: so if you send your kid off to Torah school but he has a really hard time with it, send him back home and go to school yourself instead so that once you’ve learned Torah you can go and teach your entire family. in fact, once some rabbi went out to go to Torah school and do just this, and on his way he came through this town and he asked if he could stay in the synagogue for the night. and of course the rabbi said yes but weird enough no one was in the streets and something was kind of off about the whole place. so our hero went into the synagogue only to find a seven headed demon just hanging out in the library!! our hero is terrified and prays super hard and because of this the demon is vanquished. he goes back to the rabbi and is like “dude wtf” and the rabbi was like “listen i know this is unorthodox but you’re well known for how good at praying you are and this demon has been terrorizing us for well over a month and we were desperate. we knew you wouldn’t die” and the guy was like “i didn’t know that!” who do you think is in the right? hm. tough question. anyway. what were we talking about again? oh right. what if you make your sukkah doorway 1/7 of a cubit too short. would that be fucked up or what

look up Bavli Kiddushin 29b <3

AIDS quilt contributions for Muppet performer Richard Hunt (1951-1992), who was the original muppeteer for characters including Scooter, Janice, Beaker, Sweetums and Statler. He began his career with the Henson body of work as a performer on Sesame Street in the 1970s, and was a major presence in a number of Henson's most famous creations, including The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock.

Hunt was openly gay and one of Jim Henson's closest colleagues, orating and performing at his memorial service. When Hunt passed away from AIDS-related complications less than two years after Henson's own loss, he would have a service at the very same church where he memorialized his friend.

Image source: Muppet Central

Higher res caps from National Aids Memorial (Hope this is alright OP!)

I laughed so fucking hard at this

We know you want to burn down capitalism.

But for today, just don’t answer your boss’s call off the clock.

We know you believe in ACAB and think they all should get the wall.

But for today, just don’t call 9-1-1 on the guy screaming outside of your apartment.

The memes are fun. The memes are aspirational and keep us reaching for the horizon.

But look down, too, at what actually is.

Endure pains now—suffer the inconveniences now—knowing that they likely involve unpleasantness.

The Revolution™ is fun to imagine and involves no pain. But the real world does involve pain, and it’s necessary to exercise the muscles needed for future work and opportunities.

Not to mention - The Revolution™ is something that, for a lot of disabled folks, is damn near impossible to imagine a scenario where we survive. I have relatives who rely on insulin to live, if the system goes down for more than 3 months without effective distribution lines being reactivated - they're dead. I have a physical disability that makes even walking even short distances impossible sometimes, if there is a major disruption of electricity, fuel, or food, I'm starving. Sure I have food storage, but that only lasts so long (not mentioning my partner who is also disabled and has severe dietary restrictions)

And this is why Community Support is so important. Instead of focusing all of our energy and time on the things and people we hate, it is important to put time into helping people around you survive. Direct Action isn't just protests and picket lines and riots, it's also soup kitchens, community gardens, food pantries, assistance for seniors and disabled folks - shit like this. Offer to help pick up someone's groceries, offer someone a ride to their doctor's appointment, offer to watch someone's kids for them, help where you are able to. Help people they way you advocate for them to be helped.

The Revolution is built on the backs of billions of small acts of support, love, and care. A revolution that ignores the downtrodden, the poor, the disenfranchised, the marginalized - leads to only more ignorance and cruelty. More pain and death and suffering.

Remember the people that our government forgets. Protect the people that our government attacks. That is Resistance. That is a Revolution.

We were together. I forget the rest.

source: annalaura_art

The YouTube content creator community was wracked by macabre tragedy this morning after Amelia Bedelia was instructed to hang streamers for a six year old’s birthday party

Oh this is circulating without context again. OP is Indian and they were shocked by this because in India most, if not all, food labels are in English because of British colonialism. So he was just surprised to see a country whose native language is still the primary language of communication. This isn't a 'stupid American' thing it's actually pretty sad!!

an internal memo leaked from ceo steve huffman saying the "noise" of the blackout will die out and they just need to weather it until we give up. fuck you spez.

first of all it's OVER EIGHT THOUSAND subreddits that went dark.

second of all he clearly doesn't give one single shit about the users or the UNPAID army of mods who slog through a million miles of shit every day to keep illegal and offensive content off the site (i'm a mod in a small fandom subreddit and even the shit i've seen is beyond the pale) and therefore make it appealing to the advertizers.

you have no fucking business without us. and you don't care one single bit about it.

he clearly did not mean for this memo to leak, but someone at reddit thought it was important enough to send it out anyway. please spread it (spreddit?) especially because so much of reddit is still in blackout.

This feels very similar to the uproar they LITERALLY JUST HAD in the D&D community over changes that would have negatively impacted third party creators. People started canceling their subscriptions to the paid service and Wizards of the Coast really thought they could get away with it by issuing a weak apology and waiting it out.

The community got angrier, so WotC thought they could get away with it by backing down to a half measure.

The community got even ANGRIER.

WotC ended up backing down to such an extent that they not only canceled all of the planned changes but released their core material under a creative commons license to boot, putting them BEHIND their starting position.

This is what we should be aiming for. I've used reddit daily for like fifteen years, but sometimes the only thing you can do to save a community you love is to genuinely be willing to walk away until the corporate bigwigs in charge get it through their heads that they actually NEED users. I want to make this the year of companies fucking around and finding out that unhappy users can cause them problems. Starve the bastards out and make them realize they need us more.

There's no one's wisdom that's less valuable than this

What source of passive income allows him to just print money like this?

An ‘unlimited’ annual pass with free parking is $1600/year (up from $1400 when he completed his record 2012-2020). And yeah, that’s over $116 a month and not how I’d spend my money but it’s not obscene.

Plus, he’s an older dude with free time every day. DL is a safe venue to walk around and kill time if all you have is time to kill, and from the article it seems he’s built quite the social network of Disney regulars & cast members. So good for him.

The Disney corporation hates people like him, btw. 

Disney considers AP holders parasites, clogging the parks, taking up space that could be better utilized by Big Spending out-of-town visitors. Which is why the price for an AP has gone up so dramatically ALONG WITH a zillion new restrictions like blackout days + reservation requirements.

Up until 2013 or so it was common for local families to buy their kids Annual Passes then drop them off at the park every day during summer as cheap childcare. Seriously, $100/month is a bargain.

thats just the admission and parking though, the park tends to be pretty strict on how much food and drink you can bring in and none of the options inside are cheap, even with the like 10% discount before tax and tips the annual pass holder gets.

You’re absolutely right! 

But AP holders usually don’t buy food & drink inside the parks... unless you’re DisneyFoodBlog or Jenny Nicholson. Another reason Disney hates on passholders.

Most AP holders hit one of the kazillion affordable restaurants outside the park on their way in or out, then carry a water bottle once inside to stay hydrated. And most visits aren’t the all-day-long thing out of towners do; AP folk will kill an hour or two, ride Indiana Jones or the Matterhorn then leave.

The guy in the article appears to have visited once a day just to walk a lap or two for exercise. He wasn’t staying all day, dealing with hotel room reservations, rental car, airline tickets, souvenirs, or any of the expenses a tourist would have.

The real insanity is how the US is so lacking in safe public third places that for some people, an annual pass to Disney is their best shot at having a walkable outdoor space and some semblance of community.

PLEASE for the love of god read this

The first sentence was a left hook that I almost did not recover from.

The Dollskill brand copywriting bible… we found it…

this is like a clockwork orange but a girl

more pins from The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Archives of Western New York pin exhibit (1970-2018)

My archeology class has really given me a renewed and visceral hatred of ancient aliens shitheads literally the laziest and most incurious and thoroughly racist pseudoscience in existence

Archeologists: the sarcophagus lid of Pakal the Great depicts the moment of his transformation from a living lord to a sacred ancestor, literally poised between life and death along the axis of the World Tree as he descends into the underworld. It's a beautiful and stunning piece of art providing an unparalleled glimpse of Maya cosmology.

Literally the stupidest person alive: it spaceship

June 15 is the anniversary of both the Night Vale and Gravity Falls pilots, as well as Vanessa Doofenshmirtz’s birthday and “give it up for day 15” day

happy birthday to the only things ever

And love händel reunion day and Linda and Lawrence’s anniversary

Hey.

The most day ever

Love that they put “a sense of impending doom” as one of the symptoms of a heart attack, like girl, that’s just how it is to be alive these days, you’re gonna have to be more specific

This made me chuckle but after scrolling away I felt the need to come back to it.

Because as someone who has felt this I can not stress how different it actually is from anxiety. Which is saying a lot because I have a massive anxiety disorder.

I've only felt this twice in my life - once when I was going into kidney failure due to an infection and again when my body was going into shock due to dehydration and malnourishment due to GI issues - and I can not stress how much it saved my life. It's hard to even put it into words. It's not like a panic attack, or anxiety. It is a horrific gut turning feeling of absolute dread.

Especially if you have anxiety you'll know the difference honestly. It's so much worse. It's every cell in your body and your brain screaming that there's something horribly wrong in a way you've never felt. It's your brain screaming out that you are going to die in a way no panic attack has ever done before.

I can not stress how important it is to get yourself to the ER if you feel this way. Especially if your having other physical symptoms.

This is amazing and incredibly helpful, oh my god. Thank you.

Seconding the above : I was going into shock from internal bleeding, and that sense of “something is gravely wrong” was entirely different from my day-to-day whirlwind of anxiety.

For me, it was very quiet. For me, there was a deep sense that I could just lie down on the floor and not have to ever get up again, no effort required.

That combined wrongness/relief was so weird and so unsettling that I drove myself to the ER.

The “impending” part is really key to that symptom, I think, based on my experience. It’s not the existential dread of late-stage capitalism grinding the world into nurdles. It’s a ghost crow on your shoulder whispering “it’s here, it’s now.”

Impending doom is also a feature of anaphylaxis, something I’m intimately familiar with as someone with mast cell dysfunction.

For me, its the overwhelming, near calm certainty of doom that distinguishes it from the jittery panic of “but something could go wrong.”

There’s no “what if?” There’s no room to question it. It just IS. And it’s very different from the “calm” of disassociation too. I’m not disassociated from myself when it happens. I’m probably actually the most present ever.

I’ve turned to doctors and told them calmly and with utter certainty “I am going to die” and the reaction that calm certainty gets is immediate intervention because doctors also recognize that stillness as the body not bothering to waste any time on fight or flight and just going straight to “death is imminent due to some internal failing, act accordingly.”

women should lift weights because it prevents osteoporosis in old age and makes you a more capable person in everyday life please shut up about butts and waists and hourglasses i'm going to fucking kill

;___;♡♡♡♡

genuine question from someone who would rather chew their arm off than go to a public gym, and also doesnt have a lot of money: how do you safely get into strength training? are there youtube channels, apps (android), etc anyone recommends that makes it approachable and don't lean into diet culture / body shaming?

also the biggest thing that keeps me from working out is that I already have joint and spinal issues and moving the wrong way can fuck up a knee or a shoulder or my spine for days. I really don't want to injure myself, and have unwittingly done so before. resources that are extremely clear on exactly how to move and offer gentler / alternative ways to move for people with limited range are vital.

Okay, so this may not technically be strength training, but muscles are dumber than bricks and cannot tell the difference between your own bodyweight and actual weights.

So, may I recommend:

He runs a YouTube channel where he goes over how to work your way up to more complex exercises (for instance, his pull-ups videos start with using a door jamb and moving your weight back and forth) so it's good for easing yourself into things.

pirates of the caribbean really introduced an eldritch octopus man who kills indiscriminately and torments the dead as their poster villain and then you watch the movies and it's like, "oh no, actually the worst villain in this series is a small white british man who functions as the herald of capitalism" and that was very very brave of them