Don't get rid of your porblems

@porblematic

Lem. Here to be annoying. 16 for discourse purposes.

>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

So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

stupid leftists and their belief in *checks notes* the intrinsic value of human life

Reblog if you would burn down the statue of liberty to save a life

Here’s the thing, though. If you asked a conservative “Would you let the statue of liberty burn to save one life?” they’d probably scoff and say no, it’s a national landmark, a treasure, a piece of too much historical importance to let it be destroyed for the sake of one measly life

But if you asked, “Would you let the statue of liberty burn in order to save your child? your spouse? someone you loved a great deal?” the tune abruptly changes. At the very least, there’s a hesitation. Even if they deny it, I’m willing to bet that gun to their head, the answer would be “yes.”  

The basic problem here is that people have a hard time seeing outside their own sphere of influence, and empathizing beyond the few people who are right in front of them. You’ve got your immediate family, whom you love; your friends, your acquaintances, maybe to a certain degree the people who share a status with you (your religion, your race, etc.)–but beyond that? People aren’t real. They’re theoretical. 

But a national monument? That’s real. It stands for something. The value of a non-realized anonymous life that exists completely outside your sphere of influence is clearly worth less than something that represents freedom and prosperity to a whole nation, right?

People who think like this lack the compassion to realize that everyone is in someone’s immediate sphere of influence–that everyone is someone’s lover, or brother, or parent. Everyone means the world to someone. And it’s the absolute height of selfishness to assume that their lives don’t have value just because they don’t mean the world to you

P.S. I would let the statue of liberty burn to save a pigeon. 

Avatar
tsunderepup

also, there is an extreme difference between what things or principles *i* personally am willing to die for, and what i would hazard others to die for. and this is a distinction i don’t think the conservative hard-right likes to face.

an example: so, as the nazis began war against france, the staff of the louvre began crating up and shipping out the artworks. it was vital to them (for many reasons) that the nazis not get their hands on the collections, and hitler’s desire for them was known, so they dispersed the objects to the four winds; one of the curators personally traveled with la gioconda, mona lisa herself, in an unmarked crate, moving at least five times from location to location to avoid detection.

they even removed and hid the nike of samothrace, “winged victory,” which is both delicate, having been pieced back together from fragments, and incredibly heavy, weighing over three metric tons.

the curators who hid these artworks risked death to ensure that they wouldn’t fall into nazi hands. and yes, they are just paintings, just statues. but when i think about the idea of hitler capturing and standing smugly beside the nike of samothrace, a statue widely beloved as a symbol of liberty, i completely understand why someone would risk their life to prevent that. if my life was all that stood between a fascist dictator and a masterpiece that inspired millions, i would be willing to risk it. my belief in the power and necessity of art would demand i do so.

if, however, a nazi held a gun to some kid’s head (any kid!) and asked me which crate the mona lisa was in, they could have it in a heartbeat. no problem! i wouldn’t even have to think about it. being willing to risk my own life on principle doesn’t mean i’m willing to see others endangered for those same principles.

and that is exactly where the conservative hard-right falls right the fuck down. they are, typically, entirely willing to watch others suffer for their own principles. they are perfectly okay with seeing children in cages because of their supposed belief in law and order. they are perfectly willing to let women die from pregnancy complications because of their anti-abortion beliefs. they are alright with poverty and disease on general principle because they hold the free-market sacrosanct. and i guess from their own example they would save the statue of liberty and let human beings burn instead.

but speaking as a leftist (i’m more comfortable with socialist tbh), my principles are not abstract things that i hold aside from life, apart or above my place as a human being in a society. my beliefs arise from being a person amidst people. i don’t love art for art’s sake alone, actually! i don’t love objects because they are objects: i love them because they are artifacts of our humanity, because they communicate and connect us, because they embody love and curiosity and fear and feeling. i love art because i love people. i want universal health care because i want to see people universally cared for. i want universal basic income because people’s safety and dignity should not be determined by their economic productivity to an employer. i am anti-war and pro-choice for the same reason: i value people’s lives but also their autonomy and right to self-determination. my beliefs are not abstractions. i could never value a type of economic system that i saw hurting people, no matter how much “growth” it produced. i could never love “law and order” more than i love a child, any child, i saw trapped in a cage.

would i be willing to risk death, trying to save the statue of liberty? probably, yes. but there is no culture without people, and therefore i also believe there are no cultural treasures worth more than other people’s lives. and as far as i’m concerned the same goes for laws, or markets, or borders.

Avatar
lastxleviathan

Well said!

This is an excellent ethical discussion.

The first time I came across this post, randomslasher’s addition was life changing for me. I suddenly understood where the right was coming from, and I had never been angrier.

This is also why so many people on the right fail to see the hypocrisy of trying to make abortion illegal when they themselves have had abortions. They can tally up their own life circumstances and conclude that it would be difficult or impossible to continue a pregnancy, but they’re completely mystified by the idea that women they don’t know are also human beings with complicated lives and limited spoon allocation.

This is also why they think “get a job” is useful advice. In their heads they honestly do not understand why the NPCs who make up the majority of the human race can’t just flip a switch from “no job” to “job.” When they say “get a job” they’re filing a glitch report with God and they honestly think that’s all it takes.

This is also why they tend to view demographics as individuals. They think that every single Muslim is just a different avatar for the same bit of programming.

Borrowed observation from @innuendostudios​ here, but: there’s also a fundamental difference in how progressives view social problems versus how conservatives view them. That is, progressives view them as problems to be solved, whereas conservatives do not believe you can solve anything.

Conservatives view social issues as universal constants that fundamentally are unable to be changed, like the weather. You can try to alter your own behavior to protect yourself (you can carry an umbrella), and you can commiserate about how bad the weather is, but you can’t stop it from raining. This is why conservatives blame victims of rape for dressing immodestly or for drinking or for going out at night: to them, those things are like going out without an umbrella when you know it’s going to rain. 

“But then why do conservatives try to stop things they dislike by making them illegal, like drug use or immigration or abortion?” And the answer is: they’re not. They know perfectly well that those things will continue. No amount of studies showing that their methods are ineffective will matter to them because effectiveness is not the point. The point is to punish people for doing bad things, because punishing people is how you show your disapproval of their actions; if you don’t punish them, then you’re condoning their behavior. 

This is why they will never support rehabilitative prisons, even though they reduce crime. This is why they will never support free birth control for everyone, even though that would reduce abortions. This is why they will never support just giving homeless people houses, even though it’s proven to be cheaper and more effective at stopping homelessness than halfway houses and shelters. It’s not about stopping evil, because you can’t; it’s about saying definitively what is Bad and what is Good, and we as a society do that by punishing the people we’ve decided are bad. 

This is why the conservative response to “holy fuck, they’re putting children in cages!” is typically something along the lines of “it’s their parents’ fault for trying to come here illegally; if they didn’t want to have their kids taken away, they shouldn’t have committed a crime.” It doesn’t matter that entering the US unlawfully is a misdemeanor and child kidnapping isn’t typically a criminal sentence. It does not matter that this has absolutely zero effect on people unlawfully entering the US. The point is that conservatives have decided that entering unlawfully is Bad, anything that is not punishing undocumented immigrants – due process of asylum and removal defense claims, for example – is supporting Badness, and kidnapping children is an appropriate punishment for being Bad.

This is really long but please read it

The article says that the guidelines have been updated. Instead of asking if you’re a man that’s had sex with another man in the past 3 months it asks everyone regardless of gender if they’ve had anal sex with a new partner or if they’ve had anal sex with multiple partners in the past 3 months.

This both opens up blood donation to msm in exclusive relationships or who don’t have anal sex and more accurately identifies hiv risk from people who aren’t msm. This is exactly the sort of guidelines we’ve been fighting for for years. This is a major win for both gay rights and blood donation in the US. Now a bunch of people who couldn’t donate before can donate now.

Avatar

I’ve been waiting for this day for years. I’m going to get to tell straight people they can’t donate and watch them get BIG MAD. Back when Zika was a concern donors would have a big public meltdowns because they were being discriminated against ~for their sexuality~ like yeah me too join the club. It’s equality!

Shoutout to that one lady on the bus that screamed that she likes having sex with her boyfriend more than donating blood. And then couldn’t figure out how to open the door to leave.

Avatar

i understand that this is the "disabled people know our own limitations" website, but ime, if you are the kind of disabled where everyone around you knows about it and has known you as a weak, incompetent, subhuman creature your entire life: it is important to learn how to make the distinction between "i can't" and "i'm not allowed to."

"i can't hold fragile things without breaking them" vs "my housemates won't let me do dishes anymore."

"i can't manage my own finances" vs "my family won't let me make my own financial decisions"

"i can't ever learn how to drive" vs "the state has decided that people with my disability cannot be allowed to drive."

also "what would need to happen for it to be possible for me to be able to do dishes?" or "what would i need if i were to ever move out?" or "what kinds of supports would i need if i did try volunteering?"

even if the answer to these you come away with is "i actually cannot do the thing, no matter what supports or accommodations i'm given" that's fine! they're still useful questions to ask!

I’m sure it’s a coincidence that I never see transmasc glowup threads and that it definitely has nothing to do with the fact even the most “woke” trans allys view T as something that ruins you/makes you ugly. Surely It Doesn’t Have Anything To Do With That Right

It does not! I'm sure there are tons of transmasc glowups ... uhhh... @doberbutts and ...

(help me out guys!)

I'll take the compliment but fellas take it away, show your glow-ups

Please Yes! I feel bad for letting my sour mood getting the best of me last night so let’s turn this into a positivity thread 💕🧵

Hell yeah T glow up ✨

T made me hot and confident af!! 💞

Oh good there's a version of this thread with glow ups so I can add one

Maybe not much has changed but I did have to shave my face for the second pic

Went from back stage covered in paint to on stage, all prettied up getting my head shot taken

Avatar

Spider-Men pointing at each other meme but it’s adultist normalist discoursers from opposite sides of any topic calling each other chronically online teenagers.

I think somewhere people got confused and now think that "privileged" equals "oppressor" and "having privilege" equals "has the power to oppress".

It doesn't.

Would love to hear more about this, because I understand the first part, that privileged doesn’t automatically equal oppressor, but I don’t think I know enough to understand how having privilege doesn’t equal having the power to oppress.

Having privilege does not automatically grant you power.

I have working legs. This does not mean I am systemically oppressing people who need mobility aids, and it doesn't mean I have the power to do it, either. If I got elected to government and passed legislation that removed elevators and ramps on the basis of "Well I don't need them", then I'd be systemically oppressing people based on walking privilege.

It's exactly what I was saying on the other post; existing doesn't mean oppression.

You do not have mobility problems with your legs at the time of this posting. I do, but I can still walk with relatively little assistance as long as my pain is low and the terrain is not actively working against me. That doesn't mean the stairs in your house or apartment are oppressing me, or that your ability to climb them with no negative effects is oppressing me. You have the privilege of not needing to worry if you can actually make that climb and thus more avenues are open to you- you don't have to worry about the expense of buying a house with no stairs, you don't secondguess if you can actually take the flight, entire venues and employment/schooling oppurtunies and city streets and businesses aren't completely inaccessible to you because they exist on the third floor with no fucking elevator, you don't suffer sleepless at night when you were forced to take stairs you shouldn't have climbed. But unless *you*, specifically YOU, designed these stairways in these places with no other way to access the upper floors... it's not like you not needing to worry about that is directly oppressing me.

You CAN contribute to it- "why should stairs need to be accessible" "who even needs ramps and elevators" "I mean if you can walk you should be able to take a couple steps" "why do I need to make room for you on the elevator or wait for you to catch up" and my favorite "wow the world's youngest senior citizen" usually said when walking with my cane. But until that line is crossed, you existing as someone who can walk without pain unassisted is not directly oppressing me.

And that's the thing. Actions are oppression. Existing as someone with privilege does not mean you automatically oppress people.

"Having privilege" is morally neutral. Society is what bestows you privilege. That is completely out of your control.

"Oppression" is morally repugnant. Actions that contribute to the harm of others are terrible and bad and you should not do them.

Too many people conflate the two.

Nonromantic crushes can be any sort of attraction that isn't romantic. Like a friend crush where you really wanna be someone's friend, a sexual crush, a sensual crush where you just want to cuddle with someone, etc. there's lots of different attractions. ppl try to use other words for them (ex. smush (sexual), squish (platonic or queerplatonic), mesh (alterous iirc), etc.)

Avatar
Avatar

Young people and old people's complacency and acceptance of autoplay terrifies me if I'm finished a video and another begins playing THAT I DIDN'T CHOOSE I'm already loading my gun

Avatar

Science needs to put me in a brain scanner so they can see the Evil Lobe light up whenever Im fed an autoplay video or unskippable ad

I see general public lacking understanding that intersectionality is sometimes less like this:

and more like this:

and this is really frustrating.

"I am a [trans] man therefore I oppress women" is, like, almost the opposite of intersectionality ("my experiences of being a trans man are not just a sum of being a man and trans and this combination comes with unique challenges").

I didn't even start to look anything up before I started typing this sentence, but less than a minute of search and look what I just reproduced with different variables:

i've discovered btw that referring to animals and objects with neopronouns and other uncommon pronoun sets is a great way to learn how to use them better. a telephone isn't going to care if you use ze/hir for hir. a dog won't notice if you start using ey/em for em. go for it, it helps

Fun facts of the day

You don’t need to use “delusional” as an insult. You can just say “ignorant” or “willfully ignorant” instead of dragging down people who experience delusions

A difference in opinion is not a delusion. Just because you think something is true but another person disagrees does not automatically make that person delusional