Oh, this fucking guy.

So apparently Andrew Blake (hereafter Andy), aka thanfiction, aka (now) CraftyCatDad, aka a whole bunch of other people over the decades, is back attempting to gain a(nother) following on social media.

Before I begin, a big thank you to @bemusedlybespectacled for identifying Andy as the author of this popular tweet thread, and spreading a community warning about him.

Unfortunately for everyone, Andy decided to post an (indirect) response. BemusedlyBespectacled and the truly incredible @theteablogger have already posted (excellent) discussions of his tweet thread. But his thread really pissed me off, and so I am going to do a breakdown of the some of the manipulation tactics he is using.

Unlike some other analysis posts I’ve made, I am not going to be looking at this thread in isolation – this is not a close reading within the four corners of our document. And that’s because, to give him credit, Andy is a good manipulator. I’ll be pointing out examples of this as I go through, but one of the tactics he is using in this thread is that a lot of it sounds reasonable outside the context of his history. While the extensive documentation of Andy’s history of abuse is both an independent good and useful to help warn people, the sheer amount of material can also make it difficult for a casual newcomer to know where to begin. This is particularly important when people point out behavior on Andy’s part that seems fine on the surface, but in context is part of a long history of a pattern of abusive and manipulative behavior.

This is a long post, but if you're inclined to scroll past without clicking the read more (or are like "Kaesa, what the fuck, I thought you didn't reblog callout posts and internet drama?"), I just want you to know that the tl;dr is this guy is super bad news and he is thus far the one exception to my no callout posts rule, because he has repeatedly caused people material harm in real life for decades, there is a paper trail, and his pattern of behavior is such that, if he really didn't mean to start two whole cults, he would have little to no internet presence. This is a guy who is legally prohibited from doing charity/not-for-profit work in the State of Oregon. It is emphatically not just internet drama.

The first paragraph of his long, weird Fanlore page is:

Seconding OP's suggestion of Abbey/Kumquatwriter's blog posts about getting out of his cult.

The ancient world was full of textile masterpieces we can only imagine… but most of them have rotted away. So few of them have come down to us in these days that we think of metal and stone as the primary mediums for the oldest artworks. But there were tapestries and fabric work that would have rivaled the finest wrought gold and iron and the first cave paintings.

This is a incredibly rare find. A ball of yarn made from stinging nettle fibers in the Late Neolithic (5900 years old) in what’s now Marin-Epagnier in Switzerland. The thread has been preserved by being carbonized. Look at how much thread that is! And how fine and even it is spun! The skill going into this is absolutely incredible. Imagine the incredible textile work that must’ve been made with that. For a reference here’s a ball of nettle yarn I managed to make with a drop spindle. That took me 300 hours of work.

So, okay. You know that post about how some posts that appear to be just be saying innocent feminist stuff end up having a totally different context if they're made by TERFs?

This is that. Just A Simple Artificer (@CraftyCatDad) is the latest Twitter handle of Andrew Blake aka thanfiction, a grifter so prolific that he has an entire Fanlore page about him.

His past behaviors include but are not limited to starting two different cults, sexually and emotionally abusing multiple people (some of which he himself has admitted), committing documented fraud and identify theft, and in general lying about literally anything you can imagine someone lying about: having a terminal heart condition, being sold into sex slavery as a child, fighting on "both sides of the Troubles," having an evil twin sister who was really the grifter, and, notably, everything about the nature and extent of his past crimes and abusive behavior.

I am extremely abridging the entire saga: this is a history that spans over twenty fucking years. There is not a single fandom he has entered that he hasn't tried to grift.

Why am I bringing this up on a post that's not about fandom?

Because what he's saying is very rich coming from a guy who used his position as a costumer to deliberately trigger fat and trans people's dysphoria as a form of negging. It's rich coming from a guy who "affectionately" triggered his ex-girlfriend's body image issues with a "game" involving him riding her naked body and staying on by holding onto her loose skin. And it's rich coming from a guy who repeatedly shows disdain for both trans and queer people, even though he himself is an AFAB man (he identifies as a straight cisgender man and does not want to be called a trans man or queer unless it's useful for him to get sympathy).

I have zero problem with the sentiment being expressed. But knowing the context of his past behavior – including his pattern of couching his abusive behaviors as "empowering" – it stops being a thoughtful meditation on the nature of gender and more him admitting that he knows exactly how to trigger people in order to exploit them, as well as a ploy to gather followers he knows are going to be vulnerable to that exact tactic.

So I ended up with free time at the end of my first class today, so I was like "do yall wanna see a vintage meme?" and turned on "what does the fox say". Expected like. A laugh from the kids, or even just a "wtf is this mx?" which is. A reasonable reaction to What Does The Fox Say.

But instead of a reasonable reaction. all of my students watched the first 60 seconds with jaws agape. And then this one kids turns to me like the fucking eye of Sauron and literally goes:

My husband told me I also should share the next part of this story, where I, feebly trying to defend my honor against a child, said, "No, this video was just big when I was in college!" and he scoffed, rolled his eyes, and absolutely obliterated me by saying, "So did you go to furry college?"

To everyone pointing out my icon: do I have a fursona? Yes. Does that make me a furry? Almost definitely. Do you admit that to a 12 year old who has just accused you of being a furry, in front of 23 other 12 year olds, with 25 instructional days left in the year? Absolutely THE FUCK not!!!

i've experienced popping and cracking in all of the above so i wanna know how normal this is

This is Thelockpickinglaywer and what I have for you today is something very interesting. As you can tell by the agonizing screams of the damned, I have recently left the mortal coil and, upon arriving at my destination, was informed that I did not qualify for residence. I was taken by an angel of the Lord to the mouth of Hell, and when the angel left, he closed this rather large red door and sealed it with a divine key. Although I’ve never seen this particular model of lock before, I’ve spent some time investigating the cylinder with this small shard of bone. By sticking it in the back of the keyway and slowly pulling it out, I can tell that this is a five-pin tumbler lock, that can easily be single-pin picked using this shed demon scale as a tensioner tool. Let’s try that right now. Alright, nothing on one. Nothing on two. Three is binding firmly, click out of that. Nothing on four. Five is binding, little click there, back to one. Once again, nothing. Two is binding, and we’ve dropped into a false set. Little click out of three. Nothing on four. Little click on one, counter-rotation on two, and we got this open. Okay folks, I think the main takeaway here is that no matter how much faith you place in a mechanism designed to ensure your safety, be it spiritual or physical, there is always a state in which it can fail. In any case, thank you for watching. Memento mori, and I’ll see you next time.

You know, if we DO make contact with aliens within the next hundred years-ish, enough people are going to give the Vulcan salute to the first alien they see in real life (whether out of quivering excitement, lol memeitude, or sheer awkward, panicked grasping for the one prominent alien greeting nested in the social conscious) that there's a solid chance that it becomes a thing we're known for as humans.

Live Long and Prosper, my friends.

Leonard Nimoy would openly, unironically weep with joy if that happened.

He helped develop the Vulcan salute based on what he saw certain people doing during services at his temple. The splayed fingers represent the Hebrew letter shin  ש‎, and the men (I don’t know if they are rabbis) do it with both hands. It represents a blessing.

In an interview, Nimoy mentioned how delighted he was that people the world over greeted each other with “the Vulcan salute,” because it meant “they were going out and blessing each other.” 

I’ve always been an atheist, but I still think it’s a lovely sentiment to greet someone with “May you have a long and bountiful life, and I wish for good things to happen to you.” 

It's an excellent greeting.

It's non-threatening. You not only can't hold a weapon in that hand, the position itself is awkward enough to be useless for combat. It's not something that easily switches to a punch or strike.

It doesn't involve touch contact - avoids both cultural barriers to touch and problems of disease or incompatible skin types. (Don't have to shake the hand of the volcano aliens.)

It's clearly deliberate, unlike some kinds of bowing. And it can be mirrored by a wide range of body types, even if they don't have "hands" or "fingers" - an octopus-being that holds up a tentacle in response would be recognized.

And the sentiment it conveys (the Vulcan version; I have no idea about the original Jewish meaning) is likewise pretty universally acceptable.

It’s the Priestly Blessing (although in some Reform synagogues the rabbi will do it rather than calling up all congregants of priestly lineage to do it--i.e. everyone whose last name is Cohen or Katz or Kaplan or whatever is supposed to go up and collectively bless the community together).

The words match the oldest excerpt of the Bible found by archeologists, on amulets in grave goods dating from before the big redaction project that actually produced the Bible in its written forms. (NB: Jewish amulets usually take the form of written text; this is even more true in the modern era.) There is a real sense in which this blessing predates Jewish religion as we usually understand it.

The translation is “May HaShem bless and keep you, may HaShem’s face shine on you and show you favor, may HaShem lift his face to you and give you peace.”

In the Jewish religious context, “may HaShem bless and keep you” means, like, may God decide that you’re going to keep living a while longer. So the benediction literally means Live Long and Prosper in Peace.

true crime is becoming to girls what ww2 is to boys

#there’s definitely some amount of difference#because a lot of women get into true crime#because they’re overly aware that the majority of the murder victims are women#and it’s kind of a response to knowing how dangerous it is to exist in this world as a woman- like ‘this could be me’#or ‘this is how i would protect myself if i were in this situation’#or even trying to make true crime seem more like a show because it makes the possibility that they’ll be harmed seem less likely#but also there’s serial killer fangirls so like#you really can’t defend that

The majority of murder victims are, in fact, men.

Specifically, 79%.

The most murdered group, specifically, are black men.

The LEAST murdered demographic are middle class white women, who oddly make up a majority of the murder victims shown in true crime programs and news reports, and also the ones who make up the majority of true crime fans.

It’s called Missing White Woman Syndrome, and it’s based in racist disregard for non-white lives and patriarchal protectiveness of (white) women and it leads white middle class women to have a vastly overblown idea of their own vulnerability to random serial killers.

Note, ‘overblown.’ These women are feeling fear for a vanishingly unlikely occurrence, akin to preppers who spend their lives preparing for Russian invasions. It’s not a healthy or rational fear, and it shouldn’t be encouraged.

The analogy is also apt, even if watching out of own personal fears. In the end you’re still watching police propaganda, to justify the use of the prison systems (or capital punishment), and it’s purposely playing on your fascination and disgust to do this. The same bigoted system most privileged will buy their way out off anyway. Its reactionary as shit lol.

from “violent delights” by sarah marshall

(image id under the cut)

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There was some serial killer–don’t ask which one because they blend together–said he went after people of color specifically because cops don’t go looking for them. Actually, multiple human traffickers have said that they avoid taking white women because white women draw attention.

The problem with focusing on white women is that we ignore the people who are incredibly likely to be murdered: sex workers, unhoused people, disabled people, people of color, and especially Indigenous people. There is an epidemic of missing and murdered Native women and girls, and focusing on white women takes the focus off the people who need it. (This is doubly true because Tribal Police don’t have jurisdiction outside the tribe, so if a murderer flees outside of a reservation, they are not allowed to follow.)

Case in point: How many “true crime girlies” know who Robert Pickton? He murdered 49 women–more than Gacy, more than Dahmer, more than Zodiac, more than BTK. But his crimes go unknown because he targeted Indigenous women. How many true crime docs are made about him?

oh the notes bubble is disgusting. get that out of my sight

yuck. euggh. bleughf

this is NOT healthy and actually extremely stressful for the animal. please let them freeroam this is actually sickening

Please reblog! I want a larger sample size.

new favorite tweet

(from the author of fight club)

something that rly creeps me out…..occasionally ill see videos or articles for christians or christian missionaries that say something like “what you need to do is make friends with non christians and really get them to trust you and THEN you start preaching to them and bringing them to jesus” and that is….man how much would it hurt to know that the only reason someone’s hanging out with you is to convert you to a religion you were never interested in. maybe this is a real friend, someone you really really feel like you connect to, and all of a sudden you cant hang out with them without being scared they’ll bring out the jesus stuff.

charlie youre blowing my third eye WIDE open

hahahaha like a year ago I tweeted “Christianity’s attitude toward Jews resembles nothing so much as the attitude of a man toward a woman who won’t fuck him” and people got SO MAD at me

Listen, for people wanting to call out colonialism, there are way too many of you mocking Irish, Welsh, and Scottish names.

No, they’re not alphabet soup, no they do not look like “you’ve thrown letters at a wall and used what stuck,” they are living, breathing languages which we did CPR on after the British Empire shot them.

Like, people DIED to keep them alive.

Every time I see some (English/American) interviewer make an entire segment forcing Saoirse Ronan to list off Irish names, I die a little inside. It’s particularly galling to see the same people ooh-ing over how “mystical” they sound, or claiming ancient heritage to us.

Realise there’s a world beyond your myopic lens and just accept sometimes you’ve got new stuff to learn. Fuck knows I do.

I feel like the only person not tempted to use ChatGPT like it doesn't even occur to me as an option

Anyway shoutout to the person next to me who just got GPT to do their whole essay. I know you're in the trenches.

Not a sports guy but this is wonderful

Daena the Defiant, Septa Rhaena, and Elaena the Dragon Princess | The daughters of King Aegon iii and Queen Daenaera

cr: cosmicjiver on ig

Amongst the Orange Trees  / or / The Consequences of Asking Your S/O for a Piece of Their Orange While in an Orange Grove

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Personally, there’s nothing more beautiful than couples being comfortable with each other and also the orange/blue color contrast 

under the cut a close up of Nahri and her outfit bc I spent a LOT of time on it. 

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I feel like a good shorthand for a lot of economics arguments is "if you want people to work minimum wage jobs in your city, you need to allow minimum wage apartments for them to live in."

"These jobs are just for teenagers on the weekends." Okay, so you'll use minimum wage services only on the weekends and after school. No McDonald's or Starbucks on your lunch break.

"They can get a roommate." For a one bedroom? A roommate for a one bedroom? Or a studio? Do you have a roommate to get a middle-wage apartment for your middle-wage job? No? Why should they?

"They can live farther from city center and just commute." Are there ways for them to commute that don't equate to that rent? Living in an outer borough might work in NYC, where public transport is a flat rate, but a city in Texas requires a car. Does the money saved in rent equal the money spent on the car loan, the insurance, the gas? Remember, if you want people to take the bus or a bike, the bus needs to be reliable and the bike lanes survivable.

If you want minimum wage workers to be around for you to rely on, then those minimum wage workers need a place to stay.

You either raise the minimum wage, or you drop the rent. There's only so long you can keep rents high and wages low before your workforce leaves for cheaper pastures.

"Nobody wants to work anymore" doesn't hold water if the reason nobody applies is because the commute is impossible at the wage you provide.

need judith to do smth super badass in atn, every other tlt cringefail lesbian has gotten a cool moment it is HER turn ‼️‼️‼️