between tumblr being found guilty of moderating lgbtq content unequally during the 2018 ban in court and @ sorryforpartyrocking being nuked for suggesting one of tumblr staff may have investment in defending terfs to now many different trans women having their text posts and selfies being flagged as mature without the opportunity to appeal in any meaningful way (one of which was nuked herself)… it’s very. hmmmm. it’s a bad look. as if staff wasn’t already on thin ice for refusing to engage in any effective way with hate speech. “queerest space on the internet” my ass

New Things to Beware on the Internet

On May 3rd, Google released 8 new top-level domains (TLDs) -- these are new values like .com, .org, .biz, domain names. These new TLDs were made available for public registration via any domain registrar on May 10th.

Usually, this should be a cool info, move on with your life and largely ignore it moment.

Except a couple of these new domain names are common file type extensions: ".zip" and ".mov".

This means typing out a file name could resolve into a link that takes you to one of these new URLs, whether it's in an email, on your tumblr blog post, a tweet, or in file explorer on your desktop.

What was previously plain text could now resolve as link and go to a malicious website where people are expecting to go to a file and therefore download malware without realizing it.

Folk monitoring these new domain registrations are already seeing some clearly malicious actors registering and setting this up. Some are squatting the domain names trying to point out what a bad idea this was. Some already trying to steal your login in credentials and personal info.

This is what we're seeing only 12 days into the domains being available. Only 5 days being publicly available.

What can you do? For now, be very careful where you type in .zip or .mov, watch what website URLs you're on, don't enable automatic downloads, be very careful when visiting any site on these new domains, and do not type in file names without spaces or other interrupters.

I'm seeing security officers for companies talking about wholesale blocking .zip and .mov domains from within the company's internet, and that's probably wise.

Be cautious out there.

I really want to reiterate how this can go wrong frequently and fast, folks.

A malicious actor sets up a page with an auto-downloader squatting on a domain name that matches a common zip file name like photos DOT zip. This website is set up to start an auto downloader upon being visited, downloading a zip file with the same name as the URL which contains malicious software (virus, worm, keylogger, etc).

Scenario.

Someone you know well sends you an email or text with promised photos attached. The email even reads something like this.

Because .zip is now a TLD, that plain text is automatically formatted into a link to malicious actor's website without them having to send you anything.

Folk with family with iPhones or iPads that are sent multiple photos in one go might be familiar with iCloud's tendency to automatically compile them into zip file for the sender and less savvy tech users have trouble NOT doing that.

These same less savvy users, or even just someone just not thinking in the moment, will click that .zip link, not realizing it isn't the the same as clicking on the promised attachment.

They download a file that matches the name they expected. They open it because they were expecting that file and it's from a trusted source. Except the file they downloaded isn't the one that was sent by their trusted source and now they have malware.

Another Scenario.

An IT person tries to send you an email with instructions on how to resolve a problem with a commonly used filename like install-repair DOT zip or to install new software like microsoft-office DOT zip.

The email may start with instructions of where to go get the legitimate file to do the install or repair, but now a line later in the instructions is also has a link to a .zip URL. A user, already frazzled by IT problems, may click it to ensure they have the right file. Again, they download malicious code from a squatting website or it prompts them with a fake login and now the squatting website has stolen their login credentials for a legitimate site. All due to an expected email from a trusted source.

Above you can see microsoft-office DOT zip is already out there with a fake Microsoft login screen waiting to steal your credentials.

These risks are already out there now because the TLD has been activated.

Plain text on old post are already being resolved into links to the new websites.

Here you can see a tweet from 2021, long before .zip was a domain name, now resolves that plan text into a clickable link. You'll start seeing this everywhere, and malicious actors do not have to lift a finger to send it to you.

Yes, a lot of users aren't going to click that, but a lot of folk will. Whomever is squatting on photos DOT zip domain name has made a one time payment to have access to anyone that ever sees that file name typed out.

In an example of an existing squatter site, clientdocs DOT zip is exactly one such pre-setup .zip domain name that initiates an automatic download. This one may be harmless, but the set ups are already out there and waiting to catch folk.

It's an unnecessary and risky can of worms that's been opened up.

Holy Unforced Errors, Batman.

am I finally free

YEAHHHHH ok. I need to post about this but uh. Tumblr has a very fun glitch! If you press R ONCE on the desktop ver of the site, it will reblog the focused post instantly, no tag editing or blog selection. it may accidentally post it a couple more times , but that's it.

however. if you fucking hold R? it'll reblog the post instantly too, but MULTIPLE TIMES INSTANTLY. like I hit post limit bc I thought it wasn't actually reblogging the post. I only held the r button for a solit 10 seconds for it to reblog that post 200+ TIMES. my big ass mistake

either use or abuse it is up to you, but I reported it to Tumblr bc holy fuck dude. that's too much instant power

Tumblr Support just said this is a feature, not a glitch.

holy SHIT

reading a paper on quality of life among 45-to-70-year-olds with Down syndrome:

“Individuals expressed a desire to be allowed to go to bed when they wanted to.”

:(

Imagine.

I lived in a room and board that failed the burrito test. (”If you’re not allowed to get up in the middle of the night to microwave a burrito, you live in an institution.”) No one stopped me from going to bed, but they did tell me I had to have my lights out by 10, and that I had to be out of the house by 10 the next morning. When I complained to my outpatient program that I needed more help than I was getting, they threatened me with board and care, where my cell phone would be taken away and I would lose contact with the outside world. My case manager sounded so damn smug, like he had caught me out, when he said, “if you’re really as helpless as you say, then you need to be in a board and care.” Like my only options were struggling to do things I couldn’t do, or surrendering my life to an institution.

When I tried to talk about these things with other people, they always rationalized it away. (I told my dad once that my caseworker was reading my e-mails as I wrote them, demonstrating extreme disrespect for my privacy, and he said, “Well, she’s probably making sure you don’t use the internet to goof off.” I was 22 years old.)

 People tend to mock the idea that telling an adult when to go to bed, when to eat, etc., is a human rights violation, even though they would find it outrageous and absurd if anyone came into their lives to do the same thing to them.

And this is what people seem to think when they tell disabled activists we’re just not disabled enough to understand that some people really do need to be locked up and deprived of all autonomy.

Here’s the paper:

https://library.down-syndrome.org/en-us/research-practice/06/3/quality-life-ageing-down-syndrome/

They don’t want *any* activists for mentally/developmentally disabled people. If you’re able to advocate for your rights, you’re not “disabled enough” - and if you were disabled enough you wouldn’t be able to advocate for your rights.

anyway in light of hbo's silly new series announcement today, i am going to leave these links here

Here's an addition with some Jewish charities to donate to:

so disney is using emily gwen’s lesbian pride flag with no compensation, and she’s still in need of money. i implore anyone who cares at all about the lgbt community to donate to her instead of paying for fucking mickey mouse pins

TRANSGENDER DAY OF VISIBILITY DONATION LINKS

it's tdov again, so @ my fellow allies: please use this day to help out & consider donating to charities supporting trans people. if you follow current events (which you should) you know how much this support is needed, so here is a small list of charities I personally donated to & lists others already put together:

this list is non-exhaustive, please feel free to share & add more! also remember to keep up your support beyond this one day 💙💗🤍

In case anyone is intersted, here are a couple good trans charities/organizations based in Colombia/Latin America!

The Lavender Clinic is the ONLY clinic in the occupied kingdom of Hawaiʻi for the majority of trans and non-binary youth to receive gender-affirming care and was on the verge of closing just this past February. Please continue to support it to keep it running!

don't panic buy games because of the eshop shutdown!!!! the memes are not lying It is genuinely very easy to hack your 3ds!!! please do it!!!!

3ds.hacks.guide

(don't follow video guides they are very often outdated and it's easier to make mistakes that way. this guide is very detailed with step by step instructions and they even have a support server in the event you have any trouble! i understand it might seem intimidating but risks of bricking or banning are very minimal at this point you will be glad you did it)

also you might have heard around you need a certain eshop app to homebrew, this was Once true but is now FALSE as the current method does NOT require any existing app.

so if you don't have time right now, don't worry! you will still be able to after the eshop shutdown. there is not a time limit for being able to hack your 3ds.

University of Chicago made a free tool to mask your art from AI generators.

Edit: Cool that this left out the link when I first posted this. Very cool. Very useful.

https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/index.html#whatis

it's really disappointing how people's critique of jkr starts and ends with her transphobia, and they completely ignore her blatant antisemitism, racism, homophobia, slavery apologism, sympathy for the wizard nazis, (the wizard nazi incel) snape's redemption, the villain of fantastic beasts trying to stop the holocaust, and the new game literally being a rehash of the blood libel myth.

&her ableism, fatphobia, classism, and general naked imperialism (look at things like the "thunderbird" in fantastic beasts, or anything and everything she's ever said or done about Scotland, for example)

This ass-hat has actually lobbied against things like "letting disabled people survive" and "the colonised nation I live in taking steps toward independence."

Oh, and you already mentioned it, but - antisemitism, again. Cannot stress the antisemitism enough because, holy fuck she's so antisemitic!

as a trans person this is is so important to look at and spread bc us trans people are not the only people affected, and we need to band together to spread awareness about the full extent of JKRs bigotry.

Yeah...it's really confusing how people focus exclusively on her being transphobic when she very much did recently write a book that openly and obviously makes fun of criticisms of ableism, where a person with fibromyalgia and several others of the most hard-to-diagnose painful chronic conditions (somewhat implied to be faking) murders a poor innocent writer who is being accused of ableism. 🤨

When I was 14 I had a make a wish and a very low chance of living out the year. I asked to meet her and her response was “I don’t meet *those* children” and I hear now she has a do not contact policy from make a wish. I’m glad she’s being cancelled, at this point it’s whatever it takes for me. Hopefully all of her nastiness is revealed and she can answer for all of it.

But ye reblogging for the nice list of reasons for not giving her money.

Tyre Nichol’s mother has set up a memorial fund to help pay for mental health services for his family and a memorial skate park in his name. If you cannot donate, please share.

After seeing the dad how do I channel, I really wanted this one. I searched for it and, tada! Mom how do I? Seems rather new, but I love it anyway.

This is such a cute and helpful idea, especially since some people either didn’t grow up with someone who could teach them this stuff or they grew up with parents who did everything for them. I knew a lot of guys in college who didn’t know how to do laundry or cook!

Mom How Do I

Dad How Do I

My parents were not very good teachers of life skills so this is G R E A T.

Hey so as you know if you’ve been following me this week, I just lost one of my best friends in a car accident & now I’m facing a cancer scare with my partner.

They have been calling out from work for doctor appointments all week and are struggling to afford their rent. I have also not been to work in a week since I have been in pretty bad shape since my friend’s passing.

If anyone has anything they can spare to help us in this situation so we can afford to pay our rent, I’d really appreciate it.

Thank you so much

Venmo/paypal/cashapp: stdawns

Hey, so I just lost my job. I could really use some help as I’ve been going in and out of doctor appts and I haven’t even been able to eat or take care of myself.

This a Master post of different Native American reservations and peoples needing assistance this winter due to weather emergencies, my links are from the Minnesota Public Radio News, especially a reporter and digital producer for the outlet, Sam Strooza.

The MPR News article about thousands being trapped on Pine Ridge Reservation and ways to help get people winter clothing and firewood. Condition right now are dire with reports of people trapped in their homes and needing to burn clothes for heat.

Friends of Pine Ridge is doing a drive of both quilt/blankets/comforters and also heaters, they have links to stores where you can buy blankets that will give them to the reservation and links where you can donate money to help people buy propane, fire wood or other immediate needs

Friend of Pine Ridge works very closely and supports First Families Now that works to support children, elders and families on the Pine Ridge Reservation and you can donate directly to them below

One Spirit Lakota does a lot of work supporting the citizens on Pine Ridge Reservation and supporting the Lakota people in both firewood supplies for the winter and supporting in the youth in the Allen community around the reservation and more.

Any donation right now will be used for emergency services and supplies such as firewood, and food and other things for supporting people in need.

Sićangu Co typically works to provide housing, food, education, health and addressing systematic issues regarding those concerns but given the twenty feet piles of snow and emergency situation their donations right now are shifted to meet current need of clearing the snow, filing and distribution of drinking water, and donations will also be used to feed their personnel including snow plow drivers, delivery drivers, other volunteers as well as those in need.

The Rosebud Sioux Tribe official website also has link for donating directly to their disaster relief fund related to the blizzard.

Also for clarity especially for people not from the Americas, while my main sources are from Minnesota Public Radio News, Rosebud and Pine Ridge are in South Dakota

This is a link to donate to Re-member that works to support the Oglala Lakota people and improve the quality of life on Pine Ridge Reservation they have multiple donation options from their winter heating fund to donating items directly

Use Firefox I am no longer asking. Every other cutesy alternative browser people suggest is just Google with extra steps. Stop it. Unless these people are Google undercover employees, in which case blow up your office

also the guy who made brave sucks ass and shills crypto lol get firefox

chromium is fine its just the framework needed to render web pages. its literally just the bare basics without any of the extra shit stacked on top of it. the reason its so widely used is because its one of the last remnants of when google was actually making positive contributions to tech and getting rid of it or making it closed source would upend a shit ton of tech products.

e.x., discord runs on electron, which uses chromium as its method of rendering visuals. every version of discord, desktop, mobile, web.

i dont have a nice bow to wrap this post up with. im aware not everyone would even know where to start in looking into chromium but id be remiss if i didnt point something this critical out.

Chromium itself has so much Google shit stacked on top of it, it takes a full sized project named Ungoogled Chromium to get mostly the bare basics.

incidentally, the people in charge of this project also don't seem to know what the fuck to do about Manifest V3. And just because web-based frameworks and web-apps like Chromium, doesn't mean you have to.

Chromium-based browsers aren't your friends. use Firefox, vanilla or forked.

I mean the fact Ungoogled Chromium exists is literally what I’m talking about. I’m not sure what the “gotcha” you’re going for is.

Also if we’re playing this game, check out who founded Mozilla. It’s Brendan Eich, the same guy who founded Brave and also straight up donated to right wing anti gay orgs using the Mozilla Foundations bank account.

Sorry this wound up being more complicated than a meme is able to communicate in Top Text Bottom Text.

"The One Spirit Team has been working tirelessly to help as many families on the Rez as possible through this intense winter season. Road conditions are making it near impossible to distribute firewood and food. Many homes are without power or a reliable and safe heat source.

Any donations received at this time will be used to purchase firewood, supplies, and food to take care of those critically in need."

Donations can be made here:

Donations to Oglala Re-Member organization, which also assists people living in the Pine Ridge Reservation, can be made here:

my mom and i are trying to afford a divorce and save up to move out from my shitty dad. we are both disabled and i cant work, so please, if u can help or spread this it would mean the world to me 🥺

Very much not my normal posting but since antisemitism is very actively rising, I feel like it's worth it:

Pinely is a Youtuber who's been doing a series on conspiracy theories and antisemitism. He's Jewish himself and his videos do a good job at exploring how people fall down antisemitic rabbit holes and how conspiracy theories relate to antisemitism (he's one of the only people ive seen who, when talking about shane dawson, specifically called out how antisemitism tied in to his shilling of conspiracy theories to kids). He's also just very funny (in my opinion) and a Jewish, non-white, non-American commentary channel, which is rare and refreshing. If you want to learn more about antisemitism, his videos might be something to check out. I rarely ever see people call out antisemitism specifically in commentary videos even when they call out racism, misogyny, etc., which makes watching someone tackle antisemitism so head on very nice.

Ladyknightthebrave, who is Jewish too, does film theory type commentary there a some videos about the Holocaust in film that are just really worth watching.

Chamber of Spoilers videos are about Jewish representation, antisemitism in both media and life, variety of commentary from Jewish perspective. Also really worth watching.