#because I'm losing space for new data

[ms-demeanor]

Friends, I think we need to talk about Covid.

I want to get a few caveats out there before I start:

I am aware that there are people who need to exercise extreme caution about Covid; I live with someone who has two solid organ transplants and who is at the most immune compromised level of immune compromised. *I* have to be extremely cautious about covid.

Masking does prevent a certain level of transmission, and people who think they may have covid should mask and people who are concerned that they may be at high risk for covid should mask.

You should be vaccinated and boosted with the most recent vaccines that are available to you; covid is highly transmissible and very serious, you do not want to get covid and if you do get covid you don't want it to be severe and if you do get covid you don't want to give someone else covid and up-to-date vaccinations are the best way to reduce transmission and help to prevent severe cases of Covid.

We should be testing before going to any gatherings, and informing people if we test positive after gatherings, and testing if we suspect we have been exposed.

It is bullshit that there aren't good protections for workers who have covid; you should not be expected to go to work when you are testing positive

It is bullshit that people who are testing positive are not isolating for other reasons; if you have Covid you should not be going out and exposing other people to it even if you are experiencing mild symptoms or no symptoms.

We do need better ventilation systems for many kinds of spaces. Schools need better ventilation, restaurants need better ventilation, doctor's offices and hospitals and office buildings need better ventilation and better ventilation can reduce covid transmission.

I want to make it clear that Covid is real and there are real steps that individuals and systems can take to prevent transmission, and that there are systems that are exerting pressures that needlessly expose people to covid (the fact that you can lose your job if you don't come in when you're testing positive, mainly; also the fact that covid rapid tests should be ubiquitous and cheap/free and are not).

All of that being said: I'm seeing some posts circulating about how we're at an extremely high level of transmission and the REAL pandemic is being hidden from us and, friends, I'm pretty sure that is just incorrect and we're spreading misinformation.

I'm thinking of this video in particular, in which the claim is made that "your mystery illness is covid" in spite of negative tests. The guy in the video says that there's nothing else that millions of people could be getting a day, and that he predicted this because a wastewater spike in December meant that there was a huge spike in cases.

I've also seen people saying that deaths are where they were in 2021-2022, and that we're still at "a 9/11 a week" of excess deaths and friends, I'm not seeing great evidence for any of these claims.

I know that we (in the US, which is where the numbers I'm going to be citing are from) feel abandoned by the CDC and the fact that tracking cut off in May of 2023. But that only cut off for the federal tracking.

I live in LA county and LA county sure as shit is still tracking Covid.

If you want a clearer picture, you can see the daily case count over time compared to the daily death count:

Okay, you might say, but that's just LA.

Alright, so here's Detroit:

Right, but maybe that's CDC data and you don't trust the CDC at this point.

Okay, here's fatalities in New York tracked through New York's state data collection:

It's harder to toggle around the site for South Dakota, but you can compare their cases and hospitalizations and deaths for early 2022

To cases and hospitalizations and deaths from early 2024

And see that there's really no comparison.

Okay, you might say, but people are testing less. If they're testing less of course we're not seeing spikes, and they're testing less because fewer tests are available.

Alright, people are definitely testing less than they were in 2021 and 2022. Hospitalization for Covid is probably the most clear metric because you know those people have covid for sure, the couldn't not test for it.

Here are hospitalizations over time for LA:

Here are hospitalizations over time for New York:

As vaccination rates have gone up, cases, deaths, and hospitalizations have gone down. It IS clear that there are case spikes in the winter, when it is cold and people are indoors in poorly ventilated spaces and people are more susceptible to respiratory infections as a result of cold air weakening the protection offered by our mucous membranes, and that is something that we will have to take precautions about for the forseeable future, just as we should have always been taking similar precautions during flu season.

So I want to go point-by-point through some of the arguments made in that video because I'm seeing a bunch of people talking about how "THEY" don't want you to know about the virus surge and buds that is just straight up conspiracism.

So okay, first off, most of what that video is based on is spikes in wastewater data, not spikes in cases. This is because people don't trust CDC data on cases, but I'd say to maybe check out your regional data on cases. I don't actually trust the CDC that much, but I know people who do tracking of hospitalizations in LA county, I trust them a lot more. Wastewater data does correlate with increases in cases, but this "second largest spike of the entire pandemic" thing is misleading; wastewater reporting is pretty highly variable and you can't just accept that a large spike in covid in wastewater means that we're in just as bad a place in the pandemic as we were in 2022. We simply have not seen the surge of hospitalizations and deaths that we would expect to see in the weeks following that spike in wastewater data if wastewater data was reflective of community transmission.

The next claim is that "there is nothing else that is infecting millions of people a day" and covid isn't doing that either. The highest daily case rates were in January of 2021 and they were in the 865k a day range, which is ridiculously high but isn't millions of cases a day.

But what we can see is that when people are tested by their doctors for Covid, RSV, and the Flu, more tests are coming back positive for the Flu. Covid causes more hospitalizations than the other two illnesses, but to be honest what the people in the video are describing - lightheadedness, dizziness, exhaustion - just sound like pretty standard symptoms of everything from covid to the cold to allergies. There are lots of things your mystery illness could be.

The video goes on to talk about the fact that people aren't testing, and why their tests may be coming back negative and I'd like to point out that the same things are all true of Flu or RSV tests. People might be getting tested too early or too late; getting a negative test for the flu isn't a good reason to assume you've got covid, getting a negative test for covid isn't a good reason to assume you've got the flu, and testing for viruses as a whole is imperfect. There are hundreds of viruses that could be the common cold; there are multiple viruses that can cause bronchitis; there are multiple viruses that can cause pneumonia, and you're not going to test for all of these things the moment you start feeling sick.

He then recommends testing for multiple days if you have symptoms and haven't had a positive test (fine) and talks about the location of the tests (less fine). Don't use your rapid tests to swab your throat or cheek unless it specifically says that they are designed to do so. Test based on the instructions in the packet.

He points out that the tests probably still pick up on the virus because they're not testing for the spike protein, they're testing for the RNA (good info!)

The video then discusses something that I think is really key to this paranoia about the "mystery illnesses" - he talks about how covid changes and weakens your immune system (a statement that should come with many caveats about severity and vulnerability and that we are still researching that) and then says that it makes you more susceptible to strep or mono and that "things that used to clear in a day or two now hit you really hard."

And that's where I think this anxiety is coming from.

Strep throat lasts anywhere from three days to a week. A cold takes about a week to clear. The flu lasts about a week and can knock you on your ass with exhaustion for weeks depending on how bad you get it. Did you get a cough with your cold? Expect that to take anywhere from three to eight weeks to clear up.

I think that people are thinking "i got a bad virus and felt really sick for a week and haven't gotten my energy back" but that just sounds like a bad cold. That sounds like a potent allergy attack. That doesn't even sound like a bad flu (I got a bad flu in 2009 and thought i was going to straight-up die I had a fever of 103+ for three days and felt like shit for three days on either side of that and took six weeks to feel more like myself again).

Getting sick sucks. It really, really sucks. But if you're getting sick and you're testing for covid and it's coming back negative after you tested a few times, it's almost certainly not covid.

The video then says "until someone provides evidence that it's not covid, it should be assumed to be covid because we have record levels of covid it's that simple" but that's not simple. We don't have record levels of covid and he hasn't proved it. We have record high levels of wastewater reports of covid, which correlates with covid cases but the spike in wastewater noted in december didn't see a spike with a corresponding magnitude of cases in terms of either hospitalizations or deaths, which is what we'd have seen if we had actual record numbers of covid.

He says that if you want to ignore this, you'll get sick with covid, and that about 30-40% of the US just got sick with covid in the last four months (which is a RIDICULOUSLY unevidenced claim).

He says that we need to create a new normal that takes covid into account, which means masking more often and testing more often and making choices about risk-avoidant behaviors.

Now, I don't disagree with that last statement, but he prefaces the statement with "it doesn't necessarily mean lockdown" and that's where I think the alarmism and paranoia is really visible here. We are so, so far away from "lockdown" type levels that it's absurd to discuss lockdown here.

What I'm seeing right now is people who are chronically ill, people who are immune compromised, and people who are experiencing long covid (which may not be distinct from other post-viral syndromes from severe cases of flu, etc, but which may be more severe or more notable because of the prevalence of covid) are talking about feeling abandoned and attacked and left behind by society because covid is still out there, and still at extremely high levels.

I am seeing people who feel abandoned and attacked because the lgbtq+ events they are attending don't require masking. I am seeing people who are claiming that it is eugenicist that their schools don't have a negative test policy anymore.

And this comes together into two really disconcerting trends that I've been observing online for a while.

The claim that the pandemic is still as bad as it's ever been and in fact may be worse but we can't know that because "they" (the CDC, the government, capitalist institutions that want you back in the office, the university industrial complex that wants your dorm room dollars) are covering up the numbers and

Significant grievance at the fact that people are acting like number one is not true and are putting you at risk either out of thoughtlessness (because they don't realize they're putting you at risk) or malice (because they don't care if the sick die).

And those things are a recipe for disaster.

I think I've pretty robustly addressed point one; I don't think that there's good evidence that there's a secretly awful surge of covid that nobody is talking about. I think that there are some people who are being alarmist about covid who are basing all of their concern on wastewater numbers that have not held up as the harbinger of a massive wave of infections.

So let's talk about point number two and JK Rowling.

Barnes and Noble is not attacking you when it puts up a Hogwarts Castle display in the lobby. Your favorite youtuber isn't trying to hurt you when they offhandedly mention Harry Potter.

If you let every mention of Harry Potter or every person who enjoys that media franchise wound you, you are going to spend a lot of your time wounded.

People are not liking Harry Potter at you.

Okay.

People are also not not wearing masks at you.

You may be part of a minority group that experiences the potential for outsized harm as a result of majority groups engaging in perfectly reasonable behaviors.

There are kind, well-meaning, sensible people who go out every day and do something that may cause you harm and it's not because they want to hurt you or they don't care about whether you live or die, it is because they are making their own risk assessments based on their own lives and making the very reasonable assumption that people who are more concerned about covid than they are will take precautions to keep themselves safe.

We are not at a place in the pandemic where it is sensible to expect people with no symptoms of illness to mask in public as a matter of course or to present evidence of a recent negative test when entering a public building in their day-to-day life.

I think now is a really good time to sit down and ask yourself how you expect things to be with covid as an endemic part of our viral ecosystem. I think now is a good time to ask yourself what risk realistically looks like for you and for people who are unlike you. I think now is a good time to consider what would feel "safe" for you and how you could accomplish feeling safe as you navigate the world.

I'm probably going to continue masking in most indoor spaces for years. Maybe forever. There are accommodations that SHOULD be afforded to people who have to take more precautions than others (remote learning, remote visits, remote work, etc.), and we should demand those kinds of accommodations.

But it is going to poison you from the inside out if you are perpetually angry that people who don't have the same medical limitations as you are happy that they get to go shopping with their faces uncovered.

So now I want to talk to you about my father in law.

My father in law had a bone marrow transplant in 2015. That's the most immune compromised you can get without having your organs swapped out.

The care sheet for him after the transplant was a little overwhelming. The list of foods he couldn't eat was intimidating and the limitations on where he could go was depressing. It cautioned against going to large events, it recommended outdoor gatherings where possible but only if he could avoid sunlight and was somewhere with no history of valley fever. It said that he should wear masks indoors any time he was someplace with poor ventilation and that he should avoid contact with anyone who had an illness of any kind, taking special note to avoid children and anyone recently vaccinated for measles.

It was, in short, pretty much what someone immune compromised would need to do to try to avoid a viral infection. Sensible. Reasonable. Wash your hands and social distance; wear masks in sensitive contexts and don't spend time in enclosed places with people who have a communicable illness.

This is what life was always going to be like for people who are severely immune compromised, and it was always going to be incumbent upon the person with the illness to figure out how to operate in a society that is not built with them in mind.

It is not the job of every parent I encounter to tell me whether their child has been vaccinated against measles or chicken pox in the last three months. That isn't something that people need to do as part of their everyday life. However it IS my responsibility to check with the parents I'm hanging out with whether their children have been vaccinated against measles or chicken pox in the last three months so I know if it's safe for my immune compromised spouse to be around them.

If you want an environment in which you feel safe from covid, at this point in the pandemic (when the virus is endemic and not spreading rapidly as far as we can see from case counts) it is your responsibility to take the steps necessary to make you feel safe. Some of those steps will involve advocating for safety improvements in public spaces (again, indoor ventilation needs to be better and I'm personally pretty extreme about vaccination requirements; these are things we should be discussing in our school board meetings and at our workplaces), some of those steps will involve advocating for worker protections, guaranteed sick time, and the right to healthcare. But some of the things you're going to need to do to feel safe are going to come down to you.

If you are concerned about communicable diseases you have to be realistic about the fact that our society doesn't go out of its way to prevent communicable diseases - norovirus among food service workers pre-pandemic is pretty clear evidence of that. You are going to have to be proactive about your safety rather than expecting the world to act like Covid is at 2021-2022 levels when it is measurably not.

[youremyheaven]

Do you think those influencers who dramatically switch from very left wing Marxist alternative etc to very trad Christians (specifically in homophobic/transphobic way) have ketu influence?

You were talking about ketuvians and their struggle to find a sense of self and it made me think of these types of people. I know someone with ketu 1H and magha moon who did this to an extent. She used to identify as non binary and was constantly shifting through different names and pronouns but then one day she just kind of stopped and started saying how she thinks pride is pointless and a waste of time or whatever😭 it wasn’t *that* extreme but I still thought it was a significant shift in belief in such a short time.

I think a lot of people have this dramatic shifts not only out of a need to identify with something due to a lack of sense of self, but also because they like going back to what their parents believe for comfort. I guess those two are interlinked but it’s interesting how my friend is a magha moon and magha is associated with ancestors and whatnot.

I guess mula is somewhat similar as “the root”? Idk about ashwini though

Sorry I haven’t actually had the chance to look into examples since it’s hard to find birth data for influencers and I don’t know that many examples irl 😶‍🌫️ so this is me just going on a tangent and hoping you get what I’m trying to say LMAO

I’m also not sure if anyone else is familiar with this phenomena or if I’m just too engrossed in niche internet drama.

In terms of influencers I guess a somewhat prominent example is Freckle Zelda on tiktok? I never followed her but she went from making cutesy safe space liberal type content in like 2021 and now she’s a Christian and is using it be to super controversial. But like I said I’ve never followed her so idk if this is dramatic enough of a switch to count as what I’m saying.

I also feel like this a rahu trait to switch between extremes🤔 idk lmk what you think

I feel like the capitalist commodification of identity has most adversely affected Nodal people.

If you think about it, spirituality's aim is to transcend the "self" entirely, you stop identifying with labels and attaching yourself to this or that thing. I'm not saying you cease to be a person but you stop trying to "accumulate" identities to hold on to.

9/10 times the reason we identify with something is to feel a sense of belonging but searching outwards for it will only lead to disappointment, when we search within and feel at home within ourselves, we lose the need to externally confined ourselves to rigid "identities"

Yk how people dye their hair, get piercings/tattoos etc to mark a new chapter or the end of an old one or whatever??? It is an attempt to claim something as "yourself" and "solidify yourself". Everything changes all the time, everybody changes yet there are many people who will never dye their hair or change their name or join a cult or whatever (not that all these things are the same) its just that if you're at peace with yourself and truly grounded, you will no longer be shopping for different identities or things to associate with.

Yk those people who have IG bios that read like "Mother, Pluviophile, ESFJ, Petrolhead, UJC'22, Missourian, Ancient Spirit, 1/4th Cherokee, Bitcoin Enthusiast, EDM Lover"

like what do any of those terms say about them?? how on earth is any of this central to your identity? all of these are external ??? is loving rain and being a petrolhead central to your sense of self?? im not trying to demean anybody's interests, im only trying to point out that what we choose to make the focal point of ourselves is up to us and its possible to not be defined by anything?? i think a truly ugly consequence of capitalism is how people try to define themselves by things outside them (their interests, hobbies, job, income level, marital status etc etc) because there is more to a person than all that.

when we retreat within, we base our sense of self on our qualities like kindness, compassion, creativity (this becomes the essence of who we are) so we don't feel the need to claim 87373 other things to describe ourselves

some people overly identify with others like their partners, friends or even strangers and kind of become them. this is also the root of stan culture, by being obsessed with someone to that extent and giving them all your time and energy, you are losing your own qi and harming your Sun (the same way criticizing the appearance of others ruins your Venus)

Rahu is prone to taking things to extremes and Ketu is prone to trying on different identities and losing interest in all of them one after the other. so your observations are right.

i dont really use social media so i dont know any influencers that i can quote as examples ;-; but im thinking of certain celebrities who have had drastic style changes in the past and all of them have nodal influence lol

in the 2000s, the Olsen twins were known for their boho chic hippie style and over the last decade or so they have become known for their "quiet luxury" style. They are Magha Moon

Julia Fox is Ardra Rising and she went from basic to avant garde

Jared Leto, Mula Sun, Ashwini Moon & Rising , he's also the leader of a cult allegedly so👀i guess it all adds up

Adele, Mula Moon & Ardra Rising

im not just talking about her weight loss, just her overall change in style. she got married young and had a baby and in a couple of years she got a divorce and revamped her look to that of an ig baddie

Kylie Jenner, Swati Moon she's changed her style/demeanour every other year since the early 2010s lol

Taylor Swift, Ardra Moon has also had many diff lewkzz throughout the years

before anybody says dont celebs change their styles often?? no they dont, not everybody for sure. look at Jennifer Lopez or Sarah Jessica Parker, theyve been dressing the same since the 90s. constantly evolving style/looks/personality is a Nodal thing. its also a big part of the reason why Nodal people succeed in the entertainment industry and in the material realm (a lot of rich people including Bezos have Nodal placements) because entertainment = illusion, pretending to be someone you're not and for Nodal people, this is pretty much second nature.

im sorry that my response is kind of all over the place. your question provoked some thoughts within me lol and i just had to shareee

i cant think of celebs who have drastically changed their life paths like the example u cited ;-; EXCEPT Bridget Mendler who is an actor, singer, and entrepreneur, has a PhD and went to Harvard Law and now runs a satellite company?? she also adopted a kid during all this? She has Mula Sun

anywayyys thats it for now

tysm for sending this ask!!! its a very thought provoking and interesting question<33hope u have a good day<33

#rahu #ketu #nodal #jyotish

[kiwikiwii]

Very Big and Very Long AI rant.

After the recent OpenAI stuff I'm gonna be here to share my two cents about the whole very realistic AI stuff, from the perspective of a very anxious and very art oriented person who loves techy stuff.

I very much would understand if this isn't your cup of tea so it's all undercut, thank you for your time anyways <3

Now. Onto the AI stuff.

Recently OpenAI has put out some new technology that's showing off some very nearly realistic videos and they're both creepy and very uncanny. About 2 or 3 years ago, the concerns about AI was already rising with deep fakes and the such and is going to start being a lot worse if this technology isn't properly regulated. This is what is prompting my very long and apparently, 927 word rant.

Going to put this in a few parts so it'll be easier to digest I hope.

About the tech.

We are at a point where the lines of AI generated content and real life are starting to blur. It's to a point where a sentence or a prompt could create scenes that look realistic enough that most people wouldn't even suspect that it's AI.

It is such a powerful and interesting technology that's slowly growing out of control. The people who are supposed to regulate the content and lawmakers has no idea what the fuck is going on and how the content is made in the first place, how are they supposed to make a change when they don't even understand what they're supposed to be tackling. The lack of understanding of how AI functions, how it comes to be, where the data was even gotten from in the first place and how it will impact society as a whole will truly be how we'll lose control of it someday. I'm not saying any of this because I want to be a 'hinderance to the future of technology', I'm saying this because the later we try to do something about it, the harder it is to do anything that is useful and effective for safeguarding artists, creators and everyone else who's using the internet. Not to mention the amount of frauds or scams that will skyrocket, children's safety on the internet being compromised, YOUR safety on the internet being compromised, people faking inappropriate images, videos and more will be a nightmare to deal with.

About art.

Many corporate companies unfortunately don't give a fuck about how the art is made and whether it's good or not but how fast it can be made and how much money can be made off of it. In their eyes, the trade off between quantity and quality is worth it. And that to me is extremely frustrating because where the art comes from should also be a part of the story when talking about art. Who the person who made it was like, how they developed a certain style and so on should be cared about and should be appreciated just like the art piece that was created. It shouldn't just be treated as another piece of thing to be fed to the scanner to be spat out as something else.

About creating.

Art is intrinsically a very human thing. People who make the argument "it's letting more people experience how it's like to create art" doesn't understand what it's like to create art. The entire idea of art is the learning, developing and polishing of the skills that you yourself develop. Taking away the steps that it took to get there in the first place diminishes the point of wanting to make art in the first place. It's degrading the time, energy and effort of the people who've already put effort into creating said art to be put out as a cheap and gross mimic of what it came from.

More emotional stuff that doesn't fit in any of the spaces above.

I saw someone use the word 'amalgamation' to describe what AI is today and that about wraps it all up. It's an amalgamation of dots and data skinned off of what there was and chained together to create an image, a video, an audio sample and more without a shred of humanity, love or emotion put into it.

I barely go on twitter nowadays, when I so, I see people sing high praises about the "the amazing advances of AI" and downplay the part of artists that were stolen for to create the technology they love so much in the first place. This whole ordeal makes me sick. It's depressing to see companies laying people off because they're seen as useless or worse than AI. It's disgusting to see the amount of talented people out there stolen from so that people could churn out heartless work at a faster pace to replace you. It's not a stepping stone for humanity, we're stepping over the ledge blindfolded.

I will never stop creating. It's what makes up a big part of me and will continue to be even if AI starts crumbling humanity to ash. One thing they can never take from us is creativity.

To the people who read this far, thank you. Thank you for spending your time to read over my word vomit that has been cooking in my head for the longest time.

To the artist that are still reading this. Remember you are irreplaceable. Without your art, this technology wouldn't have been here in the first place. Your art is invaluable. Never stop creating. Never give up, never give in.

Have a bear <3

#rant #ai rant #very long post #no beta we die like men #bonus bear #thank you for coming to my ted talk

[feyarcher]

It's the loss of community from all the social media site distasters of the last year that really gets me. Musk blew up twitter because ????? and I lost a huge source of my regular connection to certain communities and the world generally. Reddit is now fucked because its owner has decided it is cool to be a mini musk or something and so many communities are getting destroyed.

Some people leave immediately when the ship starts sinking. Some people are forced out because the lack of accessibility literally steals their community spaces from them. Others stay to laugh at the asshats in charge. And bad actors come in to make the remnants of the communities into cesspools.

And what are we left with? There is no other platform that entire communities can move to in the exact same way they were before. There is no way to track where every single person who brought value to your community chooses to go. And the scatter remnants are different, forced from text based to [whatever the fuck tumblr is] based or fucking video based. (The turn to video based content with your real identity attached is a whole thing for another time). Or private discord forums that you have to already know about to be able to find because message boards where you can find community and answers with an easy search are gone.

Our communities have been wonderful much of the time (if you can manage to filter out the awful and the rage bait and curate your experience), but we built them on private companies that somehow don't give a fuck about the users who drive the entire value of their site. They focus on advertisers and data collection and never improving the actual experience of the users who mean everything to their stock prices.

The undervaluing of mods, the highlighting of asshats paying $8 to spout off nonsense, the complete lack of caring about what actually makes their platforms useful. And the collateral damage is me, losing communities and news sources and amusement that I have relied on for years. In order to what? Impress investors who are equally stupid and refuse to focus on building a good product and instead focus on what? Ads half of people block anyways? Appeasing the ego of a guy who should take his halfassed spaceship to Mars and not come back?

And the only real short term option we have to fight back is to leave. To not give them our engagement. To tank the stupid metrics they care so much about. At the cost of communities. Of easy information access. Of discovering new people and ideas completely by accident that change your whole world.

Sure, in the long run we can work on shifting to "better" sites. Ones that are open sources or ones we build ourselves. Make your own website. Get involved in modding not for profit sites. But none of it brings back the communities, the connections, the people that we have lost along the way. And today, I'm just fucking sad about it.

#reddit blackout #the downfall of twitter #im not even touching on the damage tiktok has done to how we engage with each other online #this is not a shot at tumblr or their staff who i think are generally working in the right direction #but tumblr isn't profitable so how long until we lose this space too #allie says stuff sometimes #excuse my rant #wall of text

[i-am-dulaman]

Okay wait now this is truly a hot take that will probably ruin my reputation as a communist and a socialist but.

I wouldn't mind if netflix and other streaming sites started showing ads

Wait I swear im going somewhere with this.

Now I'm totally against the extent to which advertising has absolutely ruined the online space, especially how much it has driven the commodification of data collection so i would NOT like to see that level of advertisement on streaming sites (i know that once you open the gates to a little advertising you get it all, but.. thats kinda a different problem).

What i wouldnt mind seeing is something equivalent to what we see on TV or in movie theatres before a film, or basically youtube. And the reason for this is that the subscription business model does not translate well into tv/film production.

The reason netflix makes so many different tv shows and then cancels them after 1 season is because they dont care about increasing viewership numbers, they only care about subscription numbers. And they've done the calculations that a new tv show brings in more subscribers than cancelling that same show loses them.

Season 2 and beyond of a tv show doesnt earn them nearly as much money as season 1, but they cost the same amount to make, and it just gets worse with each season, pretty much no matter how popular that show is with very few exceptions (stranger things). Theres a reason we dont get 10 season long tv shows anymore.

Ads would allow them to earn money from someone long after season 1 of the show they subscribed to watch, for as long as they kept making a show worth watching.

It would also allow them to make money from repeat viewings, which takes up a lot of their bandwidth, further incentivising making actual good content rather than something eye catchy to draw in new subscribers.

Its also honestly not that unreasonable when you compare them to actual tv. Streaming sites are cheaper than cable, available on demand, allows infinite repeat viewing, and is currently ad free. Compared to cable thats a pretty good deal and im a little shocked they didnt start advertising years ago. And if it lets them produce cable quality shows without an incentive to cancel them straight away, then I wouldn't mind ads.

That's all im saying really. As long as the ads actually translate to higher quality and importantly more reliable tv show production, i wouldn't mind a youtube-level of advertisements.

Now that is all being said from within our current reality of a capitalist society. i am still in favour of burning it all down 🙏

#please be nice to me #i swear im not a corporate shill 😭

[canmom]

since this seems to be my topic of obsession for today...

turns out Bluesky internally uses content-based addressing and IPFS. I don't have a lot of use for it since it's a Twitter clone, and I've never got on very well with Twitter. Bluesky hides most of that from the user - it looks just like any old web app backed by a central server. i need to look into this more, Bluesky is taking inspiration from IPFS but it's using its own protocol, and it is doing some good things. I think its protocols could be used for something more Tumblr-like.

there's a protocol called PubSub which sounds like it does a lot of what I want, or rather gives you the low-level framework to broadcast info across a decentralised network. you could build a social network on top of that. IPFS uses it as one way of handling mutable data, like 'my website just updated'.

there's an absolute plethora of ideas, protocols, and tools for decentralised file sharing, decentralised messaging, decentralised social networks. this broad idea space is very much the hot new thing at the moment. some of them seem like they're growing. a lot of them have glossy websites with animations and stock photos of smiling people. it's hard to know in advance what's worth paying attention to. the whole field is dense with acronyms and rather abstruse concepts. which unfortunately means the current audience tends to be limited to tech nerds (c'est moi) and crypto cultists (ce n'est pas moi. merde!).

Briar is a protocol I find personally very appealing. it's security-oriented, designed to be crazy resilient, creating a mesh network through whatever protocols are available. you use it for E2E-encrypted messaging, but also you can use it for threaded discussions and blogs. right now it's only available for phones but they're working on a desktop version. the primary use case seems to be like "you're at a protest and the gov shuts off the internet", but it would be a very sexy place to put your blog. that said, I expect it would not be very fast at all.

the major encryptable, decentralised Discord/IRC alternative is Matrix. I broadly like the look of it, but we have the same problem of inertia getting people to switch from Discord, and there's still some jank I encountered when I tried it.

there's a lot of cryptocurrency in this whole area. (not surprising since the underlying tech of crypto is also hash-based, and there's ideological overlap between crypto and torrent people, because 'decentralised').

notably, there's a companion project to IPFS, a complicated scheme called FileCoin which is designed to encourage people to host data for a certain period in return for FileCoin tokens. you get FileCoins for consistently holding onto the data, and you lose a stake of FileCoins if you delete it prematurely. these FileCoins can then be used mainly to pay other people to host data for you: you pay FileCoins to a host, and pay them again to fetch your data(!). or you can trade them for other cryptocurrencies.

I'll acknowledge it doesn't seem as intrinsically environmentally corrosive as proof-of-work crypto, or even as simply 'the rich get richer' as proof-of-stake crypto. it's not filling up HDDs with random crap either. though it does sound like it requires quite a bit of CPU work to be done in all the hashing for the 'sealing' process.

I'm still not entirely convinced of the benefit this scheme brings. crypto stuff has a tendency to go belly-up very abruptly when speculative bubbles pop, so I wouldn't be super excited to rely on FileCoin for archiving some valuable bit of data. of course any offsite backup carries risk, e.g. Dropbox could go bankrupt one day. but I'm way less convinced of the benefits of something like FileCoin than IPFS. I guess it remains to be seen if this takes off.

#computer science #ipfs

[shittykawagirl97]

1899 and Black Silence: plagiarism or not plagiarism?

The funniest thing on the internet right now is the accusation of plagiarism towards 1899, and I say it sarcastically.

Yesterday my boyfriend sent me the Reddit post about Mary Cagnin accusing 1899 and Netflix of plagiarism, not only because I am a fan of the series but because I am studying Communications and contemporary media for creative industries at university.

After I approached the news as a fan, I recollect my emotions –plagiarism is a huge deal for someone in my field of study – and I approached it with analytical eyes.

First of all, I went to read Mary Cagnin's tweets. While reading them, they seemed based on true accusations but the thing that didn't add up was the fact that she approached the situation in a very strange way: if I will ever notice that a worldwide TV show was based on my work without my consent, fuck all, I'm going to call my lawyer and put down that show whatever it takes. It was strange for me that she didn't do that and just decided to post it on Twitter.

At this point, I had only one thing to do, go and read Black Silence to see what were the similarities myself. Spoiler from here on.

1) The pyramid. There is a pyramid in both shows but that's where the similarities stop. The pyramid in 1899 is a device to control the end of the simulation, in which the characters find themselves. In the comic, the pyramid is a monolith nearer Kubrick's 2001: A space Odessy monolith than 1899's black pyramid.

2) The triangles in the eyes of the character. Yes, this point is very similar, I have to say it, but it's totally different altogether. In Black Silence, the triangles appear when the character becomes entirely subjugated to the Black pyramid voices, they start to lose control of who they are and do. In 1899 the pyramid only flashes in the eyes of the character only for a few seconds when the simulation tries to wake them up, tries to make them feel that something is wrong with where they are. (I interpreted it this way.)

3) Multinational crew and space setting. Both works have these, such as Star Trek, Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, and whatever sci-fi tv show you can think about. They are two fucking tropes that everyone who writes science fiction use, I'm writing a thesis about Star Trek and how its multinational crew in space was a social shock in 1966's America and 1976's Italy. Repeat after me: "USING SIMILAR TROPES IS NOT PLAGIARISM", even so in this context.

Black Silence's crew is multinational but they were selected based on individual fields of expertise and they communicate in the same language because they need to communicate for the good of the mission. In 1899 the crew is multinational for chance, at least at the start of the show. They board a ship to go to America and the languages they know are the ones they needed during their life. Multinationalism and multilingualism in 1899 are a disadvantage for everyone and everything, it studies the language barriers and what they implicate in the society.

As I said before, almost every sci-fi tv show has a space setting. Did we have to call plagiarism on everyone? No, because it's only a setting that anyone can use whenever he/she/them wants. If we want to point fingers at all costs: 1899's final is so much more similar to the ending of the USA version of Life on Mars (2008) than Black Silence.

4) The deaths. Now, what can I say about this? That Black Silence death remembers me more of Doctor Who's "42" (3x07) death than 1899? The suicides in the comic are real for the character, they die at that moment and do not come back. In 1899 they are literally deleting strings of a program, they moving files to the waste bin: the simulation has finished and they are deleting all the data to start again.

5) The symbols. In 1899 the triangles are comparable to machine code, it's a language used to communicate while being in a simulation. The Black Silence symbols aren't explained and personally, I thought of Doctor Who's "The Impossible Planet" (2x08) when I saw them drawn.

In conclusion, no, 1899 is not copied off Black Silence. Do they have similar tropes and aesthetic choices? Yes, but that's not plagiarism. Or is the comic creator's distress caused by the show. There are a lot of stories based on spaceships, whit multinational crews and can I skip how many times the triangle and the pyramids are used in sci-fi? Just to mention one movie, Stargate (1994) where the spaceship is a pyramid that came to Earth a lot of time ago, aliens possess human bodies and the triangle is the symbol of the Earth.

You can't stay on social media and believe everything you read as true without searching for information on that topic.

I don't really know why the author tweeted about this. I have my theories, but they are that and nothing more. What really scares me about the situation is the people's reactions.

You can't spread hate like it's salt on fried potatoes.

You have an entire universe in your hand every single day, use it with caution, please. On the other side of your screen there are still real people with emotions.

#1899 netflix #1899 plagiarism #black silence #plagiarism #netflix #how to read news online #sometimes all it takes is five minutes #1899 spoilers #1899 series #analysis #university of parma #italy #communication and contemporary media for creative industries

[bodybeyondstories]

dicks keep growing around me - 1 (Myron)

(I couldn't get this phrase out of my head and I thought it was funny, so I'm seeing where it leads.)

Until recently, Myron was oblivious to the fact that dicks would get mysteriously bigger the longer someone hung out with him. He begins putting the pieces together as his boss, Miguel, starts going through all too familiar changes below the belt.

2 - Next

“Dicks keep growing around you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Or at least I think. It’s not exactly an airtight theory, but there are some examples.”

“And it just…happens,” responded my supervisor Miguel.

“Apparently.”

“And it’s happening to me?”

“Pretty sure.”

So I have a theory. Maybe just a hunch, I don’t know. And I’m not doing it on purpose, but I’m pretty sure I’m the cause. For lack of a better way of saying, dicks keep growing around me. And I don’t mean chubbing up, I mean literally growing. Like adding on real, tangible inches with no end in sight. It’s very slow, and I think it comes down to how often we’re in close proximity, but if you spend enough time around me, you may end up with more, sometimes much more, below the belt. I don’t have any idea how this works, but I wish I did. I’m still just piecing clues together.

So I guess Exhibit A would be my boss, Miguel. I do a lot of temporary contract work, which isn’t ideal, but allows me to string together rent while working on some of my own creative freelance stuff. I was hired onto this project six months ago to restructure the data management system of a small, local startup and they miscalculated the resultant shift in office space. After a series of awkward corners and at least one broom closet, they decided to just stick me in Miguel’s office. Miguel requested it actually. He figured I would be of more use working in tandem with him than I would blocking everyone’s path to the bathroom. 

I was less than pleased to look like his makeshift corner secretary, and honestly I’ve dealt with much worse, but he didn’t mind. In fact, he seemed to welcome the company. Miguel kept a tight beard and even tighter fade, always perfectly put together in what looked like one-step-below-designer business casual, with the cherry on top being the neon purple and green barefoot shoes he tended to wear to work. I would’ve been annoyed if not for the fact that he was a genuinely nice, thoughtful guy, and more than just a captivating smile. Plus, I came around on his use of a balance ball chair once I was introduced to his tight butt clad in well fitting slacks. Not that I ever really thought about him that way.

So we shared a space and had a congenial enough dynamic. We both had similar tastes in some of the experimental music scene locally and would even go out to some shows together. Also he’s a self professed menswear expert and started systemically giving my wardrobe a much needed overhaul. So I found it odd when his usual form fitting, modern pants began to lose their flair.

At one point, he chalked it up to seasonal shifts, trying out some new, looser looks for the spring. Not to mention baggier, boxier styles had been taking the place of slim fit jeans and tight shirts, at least according to him. A few times he texted me in the morning, saying he was running late because of a ‘wardrobe malfunction,’ which I never thought much of. I had come to expect him cycling through three or four outfit changes before he finally made it out. 

For a while it seemed like he might’ve just been getting the wrong fit, since he developed a habit of adjusting his crotch often, or even wincing slightly when he sat down too hard. And I had had multiple friends and partners with similar issues, so offered some tailoring tips, but he didn’t want to dwell on it.

I got a good idea why when we went to a show together one evening. A DJ we both liked was playing a set at a warehouse on a Thursday night, and we figured we had to go. We’d bring a change of clothes, work late on Thursday, then roll into the office late Friday morning. We could even call it a team meeting or professional development or something. 

The show was euphoric. I felt like I was rising up and outside of myself as our bodies bounced on the packed dance floor, in so small part due to the haze of surprisingly strong drinks and party drugs. While Miguel seemed to be enjoying it, he was still preoccupied with the constant need to readjust his crotch. I had seen him in this pair of skinny leather pants–his ass alone was unforgettable–but they seemed especially constricting. 

“Told you you’d look great in those pants,” came Miguel’s familiar voice in my ear. He never missed an opportunity to brag about being my personal stylist, but I had to admit I looked better than expected. However, I didn’t expect Miguel’s strong hands to linger on my hips, nor did I expect myself to close the rest of the gap between us. I’d been catching guys checking us out all night and I was feeling myself, so I thought Fuck it, as we began grinding to the rhythm. Maybe it was the fantasy of the moment or whatever I was on, but the bulge in Miguel’s pants felt major, and his crotch was radiating heat.  

Suddenly, Miguel’s hands tensed up and he pulled away, his hand trailing against my lower back as he turned to leave. I asked if he was doing alright and he sputtered something about needing to piss, quickly disappearing into the crowd. I didn’t think much of it, and quickly got lost in the crush of moving bodies, and more than a few lingering caresses just below my hips. To say I was getting hot and bothered was an understatement and eventually I realized that I also needed to relieve myself, aiming in the vague direction of the bathroom but quickly getting lost in the crush of the crowd. Eventually I stumbled into a back alley, a rush of chill spring night air hitting my lungs as the party thumped through the wall behind me.

I turned my head at the sound of a deep sigh of visceral relief, looking to the left to see Miguel, eyes closed and head thrown back as he pissed loudly against the side of the wall. I wasn’t exactly in my right mind, and didn’t stop myself from glancing at his cock, which, semisoft, was hanging halfway down to his knees, jiggling comically as he shook off the last drops. It wasn’t just massive, it was beautiful, majestic under the streetlight, draped in shadow by Miguel’s outstretched arm, other hand bracing against the wall.

“Sorry,” he said, making me quickly realize that while my eyes were hyperfocused on his schlong, his were on me watching me hyperfocus on his schlong. “There was a line to the bathroom and it was about to be a photo finish,” a slight smile turning up his lips as he saw me finally draw my eyes away from his stunning dick.

“I, uh, was just about to join you,” I replied, deliberately keeping my eyes on his as he struggled to fit his prodigious cock back into his pants, by some miracle getting the zipper up after a few tries.

The awkwardness must’ve been my own anxious imagination, as the next day at work he actually seemed more relaxed than he had in a while, his bubble butt perched on his exercise ball chair as he sat with a leisurely spread, his bulge plainly visible. I guess the secret’s out, I thought. At least between us.

—

When the summer sun had come to stay, and my contract was wrapping up, he proposed an office hiking trip at one of his favorite trails, a moderately strenuous 3.5 mile track that led to an impressive waterfall tucked away just outside the city. I hadn’t been, but was familiar with it because my roommate, Ty, worked in the kitchen at a bar nearby that was kind of the post-hike spot. My apartment, according to Miguel, was “on the way” to the trailhead. I begged to differ, but he insisted on the kind gesture of giving me a lift, until we reached the compromise of me getting a ride home with Ty when their shift ended. So Miguel picked me up from my place, decked out in hiking boots, thick socks, a breezy short sleeve button down, and some five inch linen shorts with a sizable bulge. I had already caught a glimpse of his dick, so I wasn’t surprised by what looked like rolled up tube socks tucked into his crotch, but this looked bigger than I remembered. 

And I don’t think I was the only one who noticed either. Miguel was certainly the center of attention when we met up with the others at the trailhead, albeit delightfully oblivious in his excitement to take us on this outing. And it looked like I may have missed the memo about the dress code. All the other guys were wearing similar short shorts, showing off their own respectable bulges–though not as impressive as Miguel’s.

As we set off down the trail, Miguel took an early lead, looking like he had no intention of slowing down. As we settled into a rhythm, I found myself consistently a few steps behind him–admiring more than the view of the scenery–with the rest of the group farther back but still within earshot. I began to think that Miguel should’ve stuck to the breezy bottoms he had fallen into wearing, because he was constantly adjusting the hem of his shorts as they dug into his meaty quads. At times, he seemed visibly uncomfortable. 

As we reached a bend in the trail with a makeshift bench, we decided to take a breather and let the others catch up. Miguel’s shirt was glued to the middle of his back by a trail of sweat that ran down to his butt crack. I had trouble noticing anything else as he bent over and rested his hands on his knees, pushing his tight butt in my direction as he caught his breath.

From behind, the crotch of his pants looked overstuffed and straining at the seams. I thought it must have been my exhausted brain and overactive imagination until with a soft rip, the crotch of his shorts gave out, his dick gracefully bobbing two thirds of the way to his knees, definitely bigger than before and paired with some proportionately huge nuts. Miguel, his cock now freed of its constraints, let out a sigh of relief before apparently coming to the realization of the cool breeze on his oversized genitals. 

Hearing the others approaching, I sprang into action, pushing him off the trail and just behind a stand of bushes, hoping passers by would assume he was relieving himself and keep moving. 

“Sorry,” he said. “I brought up a backup pair just in case, give me one second.”

“A backup pair?” I asked, wanting to respect his privacy but also betraying my own fascination with this super dick that I had now been introduced to twice.

“Yeah, I thought I wouldn’t have an issue yet with these pants, but wanted to be careful.”

“What do you mean issue?” I asked. “And what do you mean yet?”

“I don’t know, I think I need to see somebody about this, it’s like–” he was cut off by one of their co-workers catching up to them on the trail. He quickly finished changing and stuffed his cock back in his shorts, shooting me a brief look of thanks.

—

Thankfully, the rest of the outing passed without incident. We actually had a great time, and Miguel was certainly correct about the waterfall being worth the aggravation. A few of the guys even waded in to cool off, inadvertently revealing some very heavy bulges through the thin, wet fabric of their shorts. Miguel hung back. 

We got drinks afterward and it was obvious Miguel was a post-hike usual. As the afternoon wore on to evening, everyone fell away slowly, until it was just the two of us. He insisted on hanging around until Ty could take me home, and I would’ve staunchly refused if not for how much I enjoyed his company–and how he would’ve stayed against my wishes anyways.

He hadn’t really been drinking–concerned about everyone else having a good time, in typical Miguel fashion–but I had maybe had more than I should. During a lull in the conversation, he leaned in slightly and said “Thanks for the save back there. Would’ve never lived it down at work.” 

“To be honest, I was not expecting all that,” I said, trying to be careful not to push boundaries too far too fast. 

“Honestly, me neither,” Miguel responded, his eyes widening slightly as he glanced into the distance. “TMI, but I’ve been kind of having a late growth spurt the last six months. Or something.”

And well, this is when the pieces finally started to come together. I had had hunches and musings over the years about my propensity to meet some truly noteworthy cocks, but something deep in my brain felt compelled to ask “When did it start?”  

With a thoughtful look in his eye, he glanced at me and said, “Around when you showed up. You might be my lucky charm.”

This is when it finally clicked.

#male tf #dick growth #bodybeyond

[elbiotipo]

Now that I get into it, there must be a rather big cultural and social difference between spacers and planet-bound people (I'm calling them sedentarios in Spanish) in my Campoestela universe. The key here is that there is no FTL radio or communication. Urgent communication is done by fast "mail ships" which bring data packages and parcels, but it still takes weeks (months?) to reach one end of the Campoestela to the other, even more if you're outside the main aetheric currents.

The thing is this means that planetary communities are rather isolated from each other. They probably develop their own dialects and cultures quickly, and while they are not disconnected from the rest of the Campoestela there's a tendency toawards regionalism. It's possible that two planets with the same *ethnic* background might have mutually unintelligible langauges, despite belonging to the same space alliance or nation.

Another intersting thing, however, is that they would have internet and radio. For sure, there are tech differences (and there's a whole economic theory to this, not just because I decided oh this world will have a tech level of such), but telecommunications are a vital tech and I don't see any planet losing them, in fact if they don't have it they would try to build it. This means that, interestingly, life in a planet is much faster and tightly-knit than in space; in space, news takes days to flow and a email might take weeks to get answered, but in a planet, you will get news, memes, and contact instantly. Also, it is likely most settlements in planets are close to each other, surrounding the initial settlement. Interestingly, planetary life will be much faster than spacer life.

Meanwhile, spacers would live a more slow life, gathering news every time they stop by a world. However, since my setting assumes there are some languages spacers know in general (there is NO universal translator) there would be a "spacer culture" which varies from region to region but has some broad strokes. Much like real world mariners, spacers would find themselves at unease on "land" sometimes, with every port being different from what they're accostumed to and life on land having a faster pace than long weeks in the aether, disconnected from everything. Of course, this also depends if they are those "free" spacers who make their whole lives in space, crossing from one end of Campoestela to the other, or those who work for established companies or states or other organizations and operate in established routes.

#cosas mias #campoestela #there are also the generations ships that preserve old cultures because of how tightly-knit they are #but at the same time they are not isolated in fact they were the ones that kept interstellar trade before faster ships overtook them

[rainbow-nijisaki]

How about 13 and 16 for the TWEWY ask game?

13. what would you like to see in the future of the series?

First and foremost, my wish is that the series continues to be beloved and thus kept relevant by its fanbase, even if we don't receive anything new. I'm not incredibly hopeful for new entries, but that's not entirely a bad thing (and considering NEO's 14-year gap, anything could happen, so I won't say the chance is zero!). That said, I feel generally the same way about any potential sequels as I did when the "new 7 days" was first announced - I don't really want a sequel for sequel's sake, but if the team has an idea they want realized, I'd love to see it. That's one of the reasons I so wanted NEO to happen - because I had a distinct feeling the original "new 7days" project had been cancelled, and I'd always wondered about that idea that never saw light.

As for more specific and self-indulgent answers, the things I'd want most if I had infinite money and could fund the team myself:

TWEWY Prequel: This was my number one want before NEO. The original game concluded nicely, so most of its loose ends lie in the past. Joshua's rise to Composerhood is a fascinating topic, along with Kariya's hints about a previous long game occurring in the past and his familiarity with taboo noise. There's just enough information there to suggest the team knew more about all this than what they ultimately chose to share, and it kills me a little that we'll likely never know what exactly they were thinking when they wrote that. In all honesty, I still want this game, but it faces some competition from -

The Shinjuku Story: This one I mostly want because I feel like most of the story has to exist already somewhere - it almost feels like a missing entry in the series. I think I'd like to see this as a "Neku's adventures with Coco as they investigate Shinjuku and uncover the story of what led to its destruction" game, but a split timeline would also be nice. My guess is you'd play as Tsugumi during the pre-inversion sections in that case. I really, really would like a twewy prequel, but between this and that, I feel this one is in more dire need of telling. Part of the reason NEO is so convoluted is because they're trying to allude to an entire game's worth of backstory that doesn't actually exist in any other format. (On a side note, in an alternate universe I'd have liked NEO to be split between Neku in Shinjuku w/ Coco and Tsugumi, and Rindo's group working with Beat in Shibuya. Minamimoto could be on either side depending on what role Coco has for him. It'd feel a bit more relevant to AND that way, and be able to tell the Shinjuku story without losing the Shubuya tie that the team deemed necessary.)

Should they determine they're never going to make any new entries in the series, I really want a data book. I'd love to see all the plot bits that never made it into writing (which I assume they won't share now on the off-chance they do use the IP again). Novelizations of the two aforementioned plotlines would also be very welcome as an alternative to full games.

This is less of an actual want and more of a pipe dream, but I think it'd be neat to see the original remade in the style of NEO. I don't think it's quite possible to replicate what made the original's gameplay special on systems that aren't the DS / 3DS, so that ship has sailed - so a re-invention of the battle system to work in a single-screen 3D space could be a lot of fun and very stylish. Would it be as good as the original? I don't know. But it sure would look cool.

Please, please let Sora make good on his promise to see Neku in Shibuya in KH4, I'll actually buy the game if you do SE. Even better if it's NEO Neku. And let Neku bring his friends so I can finally have a 3D NEO Joshua model to spin around and get a reference for that hairstyle facing right I'm begging you SE

16. any pet peeves – gameplay mechanics, story details, missed pun opportunities, etc?

The original game is absolutely perfect except in one regard.

Where are my threads macros???

I'm willing to forgive it for the original DS version but I really would have liked to have them added to Final. We have four pin sets, but for a game heavy on fashion (especially with the brand chart mechanic) we have to manually change threads piece-by-piece. And read through all the descriptions again and again looking for that one effect...again. I think I played with equipment sets a lot less than I would have otherwise because of this.

But fine, Final is an enhanced port so I'll forgive it too.

But then we get NEO, a brand new, modern RPG in the year 2021...

And we still. Do not. Have. Threads macros.

Ugh.

-

Another big one for me (but probably more personal) is the total loss of ground-Joshua in Solo and Final remix once you unlock levitation. I understand that, unfortunately, switching mid-combat wouldn't really work anymore, but I would have at least liked a toggle in a menu somewhere.

"But Yoshaiya," you say, "why do you need that? What insane person would actually use ground combat Joshua once you unlock the vastly superior god-powers-angel-beam-flinging-levitating-actually can kill things Joshua-"

I would. I do not need to elaborate.

-

I'm not going to get into story details pet peeves since surely you're tired of reading this by now and wondering when I'm finally going to shut up - I'll just quietly note that while I do love both games, I do have some story nitpicks regarding NEO. But that's not something I want to get into right now. I'd rather not discuss my misgivings without also going into what I like about it, and most likely, neither you nor I have time for that essay right now. (Also, before I say anything about what I like / don't like regarding NEO's writing, I'd definitely want to give it another replay.)

As a minor one though...I would have liked to see more familiar faces among NEO's minor cast. Shibuya's a big town and always changing, but it's almost sad how the old faces are just...gone, three years later. Off the top of my head, I remember Eiji Oji and Ken Doi, and K-1 Okada from J of the M...and that's it. I'm actually kind of hoping I overlooked someone at this point. This isn't actually a pet peeve, mind, just...a missed opportunity I'm a little bummed about.

#answered ask game #gramoturtle #I apologize I am incapable of succinct answers #twewy spoilers #ntwewy spoilers #time for a scan

[hamncheddar]

I miss IRL streaming. I’m gonna put this rig back to use next week while I have a visitor in town. In my experience, IRL streaming doesn’t have to look bad on a phone. Here’s some nerd shit about IRL streaming and why I have my setup the way that I do.

The standard for IRL these days is a LiveU encoder with a few 4G/5G modems connected to it. The benefit of this setup is not only using multiple connections, but it allows you to max out the quality of the camera you use for IRL. It allows you to use anything from a GoPro to a DSLR / Mirrorless camera for IRL. The liveU takes that camera’s HDMI or SDI output and sends it over the connections of the modems to a destination: typically a server somewhere that is running streaming software like you would at home to stream on Twitch or YouTube. Using this server (IRLToolkit for example) adds the benefit of automatically switching scenes to a "be right back" scene if your internet connection ever dips on the go. While this is the "standard" for IRL, the barrier for entry is pretty steep. The LiveU alone will run you $1k new, maybe $700-$800 used. Then, for it to be even worth the investment, you'd want to bridge at least two modem's connections which can be anywhere north of $40 a month per modem. That intermediate server will also run you a decent amount of money per month. I haven't sworn off the idea of adopting this standard some time in the future but for now, I am running a setup on a phone that has admittedly gotten to the point where I should have just done so ages ago. I use my iPhone 12 pro max for IRL, but on that phone I use an app called Prism to stream to IRLToolkit (just like the big boys do) over RTMP, rather than just streaming directly to twitch from, say, the streamlabs app. The video quality on an iPhone 13 pro max holds up to that of a high quality camera, as long as the right software and tinkering is behind it. The audio codec and noise cancellation on Prism do a good job with keeping the audio crisp, but I've recently made the addition of DJI's new lav mic system. I have yet to test this live, but I have used it just in the iPhone's camera app and it sounds great. Then, there is the gimbal. I am currently running the DJI osmo moblie 5. A lightweight stabilizer is something that even those running the LiveU setup don't have. On the left, I have an old pixel 3 running chat, alerts, and the IRLToolkit dashboard all at the same time. Since this requires very little data, this is doable just with a pay-as-you-go SIM card. Lastly, the box jutting off on the left is a LumeCube that is mounted in a cold shoe mounting block. This is just a small LED panel that I can spin away or toward me to keep my subject lit. Not pictured: I've got a JBL clip speaker to strap to my chest, which runs alerts and TTS (which I get in trouble for in public all the time. Shoutout to the guy who played a TTS out loud while I was in the security line at TwitchCon Amsterdam saying I volunteered for a cavity search). All said and done, the Gimbal costs $140, the extra phone plan costs maybe $30 a month depending on usage. The (unnecessary) mic system is $300. I do have a discount on the intermediate server with IRLToolkit because I know the guy who runs it (sue me - it's normally $120 a month and I won't say what I pay). You could run this same setup on the Prism app to stream directly to Twitch or YouTube, so the intermediate server service can be avoided (at the cost of your stream possibly going down when you lose connection). The upfront cost is really low and the ongoing cost is also relatively low. For someone that wants a better-than-average IRL setup, I think that going down a route like this or similar is something people should explore. It requires the least amount of knowledge for a relatively low amount of money. If you want to watch this stuff in action, as well as my studio space where I run my own twitch production full time - I'm live at http://www.twitch.tv/hamncheddar ched.tv for other socials

#streaming #irl streaming #irl #twitch #youtube #streamer #camera equipment #live stream #dji gimbal #steadycam #5g services #technology #hamncheddar #dji #rtmp #dji osmo mobile 6 #audiophile #dslr #mirrorless #cameras #gopro #iphone13promax #iphone 13 #twitch partner

[team-frustration-boss-zakuyamo]

(@swagtastic-bougie-pompadour )

[Zakuyamo was at a podium in academy's gymnasium. He was about to give a presentation to the whole academy on abandoned pcs. He seemed nervous, but his ragtag team of pokemon were there to comfort him]

Testing...testing....okay it's on

Uhh...hello there students of the Academy. Some of you may know me as the dropout-turned-arsonist/PC hacker...or whatever you know me as.

With the permission from the academy, I have this presentation made to spread awareness of Abandoned PCs

[He fumbles with a slide clicker before a slide of a PC is on the big smart board]

As we all may know, pcs store pokemon that we catch and don't have enough free space. And there can be close to 1,000 pokemon in a single pc.

The issue is that when a person moves to different regions, the box data isn't transfered due to different PC servers, and there is no programming in the pcs to release the pokemon inside, and this is sad, especially when the original owners pass away, leaving the pokemon in the pc, and It's an even bigger issue with pokemon eggs, as they never hatch.

So I decided to make what I call-

[Slide moves to the RPC]

The Reverse Poke-Computer, or RPC.

Now it looks like a piece junk, and it constantly breaks down, but it hacks into the servers to extract pokemon and eggs out of the PCs and dispenses it either in a new pokeball, or dispenses the egg.

Now the eggs are usually lucky and are usually healthy, however...

[He tosses a ball as the Chonky Dunsparce comes out]

The pokemon trapped inside usually lose experience in the world or become sickly and overweight. Take this Dunsparce for example. He's a bit fat, and when I rescued him, he attempted to dig, though he left half his body above the ground. These rescued pokemon can't be released into the wild because they don't have skills anymore. So I set up an adoption center in my new home near the gates of Mesagoza.

And I would like to mention is that what I do I'd mega illegal. But of course, I don't really care.

That's my presentation, and now I'm gonna pass out from stage fright...

[Right on cue, he faints]

#pkmn irl #pokemon irl #pokeblogging #irl pkmn #team frustration #pokemon #team frustration zakuyamo #first time properly writing something

[differentfandomsandthings]

(Tbb s2 e11 spoilers down below)

Oh! Nice intro! Love the creepy alien, dead space vibe!

A commando❤!!!!

Wow ok, we're back on Daro. Wasn't expecting that until the season finale, interesting. They just transferred a new scientist to Mt Tantiss.

Oh!! They have Nala Se locked up?!😳 I wasn't expecting that. I thought she'd already be in a lab somewhere working😲 I guess it makes sense though. She ain't happy the empire destroyed her civilization. Why would she help them.

Loving all these Commandos 🥰

New scientist is named Dr. Hemlock. It seems him and Nala Se go way back.

Oh Crap! Lama Su ain't dead! He's on Coruscant in jail!

Ok I have a prediction. Lama Su is going to tell them about clone force 99, more specifically Omega. They are going to capture her somehow not only because she's probably the key to what Palpatine needs for his cloning operation but because it will make Nala Se cooperate. Maybe🤔

Ohhh! The batch are pissed at Cid! Even Omega. Cid offered a new job and they're like "we ain't doing it for no 30% give us 50%👏"

Hunter to Cid: What makes you think we'd come back at all?..Yes! They are thinking about leaving her. Maybe this will be the last fetch quest. I'm glad they kept this thinking, I was worried the writers were going to let the batch brush off what Cid did.

Tech suggests not to burn bridges with her considering all she knows about them. Let this be the final job. Which makes sense.

Omega: there's a village here. I get the feeling we're going to see that scene from the trailer of the commandos rounding up people.

Lol Tech remembered to lock the ship. I'm sure it's triple locked after what happened 😆

Tech: something bad happened here

Hunter: whatever did this isn't human

Tech: let's split up🤓

Omega: are you serious?

Tech: don't worry sis I'll be fine

😑

Omega recognizes Kaminoan medical and cloning technology but its a little different.

Definitely getting alien vibes! What the heck is that!! It seems to feed off electricity. That's always good😟

Nice creepy music

Yep electricity makes it bigger and stronger

And now it's lose headed for the village of course

Hunter: we let it lose, we have to kill it

Tech: considering it probably ate the crew I doubt it's hungry

Omega: IT ATE THE CREW!😨 goes to Wrecker to feel safe.

Wrecker: comforts Omega, "how is that helpful Tech😑😑"

Omega : it ate the crew😨

It's a Zilo Beast!!!!! Yesss! I'm glad they finally came back to that! It seems the Kaminoans were helping Palpatine clone it. Makes sense.

Here comes the empire! I guess this is where we get that Hunter flying the Marauder scene...yep😃

Ok, why is the empire shooting at the Marauder and not THE GIANT ZILO BEAST!?

Ahhh! We got the Tech saving Omega from the explosion scene!!!

So glad they made it out but now I think the Empire knows the batch are alive. Or maybe not, they only saw the ship not the crew. Idk😬

Yep, we got the scene of the commandos rounding up people. The empire's probably going to kill all the innocent villagers 😔

They are going to send the data of the zilo beast to Echo and Rex!! Does that mean next episode might be about them looking into it!! Are we going to get a Rex and Echo mission episode!!??👀

Oh my gosh is that Scorch?! If it is he totally snitched on the batch saying a ship got away😨 he has been ordered to find out who it was😬😬

Oh man the batch are in trouble now..all because of a salvage mission...that they didn't complete btw

Lama Su you snitch!!!! I knew it!!! I freaking knew he was going to snitch to save his own skin! He's telling them to get Omega!! To make Nala Sa cooperate!!

Oh my gosh!! This episode was so good!! So much happened. Clone commandos, Nala Se, Lama Su, Zilo Beast, the batch probably leaving Cid, Scorch being ordered to hunt down the batch, and the empire hunting down Omega!!! I'm so worried now!! What's going to happen next?! Please don't kill anyone!😬

I think all the scenes from the trailer has been show now. So from this point on its all new.

Also, with the empire hunting the batch now, I wonder if Cid is going to betray them? They've kinda been hinting at it but she could surprise us and prove her loyalty this one time...I'm not holding my breath though 😒

This episode gave me more than I expected and I'm loving it! Excited to see what next weeks "The Outpost" episode is all about. Please be Echo and Rex mission please be Echo and Rex mission😣

Well off to look at The Mandalorian now :D We eating good today!

#star wars #the bad batch #tbb spoilers #the bad batch season 2 #zilo beast #republic commando #scorch maybe #nala se #lama su #im so worried now guys! #they are in trouble #also where is Crosshair

[tacticalhimbo]

CS/CS/HB 3: Online Protections for Minors - Florida's New Surveillance Law

Now, I know many of you are looking at the title and raising defenses over my framing. But Jason, we care about minors! They should be safe online, don't you agree?

Absolutely I do.

However, this law will do nothing to actually make the online market "safer" for children and teens who use social media. It does not improve upon algorithms to make them less predatory. It does not instate safe, communicative spaces for online users, nor does it give them tools to avoid hate, harassment, and filter their experience.

It simply requires individuals to upload their personal, government identifications to verify their age, under the vague guise of "well, we told social media teams they have to delete the information within a certain time frame, and they legally can't sell the data." It erases anonymity for minors. Ties their online personas to their real identities, and makes it easier for bad actors to access this information.

But that aside, how else does it not protect youth? Well, it does not allow them access to queer spaces, as the State of Florida (and those representatives within it) have passed law after law sexualizing and dehumanizing the queer community. They have said that the mere act of "drag", watered down from its intrinsic art form to "dressing non-traditionally for one's gender", is considered sexual. Inappropriate for the public. They have said that simply existing within public spaces, as a trans* individual, is a crime. That daring to use the bathroom aligning with your presentation is the near equivalent of joining a criminal organization and kidnapping/sexually exploiting a child with the intent to traffic.

It uses the same, vague language as KOSA, the bill that, if signed and enacted, would require this type of personal data collection on the federal level.

Now, the ideal is to have a less predatory environment online, but we just cannot do that under capitalism. And any restrictions would be invasions of privacy by either 1) requiring an ID upload or 2) restricting account functions and monitoring activity through a probationary period (which is usually an overtly long period on purpose to encourage the former option).

Also, it's becoming funnier bc they're like "Nobody under 14"… most social medias have a 13+ policy, and you can't get a government ID in the state as a minor unless you have a parent present (I would know; I received a state ID at 16 to get a tattoo).

One thing I'm also looking at with this is the emphasis on parent permission and involvement. Are legal guardians going to have to upload their IDs to prove they're giving their child permission to use a site? Because it also says that parents can circumvent the child's account ownership and request the account be taken down if they feel they haven't given their permission for exposure to certain topics, but how do they know it's the parent? Is it an honors' system with an email address, or something more?

And what is harmful? Like I said, sexual content, sure, but also anything the state does not like. Example: Queer folk.

It's not explicit, but point 1 and point 2 fit the Florida view on queer folk.

"The average person applying contemporary community standards would find appeals to the prurient interest" (anything against the widely accepted social norm)

"Depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct" (doing drag, again, is considered lewd and laviscious, queer art is considered lewd and laviscious, etc etc).

But it doesn't stop there. Any non-US social medias are exempt from this. You simply lose access to them if you cannot verify your age, because these laws do not apply to non-US entities:

And the terms for punishment, which I do not have screencapped at the moment, are vague. The bill says the responsibility falls upon the corporation, but what happens then? Are corporations obliged to report any users violating this law to the State? Where do internet service providers (ISPs) fall into this?

This law is not for kids; it's the testing ground for total media suppression. It will be enforced that way, just as various other bills in Florida have been, and it will become the new national norm. It will do so under a Republican presidency. It will do so under a Democratic presidency.

Florida is just ground zero, babes.

#txt #important #florida politics #long post #idk what else to tag this #and i could have gone more in depth but i just... i live this shit every day. i am not strong enough to be *the* beacon #if i find any better articles about it i will amend the post and post them too

[ddejavvu]

I dont know if you know about this new law that kight take effect its called the kosa act its a way to censor kids from ao3 wattpad and tumblr, they plan of banning and deleting these site forever, losing our fandom spaces and im trying to inform every fanfic writer i know bc your work is important and i dont want to let it go, we connect as a community with our obsessions no one else can understand im super sad and stressed out I just wanted you to know!

so this has been in the works in the US for several years now, under many different names, and that's not really what the bill does. the bill will hold websites legally accountable for what happens on them, most likely by removing data encryption and making everything you do online a lot less private. the safety aspect is this: websites shouldn't get away with taking no accountability for what happens on them. now that sounds like a perfect save the kids plan, until you realize that people are going to use it as LGBTQ+ slander. a mom can claim that her 13 year old child was sexually assaulted or scarred or damaged or exposed to sexually deviant content all because she found a gay AO3 fic on the kid's internet history. the bill is written using horribly vague language (on purpose, of course it's not accidental), and there's no doubt that, if it's passed, it'll wreak havoc because of that. but it's been proposed and denied a thousand times now, so i'm hoping that this is just another run of the mill 'old men who don't know how the internet work try changing the internet and fail miserably' scenario. i'm concerned, yes, but I think it would cause a LOT of unforeseen issues that these lawmakers themselves would suffer from and I don't think it would get very far the way it's written, at least. plus, there are a lot of people exposing it for what it really is, so i'm hoping that we can band together and stop it in its tracks, even if that seems unlikely or hopeless, as it often does.

#mei's mail

[muniesstuff]

The whole cannon event and universe collapsing things has got me thinking. Miguel's way of seeing time and space seems to be in a linear format, which doesn't make much sense. Because there are many variety and vast differences of spider people and their origin stories right.

(idk where I heard this or if this was discussed in a science class at one point). But the thing is that space and time are not linear. Rather, space and time run in a wave like flow, right. But there's also the factor that the universe has not, and as far as we know, it will not stop growing/expanding.

So, this would imply there is no set direction, a universe, or dimension must take. Because the universe has not stopped growing and changing, dimensions have not stopped growing and changing.

Then there's Miguel's whole reason of being jaded, bitter, guilt consumed, and traumatized. Aka, a universe collapsing on him for wanting to raise his daughter from another dimension. I really don't think that one man could be the cause of a whole universe collapse. There are trillions upon trillions of living and sentient creatures in any given universe. One person doing one change could not cause that severe level of damage to a universe. So, there had to be more at play as to why the universe that miguel chose to interfere in for it to collapse like that.

It's like nature. If something causes an environment to change, it's just nature reacting to various factors. Take a clown fish, for example. A female clown fish is the head of the school, and there is only one female clown fish. This is because the only way to have male clown fish is for the female to create a stressful environment. There are other species that change gender in response to their environment, lacking certain factors needed to continue the life cycle. So, if earth can do that, the universe can too.

But also, there is not enough data to prove that Miguel himself had cause that single collapse. There is not enough data on the difference and similarities between every spider person's universe. Like, difference in race, city, gender, orientation, family, friends, building, food, plants, colors, name, neighbors, and the entire population of earth. So, we don't know if there are set factors in every universe that had a shift or if only certain universe had certain factors while others have different factors.

If there are different spider people, then there have to be different factors and constructs in different universes. That can come to even the genetic makeup of the universe to the day cycle of the universe.

But if Miles was such a big anomaly, and his world had a spiderman, why didn't his universe collapse? I mean, a radioactive enhanced spider bite Miles and his spiderman days not far behind. And wouldn't the spider society interference cause a destabilization of the universe they interact in when its not their's??

It makes no sense how Miles becoming spiderman caused that big of a butterfly affect. To me, it even seems that Miles was his universe why of working with a shift happening rather than against it. "Peter Parker, this universe spiderman dies? No problem. I'll fix this immediately." That's what it feels like.

But there's also Spider Society basically saying that to be a spider, you have to lose a loved one to become a spider. But Peter got his power before his uncle died, and Miles origin story mimics that. Except, Miles uncle was a villain vs a regular guy.

So, Miles did love a loved one and sacrificed things that used to be his normal life to create his new norm. It's just that Miguel's equation and justication don't make sense to me.

Maybe I'm thinking about it the wrong way? Or just overthinking it in general? Just it feels like the whole spider society was a huge and minimum data/ researched bet.

#spiderverse #miguelohara #acrossthespiderverse #atsv #miles morales