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(Note: I am not paid by anyone to write this. Neither author suggested that I compare these two series. This was done entirely independently by someone who has read both.)
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Book Review: Fiber Magick by Opal Luna
Dec. 23rd, 2021 12:00 pmAs someone who enjoys knitting and crocheting, I'm always happy to try out new sources of patterns. As a Pagan, the allure of a Pagan crochet book was hard to resist. But is Fiber Magick everything I wanted? Find out under the cut!
( Read more... )
As a magical text, I give it a 4/10. As a pattern book, 9/10. Maybe buy it for that crafty Pagan in your life who's thinking of getting into crochet.
( Read more... )
As a magical text, I give it a 4/10. As a pattern book, 9/10. Maybe buy it for that crafty Pagan in your life who's thinking of getting into crochet.
The Pixie Pouch Belt, Part 1
Oct. 13th, 2021 07:44 amAfter perusing the tutorial on Morale Fiber, I decided to make my own Pixie Pocket Belt. Among other things, it will get me Mildly Disapproving Looks from the more historical sticklers at Camelot Days, which is my area's less-strictly-historical Rennaissance-Festival-type-thing. Meanwhile, the hippies will all immediately want one (which means I need to get creative about making more if there turns out to be local demand).
For the base, I used Urth Yarns' Uneek Chunky 3-Ply (now called Koozoo) in color 7006. (Because of the name change, the Uneek Chunky was on clearance at my local yarn store. Yay?) Urth Yarns plants a tree in Africa for every skein of yarn sold, which helps improve soil quality and prevent erosion, and I'm totally down with that. I went extra-bulky for 2 reasons.
1: to make the base up quicker, and
2: to finally use the N-13 (9mm) crochet hook that a friend destashed on me a couple years ago.
After working my foundation chain, I did 2 rows of straight-up dc in each stitch. Simple, quick, and super-funky with the way this yarn is dyed. (It's self-striping, and each bit is hand-dyed, so there are still bits of undyed white peeking out all over the yarn. Yay!)
The downside of using wool for crochet is that it's very stretchy, and sure enough, I now had something a whole foot longer than my waist! On the plus side, this meant I could use the dc's as buttonholes for small buttons.
I used a gray acrylic to make my chains for adding fabric later; it means it's not all natural fibers, but acrylic doesn't stretch nearly as much. Hopefully that will limit the stretch in the finished piece so it doesn't go flopping off while I'm wearing it.
Next up: pouches!
For the base, I used Urth Yarns' Uneek Chunky 3-Ply (now called Koozoo) in color 7006. (Because of the name change, the Uneek Chunky was on clearance at my local yarn store. Yay?) Urth Yarns plants a tree in Africa for every skein of yarn sold, which helps improve soil quality and prevent erosion, and I'm totally down with that. I went extra-bulky for 2 reasons.
1: to make the base up quicker, and
2: to finally use the N-13 (9mm) crochet hook that a friend destashed on me a couple years ago.
After working my foundation chain, I did 2 rows of straight-up dc in each stitch. Simple, quick, and super-funky with the way this yarn is dyed. (It's self-striping, and each bit is hand-dyed, so there are still bits of undyed white peeking out all over the yarn. Yay!)
The downside of using wool for crochet is that it's very stretchy, and sure enough, I now had something a whole foot longer than my waist! On the plus side, this meant I could use the dc's as buttonholes for small buttons.
I used a gray acrylic to make my chains for adding fabric later; it means it's not all natural fibers, but acrylic doesn't stretch nearly as much. Hopefully that will limit the stretch in the finished piece so it doesn't go flopping off while I'm wearing it.
Next up: pouches!
Stonewall Pride's 2021 theme is "Out of the darkness, into the light." It's gotten me thinking, and I feel that I have to say this. Forward it on, or don't. Think on it, or don't. I just need to get these words out of me and on the virtual page.
For much of the modern era, what we are was a crime. Sodomy laws in most of the world, mostly made and enforced by Europeans as they colonized as much of the globe as they could, made same-sex relations punishable by death. There were a few transgender people, but they mostly stayed under the radar, as it was assumed that you couldn't change your sex by most people. When Hitler rounded up people into death camps, there were special symbols for Jewish people, Romani, political prisoners--and homosexuals, who were given the pink triangle.
In 1945 the Allies liberated the residents of the camps, except for those with pink triangles, who were sent right back into prison. Because we were a crime.
Alan Turing, who broke the Enigma code, was gay. When this was discovered, and he was about to stand trial, he committed suicide rather than suffer the indignity of being sentenced to death for being himself.
In 1969, the gay nightclub Stonewall, a known scene for drag queens, gay men, and trans women, was raided by the police. Marsha P. Johnson, a black trans woman and sex worker, threw the first brick of the Stonewall riot. That was the first Pride.
Our parades began as riots. We took the pink triangle and adopted it for our own. We took slurs like "gay," "lesbian," and "queer" and wore them as badges of honor. As someone more eloquent than I once said, "We took the bricks that were thrown at us and built houses out of them."
And in all that confusion, I, as a teen in Alabama at the turn of the century, had to find my way without elder queers to help.
When I was a teenager, I was homophobic. So of course, the idea that I liked girls was ridiculous to me. Because I liked boys. Because "I only appreciate the aesthetics of a pretty girl; everyone does." Because I was Catholic.
At age 17, I was watching late-night TV, specifically TechTV's Wired For Sex episode about intersex people. One intersex person's journey was described with her finally deciding to live as a lesbian woman. At the time I was confused. "If she gets to choose what she is, why would she pick the one that's harder? Why not just be a straight man?" Gets to choose. As if gender were a prison that I was stuck inside of, but that she had been fortunate enough to escape.
At age 21, I realized that I actually was sexually attracted to women as much as I was to men. I knew I could never tell my parents. My father had made no secret of the fact that if his child said "Dad, I'm gay," they'd be sleeping on the streets that night.
When the fight for same-sex marriage became national news, I was on the right side of the fight. Because I'd realized that everyone who wants to get married deserves that right. That civil unions, while better than nothing, weren't the same as an outright marriage.
At age 30, I watched two friends get married on the first Valentine's Day after same-sex marriage finally became legal throughout the United States. I felt nothing but joy at seeing their love finally recognized after years.
At age 34, I finally discovered that I was genderfluid. My husband still denies it. He has never had reason to question his identity, has never had to hide an important part of himself from his own family. As a straight man, he's never had to think about it.
Some states are trying to pass laws to prevent same-sex couples from adopting children, to shut trans people out of public restrooms, to shut trans children out of school sports, to force us all back into the closet where they never have to see us or think about us. The "gay panic" defense for the murder of trans women is still legal in more states than not. And queer folks still have to fight for even the basic right of survival in some countries.
This Pride, let's celebrate those who have come through the other side of AIDS and COVID pandemics, through bigotry and suffering, to be here today; and honor those who didn't make it. Let's celebrate how far we've come, while looking forward at how much farther we have to go. Let's be people that Marsha P. Johnson would be proud to view as family.
For much of the modern era, what we are was a crime. Sodomy laws in most of the world, mostly made and enforced by Europeans as they colonized as much of the globe as they could, made same-sex relations punishable by death. There were a few transgender people, but they mostly stayed under the radar, as it was assumed that you couldn't change your sex by most people. When Hitler rounded up people into death camps, there were special symbols for Jewish people, Romani, political prisoners--and homosexuals, who were given the pink triangle.
In 1945 the Allies liberated the residents of the camps, except for those with pink triangles, who were sent right back into prison. Because we were a crime.
Alan Turing, who broke the Enigma code, was gay. When this was discovered, and he was about to stand trial, he committed suicide rather than suffer the indignity of being sentenced to death for being himself.
In 1969, the gay nightclub Stonewall, a known scene for drag queens, gay men, and trans women, was raided by the police. Marsha P. Johnson, a black trans woman and sex worker, threw the first brick of the Stonewall riot. That was the first Pride.
Our parades began as riots. We took the pink triangle and adopted it for our own. We took slurs like "gay," "lesbian," and "queer" and wore them as badges of honor. As someone more eloquent than I once said, "We took the bricks that were thrown at us and built houses out of them."
And in all that confusion, I, as a teen in Alabama at the turn of the century, had to find my way without elder queers to help.
When I was a teenager, I was homophobic. So of course, the idea that I liked girls was ridiculous to me. Because I liked boys. Because "I only appreciate the aesthetics of a pretty girl; everyone does." Because I was Catholic.
At age 17, I was watching late-night TV, specifically TechTV's Wired For Sex episode about intersex people. One intersex person's journey was described with her finally deciding to live as a lesbian woman. At the time I was confused. "If she gets to choose what she is, why would she pick the one that's harder? Why not just be a straight man?" Gets to choose. As if gender were a prison that I was stuck inside of, but that she had been fortunate enough to escape.
At age 21, I realized that I actually was sexually attracted to women as much as I was to men. I knew I could never tell my parents. My father had made no secret of the fact that if his child said "Dad, I'm gay," they'd be sleeping on the streets that night.
When the fight for same-sex marriage became national news, I was on the right side of the fight. Because I'd realized that everyone who wants to get married deserves that right. That civil unions, while better than nothing, weren't the same as an outright marriage.
At age 30, I watched two friends get married on the first Valentine's Day after same-sex marriage finally became legal throughout the United States. I felt nothing but joy at seeing their love finally recognized after years.
At age 34, I finally discovered that I was genderfluid. My husband still denies it. He has never had reason to question his identity, has never had to hide an important part of himself from his own family. As a straight man, he's never had to think about it.
Some states are trying to pass laws to prevent same-sex couples from adopting children, to shut trans people out of public restrooms, to shut trans children out of school sports, to force us all back into the closet where they never have to see us or think about us. The "gay panic" defense for the murder of trans women is still legal in more states than not. And queer folks still have to fight for even the basic right of survival in some countries.
This Pride, let's celebrate those who have come through the other side of AIDS and COVID pandemics, through bigotry and suffering, to be here today; and honor those who didn't make it. Let's celebrate how far we've come, while looking forward at how much farther we have to go. Let's be people that Marsha P. Johnson would be proud to view as family.
Tennessee recently passed a law stating that people would have to use the public restroom corresponding to their assigned gender at birth, UNLESS the store the restroom is in posts a sign clearly stating otherwise, in as many words.
Here's the problem with that, illustrated using real, live people (albeit not necessariily Tennesseans). They've appeared in the news as transgender, so I am not outing anybody by doing this.
Imagine seeing this face in the women's bathroom. This is Ryan Sallans. He is transgender. The Tennessee law states that, because he was born with a vulva, he has to use the women's restroom, NOT the men's.
This is Gigi Gorgeous. Tennessee law states that, as a trans woman, she has to use the men's restroom, and suffer whatever harassment or violence results from that. Trans women (especially trans women of color) are murdered at disturbingly-high rates already.
For many trans people, the only safe option seems to be just...never using public restrooms at all. Trans people often suffer medical problems from having to hold in their pee for hours. Plus, on top of that, most HRT for trans women has a diuretic effect--which means that they have to pee more often.
Imagine trying to hold down a full-time job without being able to use public restrooms, ever. Imagine trying to run errands while your bladder is a ticking time bomb that could result in actual violence against you.
To discourage people from using public restrooms is to say that they do not belong in public at all. That is what Tennessee is doing. The state is basically saying that there exist human beings who, because of an accident of birth (wrong assigned gender), do not "deserve" to be seen in public, to have jobs, or to even camp out at the same state parks that their tax dollars are helping to pay for.
And that is reprehensible, no matter what demographic you are excluding.
Here's the problem with that, illustrated using real, live people (albeit not necessariily Tennesseans). They've appeared in the news as transgender, so I am not outing anybody by doing this.
Imagine seeing this face in the women's bathroom. This is Ryan Sallans. He is transgender. The Tennessee law states that, because he was born with a vulva, he has to use the women's restroom, NOT the men's.
This is Gigi Gorgeous. Tennessee law states that, as a trans woman, she has to use the men's restroom, and suffer whatever harassment or violence results from that. Trans women (especially trans women of color) are murdered at disturbingly-high rates already.
For many trans people, the only safe option seems to be just...never using public restrooms at all. Trans people often suffer medical problems from having to hold in their pee for hours. Plus, on top of that, most HRT for trans women has a diuretic effect--which means that they have to pee more often.
Imagine trying to hold down a full-time job without being able to use public restrooms, ever. Imagine trying to run errands while your bladder is a ticking time bomb that could result in actual violence against you.
To discourage people from using public restrooms is to say that they do not belong in public at all. That is what Tennessee is doing. The state is basically saying that there exist human beings who, because of an accident of birth (wrong assigned gender), do not "deserve" to be seen in public, to have jobs, or to even camp out at the same state parks that their tax dollars are helping to pay for.
And that is reprehensible, no matter what demographic you are excluding.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the first Sonic the Hedgehog game, and the 20th anniversary of Sonic Adventure 2, so it's only fair that I talk about the Blue Blur, since he was super important to me as a kid in the early 90s.
First off, why did I care so much? Well, it didn't hurt that we were a Sega Genesis family. Or that Sonic had two cartoon series to Mario's one. (Sonic Underground and Sonic X didn't exist yet.) But the fact that I had ADHD was also a huge factor. See, kids with ADHD need constant mental stimulation, and also have a lot of trouble making and keeping friends. So you had a lonely, easily-bored kid who was pretty much guaranteed to latch on to any form of media that seemed to validate her.
Enter Sonic. Not only were the video games greatly stimulating to watch OR play, the 90s Attitude of Sonic just really gelled with me. Jaleel White's "I'm waaaaitiiiing" in both cartoon series was funny for me because I, too, saw the rest of the world as going too slow half the time. Sonic did things at his own pace, and his pace was fast. Rushing through levels in the Genesis games. Outwitting the robots from Adventures with silly disguises. Working together with a super-genius princess and an awesome cyborg bunny in the SatAM series. (If there were a Bunnie Rabbot action figure, I would definitely own it. Sega, TAKE MY MONEY.)
But then after 1995, the well dried up. The Sega Saturn sold pitifully in the US, and my parents refused to buy a Dreamcast. ("You already have that new Nintendo.") It wasn't until 2002-3 that I got to experience the thrill of new Sonic games again with the Gamecube re-releases of the Sonic Adventure games.
And don't get me wrong, the games are a pretty decent attempt at bringing Sonic into the new 3D gaming era. They're not as good as the stuff released from Sonic Colors on, mind you, and they certainly were a step down from the Genesis days, but I played them obsessively, trying to get all the medals. (It's hard, y'all. Really, really hard.) The Chao Garden is the one feature from the Sonic Adventure games that really needs to be reintroduced. (Seriously, I will buy a new Sonic game sight unseen if you promise me it includes the Chao Garden.) It brought Sonic to a new generation of kids, kept the franchise going, but it was pretty mediocre overall.
And the music sucked. (No, I am not just talking about the character themes and their ridiculous lyrics.)
( Here's my analysis. )
The Car Wash
Dec. 13th, 2020 08:29 pmMy car had not been washed or cleaned in any way since the spring lockdown. So this morning, I took it upon myself to clean the insides of both my sedan and my husband's hatchback. This way, we could just go to one of those drive-thru car wash machines at the gas station and finish the job easily. So I got out the vacuum cleaner, the Windex, the Nature's Miracle (you'll see why in a minute) and headed out to the driveway, car keys precariously in hand.
My car was pretty okay; there was some serious dirt on the floorboards, but mostly it just needed some dusting and the windows, side mirrors, and rearview-camera screen cleaned off. A couple bits of trash hiding under and between seats to retrieve, but really not much that needed cleaning out.
And then, reader, I got to the hatchback.
To get an idea of how filthy the hatchback was, inside and out, picture that Goofy meme that says "Bitch, you live like this?"
Now imagine that, as a car. The seats, which I had kept nice and neat before we got the sedan and the hatchback became His Car, were badly stained. The armrest had a thick crust of dried-out arm sweat. The steering wheel was so caked in sweat residue that it had a tacky feel, and where the center of the wheel was still a nice charcoal-gray, the rim of the wheel was BROWN.
I couldn't even clean the actual car itself until I'd spent 20 minutes getting all the trash out of it. Then I soaked the upholstery in Nature's Miracle and let it sit while I cleaned the windows.
My husband had said that I'd never be able to get all the filth off the armrest because it was soaked in. Most of it? Came right off. And it was the nastiest thing you've ever seen. I'm glad I used paper towels instead of cloth rags because that sweat turned them diarrhea-brown.
Ditto on the steering wheel. I got as much of it as I could stand to, and it's still tacky. But at least much less of it is brown.
It took a full fucking HOUR just to make the interior of that car not look absolutely horrible. It wasn't even hot outside and I was soaked in sweat by the time I was through, and no shower ever felt more necessary nor more rejuvenating.
Husband has promised to wipe down the steering wheel with lysol wipes every couple weeks. I consider that a small victory.
My car was pretty okay; there was some serious dirt on the floorboards, but mostly it just needed some dusting and the windows, side mirrors, and rearview-camera screen cleaned off. A couple bits of trash hiding under and between seats to retrieve, but really not much that needed cleaning out.
And then, reader, I got to the hatchback.
To get an idea of how filthy the hatchback was, inside and out, picture that Goofy meme that says "Bitch, you live like this?"
Now imagine that, as a car. The seats, which I had kept nice and neat before we got the sedan and the hatchback became His Car, were badly stained. The armrest had a thick crust of dried-out arm sweat. The steering wheel was so caked in sweat residue that it had a tacky feel, and where the center of the wheel was still a nice charcoal-gray, the rim of the wheel was BROWN.
I couldn't even clean the actual car itself until I'd spent 20 minutes getting all the trash out of it. Then I soaked the upholstery in Nature's Miracle and let it sit while I cleaned the windows.
My husband had said that I'd never be able to get all the filth off the armrest because it was soaked in. Most of it? Came right off. And it was the nastiest thing you've ever seen. I'm glad I used paper towels instead of cloth rags because that sweat turned them diarrhea-brown.
Ditto on the steering wheel. I got as much of it as I could stand to, and it's still tacky. But at least much less of it is brown.
It took a full fucking HOUR just to make the interior of that car not look absolutely horrible. It wasn't even hot outside and I was soaked in sweat by the time I was through, and no shower ever felt more necessary nor more rejuvenating.
Husband has promised to wipe down the steering wheel with lysol wipes every couple weeks. I consider that a small victory.
Okay, so the first two seasons of InuYasha are on Netflix if you want to get a feel for that series, and The Final Act is on Crunchyroll, but let's say you don't wanna watch over 200 episodes of anime or read 63 volumes of manga in order to understand what's going on. That's...fair. It's a long series.
So here's the Cliffs Notes version of all the major events of InuYasha. This will get you all caught up for Yashahime, although you'll probably want to go back and watch the full series later if you have the time, because I am majorly oversimplifying most of the plot points, and leaving out most of the rest. (The entire Shichinintai arc? Skipping it. That time the Tetsusaiga broke? Skipping it. Every single demon InuYasha defeated by learning a new, awesome-to-watch sword technique? Skipping it.)
( Putting this behind a cut to save people's feeds )
And that's basically it, aside from the fact that InuYasha goes full human on the night of the full moon and is, while not quite defenseless, devoid of all the cool demon powers he's come to rely on for his safety.
Oh, and whenever he's separated from the Tetsusaiga and his life is in danger, he goes full youkai instead, and becomes ultra-violent and loses all semblance of self-control. I honestly don't remember if or how they finally resolved this, just that everyone's really careful not to leave InuYasha alone in combat situations so that he's less likely to go on a berserker demon rage.
So here's the Cliffs Notes version of all the major events of InuYasha. This will get you all caught up for Yashahime, although you'll probably want to go back and watch the full series later if you have the time, because I am majorly oversimplifying most of the plot points, and leaving out most of the rest. (The entire Shichinintai arc? Skipping it. That time the Tetsusaiga broke? Skipping it. Every single demon InuYasha defeated by learning a new, awesome-to-watch sword technique? Skipping it.)
( Putting this behind a cut to save people's feeds )
And that's basically it, aside from the fact that InuYasha goes full human on the night of the full moon and is, while not quite defenseless, devoid of all the cool demon powers he's come to rely on for his safety.
Oh, and whenever he's separated from the Tetsusaiga and his life is in danger, he goes full youkai instead, and becomes ultra-violent and loses all semblance of self-control. I honestly don't remember if or how they finally resolved this, just that everyone's really careful not to leave InuYasha alone in combat situations so that he's less likely to go on a berserker demon rage.
I am posting this because the reviews for this punch on both Amazon and on craft-store sites are all either 5 stars or 1 star. I bought the thing with a 50% off coupon, and here was my experience. (They're sized based on the radius of curvature: I bought the Small size.)
First of all, I need to point out something very important: This hole punch was made to cut through UNlaminated paper or cardstock. Un. Laminated. As in, it was not designed or tested by Fiskars to cut through a layer of laminating plastic at all.
I mention this because I'm pretty sure it's the reason for every one-star review out there. Hell, I knew ahead of time that it probably wouldn't be able to handle laminate, and still bought it to punch through laminate anyway. I did so because I own their sewing scissors, and those things are sharp enough to split a single hair multiple times and STILL cut through heavy canvas and sheer poly-silks like butter. Fiskars does not fuck around when it comes to cutting through the things it expects you to cut with their products.
I also bought this punch because working freehand, I cannot cut a neatly-curved corner to save my life. I cannot. It always looks like a child did it. I figured that I should at least see if something worked to make my corner-cutting life easier. To cut corners at cutting rounded corners, if you will.
So here are all 4 possible scenarios for trying to punch neat corners in laminate, how often they happened in a few dozen test cases, and what the fallout was:
1. Cuts neatly all the way through the plastic. Despite what Negative Nancy and Complaining Carl will tell you, this happened like 70-80% of the time. A nice, neat, smooth corner, even though it wasn't meant to cut plastic.
2. Doesn't stick, but fails to cut all the way through. This was about 20% of the time. Fortunately, when the punch didn't cut through all the way, it always left a nice neat scoreline of that pretty rounded corner that I could easily follow with scissors. So even though I technically cut these corners with a pair of scissors, it looked WAY neater than when I tried to round off corners freehanded.
3. Sticks shut and also doesn't cut the plastic all the way through. Like both of the remaining cases fell into this category. I just opened the confetti catcher on the underside and took my X-acto knife (with the blade covered) and gave it a gentle nudge with the handle end of the knife. The punch popped right back open with very little pressure. A quick snip of the little scrap of leftover plastic on the corner I was trying to punch, and all was well.
4. Completely mangles the corner you're trying to punch so it looks like garbage and is unsalvageable. This never happened, at all. Not even once. And given my unfortunate experience with paper punches and those little mushroom-shaped Happy Planner holes, I was fully expecting a mangling to happen at least once. It's good to be wrong about something sometimes. :)
In summary: If you're only cutting through plain old paper and cardstock, ignore all the 1-star reviews because this thing WILL punch just fine. If you're cutting through laminated paper or cardstock, be aware that you may still have some extra work to do, but not much. The punch still saved me time overall, AND made my corners look way nicer than I could have ever done without it. For $6, that's outstanding.
First of all, I need to point out something very important: This hole punch was made to cut through UNlaminated paper or cardstock. Un. Laminated. As in, it was not designed or tested by Fiskars to cut through a layer of laminating plastic at all.
I mention this because I'm pretty sure it's the reason for every one-star review out there. Hell, I knew ahead of time that it probably wouldn't be able to handle laminate, and still bought it to punch through laminate anyway. I did so because I own their sewing scissors, and those things are sharp enough to split a single hair multiple times and STILL cut through heavy canvas and sheer poly-silks like butter. Fiskars does not fuck around when it comes to cutting through the things it expects you to cut with their products.
I also bought this punch because working freehand, I cannot cut a neatly-curved corner to save my life. I cannot. It always looks like a child did it. I figured that I should at least see if something worked to make my corner-cutting life easier. To cut corners at cutting rounded corners, if you will.
So here are all 4 possible scenarios for trying to punch neat corners in laminate, how often they happened in a few dozen test cases, and what the fallout was:
1. Cuts neatly all the way through the plastic. Despite what Negative Nancy and Complaining Carl will tell you, this happened like 70-80% of the time. A nice, neat, smooth corner, even though it wasn't meant to cut plastic.
2. Doesn't stick, but fails to cut all the way through. This was about 20% of the time. Fortunately, when the punch didn't cut through all the way, it always left a nice neat scoreline of that pretty rounded corner that I could easily follow with scissors. So even though I technically cut these corners with a pair of scissors, it looked WAY neater than when I tried to round off corners freehanded.
3. Sticks shut and also doesn't cut the plastic all the way through. Like both of the remaining cases fell into this category. I just opened the confetti catcher on the underside and took my X-acto knife (with the blade covered) and gave it a gentle nudge with the handle end of the knife. The punch popped right back open with very little pressure. A quick snip of the little scrap of leftover plastic on the corner I was trying to punch, and all was well.
4. Completely mangles the corner you're trying to punch so it looks like garbage and is unsalvageable. This never happened, at all. Not even once. And given my unfortunate experience with paper punches and those little mushroom-shaped Happy Planner holes, I was fully expecting a mangling to happen at least once. It's good to be wrong about something sometimes. :)
In summary: If you're only cutting through plain old paper and cardstock, ignore all the 1-star reviews because this thing WILL punch just fine. If you're cutting through laminated paper or cardstock, be aware that you may still have some extra work to do, but not much. The punch still saved me time overall, AND made my corners look way nicer than I could have ever done without it. For $6, that's outstanding.
Thoughts about a news article on cable TV.
Oct. 7th, 2020 02:37 pmHere's the article: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/who-killed-the-great-american-cable-tv-bundle "Who Killed the Great American Cable TV Bundle," by Gerry Smith, originally published in Bloomberg.
1. The "original way Americans paid for TV" wasn't cable. It was purchasing an antenna. TV was free; the only cost was buying a set and the antenna to use it. Granted, there were only 4 channels including PBS, but it was one up-front payment. No subscription fees. You just had to maintain your own TV equipment (or hire a handyman when things broke down), up to and including replacing vacuum tubes in the earlier models. My grandmother still has the 20-foot-tall antenna in her backyard that she bought so she could watch the TV channel that was broadcast from an hour's drive away on the Florida panhandle. Whether you had the small rooftop antenna, the "rabbit ears" that came with the TV set, or the behemoth my grandmother has, you had to have an antenna to watch anything. And with the DTV antenna now included in most TV sets, one can go back to just an antenna if one wishes. Free TV. Imagine going back to 100% free television where you only have to pay for the television set itself. I'd put up with commercial breaks for that.
2. My husband and I have cable TV as of this writing for one reason: Under C---st, it is literally cheaper to bundle cable TV and high-speed internet, than to have the Internet alone. My husband has shows he likes to watch, but if we didn't have cable, he'd probably just get torrents. We rarely even watch anything at the time it airs anymore; our DVR is nearly full because we watch things later and fast-forward through all the commercials.
I'm a huge proponent of physical media, because I don't like the idea of a movie or TV show vanishing into the ether the second a company goes out of business (this is exactly what happens to video games, even the older ones that were originally released solely on physical media). These days, I only get rid of an old movie, CD, or video game if I am absolutely certain that I will never play it again, because so many companies are so cagey about this. Netflix, at $12.99/month, is cheaper than buying one new Blu-ray per month, and cheaper than buying a box set of an entire television season every few months. Meanwhile, I'm busily buying DVDs of favorite films second-hand at a used-media store, so that the only limit on my ability to watch them is the lifetime of the disc itself. Not the end of a licensing agreement; not the creator getting tired of it and ceasing support; only the final, inevitable decay of the DVD after a few decades. Occasionally, I'll see a CD at that store from an artist or musical that I like for $2-3, and I'll buy it to rip onto my phone. I have over 100 CDs, because if I still like the music, I keep the original disc as a backup, PERIOD. (Plus, quite a few of them are from live performers at the Renaissance Faire, and you can't autograph a digital file.) I'll see a DVD of something that hasn't been on Netflix's streaming service in years, or an anime that isn't on Netflix or Crunchyroll, and if it's one I like, I'll buy it, because it's only $10 or less.
Meanwhile, on the Nintendo Switch, there is a download-only free-to-play game called Super Mario 35, which they have already announced will only be playable until May 1, 2021. At the end of that time, not only will it be pulled from the Switch's online store, but presumably it will be automatically uninstalled from users' machines "for" them. If you don't own a physical copy of something, the creators can easily pull your license out from under you, and under capitalism, THEY WILL. Once support for a device is about to end, I download a copy of ALL my data for that device onto my computer so that I have a backup, because the company will not restore anything I have on my devices after that point. When Nintendo eventually stops offering cloud saves for Switch games, I will do the same with all my Switch games, because I do not want companies controlling how long I have access to my copy of media that I paid for with my own money.
3. Never underestimate the average person's hatred for unnecessary advertising, especially in the 21st century. We live in a world that is bombarded with a constant assault of advertising, to an extent that was absolutely not possible when I was a kid 30 years ago. Buses and billboards, even fences at schools due to a lack of educational funding, are covered in ads for everything under the sun. (One local school hosts church services on Sundays. A public school. How that isn't a First Amendment violation is beyond me.) Internet ads have gone from small, discreet banners and GIFs to data-mining bullshit that autoplays a video over the page you want to view. If there were a way for companies to put pop-up ads in a physical, dead-tree book, they would do so in a heartbeat.
1. The "original way Americans paid for TV" wasn't cable. It was purchasing an antenna. TV was free; the only cost was buying a set and the antenna to use it. Granted, there were only 4 channels including PBS, but it was one up-front payment. No subscription fees. You just had to maintain your own TV equipment (or hire a handyman when things broke down), up to and including replacing vacuum tubes in the earlier models. My grandmother still has the 20-foot-tall antenna in her backyard that she bought so she could watch the TV channel that was broadcast from an hour's drive away on the Florida panhandle. Whether you had the small rooftop antenna, the "rabbit ears" that came with the TV set, or the behemoth my grandmother has, you had to have an antenna to watch anything. And with the DTV antenna now included in most TV sets, one can go back to just an antenna if one wishes. Free TV. Imagine going back to 100% free television where you only have to pay for the television set itself. I'd put up with commercial breaks for that.
2. My husband and I have cable TV as of this writing for one reason: Under C---st, it is literally cheaper to bundle cable TV and high-speed internet, than to have the Internet alone. My husband has shows he likes to watch, but if we didn't have cable, he'd probably just get torrents. We rarely even watch anything at the time it airs anymore; our DVR is nearly full because we watch things later and fast-forward through all the commercials.
I'm a huge proponent of physical media, because I don't like the idea of a movie or TV show vanishing into the ether the second a company goes out of business (this is exactly what happens to video games, even the older ones that were originally released solely on physical media). These days, I only get rid of an old movie, CD, or video game if I am absolutely certain that I will never play it again, because so many companies are so cagey about this. Netflix, at $12.99/month, is cheaper than buying one new Blu-ray per month, and cheaper than buying a box set of an entire television season every few months. Meanwhile, I'm busily buying DVDs of favorite films second-hand at a used-media store, so that the only limit on my ability to watch them is the lifetime of the disc itself. Not the end of a licensing agreement; not the creator getting tired of it and ceasing support; only the final, inevitable decay of the DVD after a few decades. Occasionally, I'll see a CD at that store from an artist or musical that I like for $2-3, and I'll buy it to rip onto my phone. I have over 100 CDs, because if I still like the music, I keep the original disc as a backup, PERIOD. (Plus, quite a few of them are from live performers at the Renaissance Faire, and you can't autograph a digital file.) I'll see a DVD of something that hasn't been on Netflix's streaming service in years, or an anime that isn't on Netflix or Crunchyroll, and if it's one I like, I'll buy it, because it's only $10 or less.
Meanwhile, on the Nintendo Switch, there is a download-only free-to-play game called Super Mario 35, which they have already announced will only be playable until May 1, 2021. At the end of that time, not only will it be pulled from the Switch's online store, but presumably it will be automatically uninstalled from users' machines "for" them. If you don't own a physical copy of something, the creators can easily pull your license out from under you, and under capitalism, THEY WILL. Once support for a device is about to end, I download a copy of ALL my data for that device onto my computer so that I have a backup, because the company will not restore anything I have on my devices after that point. When Nintendo eventually stops offering cloud saves for Switch games, I will do the same with all my Switch games, because I do not want companies controlling how long I have access to my copy of media that I paid for with my own money.
3. Never underestimate the average person's hatred for unnecessary advertising, especially in the 21st century. We live in a world that is bombarded with a constant assault of advertising, to an extent that was absolutely not possible when I was a kid 30 years ago. Buses and billboards, even fences at schools due to a lack of educational funding, are covered in ads for everything under the sun. (One local school hosts church services on Sundays. A public school. How that isn't a First Amendment violation is beyond me.) Internet ads have gone from small, discreet banners and GIFs to data-mining bullshit that autoplays a video over the page you want to view. If there were a way for companies to put pop-up ads in a physical, dead-tree book, they would do so in a heartbeat.
George Orwell on punishment
Oct. 7th, 2020 08:19 amFrom the essay "Such, Such Were the Joys..."
The fact that the beating had not hurt was a sort of victory and partially wiped out the shame of the bed-wetting [...] Some small boys were hanging about in the passage outside the door of the ante-room.
"D'you get the cane?"
"It didn't hurt," I said proudly.
Bingo [one of the teachers] had heard everything. Instantly her voice came screaming after me:
"Come here! Come here this instant! What was that you said?"
"I said it didn't hurt," I faltered out.
"How dare you say a thing like that? Do you think that is a proper thing to say? Go in and REPORT YOURSELF AGAIN!"
This time Sim [the headmaster] laid on in real earnest. He continued for a length of time that frightened and astonished me--about five minutes, it seemed--ending up by breaking the riding crop. The bone handle went flying across the room.
"Look what you've made me do!" he said furiously, holding up the broken crop.
[...]
I knew that bed-wetting was (a) wicked and (b) outside my control. The second fact I was personally aware of, and the first I did not question. It was possible, therefore, to commit a sin without knowing that you committed it, without wanting to commit it, and without being able to avoid it. Sin was not necessarily something that you did: it might be something that happened to you. I do not want to claim that this idea flashed into my mind as a complete novelty at this very moment, under the blows of Sim's cane: I must have had glimpses of it even before I left home, for my early childhood had not been altogether happy. But at any rate this was the great, abiding lesson of my boyhood: that I was in a world where it was not possible for me to be good. And the double beating was a turning-point, for it brought home to me for the first time the harshness of the environment into which I had been flung. Life was more terrible, and I was more wicked, than I had imagined. At any rate, as I sat on the edge of a chair in Sim's study, with not even the self-possession to stand up while he stormed at me, I had a conviction of sin and folly and weakness, such as I do not remember to have had before.
The fact that the beating had not hurt was a sort of victory and partially wiped out the shame of the bed-wetting [...] Some small boys were hanging about in the passage outside the door of the ante-room.
"D'you get the cane?"
"It didn't hurt," I said proudly.
Bingo [one of the teachers] had heard everything. Instantly her voice came screaming after me:
"Come here! Come here this instant! What was that you said?"
"I said it didn't hurt," I faltered out.
"How dare you say a thing like that? Do you think that is a proper thing to say? Go in and REPORT YOURSELF AGAIN!"
This time Sim [the headmaster] laid on in real earnest. He continued for a length of time that frightened and astonished me--about five minutes, it seemed--ending up by breaking the riding crop. The bone handle went flying across the room.
"Look what you've made me do!" he said furiously, holding up the broken crop.
[...]
I knew that bed-wetting was (a) wicked and (b) outside my control. The second fact I was personally aware of, and the first I did not question. It was possible, therefore, to commit a sin without knowing that you committed it, without wanting to commit it, and without being able to avoid it. Sin was not necessarily something that you did: it might be something that happened to you. I do not want to claim that this idea flashed into my mind as a complete novelty at this very moment, under the blows of Sim's cane: I must have had glimpses of it even before I left home, for my early childhood had not been altogether happy. But at any rate this was the great, abiding lesson of my boyhood: that I was in a world where it was not possible for me to be good. And the double beating was a turning-point, for it brought home to me for the first time the harshness of the environment into which I had been flung. Life was more terrible, and I was more wicked, than I had imagined. At any rate, as I sat on the edge of a chair in Sim's study, with not even the self-possession to stand up while he stormed at me, I had a conviction of sin and folly and weakness, such as I do not remember to have had before.
I do not time-travel, but I don't judge people who do.
Please DM me on Discord to make an offer: TheL1985 #3428
Or you can DM me on Twitter: @LChanPlays
Here's my designer masterpost (Tumblr link).
My Nook Exchange list
At this time I am neither offering nor accepting items that are not listed in Nook Exchange. Thank you for your understanding.
At this time I am neither offering nor accepting items that are not listed in Nook Exchange. Thank you for your understanding.
- Net
- Watering can
Nook's Cranny: Printed Tools Available
- Shovel
Today's Store Offerings: Nook's Cranny
- Tricycle
- Tool shelf
- Arcade
- Accessories stand (black)
- Camp stove
- Tartan-check umbrella
- White lace umbrella
- Cosmos seeds: red, yellow, white
- Pansy seeds: red, yellow, white
- Tulip seeds: red, yellow, white
- Wrapping papers: green, brown
- Walls:
- Red dotted
- White brick
- Gray-striped
- Blue-painted wood
- Retro flower-print
- Beaded-curtain
- Yellow quilt
- Beige desert-tile
- Flooring:
- White-paint
- Blue rubber
- Natural-block
- Yellow floral
- Monochromatic tile
- Simple purple
- Olive desert-tile
- Cute white tile
Current Able Sisters offerings:
- Fitness tank
- Fuzzy vest
- Graduation gown
- Samurai shirt
- Thread-worn sweater
- Chinos
- Cropped pants
- Sailor skirt
- Farmer overalls
- Flower-print dress
- Grape dress
- Crown
- Straw hat
- Zap helmet
- Curly moustache
- Eye mask
- Rimmed glasses
- Mixed-tweed socks
- No-show socks
- Vivid leggings
- Boots
- Moccasins
- Pleather sneakers
- Winkle-pickers
- Handcart
- Pull-up bar stand
- Tulip hat
- Bandange
- Konnichiwa tee
- MVP tee
- Sweatpants
- Slip-on loafers
- Song: Neapolitan
These are the colors of furniture I can get from Nook Miles (Friends only unless you can make a REALLY good offer):
- Lifeguard chair (red)
- Portable toilet (yellow-green)
- Streetlamp (black)
- Drink machine (pink)
- Public bench (monotone)
- Snack machine (black)
- Springy ride-on (red)
- Park clock (black)
- Phone box (black)
- Sandbox
- Cotton-candy stall (black)
- Lighthouse (yellow)
- Pool (gray)
- Teacup ride (colorful)
OK, so I'm going to explain my exact position on antis here, because I'm noticing "people who want to prevent child sexual abuse" and "people who want to be the Fandom Police" both falling under that name. So let's be 10000% clear. Explanation of WHY I have these views under the cut.
( Read more... )
If you help to expose people who groom children for abuse, and you do your best to protect kids and teens from those predators, then I wholeheartedly support you in that endeavor. Those people are disgusting and should be kept far away from children and from the more child-heavy social media platforms of Tumblr and Twitter.
BUT,
If you believe that depicting abuse (of whatever kind) of FICTIONAL characters in FICTION is exactly as bad as hurting real-life people who can actually suffer real-world physical and psychological damage from abuse? Then you are part of the problem, and you are making it harder to stop the actual predators. If this is your viewpoint, then I absolutely do not support you.
Because things that are Not Pedophilia, and often aren't even remotely related to pedophilia, are being called "pedophilia," people are being conditioned to IGNORE POSTS that start with "Hey, XYZ is a pedophile." That is a dangerous trend, and it hurts children. The only things you should be calling "pedophilia," instead of "depictions of pedophilia," "depictions of abuse," or "fiction that makes me feel bad," are the actual, real-life grooming or abuse of actual, real-life minors. Don't muddy the rhetorical waters.
( Read more... )
If you help to expose people who groom children for abuse, and you do your best to protect kids and teens from those predators, then I wholeheartedly support you in that endeavor. Those people are disgusting and should be kept far away from children and from the more child-heavy social media platforms of Tumblr and Twitter.
BUT,
If you believe that depicting abuse (of whatever kind) of FICTIONAL characters in FICTION is exactly as bad as hurting real-life people who can actually suffer real-world physical and psychological damage from abuse? Then you are part of the problem, and you are making it harder to stop the actual predators. If this is your viewpoint, then I absolutely do not support you.
Because things that are Not Pedophilia, and often aren't even remotely related to pedophilia, are being called "pedophilia," people are being conditioned to IGNORE POSTS that start with "Hey, XYZ is a pedophile." That is a dangerous trend, and it hurts children. The only things you should be calling "pedophilia," instead of "depictions of pedophilia," "depictions of abuse," or "fiction that makes me feel bad," are the actual, real-life grooming or abuse of actual, real-life minors. Don't muddy the rhetorical waters.
I keep seeing the same argument over and over and OVER again in which antis equate use of the "Underage" tag in AO3 with the author of the fic being a pedophile and/or the fic itself being child pornography or "glorifying pedophilia." So let's unpack exactly what pedophilia is, and what the "Underage" tag is used for. CSA survivors, this will be uncomfortable for you. It might even be triggering. Please don't read this unless you're in a good emotional space to deal with this sort of discussion, because I don't want you to get hurt.
( Read more... )
By the way, since I know some of the younger folks are going to be curious: I am in my mid-30s as of the writing of this post. I am attracted to people about age 25 and older. I don't want to ever have more than a platonic friendship or mentor/student relationship with ANY teenager at my age, because they are literally half my age or younger.
The way I look at a 16-year-old is about the way a 16-year-old looks at an 8-year-old: "I remember what it was like to be your age. I'm happy to be your friend and help you grow and learn, but I'd rather date literally anybody else than you because you are Just Too Young." The closest I come to acknowledging attractiveness in teens is "Man, when I was a teenager I would have found that really hot." Because yeah, I know what teen me was into, and I'm not into that age group anymore. For me, an underage teen is about as "sexy" as a potato. Are they well-groomed? Do they have nice hair? Do they have a pleasant appearance? Sure. Are they something that I personally find sexy? No, I find that teenager to be a Child, and children aren't sexy.
( Read more... )
By the way, since I know some of the younger folks are going to be curious: I am in my mid-30s as of the writing of this post. I am attracted to people about age 25 and older. I don't want to ever have more than a platonic friendship or mentor/student relationship with ANY teenager at my age, because they are literally half my age or younger.
The way I look at a 16-year-old is about the way a 16-year-old looks at an 8-year-old: "I remember what it was like to be your age. I'm happy to be your friend and help you grow and learn, but I'd rather date literally anybody else than you because you are Just Too Young." The closest I come to acknowledging attractiveness in teens is "Man, when I was a teenager I would have found that really hot." Because yeah, I know what teen me was into, and I'm not into that age group anymore. For me, an underage teen is about as "sexy" as a potato. Are they well-groomed? Do they have nice hair? Do they have a pleasant appearance? Sure. Are they something that I personally find sexy? No, I find that teenager to be a Child, and children aren't sexy.
Bess Can't Go There.
Mar. 16th, 2020 02:38 pm20 years ago, my mother taught math at a high school that, to protect its students, used a net-nanny program called Bess. Bess was probably not originally intended for teenagers, but for elementary-school students. I say this because damn-near every single URL that didn't end in .edu or .gov was auto-blocked by Bess. Which means that if you wanted to use a search engine to do actual class research and typed in google.com?
"Bess can't go there." Because it was possible for someone to use Google to look up pornography, and therefore, by the sort of logic that only censorware authors possess, the entire Google server (I think it was still only one server at that point; Yahoo! was still the most popular search engine back then) must be blocked.
If you wanted to log in to your school email address, on the very high-school campus that issued you that email address in the first place?
"Bess can't go there."
Hotmail?
"Bess can't go there."
The Human Rights Council? UNICEF? The United Nations?
"Bess can't go there."
I'm not saying that little kids should be watching Star Wars: The Porn Parody or reading neo-Nazi blogs. And back then, the Net was very much the Wild West, where anybody really could upload anything they wanted, as long as they had dial-up and could afford to spend about a dollar a month to rent server space. Since most search engines weren't very good, every personal webpage you went to had a page full of links that like-minded readers would enjoy, and many were members of webrings. (For those who don't remember: a webring was a group of loosely-affiliated websites who all agreed to link to each other, so you could visit the "next" site in the ring, over and over, until you'd visited them all, at which point the "next" site would be the one where you started.) The "alt" server of Usenet, which originally started as "the part of Usenet where you're allowed to talk about sex and drugs" and quickly expanded into thousands of communities, was and remains completely uncensored.
Anybody could post anything, unless you were on PHPBB or another site that had specific rules against the thing you wanted to post. Most of the Internet did not have Terms and Conditions. You could go to someone's Sailor Moon Geocities page and they might have a fic with tentacle rape buried amidst a half-dozen of the sitemaster's G-rated fics, with absolutely zero warning that there was adult content in that fic. And the hosting site had no rule saying they had to take it down. You couldn't report the content because there was nobody to report it to. The only truly massive Internet community at that point was Furcadia (which was first released in 1996 and is still going after 24 years), which had a miniature army of "Beekins" (moderators) to whom you could report flamers, pedos, and the occasional jerks who started doing R-rated levels of making out in the PG-rated areas.
And this was the default state of the Internet. Internet safety rules included "If you're under 15, never use the Internet without a trusted adult present" and "If you see something that disturbs or frightens you, click Back and never go to that particular website again."
Yeah, let me go back and stress that last point. 20 years ago, the only website with a large number of users that was even remotely moderated for content was a program that let you talk to people while walking around in a virtual pixellated fursuit. (It was like Second Life, only you didn't have to pay real-world money to have a house in it, and there were no human avatars, only furry ones.) The only other sites that had moderators were webforums, which for young folks, is kinda like Discord before there was Discord, but with no video-streaming capability because nobody had a fast enough Internet connection to load video in anything like realtime.
Nowadays, interacting with people online has gone from mainly happening on PHP forums with an average of less than 100 members each, or on Usenet, or on an individual's personal Angelfire site, or on direct instant-messaging programs like AIM, to mainly happening on a handful of incredibly massive social-media sites. Facebook. Instagram. LinkedIn. Tumblr. Twitter. Snapchat. Each of them has literally millions of users, and each of them has a EULA the length of a novel so that nobody actually knows everything that's in it. Instead of the relative privacy of "you pretty much have to know about this forum to be able to view people's posts, and only the admins and the user you sent it to can see ANY of your PMs," every single one of those websites sells your information to the highest bidder. All of them. Every single one. It's how they afford the servers.
And now we no longer expect parents to protect their kids, or teenagers to use their own common sense and discretion on the Internet, even though most adult content is tagged as such nowadays, making "Don't read a full webpage that contains things you don't want to see" infinitely easier. No, we expect the companies that host our web content to babysit, so that teens never have to learn how to curate their own web experience and toddlers can watch videos on Mommy's smartphone without her even knowing what they're watching. (Seriously. Why are we giving toddlers smartphones?)
When I was 17, I accidentally viewed a pornographic site that disturbed me. So I clicked "Back," went to a site that I knew had clean, uplifting content, and never went to the porn site again. (I also learned to always mouse-over links to see what they are before clicking them, so I wouldn't make that mistake again.) I saw a Bad Thing; I did what I needed to in order to stop fixating on the Bad Thing; I learned a lesson on How To Protect Myself.
Today's 17-year-olds go to sites like AO3 that are intended mainly for adults, that they know contain adult content up to and including explicit sex scenes and pornographic fanart, refuse to block any of the tags that disturb them, and then when they stumble upon Really Nasty Shit, they immediately try to get AO3 to ban the author of the Really Nasty Shit and post "callout posts" on Twitter and Tumblr that make sure everybody else knows about the Really Nasty Shit that this person did and why they should, therefore, be Cancelled from all social media everywhere forever.
And instead of saying "if you don't want to read adult content, don't go to an adult-oriented website;" instead of saying "why didn't you block the tags for That Thing That Squicks You on the AO3 account that we all know you have, so that you don't even see it at all;" instead of saying "You're one birthday away from being a legal adult and really should learn how to press 'Back' and walk away," we enable this behavior.
No, really. SESTA and FOSTA are, ostensibly, about preventing online sex trafficking. In practice, every single social media website's response to these sites has eventually been to block all of the porn. Not age-restrict it, no. Not ban the specific buying and selling of sexual content, no. Ban every single bit of smut in general. Twitter is still holding out as a bastion of "This Tweet may contain offensive content. View anyway?" but there's no telling how long that will last.
And now, the Internet for everyone, everywhere is starting to look a lot like the Internet at my mom's old workplace 20 years ago.
You want to look at a fictional character's boobs? Sorry, Bess can't go there.
You want to set up a Patreon, but some of your art has naughty bits in it? Bess can't go there.
You want to buy the Kama Sutra on Amazon? Bess can't go there.
You want to find fellow smut artists on Tumblr? Bess can't go there.
You want to draw a man's nipples on a site that doesn't ban male nipples at all? Bess can't go there because AI has no fucking clue how to deal with images and everybody except big-name website CEOs knows it.
And freelance sex workers (who are NOT being trafficked, by definition) are hurt by it. So are small-time artists for whom every eyeball that views their art, every Like, every Share/Reblog/RT, every commission, could be the difference between them being able to buy groceries this week or not.
I know I mention the Tumblr Purge on here a lot, but Tumblr before the Purge was the safe place to go for porn. It was the website that you could go to that didn't store your credit-card information, that didn't download massive amounts of spyware and dangerous Trojan Horses to your device the second you went to it. The only other spot online that lets you access pornography without extreme risk is PornHub, which is almost entirely live video, and thus isn't what you wanted if you were hoping for animated smut or still drawings.
Are there other websites you can go to that have this sort of thing? Yes. But the vast majority of them are either entirely behind a paywall, or install all of the nastiest viruses on your device all at once. (Bless those rare sites that offer "free samples" up to 1-2 pages into the Good Stuff before you have to pay; sometimes you're both horny and broke, and these tidbits can and often do result in subscriptions once you're no longer as broke, but still horny.)
I guess what I'm trying to say is, fandom smut is largely going back to the way it was 20 years ago, when quality stuff was hidden on an individual's privately-hosted (or AngelFire, or Tripod) website. Which means we need to re-create Smut Webrings. Who's with me?
"Bess can't go there." Because it was possible for someone to use Google to look up pornography, and therefore, by the sort of logic that only censorware authors possess, the entire Google server (I think it was still only one server at that point; Yahoo! was still the most popular search engine back then) must be blocked.
If you wanted to log in to your school email address, on the very high-school campus that issued you that email address in the first place?
"Bess can't go there."
Hotmail?
"Bess can't go there."
The Human Rights Council? UNICEF? The United Nations?
"Bess can't go there."
I'm not saying that little kids should be watching Star Wars: The Porn Parody or reading neo-Nazi blogs. And back then, the Net was very much the Wild West, where anybody really could upload anything they wanted, as long as they had dial-up and could afford to spend about a dollar a month to rent server space. Since most search engines weren't very good, every personal webpage you went to had a page full of links that like-minded readers would enjoy, and many were members of webrings. (For those who don't remember: a webring was a group of loosely-affiliated websites who all agreed to link to each other, so you could visit the "next" site in the ring, over and over, until you'd visited them all, at which point the "next" site would be the one where you started.) The "alt" server of Usenet, which originally started as "the part of Usenet where you're allowed to talk about sex and drugs" and quickly expanded into thousands of communities, was and remains completely uncensored.
Anybody could post anything, unless you were on PHPBB or another site that had specific rules against the thing you wanted to post. Most of the Internet did not have Terms and Conditions. You could go to someone's Sailor Moon Geocities page and they might have a fic with tentacle rape buried amidst a half-dozen of the sitemaster's G-rated fics, with absolutely zero warning that there was adult content in that fic. And the hosting site had no rule saying they had to take it down. You couldn't report the content because there was nobody to report it to. The only truly massive Internet community at that point was Furcadia (which was first released in 1996 and is still going after 24 years), which had a miniature army of "Beekins" (moderators) to whom you could report flamers, pedos, and the occasional jerks who started doing R-rated levels of making out in the PG-rated areas.
And this was the default state of the Internet. Internet safety rules included "If you're under 15, never use the Internet without a trusted adult present" and "If you see something that disturbs or frightens you, click Back and never go to that particular website again."
Yeah, let me go back and stress that last point. 20 years ago, the only website with a large number of users that was even remotely moderated for content was a program that let you talk to people while walking around in a virtual pixellated fursuit. (It was like Second Life, only you didn't have to pay real-world money to have a house in it, and there were no human avatars, only furry ones.) The only other sites that had moderators were webforums, which for young folks, is kinda like Discord before there was Discord, but with no video-streaming capability because nobody had a fast enough Internet connection to load video in anything like realtime.
Nowadays, interacting with people online has gone from mainly happening on PHP forums with an average of less than 100 members each, or on Usenet, or on an individual's personal Angelfire site, or on direct instant-messaging programs like AIM, to mainly happening on a handful of incredibly massive social-media sites. Facebook. Instagram. LinkedIn. Tumblr. Twitter. Snapchat. Each of them has literally millions of users, and each of them has a EULA the length of a novel so that nobody actually knows everything that's in it. Instead of the relative privacy of "you pretty much have to know about this forum to be able to view people's posts, and only the admins and the user you sent it to can see ANY of your PMs," every single one of those websites sells your information to the highest bidder. All of them. Every single one. It's how they afford the servers.
And now we no longer expect parents to protect their kids, or teenagers to use their own common sense and discretion on the Internet, even though most adult content is tagged as such nowadays, making "Don't read a full webpage that contains things you don't want to see" infinitely easier. No, we expect the companies that host our web content to babysit, so that teens never have to learn how to curate their own web experience and toddlers can watch videos on Mommy's smartphone without her even knowing what they're watching. (Seriously. Why are we giving toddlers smartphones?)
When I was 17, I accidentally viewed a pornographic site that disturbed me. So I clicked "Back," went to a site that I knew had clean, uplifting content, and never went to the porn site again. (I also learned to always mouse-over links to see what they are before clicking them, so I wouldn't make that mistake again.) I saw a Bad Thing; I did what I needed to in order to stop fixating on the Bad Thing; I learned a lesson on How To Protect Myself.
Today's 17-year-olds go to sites like AO3 that are intended mainly for adults, that they know contain adult content up to and including explicit sex scenes and pornographic fanart, refuse to block any of the tags that disturb them, and then when they stumble upon Really Nasty Shit, they immediately try to get AO3 to ban the author of the Really Nasty Shit and post "callout posts" on Twitter and Tumblr that make sure everybody else knows about the Really Nasty Shit that this person did and why they should, therefore, be Cancelled from all social media everywhere forever.
And instead of saying "if you don't want to read adult content, don't go to an adult-oriented website;" instead of saying "why didn't you block the tags for That Thing That Squicks You on the AO3 account that we all know you have, so that you don't even see it at all;" instead of saying "You're one birthday away from being a legal adult and really should learn how to press 'Back' and walk away," we enable this behavior.
No, really. SESTA and FOSTA are, ostensibly, about preventing online sex trafficking. In practice, every single social media website's response to these sites has eventually been to block all of the porn. Not age-restrict it, no. Not ban the specific buying and selling of sexual content, no. Ban every single bit of smut in general. Twitter is still holding out as a bastion of "This Tweet may contain offensive content. View anyway?" but there's no telling how long that will last.
And now, the Internet for everyone, everywhere is starting to look a lot like the Internet at my mom's old workplace 20 years ago.
You want to look at a fictional character's boobs? Sorry, Bess can't go there.
You want to set up a Patreon, but some of your art has naughty bits in it? Bess can't go there.
You want to buy the Kama Sutra on Amazon? Bess can't go there.
You want to find fellow smut artists on Tumblr? Bess can't go there.
You want to draw a man's nipples on a site that doesn't ban male nipples at all? Bess can't go there because AI has no fucking clue how to deal with images and everybody except big-name website CEOs knows it.
And freelance sex workers (who are NOT being trafficked, by definition) are hurt by it. So are small-time artists for whom every eyeball that views their art, every Like, every Share/Reblog/RT, every commission, could be the difference between them being able to buy groceries this week or not.
I know I mention the Tumblr Purge on here a lot, but Tumblr before the Purge was the safe place to go for porn. It was the website that you could go to that didn't store your credit-card information, that didn't download massive amounts of spyware and dangerous Trojan Horses to your device the second you went to it. The only other spot online that lets you access pornography without extreme risk is PornHub, which is almost entirely live video, and thus isn't what you wanted if you were hoping for animated smut or still drawings.
Are there other websites you can go to that have this sort of thing? Yes. But the vast majority of them are either entirely behind a paywall, or install all of the nastiest viruses on your device all at once. (Bless those rare sites that offer "free samples" up to 1-2 pages into the Good Stuff before you have to pay; sometimes you're both horny and broke, and these tidbits can and often do result in subscriptions once you're no longer as broke, but still horny.)
I guess what I'm trying to say is, fandom smut is largely going back to the way it was 20 years ago, when quality stuff was hidden on an individual's privately-hosted (or AngelFire, or Tripod) website. Which means we need to re-create Smut Webrings. Who's with me?
The Rise of Skywalker
Dec. 26th, 2019 10:57 pmSo I have a TON of feelings about this movie, and they need to be written down NOW. Spoilers will be behind the cut.
First of all, I'm getting tired of people complaining so much about J. J. Abrams, as if he's somehow single-handedly responsible for destroying the films we loved during our childhoods. The dude is a fan of both Star Wars and Star Trek, and it shows through in his writing. Do you really want an aging George Lucas to write these films, without his ex-wife editing them like she did the original trilogy? We had that. It's called the prequel trilogy. Most fans agree that the prequels suck. Admit it: you want the original trilogy, only New Again, so you can experience it for the first time again. You can't have that. None of us can have that. It's impossible without completely wiping your memory and showing you the original trilogy. And that's okay. Some things are fleeting, like the feeling you had when you saw your favorite movie for the first time. You still remember the way you felt the first time you saw A New Hope, and that memory is still there. Nobody can buy or sell that memory. It's yours.
OK, now that that's over with, I'm starting with something absolutely beautiful. There is a subset of SW fans who somehow missed the entire point of Star Wars and grew up to be racist, sexist assholes. I'm thinking of the dude who wrote the TFA review that called BB-9 a "little cuck ball." (If that was satire, it was masterfully done. I certainly believed it was an actual MRA douchebag.) These terrible fans wouldn't STFU about Rose....existing. How dare a WOC have an important role in a Star War. How dare she be anywhere except the background while the Manly Men do the actual work. So naturally, TRoS has Rose in a much smaller role than she had in TLJ--and turns around and adds two new female characters, both of which are vital to advancing the plot, one of whom is black and plays a pivotal role in the final battle. Because fuck you, bigoted fans! Cry harder! Your tears give us strength.
As always, the droids were entertaining. And yes, of course I spoke along when C-3PO introduced himself. "Hello, I am C-3PO, human-cyborg relations" has been permanently etched into my brain since I was a toddler and my dad taped the original trilogy off the TV. (I need to see if I can find those old tapes. Since the Special Edition has been the only commercially-available one for over 20 years, it's hard to find the SW I actually watched as a kid.)
We all knew Leia was going to die, so this isn't a spoiler. They handled her death beautifully, IMO. As promised, there was still enough unused footage of Carrie Fisher that they could make her appearance in TRoS believable. I don't think Leia or Carrie could have been treated more respectfully in the movie than what we got.
There was also some shameless pandering, in two scenes at the very end of the movie that lasted less than 2 seconds each. We got Ewoks. Because apparently, somebody out there thinks, not only that fans all loved the Ewoks (I personally liked them as a kid), but that 2 seconds of cheering Ewoks at the end of the movie is the correct amount of Ewoks. THEY DID NOTHING IN THE MOVIE. Why not throw in the damn Gungans too, tick all the "annoying alien races created for merchandising purposes" boxes?
We also got "lesbian representation," in the form of 2 women who don't even get named or have any speaking roles kissing. Oh hey, a second and a half of Gay that can be easily removed for overseas markets because Disney are greedy cowards. That is not representation. That is the biggest media company in the world throwing us a tiny crumb and pretending it's a whole goddamned cake. SAME-SEX COUPLES AREN'T CONTROVERSIAL ANYMORE. EVERYONE ELSE IS INCLUDING THEM. Join the fucking 21st century already, Disney.
On the plus side, did y'all see Rey, Finn, and Poe in that 3-way hug at the end? IDC what anyone says, they are a triad. You will pluck this ship from my cold dead fingers.
And spoiler time.
( Read more... )
I'm sure I'm going to have more complaints after the initial euphoria of I JUST SAW A NEW STAR WARS MOVIE wears off, but for now? I'm happy with it, overall. It wasn't the utter tirefire that everyone on the Internet made it out to be, that's for sure.
First of all, I'm getting tired of people complaining so much about J. J. Abrams, as if he's somehow single-handedly responsible for destroying the films we loved during our childhoods. The dude is a fan of both Star Wars and Star Trek, and it shows through in his writing. Do you really want an aging George Lucas to write these films, without his ex-wife editing them like she did the original trilogy? We had that. It's called the prequel trilogy. Most fans agree that the prequels suck. Admit it: you want the original trilogy, only New Again, so you can experience it for the first time again. You can't have that. None of us can have that. It's impossible without completely wiping your memory and showing you the original trilogy. And that's okay. Some things are fleeting, like the feeling you had when you saw your favorite movie for the first time. You still remember the way you felt the first time you saw A New Hope, and that memory is still there. Nobody can buy or sell that memory. It's yours.
OK, now that that's over with, I'm starting with something absolutely beautiful. There is a subset of SW fans who somehow missed the entire point of Star Wars and grew up to be racist, sexist assholes. I'm thinking of the dude who wrote the TFA review that called BB-9 a "little cuck ball." (If that was satire, it was masterfully done. I certainly believed it was an actual MRA douchebag.) These terrible fans wouldn't STFU about Rose....existing. How dare a WOC have an important role in a Star War. How dare she be anywhere except the background while the Manly Men do the actual work. So naturally, TRoS has Rose in a much smaller role than she had in TLJ--and turns around and adds two new female characters, both of which are vital to advancing the plot, one of whom is black and plays a pivotal role in the final battle. Because fuck you, bigoted fans! Cry harder! Your tears give us strength.
As always, the droids were entertaining. And yes, of course I spoke along when C-3PO introduced himself. "Hello, I am C-3PO, human-cyborg relations" has been permanently etched into my brain since I was a toddler and my dad taped the original trilogy off the TV. (I need to see if I can find those old tapes. Since the Special Edition has been the only commercially-available one for over 20 years, it's hard to find the SW I actually watched as a kid.)
We all knew Leia was going to die, so this isn't a spoiler. They handled her death beautifully, IMO. As promised, there was still enough unused footage of Carrie Fisher that they could make her appearance in TRoS believable. I don't think Leia or Carrie could have been treated more respectfully in the movie than what we got.
There was also some shameless pandering, in two scenes at the very end of the movie that lasted less than 2 seconds each. We got Ewoks. Because apparently, somebody out there thinks, not only that fans all loved the Ewoks (I personally liked them as a kid), but that 2 seconds of cheering Ewoks at the end of the movie is the correct amount of Ewoks. THEY DID NOTHING IN THE MOVIE. Why not throw in the damn Gungans too, tick all the "annoying alien races created for merchandising purposes" boxes?
We also got "lesbian representation," in the form of 2 women who don't even get named or have any speaking roles kissing. Oh hey, a second and a half of Gay that can be easily removed for overseas markets because Disney are greedy cowards. That is not representation. That is the biggest media company in the world throwing us a tiny crumb and pretending it's a whole goddamned cake. SAME-SEX COUPLES AREN'T CONTROVERSIAL ANYMORE. EVERYONE ELSE IS INCLUDING THEM. Join the fucking 21st century already, Disney.
On the plus side, did y'all see Rey, Finn, and Poe in that 3-way hug at the end? IDC what anyone says, they are a triad. You will pluck this ship from my cold dead fingers.
And spoiler time.
( Read more... )
I'm sure I'm going to have more complaints after the initial euphoria of I JUST SAW A NEW STAR WARS MOVIE wears off, but for now? I'm happy with it, overall. It wasn't the utter tirefire that everyone on the Internet made it out to be, that's for sure.
Fun With Flags
Oct. 30th, 2019 01:20 pmSo, since I'm in my mid-30s, apparently I have now become That Bitch Who Likes Garden Flags. I was looking for some nice seasonal flags when I saw the most horrifyingly 'Murica thing I have ever seen. Here it is:
( Flag behind the cut ) That's right, folks. It's got a bald eagle, the US Constitution, an American flag, and Extra FREEDOM! all in one image. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
( Flag behind the cut )
The one about video-game piracy.
Sep. 8th, 2019 08:49 pmThat's right, y'all, I'm getting on my soapbox again. This time, it's about video games and whether piracy is ever ethically justified. (Note: piracy is still very much illegal. Please don't break the law for stupid reasons. It's not worth it.)
So let's talk about this via actual examples, and who does or doesn't benefit in each case. This post will be very, very long, so I'm putting my examples behind a cut. (And it took me three and a half hours to research and type this post, so y'all better not complain about me leaving out a game you like. Research and write your own damned post.)
( Read more... )
So there you go. That's 6 specific cases of games that were all originally released 15 or more years ago. Four of them are illegal to pirate, but still easy to obtain legally. One is abandonware. One is illegal to pirate, but difficult or impossible to obtain legally at anything like a fair price.
In my personal opinion, any game that is still available brand-new from the original manufacturer, either in its original form or as a port/remake, should be purchased the good old-fashioned way. Most new games nowadays have free demos available; this isn't feasible for ports, but those ports have been reviewed and Let's Played to death if you want to get a feel for what the game's like before you buy. Don't pirate them. Pirating a game that is still actively being sold by the developer hurts the devs. Yes, even the $70 AAA titles. The Telltale Games debacle shows that game-developing is a massive gamble, and if a company loses too much money on a game, they can, in fact, go under. (And in the case of Telltale Games, leave their entire employee base unemployed and without benefits or severance pay, then start right back up again--without giving former employees ANY of these things that they had earned--as if they were a brand new company.)
If a game is legally abandonware (and you should check Wikipedia to see if it was ported or remade after 1994, because you never know), then downloading a ROM for free is not, legally, piracy. Any game that has had NO ports, re-releases, or copyright renewals in 25 years or more is, legally, no longer under copyright under US law and can be legally distributed for free. This only applies to video games, and only in the United States. And again, if there's been a port, re-release, or copyright renewal to a game within the past 25 years, it's still under copyright, and downloading that ROM is piracy. Because of this law, the Internet Archive actually has a lot of abandonware DOS games available for free download, 100% legally. (And yes, they check to make sure it really IS abandonware according to US law.) So since it's not piracy, it should be totally OK for you to get that free ROM in these cases, but be aware that heavy-hitters like Nintendo can afford to sue you anyway if they catch you.
If a game has been out of print for more than 10 years, is hard to find for anything less than $100USD on the secondhand market, and the publisher has flat-out refused to port it to a new system, then there is no legal way to get that game for a fair price. This means that either you need to cough up way more than any game is worth, or break the law, if you want to actually play that game. There aren't any games worth that expense to me right now (except Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, but I still have a copy of that game from when it was new). Path of Radiance could be, but I'd rather just improve my Japanese, buy a Japanese GCN, and get a Japanese copy of the game than spend $175 for a game when the console it's on is literally available for less than $30 on eBay.
Furthermore, scalping copies of games that have been out of print for a decade is bad, and you should feel bad. I'm looking at you, Guy Who Sells A Used GameCube Game For $1500. Charging more than $120 for these games is just plain extortion. Stop doing that.
So let's talk about this via actual examples, and who does or doesn't benefit in each case. This post will be very, very long, so I'm putting my examples behind a cut. (And it took me three and a half hours to research and type this post, so y'all better not complain about me leaving out a game you like. Research and write your own damned post.)
( Read more... )
So there you go. That's 6 specific cases of games that were all originally released 15 or more years ago. Four of them are illegal to pirate, but still easy to obtain legally. One is abandonware. One is illegal to pirate, but difficult or impossible to obtain legally at anything like a fair price.
In my personal opinion, any game that is still available brand-new from the original manufacturer, either in its original form or as a port/remake, should be purchased the good old-fashioned way. Most new games nowadays have free demos available; this isn't feasible for ports, but those ports have been reviewed and Let's Played to death if you want to get a feel for what the game's like before you buy. Don't pirate them. Pirating a game that is still actively being sold by the developer hurts the devs. Yes, even the $70 AAA titles. The Telltale Games debacle shows that game-developing is a massive gamble, and if a company loses too much money on a game, they can, in fact, go under. (And in the case of Telltale Games, leave their entire employee base unemployed and without benefits or severance pay, then start right back up again--without giving former employees ANY of these things that they had earned--as if they were a brand new company.)
If a game is legally abandonware (and you should check Wikipedia to see if it was ported or remade after 1994, because you never know), then downloading a ROM for free is not, legally, piracy. Any game that has had NO ports, re-releases, or copyright renewals in 25 years or more is, legally, no longer under copyright under US law and can be legally distributed for free. This only applies to video games, and only in the United States. And again, if there's been a port, re-release, or copyright renewal to a game within the past 25 years, it's still under copyright, and downloading that ROM is piracy. Because of this law, the Internet Archive actually has a lot of abandonware DOS games available for free download, 100% legally. (And yes, they check to make sure it really IS abandonware according to US law.) So since it's not piracy, it should be totally OK for you to get that free ROM in these cases, but be aware that heavy-hitters like Nintendo can afford to sue you anyway if they catch you.
If a game has been out of print for more than 10 years, is hard to find for anything less than $100USD on the secondhand market, and the publisher has flat-out refused to port it to a new system, then there is no legal way to get that game for a fair price. This means that either you need to cough up way more than any game is worth, or break the law, if you want to actually play that game. There aren't any games worth that expense to me right now (except Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, but I still have a copy of that game from when it was new). Path of Radiance could be, but I'd rather just improve my Japanese, buy a Japanese GCN, and get a Japanese copy of the game than spend $175 for a game when the console it's on is literally available for less than $30 on eBay.
Furthermore, scalping copies of games that have been out of print for a decade is bad, and you should feel bad. I'm looking at you, Guy Who Sells A Used GameCube Game For $1500. Charging more than $120 for these games is just plain extortion. Stop doing that.
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.Evening Twitter
— Dr Orville Rhythm (@DrJamesMasonry) August 19, 2019
What are the adverts that you remember from your childhood?
Not any adverts though, I'm talking about the ones where the songs or words are so deeply ingrained that you can recite them word for word?
( Read more... )
