All stories are real

Microsoft has a DRM-locked ebook store that isn’t making enough money, so they’re shutting it down and taking away every book that every one of its customers acquired effective July 1.

Customers will receive refunds.

This puts the difference between DRM-locked media and unencumbered media into sharp contrast. I have bought a lot of MP3s over the years, thousands of them, and many of the retailers I purchased from are long gone, but I still have the MP3s. Likewise, I have bought many books from long-defunct booksellers and even defunct publishers, but I still own those books.

When I was a bookseller, nothing I could do would result in your losing the book that I sold you. If I regretted selling you a book, I didn’t get to break into your house and steal it, even if I left you a cash refund for the price you paid.

People sometimes treat me like my decision not to sell my books through Amazon’s Audible is irrational (Audible will not let writers or publisher opt to sell their books without DRM), but if you think Amazon is immune to this kind of shenanigans, you are sadly mistaken. My books matter a lot to me. I just paid $8,000 to have a container full of books shipped from a storage locker in the UK to our home in LA so I can be closer to them. The idea that the books I buy can be relegated to some kind of fucking software license is the most grotesque and awful thing I can imagine: if the publishing industry deliberately set out to destroy any sense of intrinsic, civilization-supporting value in literary works, they could not have done a better job.

Cailbre d/l:

https://calibre-ebook.com/download

How to use cailbre to remove DRM:

This will visually remove your deadname from any webpage. Obviously switch it off if your parents wanna check up on your work, but yee here's the link fam!!!! BOOST THIS!!! SEND THIS TO ANY TRANS PERSON YOU KNOW WHO WILL NEED THIS

The Wizard of Oz starts out in black & white — standard of the time and what people were used to.

But then after Dorothy lands and opens the door, she reveals not only the magical land of Munchkinland but also the magic of technicolor in one single shot.

ALSO

This is the greatest special effect you never knew you were looking at.

The celluloid used as film at the time was thick and brittle. Splicing it was basically impossible. How to go from sepia Kansas to technicolor Oz? This was a problem that nearly sank that amazing reveal shot.

Until some crewmember said “why not just film it all in color and paint Kansas brown?”

That’s right. THAT WHOLE THING IS COLOR. ALL OF IT. Bobbi Koshay (Judy Garland’s body double) has been put in brown makeup to hide the pink of her skin. That dress isn’t blue and filmed in sepia, it’s an identical brown dress. The furniture? All painted brown. The walls and door were painted to match their color on the Kansas film rolls....a daunting task, because film at the time came out so incredibly dark that those lush Ruby Slippers were almost orange in real life, just to get that deep red color. (Early tests with actually-red shoes came out black rather than red!)

And it was done so well and so expertly that the only way to tell it’s even there is to get one of the 1970s or TNT prints where Kansas is black and white instead of sepia-tone (since the painted “sepia” will be out of place).

Today we could do this with a click of a button. Back then they had to invent a whole new set.

He was so sad at the end 🥺 

Me: How could I have laughed at Victor, how could I have scorned his anguish in the sight of his glorious but unnatural creation??? Only now do I understand, only now-

And, as a Jewish person, I know that 6 million very well could be murdered. This is not another Shoah, but it very well could become another. As a Jewish person, I feel we must say “never again.”

Never again.

“Never again” does not mean “this event was so uniquely horrible, it could never happen again.” It means “this event was horrible, but not unique. We have to make sure it never happens again.”

Never again.

The Uyghur death count isn’t 6 million, that is misinformation. But “never again” means we have to make sure it doesn’t become 6 million.

If you are not Jewish or Romani, do not draw comparisons to the Holocaust. All that provides is shock value and misinformation. What you can do is support Uyghur Muslims.

The link to the original post doesn’t work—here are other sources:

Source from The Silhouette

Source from Business Insider

Source from Middle East Forum

Source from India Blooms

Source #1 from Jewish News

Source #2 from Jewish News

Groups to donate to:

Charity Right’s Food for Uyghurs

Uyghur Human Rights Project

Petitions to sign:

Petition 1

Petition 2

If you have more relevant resources, please share them. Petitions are likely meaningless in contrast to the Chinese government.

like, what other song can make that claim?

The crowd cheering after the first stanza when they realize what they’re all doing

So many people audibly ‘doing the guitar parts’… like ya do

The sheer number of voices joining the rediculous falsetto (thanks, Roger)

How they all start jumping at the ramp-up “so you think you can stomp me”

"mikey what should i order?"

"get the fries. youll need the energy in the coming days"

(puts 9ct gold victorian temperance charm with pop out bone devil back in pocket)

Not lore-accurate, but I wanted to give Molly’s snake tattoo aesthetic a shot. Inspired by Fiona Hsieh’s style.