itsreallyjustme

So this guy has been extremely active for around fifteen years, during which he spread these beautiful, high quality pieces all over the country, way over a thousand of his standard signature, and probably thousands more. He did completely batshit stuff like literally spray painting an entire train from top to bottom or leaving his signature at the top of a 600ft tall overpass and this whole time, only five people from his crew know who he really is. To everyone else it's a complete mystery.

And then he dies at the age of 35. A few weeks after his death, his crew shows up at his completely unassuming parents' doorstep, reveals who they are and asks if they can host a memorial exhibition of his art.

I went to the memorial exhibition his friends and family hosted and it was probably one of the most breathtaking experiences I've ever had. The entire art scene of the city showed up. They screened a movie they made out of videos EXUDT shot of himself painting and it was so crowded that not everybody fit into the backyard where the exhibition was.

His mum baked his favourite cake for the exhibition visitors 🥺🥺🥺

EXUDT left his standard signature in every single town/village in the federal state and there was a showcase with a map of the state, surrounded by photos of all signatures which were connected to their location with a thread. I overheard the guy who set that display up asking his friends over and over if it's good and dignified enough to honour his friend. Despite the fact that he increasingly withdrew, this guy was so, so loved by his community.

In the area where I grew up you practically can't go anywhere without seeing his signature. When I take the train to my beloved, I pass by 25 signatures visible from the train alone. On my way from home to my university campus there's 13.

Despite increased police presence in the city center, his crew managed to leave a small memorial painting right at the control hotspot. It reads "EXUDT 4 EVA - DANIEL FOREVER."

An old comic I made in art school (14 years ago) about a papa and baby bear, as well as a neolithic human sacrifice

A series of tweets from Robert G. Reeve (username RobertGReeve). Tweets read:

I’m back from a week at my mom’s house and now I’m getting ads for her toothpaste brand, the brand I’ve been putting in my mouth for a week. We never talked about this brand or googled it or anything like that.

As a privacy tech worker let me explain why this is happening. (thread emoji)

First of all, your social media apps are not listening to you. This is a conspiracy theory. It’s been debunked over and over again.

But frankly they don’t nee to because everything else you give them unthinkingly is is way cheaper and way more powerful.

Your apps collect a ton of data from your phone. Your unique device ID. Your location. Your demographics. We know this.

Data aggregators pay to pull in data from EVERYWHERE. When I use my discount card at the grocery story? Every purchase? That’s a dataset for sale.

They can match my Harris Teeter purchase to my twitter account because I gave both those companies my email address and phone number and I agreed to all that data-sharing when I accepted those terms of service and the privacy policy.

Here’s where eit gets truly nuts, though.

If my phone is regularly in the same GPS location as another phone, they take note of that. They start reconstructing the web of people I’m in regular contact with.

The advertisers can cross-reference my interests and browsing history and purchase history to those around me. It starts to show ME different ads based on the people AROUND me.

Family. Friends. Coworkers.

It will see me ads for things I DON’T Want, but I knows that someone I’m in regular contact with might want.

To subliminally get me to start a conversation about, I don’t know, fucking toothpaste.

It never needed to listen to me for this. It’s just comparing aggregated metadata.

So. They know my mom’s toothpaste. The know I was at my mom’s. They know my Twitter. Now I get Twitter ads for mom’s toothpaste.

Your data isn’t just about you. It’s about how it can be used against every person you know, and people you don’t. To shape behaviour unconsciously.

Apple’s latest updates block app’s tracking and Facebook is MAD. They’re BEGGING you to just press accept and go back to business as usual.

Block the fuck of of every app’s ads. It’s not about you:your data shapes the Internet.

[End image ID]

Apart from clicking ‘do not accept’, what else can you do about it?

Firstly, I’m going to plug Firefox as the only non-Chrome based Browser out there. Chrome is made by Google/Alphabet and Alphabet is an advertising company. Most, if not all, big tech companies are.

Then I’m going to plug some plugins. If you don’t know what plugins are, now is a great time to learn! They’re small pieces of extra software that run on top of (plug in to) an existing app. They’re also called extensions (because they extend the app’s functionality).

Here’s what I use to keep my data mine:

HTTPS Everywhere

An HTTPS connection means the website you’re visiting hasn’t been modified before it loaded and that any data you submit to that website can’t be seen by anyone else. HTTPS Everywhere is an extension/plugin made by the nonprofit group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and it automatically loads websites over HTTPS wherever that’s an option.

(nb: Firefox enables this by default in Private Browsing mode and has an option to force HTTPS connections in regular mode in its Privacy and Security menu)

Privacy Badger

Another EFF extension, Privacy Badger blocks invisible third-party trackers on websites. It looks at all the components of a web page, learns which ones track you across the internet, then stops them from loading.

Notably, it only blocks ads that don’t respect Do Not Follow headers, which is an option you can (and, imo, should) enable in Firefox’s settings.

Privacy Possum

Privacy Possum was written by one of the developers who worked on Privacy Badger, and has some extra features, but - because tracking companies have infinitely more resources and political power than nonprofits or individual app developers - it emphasises costing tracking companies money over user protection.

Privacy Possum’s main feature over Badger is “data poisoning” - it does background searches for random things to introduce junk data into your advertising profile.

uBlock Origin

Ad blockers do exactly what you’d expect from the name: they block ads from loading. Since the tracking software is often built into the ad itself that means they also block the tracking code.

Be careful with impersonators: there are a number of untrustworthy extensions that use a similar name in the hope you’re not fully paying attention. Fortunately, once it’s installed, you can just leave it to work in the background.

ClearURLs

Links are another way to track your movement across the Internet. You know how sometimes links look way longer than they ought to? Some of that might be data that tells the website where you came from (eg: email vs Facebook). ClearURLs removes that extra bumpf.

Multi-Account Containers

In the time after Arthur’s fall, when the land lay in ruin, many had lost their way. The lords, once bound by noble ideals, had turned inward, lost in their own power and greed. The Round Table was no more, and Camelot's glory began to fade with the sands of time. In the shadow of that broken age, a boy born of the streets would rise as a knight. His name was Glass.

Glass was a child of hardship. He knew nothing of his father. His mother, a poor widow, struggled to raise him in a world that had turned its back on them when she fell ill. The only moments of true peace that Glass could remember were the times when his mother would whisper stories of Arthur, Camelot, and the Round Table; tales of a world once ruled by honor, justice, and mercy.

Glass’s mother, weary but warm, would lay him to rest after a long day. She’d run her hands through his hair, her voice low but filled with the strength of one who had seen much pain.

"You are my little knight of Broken Glass. The world may be broken, but you have the heart of a knight. Even if the world does not see you as one, you are MY perfect knight."

When all felt lost, it was these moments that Glass would look back on.

Glass lost his mother early in life. They were left to rot while the lords' houses stood warm, their bellies full. His mother had worked hard, but because her labor was insufficient, she died poor and sick on a dirt floor, still telling stories to her precious little knight.

Since Glass was a child, he had felt a restlessness deep inside him, a fire in his chest that he could not put out. Every unjust act, every cruel word from a lord or unjust punishment from a slave owner made his blood boil, yet he was powerless to stop it. He was but one boy, a witness to the world's evil, a boy made invisible by poverty. As he aged, he could feel his hands begin to itch, to grasp at a hilt that wasn’t there. Someone needed to strike down those who had twisted the land and poisoned it against him. How could these weak and evil men turn Camelot into such a mockery of what it once was? 

Glass went forth and wandered the land…

…Many months later

Glass stood alone before the ruins of the Chapel of Saint Illtud, a place where Arthur’s knights once knelt in prayer. His mother had spoken of this chapel, where oaths were sworn in the name of justice and mercy. A chapel where a weary knight could come to seek guidance in times of distress. But those days had passed. The chapel, like the kingdom of Camelot, had been left to ruin.

The stone walls were cracked and crawling with ivy, their carvings worn away. Fragments of stained glass, once vibrant with the deeds of noble knights, now lay strewn across the floor. The altar, though broken, still stood. Above it, the crooked remains of a wooden cross clung stubbornly to the wall. Moonlight spilled through the jagged window frames, and the wind stirred softly, as though the ghosts of the past still lingered.

Glass stepped forward. He could almost see them, the knights who had come before him, standing tall in their gleaming armor, but they were no more. The lords of the land had twisted their memory, wearing the titles of knights while casting aside their oaths. No king ruled with honor. The people suffered, and no one came to their aid.

He approached the altar and knelt. As he looked around him, the shards of stained glass reflected the moon’s pale light and gave him but a glimpse of a boy he’d never see again. He clenched his fists and swallowed, fighting the tremble in his voice. He cried out:

"I swear by all that is sacred!

I swear fealty to no king!

 I will be a knight of the people, for the people!

 I will right the wrongs done to the weak, the hungry, and the helpless!

 I will fight against the injustice and tyranny that poisons this land!

 Though the world may never know my name, I will stand against evil with honor and courage!

 I will never falter, even when my hands are stained with the blood of those who would harm the innocent."

The wind howled through the open archways, and for a moment, it was as if the earth itself had heard his vow, bearing witness to the birth of something new. His words echoed through the hollow space, and then all fell silent.

Tears welled in his eyes, but he did not wipe them away. The burden of his oath weighed heavily upon him, yet he felt no shame in shedding tears. He had no lord to serve, no title to claim—only the memory of his mother’s voice, calling him her little knight of broken glass.

When the tears dried, he rose, the fragments of stained glass glinting like distant stars beneath his feet. 

"What am I to do?" He thought to himself.

sweet talking frog...

-thanks to a telecoms deal Facebook came preloaded on a lot of mobile phones and often time on FB didn’t count towards your minutes so to many in Myanmar Facebook WAS the internet

-nonetheless FB was not optimized for Burmese, Myanmar was not renders on Unicode, and the terms of service were translated extremely late and passed out on paper flyers instead of posted anywhere. FB in Myanmar had little to no oversight and there was only one contractor in Dublin monitoring hate speech in Burmese even when there were LITERAL RIOTS caused by misinformation posted on Burmese FB

-Myanmar was not a priority for FB leadership so after LITERAL RIOTS they only hired one other contractor who seemed to remove posts from peace activists rather than hate speech or posts calling for violence

-due to what seems like internal politicking against the author, the person she tries to hire to be in charge of Myanmar in the right time zonenever gets hired

-FB higher ups were warned in advance of huge misinformation efforts like troll accounts and takeovers of fan accounts for pop stars but did nothing, leading pretty much directly to what the UN calls genocide and crimes against humanity

There's a difference between a man who is immature and buys into misogynistic views of beauty and aging and one who is a predator. Also, many actual predators? Not losers and able to move through society pretty freely being seen as cool and the ideal, so conflating the two isn't helpful.

if a 40 year old dude only dates 25 year olds, DiCaprio style or something adjacent to it, then yeah he's a loser

if a 40 year old dude meets a 25 year old through social event or friends or whatever and they happen to hit it off and make a go of it, and this isn't some sort of reoccurring pattern for the guy, that's just a relationship with an age difference

being predatory means something specific, and man I agree w/ OP and really wish people just stopped ascribing it to any and all relationship dynamics they personally might not like

Legally (I live in the UK) we were not minors, although we inhabited an odd legal limbo until we turned 18, and we were certainly not “children”. Intellectually, socially, though, we were considered (young) adults, or at the most “older teenagers.” We were expected to read mostly adult books (rather than middle grade or YA), watch the news/read papers, watch mostly adult television.

And I do think we a bit under-protected, under-supported, and in some cases - neglected and financially exploited - and I’m not necessarily advocating that. But it did make us feel, I think, in charge of our own lives, capable and competent to make decisions.

At 16-17 my parents knew they could leave me alone overnight/for a couple of nights, and I wouldn’t starve or burn the house down. I felt comfortable getting cross country trains on my own, or booking and staying at a hotel (yes, with my boyfriend.)

Then there was this… creeping of sentiments that we were all Too Young to trouble our heads about certain things. A lot of it was good - more stringent licensing laws, raising the school leaving age, raising the minimum smoking age(!) - but some of the broader cultural stuff was… a bit patronising? Eg, the introduction of “New Adult” as a category of books aimed at 18-25 year olds, the way cartoons and books written for the 9-12 age group were being marketed as for the 12-15 age group, referring to late teens as “children,” etc etc.

Then, in 2008, there was the big financial crash and suddenly my generation were (broadly) robbed of all the usual markers of adulthood and success, meaning that we got ‘stuck’ in the lifestyles and modes our late teens/early 20s. And suddenly, all the emphasis shifted from social and legal protections for late teens/ younger adults, to legal restrictions on their freedoms/rights, and strange philosophical protections on the emotional states.

So, OF COURSE a 23 year old can’t buy a beer without carrying an ID card, and a 17 year old can’t have a crush on a 16 year old, but also, because you’re *children* you don’t need to live like adults. So the UK government got to save money by saying “18 isn’t a proper adult,” then “20 isn’t a proper adult,” and “25 isn’t a proper adult” because it meant they could refuse to give single occupancy housing benefit rates to people of those ages (I think they’ve raised it over 30 now.) Or by refusing to clamp down on exploitative temporary/zero hours contracts - because they’re just “temp jobs for young people!”, or by raising the retirement age because “60 is far too young to retire. You’re not a real adult until 35.”

And it means the discursive environment is such that you can claim that a 21 year old trans person is too young to make their own medical decisions, or a 15 year old is too young to consent to the contraceptive pill.

Meanwhile, they are not offering additional *protections* to these newly infantilised adults. 18 year olds are still encouraged to saddle themselves with enormous educational debt, or allowed to have credit cards, or expected to pay rent, or no longer receive child benefits. You still have to *work*. In fact, in the States, they’re looking to removed child employment restrictions - but that’s fine, because 20 year olds are being protected from making their own medical decisions, and adults get to say which books their teen kids are reading in school, and kids aren’t allowed to change their name or what they wear without parental consent.

We can see what these people are doing to the rights of children - so why are we being so complacent in expanding the definition of ‘child’?

Regardless - 25 is VERY CLEARLY an adult. At 25 I was married, had two kids, an overdraft, rent to pay, and experience of living in the world for 6 years. I had more in common with someone of 40 than I did with someone of 15. Hell, at*20* I had more in common with someone of 40 than someone of 15. Any sexual or relationship decisions you make at 25 are your own to make.

Of course there are likely to be power imbalances in a 15 year age gap - which is why most 25 year olds don’t date 40somethings - but not actually necessarily. And yeah, a 40 year old who only dates 20somethings is a skeeze - just like a 30 year old who routinely ingratiates themselves with rich 80 year olds is a skeeze.

But if any young people are reading this (doubt it)… your rights are much, much more important than your protections.

Yes, young people should be protected, but if someone claims they’re protecting you while denying you access to personal autonomy, financial stability, intellectual curiosity, or sexual self-determination because you’re “too young” to need, or understand those things… be very suspicious of their motives.

The guy was an institution all on his own; look at this.

The “A” profile in his soil is now 47 inches deep compared to less than 6 inches in 1971 and acts like a giant sponge for water infiltration and retention.

From 1971 through 1989 David used an average of 150-250 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre to grow his corn crops. After adding peas and radishes as a cover crop mix, he cut his nitrogen needs in half and was able to get it down to 125 pounds per acre.

When he added multiple species and became more aggressive with his cover crop mixes, he was able to achieve an additional drop in applied fertility. His starter fertilizer is now just 2 lbs of N, 4 lbs of P, and 5 lbs of K. His corn crop now only requires 20-30 lbs of N throughout the entire growing season. He requires no fertility for his soybeans, relying on fertility gained solely through his cover crops. He uses only 40 lbs of 10 N – 10 P – 10 K for his small grains.

Ten years ago (source study published 2019) David stopped using any fungicides and insecticides. This occurred at a time when fungicide and insecticide use has increased significantly with the average commodity farmer.

Four years ago he stopped using any seed treatment, including neonicotinoids.

His cash crop yields have been increasing by an average of 5% annually for the past 5-6 years, with far less fertilizer and no fungicides, insecticides or seed treatment.

So this is a picture of the soil horizons. The O profile/O horizon is stuff like fallen leaves, sticks, and so on, which are biodegrading into the A profile. A fair amount of soils might have no O profile at all.

If you are a gardener, the A profile is what you're concerned with most of the time; it's what we also call "topsoil." Your seeds germinate into it, and shallower plants might root into it alone without ever reaching the B profile. Worms and other small delvers live in it. It's what you're amending, what you're testing, what you're tilling, what you're trying to fill up with good microorganisms to work with your plants and provide you with food or flowers or cover.

I see this quote around sometimes, attributed to radioman Paul Harvey: Man — despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments — owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.

Without the topsoil, bluntly, we starve. And there are other problems, in places with a lack of it; without the topsoil, when the rains come, the water strikes hard soil. Hard soil doesn't accept water easily, so instead it pools and runs downhill. That action makes flooding, makes flash floods, makes standing water that carries disease, it contaminates the water table. Cholera is a huge problem in places with a low A profile that receive too much water at once.

We are seeing topsoil depletion across the US. I can't speak for other countries, but the heavy-tilling agricultural habits we've adopted here have obliterated inch after inch of our topsoil; in the 1800s the average depth was fourteen inches! Today it is six. Many suburban lawns have even less. This has knock-on effects we don't even consider on the day-to-day (for instance, there's some suggestion that the lower amounts of various minerals in vegetables and fruits today in comparison with earlier decades might be because of the lower amount of minerals in the soil for the plants to take up into themselves).

And this gentleman took soil that had been that abused and not only returned it to what it had been before the aggressive, destructive European agricultural policy had its way, but trebled that earlier depth.

His land protects the land around it from flooding. His land grows plants less susceptible to disease, because of all the various stressors and pressures those plants aren't confronted with. His land almost certainly has a considerably higher concentration of microorganisms and it would follow that we'd also see greater diversity of macroorganisms thereby.

In 1987, when Spider-Man finally tied the knot and married Mary Jane, Stan Lee held a real-life wedding at Shea Stadium as a publicity stunt.