Grandma Says, "Go For It!"

RIP to every Afghan (46,319) and Iraqi (210,296) civilians who were murdered in the Global War on Terror.

The question came up if they could cast spells underwater with verbal components and I said, jokingly, "well give me ONE good reason that you could talk underwater while waterbreathing"

These idiots (lovingly) went into like a 15-minute debate about HYDROPHYSICS AND AQUATIC ACOUSTICS PRINCIPLES... like I just got plopped in the middle of a physical oceanography conference.

It was entertaining for the first bit before I finally interrupted and said "guys... you could have just said -*~magic~*-" like I would have accepted that the nature of the MAGICAL SPELL LETTING YOU BREATHE UNDERWATER let's you communicate...

Wegener's ideas fell apart as soon as someone asked questions like "so how did these continents drift apart?" because all he had was some interesting observations (for example, Wegener noticed that fossils from identical species could be found an ocean apart, but almost as if they had a natural range across two specific areas that were at some point connected).

Without Marie Tharp, Wegener's ideas would have just been interesting food for thought, not a fully developed robust scientific understanding allowing us to predict volcanic eruptions and earthquakes and allowing us to understand continental drift.

Like mentioned in the article, they could very well donate them if storage cost is a concern. Or at least consult on how to get rid of them respectfully as shredding them is not respectful.

someone studied for decades, did an apprenticeship, and then spent multiple years writing that

Also it's extremely sacred

[Image Transcript:

And how will I prove my age?

There’s a number of methods a site or app might use to ask you to confirm your age. They might do this check themselves or use another company to do the check. These methods include:

Facial age estimation – you show your face via photo or video, and technology analyses it to estimate your age. 

Open banking – you give permission for the age-check service to securely access information from your bank about whether you are over 18. The age-check service then confirms this with the site or app.

Digital identity services – these include digital identity wallets, which can securely store and share information which proves your age in a digital format.

Credit card age checks – you provide your credit card details and a payment processor checks if the card is valid. As you must be over 18 to obtain a credit card this shows you are over 18.

Email-based age estimation – you provide your email address, and technology analyses other online services where it has been used – such as banking or utility providers - to estimate your age.  

Mobile network operator age checks – you give your permission for an age-check service to confirm whether or not your mobile phone number has age filters applied to it. If there are no restrictions, this confirms you are over 18. 

Photo-ID matching – this is similar to a check when you show a document. For example, you upload an image of a document that shows your face and age, and an image of yourself at the same time – these are compared to confirm if the document is yours.

End Transcript.]

Not only is this such a fucking breach of privacy, but this is going to hurt adults in vulnerable and abusive situations. Some adults don’t have bank accounts or credit cards or even a fucking phone. I’m one of them. I could not give half of this information even if I wanted to. What the fuck is this. Fuck the UK government. This isn’t going to protect kids, this is just going to hurt adults, and I know full well when they say “sites that allow pornography” they’re going to be going after sites that have huge amounts of queer content, like tumblr and Ao3. Queer kids are gonna lose their fucking communities because of this shit. Abuse victims are going to lose online support systems because of this.

I’m genuinely fucked off about this, and worried about whether I’m going to lose every single one of my online friends. Anyone in the UK, please email your MP and sign this petition. It needs to reach 100k signatures to pass through Parliament.

I’m only hoping the backlash will be big enough for them to stop implementing these measures.