Obsessed with all things Good Omens | I strongly identify with Crowley
I have been over 18 for a very long time. I grew up with she/her pronouns, although any are fine. (I am frequently addressed as "Sir" by store clerks, and then when they look again, they are all apologies to correct themselves. I find this amusing. I am tall, prefer masculine clothing, have a low-pitched voice, and apparently stand/walk in a way that can be perceived as masculine. But have feminine body curves. I look both like my Dad and my Mom.)
I am attracted to other people mostly by their personalities, rather than body type, although I have more commonly been attracted to people with male bodies. I am married, and have one child. (Just in case anyone was curious.)
...wait a minute, where did the last 10 (20, 30...) years go? How did I get here?
As if you fell asleep and when you wake up it's not the next day, but years and years have somehow gone by, but you feel almost the same, inside your head. But everything outside is different. It sometimes feels very surreal, like everything around you isn't really there, just some kind of mask or overlay on top of whatever reality is, like you are inside the Matrix, but have become aware of it, for just a moment.
And then, all of the "normal" things that you have to do just to survive and get through every day kind of drag you back down, into the "pretend" that is the normal everyday reality that everyone else is living in, and that weird sense of hyperawareness goes away, and you're back in "reality" again. Lately it feels more and more like this reality is a "pretend", even though I know that it is supposed to be the REAL reality, and that my imagination is supposed to be the "pretend" reality.
For whatever reason I am having these flashes of "hyperawareness" (not sure what else to call it, really) more and more often. I'm not sure what that means. I have never been "normal" (just ask any relative, teacher, or acquaintance), always read too much, asked too many questions, had too many opinions that weren't agreeable with everyone else's. Not sure if I have some sort of mental illness, physical illness, have become over-aware of and possibly obsessed with my own mortality, or what...
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I feel like it hardly matters anymore, but Flock isn't the only unsecured intrusive data selling crime inventing AI hallucinating automated license plate reading mass surveillance camera operators. Axon and Motorola and Amazon and ALPR and CCTV and security cameras should be equally rejected. All surveillance must go.
Look, we all know this is true. But there isn't a SOURCE for this, and the graph itself is basically illegible beyond "ooh colors". If we want to be good stewards of our informational resources, we need to cite our sources.
From a reverse image search, I found the website Show Your Stripes, run by the University of Reading in the UK, which is likely where the above graph originated. It provides temperature data for various regions of the world from approximately 1900-2025. For example, here are graphs for Canada, India, and Papua New Guinea:
All clearly show a sharp rise in temperature beginning around approximately the 1980s, which corresponds with the graph in OP's post. But now we know where this data came from, and we can verify its validity accordingly.
why be radically exclusionary abt queerness when you could be radically inclusionary instead. let's inflate the numbers. let's become the majority. the sky's the limit
"we can't let just ANYONE call themselves queer!!" what are you talking about. I'm steepling my fingers and gleefully cackling every time we Get Another One and you should be too. lock in.
Fuck yeah, let's make this little raft we're surviving on big as hell. If I bring my bit of driftwood and you bring yours and we let as many people join in as want to, we might end up with a functional boat.
Back when I was active on AVEN (I have no idea what it's like now), we had two definitions of asexual -- an external definition and an internal definition. The external definition, the one that's on the wiki and the press material and that everyone uses when talking about asexuality, was of course "an asexual is someone who does not experience sexual attraction". The internal definition, the one we kept in mind when talking to each other, was "an asexual is someone who calls themself asexual".
The reason for this was very simple and very practical. In the very early AVEN and immediately pre-AVEN days, back before my time when the disparate ace communities were first finding each other and creating a public online network, there was a fair lot of exclusionist discourse. There are a lot of ways to be asexual, and the early community of course fell prey to the usual infighting about whether someone with a libido counts as asexual, whether someone who chooses to have sex can be asexual (usual tiring Purity Brigade Bullshit), whether someone without a libido counts as asexual (after all, if you have no sex drive, are you sure it's a matter of sexual orientation?), whether ace people count as lgbtq, all the usual nonsense. This worked out the way it pretty much always does -- the inclusionists "win", because exclusionists always break off into smaller and smaller communities so the largest group is, of course, the one where all different kinds of people stick together and welcome each other. And that was AVEN.
And when you're trying to have a strong community and somebody shows up at the gates saying, "hi, I think I'm asexual", it's a fucking horrible idea to start doubting their credentials. They saw the public definition and started calling themselves asexual; they're here, and now they're under the internal definition. An asexual is somebody who calls themself asexual. Sometimes, these people would be frustrated allosexuals, or people choosing to swear off sex, who might not fit the external definition of the term. We made sure that everyone knew the external definition, and there were always conversations about asexuality and how it affected our lives, if they asked us directly what we thought then we'd say "only you can know for sure" and then give our thoughts on the matter for as long as they asked for them, and other than that it wasn't anyone else's fucking business or anyone's place to judge. If people weren't nasty and didn't create problems, they could stay and call themselves whatever they wanted.
Many of these people who didn't fit the strict definition eventually left after receiving support and discovering more about themselves. Some stopped IDing as ace but became allies to the community. Some people who came in with the most "I'm a heterosexual girl who is angry at my boyfriend" intro posts you've ever seen in your life discovered that they were in fact ace and that the messages that society had taught them about sex and romance were simply not for them -- these are people who, in a gatekept community, would have been incorrectly ousted immediately.
And then there were people -- a LOT of people -- who found themselves in grey areas. People who said "okay, this community makes sense to me and is useful to me and I have so much in common with a lot of you, but not EXACTLY like you. However, what I experience may not be the strict default definition but it's an awful lot like these other members on the forum." And they formed sub-communities. The grey aces. The demisexuals. The aromantics and greyromantics. Through these dialogues, between subgroups who in a more exclusionary community would be arguing about who the "real" asexuals are and splintering off into their own communities away from all those stupid cishet fakers, we developed language to describe our similarities and differences. The sexual/romantic/aesthetic attraction model came out of these dialogues and it became so massively important to our understanding of asexuality that basically everyone in the ace/aro community describes themselves by it, as do a large number of people outside the community. The community made massive leaps ahead in just a decade or two by, well, being a community. By being a place where anybody who called the place home, and didn't bully other people in the home, was right. By being somewhere where anybody who saw "asexual: someone who doesn't experience sexual attraction" and thought "that sounds like a term with some use for me" was allowed to use it.
An asexual is somebody who does not experience sexual attraction.
An asexual is somebody who calls themselves asexual.
These definitions are not in conflict -- they are both, in concert, fundamentally necessary for a safe and vibrant community where we can protect, support, and learn about each other and ourselves.
And that is absolutely not exclusive to asexual communities.
In the “No, no, we were just kidding” Hasty Pivot dep’t…
Citing backlash, ISBNdb removed its webpages about training AI, denied ever buying, scanning, or selling a book for AI training, and said th
In one now-removed article on its site, ISBNdb said that printed books published before 2022 are ideal for AI training data because they don’t include AI generated text, and ingesting these books could prevent model collapse. The article also suggested that book authors who might be opposed to this use of their work could just write with manipulating and sabotaging AI models in mind.
404 Media spoke to booksellers and saw reports online detailing a sudden uptick in sales recently. “It's not just the quantity, but the weirdness of the orders,” one bookseller told 404 Media. “The type of books [...] there's no rhyme or reason to it. Also, there's a total disregard for the price of the book. I've had some books that sold through this way that were [...] greatly overpriced. That's kind of a tell for AI because they have just so much money.”
“Purchasing paper books at scale from the secondary market does not deprive any creator of income they would otherwise have received,” one of ISBNdb’s now-removed pages said. “These are books that have already fully discharged their financial obligation to their creators.”
And yeah, sure, why don't all of us who value writing as art just spend the rest of our lives sabotaging that vital imperative by trying to screw up what we do enough to screw you up. Absolutely. Makes perfect sense.
It is really telling that their defense is "I mean the books are used so they aren't making anyone any money anyway, so we may as well sacrifice them to the AI idol."
Like they really see no value in something unless its making someone money. Like they don't understand that books have meaning to people, books are culture, they are history, they are something to pass down to the next generation. But no, they aren't making anyone any money so just feed them to the slop machine and then burn them. Who cares right?
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Ive said this before but swear the biggest skill to learn as an adult is how to resist high-pressure sales tactics. You do NOT have to answer questions with anything other than "Sorry I'm not interested." No matter how nice they are or no matter how many follow up questions they ask or even how agitated they get when you stand your ground. Just keep saying I'm not interested. Don't answer their questions. Don't give them an opening to try to push back on your reasons. Be a fucking brick wall of I'm not interested.
When we bought our car, I told Sean to let me handle it. I walked in and said "We have X for a down payment and cannot pay more than Y in monthly payments." My Y number had some leeway, but I didn't mention that.
First thing the sales guy did after I laid down the rules was turn to Sean and go, "What's your number?" And Sean said. "Oh, no, you negotiate with Gayle."
So, strike one for the sales guy. Could not divide and conquer us by implying THE MAN would not surprised at what I laid down.
Sales guy then had to confer with his manager and left us at his desk for several minutes. I have a vague recollection (this was 16 years ago) of Sean and I amusing ourselves doing bits about the other people there to look at cars. I am sure we did not give off the stressed or nervous energy they were hoping for.
Guy comes back. His first offer is fifty dollars a month more than I told him we could pay. I looked at him and said "I gave you our upper limit."
"Well, but what's another 50 bucks a month?"
"Something I can't afford."
He didn't know what to do with my open and unashamed admittal that I had a budget because my money was finite.
He went back to talk to the manager again.
It took two more rounds of "I told you what I can afford" before he finally came back 20 bucks under what I'd stated as my max.
The trick to resisting high-stress sales tactics is doing the math at home, knowing exactly what you can afford, and then walking into the room and stating that number minus 15%. Then refusing to budge from that number. Never, ever, meet then where they want. Always meet them where you want. Because at the end of the day, you can walk away and go somewhere else and say "I told the people at Z what my terms were, and they refused to work with me. Here are my terms. Meet them, and you make a sale today."
i know most leftists agree that everybody should have a right to food, water, shelter, and healthcare but i think a vitally important fifth pillar is privacy. people should not be compelled to be tracked, monitored, or to share personal space with others to access their other essential rights
it also frames desiring privacy as something the person is doing - they're being fearful, they're going against the grain because of some personal flaw - rather than the truth. governments and big tech tracking people constantly is weird, unnatural, rude, and invasive.
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When a fascist's not engaged in his employment (his employment)
Nor in plotting his felonious little plans
His capacity for innocent enjoyment ('cent enjoyment)
Is as great as any honest man's
When the newspapers all laugh at your misfortunes (your misfortunes)
When in Clacton you must argue with a bin
And the populace won't swallow your distortions (your distortions)
It's enough to do a body in
When constituency duty's to be done (to be done)
A Farage's lot is not an appy one (appy one)
When the incoming prime min'ster is a Burnham (is a Burnham)
And a scandal's coming all over the news
When the thing about your votes is you must earn 'em (you must earn 'em)
Answering for all your revenues
When it's all looking a bit too big to smother (big to smother)
All your careful plans are being overrun
Oh, take one consideration with another (with another)
A Farage's lot is not an appy one (appy one)
Yes, when constituency duty's to be done (to be done)
A Farage's lot is not an appy one (appy one)
Professional shit-weasel, Nigel Farage, announced yesterday that he is resigning as an MP so he can stand for re-election in his constituency of Clacton in what he is trying to frame as the People vs The Establishment.
This is because Nigel Farage is up to his ears in trouble for being unable to explain away to the satisfaction of the Parliamentary Commission why this five million quid he was donated wasn't officially declared, as it was meant to be. Naturally, he and his party are claiming no-one did anything wrong.
It may be that Nigel didn't realise that the Parliamentary Commission will simply continue their investigation into this should he be re-elected, it might be that he was hoping to be re-elected with a huge majority so he can paint himself as the people's champion being harassed, harangued, and brutally attacked on all sides by The Establishment, an amorphous blob at the best of times but in this case otherwise known as The Rules.
HOWEVER, in a shining example of cross-party cooperation, every major party has declined to run a candidate against him.
In what might be THE most British response to the fuckaboutery of politicians since we were all willing a lettuce to last longer than Liz Truss did as Prime Minister, Count Binface has decided to run against Nigel Farage.
And we appear to all be here for it.
(left - professional fascist shit-weasel. Right - Count Binface, the hero we need)
By-Election Gamble Turns to Farce
Farage's rivals rule out standing in Clacton by-election
Could Count Binface deliver 'triple embarrassment' for Nigel Farage at Clacton by-election?
Farage vs Count Binface? Parties rule out standing against Nigel in Clacton by-election 'circus'
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I refuse to believe that the potential ascendancy of intergalactic candidate Count Binface to the British Parliament does not have something to do with the Doctor.
I cannot stress enough that YES THIS IS A REAL MAN ACTUALLY RUNNING FOR MP. He's been doing it for years, formerly as Lord Buckethead. He's not even an independent anymore, he has an official Count Binface party!
My understanding is he's a writer who started about a decade ago partly as a joke obviously but also to try and encourage people to actually go out and vote and has just really doubled down on the satire of it all. You can read his manifesto here for such worthy policies as price locking the Wigan Kebab at 2 quid and "WiFi on trains that works. Also trains that work"