Heracleum Mantegazzianum

This study is being done by Dr. Lisa Littman, Dr. Kenneth Zucker, and J. Michael Bailey. The same people behind the “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” and other Transphobic pseudoscience. Do NOT give information to them via ayagdos, they have a long history of retractions and reported misconduct.

Report this ad wherever you see it. The fact that staff allows this kind of shit yet still turning a blind eye to everything else is just pure hatred.

Burden of Proof:

1. Check that you have good access to shade trees, a shelter custom made to fit you and all your friends, and plenty of good airflow

2. Find the hottest, sunniest, and least windy part of you pasture and lay down

3. Make sure you look as much as possible like you have died of heatstroke

4. Get your friends in on it

Sampling rights becoming prohibitively expensive to use by small artists

Musicians being forced to sign over sampling rights to their record company, making any benefits they would hypothetically gain moot.

The Digital Milennium Copyright Act leading to the vidmaker-stomping nightmare that is ContentID

The DMCA leading to making it harder than ever to preserve media due to the way it prohibits tinkering with any locks the megacorps put on it, meaning it's way easier for artists' hard work to end up vaulted and lost.

The way basic chord progressions and musical styles have become copyrightable thanks to various lawsuits by the Marvin Gaye estate

The fact that the artists of the past used to be able to remix; adapt and iterate on art made within 56 years of them, likely created in their lifetimes, and now artists can only do those things with art produced nearly a century ago by people long dead.

New and independent artists being crowded out of the market by megacorp-owned IPs that would be public domain (and thusly convey less of an overwhelming advantage-via-marquee-value to megacorps) if the US had its pre-1976 copyright laws.

Times That Copyright Expansion Has Actually Materially Helped Artists On An Institutional Level:

if I make these links clickable they'll get deleted so please copy and paste them:

Livestream: https://www.twitch.tv/enderempress

like, perhaps you are seeking out new skills to try not because you're necessarily interested in just being good at them, but specifically to see if you will be exceptionally good at them without trying. ykwim? testing to see if you "have talent" because it would prove to the part of you that doesn't comprehend your inherent preciousness as a living human being that there is "something of value" in you. which, again, the thing of value in you is you. you had inherent immutable value as a baby and babies can't do shit*. do u get me. everything else is just gravy.

it's very easy to learn fast without trying and exceed expectations as a child, for obvious reasons I think. and if that's the only thing you felt valued for, you are gonna miss that feeling like hell as an adult and part of you might even get Big Mad at the insinuation that you have value even if you are truly doing nothing and producing nothing and excelling at nothing. at which point it's time to sit with that feeling and affirm it but also ask it some questions.

so anyway my end point here is that although "you need to get comfortable with being bad at things so that you can get good at them" is not bad advice, I think it might not be addressing the actual source of the issue for a lot of people

"'fandom' is a vehicle of marginalized subcultural groups (women, the young, gays, etc.) to pry open space for their cultural concerns within dominant representations; it is a way of appropriating media texts and rereading them in a way that serves different interests, a way of transforming mass culture into a popular culture"

Jenkins, Henry. “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5, no. 2 (1988): 85–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295038809366691.  

me, an elder fandom veteran, suddenly having anne rice flashbacks:

no.

NO.

starting to rock back and fourth.

you do not understand.

you were born into an age of peace. i was there Gandalf. i was there three thousand years ago. i remember the cease and desists. i remember authors hunting fanfic writers for sport. i remember when every fic opened with a disclaimer because we genuinely thought it might protect us.

we do not charge money for the copyrighted gay wizard stories.

do not tempt fate youngling.

step away from the paywall.

that is how you summon the ancient evils.