Jasper Moor Heath

Umberto Eco, who owned 50,000 books, had this to say about home libraries:

"It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones.

"There are things in life that we need to always have plenty of supplies, even if we will only use a small portion.

"If, for example, we consider books as medicine, we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the 'medicine closet' and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That's why you should always have a nutrition choice!

I mean, if the ID requirements alone are enough to force people off the internet, what about the censorship? The right-wing extremism? The AI monitoring your every activity on every device? The behind-the-scenes information-buying-and-selling industry? The streaming services using every minute of your favorite song to pump money into war machines?

I'm not sure if you're from the US but I'm not and I don't if it's something happening everywhere or somewhere specific

I absolutely appreciate warning people about something that could cost someone their hard work but I doing so without any sort of checkable source could get people kinda panicked

(genuine message/request, I don't mean to discredit your personal experience at all, I don't think what you've shared is made up, I just wanna look into on my own too and couldn't find anything)

yeah, so sorry about that! I was so busy telling all of my writer friends, who know I wouldn’t lie about something like this that I personally watched occur, that I totally forgot people outside of my circle would not just need “hey this happened in front of me” as confirmation something’s real. Also this blog isn’t that big so I thought it would just be in the writer circles I’m in, I’ve never seen so many notifications! I’m writing this on my phone so sorry if it looks bad, trying my best here.

I’m from the US and the person who had their property deleted by Google is also from the US. I saw someone else in the reblogs who also stated they had their content removed without their permission, but I technically can’t verify for them because I did not know them before this occurred and I wasn’t there when it was discovered.

While trying to find similar experiences I found multiple complaints over the past few years of people getting their permission to their content revoked even though it’s not sexually explicit and posting to their help forums, but that’s also hard to use as a concrete source since we don’t know those people’s full stories. Google’s official policy on explicit content is as follows:

I know the friend whose content was removed would share their document for writing feedback, as that is the reason many people choose docs over word (as well as that it can be opened and edited easily on an iphone). It may be that “distribute” is the key word here for getting your items removed.

Someone was kind enough to link this story of it happening to an adult romance author last year who had this story sent to multiple news articles. I’m still looking for if this had more incidents, there are some claimed in the article but they don’t have names attached the way Renee is.

Once again, these people had their work removed because they would send it to betas, which Google flaggged as spamming people with explicit content. And to anyone thinking it’s not possible because they don’t have permission to access our work-they do. You give them permission by putting your stuff on their servers at all. It’s just that their current ToS doesn’t let them remove it until you share it with someone, in which case it’s “distribution”. Also I’m going to address this is another post with more info and stuff because I want to give more basis: I see people framing it as impossible to do in “so short a time”, but this was built up for years. This personal information stockpiling has been around for a while. I’ll put more out there when I can, right now I have to get back to my job

EDIT: talked about this in another ask here for more links

285 AD

HELIOPOLIS, EGYPT

SAINT BARBARA

The night air kept my lungs frigid as I ran. I was blessed to have moonlight to guide my eyes, it reflected off the white walls of the Temple of Ba’al. I can’t believe Father’s in there, I thought. The Tower was long behind me now. Father had drunkenly forgotten to lock the door after providing me a slop of supper. A wild hare stuck its ears above a stone outlook in the wall. I caught the glint of its eye before it ducked down once more. My eyes squinted and watered as the wind kicked up the white sand on the road. I could hear them chanting now, and couldn’t resist. The evil Temple swallowed me up. No moonlight entered here, no torch could stay aflame in this pressing darkness. I clutched the cross I had made out of nettles, and pressed on.

Kneeling next to the open ritual chamber, I clasped my hands together to invoke God, the good God, Lord of the Israelites. In the open room I was next to, I could hear their prayers as well. They gathered, hooded and enveloped in a pressing darkness, and began their own unholy wish. 

“A bull, O Ba’al, we will consecrate;

A vow, Ba’al, we will fulfill;

A firstborn, Ba’al, we will consecrate;

A flesh sacrifice, Ba’al, we will fulfill!”

I allowed my faith to flow, one with every God-given spark of life, I prayed until I heard no more sin, no more chanting, no more ancient hymns. I prayed until I heard screaming. Until I opened my young eyes and witnessed blood desecrating, no, purifying this Temple of Evil. Beautiful, shimmering, ambrosial dust flew through the chamber. The dust from which God rose Adam and Eve in the Ancient Times, the very soil of the Garden of Eden, protected by a twin-blade, a double-edged sword. 

Men screamed as their chests were impaled by this vengeful new Ark. The dust took shape, into finger-like tendrils with dark, breathing openings. They drank the blood of the impaled men, and the dust shone its color. I could not take my eyes away from its glory. The Lord spoke to me then, I felt His Holy Presence within myself. He said,

“Be this, The Ark of Abras,

Let all know, He is a jealous God,

Let all know, He is salvation.”

Grumbling murmurs and shadows of life, those taken by Scratch flock together while the world thinks they've gone. Waking up in morgues, crematoriums, or even right before burial, they rage for something to hold onto, perhaps something to dig their nails into again. Nothing is enough, though. They seem to seek wide open areas, plenty of space between each other to not touch. Not yet. They can't help but despise warmth without their fix. They need the itch. It's sacred to their shells, to feel their shells. Their next fix of Scratch will lead them to salvation. They need enough for all of them. What force possesses them? What force inhabits these shells? What is it's goal?

Grumbling murmurs and shadows of life, those taken by Scratch flock together while the world thinks they've gone. Waking up in morgues, crematoriums, or even right before burial, they rage for something to hold onto, perhaps something to dig their nails into again. Nothing is enough, though. They seem to seek wide open areas, plenty of space between each other to not touch. Not yet. They can't help but despise warmth without their fix. They need the itch. It's sacred to their shells, to feel their shells. Their next fix of Scratch will lead them to salvation. They need enough for all of them. What force possesses them? What force inhabits these shells? What is it's goal?

LYRICS:

Crystalline shards 

Deep in your lungs

Try to speak but 

Nothin comes

Didn't wanna cut you that deep

Didn't mean to cutcha that deep

STUCK IN A HOLE

GOT NOWHERE TO GO

FEAST OH SCAVENGER

TAKE THIS INFERNAL CONTROL

Stuck in a hole!

Got nowhere to go!

Feast, oh scavenger!

Take this infernal control!

(TAKE THIS INFERNAL CONTROL)

(TAKE THIS INFERNAL CONTROL)

Crystalline shards 

Deep in your lungs

Try to speak but 

Nothin comes

Didn't wanna cut you that deep

(FILL ANOTHER BOTTLE WITH MY REGRET)

Didn't wanna cutcha that deep

Didn't wanna cut you that deep

(I WONT BE YOUR PET)

Didn't wanna cutcha that deep

Crystalline shards 

Deep in your lungs

Try to speak but 

Nothin comes

Didn't wanna cut you that deep

Didn't wanna cutcha that deep

Didn't wanna cut you that deep

Center harm, not disgust!

When in doubt (and when not in doubt, just swept by problems bigger than you and assured by someone that they know the answer, so don't think right now, just Do!), center harm.

Focus on what specific harm you're reducing with your actions. Make sure it's tangible and concrete. If your actions are minimizing hypothetical harm at the cost of real, tangible harm on others, 9 out 10 times you're on the wrong fucking side, being weaponized by propaganda.

If a conversation revolves around disgust as a driver for action, you're being radicalized. If a call to action depends on your emotional response, you're being manipulated. I'm sorry, this isn't the 90s anymore, social media has eroded the web of respectability of the pre internet society. The primary axis for misinformation to spread in this day and age is emotional response: half the things you believe are true and share as such are not based on fact, expert opinion or personal research. Social media has conditioned us (all of us! You and me and most dangerously of all, the idiots we put in power) that if something feels true, it probably is.

But do you know for sure it is? Do you think it's true because you have first hand experience or actual time spent on reputable sources learning it to be fact? Or just because it aligns with your worldview and it would be nice for you if it were true?

Are you taking action because you're angry and a group of fellow angry folk invited you to join them? Do you have a plan or is this just catharsis? Are you aware of the consequences of your actions or are you drunk on rage and focused only on the immediate future?

Center harm. Center specific actions and their consequences.

Discomfort is not harm. Disgust is not harm. Hypothetical paranoia is not harm.

The reactionary pipeline is real and your self-image as a progressive is not actually enough to save you from falling down the hole. Radicalization is not hinged on politics alone. Saying you're a leftist is worthless if your thought process and actions themselves are indistinguishable from qanon losers. Conspiratorial thought has literally no politics inherently, and your insistence it does is pure lack of critical thought on display.

Center harm, not feelings, not politics, not group think.