I speak Meme

Broke: Scavengers/Humans screaming in fear before they're eaten by dragons.

Woke: Folks cussing dragons out or casting judgement on how they're eaten. If you're about to die you may as well say what's on your mind, right?

Plus a scene for a future fic this put me in the mood to draw.

These guys WANT the world to break down into chaos so they can finally live out their fantasies of shooting everyone (except for the womenfolk! They can have sex with them!) and stealing guilt-free. They are very uncomfortable when others remind them that to really survive, you’ll have to WORK WITH others, and you’ll also run out of already-produced goods to loot.

A woman from an underdeveloped planet keeps begging for replicator technology on the grounds that it would bring her planet into the same socialist utopia that the crew of the Orville enjoys, and the first officer says "You've basically got that backwards."

She explains that it was their socialist utopia that brought about the cooperation necessary to invent the replicator, and that had it been invented during Earth's 20th or 21st centuries it wouldn't have worked, because the rich and powerful would have hoarded the technology.

As @BoomerNiner often says, we have enough resources on the planet right now, without a replicator, to give everybody food and housing — if we wanted to. The invention of a replicator wouldn't change that.

Zefram Cochrane, famously, tried to invent the warp drive with a profit motive - he thought he was going to get rich off the technology, and it was only the realization that we weren't alone in the galaxy (and perhaps a few lectures from people from the future) that changed him.

People don't suddenly become moved to share because of abundance - Elon Musk had 44 billion dollars and he didn't decide to share it with the world, he decided to buy Twitter with it. He has always, and will continue to, hoard his wealth for himself no matter how much he has.

If Tesla invented a replicator they wouldn't give that away to everyone for free. They'd patent it, and sell it to world governments with DRM software they could deactivate remotely if those governments didn't pay a subscription fee.

If governments had replicators, they wouldn't suddenly start handing out free, delicious, nutritious food to everyone - that will collapse the economy," they'd say. "Free food for the needy would be unfair to people who've been paying money for food all this time."

"How will people be motivated to work," the Republicans would say, if they don't have the threat of starvation hanging over them? If everyone has enough food, how will we motivate people to join the Army?"

Even though the replicator was producing molecularly-identical food to the real thing, conservatives would insist it wasn't "real" enough for them. "Real" beef, they'd say, demands the slaughter of an animal. Replicated beef is basically *vegan.*

The beef industry would quickly draw battle lines with their donation money, congressmen from places like Texas would move to outlaw replicated meat from being served on the grounds that it hurts entire industries.

Conspiracy theorists would insist that replicated beef is full of additives the government is trying to sneak into them to feminize men and make you sick, even though *real* beef is full of antibiotics and hormones.

Campaign ads would show Republicans personally slaughtering cattle and gutting deer to show their commitment to only eating meat that was really alive.

We're already seeing this type of thing when, like, Cracker Barrel tries to introduce plant-based sausage that's entirely optional to order. People (caps) freak out (end caps) that you might take their meat away.

In short, inventing a replicator wouldn't save us - right now, it'd *ruin* us even faster, as the amount of bounty the wealth plays keep-away with would just grow even larger and more ludicrous.

Capitalism would never allow a replicator to exist to its true potential, too many people would go broke. Replicators didn't create the Star Trek future, the Star Trek future comes first, then replicators.

Thought you guys might have missed some of the more humans are weird related Dr. krill writes a medical report stuff. 

Consider this a PSA from Krill to anyone who happens to possess skin 

https://www.patreon.com/empyreaniris?fan_landing=true

https://starr-fall-knight-rise.tumblr.com/post/182501791735/master-post

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jzEIdDAB4omdO2JcQVMObfrhLJ5kX4ONmSsLypM1ks0/edit?usp=sharing.\

-

The Intergalactic Journal of Xenomedical Biology 

Author: Dr. Krill

ID# 374622

Status: Revision Phase Not Cleared for Publication

Issues - Informal language

I think by this point my contribution to the scientific community is enough to openly acknowledge that I am the universe’s number one leading nonhuman expert in human biology. I have been told it is presumptive to claim that I probably know more than the humans do, so I have been forced to put in “nonhuman expert” against my will.

Human skin is an object of some interest in the xenobiological community. It should hardly be so interesting, considering that every species in the galaxy has skin to some degree or another, but human skin has some interesting qualities I wish to discuss here. 

Human skin is the soft outer layer most visible on the human body, skin tones on a human can range from almost white to almost black with brown and cream comprising the midtones, though despite the color variations the underlying structure remains the same. Now human skin is known, commonly, to have three layers, in its most simple model, as there are other models discussing the layers within the layers, but for the purpose of this paper, I will be discussing the Epidermis, the dermis and the hypodermis.

The skin in general, but especially the epidermis acts as protective barrier, specifically to keep out germs and bacteria from infecting the inner structures of the body. Now, while it is possible for a human to get a skin infection, the sheer fact that they don’t spend their entire lives infected with all the nasty things that they insist on touching is beyond me. I mean humans put their own fingers in their mouths for architect’s sake, and as you know from my previous paper, “A comprehensive analysis on the human mouth.” The fact that they don’t simply dissolve from flesh eating bacteria is a miracle in itself. 

Furthermore, the outer layer creatures new skin cells at a rapid rate. Do not be surprised, when upon acquiring a human, your living space suddenly becomes more dusty. You will be interested to learn that this is the fault of your human companion who cannot help but shed the entirety of their outer dermal layer every thirty days, so if you have a human, and your ship is dusty, simply know that most of that is dead human skin just floating around, absolutely disgusting. Humans can’t go anywhere without leaving little pieces of themselves behind.

Earth is a planet with an open atmosphere and dynamic cloud cover, which allows sunlight, and thus radiation down through its atmosphere and onto the ground. You would think after a thousand years of evolution human skin would do a bang up job of protecting the human in question from radiation burn.

And in fact it does a bang up job. In the same way your granny makes a banging noise as she falls down the stairs. Human skin is absolutely shit at resisting stellar radiation. Now don’t you dare ask a human about this, because you are bound to hear a crock of bullshit come out of their mouths like, “Oh I don’t burn, I tan!” or “My skin is too dark to burn, so I’m good.” 

All bullshit.

Human skin does indeed contain melanin, which is the structure that allows for skin color and tanning. On different parts of earth, different levels of light are allowed through the atmosphere, and over the years this has caused a varying degree of melanin to be distributed throughout the human population. Humans with ancestry that hails from the north, where effects of sunlight are lessened will have naturally pale skin, while humans with ancestry more towards the equator will have darker skin, which is an adaptive response to varying degrees of sunlight.

However, dark skin still does a shit job at protecting from the sun. Yeah sure pale skin is shittier, but shitty and shitteir are pedantic when it comes to the possibility of skin cancer. Research suggests that darker skin humans have a natural SPF (sun protection factor) of 13, while fair skinned people might have half of that.

This may seem like a boon, however, human experts recommend an SPF of at least 30 which is TWICE the amount of natural SPF provided by higher melanin content. But try telling that to a human! You can scream at the top of your lungs all day and the bastards will just insist that they will get a tan instead. Its this diabolical human belief that they are somehow IMMUNE TO THE SUN!!!!? So please, if you must, grab your human and marinade them in sunscreen, no matter how much melanin they happen to possess.

Because of the erroneous belief that darker skin is effective at blocking out UV radiation, Darker skinned humans may be more likely to die of skin cancer than light skinned humans. Light skinned humans are more aware of the dangers, due to their natural proclivity for burning instead of tanning, and the visibility of dermal abnormalities like moles, or freckles. In many cases cancer on darker skinned humans is caught later because of the erroneous belief by both civilians AND medical professionals in some cases, that darker skinned people are not susceptible to skin cancer.

So I don’t care if your human insists they either don’t like or don’t need sunscreen. TO BAD! They are WRONG! And they deserve to be SMACKED. Even a SINGLE sunburn can increase a human’s chance of getting cancer by FIFTY PERCENT. A SINGLE sunburn. Never in my life have I ever met a human who didn’t have at least TWO OR MORE sunburns.

The “I don’t get burned I just tan.” humans are FULL OF SHIT, “Tanning comes as a direct result of SUN DAMAGE. I don’t care how pretty it looks, it is NOT good for you. I had a light skinned human once who fell asleep in the sun and the skin BLISTERED. That is a SECOND degree burn from RADIATION. 

Humans can get SUN POISONING.

MMMmmmmm

The worst part about all this is I can’t even lock the humans under a rock somewhere because humans NEED sunlight in order to get their vitamin D, and without Vitamin D, they could be tired, sore, weak, and may fall into heavy depression. In fact some humans become depressed in seasonal cycles where the sun may not provide them with ENOUGH light.

So apparently humans are INCAPABLE of being happy without getting to stand in the CANCER RAY

What they mean: "I want to know whether to activate my short term waiting mode where I just wait and do nothing else, or activate my long term waiting mode where I occupy my mind with something else. I fully understand that both are possibilities, and I have no problem whatsoever with either one, but I want more information so I can best adapt to the situation."

because if there's more actual plot detail gone into the whole humans and dragons in a future installment to follow up on the events of dragonslayer. i really do think that it'd make sense to focus on them? like these guys decided to build their own village separate from talisman after leaf, ivy, and wren gave them the idea to and i'd imagine their new village would be fairly close to sanctuary considering how close talisman seems to be where i believe sanctuary is located? like...it's right there

Glamrock Animatronics Icons ✩⃛ೄ

🌈🎉🎸

February 1, 2022

I’m so so sorry for the long post but please please please pay attention and spread this

WHAT IS THE EARN IT ACT?

The EARN IT Act has been roundly condemned by nearly every major LGBTQ+ advocacy and human rights organization in the country. This is a bill that will make children less safe, undermine online safety and security, and trample free expression, because it carves out another exception to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230), which the ACLU describes as “foundational to modern online communications.” This has been the law that has let the internet grow into what it is today, we’ve had this law since the 90s. (For context, Trump wanted to get rid of this law because he knew it would lead to mass govt surveillance and censorship of minorities online.)

The EARN IT Act will lead to online censorship. Platforms will be incentivized to scan their users’ communications and censor all sex-related content, including sex education, literally anything lgbt, transgender or non-binary education and support systems, and sex worker communication according to the ACLU. All this in the name of “protecting kids” and “fighting CSEM”, both of which the bill does nothing of the sort. In fact it makes fighting CSEM even harder.

If this bill passes, we're going to see most, if not all, adult content and accounts removed from mainstream platforms, for fear of the liability that could come with ever accidentally hosting CSAM, as well as the erasure of end-to-end encryption on messaging platforms.

This is really not a drill. Anyone who makes or consume anything “adult” online has to be prepared to fight Sen. Blumenthal's EARN IT Act, brought back from the grave by a bipartisan consensus to destroy Section 230.

EARN IT will open the way for politicians to define the category of “pornography" as they — or the lobbies that fund them — please, (Right now, right wing organizers are catgorizing books about racism as ‘porn’ to ban them from schools) which is a cherished goal of organizations that seek to reintroduce obscenity prosecutions for content now protected by Free Speech jurisprudence. This will 1000000% be used to eradicate anything LGBT online.

What this bill says it does on the surface is make platforms liable for their users’ activity if that activity involves sex and minors. However, because of 230, platforms are not liable at all about their users' activity. This has allowed platforms to grow and thrive and many niches online to as well. The bill also creates an unelected commission to create “best practices” to combat online child sexual exploitation. While these recommendations are nominally voluntary (so Americans have no decision on who gets to be on it), platforms that refuse to comply will be liable for criminal prosecutions and lawsuits should the government decide any of their users is engaging in online child sexual exploitation.

This is already a nightmare enough. But the bill also DESTROYS ENCRYPTION, you know, the thing protecting literally anyone or any govt entity from going into your private messages and emails and anything on your devices and spying on you.

This bill is going to finish what FOSTA/SESTA started. And that should terrify you.

Senator Blumenthal (Same guy who said ‘Facebook should ban finsta’) pushed this bill all of 2020, literally every activist (There were more than half a million signatures on this site opposing this act!) pushed hard to stop this bill. Now he brings it back, doesn’t show the text of the bill until hours later, and it’s WORSE. Instead of fixing literally anything in the bill that might actually protect kids online, Bluemnthal is hoping to fast track this and shove it through, hoping to get little media attention other than propaganda of "protecting kids" to support this shitty legislation that will harm kids.

The entire EARN IT act is based on *multiple* misunderstandings of the law and reality. It's a really really really bad policy that will do serious harm. But because Senator Blumenthal wants headlines, he'll pretend that it "helps protect the children." It won't. It'll do real damage. It will make CSEM much much worse.

One of the many reasons this bill is so dangerous: It totally misunderstands how Section 230 works, and in doing so (as with FOSTA) it is likely to make the very real problem of CSAM worse, not better. Section 230 gives companies the flexibility to try different approaches to dealing with various content moderation challenges. It allows for greater and greater experimentation and adjustments as they learn what works -- without fear of liability for any "failure." Removing Section 230 protections does the opposite. It says if you do anything, you may face crippling legal liability. This actually makes companies less willing to do anything that involves trying to seek out, take down, and report CSAM because of the greatly increased liability that comes with admitting that there is CSAM on your platform to search for and deal with. This liability would allow anyone for any reason to sue any platform they want, suing smaller ones out of existence. Look at what is happening right now with book bans across the nation with far right groups. This is going to happen to the internet if this bill passes.

(Remember, the state department released a report in December 2021 recommending that the government crack down on "obscenity" as hard the Reagan Administration did. If this bill passes, it could easily go way beyond shit red states are currently trying. It is a goldmine for the fascist right that is currently in the middle of banning every book that talks about race and sexuality across the US.)

NCOSE, the far right anti-LGBT hate group behind the global anti-sex legislations, is pushing the idea that any form of sexual expression, including talking about HEALTH, leads to sex trafficking. Their goal is to eliminate all sex, anything gay, and everything that goes against their idea of ‘God’ from the internet and hyper disney-fy and sanitize it. This is a highly coordinated attack on multiple fronts.

The reason these bills keep showing up is because there is this false lie spread by organizations like NCOSE that platforms do nothing about CSEM online. However, platforms are already liable for child sexual exploitation under federal law. Tech companies sent more than 45 million+ instances of CSAM to the DOJ in 2019 alone, most of which they declined to investigate. This shows that platforms are actually doing everything in their power already to stop CSEM by following already existing laws. The Earn It Act includes zero resources for proven investigation or prevention programs. If Senator Bluementhal actually cared about protecting youth, why wouldn’t he include anything to actually protect them in his shitty horrible bill?

The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) along with a coalition of 26 civil society organizations urged the United States Senate to reject the EARN IT Act. Groups on the left and right, including the ACLU, Fight for the Future, EFF, and Hacking // Hustling oppose it. Because it threatens free expression online and will threaten marginalized people’s safety while being totally unnecessary and failing to fix the problem it claims to address. The EARN IT Act empowers states to give law enforcement access to users’ private conversations and force companies to create encryption backdoors for law enforcement. This is totally unnecessary. Platforms are already handing over CSAM to the federal government. It’s actually likely to make prosecuting child molesters more difficult since evidence collected this way likely violates the Fourth Amendment and would be inadmissible in court.

I don't know why so many Senators are eager to cosponsor the "make child pornography worse" bill, but here we are.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

EARN IT Act was introduced yesterday! And it’s already scheduled to get marked up, which is the first step post-introduction. Most bills never go to markup, so this means they are putting pressure to move this through. IF YOU LIVE IN THESE STATES (IL, VT, CA, RI, MN, DE, CT, HI, NJ, and GA), CONTACT YOUR SENATOR AND HOUSE MEMBERS NOW. THIS IS URGENT. This is who gets first crack, and folks in all have Senators who are on the Judiciary committee.

I'm guessing this month or March is when the bill would be passed if there is no opposition 😭 The bill was re-introduced yesterday, already set for markup this Thursday. This feels like an attempt to fast track it this month. Additionally the current makeup of Congress favors those who want it passed. Back in 2020 it was mostly Senate republicans and democrats who are basically republicans (just like now, check the sponsors) pushing it with Ron Wyden using the filibuster to stop their efforts. The house dems didn't want to give Trump a win and needed to appear as pro-privacy/free speech for the 2020 election. Now the dems have the presidency, both chambers of Congress and if you've noticed have spent a few years repeatedly demanding social media censorship and desperately want to give Biden victories. biden isn't like obama who opposed sopa/pipa to appeal to younger voters. This is similar to how FOSTA passed with the group who made it happen last time back again. Far as I'm aware Wyden hasn't spoken about new earn it yet but even if he does oppose it, it's very possible there will be enough Senate democrats to join the republicans in passing it beating a filibuster. Then pelosi's band of house idiots pass it and we have to choose between breaking the law because they can't stop us from using encryption or being obedient sheep to a group who consider themselves above laws.

It already has a fifth of the Senate cosponsoring it. There is a very very very real chance this bill becomes law. This is an uphill battle that's going to happen fast and quick. PLEASE, FIGHT NOW.

202-224-3121 connects you to the congressional hotline.

This website takes you to your Senator / House members contact info. EMAIL, MESSAGE, SEND LETTERS, CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL. Calling is the BEST way to get a message through. Get your family and friends to send calls too. This is literally the end of free speech online.

More sources to read about this bill:

https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/the-earn-it-act-is-anti-evidence

Fight for the Future’s Statement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=678EW8v09z8&t=1s

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220131/22423648395/senates-new-earn-it-bill-will-make-child-exploitation-problem-worse-not-better-still-attacks-encryption.shtml

EARN IT Act treats Myths as Facts.

https://surviveearnit.com/what-is-the-earn-it-act/ From 2020, but little has changed about the bill.

https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/earn-it-act-back

Center for Democracy and Technology’s Statement

Petitions from resistbot to be sent as two separate texts:

Texting SIGN PLBKUU to 50409 will sign and send a petition to your state reps that you wish for them to vote NO on this act. They are able to vote against this bill before Biden can.

Texting SIGN PDMTRW to 50409 will sign and send a petition to Joe Biden that you believe he should veto this bill. He is your next line of defense if the bill gets approval from the state representatives.