Journey Inc

The Duke (dressed as the devil): Yup. S'me. The devil. Hand to god the real ass devil. The only way to save Dulcinea is to give me the funny numbers on the back of your credit card.

Sancho: Idk if the devil would say "hand to god" he's the devil.

Don Quixote:

~Diane Duane, A Wizard Alone

Genetics: Do not. Unless cheek swabs?

Chemistry: NO!!!!! DO NOT!!!!!!

Archaeology: Perhaps. But might be human bone.

Geology: Sometimes needed, sometimes dangerous 

Psychology: Best not.

Physics: ????????? How??????

Botany: You might hallucinate or die, OR it might be delicious

Computer Science: the tingle of electricity on your tongue is how you know it’s working

Hematology: don’t unless your name is Dracula

Mycology: lick the science, lick the dragons in your living room

toxicology: probably don’t

statistics: maybe but you have to find the likelihood of it being a good idea

Literature: No. It makes the paper soggy.

Music: Reeds, yes. Pianos, no.

Theatre Arts: Depending on the script, either forbidden or required. Wait for the cast party.

Dance: if you can catch them

Mastercard, Visa, and other payment processors are still targeting material they deem obscene - whether or not it actually is.

We need to start calling again. Even if you don't like NSFW stuff or dislike porn - porn and nsfw is only the start of what they'll go after.

Among Mastercard's list of "high fraud risk" subjects in relation to Mastercard Threat Intelligence are the following:

Vtubing

Adult Content (which they define very loosely)

Tabletop Games

Video Games & their platforms

And likely more.

They're likely targeting political activism now in addition to this, and people who speak out against the companies. Notably now, Ana Valens is repeatedly having her payment processing accounts and platforms taken down or flagged as potential fraud - Buy Me A Coffee, Throne, Ko-Fi, Patreon - and in some cases, customer support from these platforms are citing information that hasn't been put on their platforms when explaining why they've targeted her accounts.

Completely SFW accounts of hers have been targeted, likely due to her speaking up about what the payment processors are doing and because of what she makes as a creative. She is at risk of debanking.

This happening to her means that other creators - Vtubers, game devs of both video games and tabletop games, creatives, sex workers - are likely at risk of the same. For many, it's already happening to them.

Companies and corporations should not have the power to censor what people say and do, or where their money goes - political power like this should not lie in their hands.

We need to start calling the payment processors again and making noise. Contact people in your circles, talk to people, spread the word. Contact your representatives about censorship laws. Spend less money this holiday season.

This is not just about sex work or NSFW. This is about people's right to decide what they spend their money on, and in some cases, people's right to access their finances. It's about creative expression and whether or not what we make gets censored, about what we get to say online.

Below are some resources that include info on phone numbers to call, email addresses belonging to the offending companies, and how to call. Start making noise again. Focus on the fact that companies should not have this power over what people spend their money on, at all.

In portuguese, much like spanish, we have no gender neutral pronouns. People who do not use ele/dele and ela/dela (he/him or she/her) all use whatever neopronoun suits them best in portuguese (ie elu/delu, eli/deli) because we have no access to a universal gender neutral pronoun like gringos do. When I brought this up upon them making fun of my "neopronouns", they said to suck it up, and that being foreign does not make neos valid.

In mocking people who use neopronouns in english, you are mocking a very large sum of latin american genderqueer and trans people.

I know various latin language speakers that struggle with their identities in their native tongue due to us not having they/them equivalents, so they are forced to let go of their, in example, brazilian queerness, to appease to anglos who would harass them and call them mockeries of trans people for not sticking to what The Cis want.

When non-anglos tell you the usamerican and british dominance over queer spaces ruins things for them, they mean it. We are forced to repress our identites because you people think they're too "out there and problematic". We are forced to suppress our own queer culture because we don't fit into your neat little boxes of what makes someone gay what makes someone a lesbian what makes someone trans or what makes someone anything else.

You tell us to remember "our queer elders", but do you know of any queer latin american figures? We learn your history, and you refuse to learn ours because you already have "too much on your plate". You disregard us and shame us for not fitting your ideals of queerness and using labels for ourselves you dislike, and try to baby us and tell us the proper way to be gay.

Your culture is not universal.

You are not saving queer people by making jabs at other queer people you don't personally get. Odds are you are harming an entire group of foreign queers you never bothered to consider, because your anglo bubble is too self important.

If you want to do queer people a real favour instead of getting mad at identities that existed long before you were even born, here. Make yourself useful. Donate to queer brazilian housing and support programs. Your beloved dollar is worth a lot more than the Real. Even five dollars help.

Casa Um

Eternamente Sou

Reminder, if you ever pay someone for a commission on Paypal (NSFW OR NOT) you SHUT THE FUCK UP in any text box it gives you.

owning or god forbid using tote bags is performative, apparently, so that's another strike against me. enjoying matcha is bad for reasons that are lost on me since I'm not a coffee or tea guy, but I assume that if you are then the nature of matcha sins is probably totally rational. making playlists is bad, taking photos is bad, somehow even decorating your house with the photos you've taken is apparently bad. having a labubu also is suspect, and while I do agree broadly with criticism of overproduced and overpriced fad items that are inevitable landfill fodder and operate as a shadowy gambling system that's a solidly gender neutral criticism, whereas the issue here seems to be that a man engaging in an act of silliness is innately suspect.

it's really giving this tweet if I'm being honest

Is it just me or did our generation (those of is who are currently 20-30 ish) just not get the opportunity to be young in the 'standard' sense?

Don't get me wrong, we had fun. But all of that, threats of not graduating, threats of failing classes over a single test, over some mini golf and ice cream?

Throughout high school and early in college, my friend group got kicked out of malls, stores, and even a parking lot just for being there wrong. Not being loud of disruptive. Not causing problems. Just being there too long, or without buying anything.

My mom graduated high school, after repeating her senior year, without a single grade above a D, and was offered a full ride scholarship to a state university to play on their women's football team. I had a 3.8 GPA, multiple extracurriculars, a summer job, and over 100 hours of volunteer work, and barely got into that same university, and then couldn't afford to go there anyway.

We've made getting into college so important and yet so difficult that kids are sacrificing their childhoods for it.

Then they become adults and it doesn't go away. Your employer/ potential employers are searching your social media and internet presence so you'd better hope no one has ever posted a picture of you at a party, or with alcohol, or wearing revealing clothes, or whatever else they've deemed unprofessional. And if you want to go out it's a 10 dollar cover and drinks are at least 8 dollars, and you need to tip if there's any kind of live entertainment, who can afford to do all that regularly?

My physical therapist, when I was 18, told me about his 21st birthday, how the last thing he remembers is people taking body shots off him. I spent my 21st birthday alone, was in bed by 10pm because I had to be at work the next morning. My boss had already told me that they knew it was my 21st, and if I called out, she'd write me up for improper use of sick leave because you're not allowed to use sick leave for a hangover. I don't know anyone whose 21st birthday was a big deal. No one went out and partied for it.

Original report (waybacked PDF) is from 2007. That's Gen Z kids.

When I, Gen-Xer, was about 12 - in my rural home, I had about a three-mile range. (Could've pushed it to more, but didn't want to walk that far.) In the city, it was about a mile. Not that anyone was checking; again, that was about the distance I wanted to walk, and besides, that covered all of "downtown."

My kids? Closer to that 300 yards limit at the same age. Not because I wanted to restrict them, but we live next to a freeway on-ramp and between two sets of train tracks... and there is absolutely nothing kid-friendly within a half-mile for them to visit.

I spent my 21st birthday bar-hopping. My kids spent their 21st birthdays at home with a nice meal. I don't think either of them wanted to go bar-hopping - but yeah, as a society, we've removed a LOT of teen-friendly options.

See also: End of Third Places, switch from video game arcades to home consoles (hey, then every kid has to buy their own copy--great for game-makers!), shutdown of malls or restrictions on youth at them, closure of public parks, reduced/removed after-school programs, etc. Plus the places that think it's illegal for a 12-year-old to walk to the corner store unsupervised.

I am, however, DELIGHTED to hear that the booze & other vices industries are panicking over Gen Z not going out to party. Like, you spent 30-odd years removing all the places and ways people can hang out together and have fun outside of someone's personal house, and... guess what, when people hit milestone events (graduation, milestone birthdays, job promotion, whatever), they don't immediately flock to the Party Zone that they have never been welcome at. How shocking.

and nowadays?? we've made the bar so fucking high for these kids. i participated in this mock interview program as an interviewer guest from the library, where seniors would get a chance to pretend interview for a job with me to get some experience before they entered the workforce.

and my god. the resumes on these kids. they're pumped full of sports, arts, extracurriculars, awards, volunteer work, like 60% of them had already had at least one job, and at least 2 of them had already started their own fucking businesses.

like. i'm impressed of course, overall this isn't a terrible thing. but when do these kids get to take a break? when do ANY of us get to take a break?? we have made society so back-breaking that 15 year olds are starting businesses while they run the student council, attend five clubs, volunteer on the weekends, and do ever increasing mountains of homework to maintain a 4.0 GPA.

Like again. I was a fucking square in school. I had all A's in everything and i did extracurriculars, i even did some volunteer work here and there. but mostly i went home, i read books for fun, i went rambling in the woods near my house for no particular reason. i chilled out with my friends and doodled pictures and wrote piles of fanfiction. i spent so much time in high school just...relaxing and playing.

when are these kids getting time to do that, between all the stuff we expect of them? where are these kids getting the space to do that as we continue to push them out of every single physical space, because teens hanging out in a gaggle of friends is somehow threatening?

why are we expecting this much out of kids, out of young adults, while we refuse to offer even a fraction of what our parents and grandparents were given for a fraction of the work we're putting in?

Mastercard, Visa, and other payment processors are still targeting material they deem obscene - whether or not it actually is.

We need to start calling again. Even if you don't like NSFW stuff or dislike porn - porn and nsfw is only the start of what they'll go after.

Among Mastercard's list of "high fraud risk" subjects in relation to Mastercard Threat Intelligence are the following:

Vtubing

Adult Content (which they define very loosely)

Tabletop Games

Video Games & their platforms

And likely more.

They're likely targeting political activism now in addition to this, and people who speak out against the companies. Notably now, Ana Valens is repeatedly having her payment processing accounts and platforms taken down or flagged as potential fraud - Buy Me A Coffee, Throne, Ko-Fi, Patreon - and in some cases, customer support from these platforms are citing information that hasn't been put on their platforms when explaining why they've targeted her accounts.

Completely SFW accounts of hers have been targeted, likely due to her speaking up about what the payment processors are doing and because of what she makes as a creative. She is at risk of debanking.

This happening to her means that other creators - Vtubers, game devs of both video games and tabletop games, creatives, sex workers - are likely at risk of the same. For many, it's already happening to them.

Companies and corporations should not have the power to censor what people say and do, or where their money goes - political power like this should not lie in their hands.

We need to start calling the payment processors again and making noise. Contact people in your circles, talk to people, spread the word. Contact your representatives about censorship laws. Spend less money this holiday season.

This is not just about sex work or NSFW. This is about people's right to decide what they spend their money on, and in some cases, people's right to access their finances. It's about creative expression and whether or not what we make gets censored, about what we get to say online.

Below are some resources that include info on phone numbers to call, email addresses belonging to the offending companies, and how to call. Start making noise again. Focus on the fact that companies should not have this power over what people spend their money on, at all.