Dispatches from the Middle Circle

For those who don't know, Fortune A Day can be found on Pillowfort and Bluesky. Updates might stop on Bluesky as it appears the app is rolling out age verification more widely ahead of actual regulation.

They are complying in advance for no reason.

Even if all these age verification laws were fully on the books in every US state, websites should still stand up for their businesses and the privacy of their users and not comply. That is a choice at scale if they would only fucking care to make it.

Bluesky's age verification is being handled by Veriff, a company that has already failed to protect peoples' data. There are data-hungry companies out there begging for websites and apps to comply with age verification ahead of time, calling it an inevitability, because they want to pump and dump our public and private identifying info. Naturally, protecting that data is not at all a concern to them. Lawsuits will be a slap on the wrist; they'll be the price of doing business and your information will continue to leak while they make millions of dollars off of it.

If you are in the US, please do this for all of us: Contact your representatives TODAY, June 29, 2026, to tell them to vote NO on the KIDS Act, HR 7757.

Here's more information through the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And this page has a way to send a form letter to your rep via email.

Do this right now. HR 7757 is being voted on today.

Phone calls are best and they can be incredibly quick. The person at your rep's office will answer the phone. They'll want your name and your location to confirm that you're a constituent. Simply tell them this and then: "I just want my representative not to vote for HR 7757, the KIDS Act. I know that it does nothing to actually protect children. It's about selling my information and stopping free speech." Thank them. Hang up. It is genuinely easy, even with phone anxiety.

Say No To Bad Internet Bills also has even more you can do to stop these things because there is an absolute deluge of these kinds of bills working their way through the US Congress right now.

Now we need to direct efforts to our Senators to stop it in the Senate. Find who your rep is and contact them early and often.

https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

Tell your Senators that you oppose the KIDS Act and KOSA.

It does not matter how Republican or vampiric your Senator is. One of mine is professional Skeletor impersonator Rick Scott, the worst of the worst. I will still be contacting his people to tell them I'm not fooled by this. Rick Scott has made enough money off of conning the American people (he, in particular, should be in fucking prison for exactly that). I don't need him restricting my speech, selling my info, or trying to arrest me for making posts like this calling for political action in protest of disgusting censorship.

"Democrats and Republicans in Congress have struck a deal on a bill they say will help keep children and teens safe online. The KIDS Act could pass on the House floor as soon as next week; if enacted, it would fundamentally change the way everyone — not just kids — accesses the internet.

At stake is your ability to use many social media platforms without revealing your identity. 

That’s because the KIDS Act at least strongly incentivizes — and, for some services, outright requires — age verification. Many platforms will turn to age verification to avoid potential liability under the law. Companies like X, video-sharing services like Vimeo, and others with a history of users’ populating social feeds with edgy content may be required to verify users’ ages because they host a certain amount of content deemed “sexual material harmful to minors,” a term that the KIDS Act defines broadly. 

That’s a big problem for people who need to be able to use the internet anonymously, since, as Taylor Lorenz has previously written about in The Intercept, “there’s no way to reliably verify someone’s age without verifying who they are.” 

Threats to online anonymity harm everyone, but one group is often overlooked: journalists and the sources who talk to them. Age verification requirements will help the Trump administration carry out its vendetta against the press by creating new avenues to identify journalists’ confidential sources. [...]

A nice Christmas horror movie.

And so far... I guess the trailer people had to chose dialogue that is as close to regular English as it could be, but if it IS going to be 14th century Middle English then there's going to be obvious differences in not just wordage, but verbiage and intonation as well.

I'll give a passing grade since the costumes do look accurate to the period (the lord (I assume) is wearing a bycocket hat which is nice), but the obvious grayscale colour shading will obviously obstruct the colours a good degree.

My Alpha Striking MechWarrior piloting a 100 ton Assault 'Mech accruing 72 heat on Turn 1:

Blanca is almost ready to paint (:

Gp02 is close but imma leave it here for now.

This is the first time I ever really sculpted outside of college, around 15 years ago. I'm not all that skilled w 3d media and often found myself very frustrated w not being able to portray the figures in my mind.

It's going a bit better now but I realize maybe air dry is too malleable to a fault: easy to make details but too soft when applying on top of each other so it squishes easily. Even w foil or armature.

I do enjoy making wonky robots w it, so I'll continue until I run out of clay.

Black Menswear modelled by Black Men

Taras Shevchenko and Ira Aldridge by Heorhiy Melikhov, 1963