Today brings you...

This is the most beautiful scientific diagram I've ever seen.

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

Next up someone is going to claim that the Narnia series isn't kids books.

Private Equity: Pestilence (they are parasites that voraciously strip the value out of a healthy business until it withers and dies)

Workforce Optimization: Famine (cutting hours and employees until the business is starved of staff, barely functioning)

United States obscenity law deals with the regulation or suppression of what is considered obscenity and therefore not protected speech or expression under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In the United States, discussion of obscenity typically relates to defining what pornography is obscene.

It's important to understand that key idea, that "obscene" is a legal classification that marks something as not protected by Freedom of Speech, The Press, and Free Expression, which is the First Amendment.

There are several ethical problems with having a way to exempt something from protection, and therefore censor it. It encourages people who want to censor things to try and get them legally classed as exceptions to any Freedom of Speech laws on the books. Now, with art, there are exemptions that should exist--art that harms people in the making of it, for example, which is what Child Sexual Abuse Material is, and why we call it that. We also classify filmed evidence of murder done for the film's sake as an exception. But the way people define the word "obscenity" is extremely different depending on who you ask, and because definitions in this country are set by precedent, i.e. judges ruling on court cases, the definition of things like "obscenity" keeps changing.

In 1873, for example, the Comstock Act said that birth-control information and condoms were "obscene" and banned sending them through the mail, which meant a lot of people were cut off from being able to learn about birth control (because nobody was learning about it in school--most people at the time didn't go to school after learning basic reading skills, if that; children worked, just like their adult relatives, to support their families). Do you think a book like this one that educates about puberty and sex, including birth-control, is obscene and pornography? Well it was, at one time, and BANNED. And I don't tell you this so you can go, "Well people were backwards then, we're Enlightened now, we'd only ban the RIGHT things" People have always been people, just as wise AND just as foolish as we are now, and progress has never been a straight line.

Our point is that pornography is an important thing to make, and to fight for, and to CALL "pornography". It's important to hold the line and not let people begin to call WRITTEN and DRAWN things the same as PHOTOGRAPHED and FILMED things. For MANY DECADES, people have been trying to ban and censor pornography that has involved no one but the author or artist in the making, and is therefore HARMING no actual human beings. A photograph involves real, live, breathing human beings; a drawing involves a piece of paper and a pen and the artist.

Whatever you think is "just erotica" or even "not erotica at all" is going to be called porn and obscene by a malicious and controlling person like say Warriors For Innocence, who successfully scared LiveJournal into banning a whole lot of writing and drawing and also queer and survivor support communities and users in 2006. These same folks are behind the Purity/Anti culture on Tumblr, and members successfully lobbied to pass FOSTA-SESTA and the subsequent "Titty Ban" on any website that relies on an app. FOSTA-SESTA, btw, has made human trafficking and harm to sex workers WORSE, not better.

So you need to start fighting WITH pornographers who are fighting censorship, because the people you think are on your side about only banning and censoring "the REAL bad stuff" are going to turn around and call YOUR stuff just as bad. They're already calling queer people obscene just for existing. They are calling us child abusers again, just for breathing. I don't think you want to be on the side of that rhetoric, because it will come for you and call YOU obscene and worthy of arrest, in the end.

The Mysterious Eastern Swordsman

if you absolutely must, in primarily muscle force-based sports, create competitive classes like in boxing except separated by body comp, not just pure body weight. i mean, if you must. this will eliminate any tiny advantages in muscle mass. some will say basketball should have height classes but frankly some of the NBA's most impressive players were not tall so idk that this actually matters ever

the primary athletic impediment to all women is overwhelmingly cultural and psychological. i have won probably half the physical competitions with cis men that i have engaged in, friendly or otherwise. even without the benefit of a lifetime of people trying to make me throw or hit balls, i have won wrestling matches, sparring matches, funny backyard foam sword fights, video games, equestrian activities, dance, endurance tests of various kinds, etc. i'm small and weak. men think theyre stronger and more skilled than they are, women think the opposite about themselves

humans just arent that differently-sized or -shaped, as a species. we have almost no sexual dimorphism at all compared to the vast majority of other mammals.

animals that have similar levels of sexual dimorphism to humans, for example cats, dogs, and horses, do not generally have competitive events segregated by sex. the dog agility trials dont normally have separate leagues for male and female dogs (gendered competitions exist they're just unusual). because it doesnt matter. there is no kentucky derby 2 just for girl horses. thats not a thing

if you would like to spite the really mean people even more today, consider donating to raices con voz. they're a student-led organization in los angeles, who deliver food and essential supplies to immigrant families who can't leave their homes due to the ICE raids. More information about them here

in keeping with tradition, here is a link to unicef's fund for emergency health supplies and services for survivors of the venezuela earthquakes.

here is another link for manos in action, an organization that delivers supplies, such as food and childcare items, to latin american immigrants in central florida. I've participated in one of their local food drives; they're great. if you're not local to central florida, you can always donate money.

how measurements work in canada (ie/ badly)

it would be so awesome

it would be so cool