Welcome to The Swamp™

This post talks about a new DM feature in youtube. What it fails to mention is that as part of this new feature is that when you send someone a link to a video, and they open it in the youtube app, they will see who sent them the link. Specifically, your channel name.

If your google account name is your real name, so is your channel name by default.

This means the new default behavior is that everyone you send a youtube link to will see your full name if they open it in the mobile app.

To turn this off:

Go to your youtube app settings

Go to Privacy

Turn off "Channel visibility for shared links"

There are 760,000 Australians on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the system that - if they feel like it and your personalised plan says you get to have it - provides funding for everything from personal hygiene care to support workers to therapies to assistive technology. It's already very hard for disabled people to get on the NDIS, regardless of your disability. It's near impossible to access most support and equipment without being on the NDIS. And the government has announced that they want that number to drop to 600,000 in four years. 160,000 of us cut off the Scheme - and countless more denied access. This will cause deaths. People will die and people will suffer because there is no safety net. The NDIS is the only option for most of us. Even private health insurance doesn't cover most of these things. Nobody will swoop in to save us.

The bill wants to give the (non disabled!) NDIS minister basically unlimited power to cut our funding. They're already planning what they'd do with that power. What rights they'll strip from us. What dignity and freedom they'll remove to make their budget look better.

The bill wants to force people to try every treatment out there before they're allowed to be on the NDIS. Including if the treatment is literally impossible to access. There’s a lot of us living in regional areas or out bush who can't just pop to the capital cities for specialists. This will especially hurt disabled First Nations people in regional and remote communities, who already experience limited access to healthcare. Oh, and it includes chemical restraint, too. The government has directly refused to exclude chemical restraint from the required process, calling it "trialling medication".

If you're australian and worried, the ABC did a good breakdown of the proposed changes.

I know australia stuff doesn't really pop up on the radar on this site, but I want everyone to know what's going on. What we're fighting for here. Your australian disabled friends might be NDIS participants fearing for their life, rights, and freedom. They might not be a participant and afraid these changes mean they never will have access. We deserve better. The government built a system with no backup plan, and now they want hundreds of thousands of disabled people to pay the price for their bad planning.

- Nobody needs to apologise for venting in the notes or reblogs. We're scared and upset and deserve to be heard.

What to do:

- australians: don't give up! There's still people fighting this, it's not law yet. And even if it passes we can fight them on it. Most disabled peoples' organisations are fighting this, so organisations like People With Disability Australia and area specific groups. Membership to most of them is free if you're disabled. PWDA sends out a list of the news about us each week to keep us informed.

🔗Disabled People Against Cuts are leading a charge. There's always a way to make politicians pay attention even if we have to park our arses on their front step. Share support and resources where you can and keep an eye on the others in your community if you're able to. Talk to local support clinics about Coles and Woolworths vouchers for those facing a lot of uncertainty. And get your flu shot if you're able. Nobody needs the next protest to give everyone the flu.

- non-australians: keep watching. You might also benefit from seeing what DPAC are doing and if they ever call for international support. Supporting the disabled australians you know and refusing to be kept in the dark about what’s being done to marginalised people internationally is good preparation for lots of ways to help, it means you're ready to go if something you can help with appears and don't lose time educating yourself. Many of the situations with the NDIS have deliberately had short time frames to act, to try and stop us from having a voice.

context from the notes:

- When I said health insurance doesn't cover disability supports, I don't mean "it's very expensive so people can't access it". I mean the services often won't take on anyone who doesn't have an NDIS plan. Even then, it's common for services to prefer people who are "plan managed" or "agency managed", meaning someone else handles our invoices, because they feel "self managed" people might not pay them fast enough.

- People have been getting "check in" phone calls from the agency. It’s secretly plan reviews for them to reduce people's funding. If they call you and you don’t have your support people with you, they are lying when they say you don't need them. Tell them to organise a time to call later so you can have your support people. This kind of warning is the only reason I knew to contact my support coordinator when I got this phone call. Others I have seen didn't know and got their plan cut. And it takes years to try and change a plan or appeal it through the tribunal.

- Someone in the notes has identified herself as a support coordinator and offered to help with questions for people concerned about their plan via DMs (thank you @andromedusia). This is very kind of her and I also hope mentioning this here doesn't cause you any trouble, very sorry if it does.

- Also, not thrilled to find out they might be phasing out support coordinators. Lots of us are dependent on them - a support coordinator is someone who helps us understand out plan and connect with supports, and often helps with advocacy too. They’ll save money on us purely because we won't know where to go or what the plans mean. They use a lot of confusing terms in the plans. I'd be screwed without my support coordinator.

- Oh they also want to use a standardised assessment tool to tell how disabled we are, after a decade of having to pay out of pocket for specialists who know us to provide reports. This is actually worse because the tool doesn’t have to be done by a qualified professional and doesn’t work on people with a lot of different disabilities. The government is very good at somehow turning "bad" into "worse".

- Yeah. 760,000 australians is actually not that many. There's 27 million people living here. 85% of disabled australians aren't on the NDIS. Now, a lot of disabled people don't necessarily need the kind of support the NDIS provides, but you know who I don't trust to make that decision? The government who doesn't want to pay for it.

- None of this fixes the existing problems with access for First Nations people or people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. I'm pretty sure a standardised assessment tool will actually only make that way worse. No room for professionals to work with cultural sensitivity and humility to understand the impact of someone's disability, or the varying ways First Nations communities may construct and talk about disability that don't necessarily align with the settler government's convenient definition. Just checkboxes.

- This isn't even our "conservative" government party in power. This is the centre/centre-left party, Labor. The 'Liberal party' (note: not liberal) would likely do worse. But I don't think there's much to be grateful for when this will kill people. And probably won't stop later conservative cuts anyway. Because we cost too much.

First: THIS RECALL IS NOT STATE SPECIFIC. IT IS NATIONWIDE.

here are the specific products and dates:

FDA page on this:

1 ⧽. if you could sit down and finish any one of your wips without anything stopping you (time, tiredness, etc), which fic would you choose? tell us about it if you want!

Lead Me Not is at the front of my mind, and has the most clear plan, so that one probably :)

2 ⧽. if you could sit down and finish any completely new fic without anything stopping you (time, tiredness, etc), what would you write? tell us about it if you want!

My first thought was a full Sonic Adventure 2 (Sonic/Shadow levels only) cowboy rewrite, my second was the Skyward Sword cyberpunk AU I never wrote (it was next in line after Damage Control, then the fixation kinda... fell off). both kind of cheating, as they have oneshots I am basing them off of. I tried to think of a totally original idea but my only other thought was a sequel to my Shadow 05 alt ending I have been thinking about.

it would explore nontraditional omegaverse (especially being transgender in a world with secondary genders), animal testing on sapient nonhumans, and while the main focus is to ship omega/alpha Sonadow they would also be really close with aromantic beta Rouge, and dive into the implications of the ending where she betrays everyone for an 'evil' Shadow when he defeats Black Doom & takes over (expect, it doesn't really work out that way, and now they're public enemies #1 and 2). very Maximum Ride inspired and would be the darkest fic I write yet. I started rambling there lol.

5 ⧽. is there a certain kind of fic that feels the most satisfying to finish? any reason why?

loooong oneshots. 10k+ in one chapter. Finally posting everything at once is so satisfying. (tbh, I'm not a big fan of finishing longfics-- kind of underwhelming)

14 ⧽. is there anything outside of your normal content that you want to write?

okay so. my normal content right now is fanfic, but when I had free time in high school I did a lot of original fiction (I took creative writing classes). I would like to get back into that because I feel like my fanfic is at best 40% effort of what I CAN write when I want to write well. Outside of my mostly unedited, write as I go, just-for-fun fanfics I am really good at writing and have two degrees (and several grants) to show for it. I wrote a paper for a journal but then the journal lost funding and it never got published so it's kinda been put on hold. when I actually have time energy and focus I can write. I don't have that right now. so. fanfic to destress it is

that being said my two biggest "what if" books I would want to explore in the distant future are fanfic adjacent, but

all girls lord of the flies (I am severely disappointed with every work that claims to be an all girl lotf adaptation on the market). I have wanted this since I was 16

this one is recent. Arthurian Legend retelling (humans, obviously, not hedgehogs) where the Arthur - Lancelot side of the love triangle is even more homoerotic. it is not a polycule. they are all cheating on each other with each other. I think this could be the next Heated Rivalry (jkjkjkjk)

Go ahead and any answer any of these questions that you want (I'd truly be interested in hearing any and all of them), but to pick a few:

1 ⧽. if you could sit down and finish any one of your wips without anything stopping you (time, tiredness, etc), which fic would you choose?

3 ⧽. what's something you like about your writing?

4 ⧽. is there an au or trope that you haven't written before, but would want to try?

18 ⧽. how do you want your writing to feel to your readers?

No worries if you're not in the right space to answer these, of course <3 Feel free to answer later, or never, lol.

Oh my god, we've been driving through absolute nowhere with no service for over an hour, so I only just saw these 😭 You are an amazing person, thank you so much for this 🩵

1. if you could sit down and finish any one of your wips without anything stopping you (time, tiredness, etc), which fic would you choose?

Ha ha, I'm torn between cheating and picking some really long fic that I've barely even started just to get a full story out effortlessly—and Arbiter. I'm over 7000 words into it, so it really shouldn't need that much more, but it's been fighting me every step of the way 😛 It's going to feel really good to finally have that one wrapped up, I think.

Then again, what's also kind of needling me about Arbiter is that it more than anything else I've written is pointing *really hard* towards a sequel. I even have some ideas for one that feel really promising—but knowing how long it takes me to write and feeling the way I do about TotK, I'm really kind of torn about pursuing them? So I think it might be worth it to suffer and strain through the last few thousand words of Arbiter if I could just breeze through whatever comes next 😂

3. what's something you like about your writing?

Ahhhh I wish this question didn't stump me 😭 I like when it gets a bit ethereal, I guess? Like—I was reading through Again recently, and I think it has some pacing issues, but I still like how it's kind of. Atmospheric. I feel like Sunrise, Somewhere also had that quality to it, and maybe Crystalline, too? The part in Crystalline where they're dueling at dusk in the desert with crystals scattered through the sand is an image that sticks with me still.

Oh, I think I was also kind of proud about how I managed to portray environments with Link in BBN when I couldn't rely on sight as a descriptor? So—imagery. I like my imagery :)

4. is there an au or trope that you haven't written before, but would want to try?

I always did kind of want to write an OoT/Majora's Mask AU with Ghirahim as the gilded sword, but I could never quite put my finger on the story there. I'd also like to write... like a traveling story, I guess? I'm noticing an odd trend in my stories and WIPs (not all of them, but a lot) where the characters are either stuck in or keep returning to the same spot—Pinesong, Arbiter, Again, the Horned Statue fic, this other old revalink WIP I've posted a bit of. I don't know why I keep doing that, but I'd like to break myself out of it somehow 😛

18. how do you want your writing to feel to your readers?

any [insert __] is for the sender to fill in :)

1 ⧽. if you could sit down and finish any one of your wips without anything stopping you (time, tiredness, etc), which fic would you choose? tell us about it if you want!

2 ⧽. if you could sit down and finish any completely new fic without anything stopping you (time, tiredness, etc), what would you write? tell us about it if you want!

3 ⧽. what's something you like about your writing?

4 ⧽. is there an au or trope that you haven't written before, but would want to try?

5 ⧽. is there a certain kind of fic that feels the most satisfying to finish? any reason why?

6 ⧽. if you were to write a part two/sequel to a fic, what fic would you want to write it for?

7 ⧽. is there a fic you wish you received feedback on, but didn't get any/much? this ask game is asking someone else to then give feedback on said fic, pretty pretty please!!!

8 ⧽. what part of [insert fic] is your favorite?

9 ⧽. tell us about a wip/idea that you're excited about!

10 ⧽. what genre is generally the easiest or most enjoyable for you to write? which is the hardest?

11 ⧽. if you were to rewrite [insert fic] with [insert different character/ship] how do you think it might change?

12 ⧽. what's a song or two you associate with [insert fic]?

13 ⧽. do you have any writing projects/goals/plans you're working on/want to work on?

14 ⧽. is there anything outside of your normal content that you want to write?

15 ⧽. if you wrote a fic called [insert title] with [insert character/ship] what do you think it might be about?

16 ⧽. if you wrote a fic called [insert title] what character/ship would you want to write it for?

17 ⧽. are there any songs you want to write a songfic for?

18 ⧽. how do you want your writing to feel to your readers?

19 ⧽. give a hint/teaser about something you're writing without any context or explanation! tease us haha

20 ⧽. answer any one of the other questions that you want to!

As the mother of sons, I wish we didn’t spend quite so much time knocking young men. TV talking points like Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere have focussed our attention on problematic blokes to such an extent that few pose an important question: What’s up with the femosphere? It seems that for every male who’s found his mentor in Andrew Tate or the late Charlie Kirk, there’s a young woman who’s been radicalised by Greta Thunberg and AOC (Democrat congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to you and me). On both sides of the Atlantic, polling shows young women are far more likely to skew Left than their male counterparts. It’s fair to say this emerging female cohort seems to live in ceaseless dread and fury of fossil fuels, Elon Musk, toxic masculinity, TERFs and neo-Nazis.

I have some sympathy for this campaigning brigade of seething young women. The dark revelations that flowed from MeToo, the Epstein Files and horrific episodes like Sarah Everard’s murder at the evil hands of Met officer Wayne Couzens made most women’s blood boil. But my generation wasn’t raised on the sewer-tide of social media and fake news, where – if you’re not constantly vigilant – rage-inducing algorithms propel you towards blood-boiling content and agitators sweep you into causes you’re being groomed to embrace, rather than challenge.

To no one’s surprise, this mass seething isn’t making the Gen Z sisterhood happy. The Left’s own in-house magazine, The New Statesman, has a cover story this week titled “Meet the angry young women: the new feminism reshaping Britain”. The mag’s poll found (once again) that “young women, aged between 18 and 30, are by far the most progressive demographic in the UK”. The writer, Emily Lawford, zipped up and down the land interrogating feminist influencers and hanging out in a trans-inclusive student women’s book group, a Unison “youth wing” ceilidh and… well, you get the gist.

Suffice to say, Lawford’s findings make for deeply depressing reading that should trouble us all. The more privileged class of women “are the most pessimistic of all” and less likely than working-class contemporaries to believe hard work will propel them to success. Equally startling was the fact young progressive females seem decidedly more negative about their male peers than vice versa, while “white women are more likely to feel the country is racist than non-white women”.

I was reminded of how US commentator Rob Henderson coined the phrase “luxury beliefs” after attending Yale following service in the US air force – having also survived a traumatic childhood, where he was fostered at the age of 3. Henderson noted that the affluent, privileged students around him constantly espoused opinions that bore no relation to the stable circumstances that had jet-propelled them to the top of the heap. His peers would denounce capitalism, the nuclear family, marriage, fidelity and the key role of fathers, while not acknowledging they’d benefitted from that very system.

What are we to do with female malcontents and their apocalyptic pessimism? If an increasing number of educated young women feel hopeless about the world’s future, hostile towards men, intend to spurn relationships (let alone marriage), declare themselves non-binary and don’t want to have children, as Lawford reports, then we’re all up Faeces Creek without a paddle. And that’s before we examine their desire to overturn capitalism, without having the faintest grasp of basic economics. I see signs of this generational disaffection in my four beloved nieces, while the four male cousins are more happy-go-lucky. Three of the four young men have girlfriends, while only one of the nieces is currently dating a young man – and two of them have declared they don’t want children, while all the boys remain baby-positive.

This imbalance between the sexes is perilous for wider society. How on earth do women of my generation persuade these young Green Amazons that the most certain forms of consolation and meaning in an often bleak world reside in passionate love, family life and the blessed distraction from Armageddon that is parenthood? And that men are, by and large, decent, chivalrous, thoughtful and disarmingly funny? Just ask the Millennial socialist I know, who recently married a Conservative-voting Army officer.

Shop drop! New prints available!

A4/8.3x11.7" Matte finish

Shinobi in the Snowy Woods (Kisame from Naruto), Dark Sun (Gwyndolin from Dark Souls), Holiday Anka (original content, originally created for the Holiday Horns digital zine)

A4/8.3x11.7" (very very shiny) Holo finish

Scarcrossed Ascelin (original content), Backhalls Ascelin (original content), All Hallows Cyneric (original content). Because of how incredibly sparkly this finish is, I won't be restocking it. Once these are gone, they're gone.

A5/4.5x6" prints

Laurence and Gehrman (Bloodborne fanart, matte finish. Originally printed in the For Whom the Bell Chimes NPC zine)

10.16×15.24cm/4x6" heavy cardstock Holiday Yari prints (original content, printed in Winter 2025. Limited run of 50 prints).

There's also a new Deluxe Prints bundle, with 25% savings compared to buying the items separately. This is a test promo, so only five are available. If you'd like to get one of each print at a discounted price, this is the best option!

yes, India made legal gender change impossible but my friends have always gendered me correctly and stick to it even when it confuses other people and my friend's little sibling calls me older brother in Kannada yes, India made legal gender change impossible but my dog learned my new name quicker than the humans and she runs to give me a kiss when she's told to without being confused about who's being referred to

yes, India made legal gender change impossible but I can feel the Adam's apple growing in my throat and my muscles getting stronger, and my smile more real and I'm growing a beard, and I talk more freely

1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.

2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.

3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."

4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.