Idk lmao

Which is such bullshit.

Anyway. Several kids wanted to talk to me about the walkout yesterday afternoon. Didn't say anything. Just gave them the I Can't Say Anything And You Know Why look. One of them was like, "Don't worry, Ms. S. We got you."

And then today? They came back. WITH FUCKING PAPERWORK. Those beautiful darlings went to the city clerk's office and got a protest permit for the park down the road and they're organizing a protest after school, they've coordinated with a local immigrant rights group, they have police permission, and they've notified the school district that all the paperwork is filed, legal, and in order. District said: no walkout, or we'll suspend you, take your parking, kick you off of sports teams. Kids said: sure, fine. Be that way, jerks. Let's make this a whole-ass community thing and go loud.

I'm so impressed. And one of them was like, "We were talking about it, wanted to organize a protest, and we remembered how you said in class that most substantive democratic states there are still requirements to register large protests, so we looked up how to file for a permit. We're not giving them a reason to say we didn't do it right," and I wanted to fucking cry.

(headline from the Guardian, 4 November 2025)

donation comm for my dear @vinelark

[Image Transcript:

And how will I prove my age?

There’s a number of methods a site or app might use to ask you to confirm your age. They might do this check themselves or use another company to do the check. These methods include:

Facial age estimation – you show your face via photo or video, and technology analyses it to estimate your age. 

Open banking – you give permission for the age-check service to securely access information from your bank about whether you are over 18. The age-check service then confirms this with the site or app.

Digital identity services – these include digital identity wallets, which can securely store and share information which proves your age in a digital format.

Credit card age checks – you provide your credit card details and a payment processor checks if the card is valid. As you must be over 18 to obtain a credit card this shows you are over 18.

Email-based age estimation – you provide your email address, and technology analyses other online services where it has been used – such as banking or utility providers - to estimate your age.  

Mobile network operator age checks – you give your permission for an age-check service to confirm whether or not your mobile phone number has age filters applied to it. If there are no restrictions, this confirms you are over 18. 

Photo-ID matching – this is similar to a check when you show a document. For example, you upload an image of a document that shows your face and age, and an image of yourself at the same time – these are compared to confirm if the document is yours.

End Transcript.]

Not only is this such a fucking breach of privacy, but this is going to hurt adults in vulnerable and abusive situations. Some adults don’t have bank accounts or credit cards or even a fucking phone. I’m one of them. I could not give half of this information even if I wanted to. What the fuck is this. Fuck the UK government. This isn’t going to protect kids, this is just going to hurt adults, and I know full well when they say “sites that allow pornography” they’re going to be going after sites that have huge amounts of queer content, like tumblr and Ao3. Queer kids are gonna lose their fucking communities because of this shit. Abuse victims are going to lose online support systems because of this.

I’m genuinely fucked off about this, and worried about whether I’m going to lose every single one of my online friends. Anyone in the UK, please email your MP and sign this petition. It needs to reach 100k signatures to pass through Parliament.

I’m only hoping the backlash will be big enough for them to stop implementing these measures.