The Tobacco Obsessed Dorky Crow

“You’re aware this is someone else’s yard.”

“Mhm.”

“And you’ll get caught if someone finds you…”

“Yeap~”

“Alright, Veronica.”

“Sesh, if you were even a bit buff, Hornet wouldn’t think of targeting us.”

“But that’s the thing, no one in our Mantis group is…”

“Still would be nice to imagine.”

“Not whilst in a hanging wedgie, Roh, now help me get off this tree!”

The (s)ass master is back, now done by L_E_Z_I_F_I_E_D

Watch the transitions from book to Dreamworks movie.

I WAS PROMISED A BATTLE

*throws down gauntlet*

2) It was super awesome!

As of June 15th, 2018, PayPal has changed their user policy with little to no fanfare at all in ways that could literally destroy your business. I’m going to say this as plainly as possible:

DO NOT USE PAYPAL AT ALL IF POSSIBLE.

I know this is a lot to ask, especially since PayPal is the most globally accepted digital tender, but unless you want to lose access to your funds for six months and PayPal possibly forever, you need to read this.

PayPal Business accounts are now being flagged, locked, and completely shut down if:

1. If you haven’t shipping anything within 21 days of your first transaction

2. You’ve received more than 200 orders

and/or

3. You’ve made an excess of $20,000 (USD)

If this happens to you, you will not be able to access your money for up to six months. PayPal is NOT willing to work with you, all they will say is there’s nothing they can do, they’re cutting business ties, and offer you the MAILING address of their legal department. That’s right, you can’t even get a direct line to these people, they’re just going to tank your business by dicking around with your money for six months. Your only options are to:

1. Wait six months and frustrate customers, and by-proxy tarnish your reputation.

2. Refund everyone, possibly lose their business, and tarnish your reputation.

3. Pursue the matter legally, which will likely take longer than six months anyway, not to mention cost money out of pocket.

Thankfully most of my stuff is filtered through other sites first but fucking here we go again.

It used to be you could get around this by marking your stuff as digital goods that dont need shipment notification but I dunno if that’ll work anymore. All I know is paypal has been making it increasingly difficult for a lot of artists and creators lately and it’s a logistical nightmare for a lot of us.

It started out with “you can’t use a stage name unless you have a business account”. Which means you get a chunk of your money taken as a processing fee, but get to use a “business” name instead of your real name AND LOCATION, cause that’s a thing they were forcing you to post too unless you upgraded.

People used to tell me all the time when they put a tip in my tip jar that it was telling them my real name and the city I lived in, so eventually I bit the bullet and upgraded to avoid that. (Which is why ko-fi was/is so great, because it’s essentially a paypal wrapper that lets you use the service while not revealing your identity and location.)

But they’ve been making it increasingly harder and harder to run an online business for anyone who doesn’t ship physical items that can be tracked. Like part of it is likely to ensure that customers are getting what they paid for, but when it comes so quickly on the heels of numerous policy updates regarding sex work and adult content, it is undoubtedly linked to making it more difficult for those people to use their services.

Patreon might be doing my head in with their site constantly breaking, and they fuck up on communication issues a lot, but this is largely why they changed who they do their payment processing with, to avoid paypals “no naughty business” policies. They still use paypal and Stripe, but they moved their handler to other countries with less draconian laws, and broadened to other payment processors because of this kind of thing.

Toxic- Britney Spears

So what has happened so far … the Commission has drafted up a long overdue copyright reform. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/procedure/EN/2016_280 It contains a lot of good, and some bad: mainly Article 11 and 13.

This was put forward as a whole to the European Parlament, where it was voted down on the 5th of July 2018

This meant, this will not go through the fast way, and will be subject to scrutiny and change. 

The Commission made some alterations https://eur-lex.europa.eu/procedure/EN/2016_280 and put it forward again. If Parlament would have voted it down again, it probably would have meant back to the drawing board, but most people (including me) agree that Europe does need copyright reform, so on the second vote it passed the first step:

So what happens now? 

This will now go into what is called the Trilogue, where Commission, Parlament and representatives of all national governments will sit together to make alterations until everybody is happy implementing the regulation.

This means we can now influence this via our MEPs and our National Government!

In countries that are red your government is likely to support Article 13.

What to do now?

There are a lot of organisations that organise actions against article 13. Check out their websites and get in touch with your MEP or local government and let them know you are unhappy about this.

https://www.saveyourinternet.eu/ 

https://epicenter.works/

https://www.changecopyright.org/

https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/

… and many many more, just google to find one in your country.

Also, as @asthesea-breezehitsmylungs pointed out, a lot of people are not aware of this going on. So make them aware! Share the memes and point them to the petitions. And don’t just complain how shit this is, get in touch with your politicians!

Yo, everyone, EU or not, please at least signal boost this shit. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: those two articles will suck majorly for all of us.

Like dude, how much time do you spend enjoying various things that relate to, Idk, your favourite show or book series. It’ll probs be gone. Funny memes and shit? Nah our generation doesn’t fucking need to laugh, it’s not like half of us are already depressed or anything. And so many other things that are cool about the internet, I’m not even gonna mention how some big, cool places like YouTube and Tumblr will be fucked by this.

So seriously, there’s only so much a small bunch of people can do. We need some noise on this. As much as I hate to admit it, some things require some fat numbres to be paid attention to. So even if you’re not planning on taking any action yourself, the best thing to do would be to spread this to everyone you trust to either get involved or pay it forward like you did.

share your own holiday pictures if there’s a monument in the background

share any kind of picture that includes a logo or a brand (think cute selfie with a random Subway or McDonald’s in the background)

share a WhatsApp video of those beautiful fireworks, that funny bird or your kid doing cute shit with your friends and family because the Eiffel Tower is in the background

upload a profile pic of you wearing your SPN t-shirt

make gifs 

make crack such as [TV show] + textposts / Onion headlines / tweets

add screencaps to your metas or reviews

share the cover of that fantastic book you just read

share images of any painting, statue, or monument

share gifs, videos or pics of any sport event 

create or share memes

make videogame-related tutorials featuring reviews, walkthroughs and whatever else

make fanvids

sing or play your own covers of other artists (alive or dead)

see (or contribute to) wikia sites for your favourite shows and movies

watch stuff like the Pop Culture Detective’s videos

share fanfiction and drabbles on FFN and tumblr 

share fanart or original art on DeviantArt

BUT HE HAD 7 KIDS AND A WIFE TO FEED SO HE ENDED UP OWNING A GROCERY STORE AFTER SERVING IN WW2

TODAY MY DAD WAS CLEANING THE HOUSE AND FOUND SOME PENCIL DRAWINGS THAT MY GRANDPA DID AND ASKED IF I WANTED TO HAVE THEM AND I

CAN WE JUST LOOK AT THIS

MY BAD WEBCAM PICTURES DON’T EVEN DO THEM JUSTICE LIKE LOOK AT THESE

MY GRANDPA NEVER BECAME A FAMOUS ARTIST

B: 3 biggest pet peeves

C: Celebrity crush?

D: If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be?

E: Do you smoke?

F: Do you drink?

G: If you had to rank yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, what would you be?

H: Longest relationship and with who?

I: 5 turn ons

J: 5 turn offs

K: What’s the biggest lie you have ever told?

L: Would you ever date someone of another race?

M: What is your sexual orientation?

N: Top 5 traits you look for in a person that you want to have a relationship with

O: Who are you crushing on right now?

P: Who is your bestfriend?

Q: Your guilty pleasure?

R: Who was your first kiss?

S: Do looks matter to you?

T: What kind of underwear are you wearing?

U: How big is your penis or for a girl, how big are your boobs

V: How far have you gone?

W: Do you like it when people play with your hair?

X: Are you circumcised?

Y: Do you name your private parts?

Z: What do you want to do when you grow up?