#Protect PDF File

[astrolook]

🌙 North Node & South Node in Each Sign: What Your Soul Came to Learn

🔮 The South Node = Past Life Karma (What you’ve mastered but need to let go of) 🌟 The North Node = Soul’s Purpose (What you’re here to grow into)

👇 Check your North & South Node placements and see what your soul signed up for!

♈ North Node in Aries / South Node in Libra → In past lives, you relied too much on relationships. Now, you must learn independence, self-assertion, and putting yourself first.

♉ North Node in Taurus / South Node in Scorpio → You’ve had intense, dramatic past lives. This time, it’s about stability, peace, and building something solid without chaos.

♊ North Node in Gemini / South Node in Sagittarius → You were a philosopher, adventurer, or traveler in past lives. Now, you must focus on communication, curiosity, and the details.

♋ North Node in Cancer / South Node in Capricorn → You were all about work and status before. This time, it’s about family, emotions, and nurturing your personal life.

♌ North Node in Leo / South Node in Aquarius → You spent past lives as a rebel or a group leader. Now, it’s about self-expression, creativity, and embracing the spotlight.

♍ North Node in Virgo / South Node in Pisces → You were a dreamer, spiritual seeker, or healer in past lives. This life is about structure, routine, and practical skills.

♎ North Node in Libra / South Node in Aries → You were fiercely independent before. Now, it’s about learning balance, partnerships, and working with others.

♏ North Node in Scorpio / South Node in Taurus → You had easy, comfortable past lives. Now, you must transform, embrace intensity, and dive into the unknown.

♐ North Node in Sagittarius / South Node in Gemini → You were caught up in small details in past lives. Now, it’s about expanding your mind, taking risks, and seeking truth.

♑ North Node in Capricorn / South Node in Cancer → You lived for family and emotions in past lives. This time, you must focus on discipline, ambition, and personal success.

♒ North Node in Aquarius / South Node in Leo → You were all about personal recognition before. Now, it’s about the collective, humanitarian work, and thinking outside the box.

♓ North Node in Pisces / South Node in Virgo → You used to be overly logical and focused on details. Now, it’s about spirituality, intuition, and surrendering to the unknown.

✨ Want a deeper guide on your past life karma?

Karmic Paths & Soul Purpose: A Complete Guide to the North Nodes & South Nodes in Astrology (13-page report) - $5

Get my full PDF guide for just $5! Payment via PayPal. Once payment is confirmed, I will send you the PDF. It covers North Node & South Node in signs & houses, who you were in your past life, your career, family, love and your relationships in detail. Message me to grab your copy! 🌟

Note : Due to different time zones, I might not reply immediately. Don't worry! Leave me your email address for me to send the password-protected PDF file. Once the payment is confirmed, I will give you the password to access to it.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ad-tech targeting is an existential threat

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me TORONTO on SUNDAY (Feb 23) at Another Story Books, and in NYC on WEDNESDAY (26 Feb) with JOHN HODGMAN. More tour dates here.

The commercial surveillance industry is almost totally unregulated. Data brokers, ad-tech, and everyone in between ��� they harvest, store, analyze, sell and rent every intimate, sensitive, potentially compromising fact about your life.

Late last year, I testified at a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau hearing about a proposed new rule to kill off data brokers, who are the lynchpin of the industry:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

The other witnesses were fascinating – and chilling, There was a lawyer from the AARP who explained how data-brokers would let you target ads to categories like "seniors with dementia." Then there was someone from the Pentagon, discussing how anyone could do an ad-buy targeting "people enlisted in the armed forces who have gambling problems." Sure, I thought, and you don't even need these explicit categories: if you served an ad to "people 25-40 with Ivy League/Big Ten law or political science degrees within 5 miles of Congress," you could serve an ad with a malicious payload to every Congressional staffer.

Now, that's just the data brokers. The real action is in ad-tech, a sector dominated by two giant companies, Meta and Google. These companies claim that they are better than the unregulated data-broker cowboys at the bottom of the food-chain. They say they're responsible wielders of unregulated monopoly surveillance power. Reader, they are not.

Meta has been repeatedly caught offering ad-targeting like "depressed teenagers" (great for your next incel recruiting drive):

https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/01/105987/is-facebook-targeting-ads-at-sad-teens/

And Google? They just keep on getting caught with both hands in the creepy commercial surveillance cookie-jar. Today, Wired's Dell Cameron and Dhruv Mehrotra report on a way to use Google to target people with chronic illnesses, people in financial distress, and national security "decision makers":

https://www.wired.com/story/google-dv360-banned-audience-segments-national-security/

Google doesn't offer these categories itself, they just allow data-brokers to assemble them and offer them for sale via Google. Just as it's possible to generate a target of "Congressional staffers" by using location and education data, it's possible to target people with chronic illnesses based on things like whether they regularly travel to clinics that treat HIV, asthma, chronic pain, etc.

Google claims that this violates their policies, and that they have best-of-breed technical measures to prevent this from happening, but when Wired asked how this data-broker was able to sell these audiences – including people in menopause, or with "chronic pain, fibromyalgia, psoriasis, arthritis, high cholesterol, and hypertension" – Google did not reply.

The data broker in the report also sold access to people based on which medications they took (including Ambien), people who abuse opioids or are recovering from opioid addiction, people with endocrine disorders, and "contractors with access to restricted US defense-related technologies."

It's easy to see how these categories could enable blackmail, spear-phishing, scams, malvertising, and many other crimes that threaten individuals, groups, and the nation as a whole. The US Office of Naval Intelligence has already published details of how "anonymous" people targeted by ads can be identified:

https://www.odni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ODNI-Declassified-Report-on-CAI-January2022.pdf

The most amazing part is how the 33,000 targeting segments came to public light: an activist just pretended to be an ad buyer, and the data-broker sent him the whole package, no questions asked. Johnny Ryan is a brilliant Irish privacy activist with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. He created a fake data analytics website for a company that wasn't registered anywhere, then sent out a sales query to a brokerage (the brokerage isn't identified in the piece, to prevent bad actors from using it to attack targeted categories of people).

Foreign states, including China – a favorite boogeyman of the US national security establishment – can buy Google's data and target users based on Google ad-tech stack. In the past, Chinese spies have used malvertising – serving targeted ads loaded with malware – to attack their adversaries. Chinese firms spend billions every year to target ads to Americans:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/business/google-meta-temu-shein.html

Google and Meta have no meaningful checks to prevent anyone from establishing a shell company that buys and targets ads with their services, and the data-brokers that feed into those services are even less well-protected against fraud and other malicious act.

All of this is only possible because Congress has failed to act on privacy since 1988. That's the year that Congress passed the Video Privacy Protection Act, which bans video store clerks from telling the newspapers which VHS cassettes you have at home. That's also the last time Congress passed a federal consumer privacy law:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

The legislative history of the VPPA is telling: it was passed after a newspaper published the leaked video-rental history of a far-right judge named Robert Bork, whom Reagan hoped to elevate to the Supreme Court. Bork failed his Senate confirmation hearings, but not because of his video rentals (he actually had pretty good taste in movies). Rather, it was because he was a Nixonite criminal and virulent loudmouth racist whose record was strewn with the most disgusting nonsense imaginable).

But the leak of Bork's video-rental history gave Congress the cold grue. His video rental history wasn't embarrassing, but it sure seemed like Congress had some stuff in its video-rental records that they didn't want voters finding out about. They beat all land-speed records in making it a crime to tell anyone what kind of movies they (and we) were watching.

And that was it. For 37 years, Congress has completely failed to pass another consumer privacy law. Which is how we got here – to this moment where you can target ads to suicidal teens, gambling addicted soldiers in Minuteman silos, grannies with Alzheimer's, and every Congressional staffer on the Hill.

Some people think the problem with mass surveillance is a kind of machine-driven, automated mind-control ray. They believe the self-aggrandizing claims of tech bros to have finally perfected the elusive mind-control ray, using big data and machine learning.

But you don't need to accept these outlandish claims – which come from Big Tech's sales literature, wherein they boast to potential advertisers that surveillance ads are devastatingly effective – to understand how and why this is harmful. If you're struggling with opioid addiction and I target an ad to you for a fake cure or rehab center, I haven't brainwashed you – I've just tricked you. We don't have to believe in mind-control to believe that targeted lies can cause unlimited harms.

And those harms are indeed grave. Stein's Law predicts that "anything that can't go on forever eventually stops." Congress's failure on privacy has put us all at risk – including Congress. It's only a matter of time until the commercial surveillance industry is responsible for a massive leak, targeted phishing campaign, or a ghastly national security incident involving Congress. Perhaps then we will get action.

In the meantime, the coalition of people whose problems can be blamed on the failure to update privacy law continues to grow. That coalition includes protesters whose identities were served up to cops, teenagers who were tracked to out-of-state abortion clinics, people of color who were discriminated against in hiring and lending, and anyone who's been harassed with deepfake porn:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/20/privacy-first-second-third/#malvertising

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[snail163]

They didn't open the PDF yet :(

I was hoping they were going to do it while I was sleeping, but they didn't for some reason.

I'm fairly certain that it will happen today or tomorrow, though :3

I think tonight may be the night I come out finally :3

Hopefully it actually happens this time. unlike my other attempts...

[agitateandeducate]

Complicity won't save you from a government that wants you DEAD. Every download includes a pdf, pngs, and an image description file for the set of posters! Free Posters available here: https://ko-fi.com/s/fe6e19ff45

---Image Descriptions---

1: white background with black text on the left side: COMPLICITY IN EUGENICS WILL NOT SAVE YOU FROM A GOVERNMENT THAT WANTS YOU DEAD. The right side of the poster has a vertical rectangle all the way from top to bottom, featuring horizontal strips of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple). In the bottom left corner is black text: MASK UP FOR THIS GENERATION AND THE NEXT!

2: white background with black text on the left side: COMPLICITY IN EUGENICS

WILL NOT SAVE YOU FROM A GOVERNMENT THAT WANTS YOU DEAD. The right side of the poster has a vertical rectangle all the way from top to bottom, featuring vertical strips of the trans flag (blue, pink, white, pink, blue). In the bottom left corner is black text: MASK UP FOR THIS GENERATION AND THE NEXT!

3: white background with black text on the left side: Complicity in eugenics will not save you from a government THAT WANTS YOU DEAD. Underneath the large text is smaller black text: COVID-19 IS A LEADING C AUSE OF DEATH IN YOUTH AND ADULTS. QUEER AND TRANS FOLKS OF THE GLOBAL MAJORITY ARE MORE LIKELY TO DEVELOP LONG COVID. MASK UP FOR THIS GENERATION AND THE NEXT - RESIST EUGENICS! Underneath the smaller text, a rainbow extends from the center perspective point of the text to the left and right edges of the poster.

4: white background with black text on the right side: COMPLICITY IN EUGENICS WILL NOT SAVE YOU FROM A GOVERNMENT THAT WANTS YOU DEAD. The “o” in YOU is a red gun target, and both “you” and “dead” are hollowed out. In the bottom left corner is red and black text spanning the bottom: COVID-19 IS A LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH IN YOUTH AND ADULTS (in red). DO YOU MEAN IT WHEN YOU SAY BLACK TRANS LIVES MATTER? PROTECT TRANS WOMEN? PROTECT TRANS YOUTH? THEN MASK UP FOR THIS GENERATION AND THE NEXT (in black)

[11queensupreme11]

Omg, I just realized that if the ror universe were horrified by Percy choice of mortal spot, then their also gonna HATE when she gives up the Nemean Lion skin

EDIT: i posted this too early my bad, but i added a lil more at the end!

i had to go find a pdf file for the titan's curse so i can reread the scene cuz i forgot some details 😅 but for those that forgot like me, percy uses the pelt as an offering to poseidon for help!

here's early on when percy first gets the nemean lion's pelt (btw, the pelt kinda works like achilles curse! wearing it grants you invulnerability!):

and then when percy learns that bessie is actually the ophiotaurus:

and then percy later on asking poseidon for help in keeping bessie and grover safe as they travel through the sea, and using the pelt as an offering:

NOW BACK TO THE ASK!

anyways, POSEIDON WOULD BE THE MOST PISSED LMAO 😭😭😭😭 like what do you mean HIS OWN DAUGHTER had to GIVE UP SOMETHING THAT FUCKING USEFUL THAT COULD'VE PROTECTED HER just to ask for HELP from his shitty counterpart?!?!?!?!

dhhadfbvadf. he's gonna be losing his shit 😂😂😂😂😂😂

the others are gonna be baffled too, because holy shit????

wtf do you mean percy had to give an OFFERING to her own FATHER just to get his help???????????? especially and offering that actually could've kept her safe should she have been able to keep it?!??!!!!! they'd be screeching at pjo!poseidon to give the damn pelt back cuz this danger prone child is literally THE ONE PERSON who NEEEEEEEEDS that shit fr 😂

ror!poseidon wouldn't have put his daughter in that situation in the first place but pjo!poseidon robbing his kid of a cool pelt????? NOT cool bro 😞👎 give her the pelt back 🙄

[outofgloom]

AI KURU: An Anthology of Weird Fiction Horror and Art in the World of BIONICLE

LINK TO FILE (PDF)

Update 10/8/24: Now also posted as a series on AO3!

aikuru adj. Unknown, obscure, foggy, dark. A Matoric word...

This is a collection of eighteen original short stories and associated artwork set within the world and universe of BIONICLE (a property of LEGO), taken from the Art & Writing section of this blog.

If you are not familiar with the lore of this world, the characters, settings, and themes of these stories will be obscure to you, although perhaps not entirely incomprehensible...

Many of these stories feature beings called Matoran: the biomechanical worker-beings of a vast, artificial world. The Matoran were designed as automatons by their creators (an enigmatic group known only as the “Great Beings”) but later evolved by unknown means to become self-aware and self-actualizing while still keeping to their original programming as maintainers of the world. Alongside Matoran are the Toa—powerful elemental warriors who are sworn to serve and protect—as well as the Turaga, elders who guide and govern the Matoran (and who were formerly Toa themselves). An array of other creatures and species are present as well, with their own special characteristics and functions in keeping the great Machine of the World running.

Many of these stories explore themes related to the emergence of self-actualization, culture, and emotional complexity amongst the Matoran and the other beings they share the universe with. A similar theme of these stories is “forbidden knowledge”, dealing with cases where the creatures of BIONICLE gain some knowledge about the nature of their world and are forced to grapple with it, sometimes with disastrous results. Themes of death, loss, change, companionship, betrayal, curiosity, obsession, and the weariness of duty may also be found.

Some stories are set within specific moments of the larger BIONICLE narrative, both past and future, and feature established characters and settings from the lore, while others feature entirely original characters and settings.

The final story in the anthology is different. It is not set within the artificial world of the Matoran, but instead on the world of the “Great Beings” themselves, called Spherus Magna—a planet which was shattered and then remade by the machine-world of the Matoran (which took the form of a planetoid-sized robot). The story is set long after the conclusion of the story of BIONICLE proper, in a time when the inhabitants of Spherus Magna have moved on from the destruction of the past in many ways, but remain nevertheless fascinated by the mysteries buried beneath the surface of their world . . . with some even attempting to unearth those mysteries, for better or worse.

I hope that you enjoy these works, and that, through these stories and the accompanying art, you too may glimpse the way that is called BIONICLE.

[dlstmxkakwldrlarchive]

(update) Notice on Legal Action Against Infringement of Artist's Rights

Hello, this is Griffin Entertainment.

First, we would like to express our gratitude to the fans who show love and support for our artist, Onew.

We have confirmed that defamatory remarks, malicious criticism, false rumors, personal attacks, and other harmful posts about Onew are continuously being spread across SNS and various online communities.Such actions are illegal as they violate the artist’s reputation and rights.

Therefore, we have appointed legal experts and are currently taking legal steps, including filing complaints with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.

Not only will we continue with our ongoing cases, but we also plan to take all possible legal measures without any leniency or settlements in the future.

Additionally, we sincerely thank fans for providing tip-off materials, which have been of great help. We will continue collecting evidence related to defamation and malicious posts, so we ask for your active cooperation in reporting such cases.

Report Email: protect@griffinent.com

[How to report malicious post]

1. Email to : protect@griffinent.com

2. Email subject : [온유] 악성 게시물 신고/[ONEW] Report of Malicious Post

3. Email content

1. Posting date : year. month. day. time

2. Posting platform :

3. Posting URL:

4. Post author (Nickname, ID, etc):

5. Content:

6. Attach supporting documents (PDF, JPG, etc)

*Please attach whole screenshot showing the posting date, posting author, URL

translation

[bisexualbaker]

Crochet Pattern for Palestine and Israel Relief

At long last, it's done!

This crochet pattern is for small cats, of a good size to make into keychains, magnets, or even hair clips! There are six PDF versions available:

- US stitch names in 12 point Atkinson Hyperlegible - US stitch names in 22 point Atkinson Hyperlegible - US stitch names in 22 point Comic Sans

- UK stitch names in 12 point Atkinson Hyperlegible - UK stitch names in 22 point Atkinson Hyperlegible - UK stitch names in 22 point Comic Sans

Between those six options, that should cover most pattern accessibility needs. If you need something else, though, let me know! I'm prepared to offer a .doc or similar file on an individual basis if you need a screenreader to access crochet patterns, and have a sheet I can use to translate things to German stitch terms (though more in-depth instructions would still be in English). The pattern is worked primarily in (US) single crochet/(UK) double crochet, with the ears in (US) double crochet/(UK) treble crochet popcorn stitches, and is bundled with similar file options of a popcorn stitch tutorial PDF (no stitch names used).

"Socchan," you say, "These cats are super cute! And you said that this pattern is for charity? How does that work exactly?"

I'm glad you asked! Simply donate a minimum of $3 or close-enough local equivalent to a related charity, then take a screencap of your receipt/proof of donation. Block out any information that could doxx you; it's nice if you trust me, but it's not impossible that my email could get hacked, and I want you to be safe! Finally, email the altered screencap to socchan (at) protonmail (dot) com.

Once I get and check the screencap, I will email you back with a link to a MediaFire folder and the password you'll need to open the PDFs. Yes, it is a bit of a pain to need a password to open these files, but this was the simplest way I could figure out how to do things without needing to upload and send a minimum of six files to every person. Download as many of the variations as you want, keep a copy of the password somewhere safe (and don't delete the email with it), and go to town!

As a bonus, if you take your donation up to at least $5 (or close-enough local equivalent), I'll throw in an additional link and password for a very cute little flower pattern!

"That sounds pretty easy," you go on to say, "but where should I donate? There are so many options to choose from!"

No problem! Here's a couple of short lists of options that can help you narrow things down:

Palestine: Palestine Children's Relief Fund - Focuses on medical aid to children in Palestine Medical Aid for Palestine - "[H]elp MAP respond to the ongoing emergency in Gaza, as well as provide medical supplies, support healthcare services and deliver long term development to healthcare in the occupied Palestinian territory and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon." MAP reportedly has a team on the ground in Gaza, providing critical medical aid. Anera - Providing food, hygiene kits, and medical care in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Palestine Red Crescent - More medical support in Palestine; the rest of the webpage is in Arabic, so be prepared if you want to click around at all. Basically the Palestinian Red Cross. Gaza Cemetery Project - "Al-Hamdulillah, a ​​5,500 square meters’ piece of land has been secured to create a public cemetery for the city and neighbouring areas." This area still needs a fence to protect the burial plots before it can be used.

Israel: Zaka - A group of first responders and people who identify bodies and prepare them for burial (sadly, sorely needed right now); they are in need of safety equipment, medical supplies, first aid kits, and more. Red Magen David - The Israeli/Jewish equivalent of the Red Cross; first responder medical support and similar. (This one has some pretty immediate upsetting text, so take care!) Hatzalah - Similar to Red Magen David, another first responder and emergency medical group. The Koby Mandell Foundation - Focuses on bereavement aid in Israel for people who have lost loved ones in traumatic circumstances; they've got support hotlines and can arrange for support visits, among other things. The Refuser Solidarity Network - Providing support for Israeli citizens who refuse government mandatory military service.

I think that's everything, aside from: Please Signal Boost! If I end up having to send out two hundred emails in the next couple of days, that still won't be too many.

[velvet-cupcake-games]

In the Wake of Will

It's been a lovely week. Thanks so much to everyone who has given me their excellent feedback on Will's route! I've taken some time to relax after crunching a bit on Will's release, and I've been working on the Made Marion Mega-Guide. Right now the guide-in-progress is only going out to Kickstarter backers who pledged for it, but it will be available to the general public later on.

The Mega-Guide is an omnibus lore guide, art book, game guide, and general Made Marion-related fun time with some development bloopers and the best of our silly Tumblr memes compiled in it as well. Cross your fingers that I can fit it all into a single .pdf file without slaughtering Acrobat Reader.

Affinity Publisher 2 is a pretty groovy piece of software. I was flummoxed by the previous version of the software, but they made it a lot more user friendly in version 2. I've been able to figure out just about everything from the help system.

Version 2.1 Progress

Version 2.1 will be out in the next couple weeks. It will contain the final version of the final CG (the ending CG for Will's spontaneous route, which has now been provided to me) and the expanded love scenes for Robin's route.

John Route Prep

In the meantime, I'm working on mood pages for John's route to get a better feel for the details of the romance. It can be difficult to plot out conflict in a romance with a person who is very kind and who carries his flaws more beneath the surface. I don't want Marion to come off looking bitchy or unreasonable, as that's not my intention. But she and John are going to butt heads a little bit as they are both proud, highly responsible people who had to grow up too early. It's not always easy for two such "in charge" people to work together, even when they both have the best of intentions.

It'll be fun to flip the script in this one and see how Will responds to Marion as his brother's partner. He's very much in favour of the partnership at first for his own selfish reasons. But Will is protective of John in his own ways...

[stumpyjoepete]

I'm working on a project that focuses on solving a bunch of schleppy tasks that the average person has (and might resort to a sketchy website to solve) but a mediocre programmer could probably knock out with half an hour and access to stackoverflow. Examples are things like unlocking password-protected power point files, extracting random archive formats, doing stupid things in ImageMagick, slapping together multiple PDFs, etc. And everything executes in the browser, no uploads or downloads. And programmers can share helpful scripts with their less technically inclined friends in a safe way. Anyhow, if you're interested, I can share more later.

One example task that's driving me nuts is dealing with those Winmail.dat files that Outlook sometimes sends instead of a normal email with attachments. This problem is so straightforward and easy to solve--there's a fuck ton of libraries to extract them--, but I have no idea if I've solved it because I can't acquire any test data. Every search result on the internet for Winmail.dat is instructions for how to extract attachments from them or for how to reconfigure Outlook to never send them. At no point has anyone in the history of the world ever intentionally created a Winmail.dat file. For every 100 libraries that parse them, there are zero libraries to create them. It's like searching for the best way to contract leprosy. I think I might need to resort to hiring a borderline-illiterate boomer to send me important paperwork via email.

[strawberryshortcake1495]

Fun Facts About My Jobless Monday AU ❤️

The baby Stan twins inspired Auntie Pines to have Dipper and Mabel. She first met them at a family gathering when they were little kids, and she decided she wanted some curious eyes and bright smiles of her own too.

Filbrick and Auntie…don’t have the best relationship. When she was a little girl, Auntie was forced to do all the housework whether she liked it or not. Filbrick isn’t the best person but she used to make up excuses for his behavior until they reached adulthood. One day, she met Uncle Schmidt and he made her feel like the most special person in the entire world. Wealth and love is the perfect combo. They were together for 3 years until getting married and deciding to have children. 

Uncle Schmidt looks like a cold and apathetic man just like Filbrick but is actually super kind and caring. He’s just an introvert with a resting bitch face.

After 6-7 years of living in the mansion, Stan decides to move out once he’s matured and thanks the Schmidt family for putting their faith in such a screwup like him. Let’s just say it was super emotional. 

Stan once fought a group of PDF files to protect the twins. 

In their early adulthood, Filbrick kept begging Auntie for money and she politely rejected until one night he was caught almost breaking into the old family home. Auntie and Uncle both decided to move to Bel-Air for their safety. 

During college, Ford went on a class trip to Bel-Air along with Fiddleford but he never bothered to visit Stan. 

Uncle Schmidt gave Stan haircuts every 2 weeks until one time he accidentally forgot to for an entire month and the twins loved Stan’s long hair, which made Stan himself love it.

Uncle Schmidt is British. He moved from Wales to Jersey to Bel-Air.

[gracehosborn]

I hate to be the bearer of frustrating news, but in case some of you who frequent Founders Online (like I do) and have noticed an extreme spike of 503 “Service Temporarily Unavailable” errors, making access to the site impossible for periods of time, the team posted the explanation below:

Founders Online performance issues

19 May 2025: Founders Online is experiencing periodic degraded performance owing to extreme spikes in traffic caused by excessive website crawling, associated with content scooping from AI platforms and other indexers. We are working on a viable fix within the constraints of our server resources.

This is very unfortunate and very disgusting. I’m glad that they are trying to fix the issue, but it breaks my heart that they even have to put in the effort. From personal experience working as a student technician in my university’s Preservation Department, where my primary task is to digitize all sorts of old materials—books, newspapers, photographs, etc, and collaborate on how those items should be handled and scanned so that their digital copies can be presented and made accessible in the right ways, it takes A LOT of work just to digitize one item. Almost all of the documents you see on Founders Online are digital copies of the book pages from where these transcriptions originated—series’ of the founders papers that were printed in the last 70-80 years by university presses. Books that, when Founders was launched 15 years ago, were all between a few years and many decades old, and difficult for the general public to access. Of course, I don’t know the Founders team’s exact process for making the archive when they first started, nor do I claim to be the preservation expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a big hunch that it took many hundreds of hours, and likely continues to do so for the remaining volumes they intend to add to the site, to make Founders Online as it appears and maintain its usually fast performance.

AI in general frustrates me, but to see that this extremely valuable archive has now gotten caught in the scooping net makes me equally sad and angry. If you want to gather documents from the site, but will later be offline, you have the ability through the site to download PDF files of individual documents and print them. Most of the material is also in the public domain as well (not all, however—any annotations to a document are copyright of the institution which originally published those physical volumes I mentioned). AI scooping this archive for information to feed to language learning models is a waste of time, energy, and money, and is a violation of copyright law. At the risk of causing performance issues and affecting the servers that make Founders possible, this activity is potentially detrimental to historic preservation and access to historical knowledge. Those hundreds of hours the teams behind the site have worked also come into play: this site is their baby, their hard work, and it’s being stolen. And as a result, everyone’s ability to easily use the site without issue is being affected.

I am extremely fortunate to be in a position where I have been able to acquire a personal backup system for what I primarily use Founders for (my volumes of The Papers of Alexander Hamilton), and more so in that through my university, I have access to the rest of the physical series that make up the archive. So this current issue with the site being slow on performance and frequently down does not inconvenience me much. But this is a privilege. Founders Online was created to get around that privilege and allow for everyone (with an Internet connection) to access these important historical documents. I cannot hammer down to you just how important and valuable that is. Founders Online is an invaluable resource that deserves to be maintained and protected. I’m thankful that the team behind it are working diligently to do just that, but they should never have had to combat AI stealing their hard work and affecting the usability of the site in the first place.

[agitateandeducate]

Bottom posters inspired by slogans from AIDS activists. Every download includes a pdf, pngs, and an image description file for the set of posters! Free Posters available here: https://ko-fi.com/s/f3b8ee6afa

---Image Descriptions---

[id 1] White minimalist poster with large black text in upper left: we will not accept covid eugenics. Neither should you. A thin black line runs horizontally through the center with two black triangle meeting slightly off center. Several more lines radiate from the triangles giving a 3d like effect. In the bottom right corner is large black text: mask up! [end id]

[id 2] White minimalist poster with large black upside down black triangle in the upper center with white text inside: we will not accept covid eugenics. Neither should you. In the bottom is large black text: mask up! [end id]

[id 3] Black poster with large white text going down in a row: CDC lies. Covid is disabled and poor genocide. Learn to protect your community. The text gets thicker towards and away from the center, with the word genocide hollowed out. [end id]

[id 4] White poster with large black text going down in a row: CDC lies. Covid is disabled and poor genocide. Learn to protect your community. The text gets thicker towards and away from the center, with the word genocide hollowed out. [end id]

[evidence-based-activism]

what do you think of this exchange? I find the 100% statistic and the claim that a male solder rapes a female soldier every 3 hours to be quite unbelievable https://www.tumblr.com/lickmybigfathairypussy/761526266679705600?source=share

I think the second poster is repeating misogynistic myths perpetuated by men's rights activists. The first poster (@hadesoftheladies) does a good job illustrating why he is wrong.

For the specific statistics you are interested in:

---

The claim "French men have sexually assaulted 100% of female users in public transport" appears to have been taken out of context. (Maybe this was the result of French-to-English translations?) There was a French report that found 100% of their sample of women reported sexual harassment while on public transportation ... but this sample was drawn from a poll about harassment on public transportation, so it's not representative [1].

I do not read French, so this was a difficult to research, but it looks like a better (but still imperfect) estimate is 87% [2]. I can't find any recent representative studies. (They are probably all in French, which I, again, cannot read.) What I can find all suggests that sexual harassment in France is already prevalent and becoming even more frequent [3].

---

For the one about American soldiers ("A US american solder rapes one of his female coworker every 3 hours."). To be clear for everyone, what this is saying is that every three hours, one male American solider rapes one female American solider. And it turns out you're correct, Anon, male American soldiers rape their female coworkers much more frequently than this [4, 5].

Specifically, in 2018, 6.2% of female active duty service members reported being assaulted. 92% of these assaults were by "men or a group of men". Given both formal and informal military culture around sexual assault and women, this is likely a severe underestimate. In addition, this is a prevalence rate not an incidence rate, so, for example, if one woman is actually assaulted on 5 different occasions, it would still only be recorded once.

But, going by just these values, it works out to at least 11,893 male soldiers having assaulted 11,893 women in 2018. That's about 33 every day or more than 4 every 3 hours. Even if you include only "completed penetrative" assaults (and assume the types are split evenly by perpetrator sex, which is extremely unlikely), that's still 2 every 3 hours.

And again, this doesn't take into account how many of these incidents had more than one male perpetrator, how many women were victimized more than one time, and how many more assaults went unreported in the survey.

---

Check out my male violence tag for more statistics.

References under the cut:

France 24. (2015, April 16). France: Women face harassment in the metro and on public transport. https://www.france24.com/en/20150416-france-women-harassment-metro-transport-rights

FNAUT. (2016). Étude sur le harcèlement sexiste et les violences sexuelles faites aux femmes dans les transports publics. https://web.archive.org/web/20210319070100/https://www.centre-hubertine-auclert.fr/sites/default/files/fichiers/etude-fnaut-2016.pdf

Sweeney, J. (2023, January 23). Sexism in France is alarming and getting worse, says report. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/23/sexism-in-france-is-alarming-and-getting-worse-says-report

Prevalence of sexual assault in the military: Risk and protective factors, data sources, and data uses. (n.d.). https://www.rand.org/pubs/tools/TLA746-2/handbook/resources/data-on-sexual-assault-in-the-military.html

Breslin, R., Davis, L., Hylton, K., Hill, A., Klauberg, W., Petusky, M., ... & Office of People Analytics Alexandria United States. (2019). 2018 Workplace and Gender Relations of Active Duty Members: Overview Report.

[darkmaga-returns]

Newly-disclosed emails from former President Joe Biden’s Treasury Department show coordination between the administration and left-wing organizations on tax policy and messaging, raising concerns about the influence of special interest groups over the prior White House.

Public records from the Treasury Department were obtained by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which include documents that show email correspondence between Biden Treasury Department officials and employees of left-wing nonprofits. In the emails, the officials and nonprofits worked together on developing talking points and policy, showing a very close relationship where the latter had sway over the former.

File

2023-FOIA-00660.pdf

In December 2022, Victoria Esser, founder of Belle Haven Consulting, LLC, emailed Ellen Nissenbaum, who at the time was Senior Vice President for Government Affairs at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), regarding talking points for Jack Lew, former Treasury secretary for the Obama administration. CBPP was a contributor to shaping Obamacare.