#and bans them from making changes

[i-eat-mold]

I am eating your sketch refs of teen skk

they are yummy and very scrumptious

apologies they are GONE now but nom nom nom

NO MY CHILDREN

i had to draw this so quickly on my phone but you don’t understand i HAD to. so here’s a snack for you my guy

they sent this to mori

[leftoverbriocheloaf]

Ok long yap but I wanna write a camp halfblood au for bsd so bad askljalsdj bc hear me out yosano daughter of hades grows up in an orphanage (run by fukazawa, who acts as chiron in this au just like chiron works at percy's school trying to keep an eye on yosano) and ranpo grows up in the same orphanage, but ranpo is a mortal who can see through the mist. and like yk how sally was at risk for monster attacks bc of how much time she spent with percy despite being human? the same thing applies to ranpo. So when fukuzawa needs to take yosano to camp halfblood for her own safety he takes ranpo too, who just says he was "claimed" before they reached camp-halfblood to keep the "he doesn't have an ability but he acts like he does" vibes

Back at camp halfblood we've got Poe, son of athena who arrived at camp halfblood after his uncle decided he couldn't deal with the demigod stuff (his dad was already dead atp), and lucy who arrived a year before yosano and ranpo with louisa and is a daughter of Hephaestus who makes giant bronze battle statues like the ones across manhattan in the pjo series that look like Anne from Anne's room

Louisa is also a younger daughter of athena ofc

We've also got Dazai as a son of Dionysus with his laid-back but manipulative vibes and Chuuya son of ares (I don't wanna make them children of the big three bc I'd want Atsushi to have that) with Kouyou and Verlaine also children of Ares w him, and then Atsushi is a son of zeus and akutagawa and gin are children of hermes (so akutagawa feels inferior like a lot of the kids of hermes do in canon bc their abilities aren't really combat focused)

Kenji son of demeter, obviously, Kyouka hunter of artemis and tanizaki is a mentee of hecate (which was established by hazel as a thing in the 2nd series) with Naomi being a prophet like rachel?? Kunikida is an apollo kid who utilizes poetry and appreciates rising with the sun (hes a pretty unusual child of apollo which makes dazai try and get him to loosen up) and he's head of the cabin and takes very good care of the younger campers

But like??? It works??? ive been thinking about this au so much im obsessedddd if I wrote it it probably wouldn't be like pjo canon compliant just using the camp as an au but i think it would be so much fun aslkjalksdjka

[good-beanswrites]

I can't stop thinking of Kyanako's Order of Attack au... there's something so moving to me about how things getting so much worse could be what finally causes Amane to get better -- seeing Fuuta dying may be the final straw of getting her to rethink her rejection of medicine. Been a while since I've attempted something whump-y, this was fun to work with.

Tw for mentions/contemplation of death. I don't go into detail about the cult but the doctrines are implied through it all.

Fuuta was not a big fan of dying.

When he imagined his own death, he always pictured it as something dramatic and fast. Action heroes going out in a show of explosions and gunfire. Fantasy characters meeting the shining end of a blade. Even when he accepted his place in Milgram, it filled his mind with images of gallows and electric chairs. 

Whatever this slow, lengthy fever was, it was pissing him off. 

He’d lost all sense of time. He could no longer tell which hour the prison bells were marking -- morning and night blended together. Dreaming and waking blended together. His head injury and broken leg and broken bones blended together. It was all just pain at the end of the day. He had nonstop visitors that kept him awake and asked him too many questions and prodded his injuries and made his head spin. Somehow, he was simultaneously alone every time he rolled over to talk to someone. Painfully, suffocatingly alone. 

If Kotoko was going to kill him with those ridiculous emo boots of hers, she should have just done it. He was losing his mind here: devoid of all energy, suffering through broken bones and a cracked head, and boiling in an increasingly fiery fever. Maybe that was the reason he stopped commenting when he watched Amane pocket the medicine Shidou had left him. Maybe that was why he’d stopped following Shidou’s instructions himself. Even after losing an eye and taking a beating herself, Amane always looked at peace. He was tired of dealing with all of this. He wanted a bit of that peace.

Regardless of why, it was working. His fever had quickly gone from the biggest pain in his ass to the very thing that dulled his racing thoughts. 

He awoke suddenly, or maybe he’d already been awake. He couldn’t feel anything in his limbs. There was only a breathless heat around him. He raised himself into a sitting position, looking for a drink. Moving his head felt like one of those glitching computer windows that leaves a trail of copies behind it. The room swam around him. His eyes moved absently around him.

Fuuta picked up the glass that someone had left him. His fingers were clumsy, and it immediately went crashing to the ground. He hardly heard the noise as it broke apart on the concrete below. 

He swung his legs over the side of the bed. He’d just go get a drink himself. Shidou told him not to get up without help. But what did he know? Thinking of the man ordering him around only drove Fuuta to step out of bed even quicker. He cried out, pain shooting through his leg. That was right, it was broken… 

Fuuta looked down, finding himself on the ground. It was so hot. Maybe this is what she felt, he thought numbly. Was it this slow for her too? Probably not. She had no regrets to fill the time like he did. The heroes got quick, beautiful deaths, and it was the villains who had to suffer the long ones. 

He lifted his right palm from where it had caught his fall. The shattered glass on the floor had cut into it. Shattered glass? What had broken? He stared blankly at the blood dripping down. 

He didn’t have the strength to raise himself up. He was burning. Why was he on the ground? Was he bleeding? He could barely breathe. What was he doing here, anyway? He just wanted to curl up and sleep. He was so weak... just to lie down... he wouldn't have the strength to get back up again. Was that such a bad thing...?

A voice caught his attention. His eyes struggled to focus on the figure who’d come running into the cell. He couldn’t understand a word of what she was saying, but he was happy when she pressed her cool little hands against his forehead. 

He allowed her to prop him up next to the bed. She held onto his hand, squeezing it tight. Why was she holding it like that? That hand was bleeding. When did that happen?

Her arms wrapped tightly around him. He wanted to shove her away -- it was too hot -- but couldn’t. In his ear, he could make out her words. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please, Fuuta. Don’t leave me alone. I’m so sorry...”

As she pulled back, he recognized Amane. Her uninjured eye was filled with tears. Was she upset? He thought he’d been making her happy. He wanted to keep making her happy. He’d never made anyone happy before. 

He opened his mouth to say something, but no words would come out. They all scrambled up in his mouth. He felt the cell swirling around him.

Amane raised her voice. She looked desperately upwards. “This can’t be --! This isn’t right!” 

Fuuta looked up at the ceiling. There was nothing there. 

“I can’t do this anymore.”

She continued talking. Fuuta was too busy studying the ceiling. She was shouting. Or maybe crying. Fuuta didn’t like that she was so upset. Huh, had there been someone there? He surveyed the empty cell. What was he doing on the ground?

He looked down at his hand. The sheet from his bed had been pulled down and wrapped hastily around it. Why? His eyes felt sticky as he blinked. Everything hurt. It was so hot. What was going on? He was so angry. He was so scared. He wanted to cry. Why was he here? Why couldn’t he just hurry up and die already?

The next time she entered, Fuuta recognized Amane instantly. Her one hand pointed to him, the other held onto someone else. The second figure hurried over to him. 

Fuuta was not a big fan of dying. Shidou reassured him he wouldn’t.

—

“You’re wearing the eyepatch,” Fuuta observed. 

He was playing a dangerous game, drawing attention to it like that. He was too exhausted, and his curiosity won out over his better judgment. If Amane was going to explode with one of her typical speeches, he’d just let her.

She didn’t. 

Amane’s hand drifted up to her eye. It had been hastily covered before, but now it was cleaned and wrapped in professional-grade materials. She simply said,  “Kajiyama Fuuta. How do you feel?”

“Like shit.”

“But--”

“-- But I’m better, yeah.”

Amane nodded, her shoulders releasing. 

“Oi, I haven’t seen you in a while. Not since…” He wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence. Shidou had told him what happened, but it was difficult to believe. He couldn’t quite trust his own memory of the night. No matter how much clearer his mind felt since receiving proper treatment, those days of fever still muddled together. He heard that Amane had up and switched her beliefs overnight -- she was now complacent about all of Shidou's treatments -- but Fuuta knew people didn't just change like that. He wanted to hear it for himself.

She lowered her gaze in shame. “I… I thought you hated me.” Her voice was steady. “As you should. I almost killed you. I accept any ill will you may feel.”

“I -- what? You’re wrong. You… it wasn’t…” He grabbed his head, grunting in frustration.

After standing awkwardly in the entryway the whole time, Amane took a few steps inside. She made it to his bedside when he finally collected his thoughts. 

“It was your fucked up family or whatever that caused everything. They did this. And I went along and made things worse.” He looked away. His next words felt stupid to say to a little kid. He felt like the most pathetic, weak, loser. But it was too important not to say.

“They almost killed me. You saved me.”

[102ki]

hime having had long nails is insane. why would you even try and game with long nails as a keyboard gamer

[orcelito]

Reading up on the people on my election ballot and there's some combination of "can ANYONE tell me what their policies actually are???" (Specifically with the smaller offices) VS "Oh, so YOU'RE the reason why Indiana has an abortion ban! Duly noted!"

[s-cullayy]

Shrimp is so revolting to me as a food that it feels like Truman Show-esque gaslighting anytime I see someone eating it. I know you’re lying. You’re all lying

[quantummindclassicalheart]

Under the https://www.tumblr.com/support link, they have a category for Feedback. It would be a real shame for staff if they suddenly had a lot of new Feedback support tickets from users expressing solidarity with trans bloggers.

Please also remember that the folks running the support ticket system might not be the same ones handing out bans or reviewing them. Short messages emphasizing your solidarity with trans users, stating how it will affect their bottom line (i.e. not buying badges or Ad-Free or blazing until something changes), and calling for accountability for biased mods and moderation decisions will go a lot farther than a vague angry message yelling at staff.

This is not to say don't be angry-- just that directing that anger into specific asks and consequences will have a better impact.

Anyway for those of you not enmeshed with tumblr’s transgender mycelial network, or otherwise on its periphery, basically every damn day of pride month another couple trans bloggers have gotten wiped, regardless of blog content, following, blog age, anything, and it shows no sign of slowing. In general it seems to be hitting transfems more liberally, but transmasc and nonbinary friends of mine have also been wiped for their steadfast solidarity or Just Cause. There’s also been an uptick in posts being almost immediately marked mature by community tags for no discernible reason beyond “Posting While Trans”. This is a time to stick together like goddamn epoxy resin. Vocally defend and support each other. Block and ignore any wretched cunt spreading callouts or stirring up shit. Make sure you have a way to talk to your friends beyond this site. Don’t buy badges, don’t blaze, cold shoulder the fuck out of mod blogs, and give voice to your discontent.

Bite the hand🖤

[vaspider]

Listen to me. Listen very carefully:

They are trying to wear you out.

They are trying to wear you out, and they own most major social media now, along with many major media outlets. The disinformation machine is cranking along. You are going to have to slow the fuck down and read things before you help them wear out other people, too.

So you just saw a post about a real scary bill, hunh? Republicans want to make it a capital offense to pet dogs and repeal The Sky Is Blue Act of 1793, declaring the new official color of the sky to be squant? Damn, that sounds scary.

Let's go look up this fictitious "Make The Sky Squant Again Act" on GovTracker* & on the official legislative tracker on congress.gov!

Well, let's see... GovTracker estimates it has a 1% chance of even getting out of committee and a 0% chance of being enacted, while congress.gov says this bill has 2 cosponsors who have been in the House and combined total of less than a month. The bill doesn't have any actual text, and it was referred to 5 different committees.

That fictitious bill and a hundred others like it are quite literally not worth your time, and more than that, continuing to wring your hands about it and tell other people about the scary scary squant sky bill only does their work for them. It scares people, it makes them spend time and energy on it, and it wears them out. It is a legislative Gish Gallop, meant to throw so many things at people that we can't keep up.

Even calling or messaging your Rep in this case means their staffer has to waste time responding to you and letting you know that Representative Buttzonheads definitely won't support making petting dogs a capital offense, a thing that will never, ever happen regardless.

Staying engaged in this environment is going to require protecting your heart and protecting your energy, yes, but also protecting the energy of others. This is why WWII propaganda posters also included ones taking people to task for spreading panicky rumors and undermining morale.

Do you know why most observant Jews don't eat chicken and dairy together, even though the ban is on red meat and dairy together bc you're not supposed to cook the calf in the milk of its mother?** It's not because we think that chicken might secretly lactate or Just Because. It's because the rabbis decided that if I'm sitting out in public and eating turkey and cheese together, someone might glance at the turkey and mistake it for red meat and think, "oh, well, I know that Spider is a good Jew, there must have been a change, or maybe I can just justify it to myself that if Spider does it, it must be permissible to bend the rules just that much." And I would then be accidentally leading my fellow Jew astray. We are responsible for being even more careful for the sake of others than we are for ourselves.

It's the same principle here. We need to really be careful about the information we are spreading and check things past reading a news site. Is it true? Is it relevant? Is it meaningful? Is the news site one I recognize? Can I find meaningful independent corroboration on another site, which is to say, if I find an article about it on a second site, is it just quoting or rephrasing this site?

Yeah, that is a lot. But that's how we keep them from using us to lead our fellows astray.

*GovTracker is an independent site. They explain their methodology in their About section.

**I cannot say enough how I am not at this time interested in going on a Jewish Side Quest About Dietary Laws on this post. Usually, I love it, but hold off this time, please, y'all. Let's stay on target this once.

[kagiura-akira]

Meryn

Name Origin: Latin

Meaning: Of The Sea

She's gone through a lot so let's let the girl cry 😅

Picrew I used: https://picrew.me/share?cd=jkzhc5iRof

[artielu]

Ok, so. The Trump budget. It has already passed the House and now just needs 51 senators to pass it and send it to Trump for signature.

There are 53 Republican senators, 45 Democratic ones, and 2 Independents that vote with the Democrats. VP Vance is a tiebreaker vote.

So to block the bill, at least four Republican senators need to find their spines and the Democrats and Independents all need to keep their spines. This will not happen without direct action from voters.

They are only going to resist this bill if they hear from voters in their states. They do not care if some person from California calls them.

It's really fucking bad for everyone except the ultra-wealthy, surprise surprise.

I'm going to go through some of the features of this budget in reblogs, but trust and believe that it's horrible for the vast, vast majority of Americans, including you.

Highlights include:

Extends the Trump tax cuts passed in 2017. This continues $3.7 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy. If this budget does not pass, these tax cuts will expire and go back up without any action.

$150 billion in additional military spending

Work requirements for Medicaid. "childless adults without disabilities would be required to work 80 hours per month to qualify for benefits.". They expect millions of people to fail to meet work requirements and lose Medicaid.

Planned Parenthood and trans care. "Bans Medicaid from providing funding to Planned Parenthood as long as the organization continued to provide abortions, and would bar Medicaid from covering gender affirming health care to any beneficiaries. "

Reduces SNAP food stamp access that 40 million people use. "mandates work requirements for able-bodied SNAP enrollees who don't have dependents.".

Clean energy "dramatically scaling back many of the tax credits for clean energy."

Border walls and ICE. "$46.5 billion toward completing Trump's border wall. It also allots $5 billion for Customs and Border Protection facilities and more than $6 billion to hire and retain more agents and officers"

Student loans. "cut $330 billion from the student loan system by scrapping several existing repayment options, including the Biden-era SAVE program that based payments on income and household size.". Does anyone want to have student loan payments that you cannot afford?

Guts Obamacare. "Saves $100 billion, but will result in millions of Americans becoming uninsured if they fail to adhere to new paperwork requirements or can no longer afford insurance premiums."

Weakens federal courts that keep using orders that his actions are illegal and unconstitutional. It prohibits courts from enforcing contempt citations for violations of injunctions or temporary restraining orders unless the plaintiff pays a bond. Bonds can be EXTRAORDINARILY EXPENSIVE and are not currently required in these cases. The provision "would make most existing injunctions—in antitrust cases, police reform cases, school desegregation cases, and others—unenforceable," says the god of constitutional law, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

So, you folks in red states and you folks in wobbly blue states (PA, NC, etc), you need to call your senators and save us all.

Call every day. Call after hours so you can leave a voicemail and not talk to anyone.

For real y'all, millions of people are going to starve, go broke, and be without medical care if this bill passes. Which is a feature, not a bug, of the Trump administration.

And it will balloon the national debt to pay for these tax cuts for the wealthy.

[goldentigerfestival]

Now listen, listen, I know I'm a bias fuck, but if they ever remaster/remake Destiny DC, I need them to start treating Leon and Stahn like Milla and Jude. Leon has a fully playable route following the story from his perspective just like Milla! It's not like Rebirth where we have a "Claire side" but she's not playable and we only see what she's doing while she's away from our party! It's fully playable! He is the main character of his route!

I know! I know! I'm a bias fuck who would sell out many human souls for Leon! But listen!!! He deserves his place as a joint main character! The Tales team already started to acknowledge it when they remade Destiny into Destiny DC and gave Leon his own entire route! Plus, since he's so popular he got booted to the Hall of Fame with Yuri, it's easy money! It's new merch and more money!

I keep thinking about it because of the anniversary illustrations for the games, and they showed each mc/game separately, but Milla and Jude were together on theirs. That's how it should be for Leon! I get that he wasn't originally a main character with his own route, but when Tales gets a remake, the most recent remake is the new "canon" (such as for mobage/crossover games, events, side material, etc). That means Destiny with Leon having a full playable route is the current canon!

I'm pounding my lil fists on my desk, Tales team. Do it. You gotta do it. Do it for him. Do it for Leon Magnus. Make him a main character. In the Tales of Crestoria Twitter Space that the game's writer had, he admitted Vicious was a double heroine with Misella to Kanata's main character! Things are happening! Moving! Tales team! It's time! Accept the popularity you caused by creating Leon! Give him his own route! He was treated almost like a joint main character with Stahn in Rays' first arc, when they had their introduction arc and Leon was the "main" pull for the chapter's story/plot! Crestoria literally turned Stahn into a Swordian and made Leon the face of Destiny for Destiny's part in Crestoria! TALES TEAM! IT IS TIME!

featured in this post: me finding every reason they should make leon a joint main character and not a side main character, bc i am thoroughly convinced he's reached that status and for some weird technical reasons has not been counted as one.

im on my knees, tales team. do it for him. and bamco's wallet. they'll like you for it.

[eeyes]

idk if this is relevant but my blog got suspended for no reason back in 2018 (tumblr purge, nsfw ban was just implemented, really shitty bot bans handed out everywhere, i dont even post nsfw) and tumblr literally didnt bring back my original blog til a full year later and i would send tumblr support tickets every day and tumblr never had a human respond to me

until i sent this image. attached to my suport ticket

and my sister's gf's tumblr blog got nuked too adn couldnt get it back so i told her "did you try sending miley cyrus psychic stare image" and it literally got her blog back too so. I dont know. Maybe theres something to it.

What always gets me the most is like staff doesn’t seem to ever give a warning like. Hey this thing you’re doing or this content you’re posting is worthy of termination. Stop doing that and delete those posts or we’ll terminate your blog. They just decide when someone deserves to get erased from the internet and immediately do so

[makingqueerhistory]

Okay, so I try hard to cover global queer history, and this isn't marking a stop to that, but I am aware that most of my audience is American, and I want to address them very directly right now.

Google Removed Pride Month From Its Calendar App, and Stonewall National Monument's "LGBTQ" status was changed to "LGB" on the government website. This is the beginning of the erasure of queer history, not the end. I don't know what the future of the United States looks like, as someone who studies queer history and has done so for many years, I want to share some tools with you.

Now is a good time to prioritize local queer history, Making Gay History is a great project, so is the Digital Transgender Archive, but also check your city and see what resources there are.

Read and buy books about queer history. I have an affiliate list with some of the books I personally recommend.

If you use Google Calendar, repopulate that resource with so much queer history with a free queer history calendar plug-in, it has names from queer history that you can also learn more about for free when they come up. As the author of these articles, feel free to save them, print them off, whatever makes them freely accessible as suppression get's worse.

Use your local library. Email the board about book bans, request banned books, request queer books, and make your voice heard.

Make queer art. Share queer art. Protect queer art. Here is some public-domain queer art to use as you wish.

Keep up with queer news, THEM is a great resource.

All of these tools are currently freely accessible with an internet connection. Queer history is a community responsibility, do your part.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”

20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired. I'd publicly noted my disappointment with glowing Wired reviews of DRM-encumbered digital devices, prompting Anderson to call me unrealistic for expecting the magazine to condemn gadgets for their DRM:

https://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2004/12/is_drm_evil.html

I replied in public, telling him that he'd misunderstood. This wasn't an issue of ideological purity – it was about good reviewing practice. Wired was telling readers to buy a product because it had features x, y and z, but at any time in the future, without warning, without recourse, the vendor could switch off any of those features:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/12/29/cory-responds-to-wired-editor-on-drm/

I proposed that all Wired endorsements for DRM-encumbered products should come with this disclaimer:

WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.

Wired didn't take me up on this suggestion.

But I was right. The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations. Inkjet printers were always a sleazy business, but once these printers got directly connected to the internet, companies like HP started pushing out "security updates" that modified your printer to make it reject the third-party ink you'd paid for:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Now, this scam wouldn't work if you could just put things back the way they were before the "update," which is where the DRM comes in. A thicket of IP laws make reverse-engineering DRM-encumbered products into a felony. Combine always-on network access with indiscriminate criminalization of user modification, and the enshittification will follow, as surely as night follows day.

This is the root of all the right to repair shenanigans. Sure, companies withhold access to diagnostic codes and parts, but codes can be extracted and parts can be cloned. The real teeth in blocking repair comes from the law, not the tech. The company that makes McDonald's wildly unreliable McFlurry machines makes a fortune charging franchisees to fix these eternally broken appliances. When a third party threatened this racket by reverse-engineering the DRM that blocked independent repair, they got buried in legal threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Everybody loves this racket. In Poland, a team of security researchers at the OhMyHack conference just presented their teardown of the anti-repair features in NEWAG Impuls locomotives. NEWAG boobytrapped their trains to try and detect if they've been independently serviced, and to respond to any unauthorized repairs by bricking themselves:

https://mamot.fr/@q3k@hackerspace.pl/111528162905209453

Poland is part of the EU, meaning that they are required to uphold the provisions of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive, including Article 6, which bans this kind of reverse-engineering. The researchers are planning to present their work again at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg this month – Germany is also a party to the EUCD. The threat to researchers from presenting this work is real – but so is the threat to conferences that host them:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/researchers-face-legal-threats-over-sdmi-hack/

20 years ago, Chris Anderson told me that it was unrealistic to expect tech companies to refuse demands for DRM from the entertainment companies whose media they hoped to play. My argument – then and now – was that any tech company that sells you a gadget that can have its features revoked is defrauding you. You're paying for x, y and z – and if they are contractually required to remove x and y on demand, they are selling you something that you can't rely on, without making that clear to you.

But it's worse than that. When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by Act III. Selling a product that can be remotely, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that there are no penalties for doing so makes it impossible for the better people in that meeting to win the ensuing argument, leading to the moral injury of seeing a product you care about reduced to a pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

But even if everyone at that table is a swell egg who wouldn't dream of enshittifying the product, the existence of a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature makes the product vulnerable to external actors who will demand that it be used. Back in 2022, Adobe informed its customers that it had lost its deal to include Pantone colors in Photoshop, Illustrator and other "software as a service" packages. As a result, users would now have to start paying a monthly fee to see their own, completed images. Fail to pay the fee and all the Pantone-coded pixels in your artwork would just show up as black:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

Adobe blamed this on Pantone, and there was lots of speculation about what had happened. Had Pantone jacked up its price to Adobe, so Adobe passed the price on to its users in the hopes of embarrassing Pantone? Who knows? Who can know? That's the point: you invested in Photoshop, you spent money and time creating images with it, but you have no way to know whether or how you'll be able to access those images in the future. Those terms can change at any time, and if you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.

These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." Adobe chose to design its software so it would be vulnerable to this kind of demand, and then its customers paid for that choice. Sure, Pantone are dicks, but this is Adobe's fault. They stuck a KICK ME sign to your back, and Pantone obliged.

This keeps happening and it's gonna keep happening. Last week, Playstation owners who'd bought (or "bought") Warner TV shows got messages telling them that Warner had walked away from its deal to sell videos through the Playstation store, and so all the videos they'd paid for were going to be deleted forever. They wouldn't even get refunds (to be clear, refunds would also be bullshit – when I was a bookseller, I didn't get to break into your house and steal the books I'd sold you, not even if I left some cash on your kitchen table).

Sure, Warner is an unbelievably shitty company run by the single most guillotineable executive in all of Southern California, the loathsome David Zaslav, who oversaw the merger of Warner with Discovery. Zaslav is the creep who figured out that he could make more money cancelling completed movies and TV shows and taking a tax writeoff than he stood to make by releasing them:

https://aftermath.site/there-is-no-piracy-without-ownership

Imagine putting years of your life into making a program – showing up on set at 5AM and leaving your kids to get their own breakfast, performing stunts that could maim or kill you, working 16-hour days during the acute phase of the covid pandemic and driving home in the night, only to have this absolute turd of a man delete the program before anyone could see it, forever, to get a minor tax advantage. Talk about moral injury!

But without Sony's complicity in designing a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature into the Playstation, Zaslav's war on art and creative workers would be limited to material that hadn't been released yet. Thanks to Sony's awful choices, David Zaslav can break into your house, steal your movies – and he doesn't even have to leave a twenty on your kitchen table.

The point here – the point I made 20 years ago to Chris Anderson – is that this is the foreseeable, inevitable result of designing devices for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades. Anyone who was paying attention should have figured that out in the GW Bush administration. Anyone who does this today? Absolute flaming garbage.

Sure, Zaslav deserves to be staked out over an anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup. But save the next anthill for the Sony exec who shipped a product that would let Zaslav come into your home and rob you. That piece of shit knew what they were doing and they did it anyway. Fuck them. Sideways. With a brick.

Meanwhile, the studios keep making the case for stealing movies rather than paying for them. As Tyler James Hill wrote: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing":

https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kflw2lvam42n

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/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

Image: Alan Levine (modified) https://pxhere.com/en/photo/218986

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[miiyumei]

i need someone to childproof lock my multi-chapter or something to force me to actually finish the next chapter instead of obsessively editing what’s been published for months !!!!

[stil-lindigo]

In Gaza, journalists are passing out from exhaustion and famine. Despite the ICJ ruling, the US and Australia are intentionally defunding UNWRA based on baseless claims by Israel that members of the aid group are Hamas-sympathizers. Netanyahu, of course, has ignored the ICJ ruling. Israel has banned insulin pens from arriving in Gaza, a particularly cruel and inhumane crime to add to their laundry list of offences. Nothing has changed, and things are getting worse.

It is not that hard to not buy things. To not watch things. Perhaps it is inconvenient, and makes you go out of your way, and costs a little more to buy alternatives. But if you were to attend a funeral a day for every child that has died in Gaza so far, it would take you over 27 years. When the worst that will happen to you is that you don't watch a TV show featuring a zionist, you don't buy a specific brand that donates to and supports zionism, how could that possibly compare to the plight of Palestinians who must amputate limbs without anesthesia?

Once again, this is the BDS list of brands to boycott.

Here is a comprehensive post about more actions you can take in support of Palestine.

Here is a list of verifiable orgs that provide aid on the ground.

credible organisations that are doing work on the ground in Palestine:

Care for Gaza:non-profit charity that distributes money, food and other resources directly to families in Gaza.They maintain a regular presence on Twitter and Instagram. You can donate to them via Paypal here.

PCRF / Palestine Children's Relief Fund: non-profit organisation that distributes essential food and resources to families in Gaza. Most recently, they delivered 30 tons of vital medicine, and 82,000 pounds of flour.

Medical Aid For Palestinians: deploys medical teams to treat Palestinians suffering under Israel's malicious bombardments.

Donate e-sims to Palestine: massive post with tutorials and relevant links, with discount codes included in the post and in the replies.

Direct Aid: humanitarian fund distributing supplies such as blankets and winter jackets directly to Palestinian families.

help people leave palestine (donate what you can)

Help a Family Evacuate Gaza (GoGetFunding)

Save Sanaa and her Family (Gofundme)

Save Amjad Saher and his family (Gofundme)

Help a family of 13 escape Gaza (Gofundme)

Help a Palestinian children's book illustrator save her family of 12 (Gofundme)

Today, tomorrow and until Israel faces justice for their crimes, learn how to prioritise Palestine over your own comfort.