#file under: memes: fidel

[knotfodder]

name: Fidel Herrera nicknames: Fido, Fi, pup (by some) dob. age: August 13, 1998 (25) gender: Male pronouns: (he/him/his) secondary gender: Alpha occupation: escort species: werewolf fc: Michael Cimino

+clever, tenacious, hard working+ -jealousy-prone, isolated, selfish-

[nothoughtsgarf]

Regarding Garfield.Fandom.com and the Future of NoThoughtsGarf

This is an issue that I have been semi-aware of for some time now, and i figured I should face it head on by asking what you all think.

Should I switch sourcing from GoComics.com/Garfield to Garfield.Fandom.com? This would increase the comic quality, but may decrease the 'ease of access' to the original comic

Explanation + My Thoughts under the Read More

I've had this on my mind since August 2023, but it's really come to a point... at this point. I've come across a few issues while editing these comics, which I've been very vocal about in many of the 'read more' sections. How the lattice backgrounds are so annoying, and clouds/bushes are my greatest enemies >:( , and most importantly, how low resolution some of the 'meme' comic panels ("Garfield in a padded cell" and "Garfield thrown through a window") are on GoComic.

In the past, it was only when there was a misprint in GoComic that I would try Fandom because I find the website irritating to navigate and cumbersome to link to. No shade intended to the wonderful people of Garfield.Fandom, but it just feels awkward to link to the pages since the comics are grouped by month. So any curious Garfers would need to scroll past ads and other stuff to find a date's comic, or I have to link the image directly, hoping it doesn't break or change over time.

Since GoComic has each comic on a standalone page, I can link the page and know that the comic will be right there on the screen. You can go to the next comic by pressing the next button, go to a specific comic with the date selector (useful for sunday comics), or change the url to find a certain date very easily

Fandom: https://garfield.fandom.com/wiki/Garfield,_May_1981_comic_strips?file=1981-05-18.gif

GoComic: https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/1981/05/18

gocomics.com/garfield/<YEAR>/<MONTH>/<DAY>

Linking aside, the real crux of the issue is that many of the earlier comics (especially pre-2000s) are simply more vibrant, colorful, and high-res on Garfield.Fandom

Most strikingly is that some of the comics where I'm having a Bad Time™ due to mushy patterns or gristly gradients are actually less of a problem.

A (possible) downside to better fidelity is that mistakes may end up being more apparent (which may mean more community participation ?). but for the later comics (2010-present) there's not that much of a difference between the websites.

And most selfish of all, I already have my macros set for GoComic, so that I can pull up the page, press f9, and then the image, the date, and the links are all pulled faster and more consistently than copying and typing by hand (my keyboard has a tendency to double up or miss some letters, my fingers have a tendency to misspell words and smear letters). So I just don't want to redo it again.

Thanks for reading all this, and for enjoying the comics so far. It's been very fulfilling to do this. The queue is still locked and loaded to continue with the comics I've already edited, but I figured that this was important enough to bump into the queue so we can feel out how this should all continue :)

[volcanokids]

Hey idk who needs to hear this but the shit going on with Robinhood and Gamestop right now should make you really fucking angry and I’ll tell you why

If you’re not up to speed on the situation, here’s some good posts explaining it. The gist is that using completely legal means, a bunch of individual retail investors (fancy words for normal ass people who, like the rest of us, have very little money) who invest on online brokerage apps (like Robinhood) bought stock in Gamestop after hedge funds worked hard to manipulate the market for their own gains. These average people interrupted the plans of these much larger hedge funds to essentially drive Gamestop’s stock price into the ground by buying all of the stock these companies had and holding onto it, which has now costed these hedge funds BILLIONS of dollars, and for once has disrupted their long standing practice of market manipulation to fuck people over and maintain the wealth of the 1%.

Otherwise average people with accounts on Robinhood, Fidelity, Webull, etc., have now taken and held a ridiculously huge amount of control over GME stock and the rich corporations invested into it and caused it’s growth to absolutely explode. I’ve seen COUNTLESS stories in which many of them turned hundreds of dollars into thousands, made enough much needed money to pay off debts, medical bills, or just to put into savings that they wouldn’t have gotten under other circumstances. They accumulated small fortunes and gave power back to the people, and best of all took that money directly out of the hands of greedy and corrupt billion dollar hedge funds.

But of course, there had to be backlash for this.

Last night (1/27), Robinhood took away its investors’ ability to buy any more stock in Gamestop than they already owned, and today has made its user base fully unable to trade Gamestop stock AT ALL unless it is to sell their already owned shares, like literally fully took away the button that lets you purchase GME stock, period. Straight up preventing trade like this to any degree in the free market, much less to favor billion dollar corporations, is incredibly blatant market manipulation which is very illegal, hence the class-action lawsuit that has already been filed against Robinhood. Hedge funds have lost literally BILLIONS of dollars to normal people trading stock legally, and Robinhood halting trade and making selling the ONLY option for Gamestop, AMC, and similar companies is their attempt at helping the hedge funds gain back their fortune after they failed to manipulate the market in their favor, and fucking over the average people who are invested on their platform in the process. 

Retail investors—regular people—when this happened, lost THEIR ability to buy, and therefore continue taking back the wealth held by the hedge funds, but this restriction on Robinhood has NO effect on hedge funds, who have now been able to buy and sell all day today (1/28) freely. They used the opportunity to drive the price of Gamestop down again, essentially trying to bail themselves out after they manipulated the market and fucked themselves over in the first place. So, Robinhood, several other trading brokers, CNBC, and any other large corporation who has pissed on Reddit for “manipulating the market” have also now revealed their alignment with these companies, who are the reason the wealth in America is as disparaged as it is. They’re complaining, shifting the blame, even making up straight up lies about retail investors being involved in the alt-right to defame the people who have beat them at their shitty game.  

People on Reddit saw the manipulation, played the game fairly, and hedge funds are STILL trying to fuck them over for daring to touch the fortunes that they have gained by their shady as hell practices and fucked up the economy by hoarding. Reddit saw an opportunity to actually literally redistribute wealth, and these companies are trying to put us all in our place and keep that from happening by extremely corrupt means.

Market manipulation has been going on for a very long time with very little pushback from the people who actually take the blow when the market tanks—i.e. lower to middle class people who can’t afford bailouts and end up broke and out of jobs when the market crashes. The crash of ‘08 was caused by big brokers doing illegal shit and fucking around with people’s money with absolutely no personal repercussions. No lawsuits (or at least no lawsuits that did fuck all about it) no jail time for anyone responsible, nothing. Not only has this Gamestop movement taken back some of the wealth, we are beginning to finally hold these companies accountable. Again, as of right now, a class-action lawsuit has been filed against Robinhood for their blatant market manipulation, and hedge funds invested in GME have lost over 5 billion dollars.

We always talk about eat the rich, fuck the 1%, redistribute the wealth. I know the stock market is confusing—it’s made that way on purpose—and I understand anyone’s personal reluctance to participate in the stock market directly because of the hatred for it’s capitalistic nature and everything it’s done wrong and every way it’s failed so many people. But, if you want to actually be a part of a movement that is literally taking billionaire’s wealth and redistributing it right now, show support on social media for the people putting in time and money to make this happen.

I am not qualified at all to give financial advice, and I can’t in good faith tell anyone to buy stocks, ESPECIALLY knowing many, many people do not have the disposable income to be able to do so. Do not spend money you don’t have. But the media is going to and has been altering the narrative, making the small investors look like they’re being corrupt. Do not believe them. They’re often paid out or owned by these big corporations in the first place, they do not give a shit about any of us, about ruining our lives, about taking everything we’re worth. They’ve done it forever. But the HUGE number of people buying GME, supporting, and cooperating with each other with the solitary goal of fucking over these hedge funds, fighting them and beating them at their own game is scaring the absolute shit out of them. It’s becoming a movement that’s being compared to another occupy wall street. It’s showing people they have the power to instigate change and could legitimately lead to an entire restructuring of the system if we play our cards right. Of course changing one capitalist system into another capitalist system is not ideal nor is it the goal, but this whole thing has very quickly become a movement backed by A LOT of people who have knowledge about the system, have seen it work and seen it get corrupted in real time, acknowledged exactly where it fucks us all over, and are beginning to break it down by exposing a huge and obvious instance of corruption at the hands of billionaires.

If you can do nothing else, educate yourself about all the fuck shit these companies are doing, rally support on whatever social media you use, keep posting diamond-hands-we-like-the-stock-gme-to-the-moon-memes, put pressure on the brokerage apps like Robinhood who are manipulating the market and let them know there will be hell to pay. Robinhood is sitting at a well deserved one star review on the google play store for their shitty actions and has gotten burned over and over on twitter, lots of investors are planning a mass exodus and closing their Robinhood accounts when all this shit is over, as WELL as the lawsuit, and all of it has garnered the attention of some very influential figures who now have our backs. All of the repercussions they’re facing is the direct result of our outrage and backlash. Be outraged with us and let’s make real fucking change.

GME to the fucking moon everyone 🚀

[page-of-tales]

HFY Story: Faith in Humanity

Listen, I’ve accidentally deleted this thing twice now. First by not saving manually, and then by overwriting the file accidentally. I’m hoping this counts as my third draft and so I’ve edited it less thoroughly than usual.

Word count: 2040

---

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Bureau of Alien Contact is a large Ergotoid government agency tasked with protecting the Ergotoid people from the influence of alien cultures. Each new alien species encountered resulted in a new department and new challenges for this agency. Sometimes the threats would be active, such as the subtle hypnosis imagery utilized in the entertainment distributed by the Boral aliens. Or the false claims by the Knorr in their advertisements for Ergotoid miracle “cures.” Other times the threats would be from within, and prove to be far more challenging. Inevitably after contact with a new alien race was made, a cult of personality would form. Admiring if not outright worshipping an alien race, idealizing them to godhood status. These cults would have to be crushed physically and ideologically as they posed a risk to national security.

Senior Agent Barann was well versed in dismantling these deviant worships. Having organized the misinformation campaign to break the illusion presented by the Pladis and their “utopian” society. As well as heading the military campaign to “kill” an Immortal, shattering the supernatural allure the mysterious figures held over the Ergotoid citizens. He had been commended for his effective solutions. Promoted to head his own department for a new alien species. Set for life it seemed. However now his position was now in contention.

Barann had not expected the subject of his department, humans, to generate much attention. They were at a glance an uninteresting species. The usual freakish alien appearance with no close match to any Ergotoid mythical imagery. No supernatural abilities or “magic” technology. Territory far enough away to limit physical influence to just their diplomats. Early assessments had graded humanity a low priority for the BAC, Bureau of Alien Contact. Whoever had made those assessments should have been fired. It had recently come to light that a human sourced series of viral videos was being passed around on the net. Like most such viral instances the videos were not distributed by any accountable source, but continually shared and transmitted by individuals.

Any alien product that reached that level of appeal was immediately appraised for threat analysis. Prior instances of the human cultural artifact known as memes had been brought up before and consequently been dismissed as non threats. These videos were different, despite having no obvious call to action, it was spurring sentiment in favor of the humans across Ergotoid space. Barann had viewed the first video in question several hundred times by now. Despite his seniority status he found that examining the materials under examination to be far more useful than second hand reporting.

The video was formatted as an amateur edit of various clips. With an opening text disclaimer asserting the imagery was not for juveniles.

The first clip has footage drawn from a camera outside the hull of a ship. Text in the corner notes the time and place. The ship is labelled as the Vivian. Barann had heard of this incident, rewriting it to feature Ergotoids had been one of his tasks before his promotion. The Vivian had been a colony vessel, some 10,000 individuals aboard belonging to the Kellarian Constituency. While on route to a potential colony site the Vivian had become crippled by a microstorm in a remote system. The punctured hull and spinning fragments could be seen as the camera panned slowly about. No engines, no shields, just waiting in space for the microstorm to rotate around the star and finish them off. The quietness of the video is unsettling. The camera’s slow movements almost seeming regretful of the loss about to happen.

Then a blink of light in the distance, distinct from the flashing metal and debris. The camera pans over and zooms in search. In the distance a large freighter can be seen moving in slowly. The human freighter, the Pale Air. The silence of the footage is supplemented by a tense music cue as the freighter moves in slowly. Stopping just beyond the edge of the microstorm.

Whatever discussion was taking place ended. The Pale Air’s engines flicker to life and the Pale Air closes in on the crippled vessel. The Pale Air’s shields flash as microstorm debris disintegrates on impact, sections begin to fizzle under the continued bombardment. As the freighter continues to approach it becomes apparent the humans are moving too fast to safely dock. A minute later something large impacts beside the camera. As the camera stops shaking the image resolves to show the Pale Air impacted against the Vivian’s hull. It’s engine roar to life. The vibrations from the engines transmitting to the Vivian and rattling the camera. Text scrolls past the screen as the camera slowly loses fidelity. The Pale Air had slowly pushed the wounded colony ship out of danger away from the microstorm, saving the lives of thousands of Kellarians. The screen fades to black as the music plays into the background.     

The second clip starts with news footage. As footage of a bustling multi-species hub is shown the news ticker describes what is happening. A disease called the Jinkor plague, is ravaging some alien system. Somehow human blood is being used as treatment. The camera moves to an alien reporter who begins to speak, behind them are rows of humans sitting in chairs. Red liquid being drawn from their arms.   

The video cuts to a vertical aspect ratio. A human pointing the camera at themselves. It opens it’s mouth to show teeth, in a predatory manner. It shouts in an alien tongue over a noisy background, “Doing my part, hashtag Give Blood.” and points the camera at it’s arm. Inserted into its arm is a needle drawing blood into a machine. The human raises the camera to show the people sitting behind them who wave a hand at the camera, “These people are also doing their part!” The camera spins around to show the rows of humans giving blood before the video cuts again.

This time it’s a newsreel montage. Footage of red liquid being injected into aliens. Long lines of the same aliens. Crowds cheering, more blood donations. The a blank page with statistics scrolling upwards. Number of donations, quantity of blood, lives saved. The montage ends with a picture of a juvenile alien hugging the leg of a human before fading to black.

The image pans from a cloudy yellow sky to a tree. On the upper branches a purple creature can be seen. Its cries faintly caught by the recorder. The viewer pans down to an alien in distress. Pointing and calling for someone to help its pet. From out of frame a human steps forward. Grasping a lower branch it examines the tree. Then the human pulls themselves up. With surprising agility the human climbs the tree until it is just below the purple creature. An arm stretches out, fingers stretching to reach the creature which shys away. The human jumps, shaking the tree. The human jumps again, and a branch snaps.

The recorder swings wildly, blurred frames of the human falling through the branches. There is a scream, and then the recorder rushes over to the human laying on the ground. The human uncurls an arm and the purple pet springs from its grasp and runs to its owner. The human then slowly rises to its feet. The recording stops as the human hobbles away.

An audio waveform bounces on the screen as an alien voice speaks.

“Distress, distress, this is Hilti Mining Station JV-33, we’ve had a mass casualty explosion event. We require immediate evacuation. Repeat, we have had an explosion. Fires uncontained. We require evacuation. Distress, distress…”

Colors splash onto the screen, a light blinds the camera, then the camera faces at cold metal plating. The angle moving awkwardly before settling into place. “Helmet cams online.” The camera turns, a human in full hard suit makes a hand gesture at the camera. More human voices crackle through a radio.

“The Hilti are cut off from their hangars and escape pods. Fire remains out of control and fuel is leaking into the vicinity. Check your fire suppression tanks.”

The camera moves as the human looks around the small room. A small group of humans wearing hard suits surround them. Various tools and devices at hand.

“30 seconds, get ready!”

The POV camera turns to withdraw a large tube from a locker. The human moves to stand with others alongside a wall. The human crouches down, one hand reaching out to grasp a handle.

“Opening door in 3, 2, 1. NOW!”

One of the wall slides away opening the room to space beyond. Across the distance is a facility floating in space. The lower half clearly damaged with gaping holes exposing the interior to the vacuum of space. Parts of the station glow red and white as internal temperatures rise from uncontrolled fires.

The human kneels down, the large tube protruding into the camera view. After a moment a rocket is fired. Behind the rocket trails a line. Unraveling as it travels, the rocket embeds itself onto the station. Moments later two more lines attach to the station The lines are attached to the ceiling of the room, bridging the gap between the ship and the station. Then the humans attach ascending devices to traverse across the line. The only movement being the humans on the line, and a tendril of orange liquid fuel twirling in space. As the humans are in transit one of them yells out.

“Holy shit! Lookout!”

In the silence of space the facility plating down below seemed to suddenly disintegrate. There was only time for brief incoherent yelling before the expanding metal shards reached them. The camera jerked violently, humans ahead curling up to make themselves smaller targets. Within seconds the shrapnel passes by.

“Roll call!”

“I’ve got a breach!”

The camera turns to look at one of the humans behind them. They have a hand to their leg.

“Return to the ship, everyone else keep moving!”

The video cuts to the humans hanging off the side of the facility. Sparks from torches blinding the camera as they cut through the wall. The panel is launched outwards as the internal atmosphere vents into space.

The video again cuts as the humans make their way through the darkened station corridors. Smoke obscuring their visor lights.. The humans regularly calling out for survivors. Open flame doused with a chemical foam. A hand with 4 fingers reaches out to them.

The video cuts again to the humans traversing the lines back to their ship. The room now filled with aliens laying against the wall. The human turns to cut the line from the roof as the wall slides back into place. The video cuts out and ends.

Barann shifted to a meditative stance. The appeal of the video was obvious. Dramatic depictions of heroic deeds was bound to inspire admiration. The usage of true stories only enhanced that effect. But its effect was becoming much more far reaching. Net searches related to humans had increased several thousand fold. Uncontrolled media outlets also began presenting stories of humans. Interest in humans was statistically on the rise, a positive image working to subvert the BAC’s work.

It seemed obvious that something insidious was going on. Something the BAC had missed. The analysts had combed the video for hidden signals or subversive techniques, finding neither. Attempts to find the procedure had been unsuccessful. Barann suspected it to be a group of individuals human who made the video as part of an amateurish hobby. Which would make it difficult to stem the further production of videos. Hoping to find a clue in the next viral video Barann uploaded the next file, Faith in Humanity #2.

[thegreatbritishyorubaclub]

Digital Dashing

The world of money and finance is changing right in front of our eyes. It progresses from barter to metal to paper currency, from paper to plastic, and from plastic to electronic bits to allow the transfer of digitised assets. Innovative financial channels, tools, and systems are ushering in new financial transaction paradigms and constructing alternative capital sources. Investing is an action to take with money to gain profitable returns. There are many things that you could invest the money in, and some options for investing are stocks, bonds, and real estate, all of which help the money grow, and placing money in these avenues becomes an investment. 

Cryptocurrency is not new to the financial market because it was introduced prior, and in 2009 it was made available to the public. Cryptocurrency is a digital version of money that takes the form of virtual tokens or coins. You can use it to buy or sell items from people or companies that accept such payments. A paper called Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, was posted to a mailing list discussion on cryptography. It was posted by ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’, whose real identity remains a mystery to this day. At this time, cryptocurrency slowly became popular, and some people discovered the advantages of using this medium for investment. People also thought and considered investing in crypto rather than the Orthodox way because of the advantage in the market. (Globalfindex, 2017; World Bank, 2017).

Cryptocurrency uses Blockchain technology which is a distributed database or ledger that is shared among the nodes of a computer network. As a database, a blockchain stores information electronically in digital format. Blockchains are best known for their crucial role in cryptocurrency systems, such as Bitcoin, for maintaining a secure and decentralised record of transactions. The innovation with a blockchain is that it guarantees the fidelity and security of a record of data and generates trust without the need for a trusted third party.

Online Piracy in the crypto world 

As cryptocurrencies gain traction, some of their creators are learning difficult lessons in the world of intellectual property protection. While long-standing policies and practises have been applied to various IP-related matters that have sprung up over the last few years, there isn’t much in the way of either case law or rigid policy when it comes to cryptocurrency itself. These areas are likely to evolve as time progresses.

The issue of early intellectual property protection is one that has recently come up. It's crucial to protect your intellectual property (such as trademarks and patents) as early in the process as possible.

The recent controversy over the meme-based cryptocurrency Dogecoin may be the best illustration of this. Numerous alternative virtual currencies bearing the same name have emerged as a result of the original Dogecoin Foundation's failure to register its name as a trademark. As of right now, the Dogecoin Foundation is having trouble enforcing its ownership of the name.

At this point, there’s also a chance that the term "Dogecoin" may be considered a commonly used term (much like the name "Bitcoin"), and therefore not subject to protection under trademark law. They also need to demonstrate that there are some forms of goods or services connected to their currency. Otherwise, it would not count as a trademark.

Patent Ownership in cryptocurrency 

Mastercard obtained a patent with the USPTO that grants it rights to a method for "managing fractional reserves of blockchain currency." The method covers the storage of both fiat wealth and cryptocurrencies under one account.

PayPal filed a patent with the USPTO for a technology that allegedly speeds up cryptocurrency payments through the utilisation of secondary wallets. The process that PayPal seeks to optimise settles cryptocurrency payments between merchants and buyers on retail or e-commerce platforms. The use of secondary wallets would allow the transfer of unique keys between buyers and sellers to be transferred privately.

As evidenced by the complexity of each innovation, these applications qualify under USPTO requirements because they include the inventive step. Each makes processes more efficient or solves an industry-wide problem. 

How can Blockchain help against online piracy?

In very basic terms, a blockchain is a tamper-resistant ledger that cannot be manipulated by any single group of people. The network of users called miners help protect the network and make administrative decisions about the future of the blockchain. For the first time since the beginning of the internet, this has enabled us to make digital assets that cannot be counterfeited. For example, every Bitcoin created since its inception is unique with its history of transactions that cannot be altered. Clearly, this has a lot of implications for banking and finance but its influence is sure to extend far beyond to industries like logistics and food safety among others.

Blockchain relies on public key cryptography to ensure that messages are signed by the owners of the right “private keys” which are used to prove identity. These same private keys can be used for much more than just sending transactions and in fact, can be used to verify the authenticity of any type of digital goods. These private keys combined with smart contracts can be used to track the consumption of digital content across the internet and make sure that the original creator gets the fair share of the proceeds from the work.