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An alligator friend..

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Would you be delighted to have your fics recorded into podfics (aka audio versions of your words)?

You can tell us in a permission statement!

Does the idea of your words being turned into a pod churn your stomach and make you want to hide in the forest (ie you DON’T give permission)?

You can tell us in a permission statement!

Do you have boundaries, are some works a yes and some a no? Do you like the idea of art but no pods or pods but no translations?

You can tell us in a permission statement!

Who is ‘Us’?

We’re like the cool weird aunts (gn) at your family reunion that few people listen to and even fewer respond to, but we continue to be cool and weird despite the radio silence because we know that there are other cool, weird aunts around that get excited about the same things we do.

We’re pocket friends who are deep in your fandoms and already enamoured with your words; and we’re internet randos who go squirrelling for food, fandom blind, so that we can record it for team challenges. We’re fans who wish our favourite fics were audiobooks so we could listen to them over and over on our daily commute, or in the bath, or when we’re hiding from the world under a weighted blanket.

We’re people who want to turn eyeball cake into earball cake, and we need to know if your bakery is open. (Not a euphemism. Unless…?)

Okay, weird aunt, so what IS a permission statement?

It’s a sentence or three in your ao3 (or other) profile that tells other creatives where you stand about related works.

Here is a great post with more detail and here is an example of mine:

I love podfics, fan art and translations, and I’d die of happy if one of my fics has moved you to create.

It’s a blanket yes from me for art and podfics - but I like to be asked on a case-by-case basis for translations (unless we know each other outside of ao3 then go forth and do your thing). Please ask in a comment on the fic! I read all my comments and will respond.

(And PLEASE, whether we know each other or not, share your creation w me so I can die of happy, as per above, and so I can share your work in kind!)

If creating your own seems too hard, and my bakery matches your bakery, feel free to copy and paste.

That’s it!

If I’ve encouraged you to make a permission statement regarding your own works please let me know in the next *checks watch* three days so I can get some extra cool weird aunty points for a cool, weird team challenge xx

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Normalize leaving unhinged comments on ao3 fics you like. I'm tired of being the only one brave enough to write "I am chewing on this fic" in the comment section. Be weird. Authors will love you for it

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bc of my crack fic people have been sending me every manner of Grinch x Tony the Tiger headcanon……who wants to hear the one that finally snapped me like a tennis player’s tendon

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Mermay Day 6: Broadclub Cuttlefish

The broadclub cuttlefish is the second-largest cuttlefish species, inhabiting shallow coral reefs throughout the Indo-Pacific, where it actively hunts fish and crustaceans. Renowned for its extraordinary camouflage, it can rapidly change both color and skin texture, and often mesmerizes prey with rhythmic waves of light before striking. This fascinating cephalopod also displays complex courtship behaviors and lays its eggs on reef surfaces, making it a captivating subject for marine biologists and divers alike.

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have you ever shipped something so hard that you become irrationally happy and make a sound akin to steam escaping from a kettle everytime they so much as stand next to eachother

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math major pope but math majors are a diverse bunch. he could know very little or quite a bit. we need answers. does he know group theory. sometimes you can get away with not knowing any group theory. plus it was the 70s. has he taken a topology class....probably not. but possibly. i wonder if the math curriclum of 70s villanova university is recorded anywhere. it could be lost to time. did any of your parents go to villanova for math in the 70s. do they still have their transcript. this could be big

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Someone take my tablet away from me 

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With Winnie-the-Pooh and The Battle of Hastings sharing an anniversary today, did you know that E. H. Shepard once drew this amazing scene for an exclusive book bag?

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I've seen a number of people worried and concerned about this language on Ao3s current "agree to these terms of service" page. The short version is:

Don't worry. This isn't anything bad. Checking that box just means you forgive them for being US American.

Long version: This text makes perfect sense if you're familiar with the issues around GDPR and in particular the uncertainty about Privacy Shield and SCCs after Schrems II. But I suspect most people aren't, so let's get into it, with the caveat that this is a Eurocentric (and in particular EU centric) view of this.

The basic outline is that Europeans in the EU have a right to privacy under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an EU directive (let's simplify things and call it an EU law) that regulates how various entities, including companies and the government, may acquire, store and process data about you.

The list of what counts as data about you is enormous. It includes things like your name and birthday, but also your email address, your computers IP address, user names, whatever. If an advertiser could want it, it's on the list.

The general rule is that they can't, unless you give explicit permission, or it's for one of a number of enumerated reasons (not all of which are as clear as would be desirable, but that's another topic). You have a right to request a copy of the data, you have a right to force them to delete their data and so on. It's not quite on the level of constitutional rights, but it is a pretty big deal.

In contrast, the US, home of most of the world's internet companies, has no such right at a federal level. If someone has your data, it is fundamentally theirs. American police, FBI, CIA and so on also have far more rights to request your data than the ones in Europe.

So how can an American website provide services to persons in the EU? Well… Honestly, there's an argument to be made that they can't.

US websites can promise in their terms and conditions that they will keep your data as safe as a European site would. In fact, they have to, unless they start specifically excluding Europeans. The EU even provides Standard Contract Clauses (SCCs) that they can use for this.

However, e.g. Facebook's T&Cs can't bind the US government. Facebook can't promise that it'll keep your data as secure as it is in the EU even if they wanted to (which they absolutely don't), because the US government can get to it easily, and EU citizens can't even sue the US government over it.

Despite the importance that US companies have in Europe, this is not a theoretical concern at all. There have been two successive international agreements between the US and the EU about this, and both were struck down by the EU court as being in violation of EU law, in the Schrems I and Schrems II decisions (named after Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist who sued in both cases).

A third international agreement is currently being prepared, and in the meantime the previous agreement (known as "Privacy Shield") remains tentatively in place. The problem is that the US government does not want to offer EU citizens equivalent protection as they have under EU law; they don't even want to offer US citizens these protections. They just love spying on foreigners too much. The previous agreements tried to hide that under flowery language, but couldn't actually solve it. It's unclear and in my opinion unlikely that they'll manage to get a version that survives judicial review this time. Max Schrems is waiting.

So what is a site like Ao3 to do? They're arguably not part of the problem, Max Schrems keeps suing Meta, not the OTW, but they are subject to the rules because they process stuff like your email address.

Their solution is this checkbox. You agree that they can process your data even though they're in the US, and they can't guarantee you that the US government won't spy on you in ways that would be illegal for the government of e.g. Belgium. Is that legal under EU law? …probably as legal as fan fiction in general, I suppose, which is to say let's hope nobody sues to try and find out.

But what's important is that nothing changed, just the language. Ao3 has always stored your user name and email address on servers in the US, subject to whatever the FBI, CIA, NSA and FRA may want to do it. They're just making it more clear now.

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The hill I will die on.

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I’m reading that new memoir about working at Facebook,”Careless People,” and it’s just fucking insane.

At one point Facebook wanted to be an international hub for organ donation. The “Lean In” lady asked why she couldn’t go down to Mexico and buy a kidney if her four year old needs one. This is literally on p.57. What the fuck else is going to be in this book if that is on page 57

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Attaching a doll's head like that to a hurdy-gurdy is nightmare fue, screeching and wailing notes pressed into a hidden tortured body. 🫣 This guy has been haunting humanity for 7 centuries.

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i cant decide if it was better when being weird but mostly able to live independently meant being labeled as "eccentric" instead of being randomly pushed through a parade of explanatory identities. "Me Too!” is a powerful affirmation and bonding experience, especially when manifest against interpersonal conflict and unfair norms, but is it helpful for living well in community or is it more self-centered distraction?

there are a lot of lives that i see as divergent from my own by almost negligible variation. One of those variations is which flavour of neurodivergence got assigned first in my quest to figure out "why can't i do the things?" I got dyslexia first, then ADHD, then bipolar, and the autism spectrum is looming large again.

but the problem was mostly that the system i was trying to survive was fundamentally unfeeling and inflexible. Whatever the excuse given, they didn't change how i needed to work through my own specific circumstances when the people around me were already too strained to negotiate for a more comfortable way of living/working together.

anyway I'm grumpy about relating to behaviors like about self soothing through hand flapping that are presented as *autistic* traits when fuck all labels I'm just a tired person trying to live life comfortably without offending everyone.

would it be nice to explain to my colleagues that i avoid eating lunch with them because *LABELS* instead of the specific reason? ( that lots of other people's food is gross to me and i hate when people comment on what i brought for myself. ) Yes. but labeling is a commitment i cant handle right now.

self identification feels like such a trap. honestly i do not know how i am weird relative to expectations because i dont know the expectations, and what i manage to pick up on will be a biased subset scaffolded by familiar narratives of interiority shared via media. While i have more access to my WHYs then acquaintances or new friends, my self awareness is still limited and fallible. Just like everyone else's. What matters more is how interpersonal conflict and misunderstandings can be resolved with tolerance and mutual understanding for the individuals involved.

labels give people access to communities they might not find socially, they are a reason to gather information into explanations and build connections with strangers. I just don't feel good about a lot of the information floating around that is trying to explain us to ourselves.

I want to be living rather than revising interpretations of who i have been.