lyraeon

[lyraeon]

Reading the new checks that might come in due to the Online Safety Act in the UK and this is actually bullshit

[Image Transcript:

And how will I prove my age?

There’s a number of methods a site or app might use to ask you to confirm your age. They might do this check themselves or use another company to do the check. These methods include:

Facial age estimation – you show your face via photo or video, and technology analyses it to estimate your age. 

Open banking – you give permission for the age-check service to securely access information from your bank about whether you are over 18. The age-check service then confirms this with the site or app.

Digital identity services – these include digital identity wallets, which can securely store and share information which proves your age in a digital format.

Credit card age checks – you provide your credit card details and a payment processor checks if the card is valid. As you must be over 18 to obtain a credit card this shows you are over 18.

Email-based age estimation – you provide your email address, and technology analyses other online services where it has been used – such as banking or utility providers - to estimate your age.  

Mobile network operator age checks – you give your permission for an age-check service to confirm whether or not your mobile phone number has age filters applied to it. If there are no restrictions, this confirms you are over 18. 

Photo-ID matching – this is similar to a check when you show a document. For example, you upload an image of a document that shows your face and age, and an image of yourself at the same time – these are compared to confirm if the document is yours.

End Transcript.]

Not only is this such a fucking breach of privacy, but this is going to hurt adults in vulnerable and abusive situations. Some adults don’t have bank accounts or credit cards or even a fucking phone. I’m one of them. I could not give half of this information even if I wanted to. What the fuck is this. Fuck the UK government. This isn’t going to protect kids, this is just going to hurt adults, and I know full well when they say “sites that allow pornography” they’re going to be going after sites that have huge amounts of queer content, like tumblr and Ao3. Queer kids are gonna lose their fucking communities because of this shit. Abuse victims are going to lose online support systems because of this.

I’m genuinely fucked off about this, and worried about whether I’m going to lose every single one of my online friends. Anyone in the UK, please email your MP and sign this petition. It needs to reach 100k signatures to pass through Parliament.

I’m only hoping the backlash will be big enough for them to stop implementing these measures.

[lyraeon]

Kill Credit card Companies

[lyraeon]

Everyone: Please please please don't write your books in Google Docs. Frankly don't use Google Drive for personal stuff.

Their terms of service say they take down stuff like content related to terrorism and trafficking, but this Google Sheet was literally a list of movies I'd watched this year and books I'd read.

[lyraeon]

so itchio has shadowbanned any games tagged with 'nsfw', 'adult', or 'erotic' so they don't show up in searches, and several devs have reported that their r18 games have been removed from the site with no warning

you know, maybe the internet shouldn’t be controlled by payment processors and terf lobbyists. and maybe people should be more concerned about this rise of censorship on queer media.

[lyraeon]

I just wish I had a clear idea of how I could improve, you know?

[lyraeon]

I’m at a sociology conference and just attended a memorial for one of the giants of our field, and one of the panelists told this story…he was at a meeting with this guy, who he got his PhD under and had a long standing relationship with, and he was bemoaning the current state of the world, and he asked this old professor, “how can you be so optimistic? I can’t ever be anything but a pessimist.”

and the old professor said, “you little fucker, I’m going to make a statement and then I’m going to take you out to the parking lot and beat your ass. What good does your pessimism do?”

and that really struck me. not the least because I also knew this old professor and he very rarely swore, so I know this was something he was really worked up about. what good does your pessimism do? What GOOD does your pessimism DO. I’ll be thinking about that for awhile.

[lyraeon]

My favorite genre of self-portrait is cartoonists being bothered by their characters while trying to draw

Bill Watterson – Calvin and Hobbes (1986)

Hergé – Tintin (1947, Tintin Magazine)

Jeff Smith – Bone (1993, Bone Holiday Special)

Walt Kelly – Pogo (1950, Maclean's Magazine)

And a bonus:

Berkeley Breathed – Bloom County

[lyraeon]

...this is groundbreaking.

Opening sequence. Driving test.

As they talk, we discover…

…not only does Shaggy have a license…

…Scooby has one, too.

Let that sink in.

For an unknown number of past episodes and movies…

…for years, or even decades…

…Scooby could have been driving the Mystery Machine if he wanted to.

This is a magnificent development.

[lyraeon]

I’ve been listening to the people in the apartment below me have arguments for two years now and I still can’t figure out what language they’re speaking. The best I can narrow it down is like if Portuguese and Hebrew had a baby. Is that a common pidgin combination

[lyraeon]

We're already at $400!

This is going to be a huge help in covering my bills this fall!

New Sponsored Campaign!

I'm doing a new sponsored campaign for the game Match Masters!

It's a Match 3 game, but vs other players! There's also fun powerups that remind me of Peggle. If that sounds like fun, you've got 30 days to download from the link above and play!

(Only new mobile players count towards goals!)

I get rewarded every few hundred trophies that you win, with a few bonuses for reaching those goals quickly or making in-game purchases.

The first few goals are installing the game and hitting 100, 300, and 500 trophies. The rest are under the cut below!

If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask! I'll be streaming it this coming weekend if you'd like to see it in action before trying it out!

Help me get that bread!

[lyraeon]

might not exactly be the best suggestion considering the heat in my region is dry heat (not humid), but if you ever fall asleep during the day without a lot of blankets/pillows, you kinda have to note what causes you to pass out without the weight of a blanket; sometimes it's just a pill of benadryll, putting on light socks to make it feel like they're in a blanket,or having many plushies on top of a light blanket to weight it down. all of these are like, my personal methods without spending on anything huge.

sadly I'm having just as much trouble sleeping during the day at the moment. so far the best I've got is laying a pillow on top of my back, so the plushies idea might work. I have some muscle relaxers that will reliably knock me out, but I get dependent on them within like 3 nights and take a week to get back to sleep without them again, so I'm trying not to friend on them. anything lower potency that's supposed to make me sleep only works for like an hour. thank you for the suggestions though!

[lyraeon]

in other news I am once again experimenting with having an actual laundry basket to put dirty things in instead of a designated corner of the floor. generally in the past this has just resulted in all my clothes being forgotten about, as once in the basket they are essentially de-object permanenced out of my brain, vs on the floor I can see both that there is laundry that needs doing and that if I did the wash I could wear that shirt I like again. but I have been doing pretty decent at putting "stuff I can wear again" and "stuff that needs washed" into separate piles the last few months, so maybe this will work this time.

(hilariously I hope so not just cuz I would like my laundry off my floor so the dog stops trying to nest in it, but also because adding a nightstand to my room has left a space the basket fits into perfectly and that space is just gonna look naked if the basket isn't there)

[lyraeon]

wait, how much would like a chainmail shrug be? cuz really as long as the weight is across my shoulders (preferably whole torso, but) then it should help. so just getting like a 2' x 3' shrug/lap blanket might be enough.

...still asking for other suggestions before I go that route though.

in all seriousness, the whole "summer blanket too light" thing seems to be ruining my life right now. I normally sleep 10-ish hours a day and since it got hot I doubt I've managed more than 6 a day and all of it is broken by me waking up thinking my blanket has gone missing.

If anyone has any practical suggestions I would appreciate it (yes, I know, chainmail blanket, but that's out of my financial and wrist-using capabilities). I'm wondering if like a cooling gel pad might help? either pillow or whole mattress? I can probably dig like $50 out of my budget towards a solution, assuming my laptop doesn't cost tons to fix.

[lyraeon]

in all seriousness, the whole "summer blanket too light" thing seems to be ruining my life right now. I normally sleep 10-ish hours a day and since it got hot I doubt I've managed more than 6 a day and all of it is broken by me waking up thinking my blanket has gone missing.

If anyone has any practical suggestions I would appreciate it (yes, I know, chainmail blanket, but that's out of my financial and wrist-using capabilities). I'm wondering if like a cooling gel pad might help? either pillow or whole mattress? I can probably dig like $50 out of my budget towards a solution, assuming my laptop doesn't cost tons to fix.

[lyraeon]

So do people realize that we aren't building new train tracks when we expand the amteak network, I have multiple times seen people say that we shouldn't expand the network because it would destroy protected lands, which would be a fair criticism but Amtrak doesn't build new tracks, we use existing tracks. We are not destroying protected lands, we are using land that has already been clear for a century

[lyraeon]

I love it when people use "shrimp" to mean "beyond the human range". like "shrimp colors" but applied to other things. "shrimp emotions" "shrimp sounds" "shrimp morality", as if shrimp are living some kind of transcendent existence that humans can never comprehend