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Kid today (probably like 6 years) came up to me and was like "teacher teacher what's your name" and i was like "asha :) also im not a teacher" and he was like "okay asha asha asha I need help" and i was like "okay buddy what's wrong" and he showed me this chunk of metal he'd found sitting in the sun that he was just carrying around and it was super sharp and super hot from the sun and he was like "my hand hurts :(" and i was like "ok. put that down. does it still hurt?" And he did and was like "no." and then he picked it up again and immediately went "my hand hurts :(" again and then I was like "kid. put that down and stop touching it" and he was like "ok but when I touch it my hand hurts :(" and i was like "Please Just Stop Touching That. If you dont touch it your hand won't hurt" and this went on for like another 2 minutes before i got him to realize that if he stopped touching the metal it would not hurt. Kids are so fucking weird man

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Pay attention to the particulars of Mastercard's responses, because this a textbook example of how to create plausible deniability.

"Mastercard has not barred any legal transaction" is, technically, a true statement – because Mastercard is not the one processing the transactions in the first place. Mastercard does not deal directly with any merchant, and in fact typically refuses to communicate with merchants at all; there's always a payment processing service sitting in between Mastercard and the merchant, whether that's Stripe or Paypal or any of dozens of other service providers.

Consequently, there are two layers of service agreements in place: the agreement between Mastercard and the payment processing service, and the agreement between the payment processing service and the merchant. That second layer of service agreements, between the payment processing service and the merchant, is where all of these content restrictions are being imposed. Mastercard can thus truthfully claim that they aren't barring legal transactions.

Now, if you've been paying attention, you've probably already spotted the issue: if the content restrictions are being imposed upon the merchants by individual payment processing services and not by Mastercard, why do all of those payment processing services seem to have exactly the same content restrictions?

That's where the critical sleight of hand comes in: while Mastercard's own terms of service do not require payment processing services to bar transactions of particular types, their ToS does require payment processors to bar transactions which could be damaging to the Mastercard brand. What constitutes damage to the Mastercard brand is not defined; it means whatever Mastercard wants it to mean. The payment processing services are thus in a position where they can be held in breach of Mastercard's terms of service for basically any reason, which gives them a strong incentive not to test any boundaries.

And that's why Mastercard can truthfully say they have never barred any legal transaction: they're never the ones doing the blocking. The layer of payment processing services that sits between Mastercard and the merchants are enforcing those content restrictions, based on a series of unwritten handshake agreements between the payment processors and Mastercard regarding what does and does not constitute acceptable content – and because the particulars of those handshake agreements aren't in writing, Mastercard can assert that their terms of service do not compel payment processing services to bar any legal transaction and technically be telling the truth.

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I thought Old Man Yaoi was like a specific person or entity. Like you walk down to the river, there’s Old Man Consequences, you walk down to the oak tree there’s Old Man Sensibility, and then you walk into the gay club and you’ll never guess who it is

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“coke is better!” “pepsi is better!” wrong. squirt supremacy.

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saw a car dragging a labubu facedown through the street

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While it's true that mandatory identity verification will inevitably be leaked on a massive scale, the thing you need to understand when framing these arguments is that a lot of the folks in favour of such measures don't see that as a bad thing. Full de-anonymisation of the Internet is their explicit goal. Like, the actual objective here is for everyone to have a public record of everything they say and do – online or otherwise – linked to their government ID. The universal panopticon is the good ending as far as these people are concerned.

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sorry to post facebook videos on main but the sound of jello going through an industrial shredder is both mesmerizing and horrible

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Male writers writing female characters:

“Cassandra woke up to the rays of the sun streaming through the slats on her blinds, cascading over her naked chest. She stretched, her breasts lifting with her arms as she greeted the sun. She rolled out of bed and put on a shirt, her nipples prominently showing through the thin fabric. She breasted boobily to the stairs, and titted downwards.”

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John Oliver gets it, as usual. AI Slop is one of the best episodes of Last Week Tonight I've seen so far. Gen AI is theft. Those who use it are not authors or artists, they're grifters profiting from real creatives.

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socal Media app perfec t size for put personal ID in to age veryify! inside very Safe and Web Security info kept safely put ID in Social Media Website. Put ID In Social Media Website. no problems ever in soccial media website because good third party App and Privacy for personal information sensitive of private state issued ID. Asocialmedia Website yes a place for a legal ID put ID in social media website can trust social media website for keepeing good secret of identity. friend social media

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one thing about americans is that they know how to make a fucking milkshake

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YOU HAVE 24 HOURS GOOOOO

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reddit white is like the typical racist guy living in a multicultural city with whom every time a nonwhite person enters their FOV they'll whip out the most predictable derisive racist quip like a pokemon shouting its own name. they'll consume nonwhite cultures as theatre but refuse to engage with it on the same level as white culture. tumblr white is like a gated community guy who is so unbelievably insulated from any nonwhite people or culture they'll straight up say wild shit like "well no one told me that dark skinned people didn't have thicker veins! how was i supposed to know that? you can't blame me for that!"

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just more study doodles and little thoughts today. sorry.

the au