#Create QR Code Free

[makeaqrcode]

Effortless QR Code Creation: Customise with Logos, Colours, and Frames

QR codes have become an essential part of modern digital interaction, streamlining everything from marketing campaigns to personal engagements. With just a quick scan, users can access websites, make payments, or even download apps. But how do you create a QR code that stands out and aligns with your brand identity? The answer lies in effortless customisation, where you can add logos, choose colours, and design frames that suit your needs. Whether you're an entrepreneur looking to enhance customer engagement or an individual wanting to share personal content stylishly, a free QR code generator makes the process seamless.

Understanding how to set up a QR code is simpler than ever, thanks to intuitive tools that guide you through the process. To make a QR Code, all you need is the relevant link or data, select your preferred customisation options, and generate your design. The best part is that many platforms offer to create QR code free service, ensuring accessibility without financial commitment. By taking advantage of these tools, businesses and individuals can craft visually appealing QR codes that maintain functionality while reflecting their unique brand aesthetics.

A QR code for business can be a game-changer, offering a bridge between physical and digital interactions. From product packaging to restaurant menus and marketing materials, these small but powerful graphics enhance accessibility and engagement. If you're wondering how to get a QR code for my business, the process is straightforward. Choose a free QR code generator that provides customisation features, input your URL or data, and adjust the design elements to match your brand. High-resolution downloads ensure crisp and professional-quality results, making them suitable for both online and print usage.

Creating a QR code for business not only boosts customer interaction but also adds a professional touch to promotional materials. When you create a QR code free of cost, you still get access to multiple customisation options, ensuring that your QR codes remain visually appealing and recognisable. Adding a logo, adjusting the colour scheme, and incorporating frames can make a significant difference in how users perceive and engage with your QR code. The ability to download in sharp, high resolution ensures that the final output is not just practical but also aesthetically aligned with your branding needs.

Beyond businesses, QR codes are also widely used for personal needs. Whether it’s for sharing contact details, event invitations, or social media profiles, the flexibility of QR codes makes them a versatile tool. By leveraging an easy-to-use free QR code generator, anyone can create a personalised QR code in just a few clicks. Customisation adds a unique touch, ensuring that even a simple QR code aligns with personal branding or themes.

High-resolution QR codes are vital for maintaining visual integrity across different platforms and media. Whether printed on a billboard or displayed on a smartphone screen, clarity and sharpness are essential. That’s why choosing a generator that allows high-resolution downloads is crucial. Businesses, in particular, benefit from this feature as they can integrate QR codes seamlessly into advertisements, brochures, and product packaging without compromising quality.

Custom QR codes not only look better but also offer enhanced brand recognition. When a QR code carries the company’s colours, logo, and design elements, it becomes instantly recognisable, increasing the likelihood of engagement. Whether you need a QR code for digital marketing, business networking, or customer service, making one that aligns with your visual identity is now effortless.

In a world where digital engagement is key, having a customisable and high-resolution QR code can significantly enhance accessibility and interaction. With easy-to-use generators, even those without technical expertise can create a QR code free of charge. Whether for business or personal use, taking advantage of advanced customisation features ensures that your QR codes not only function efficiently but also stand out visually. The days of plain black-and-white QR codes are long gone—now, effortless QR code creation allows for stylish, brand-specific designs that leave a lasting impression.

[technifytechnologies]

Instantly Connect on Telegram with a QR Code!

Center: Make it easy for people to find and message you on Telegram. Generate a QR code that links directly to your Telegram profile, group, or channel for quick access. Ideal for businesses, influencers, and community engagement.

[calcifyai]

Generate QR Codes & short Link with InShorten

Simple, Fast & Free. Bringing back the good days!

Static URL Shortener

Create short & memorable links in seconds.

A fast and simple URL shortener

InShorten allows to shorten long links from Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linked In, WhatsApp, TikTok, blogs and sites.

Create a short URL for easy to share on sites , URL Link Shortener use for manage your link its free, easy and fast tool.

Dynamic URL Shortener

Create short & memorable links in seconds.

A fast and simple Dynamic URL shortener Long links in social networks look awful, additionally, the system can cut off and transmit to the user in a half-finished form. A short link like InShorten looks very nice, very easy for copying, and even easuliar to remember. Statistics of each click you will also receive - regardless of where you place the link - in Facebook, Telegram or Twitter. Wrap in your short link.

Transform your long URLs into dynamic short links with our url shortening service. get simple and easy to use free url shortener.

QR Code generator

Creating QR codes should be quick, easy, and straightforward. Our tool allows you to generate QR code for your business or personal needs.

Create a free QR Code

QR Code Generator and Shorten to create one Connections Platform Nurture seamless audience connections through branded links, customizable QR codes, and Landing Pages We make every link and scan an accelerant for connections.Easily create qr code free.

Boost your marketing strategy and reach your target audience with custom-generate qr codes for promotions, products, and more.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“That Makes Me Smart”

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/2024/12/04/its-not-a-lie/#its-a-premature-truth

The Biden administration disappointed, frustrated and enraged in so many ways, including abetting a genocide – but one consistent bright spot over the past four years was the unseen-for-generations frontal assault on corporate power and corporate corruption.

The three words that define this battle above all others are "unfair and deceptive" – words that appear in Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act and other legislation modeled on it, like USC40 Section 41712(a), which gives the Department of Transportation the power to ban "unfair and deceptive" practices as well:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

When Congress created an agency to punish "unfair and deceptive" conduct, they were saying to the American people, "You have a right not to be cheated." While this may sound obvious, it's hardly how the world works.

To get a sense of how many ripoffs are part of our daily lives, let's take a little tour of the ways that the FTC and other agencies have used the "unfair and deceptive" standard to defend you over the past four years. Take Amazon Prime: Amazon executives emailed one another, openly admitting that in their user tests, the public was consistently fooled by Amazon's "get free shipping with Prime" dialog boxes, thinking they were signing up for free shipping and not understanding that they were actually signing up to send the company $140/year. They had tested other versions of the signup workflow that users were able to correctly interpret, but they decided to go with the confusing version because it made them more money:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/amazon-execs-may-be-personally-liable-for-tricking-users-into-prime-sign-ups/

Getting you signed up for Prime isn't just a matter of taking $140 out of your pocket once – because while Amazon has produced a greased slide that whisks you into a recurring Prime subscription, the process for canceling that recurring payment is more like a greased pole you must climb to escape the Prime pit. This is typical of many services, where signing up happens in a couple clicks, but canceling is a Kafkaesque nightmare. The FTC decided that this was an "unfair and deceptive" business practice and used its authority to create a "Click to Cancel" rule that says businesses have to make it as easy to cancel a recurring payment as it was to sign up for it:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/12/ftc_cancel_subscriptions/

Once businesses have you locked in, they also spy on you, ingesting masses of commercial surveillance data that you "consented" to by buying a car, or clicking to a website, or installing an app, or just physically existing in space. They use this to implement "surveillance pricing," raising prices based on their estimation of your desperation. Uber got caught doing this a decade ago, raising the price of taxi rides for users whose batteries were about to die, but these days, everyone's in on the game. For example, McDonald's has invested in a company that spies on your finances to determine when your payday is, and then raises the price of your usual breakfast sandwich by a dollar the day you get paid:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Everything about this is "unfair and deceptive" – from switching prices the second you click into the store to the sham of consent that consists of, say, picking up your tickets to a show and being ordered to download an app that comes with 20,000 words of terms and conditions that allows the company that sends you a QR code to spy on you for the rest of your life in any way they can and sell the data to anyone who'll buy it.

As bad as it is to be trapped in an abusive relationship as a shopper, it's a million times worse to be trapped as a worker. One in 18 American workers is under a noncompete "agreement" that makes it illegal for you to change jobs and work for someone else in the same industry. The vast majority of these workers are in low-waged food-service jobs. The primary use of the American noncompete is to stop the cashier at Wendy's from getting an extra $0.25/hour by taking a job at McDonald's.

Noncompetes are shrouded in a fog of easily dispelled bossly bullshit: claims that noncompetes raise wages (empirically, this is untrue), or that they enable "IP"-intensive industries to grow by protecting their trade secrets. This claim is such bullshit: you can tell by the fact that noncompetes are banned under California's state constitution and yet the most IP-intensive industries have attracted hundreds of billions – if not trillions – in investment capital even though none of their workforce can be bound under a noncompete. The FTC's order banning noncompetes for every worker in America simply brings the labor regime that created Silicon Valley and Hollywood to the rest of the country:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

Noncompetes aren't the only "unfair and deceptive" practice used against American workers. The past decade has seen the rise of private equity consolidation in several low-waged industries, like pet grooming. The new owners of every pet grooming salon within 20 miles of your house haven't just slashed workers' wages, they've also cooked up a scheme that lets them charge workers thousands of dollars if they quit these shitty jobs. This scheme is called a "training repayment agreement provision" (TRAP!): workers who are TRAPped at Petsmart are made to work doing menial jobs like sweeping up the floor for three to four weeks. Petsmart calls this "training," and values it at $5,500. If you quit your pet grooming job in the next two years, you legally owe PetSmart $5,500 to "repay" them for the training:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/04/its-a-trap/#a-little-on-the-nose

Workers are also subjected to "unfair and deceptive" bossware: "AI" tools sold to bosses that claim they can sort good workers from bad, but actually serve as random-number generators that penalize workers in arbitrary, life-destroying ways:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/26/hawtch-hawtch/#you-treasure-what-you-measure

Some of the most "unfair and deceptive" conduct we endure happens in shadowy corners of industry, where obscure middlemen help consolidated industries raise prices and pick your pocket. All the meat you buy in the grocery store comes from a cartel of processing and packing companies that all subscribe to the same "price consulting" services that tells them how to coordinate across-the-board price rises (tell me again how greedflation isn't a thing?):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

It's not just food, it's all of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Take shelter: the highly consolidated landlord industry uses apps like Realpage to coordinate rental price hikes, turning the housing crisis into a housing emergency:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy

And of course, health is the most "unfair and deceptive" industry of all. Useless middlemen like "Pharmacy Benefit Managers" ("a spreadsheet with political power" -Matt Stoller) coordinate massive price-hikes in the drugs you need to stay alive, which is why Americans pay substantially more for medicine than anyone else in the world, even as the US government spends more than any other to fund pharma research, using public money:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/23/shield-of-boringness/#some-men-rob-you-with-a-fountain-pen

It's not just drugs: every piece of equipment – think hospital beds and nuclear medicine machines – as well as all the consumables – from bandages to saline – at your local hospital runs through a cartel of "Group Purchasing Organizations" that do for hospital equipment what PBMs do for medicine:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/27/lethal-dysfunction/#luxury-bones

For the past four years, we've lived in an America where a substantial portion of the administrative state went to war every day to stamp out unfair and deceptive practices. It's still happening: yesterday, the CFPB (which Musk has vowed to shut down) proposed a new rule that would ban the entire data brokerage industry, who nonconsensually harvest information about every American, and package it up into categories like "teenagers from red states seeking abortions" and "military service personnel with gambling habits" and "seniors with dementia" and sell this to marketers, stalkers, foreign governments and anyone else with a credit-card:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-proposes-rule-to-stop-data-brokers-from-selling-sensitive-personal-data-to-scammers-stalkers-and-spies/

And on the same day, the FTC banned the location brokers who spy on your every movement and sell your past and present location, again, to marketers, stalkers, foreign governments and anyone with a credit card:

https://www.404media.co/ftc-bans-location-data-company-that-powers-the-surveillance-ecosystem/

These are tantalizing previews of a better life for every American, one in which the rule is, "play fair." That's not the world that Trump and his allies want to build. Their motto isn't "cheaters never prosper" – it's "caveat emptor," let the buyer beware.

Remember the 2016 debate where Clinton accused Trump of cheating on his taxes and he admitted to it, saying "That makes me smart?" Trumpism is the movement of "that makes me smart" life, where if you get scammed, that's your own damned fault. Sorry, loser, you lost.

Nowhere do you see this more than in cryptocurrencyland, so it's not a coincidence that tens – perhaps hundreds – in dark crypto money was flushed into the election, first to overpower Democratic primaries and kick out Dem legislators who'd used their power to fight the "unfair and deceptive" crowd:

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/california-playbook-pm/2024/02/13/crypto-comes-for-katie-porter-00141261

And then to fight Dems across the board (even the Dems whose primary victories were funded by dark crypto money) and elect the GOP as the party of "caveat emptor"/"that makes me smart":

https://www.coindesk.com/news-analysis/2024/12/02/crypto-cash-fueled-53-members-of-the-next-u-s-congress

Crypto epitomizes the caveat emptor economy. By design, fraudulent crypto transactions can't be reversed. If you get suckered, that's canonically a you problem. And boy oh boy, do crypto users get suckered (including and especially those who buy Trump's shitcoins):

https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/

And for crypto users who get ripped off because they've parked their "money" in an online wallet, there's no sympathy, just "not your keys, not your coins":

https://www.ledger.com/academy/not-your-keys-not-your-coins-why-it-matters

A cornerstone of the "unfair and deceptive" world is that only suckers – that is, outsiders, marks and little people – have to endure consequences when they get rooked. When insiders get ripped off, all principle is jettisoned. So it's not surprising that when crypto insiders got taken for millions the first time they created a DAO, they tore up all the rules of the crypto world and gave themselves the mulligan that none of the rest of us are entitled to in cryptoland:

https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/07/20/hard-fork-completed

Where you find crypto, you find Elon Musk, the guy who epitomizes caveat emptor thinking. This is a guy who has lied to drivers to get them to buy Teslas by promising "full self driving in one year," every year, since 2015:

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/autonomous-driving/timeline-of-tesla-self-driving-aspirations-a9686689375/

Musk told investors that he had a "prototype" autonomous robot that could replace their workers, then demoed a guy in a robot suit, pretending to be a robot:

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-unveils-his-funniest-vaporware-yet-1847523016

Then Musk did it again, two years later, demoing a remote-control robot while lying and claiming that it was autonomous:

https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/14/tesla-optimus-bots-were-controlled-by-humans-during-the-we-robot-event

This is entirely typical of the AI sector, in which "AIs" are revealed, over and over, to be low-waged workers pretending to be robots, so much so that Indian tech industry insiders joke that "AI" stands for "Absent Indians":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

Musk's view is that he's not a liar, merely a teller of premature truths. Autonomous cars and robots are just around the corner (just like the chatbots that can do your job, and not merely convince your boss to fire you while failing to do your job). He's not tricking you, he's just faking it until he makes it. It's not a scam, it's inspirational. Of course, if he's wrong and you are scammed, well, that's a you problem. Caveat emptor. That makes him smart.

Musk does this all the time. Take the Twitter blue tick, originally conceived of as a way to keep Twitter users from being scammed ("unfair and deceptive") by con artists pretending to be famous people. Musk's inaugural act at Twitter was to take away blue ticks from verified users and sell them to anyone who'd pay $8/month. Almost no one coughed up for this – the main exception being scammers, who used their purchased, unverified blue ticks to steal from Twitter users ("that makes me smart").

As Twitter hemorrhaged advertising revenue and Musk became increasingly desperate to materialize an army of $8/month paid subscribers, he pulled another scam: he nonconsensually applied blue ticks to prominent accounts, in a bid to trick normies into thinking that widely read people valued blue ticks so much they were paying for them out of their own pockets:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65365366

If you were tricked into buying a blue tick on this pretense, well, caveat emptor. Besides, it's not a lie, it's a premature truth. Someday all those widely read users with nonconsensual blue ticks will surely value them so highly that they do start to pay for them. And if they don't? Well, Musk got your $8: "that makes me smart."

Scammers will always tell you that they're not lying to you, merely telling premature truths. Sam Bankman-Fried's defenders will tell you that he didn't actually steal all those billions. He gambled them on a bet that (sorta-kinda) paid off. Eventually, he was able to make all his victims (sorta-kinda) whole, so it's not even a theft:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/business/ftx-bankruptcy-plan-repay-creditors/index.html

Likewise, Tether, a "stablecoin" that was unable to pass an audit for many years as it issued unbacked, unregulated securities while lying and saying that for every dollar they minted, they had a dollar in reserves. Tether now (maybe) has reserves to equal its outstanding coins, so obviously all those years where they made false claims, they weren't lying, merely telling a premature truth:

https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/cryptocriticscorner/episodes/Tether-wins–Skeptics-lose-the-end-of-an-era-e2rhf5e

If Tether had failed a margin call during those years and you'd lost everything, well, caveat emptor. The Tether insiders were always insulated from that risk, and that's all that matters: "that makes me smart."

When I think about the next four years, this is how I frame it: the victory of "that makes me smart" over "fairness and truth."

For years, progressives have pointed out the right's hypocrisy, despite that fact that Americans have been conditioned to be so cynical that even the rankest hypocrisy doesn't register. But "caveat emptor?" That isn't just someone else's bad belief or low ethics: it's the way that your life is materially, significantly worsened. The Biden administration – divided between corporate Dems and the Warren/Sanders wing that went to war on "unfair and deceptive" – was ashamed and nearly silent on its groundbreaking work fighting for fairness and honesty. That was a titanic mistake.

Americans may not care about hypocrisy, but they really care about being stolen from. No one wants to be a sucker.

[reasonsforhope]

"Clothing tags, travel cards, hotel room key cards, parcel labels … a whole host of components in supply chains of everything from cars to clothes. What do they have in common? RFID tags.  

Every RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tag contains a microchip and a tiny metal strip of an antenna. A cool 18bn of these are made – and disposed of – each year. And with demands for product traceability increasing, ironically in part because of concerns for the social and environmental health of the supply chain, that’s set to soar. 

And guess where most of these tags end up? Yup, landfill – adding to the burgeoning volumes of e-waste polluting our soils, rivers and skies. It’s a sorry tale, but it’s one in which two young graduates of Imperial College London and Royal College of Art are putting a great big green twist. Under the name of PulpaTronics, Chloe So and Barna Soma Biro reckon they’ve hit on a beguilingly simple sounding solution: make the tags out of paper. No plastic, no chips, no metal strips. Just paper, pure and … simple … ? Well, not quite, as we shall see. 

The apparent simplicity is achieved by some pretty cutting-edge technical innovation, aimed at stripping away both the metal antennae and the chips. If you can get rid of those, as Biro explains, you solve the e-waste problem at a stroke. But getting rid of things isn’t the typical approach to technical solutions, he adds. “I read a paper in Nature that set out how humans have a bias for solving problems through addition – by adding something new, rather than removing complexity, even if that’s the best approach.”   

And adding stuff to a world already stuffed, as it were, can create more problems than it solves. “So that became one of the guiding principles of PulpaTronics”, he says: stripping things down “to the bare minimum, where they are still functional, but have as low an environmental impact as possible”.  

...how did they achieve this magical simplification? The answer lies in lasers: these turn the paper into a conductive material, Biro explains, printing a pattern on the surface that can be ‘read’ by a scanner, rather like a QR code. It sounds like frontier technology, but it works, and PulpaTronics have patents pending to protect it. 

The resulting tag comes in two forms: in one, there is still a microchip, so that it can be read by existing scanners of the sort common within retailers, for example. The more advanced version does away with the chip altogether. This will need a different kind of scanner, currently in development, which PulpaTronics envisages issuing licences for others to manufacture. 

Crucially, the cost of both versions is significantly cheaper than existing RFID kit – making this a highly viable proposition. Then there are the carbon savings: up to 70% for the chipless version – so a no-brainer from a sustainability viewpoint too. All the same, industry interest was slow to start with but when PulpaTronics won a coveted Dezeen magazine award in late 2023, it snowballed, says So. Big brands such as UPS, DHL, Marks & Spencer and Decathlon came calling. “We were just bombarded.” Brands were fascinated by the innovation, she says, but even more by the price point, “because, like any business, they knew that green products can’t come with a premium”."

-via Positive.News, April 29, 2024

--

Note: I know it's still in the very early stages, but this is such a relief to see in the context of the environmental and human rights catastrophes associated with lithium mining and mining for rare earth metals, and the way that EVs and other green infrastructure are massively increasing the demand for those materials.

I'll take a future with paper-based, more humane alternatives for sure! Fingers crossed this keeps developing and develops well (and quickly).

[asmolvaporeon]

Reminder: Nintendo Network Shutdown and Discontinuation of Online Services for 3DS and Wii U

It's going to happen on Monday 8th April, 4pm PDT. That's just a few days from now.

What this entails for following games and software (amongst other):

Pokémon: No more online trading and battling on Pokémon XY/ORAS/SUMO/USUM. So get those last trades in!

Splatoon: No more online battles, which is the main part of the game.

Mario kart Wii U: Obviously no more online races.

Nintendo Badge Arcade: Will be completely unusable. I recommend people to go over their badge box and carefully sort what they want to keep, as those badges will stay on your system. Everything else will be lost.

Animal Crossing New Leaf: No more visiting each other's towns. However the QR code designs should be unaffected. You can still create and read those.

Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer: I'm quite sure that you won't be able to upload or see other people's creations.

here are things I'm unsure of:

Friend list: You cannot add friends through the internet (I think, I have no confirmation for this)

Spotpass: Will not work. I unfortunately don't know much about Spotpass and what this means.

EShop:

-There is a small set of free themes that you can download for free right now (at least in the PAL region). I'm not sure if that will be possible later.

-According to the Nintendo website "For the foreseeable future, it will still be possible to download update data and redownload purchased software and downloadable content from Nintendo eShop." Interpret that as you want.

Other: I also called Nintendo's support to ask if it still will be possible to log into the Wii U if you use a NNID password to sign in (because I'm a paranoiac), and the answer was more or less "Yes I'm sure". Not sure how long this will last though. Most likely as long as the point above.

That's all I can remember at the moment. I'll probably add more later.

[swartists4palestine]

Open fandom week!!

This week we’re opening up commissions to other fandoms!! Request a piece of writing or art & one of our team of artists will create it for you in exchange for proof of donation.

Guidelines:

We will not draw anything gore, nsfw, or romantic ships.

We will not write anything gore, nsfw, or proship.

Fandoms we will NOT accept requests for are The Last of Us, Stranger Things, Our Flag Means Death, Harry Potter, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss.

We are open to most other fandoms but will not be able to complete certain requests as the team may not be familiar enough with the media to do it justice.

If you have questions about whether or not your request will be accepted feel free to send an ask first!

How to donate & request:

Be sure to take a screenshot of the receipt & block out any sensitive information (your address, phone number etc.). If you’re purchasing an e-sim send it to gazaesims@gmail.com & only send us the receipt. Please do not send us the QR code.

To send in a request fill out this form. (Star Wars requests still go here.)

Purchase an e-sim here or here.

Donate to a Palestinian family’s gfm here.

[mariacallous]

Jack and Fiona wanted to do something, but they didn’t know where to start. For months, the couple had watched as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, then spearheading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), had turned the US into what they thought was “a fascist hellscape.” But they live in a deeply red county in a deeply red state in the South, and were worried that speaking out publicly could mean putting them and their children in danger.

Jack, who requested WIRED use a pseudonym to safeguard his identity, has long been familiar with extremism in the US. He says he was brought to his first KKK meeting at the age of 7. “I have seen the kind of behavior exhibited by MAGA, and know that it's exactly what I saw when I was younger,” he says. “The strain it is putting on society is the same strain that it puts on every single one [of us] who was in that space.”

So Jack and Fiona turned to technology. Searching on platforms like Reddit and Bluesky, Fiona stumbled on Realtime Fascism, a website that uses AI to trawl the internet for news articles featuring keywords linked to fascism. The tool analyzes those stories to produce a score for the threat posed by fascism in the US at any given time. The rating they found when they opened the site in February? CRITICAL.

The couple wanted more people to understand what was happening, so they built their own website called Stick It to Fascists. They bought a $100 thermal label printer, created a QR code linking to Realtime Fascism, and began making stickers.

What began with 500 stickers posted all over their small town “in the heart of MAGA country” quickly grew—with the help of an appeal on Reddit—to a campaign that has so far seen the couple and their children send 750,000 stickers to more than 1,000 people in all 50 states.

Stick It to Fascists is one of countless grassroots efforts that have emerged since Trump took office a second time. Many of them are fueled by technology: printers, QR codes, Reddit, online platforms, encrypted messaging apps like Signal. Across the country, small local groups have used a wide variety of online tools to mobilize their resistance to Trump 2.0 while trying to protect themselves against backlash from the administration. As millions of Americans joined some 2,000 “No Kings” protests last Saturday, these tools were powering the movement.

Spinning up crowdsourced collaborative tools is relatively easy. Maintaining them is much more difficult, however, and without aligned goals or aims, many of them could eventually become digital wastelands. But that is not stopping people who see no other option.

WIRED spoke to more than a dozen people involved in organizing against the Trump administration who all believe that the Democratic Party has not presented a coherent opposition to Trump and DOGE’s dismantling of the government. As a result, the organizers say, they had no choice but to get involved.

“We're doing this now, because in a couple of months, what we're doing may be illegal,” Fiona says. “This administration is already doing everything within their power to limit free speech, and it's extremely important that dissenting voices not be silenced.”

In the early days of Trump's second term, there was concern that an opposition movement against Trump was nowhere to be found.

But the reality is that protest movements this time around are just different than during Trump’s first term. Last time, while groups like the Women’s March and others organized large-scale demonstrations in the early months of his first presidency, this time around opposition is being driven by decentralized groups and individuals focused on a smaller-scale approach.

The change from a top-down movement to a much more decentralized one is key to understanding what’s happening, says Dana Fisher, a professor of sociology at American University and author of American Resistance: From the Women's March to the Blue Wave. “This is what we who study social movements call a moment of tactical innovation, where there are going to be all these innovative ideas about ways to break through and to get people to mobilize and work together in these very dark moments,” Fisher says.

People are still in the streets, as well. Data from the Crowd Counting Consortium, a joint project of the Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut, shows that in late January and February alone there were over twice as many street protests in the US than in February 2017. The numbers have kept growing.

The protests at Tesla dealerships, for example, began as a grassroots effort that has grown into a nationwide movement. There are also people working together online to combat the disinformation being pushed by Musk and DOGE, in addition to individuals like Jack and Fiona doing what they can. In isolation, these are small-scale protests; viewed as a whole, they show the level of anger that ordinary Americans feel at what has been happening in Washington over the past five months.

The number and scale of the protests has grown significantly, with millions of people turning out at more than a thousand separate protests in all 50 states on April 5. Last Saturday’s No Kings protest, which was organized by dozens of groups, drew over 5 million people to more than 2,100 events across the nation, according to the organizers, though notably not in Washington, DC, where Trump held his military parade to celebrate the US Army’s 250th anniversary.

Many of these calls for protest can be traced back to a single post on a subreddit called 50501, which stands for 50 protests, 50 states, 1 movement.

Sydney Wilson first learned about the online movement against Trump through this subreddit. Her journey into political activism began in late January while she was idly poking around on Reddit and came across a flyer for an event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, at which citizens would be protesting against the Trump administration. Wilson was intrigued, but living 200 miles away, she wondered if there were any events closer to her home in Pittsburgh.

That’s when she found 50501. Though the subreddit had been created just a few days earlier, it was already amassing huge support. It began on January 25 with a single Reddit post calling for citizens to fight back against executive overreach. The idea took hold, and within 10 days, those who signed up had organized protests in 80 cities across the US. Two weeks later, on February 17, they held another set of protests, with thousands of people attending.

Wilson, who had attended political protests in the past but had never been involved in organizing them, joined the group’s Discord channel to help plan.

“Not even in my wildest dreams did I think that my first protest that I organized with another group of Pennsylvanians would have 200 people show up,” Wilson tells WIRED. “Then the next one, I think we had 300 or 400, so I'm optimistic right now. The trick will be to keep this energy going.”

Like Wilson, many of the 311,000 subscribers to the subreddit and the 17,000 members of the group’s Discord have no experience in organizing protests. Still, they felt they had to.

“Democracy needs to be defended, and it's up to us as community members to stand up and do that work, because no one else will do it for us,” Wilson says.

The 50501 group also uses a wide variety of other online platforms to coordinate their efforts, including encrypted messaging apps like Signal and Matrix, which smaller subgroups use for sensitive conversations. Platforms like Mobilize.us allow participants to share information about upcoming protests, while state-level groups come up with ideas for signs and chants on shared Google Docs.

“Everybody's kind of using different strategies to communicate, so it's all over the place,” says TJ Demetriou, the public affairs officer for a 50501 subgroup for veterans. “If you're involved in a couple different groups, it can be confusing.”

Discord is the primary platform for planning and assigning volunteer positions within local groups, but it also serves as a place for the community to vent. Following the group’s protests on March 4, many of the members gathered on the group’s Discord server to watch Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress.

The “general chat” channel was quickly filled with anger, not at what Trump was saying but at the response from the Democrats in the chamber, who had decided the best way to confront Trump was to wear pink blouses and hold up tiny signs that no one could see.

“I kid you not, they are holding signs instead of booing,” one member wrote incredulously. “Bunch of spineless fucks,” another added, after no other Democrat came to the defense of representative Al Green of Texas, who was removed from the chamber for heckling Trump.

“Well I'm glad YOU all are protesting because holy shit that was a weak showing from dems with their bitch=ass [sic] paddles and pink shirts and blue ties,” another member wrote.

Though the group has had a lot of successes, some infighting has unfortunately become a distraction.

In April, the person who posted the original 50501 post, known online as Evolved Fungi, locked down the subreddit entirely, claiming that some national groups were seeking to take control of the 50501 group for their own ends. According to a since-deleted post on Reddit, Fungi believed someone had sought to file trademark applications for the 50501 name. A member of the 50501 leadership group subsequently claimed in a Reddit post that there was an attempt to trademark the name and create a 501c4 entity, but that this was done by “a separate, independent group of three people wholly unconnected to the broader 50501 group.

Fungi, who was posting anonymously, says they were doxed and accused of what some felt was inappropriate behavior during a Zoom call with other members of the 50501 group. Some 50501 members circulated a petition calling for them to step down before they finally did so. Fungi declined to comment when contacted by WIRED.

Fungi's departure didn't slow the movement down. By late spring the organization was deeply involved in organizing the No Kings protests on June 14, ultimately helping bring people to protests across the US and bolstering the movement's momentum even further.

The 50501 movement is not the only grassroots effort that began life online. The Tesla Takedown protests began with a single Bluesky post that exploded in large part thanks to social media posts, including protesters’ pictures and videos outside dealerships. These efforts were boosted when celebrities got involved, and Instagram reels went viral from people like Grammy-winning singer Sheryl Crow waving goodbye to her Tesla.

Other movements online, including tools for keeping tabs on the Trump administration, have also sprung up. One online tracker follows how many of Trump's policy actions align with Project 2025's goals. As of this writing, it shows that more than half of them have been completed or are in progress. Another tracker, Spotlight on DOGE, aims to fact-check claims made about the department's savings. The organizer, who asked to remain anonymous, says they recruited more than a dozen professionals, including lawyers and doctors, across the US to help analyze DOGE's actual savings.

But for all the work being done online to organize, educate, and plan, veteran activists who protested the first Trump presidency believe that success this time around will rely on turning that online support and activity into real-world demonstrations.

“I do think that there's a lot of work to do to move people from where we are now to the kind of mass society-wide struggle that it will take to stop this regime,” Sam Goldman, host of the Refuse Fascism podcast, tells WIRED.

“What this is going to require is sacrifice,” he continues. “It is going to require what people did in the Arab Spring, which was, get in the streets, stay in the streets, bring more people into the streets, coming back again and again and again, and not stopping until their demands were met.”

But deciding what those demands are can be difficult, especially in a movement that is so decentralized, and often leaderless. As national groups and bigger names seek to leverage recently activated grassroots activism, conflicts and disagreements are inevitable. This happened among the leadership of the Women’s March, and it’s already happened within the 50501 subreddit.

Last week, as people took to the streets of Los Angeles to protest deportation raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, Trump called in the National Guard and Marines over the objections of California governor Gavin Newsom and LA mayor Karen Bass. Protests persisted anyway, as online supporters hit the streets.

[persialiu]

glory to the martyrs 🇵🇸

alhamdulillah at last it is the day of a ceasefire, but the genocide, colonialism, and apartheid remain

our work does not end until palestine is free

from the river to the sea

please follow the qr code link to access resources, fundraisers, and more: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XE9ahQJDj3DTjkrN5QRE5QXtMe0z2C9M2KR3Ndm_QQE/edit

Today is January 19, 2025. Below is a list of verified donation campaigns I have received from families in Palestine. I have created additional lists, which can be found on my blog under #gfmhighlights. Please donate urgently and generously.

Mahmoud ( @mahmoudgazza22 , @mahmoudgazza6 ) has $4,386 raised of $30,000 goal

Chuffed campaign

#381 on row 386 on @/gazavetters spreadsheet

Hanan Mahmoud ( @hanangaza0 , @gazahanan5 , @hanangaza12 , @hanangaza22 ) has $43,761 raised of $100K goal

Gofundme

#140 on row 145 on @/gazavetters spreadsheet

Abdul Rahman ( @abd2756 ) has €847 raised of €25K goal

Gofundme

#359 on row 364 on @/gazavetters spreadsheet

Safaa ( @sfaamq10 , @safaanxk )

Gofundme verified by @/90-ghost here

Chuffed campaign is unverified

Ahmed ( @ahmedalnabih23 ) has $2,268 raised of $20K goal

Gofundme

#186 on row 191 on @/gazavetters spreadsheet

Mahmoud Al-Sharif ( @mahmooud-sharif2 ) has $17,203 raised of $60K goal

Gofundme

Verified by @/90-ghost

Mohamed Alanqer ( @nourasbasha ) has €77,555 raised of €90K goal

Gofundme

Mohamed is a founding member of @/gazavetters

Mohammed Almanasra (@save-mohamed-family ) has been verified #192 on row 196 of el-shab-hussein and nabulsi’s spreadsheet

Gofundme

Chuffed campaign

Dr. Mohammed Al-Deeb ( @mohammedaldeeb ) has €46,084 raised of €55K goal

Gofundme

#212 on row 216 of el-shab-hussein and nabulsi’s spreadsheet

Ahed ( @ahedalshaer ) has been verified here

Gofundme

Siraj Abudayeh ( @siraj2024 ) has been verified #219 on row 223 of el-shab-hussein and nabulsi’s spreadsheet

Updated chuffed campaign

today palestine, soon sudan 🇸🇩 inshallah

List 3/#gfmhighlights

[wittyworm]

The linktree is live! @lovingthyneighbor was put together by me and my sister

We are going to be spreading stickers of these all over my town. a lot of people don't know what is happening in the world aside from what they see on the news. so i created a concise list of resources including videos and ways to help out, i want to help give people a better understanding of how it effects them and their neighbors.

I myself am Afro Boricua , and I live in a mostly Latino populated area aside from heavy tourism. It is important that we learn from our history. people think it cant happen to them, but it already has.

if you think this will be helpful to you and your neighbors, feel free to use the link and the QR code and the art yourself! no credit needed. lets get educated !

#Landback

[cuteknightbindery]

This is a mock cover for the tail of two pooka by kayasurin on A03. It is a great fic focusing on Jack and Bunny from Rotg. This author has done some amazing works for Rotg and this is a great look at Pooka Jack.

The original main part of the cover art of Jack and Bunny was created by the amazing @sourgoat inspired by the fic who gave me their permission to use their work in this cover. I hope I've done it justice! Due to the size of the original piece not entirely fitting the size a folio needs, I 'cut out' jack and bunny and found some of the original movie concept work regarding the Bunny's home. I then took different pieces from different concept works and cut and moved them into a background I liked. I loved the waster eggs on sourgoats original piece aswell as the concept art so I found other versions from the concept art and cut them and and moved them around how I liked. I really wanted to stay true to the original art as much as possible so I used Canva to add in flowers, plants and such around bunny and then different snow, ice and visible breezes (for Wind!) on Jack's.

Because the art is so stunning and the background so vibrant with lots of little add ons I didn't want to make the title or author name super attention grabbing so I chose a simple but elegant font and added a curve to name.

While I usually add the summary to the back, the wrap around style cover was so pretty I decided to not add it. I did however add a qr code to the fic with the wordcount and pricetag (£0.00).

I really enjoyed making this one! It probally took around 2-3 hours to make this one.

Keep fanfic free!

@kayasurin

[lunawings]

Brief Aikatsu FAQ

Although this is not an Aikatsu blog, for some reason I tend to get a lot of Aikatsu questions, so I'm going to pin this here!

I'm going to Japan. Where/How can I play Aikatsu?

All versions of the Aikatsu arcade game (Original/Stars/Friends/Parade/Planet) have been discontinued. However as of May 2024, there is an original Aikatsu machine and a Parade machine located at the Official Aikatsu Store in Akihabara and if you buy something at the store you can get a ticket to play one or the other. The machines themselves are free to play, however they are offline, meaning you cannot scan school IDs, create new characters, or get Aikatsu cards. Depending on how busy the store is, you might only get to play once, so I would suggest you go early and think about the song and character you might want to play!

Disclaimer: I've never been to the store myself, but I will update this post if I ever do go!

Where can I get Aikatsu QR codes? (For the 3DS games, etc.)

This website has an archive! The password is Aikatsu!Aikatsu!

Sometimes the password doesn't work on the first try. I don't know why, but try again!

[webtomo]

hi! do you by any chance know anything about the miis on the box art for tomodachi life? like, who re they supposed to be or something

Personally, I am not one of the people who is super invested in the CPU Miis as a whole (Ironically for someone who runs a Mii related blog, I am pretty faceblind). I do enjoy seeing them cameo in other games, though I am not really quickly able to identify most of them aside from some of the Wii series Miis.

However, to my knowledge I do believe that most (if not all) of the Miis present in the box art for all regional versions of the game are wholly unique and as far as I am aware, are not used in other Mii games prior to Tomodachi Life (and Collection on DS). However I could be entirely wrong on that. Anyone out there who may be more familiar with the CPU Miis, please feel free to make additional comments if you have any input!

The only Nintendo-created Miis for Tomodachi Life that have functional QR codes and are known to have mostly complete information about them (that I am aware of) would be the celebrity Miis and the Tomodachi Collection Fashion Catalogue Miis, all of whom are Special Miis with gold pants.

[arinzeture]

FREEDOM AINT FREE

Please join the All African People’s Revolutionary Party and the All African Women’s Revolutionary Union for a tribute to our ancestor and Black Liberation Army veteran, Sekou Odinga, on the 1st year anniversary of his passing.

This tribute will also include a listening party for the Freedom Ain’t Free album that was created by the Sekou Odinga Defense Committee in 2014, as well as information and updates on campaigns for several other political prisoners, mutual aid campaigns for Palestine, and how to get more involved with local organizing efforts.

If you cannot attend this program but would like to make contributions, please use the QR codes on this post or directly contact these organizations:

Curbfest (@curbfest_hou)

Free Xinachtli (@freexinachtlinow)

Free Kamau Sadiki (@freekamausadikicampaign)

Translating Falasteen (@translating_falasteen)

The Sameer Project (@thesameerproject)

ORGANIZE

FREE EM ALL

HOMELAND OR DEATH

PANAFRICANISM OR PERISH

#FREETHEMALL #Houston #Texas #LandBack #FreethePeople #panafricanism #HomelandorDeath #PanAfricanismorPerish #DefendAFRICA #Organize #JoinanOrganization #allafricanpeoplesrevolutionaryparty #BuildtheAAPRP #BuildTheAAWRU #AAPRP #AAWRU #JoinTheAfricanRevolution #Liberation #HandsOffHaiti #USoutofEverywhere #FranceoutofEverywhere #EuropeoutofEverywhere #UsoutoftheUS

#abolishNATO #shutdownafricom #antiimperialism #anticolonialism #antineocolonialism #antizionist

[bricksandmutualaid]

🚨The Next Phase of Pigeon Radicalization: From Park Bench Agitators to Aerial Anarchists🚨

The first phase of pigeon radicalization was simple: liberate them from their docile, breadcrumb-munching existence and awaken their revolutionary potential. We exposed them to theory (carefully shredded and scattered pages of The Conquest of Bread), trained them in direct action (coordinated dive-bombing of capitalist figureheads on their lunch breaks), and laid the foundation for an avian uprising.

Now, we must escalate.

1. Establishing Autonomous Pigeon Zones

A true revolutionary movement needs strongholds. Public squares, rooftops, and abandoned buildings already serve as pigeon refuges—why not transform them into autonomous zones? Humans think they own city infrastructure, but pigeons have squatter’s rights. By reinforcing these spaces with barricades of stolen french fries and cigarette butts, our feathered comrades can create safe havens free from bourgeois oppression (i.e., anti-bird spikes and city ordinances).

Pigeon-led mutual aid networks must emerge. Cooperative bread redistribution efforts will ensure that no pigeon goes hungry while their human allies strategically disrupt the supply chains of overpriced urban bakeries.

2. Counter-Surveillance and Cyber-Warfare

The state has already deployed its pigeon surveillance division—commonly known as “Birds Aren’t Real” conspiracy theorists. We must assume that some pigeons have been compromised and are working as informants. This is why encrypted coo-munications must be implemented. Research into whether pigeons can be taught to recognize QR codes could be the next major step in secure, low-tech messaging.

Meanwhile, select tech-savvy pigeons should be trained to infiltrate government offices via open windows, planting USB drives loaded with decryption software and manifestos.

3. Tactical Defecation Strikes

We must not underestimate the power of aerial bombardment. Pigeons have long been nature’s most precise ordinance delivery system. A well-placed dropping can demoralize CEOs, landlords, and police chiefs alike. In 2025, we must transition from opportunistic strikes to a well-coordinated tactical shitting campaign.

Pigeons must be trained to distinguish between targets. The rich: full force assault. The working class: solidarity poops only (gentle encouragement to unionize). Cops: full saturation bombing. This will require strategic feeding programs—certain dietary adjustments may yield more potent munitions.

4. Bridging the Gap Between Pigeon and Proletariat

We must take inspiration from history. During WWII, pigeons were trained as message carriers and even guided missiles. The technology exists; we must reclaim it for the people. Imagine a network of radicalized pigeons carrying encrypted notes between comrades in times of crisis. Picture a pigeon-mounted camera live-streaming protests from above, immune to tear gas and riot shields.

Further pigeon-human solidarity will require direct engagement. Bring your local pigeons into study groups. Offer them high-protein snacks for endurance training. Reward direct action efforts with choice sunflower seeds. It is time to integrate pigeons into the broader struggle against capitalism.

5. What Comes Next?

If we succeed in the above phases, the final goal is clear: the pigeons must seize the means of production. We begin small—commandeering street food carts and redistributing hot dogs to those in need. From there, it’s only a matter of time before pigeons occupy Amazon warehouses, pecking open boxes and redistributing goods to the people.

A liberated society must include all beings oppressed by capitalism. If we cannot achieve freedom for the pigeons, how can we ever hope to be free ourselves? The struggle continues. Let the revolution take flight.

Pt 1:

[pleasants-mii-code-palace]

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! Due to @mii-gallery being inactive, I decided to share my Miis! I create miis for the 3DS and WII U. If you are a switch user, there's plenty of Switch Creation Videos for Miis, and you should seek them out.

What is QR Codes?

Back in the days of the 3DS and Wii U, the way people were able to generate these Mii Codes were by the built in Mii Maker App on their respective consoles, with the power of just a button, people were able to export Mii Codes and publish them for all to see.

How did you do that when Online Services don't work?

Pretendo, but I don't have Pretendo. I hacked my 3DS in order to use the FTP App that Homebrew has, so I can connect to my PC and that exactly. It's not authorized or well good when you have an SD Card but when you're desperate like me then you need to find other ways of satiating that itch.

What can QR Codes be used for?

Mii Maker

Tomodachi Life

There's a lot of others, but those are my only things I can think of.

Why is [Mii] lowercase?

I made these Miis awhile back on another system pre-transfer and they cannot be edited. Unless you hacked your 3DS then you can rename the Miis itself, the names of the Owner of the Miis are just "Me" because usually I intended for those Miis to be used only by me.

Can I request Miis?

Yes! It's opened! Feel free to send in ASKS ONLY FOR MIIS any other related ask will be removed. Exceptions are made if you are inquiring about a Mii that's been created.

How many Miis can I request per Asks?

Depending on how complex or intriguing the Miis are, you can request around 5 IF they are from the same franchise/source, any mix and matches are not going to happen.

How many Miis have you created?

Alot, I have TONS of Miis from DBZ (Some are OCs), Willy Wonka from the 2005 reboot, Steven Universe, Some Miis that were children on my Tomodachi Life... This blog is just a way to store them all.

How can I support you?

I have a Kofi, so if you want priority you can always donate 3$ to get priority Miis up the Queue.

My Kofi: X

Priority Queue: 0

Requests Queue: 9

Personal Commissions: 0

Miis Created: 151

MII MASTERLIST

Check this link here: x