#HTML Report

[samvedschool]

Samved School – A Leading Choice Among Schools in Bangalore JP Nagar | Enroll Now!

We at Samved School, recognized among the best schools in Bangalore JP Nagar, prioritize your child’s holistic development by catering to their unique learning needs and developmental stages. Our approach blends academic excellence with life skills, ensuring students grow into confident, independent thinkers. With a student-centric curriculum, engaging activities, and a nurturing environment, we strive to make learning meaningful, enjoyable, and future-ready.

At Samved School, children engage in active and collaborative learning, ensuring their education is seamlessly connected to real-life experiences. Our goal is to foster their holistic development, nurturing both academic and life skills. As one of the leading schools in Bangalore JP Nagar, we emphasize a well-rounded approach that encourages critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving. Through experiential learning and hands-on activities, we empower students to become confident, independent learners prepared for the future.

English is the medium of instruction in the school, from Pre-Nursery to Standard X.

We have the following language options:

Primary School

I Language — English

II Language — Kannada

III Language — Hindi from Standard III

High School

Option I

I Language — English

II Language — Kannada

III Language — Hindi

Option II

I Language — English

II Language — Kannada

III Language — Sanskrit

At the end of Standard X, students appear for the SSLC Exam conducted by the Karnataka State Secondary Examination and Assessment Board.

Our campus features well-designed spaces for indoor activities, games, and art, while our spacious outdoor play area inspires exploration and the joy of free play. We believe that outdoor experiences spark creativity, nurture initiative, and cultivate self-reliance and responsibility in every child.

We use XSEED Education textbooks from Nursery to Standard VII and State/NCERT books from Standard VIII to X, ensuring alignment with the Karnataka State Board while integrating the best elements of various syllabuses. Our research-backed curriculum is designed to provide quality holistic education, fostering well-rounded development in every child.

The admission for 2024–2025 start from November 1st

Visit the following site to learn about the admissions process: school admission in Bangalore

Visit the following site to learn about the admissions rules: School Admission Bangalore

Contact Details :

Address : No13, 17th Cross, 20th Main, J.P. Nagar 5th, Phase Bangalore, Karnataka 560078

Email : office@samvedschool.in

Phone Number : 080 2659 0952 | 080 2659 0017 | 080 2649 1248

[jihnari]

hey hi, that's over 80% of people reading on a handheld device (phone or tablet). so ao3 html writers, why do you insist on writing exclusively for pc?

just a thought! maybe code for phones instead!!

[furiouszealot]

UPDATE: As of 25/04/2025, 4chan is back up and running again. This post and its addendum will be kept as is, and will no longer be updated unless it goes back down again. If you were on /ghost/, it was a pleasure shitposting with you.

All right, I know no one gives a shit, but let me give you a recounting of the fall of 4chan from the perspective of someone who was there and has been lurking both 4chan and tumblr for a few years now.

I'll try to provide as much context as I can, but a lot of images were either lost or im too lazy to look for them in the +5000 reply thread in soyjak party.

Anyways, info below:

So, necessary context: a few years back, 4chan had a board called /qa/, which if you know little about the page, you may think every board is like /b/ or /pol/, which means a containment cess pool of grifters, (you) baiters, incels, and other deranged individuals. The thing is, /qa/ was somehow worse. The entire board was plagued and infested with soyjack edits, board culture was a nuclear disaster, anons were incredibly hostile in there, you know the drill, the big bad 4chan, but this time its actually true.

One day, moderation deleted /qa/, anons that posted there got mad, tried to raid other boards, failed, and then moved on to an altchan called soyjack party, which entire purpose you can guess from its name alone.

Apparently, the boards that allow pdf uploads (paper and origami, for example) didn't check if the uploaded file was actually a pdf file, so postscript files could be used to get access. This is as far as my understanding of web backend goes, sorry.

The hacker claims to have been working on this since 2021, and that he had access since about a year ago, but was recopilating data.

Now, what actually happened when the hack ocurred? Well, a banner of miku dancing with a song that played automatically was placed on top of every board, with the text "/QA/ IS BACK", this was possible because apparently no board was ever deleted, they were just hidden from the public.

A thread was then made on soyjack party, claiming authorship over the hack, and shit went south from there. Anons went en masse to talk there, a lot of weird discussion happened, the thread got the bump limit removed and got pinned, more than 5k posts were amassed on the first night alone. Keep in mind this happened at about 8 pm and most of the stuff went on through midnight.

So, the hacker leaked some things, first of all, the html files for the entirety of /j/ and the email address for every moderation member (important note: the pressence of .gov mails was disproven by the hacker themselves, so i guess there were never any feds), what is /j/? the board exclusive for jannies and moderators to discuss actions taken on the website regarding spam, ban evaders, threads spiraling out of control, etc. Among other things, some of the inner workings of 4chan got revealed, such as the web extension for jannies that allows them to do their job easily, how reports are handled, and other stuff. (Anecdotically, some guy got permabanned for calling anons jews or n-words over a 100 times in the same few threads)

Then, the source code got leaked. Important to say, the hacker removed the part of the source code related to the captcha, as to not facilitate bot attacks on the future, and all information related to email verification or 4chan pass users information also got removed, so all in all users are safe.

What was found on the sourcecode? That it was old, mostly. Most boards used code that hasn't been updated since about 2016, and /flash/ used the exact same code from when it was created back on 2011.

From there, desuarchive, a site that archives threads that die from bump limit, opened a dragon ball general on ghost mode, and thus began what later got called /ghost/, a solely text based thread with well over 20k replies as of right now, where a fraction of the 4chan population took refuge and is currently discussing random things with no particular topic. Kinda hard to read, but its comfy.

What does this mean for other sites? Not a lot, really. A lot of anons already crossposted in 4chan and tumblr already, and the ones that din't most likely wont come here. Some of the bigger/most dedicated groups, like /vt/, migrated to other boards. Various altchans are trying/tried to catch some of the flock of users that got lost, but i doubt it will get anywhere, since soyjak party for example was struggling with just the influx of users that came for the hack thread given its poor infrastructure. Kiwifarms saw a surge of new accounts apparently, but a lot of anons kinda loathe the idea of having to register, so theres that.

Smaller communities, such as generals that didn't get a lot of traffic, or boards on the slower end (say, /ic/, /lit/, etc) will probably vanish or disseminate until (or if) 4chan comes back up. I'd say give it a month, don't get your hopes up whether you want it to stay dead or want it to come back.

Given how many anons are staying on places like /ghost/ or other similar archives with the same ghost posting feature, i doubt it will be as bad as people are making it sound. Besides, the communities that are most likely to migrate to places like tumblr are either /co/, /vg/ or /lgbt/ refugees, which aren't THAT bad. Not every board was like the main cesspools (/b/, /r9k/, /pol/).

From now on, either 4chan comes back up in a few weeks (somewhere between 2 weeks to a month is expected), altchans capture the migrating anons, or a brand new imageboard rises from the ashes to become the new go-to site for old 4chan posters.

In conclusion, nothing ever happens, but also don't worry, chances are this won't affect tumblr in the slightest. If it does, you can cash in your "you were wrong" ticket whenever you want, i'll take the L.

As a footnote, keep in mind: NO users were compromised, if you ever posted there and are worried for your safety, physical or digital, you are safe.

Edit: Forgot to add, if you are a 4chan refugee, im BEGGING you to dm me and tell what board you were from and where are you migrating, if at all.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

SoCal Gas spent millions on astroturf ops to fight climate rules

Today (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

It's a breathtaking fraud: SoCal Gas, the largest gas company in America, spent millions secretly paying people to oppose California environmental regulations, then illegally stuck its customers with the bill. We Californians were forced to pay to lobby against our own survival:

https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article277266828.html

The criminal scheme is spelled out in eye-watering detail in a superb investigative report by Joe Rubin and Ari Plachta for the Sacramento Bee, which names the law firms and individual lawyers involved in the scam.

Here's the situation: SoCal Gas is California's private, regulated gas monopoly. They are allowed to lobby, but are legally required to charge their lobbying activities to their shareholders, and are prohibited from raising customer rates to pay for lobbying.

The company spent years secretly violating this rule, in the sleaziest way possible: working with corporate cartels like the California Restaurant Association and BizFed, the monopoly paid BigLaw white-shoe firms to procure people who posed as concerned citizens in order to oppose climate regulations that are essential to the state's very survival.

The bill topped $36 million – and it was illegally charged to its customers, the Californians whose immediate health and long-term survival these efforts opposed. SoCal Gas refuses to disclose the full extent of the spending, as do its lawyer-procurers, who cite legal confidentiality and a First Amendment right to secretly seek to influence policy in their refusal to disclose their profits from this illegal conduct.

The law firms involved are a who's-who of California's most prominent corporate fixers, including Reichman Jorgensen and Holland & Knight. The partners involved have a long rap sheet for anti-climate dirty tricking, most notably Jennifer Hernandez, notorious in climate justice history for an incident where activists claim she posed as one of them, infiltrating a campaign to force corporate despoilers to clean up their pollution in order to sabotage it, while secretly on a wealthy, prominent landowner's payroll.

Hernandez claims to care about the environment and says that her longstanding, corporate-funded, extensive campaigns and lawsuits against state environmental regulations are motivated by concern over their impact on working people. Her firm, Holland & Knight, denies serving SoCal Gas in opposing gas regulations, but it received $594k in ratepayer dollars, and submitted comments opposing the rules on its own behalf. Those comments were nearly identical to the comments submitted by SoCal Gas.

Hernandez also represents an obscure organization called The Two Hundred for Home Ownership in "a flurry of lawsuits" over California Air Resources Board rules on pollution, seeking to overturn the state's landmark climate change regulations.

Two Hundred for Home Ownership was founded by Robert Apodaca, who told the Bee that Hernandez's work for him is pro bono and not funded by SoCal Gas, but his entry into the fray occurred just as SoCalGas was founding an astroturf group called Californians for Fair and Balanced Energy (C4BES), which pretended to be an independent organization, disguising its relationship with SoCal Gas.

Apodaca is also founder of United Latinos Vote, an organization that had been largely dormant for seven years, not receiving any donations, until 2018, when the California Building Industry Association gave it $99k. The CBIA is a large-dollar recipient of donations from SoCal Gas, and its CEO insists that it was not acting on SoCal Gas's behalf when it made its unpredented donation to Apodaca.

The CBIA donation to United Latinos Vote was forerunner to a flood of corporate donations from the likes of Chevron, Marathon and Phillips 66. Shortly after receiving this cash, United Latinos Vote ran a full page ad in the LA Times, accusing the Sierra Club of pushing for anti-gas appliance rules that would harm working class Latino families.

This ad, in turn, featured prominently in advocacy by the SoCal Gas front group C4BES, funded with $29.1m in ratepayer money, which it then spent seeking to link clean appliance rules with anti-Latino racism. A quarter of California's carbon emissions come from home gas use.

SoCal Gas is regulated by the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC), which tolerated this mounting illegal conduct for many years, even as the company circulated internal memos as early as 2015 discussing its plans to oppose electrification in the state on the basis that it constituted "a significant risk to our business."

But last year, CPUC fined SoCal Gas $10m. Now, CPUC's Public Advocate office has filed a damning, extensive report on SoCal Gas's unlawful conduct, seeking $80m in rate cuts to compensate Californians for the funds misappropriated to protect the company's shareholder interests:

https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Efile/G000/M517/K407/517407314.PDF

Additionally, the Public Advocate is demanding $233m in fines for the company's refusal to allow investigators to audit its books and discover the full extent of the fraud.

SoCal Gas is the nation's largest utility, but (incredibly), it's not the dirtiest. That prize goes to Ohio's FirstEnergy, which handed $60m in ratepayer dollars to state politicians in illegal bribes in exchange for coal and nuclear subsidies and cancellation of state climate rules. That scandal led to GOP speaker of the Ohio House Larry Householder being sentenced to 20 years in prison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_nuclear_bribery_scandal

There is something extraordinarily sleazy about using ratepayers' own money to lobby against their interests. SoCal Gas and its Big Law enablers have funneled millions in Californian's money into campaigns to poison us and boil us alive, and they did it while using workers and racialized people as human shields.

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

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/2023/08/19/cooking-the-books-with-gas/#reichman-jorgensen

Image: Maryland GovPics (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/mdgovpics/6635539089/

Jackie (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/79874304@N00/197532792

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[kitkins13]

shared from Click's subreddit:

Trump actually cheated and there's time for a recount but we need to act NOW!

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheClickOwO/s/KTdyrF1AdD

idk how accurate any of this is but if even some is true I really hope something can be done

(post text is below the cut)

Not enough people are talking about this and there's still time.

Trump did actually cheat and someone compiled all the evidence on twitter: https://x.com/Espaking2/status/1854287198331515005

Edit:

If you don't have twitter, this will show most of the thread but may not have the entire thing: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1854287198331515005.html

People are reposting and saving it because from what I saw in the comments, Elon has been deleting any evidence against trump tampering the election.

- Trump said a few weeks back that he didn't need anymore votes, that he had more than enough.

- Trump also said he had a 'trick up his sleeve' to win.

- A bomb scare was called into areas where voting was taking place, so people would flee the areas and not vote.

- Ballot boxes were then set on fire by trump supporters.

-20 MILLION Ballots went missing. People only just got emails today about their ballots going missing, their signatures suddenly not being accepted, or some outright being destroyed if they didn't vote for trump.

- Trump has a long history of lying, cheating, blackmailing and bribing people to get what he wants.

Kamala was in the lead to win but literally after these ballots were lost and after the russian bomb scare, somehow trump ended up with the highest republican vote in over 20+ years.

- Russian software used for rigging elections was found being used.

All of the evidence is in that tweet but I've also saved a copy of everything in case Elon attacks that post too. There's a link to contact the white house and to (politely) demand a refund due to the evidence of trump cheating:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Submit directly to the president.

Click the first option, select your reasoning as election security.

State these pieces of information as a paragraph:

-32 fake bomb threats were called into democratic leaning poll places, rendering polls to be closed for at least an hour

- a lot of people reporting their ballots weren't counted for various reasons that are not very sound seeming (signature invalidation, information that vote counter could not have had)

This all occured in swing states (PA, Nevada, Georigia, ETC.)

- This is all too coincidental that these things happen and swing in his favor after months of hinting of foul play

- Directly state that an investigation for tampering/fraud is required, not just a recount

Again, there is not much time, please, please, please make this spread like wildfire, there's still time to do this!

(trigger warning, SA

(trump is not a good person. Aside from a history of the above and dodgy legal activities, he also has a long history of SA towards women and children. Trump is a convicted p*dophile and project 2025 will strip away the rights from anyone who isn't a cis white man.

Please, please, please spread this information, read through the twitter evidence thread and share it. There's still time to demand an investigation but we have to act NOW

[apod]

2025 January 26

The Many Tails of Comet G3 ATLAS Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Mašek (FZU, Czech Academy of Sciences) & Jakub Kuřák

Explanation: Why does this comet have so many tails? C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) has developed several long and intricate tails visible from Earth's southern hemisphere over the past two weeks. Many observers reported seeing the impressive comet without any optical aid above the western horizon just after sunset. At least six different tails appear in the featured image captured five days ago from the dark skies above Paranal Observatory in Chile. One possible cause for the multiple tails is dust and gas being expelled from the comet's rotating nucleus. The outward push of the Sun's complex solar wind may also play a role. The huge iceberg-like nucleus of Comet ATLAS appears to have broken up near its closest approach to the Sun two weeks ago. Unfortunately, Comet ATLAS and its tails are expected to fade significantly over the coming weeks.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250126.html

[lolita-wardrobe]

Your Faithful Knight Reports To You.

◆ Shopping Link of the Outfits >>> https://lolitawardrobe.com/princess-chronicles-future-knights-ultimate-battle-ouji-lolita-shirt-cape-and-jumper-dress_p8177.html

[nando161mando]

UnitedHealth, employer of slain exec Brian Thompson, found to have overcharged some cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%

https://www.yahoo.com/news/unitedhealth-employer-slain-exec-brian-175429944.html?guccounter=1

[lonely-coconut]

New blinkie credit system idea

Heyo, new idea for my blinkie site today! So, right now for each blinkie they are linked to their source, and then it also says the source when hovered over, and it has a screenshot of the source (in an html comment) in case the credit link dies one day.

The problem is, that’s a whole lot of bologna. With this current system, I will have to swap the credit link for a screenshot link whenever an old link dies. And, well… how am I supposed to know when a credit link dies?? I’m not checking random blinkies 24/7. (Well, I kind of am… but that’s because I’m coding my blinkie site. Shh.) Would I make some kind of reporting system so users can tell me when they find a broken credit link? Or, will I have to tell the users that if a link is broken, to go into the code to find the screenshot?

No, those are both ridiculous and inefficient. Ideally, I won’t have to update a blinkie’s code at all, and the site should be accessible and intuitive to everyone. Once a blinkie’s in, it’s in, and good to go forever. That’s how it should be anyway. So my solution? Give each blinkie a link to it’s source AND a link to it's screenshot! I didn’t think this would be possible or easy, but with some css I think I’ve figured it out! Check it out gang:

(Blinkie source btw)

When you hover over a blinkie, you get three options. A link to the source, a link to the screenshot proving the creator, and a link to view the blinkie at full size! And, the blinkie itself is still linked to the source as well, so a simple click will still take you there. With this new system, I won’t have to update anything. Instead, on site I will explain like “Hey, each blinkie is linked to it’s source, but if the link is broken, you can view a screenshot which proves who the creator is by hovering over the blinkie!”

This goes so hard. I’m very happy about it. This means that I won’t have to update the site for credit over time, and the site should ideally still work perfectly fine without my intervention for years to come! The credit for every blinkie shall be immortalized, and accessible to all. It’s very exciting! Things are going just so swell right now.

Edit: Posting this today since I forgot it in my drafts lol. Since then the dropdown css looks a lot better, and I also made variations for each blinkie color! I’m not going to have this on day one (focusing more on quantity over quality right now), but I plan to go back and implement this at some point!

[terrorcamp]

Terror Camp is hiring!

We are looking to expand our volunteer staff for this year’s conference.

We have two job listings based on our current needs, but if we receive a lot of great applicants there is the possibility we’ll split up these responsibilities into 3 or even 4 separate positions.

Terror Camp is a fully volunteer, remote, asynchronous workplace (with occasional sync meetings as schedules permit). We communicate over Discord and organize our documentation over Notion and Google Drive.

We are looking for people who can devote up to a few hours a week, depending on the time of year. Commitment increases around the times of Submission Opening (June 1), Submission Closing/Acceptances (September 1-Oct 1) and the conference itself (early December).

Terror Camp looks great on your resume. You can say that you volunteer for a successful community-led online history & heritage conference with an audience in the thousands!

You don’t need to match the job descriptions perfectly in order to apply. If your experience doesn’t match up but you think you’d still be good at the job, please apply anyway!

Here are the positions we're looking to fill:

🎨 Designer 🎨

Terror Camp is seeking a dedicated Designer who will:

Ideate and deliver a new evergreen brand identity for TC that can be revamped and reused each year

Including logo, logotype, color scheme, font families, and other brand assets for use on web, social media, and printed merch

Be an proactive team member with strong communication skills, able to quickly and regularly deliver new graphics for promotional use on social media and in email marketing

Help design an evergreen/permanent collection of merchandise as well as a limited-edition collection for this year’s conference

Assist our Webmaster in revising our website & email marketing templates to fully match new brand identity and meet best practices for UX

Potentially work on print layout for a Terror Camp book or zine (TBD)

This job would be a good fit if you:

Work or have worked professionally or semi-professionally as a graphic designer; or are a hobbyist designer with a standout portfolio

Have experience working with both digital and print assets

Have a working knowledge of web design best practices and HTML/CSS

Have experience with Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Canva (but not ONLY Canva, sorry) and Wix or similar WYSIWYG ESP/site builder

The Designer will report to our Assistant Director/Webmaster, & will also collaborate closely with our Marketing Lead on graphic assets for social media and with our Merch Lead on preparing designs for print.

To apply, please fill out this form.

💬 Communications Coordinator 💬

Terror Camp is seeking an enthusiastic Communications Coordinator who will:

Own Terror Camp’s main email inbox and oversee all direct communication with attendees and interested parties

Respond promptly to inquiries including:

Requests for past recordings

Requests to join the Discord

Questions about schedule, programming, submissions, guests, and other conference topics

Catch inbounds to social media inboxes (Tumblr, X, Bluesky, Insta) & answer or redirect to email as appropriate

Act as coordinator/assistant for Marketing Lead, with responsibilities including:

Scheduling pre-written content

Assisting with ideating and drafting content, proposing content ideas

Cross-posting content to multiple platforms

Consistently and frequently engaging with social audiences (finding content to repost, replying to people, etc)

This job would be a good fit if you:

Work or have worked in any digital customer-facing environment; have experience with support tickets and/or ongoing user communications; have run social media for brands or institutions; are an efficient and clear writer able to work creatively within brand voice guidelines

Have successfully and sustainably moderated Discord servers, Tumblr communities, social media for other fandom projects like fests, zines, and charity events

Can spare the time and attention to respond to inquiries and turn around new social media posts in a timely manner

Are prepared to represent the Terror Camp brand professionally and maturely in digital public spaces

The Communications Coordinator will report directly to our Marketing Lead.

To apply, please fill out this form.

If you have any questions about these positions, please email us at command [at] terror [dot] camp!

[samvedschool]

List of schools in South Bangalore

 Education is the foundation of progress and a significant part of your child’s development. One of the best schools in JP Nagar Bangalore South makes sure you do not have to worry about your education.

We focus on your child’s holistic development keeping their learning needs and developmental stages in mind. Education is the basic foundation of progress. Samved, one of the best schools in Bangalore South, aspires to nurture your children into good human beings with adequate skills and expertise necessary to excel in life. Children are given opportunities for active and collaborative learning. We ensure your child’s learning is connected to real-life needs and cultural activities for students. Our aim is to address the overall development of your child.

At Samved, regarded as one of the best schools in JP Nagar Bangalore, we believe that every child is unique. We take this into account when creating programs for each child, and we aim to make sure that your child grows up with the tools they need to succeed. We know that your child has a unique learning style, developmental stage, and level of maturity. When you enroll your child in Samved, we work with them to create the environment that will help them thrive.

Samved School’s journey began in 1967 as A.V. Education Society with 50 children in a rented building in Jayanagar, Bangalore. We have over 1000 happy children enrolled currently.

It has been accredited by the Department of Education in Karnataka to follow the State’s S.S.L.C. Syllabus from Standards I to X. We are currently rated as one of the top 10 schools in south Bangalore out of 1500 schools.

Looking for top educational institutions in South Bangalore? Start your search with Samved School, renowned for its holistic approach to education and commitment to student success.

CONTACT US

No.13, 17th Cross, 20th Main, J.P. Nagar 5th Phase Bangalore, Karnataka 560078

080 2659 0952 080 2659 0017 080 2649 1248

office@samvedschool.in

[saywhat-politics]

GOP gets SHOCKED by MASSIVE LOSS in SOUTH CAROLINA!!!!

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Republicans losing big in a South Carolina special election for a State House seat.

https://www.270towin.com/news/2025/06/03/live-results-south-carolina-state-house-district-50-special-election_1738.html

[egelantier]

PSA: Winterfox/Requires Hate/Benjanun Sriduangkaew/Maria Ying

I'm starting to see recs for Benjanun Sriduangkaew crop up in fandom again, so here's your reminder that Benjanun Sriduangkaew, aka Maria Ying, is actually Winterfox/Requires_Hate, a well-known serial harasser, blackmailer and abuser who decided that the best thing to do with her multimillionaire heiress time and money is to do real and lasting harm to many communities and many writers (especially writers of color) that she saw as rivals.

with how fast things move online right now, I imagine she's banking on people just forgetting everything she pulled: please don't! But even if you won't deny her your attention, at least keep yourself safe and remember that her modus operandi used to be either love bombing people until they let slip something she then blackmailed them with, or literally decades of unhinged harassment.

feel free to share.

original sources:

Mixon report: https://feralsapient.com/?p=889

The letter to Apex editors: https://web.archive.org/web/20170216003240/http://awitin.likhain.net/2017/02/a-letter-to-apex-editors-re-the-intersectional-sff-roundtable/

Zen Cho's report (start here of you never heard of any of this): https://web.archive.org/web/20200808225250/https://zencho.org/being-an-itemised-list-of-disagreements/

*she had once upon a time deleted her blog, hence the Wayback link; but now it's re-uploaded by her here, as she explicitly still stands by her words: https://zencho.org/articles/being-an-itemised-list-of-disagreements/

Rachel Manija Brown's report: https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/1288081.html

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Academic economists get big payouts when they help monopolists beat antitrust

After 40 years of rampant corporate crime, there's a new sheriff in town: Jonathan Kanter was appointed by Biden to run the DOJ Antitrust Divisoon, and he's overseen 170 "significant antitrust actions" in the past 2.5 years, culminating in a court case where Google was ruled to be an illegal monopolist:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

Kanter's work is both extraordinary and par for the course. As Kanter said in a recent keynote for the Fordham Law Competition Law Institute’s 51st Annual Conference on International Antitrust Law and Policy, we're witnessing an epochal, global resurgence of antitrust:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/assistant-attorney-general-jonathan-kanter-delivers-remarks-fordham-competition-law-0

Kanter's incredible enforcement track record isn't just part of a national trend – his colleagues in the FTC, CFPB and other agencies have also been pursuing an antitrust agenda not seen in generations – but also a worldwide trend. Antitrust enforcers in Canada, the UK, the EU, South Korea, Australia, Japan and even China are all taking aim at smashing corporate monopolies. Not only are they racking up impressive victories against these giant corporations, they're stealing the companies' swagger. After all, the point of enforcement isn't just to punish wrongdoing, but also to deter wrongdoing by others.

Until recently, companies hurled themselves into illegal schemes (mergers, predatory pricing, tying, refusals to deal, etc) without fear or hesitation. Now, many of these habitual offenders are breaking the habit, giving up before they've even tried. Take Wiz, a startup that turned down Google's record-shattering $23b buyout offer, understanding that the attempt would draw more antitrust scrutiny than it was worth:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wiz-turns-down-23-billion-022926296.html

As welcome as this antitrust renaissance is, it prompts an important question: why didn't we enforce antitrust law for the 40 years between Reagan and Biden?

That's what Kanter addresses the majority of his remarks to. The short answer is: crooked academic economists took bribes from monopolists and would-be monopolists to falsify their research on the impacts of monopolists, and made millions (literally – one guy made over $100m at this) testifying that monopolies were good and efficient.

After all, governments aren't just there to enforce rules – they have to make the rules first, and do to that, they need to understand how the world works, so they can understand how to fix the places where it's broken. That's where experts come in, filling regulators' dockets and juries' ears with truthful, factual testimony about their research. Experts can still be wrong, of course, but when the system works well, they're only wrong by accident.

The system doesn't work well. Back in the 1950s, the tobacco industry was threatened by the growing scientific consensus that smoking caused cancer. Industry scientists confirmed this finding. In response, the industry paid statisticians, doctors and scientists to produce deceptive research reports and testimony about the tobacco/cancer link.

The point of this work wasn't necessarily to convince people that tobacco was safe – rather, it was to create the sense that the safety of tobacco was a fundamentally unanswerable question. "Experts disagree," and you're not qualified to figure out who's right and who's wrong, so just stop trying to figure it out and light up.

In other words, Big Tobacco's cancer denial playbook wasn't so much an attack on "the truth" as it was an attack on epistemology – the system by which we figure out what is true and what isn't. The tactic was devastatingly effective. Not only did it allow the tobacco giants to kill millions of people with impunity, it allowed them to reap billions of dollars by doing so.

Since then, epistemology has been under sustained assault. By the 1970s, Big Oil knew that its products would render the Earth unfit for human habitation, and they hired the same companies that had abetted Big Tobacco's mass murder to provide cover for their own slow-motion, planetary scale killing spree.

Time and again, big business has used assaults on epistemology to provide cover for unthinkable crimes. This has given rise to today's epistemological crisis, in which we don't merely disagree about what is true, but (far more importantly) disagree about how the truth can be known:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/25/black-boxes/#when-you-know-you-know

Ask a conspiratorialist why they believe in Qanon or Hatians in Springfield eating pets, and you'll get an extremely vibes-based answer – fundamentally, they believe it because it feels true. As the old saying goes, you can't reason someone out of a belief they didn't reason their way into.

This assault on reason itself is at the core of Kanter's critique. He starts off by listing three cases in which academic economists allowed themselves to be corrupted by the monopolies they studied:

George Mason University tricked an international antitrust enforcer into attending a training seminar that they believed to be affiliated with the US government. It was actually sponsored by the very companies that enforcer was scrutnizing, and featured a parade of "experts" who asserted that these companies were great, actually.

An academic from GMU – which receives substantial tech industry funding – signed an amicus brief opposing an enforcement action against their funders. The academic also presented a defense of these funders to the OECD, all while posing as a neutral academic and not disclosing their funding sources.

An ex-GMU economist, Joshua Wright, submitted a study defending Qualcomm against the FTC, without disclosing that he'd been paid to do so. Wright has elevated undisclosed conflicts of interest to an art form:

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/google-lawyer-secret-weapon-joshua-wright-c98d5a31

Kanter is at pains to point out that these three examples aren't exceptional. The economics profession – whose core tenet is "incentive matter" – has made it standard practice for individual researchers and their academic institutions to take massive sums from giant corporations. Incredibly, they insist that this has nothing to do with their support of monopolies as "efficient."

Academic centers often serve as money-laundries for monopolist funders; researchers can evade disclosure requirements when they publish in journals or testify in court, saying only that they work for some esteemed university, without noting that the university is utterly dependent on money from the companies they're defending.

Now, Kanter is a lawyer, not an academic, and that means that his job is to advocate for positions, and he's at pains to say that he's got nothing but respect for ideological advocacy. What he's objecting to is partisan advocacy dressed up as impartial expertise.

For Kanter, mixing advocacy with expertise doesn't create expert advocacy – it obliterates expertise, as least when it comes to making good policy. This mixing has created a "crisis of expertise…a pervasive breakdown in the distinction between expertise and advocacy in competition policy."

The point of an independent academia, enshrined in the American Association of University Professors' charter, is to "advance knowledge by the unrestricted research and unfettered discussion of impartial investigators." We need an independent academy, because "to be of use to the legislator or the administrator, [an academic] must enjoy their complete confidence in the disinterestedness of [his or her] conclusions."

It's hard to overstate just how much money economists can make by defending monopolies. Writing for The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner gives the rate at $1,000/hour. Monopoly's top defenders make unimaginable sums, like U Chicago's Dennis Carlton, who's brought in over $100m in consulting fees:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-09-24-economists-as-apologists/

The hidden cost of all of this is epistemological consensus. As Tim Harford writes in his 2021 book The Data Detective, the truth can be known through research and peer-review:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford

But when experts deliberately seek to undermine the idea of expertise, they cast laypeople into an epistemological void. We know these questions are important, but we can't trust our corrupted expert institutions. That leaves us with urgent questions – and no answers. That's a terrifying state to be in, and it makes you easy pickings for authoritarian grifters and conspiratorial swindlers.

Seen in this light, Kanter's antitrust work is even more important. In attacking corporate power itself, he is going after the machine that funds this nihilism-inducing corruption machine.

This week, Tor Books published SPILL, a new, free LITTLE BROTHER novella about oil pipelines and indigenous landback!

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/2024/09/25/epistemological-chaos/#incentives-matter

Image: Ron Cogswell (modified) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:George.Mason.University.Arlington.Campus.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[weeaboo-kei]

Sakuracon lolita panel report from April 6-8, 2007 (almost 17 years ago...)

all images from this post by user martel9 on egl livejournal https://egl.livejournal.com/8608584.html?page=2

[gingerdusk]

List of Tumblr things that would NOT get the Tumblr devs eaten alive for changing the website (Tumblr please take notes)

We're changing how moderation works: Reporting blogs at a certain threshold (maybe 1000 unique reports) gets it sent to a human person for manual review. Nobody gets deleted without a human pulling the kill switch.

Refined search engine: There's a new button you can press when searching a term that lets you exclude certain tags, sort by date posted/most likes/etc. Also you can refine it to include only results from certain users. It's the Ao3 system. Please I'm begging you Tumblr's search is so broken and hides so many works behind an arbitrary cap. You can't tell me there are only 3000 posts about Zelda over the 10+ years this site has been alive, you CAN'T.

Theme on/off switch on page: Themes are an integral part of Tumblr. You can HTML things to death. But sometimes they're illegible to some people, so instead of having to swap "powdermelonkeg.tumblr.com" to "tumblr.com/powdermelonkeg" manually, there's a sliding toggle at the top of the blog that allows you to quickly switch between them.

Filterable asks: You can set blocked terms so people can't send you them in your ask box. For example, if I don't want to see anything about "weather," nobody can ask me anything that includes the word "weather." And if there's a scam/copypasta sort of thing going around, you can block entire paragraphs of text.

Mutual icons beside usernames on posts: Same as it is in the Activity tab, you can now see if someone who put something on your dash is a mutual or not.

Search followers/following letter-by-letter: No longer do you have to type in "powdermelonkeg" spelled exactly correctly to see if you're following powdermelonkeg, you can just type in "powd" and all users except "powdermelonkeg," "powderpuffgirls," "expowd" etc will be filtered out. (I MADE THESE USERNAMES UP EXCEPT MINE. I DON'T KNOW THESE PEOPLE)

Toggleable See Results: You asked, we heard, you can now decide when making a poll whether or not people should be allowed to see the results before they've voted.

Block Specific Posts: Sometimes something's so icky it makes your stomach turn. Sometimes you're just sick of all your mutuals reblogging the same meme. Block a post without blocking OP.