#How to protect PDF file

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ad-tech targeting is an existential threat

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me TORONTO on SUNDAY (Feb 23) at Another Story Books, and in NYC on WEDNESDAY (26 Feb) with JOHN HODGMAN. More tour dates here.

The commercial surveillance industry is almost totally unregulated. Data brokers, ad-tech, and everyone in between – they harvest, store, analyze, sell and rent every intimate, sensitive, potentially compromising fact about your life.

Late last year, I testified at a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau hearing about a proposed new rule to kill off data brokers, who are the lynchpin of the industry:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

The other witnesses were fascinating – and chilling, There was a lawyer from the AARP who explained how data-brokers would let you target ads to categories like "seniors with dementia." Then there was someone from the Pentagon, discussing how anyone could do an ad-buy targeting "people enlisted in the armed forces who have gambling problems." Sure, I thought, and you don't even need these explicit categories: if you served an ad to "people 25-40 with Ivy League/Big Ten law or political science degrees within 5 miles of Congress," you could serve an ad with a malicious payload to every Congressional staffer.

Now, that's just the data brokers. The real action is in ad-tech, a sector dominated by two giant companies, Meta and Google. These companies claim that they are better than the unregulated data-broker cowboys at the bottom of the food-chain. They say they're responsible wielders of unregulated monopoly surveillance power. Reader, they are not.

Meta has been repeatedly caught offering ad-targeting like "depressed teenagers" (great for your next incel recruiting drive):

https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/01/105987/is-facebook-targeting-ads-at-sad-teens/

And Google? They just keep on getting caught with both hands in the creepy commercial surveillance cookie-jar. Today, Wired's Dell Cameron and Dhruv Mehrotra report on a way to use Google to target people with chronic illnesses, people in financial distress, and national security "decision makers":

https://www.wired.com/story/google-dv360-banned-audience-segments-national-security/

Google doesn't offer these categories itself, they just allow data-brokers to assemble them and offer them for sale via Google. Just as it's possible to generate a target of "Congressional staffers" by using location and education data, it's possible to target people with chronic illnesses based on things like whether they regularly travel to clinics that treat HIV, asthma, chronic pain, etc.

Google claims that this violates their policies, and that they have best-of-breed technical measures to prevent this from happening, but when Wired asked how this data-broker was able to sell these audiences – including people in menopause, or with "chronic pain, fibromyalgia, psoriasis, arthritis, high cholesterol, and hypertension" – Google did not reply.

The data broker in the report also sold access to people based on which medications they took (including Ambien), people who abuse opioids or are recovering from opioid addiction, people with endocrine disorders, and "contractors with access to restricted US defense-related technologies."

It's easy to see how these categories could enable blackmail, spear-phishing, scams, malvertising, and many other crimes that threaten individuals, groups, and the nation as a whole. The US Office of Naval Intelligence has already published details of how "anonymous" people targeted by ads can be identified:

https://www.odni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ODNI-Declassified-Report-on-CAI-January2022.pdf

The most amazing part is how the 33,000 targeting segments came to public light: an activist just pretended to be an ad buyer, and the data-broker sent him the whole package, no questions asked. Johnny Ryan is a brilliant Irish privacy activist with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. He created a fake data analytics website for a company that wasn't registered anywhere, then sent out a sales query to a brokerage (the brokerage isn't identified in the piece, to prevent bad actors from using it to attack targeted categories of people).

Foreign states, including China – a favorite boogeyman of the US national security establishment – can buy Google's data and target users based on Google ad-tech stack. In the past, Chinese spies have used malvertising – serving targeted ads loaded with malware – to attack their adversaries. Chinese firms spend billions every year to target ads to Americans:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/business/google-meta-temu-shein.html

Google and Meta have no meaningful checks to prevent anyone from establishing a shell company that buys and targets ads with their services, and the data-brokers that feed into those services are even less well-protected against fraud and other malicious act.

All of this is only possible because Congress has failed to act on privacy since 1988. That's the year that Congress passed the Video Privacy Protection Act, which bans video store clerks from telling the newspapers which VHS cassettes you have at home. That's also the last time Congress passed a federal consumer privacy law:

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

The legislative history of the VPPA is telling: it was passed after a newspaper published the leaked video-rental history of a far-right judge named Robert Bork, whom Reagan hoped to elevate to the Supreme Court. Bork failed his Senate confirmation hearings, but not because of his video rentals (he actually had pretty good taste in movies). Rather, it was because he was a Nixonite criminal and virulent loudmouth racist whose record was strewn with the most disgusting nonsense imaginable).

But the leak of Bork's video-rental history gave Congress the cold grue. His video rental history wasn't embarrassing, but it sure seemed like Congress had some stuff in its video-rental records that they didn't want voters finding out about. They beat all land-speed records in making it a crime to tell anyone what kind of movies they (and we) were watching.

And that was it. For 37 years, Congress has completely failed to pass another consumer privacy law. Which is how we got here – to this moment where you can target ads to suicidal teens, gambling addicted soldiers in Minuteman silos, grannies with Alzheimer's, and every Congressional staffer on the Hill.

Some people think the problem with mass surveillance is a kind of machine-driven, automated mind-control ray. They believe the self-aggrandizing claims of tech bros to have finally perfected the elusive mind-control ray, using big data and machine learning.

But you don't need to accept these outlandish claims – which come from Big Tech's sales literature, wherein they boast to potential advertisers that surveillance ads are devastatingly effective – to understand how and why this is harmful. If you're struggling with opioid addiction and I target an ad to you for a fake cure or rehab center, I haven't brainwashed you – I've just tricked you. We don't have to believe in mind-control to believe that targeted lies can cause unlimited harms.

And those harms are indeed grave. Stein's Law predicts that "anything that can't go on forever eventually stops." Congress's failure on privacy has put us all at risk – including Congress. It's only a matter of time until the commercial surveillance industry is responsible for a massive leak, targeted phishing campaign, or a ghastly national security incident involving Congress. Perhaps then we will get action.

In the meantime, the coalition of people whose problems can be blamed on the failure to update privacy law continues to grow. That coalition includes protesters whose identities were served up to cops, teenagers who were tracked to out-of-state abortion clinics, people of color who were discriminated against in hiring and lending, and anyone who's been harassed with deepfake porn:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

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/2025/02/20/privacy-first-second-third/#malvertising

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[dlstmxkakwldrlarchive]

(update) Notice on Legal Action Against Infringement of Artist's Rights

Hello, this is Griffin Entertainment.

First, we would like to express our gratitude to the fans who show love and support for our artist, Onew.

We have confirmed that defamatory remarks, malicious criticism, false rumors, personal attacks, and other harmful posts about Onew are continuously being spread across SNS and various online communities.Such actions are illegal as they violate the artist’s reputation and rights.

Therefore, we have appointed legal experts and are currently taking legal steps, including filing complaints with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.

Not only will we continue with our ongoing cases, but we also plan to take all possible legal measures without any leniency or settlements in the future.

Additionally, we sincerely thank fans for providing tip-off materials, which have been of great help. We will continue collecting evidence related to defamation and malicious posts, so we ask for your active cooperation in reporting such cases.

Report Email: protect@griffinent.com

[How to report malicious post]

1. Email to : protect@griffinent.com

2. Email subject : [온유] 악성 게시물 신고/[ONEW] Report of Malicious Post

3. Email content

1. Posting date : year. month. day. time

2. Posting platform :

3. Posting URL:

4. Post author (Nickname, ID, etc):

5. Content:

6. Attach supporting documents (PDF, JPG, etc)

*Please attach whole screenshot showing the posting date, posting author, URL

translation

[bisexualbaker]

Crochet Pattern for Palestine and Israel Relief

At long last, it's done!

This crochet pattern is for small cats, of a good size to make into keychains, magnets, or even hair clips! There are six PDF versions available:

- US stitch names in 12 point Atkinson Hyperlegible - US stitch names in 22 point Atkinson Hyperlegible - US stitch names in 22 point Comic Sans

- UK stitch names in 12 point Atkinson Hyperlegible - UK stitch names in 22 point Atkinson Hyperlegible - UK stitch names in 22 point Comic Sans

Between those six options, that should cover most pattern accessibility needs. If you need something else, though, let me know! I'm prepared to offer a .doc or similar file on an individual basis if you need a screenreader to access crochet patterns, and have a sheet I can use to translate things to German stitch terms (though more in-depth instructions would still be in English). The pattern is worked primarily in (US) single crochet/(UK) double crochet, with the ears in (US) double crochet/(UK) treble crochet popcorn stitches, and is bundled with similar file options of a popcorn stitch tutorial PDF (no stitch names used).

"Socchan," you say, "These cats are super cute! And you said that this pattern is for charity? How does that work exactly?"

I'm glad you asked! Simply donate a minimum of $3 or close-enough local equivalent to a related charity, then take a screencap of your receipt/proof of donation. Block out any information that could doxx you; it's nice if you trust me, but it's not impossible that my email could get hacked, and I want you to be safe! Finally, email the altered screencap to socchan (at) protonmail (dot) com.

Once I get and check the screencap, I will email you back with a link to a MediaFire folder and the password you'll need to open the PDFs. Yes, it is a bit of a pain to need a password to open these files, but this was the simplest way I could figure out how to do things without needing to upload and send a minimum of six files to every person. Download as many of the variations as you want, keep a copy of the password somewhere safe (and don't delete the email with it), and go to town!

As a bonus, if you take your donation up to at least $5 (or close-enough local equivalent), I'll throw in an additional link and password for a very cute little flower pattern!

"That sounds pretty easy," you go on to say, "but where should I donate? There are so many options to choose from!"

No problem! Here's a couple of short lists of options that can help you narrow things down:

Palestine: Palestine Children's Relief Fund - Focuses on medical aid to children in Palestine Medical Aid for Palestine - "[H]elp MAP respond to the ongoing emergency in Gaza, as well as provide medical supplies, support healthcare services and deliver long term development to healthcare in the occupied Palestinian territory and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon." MAP reportedly has a team on the ground in Gaza, providing critical medical aid. Anera - Providing food, hygiene kits, and medical care in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Palestine Red Crescent - More medical support in Palestine; the rest of the webpage is in Arabic, so be prepared if you want to click around at all. Basically the Palestinian Red Cross. Gaza Cemetery Project - "Al-Hamdulillah, a ​​5,500 square meters’ piece of land has been secured to create a public cemetery for the city and neighbouring areas." This area still needs a fence to protect the burial plots before it can be used.

Israel: Zaka - A group of first responders and people who identify bodies and prepare them for burial (sadly, sorely needed right now); they are in need of safety equipment, medical supplies, first aid kits, and more. Red Magen David - The Israeli/Jewish equivalent of the Red Cross; first responder medical support and similar. (This one has some pretty immediate upsetting text, so take care!) Hatzalah - Similar to Red Magen David, another first responder and emergency medical group. The Koby Mandell Foundation - Focuses on bereavement aid in Israel for people who have lost loved ones in traumatic circumstances; they've got support hotlines and can arrange for support visits, among other things. The Refuser Solidarity Network - Providing support for Israeli citizens who refuse government mandatory military service.

I think that's everything, aside from: Please Signal Boost! If I end up having to send out two hundred emails in the next couple of days, that still won't be too many.

[velvet-cupcake-games]

In the Wake of Will

It's been a lovely week. Thanks so much to everyone who has given me their excellent feedback on Will's route! I've taken some time to relax after crunching a bit on Will's release, and I've been working on the Made Marion Mega-Guide. Right now the guide-in-progress is only going out to Kickstarter backers who pledged for it, but it will be available to the general public later on.

The Mega-Guide is an omnibus lore guide, art book, game guide, and general Made Marion-related fun time with some development bloopers and the best of our silly Tumblr memes compiled in it as well. Cross your fingers that I can fit it all into a single .pdf file without slaughtering Acrobat Reader.

Affinity Publisher 2 is a pretty groovy piece of software. I was flummoxed by the previous version of the software, but they made it a lot more user friendly in version 2. I've been able to figure out just about everything from the help system.

Version 2.1 Progress

Version 2.1 will be out in the next couple weeks. It will contain the final version of the final CG (the ending CG for Will's spontaneous route, which has now been provided to me) and the expanded love scenes for Robin's route.

John Route Prep

In the meantime, I'm working on mood pages for John's route to get a better feel for the details of the romance. It can be difficult to plot out conflict in a romance with a person who is very kind and who carries his flaws more beneath the surface. I don't want Marion to come off looking bitchy or unreasonable, as that's not my intention. But she and John are going to butt heads a little bit as they are both proud, highly responsible people who had to grow up too early. It's not always easy for two such "in charge" people to work together, even when they both have the best of intentions.

It'll be fun to flip the script in this one and see how Will responds to Marion as his brother's partner. He's very much in favour of the partnership at first for his own selfish reasons. But Will is protective of John in his own ways...

[agitateandeducate]

Do you know how powerful it is to care for each other? Every download includes a pdf, pngs, and an image description file for the set of posters! Free Posters available here: https://ko-fi.com/s/d4b40ce2f8

---Image Descriptions---

1 Poster with a scrapbook style background with various brown paper textures, lined paper pieces, and pressed flowers at the top and bottom.The center of the poster has a white background and the text is made up of various magazine cutout pieces of each letter. The magazine cutout phrase is: caring for each other is powerful. There is black text in the lower right corner over a the scrapbook background: resist covid eugenics, mask up!

2 Poster with a white background with black text falling diagonally down from left to right: we can protect each other… wear a mask. The word protect is in cursive. In the upper right corner is a black sketch of flower petals with watercolor marks in hues of pink, purple and green. In the bottom right hand corner is a sketch of flowers stems and petals coming up the right side of the poster, with water color marks in hues of yellow, purple, orange and pink. In the bottom right hand corner is black text: how are you fighting for collective liberation without leaving disabled folks behind?

3 Poster with a rainbow gradient background. In the bottom left corner is a purple and blue megaphone with a white speech bubble coming up through the center of the poster. There’s a yellow lightning bolt in the upper right portion of the speech bubble. Black text inside the speech bubble: Did you know? Anyone can get covid, not just disabled and immunocompromised folks! In the bottom right corner is black text: mask up. Save a life.

4 Poster with a white background. In the bottom left corner is a white and red megaphone with a white speech bubble coming up through the center of the poster. There’s a red lightning bolt in the upper right portion of the speech bubble. Black text inside the speech bubble: Did you know? Anyone can get covid, not just disabled and immunocompromised folks! In the bottom right corner is black text: mask up. Save a life.

5. Poster with a white background. In the bottom left corner is a white and grey megaphone with a white speech bubble coming up through the center of the poster. There’s a gray lightning bolt in the upper right portion of the speech bubble. Black text inside the speech bubble: Did you know? Anyone can get covid, not just disabled and immunocompromised folks! In the bottom right corner is black text: mask up. Save a life.

6. Poster with a white background. In the bottom left corner is a white and grey megaphone with a white speech bubble coming up through the center of the poster. There’s a gray lightning bolt in the upper right portion of the speech bubble. Black text inside the speech bubble: Did you know? Anyone can get covid, not just disabled and immunocompromised folks! In the bottom right corner is black text: Join us in keeping each other & our community safe from Covid-19. Find free masks at covidactionmap.org

[stumpyjoepete]

I'm working on a project that focuses on solving a bunch of schleppy tasks that the average person has (and might resort to a sketchy website to solve) but a mediocre programmer could probably knock out with half an hour and access to stackoverflow. Examples are things like unlocking password-protected power point files, extracting random archive formats, doing stupid things in ImageMagick, slapping together multiple PDFs, etc. And everything executes in the browser, no uploads or downloads. And programmers can share helpful scripts with their less technically inclined friends in a safe way. Anyhow, if you're interested, I can share more later.

One example task that's driving me nuts is dealing with those Winmail.dat files that Outlook sometimes sends instead of a normal email with attachments. This problem is so straightforward and easy to solve--there's a fuck ton of libraries to extract them--, but I have no idea if I've solved it because I can't acquire any test data. Every search result on the internet for Winmail.dat is instructions for how to extract attachments from them or for how to reconfigure Outlook to never send them. At no point has anyone in the history of the world ever intentionally created a Winmail.dat file. For every 100 libraries that parse them, there are zero libraries to create them. It's like searching for the best way to contract leprosy. I think I might need to resort to hiring a borderline-illiterate boomer to send me important paperwork via email.

[gracehosborn]

I hate to be the bearer of frustrating news, but in case some of you who frequent Founders Online (like I do) and have noticed an extreme spike of 503 “Service Temporarily Unavailable” errors, making access to the site impossible for periods of time, the team posted the explanation below:

Founders Online performance issues

19 May 2025: Founders Online is experiencing periodic degraded performance owing to extreme spikes in traffic caused by excessive website crawling, associated with content scooping from AI platforms and other indexers. We are working on a viable fix within the constraints of our server resources.

This is very unfortunate and very disgusting. I’m glad that they are trying to fix the issue, but it breaks my heart that they even have to put in the effort. From personal experience working as a student technician in my university’s Preservation Department, where my primary task is to digitize all sorts of old materials—books, newspapers, photographs, etc, and collaborate on how those items should be handled and scanned so that their digital copies can be presented and made accessible in the right ways, it takes A LOT of work just to digitize one item. Almost all of the documents you see on Founders Online are digital copies of the book pages from where these transcriptions originated—series’ of the founders papers that were printed in the last 70-80 years by university presses. Books that, when Founders was launched 15 years ago, were all between a few years and many decades old, and difficult for the general public to access. Of course, I don’t know the Founders team’s exact process for making the archive when they first started, nor do I claim to be the preservation expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I have a big hunch that it took many hundreds of hours, and likely continues to do so for the remaining volumes they intend to add to the site, to make Founders Online as it appears and maintain its usually fast performance.

AI in general frustrates me, but to see that this extremely valuable archive has now gotten caught in the scooping net makes me equally sad and angry. If you want to gather documents from the site, but will later be offline, you have the ability through the site to download PDF files of individual documents and print them. Most of the material is also in the public domain as well (not all, however—any annotations to a document are copyright of the institution which originally published those physical volumes I mentioned). AI scooping this archive for information to feed to language learning models is a waste of time, energy, and money, and is a violation of copyright law. At the risk of causing performance issues and affecting the servers that make Founders possible, this activity is potentially detrimental to historic preservation and access to historical knowledge. Those hundreds of hours the teams behind the site have worked also come into play: this site is their baby, their hard work, and it’s being stolen. And as a result, everyone’s ability to easily use the site without issue is being affected.

I am extremely fortunate to be in a position where I have been able to acquire a personal backup system for what I primarily use Founders for (my volumes of The Papers of Alexander Hamilton), and more so in that through my university, I have access to the rest of the physical series that make up the archive. So this current issue with the site being slow on performance and frequently down does not inconvenience me much. But this is a privilege. Founders Online was created to get around that privilege and allow for everyone (with an Internet connection) to access these important historical documents. I cannot hammer down to you just how important and valuable that is. Founders Online is an invaluable resource that deserves to be maintained and protected. I’m thankful that the team behind it are working diligently to do just that, but they should never have had to combat AI stealing their hard work and affecting the usability of the site in the first place.

[evidence-based-activism]

what do you think of this exchange? I find the 100% statistic and the claim that a male solder rapes a female soldier every 3 hours to be quite unbelievable https://www.tumblr.com/lickmybigfathairypussy/761526266679705600?source=share

I think the second poster is repeating misogynistic myths perpetuated by men's rights activists. The first poster (@hadesoftheladies) does a good job illustrating why he is wrong.

For the specific statistics you are interested in:

---

The claim "French men have sexually assaulted 100% of female users in public transport" appears to have been taken out of context. (Maybe this was the result of French-to-English translations?) There was a French report that found 100% of their sample of women reported sexual harassment while on public transportation ... but this sample was drawn from a poll about harassment on public transportation, so it's not representative [1].

I do not read French, so this was a difficult to research, but it looks like a better (but still imperfect) estimate is 87% [2]. I can't find any recent representative studies. (They are probably all in French, which I, again, cannot read.) What I can find all suggests that sexual harassment in France is already prevalent and becoming even more frequent [3].

---

For the one about American soldiers ("A US american solder rapes one of his female coworker every 3 hours."). To be clear for everyone, what this is saying is that every three hours, one male American solider rapes one female American solider. And it turns out you're correct, Anon, male American soldiers rape their female coworkers much more frequently than this [4, 5].

Specifically, in 2018, 6.2% of female active duty service members reported being assaulted. 92% of these assaults were by "men or a group of men". Given both formal and informal military culture around sexual assault and women, this is likely a severe underestimate. In addition, this is a prevalence rate not an incidence rate, so, for example, if one woman is actually assaulted on 5 different occasions, it would still only be recorded once.

But, going by just these values, it works out to at least 11,893 male soldiers having assaulted 11,893 women in 2018. That's about 33 every day or more than 4 every 3 hours. Even if you include only "completed penetrative" assaults (and assume the types are split evenly by perpetrator sex, which is extremely unlikely), that's still 2 every 3 hours.

And again, this doesn't take into account how many of these incidents had more than one male perpetrator, how many women were victimized more than one time, and how many more assaults went unreported in the survey.

---

Check out my male violence tag for more statistics.

References under the cut:

France 24. (2015, April 16). France: Women face harassment in the metro and on public transport. https://www.france24.com/en/20150416-france-women-harassment-metro-transport-rights

FNAUT. (2016). Étude sur le harcèlement sexiste et les violences sexuelles faites aux femmes dans les transports publics. https://web.archive.org/web/20210319070100/https://www.centre-hubertine-auclert.fr/sites/default/files/fichiers/etude-fnaut-2016.pdf

Sweeney, J. (2023, January 23). Sexism in France is alarming and getting worse, says report. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/23/sexism-in-france-is-alarming-and-getting-worse-says-report

Prevalence of sexual assault in the military: Risk and protective factors, data sources, and data uses. (n.d.). https://www.rand.org/pubs/tools/TLA746-2/handbook/resources/data-on-sexual-assault-in-the-military.html

Breslin, R., Davis, L., Hylton, K., Hill, A., Klauberg, W., Petusky, M., ... & Office of People Analytics Alexandria United States. (2019). 2018 Workplace and Gender Relations of Active Duty Members: Overview Report.

[thenightfolknetwork]

Are your books too strange for your regular bookbinder to handle? Do your clients complain about strange happenings around loaned boardgames? Are your digital resources more arcane than expected?

Then we at Accursed Barometz Specialised Bookbinding and Physical Media Services are happy to help!

While we mainly deal with libraries, we also offer our services to private and commercial clients at a higher price.

We can analyse, ward, and repair your cursed grimoires, haunted tapes, and other strange media for maximum safety for staff, client, and item alike.

New: Our recently established Digital Services team can handle most thaumically charged PDFs and other supernatural files, and can advise you on how digitalisation and Open Access publishing may interact with curses and blessings.

Building a Library of Things but unsure about how to handle donated quest items and enchanted objects? With our protective seals, your clients will be able to accept or ignore any such riders with no ill effects if they don't accept. Allow your clients to simply borrow a popcorn machine for their birthday party without having to worry about getting roped into a quest to seal a rift to the Elemental Plane of Maize, while allowing clients who would like to engage in a heroic overseas journey to Ohio to do so.

-

[digitallhell]

it's great that you're interested in archiving, it's a really important skill to learn! you can't archive things by saving chrome files of them, google is not your friend and you should always use a file type that doesn't depend on the internet to open it. those jpegs and mp4s are fine. the books you want to archive should be saved as pdfs, you will probably be able to find them on the internet archive. while ur at it go ahead and download ur favourite books so you never lose access to them! google services (or any social media or streaming services) will never protect your right to access a file that's been blocked in your country, and you also don't own anything you buy from them because they can remove it whenever they want. fucked up right! if you'd like to get into archiving media to share with people you should learn about torrenting, but don't try to torrent until you're very well versed on how to properly do it without getting in trouble (you need to have a vpn and configure it to your torrenting client and instructions will vary depending on what software you use). when you're ready to try it out, don't just choose a vpn based off what a youtuber tells you. a lot of popularly advertised vpns are owned by companies that don't really care about protecting your data. when choosing a vpn for archiving purposes it's best to search on r/piracy and look for the most recent info. ipleaks is a handy tool to make sure youve configured everything right. also do not share links to pirate sites on social media beause it it can risk getting the sites blocked or taken down. gl <3

ive gotten a lot of feedback about the google thing, i'm actually about to go change them to actual pdfs that are not connected to google. i'll look into everything else as well. i do intend to get a hard drive to save this all onto, but as i've mentioned im a teenager and my parents (despite being democrats) don't really want me doing all this because they think it's bad for my mental health to be so worried about politics- which to a certain point is true, but i like being up to date on what's happening. but i'll try to find a way to get one without them getting all worked up about it. thank you so much!

[zytes]

Question from someone just starting with creating and then posting art to Tumblr, do you think I should be watermarking my pieces?

I’ve always disliked watermarks as they naturally tend to dissuade people from interacting with art in a natural manner; it depends very heavily on the size and placement of the mark, obviously. BUT, often times an artist will overzealously obscure their work with identification and it has a somewhat repulsive effect on the average viewer - a wall has been erected between the viewer and the art, in a sense. Watermarks, to me, exist to prevent very specific situations from unfolding with your work - almost all of those reasons seem to be financially motivated, like preventing strangers from printing your art out at home or reposting without attribution. Situations that could affect your ability to profit off of your work.

Admittedly, much of my perception about this issue was inspired by an article included in the book “Context” by Cory Doctorow, wherein he writes about how he’s benefitted from “thinking like a dandelion”, which is an idea that was inspired by conversation the author had with Neil Gaiman — I’ll try and summarize the parts of the point that are more relevant to visual arts; since portions of the allegory refer more specifically to certain qualities of written media.

He begins with, “Mammals worry about what happens to each and every one of their offspring, but dandelions only care that every crack in every sidewalk has dandelions growing out of it. The former is a good strategy for situations in which reproduction is expensive, but the latter works best when reproduction is practically free — as on the Internet.”

So how do you “think like a dandelion” then?

“Your work needs to be easily copied, to anywhere whence it might find its way into the right hands. That means that the nimble text-file, HTML file, and PDF (the preferred triumvirate of formats) should be distributed without formality — no logins, no e-mail address collections, and with a license that allows your fans to reproduce the work on their own in order to share it with more potential fans. Remember, copying is a cost-center — insisting that all copies must be downloaded from your site and only your site is insisting that you — and only you — will bear the cost of making those copies. Sure, having a single, central repository for your works makes it easier to count copies and figure out where they’re going, but remember: dandelions don’t keep track of their seeds. Once you get past the vanity of knowing exactly how many copies have been made, and find the zen of knowing that the copying will take care of itself, you’ll attain dandelionesque contentment.”

The rest of the allegory more specifically applies to written work, but I’ll link it here for the sake of posterity. Essentially: every wall or pre-requisite that you establish before allowing a fresh set of eyes to fall upon your work actually may deter people from engaging with the work and sharing it with others. Signatures, subtle watermarks that are “baked” into the work, or maybe like.. a well-placed QR code that links people back to you — all of those would be my suggestion for someone who wants to leave a lasting, linking thread between a given work and it’s artist. If the right person sees your art and connects with it, there SHOULD be a way for them to follow that thread back to you and discover more; but if you over-prioritize demonstrating ownership over your work, you’re likely to drive those coveted genuine connections away.

On the other hand, if your primary goal is to sell prints or other products, brazenly watermarking your work will protect your bottom line from the kind of low-level art-scraping that drives all those shady redbubble shops and etsy stores that sell stolen works on cheap t-shirts and hankies. For me, art is a primarily social interest in which I prioritize the sharing of culture and ideas. I don’t want financial factors to take precedence and alter how/why I created something; it feels like I’d have to take much of myself out of my art in order to make it palatable for consumer spaces.

You should determine your priorities and then strive to make art that fulfills those priorities without compromise. I think you’ll find that self-satisfaction manifests readily at different points in the midst of that process.

[raicass]

CONTROVERSIAL QUESTION!

Why are you shipping Raiden X Cassie? Does Raiden consider a GRANDPA because he already met Johnny Cage & Sonya Blade around the MK 1990s comic, & Cassie's first debut in MKX? Is Raiden considered a PDF file because he's grooming Cassie?

Well, well… I've already answered why I ship them. And I’m tired of all of this. Cas I wanna see true, pure, and wholesome love and healthy relationships that they both deserve. Without, u know, popular weird shit like perversions that some ill people like. Just man — god, after all — and woman. Nothing extra.

I keep seeing — way too often, honestly — this take that Cassandra is «just a kid» at 20-22. Like, seriously? 😁 It’s baffling, to say the least.

Here’s the fun fact 1: Cassandra is apparently «grown enough» for pairings with Sub-Zero, Erron, Kano (wtf?), or any other dude in Mortal Kombat, but when someone mentions her with Raiden, fans lose their minds and call her a child. I just want to ask: are u fucking degenerates? (Yeah, u are) Cas u’d have to be to miss the point this badly. Did u feel like a kid at 20?

Fun fact 2: girls often go for older guys cause, let’s be real, guys their age are usually lagging behind in maturity.

Cassie isn’t even 18 — she’s 20! Sure, 20 is young, it’s youthful, it’s still got some wild ideas bouncing around in u head, and God help us if there’s anything more substantial in there by 25-30 (sadly, that’s just how it is these days). But let’s not kid ourselves.

Cassandra? First off, she’s the daughter of two badass warriors, raised by serious people — not some deadbeat parents — who passed down their skills and experience to her. Second, at 20 (!!!), she’s already leading a special forces unit, serving and protecting Earthrealm. Could a child pull that off? Hell no. Cassie’s got real experience at 20, and Raiden would see her for what she is: a strong, fearless warrior, not some kid. Because she’s not a kid.


And here’s the cherry on top:
What about canonical pairings with huge age gaps? Caroline/Klaus (ever watched The Vampire Diaries? High school girls dating centuries-old vampires, lol!), Aragorn/Arwen? No issues there, right? Oh, I get it: as long as the characters look youthful, all complaints magically disappear. Who gives a fuck how old they actually are, right? 😉

Oh, and by the way, gods can't be PDFfiles by definition — they're GODS! They're above humans, above passions, sins, perversions, and mental disorders.

А вообще погуглите для общего развития, что такое педофилия, и перестаньте разбрасываться этим оскорблением в кого попало — это только выдаёт вашу тупость.

[agitateandeducate]

What was yours?: white people who assumed the pandemic had a disparate effect on communities of color were less supportive of safety measures." (from the study "Highlighting COVID-19 racial disparities can reduce support for safety precautions among White U.S. residents")

Every download includes a pdf, pngs, and an image description file for the set of posters! Free Posters available here: https://ko-fi.com/s/fd6ff985a3

---Image Descriptions---

[id 1] Poster with a black background. The top of the poster features numerous white masks seemingly dropping into the frame, with far more masks, faded and red, behind them. In the center of the poster is large white bold text: HOW MANY DEATHS FOR YOU TO START CARING? (the word caring is in red). Underneath the text is a red horizontal box, featuring white text: What is your number?

At the bottom of the poster, in the center, is white bold small text: do not normalize genocide

Underneath that text is small white regular text: mask up & protect your community from covid! [end id]

[id 2] Poster with a black background. The top of the poster features numerous white masks seemingly dropping into the frame, with far more masks, faded and red, behind them. In the center of the poster is large white bold text: WHOSE DEATHS DID IT TAKE FOR YOU TO STOP CARING? (the word caring is in red). Underneath the text is a red horizontal box, featuring white text: What was your reason?

At the bottom of the poster, in the center, is white bold small text: do not normalize genocide

Underneath that text is small white regular text: mask up & protect your community from covid! [end id]

[spyridonya]

I have no idea if this will be a two part post or a series of things, but I wanted to write a little about Forgotten Realms for new BG3 fans. I decided the best start was here:

Baldur's Gate Primer: Fantasy Kitchen Sink and CRPGs

The Forgotten Realms began as an official campaign setting for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons ("1e") in 1987 and published by TSR Inc, the gaming company that originally published D&D.

Since its introduction, the Forgotten Realms' world of Toril has been wildly popular, jumping over the then more established Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and several other settings whose influences were based High Middle Ages Northern and Central Europe (and the unfortunate implications of Central Asian Nomads with monsters such as orcs and goblins). Ed Greenwood is the loving (if slightly horny) creator of the Realms, though many authors have written stories within the setting for several good reasons.

The Realms is an excellent Fantasy Kitchen Sink.

While Toril has several European influences, it has little to do with High Middle Ages in world building and more to do with 19th century based on nation states with the aesthetics of the Late Renaissance in terms of art, culture, and technology.

Toril also took inspiration from other cultures with their nations and continents:

The first of Toril's continents written about was Kara-Tur, which was introduced before the 'official campaign book' and heavily focused based on East Asian.  

Another continent based on Central Indigenous nations (Mayan and Aztec) called Maztica, who are giving the Faerun colonists hell due to their magic and their immune systems, and consider themselves the 'True World'.

There’s the nation of Zakhara that’s based between Faerun and Kara-Tur, making it a touch on the nose since it's based on Arabian Nights.

The nation Chult is based after the Congo Basin rainforest, though it really seems like whoever made this development slept through Heart of Darkness. (It went away for a little while, but it's back now.)

Meanwhile Calimshan and Mulhorand are based after Morocco and Egypt. 

Bear in mind, despite good intentions that Ed Greenwood and TSR had, a lot of the old lore comes off as Orientalist, and WotC hasn't done much to update it save slapping a disclaimer on PDF files and not much else with these settings save a bare description.

However, if some dork-ass tells you that Wyll and BIPOC are going against the lore accuracy, tell them to fuck off. The Forgotten Realm was introduced with a BIPOC setting despite it’s flaws. 

Due to the diversity of the 'Realms', the setting has attracted writers, artists, and campaign designers who developed some of D&D's most iconic characters and thus influenced a lot of how D&D's multiverse structure. Players loved the lore of the Realms and the feeling their characters could be from anywhere and do anything. This is in contrast to Greyhawk never really growing past it's War Game boundaries as a world and Dragonlance's creators being highly protective of it's inflexible plot with the lack of multiple settings. 

So it made sense when TSR approached the game developer SISI with their Gold Box Engine with the Forgotten Realms in mind. SISI's first D&D based game is called Pool of Radiance, and the game took place in Faerun’s Moonsea region in the ruins of Phlan, where adventurers fought off undead and fiends to help give a new city a fighting chance in rebuilding. While SISI would dabble in Dragonlance and Dark Sun (a post apocalyptic setting that is so fucking grim dark, Githyanki ran away from Dark Sun's world of Athas screaming), most of their games were based in Forgotten Realms.  

For those curious about the Gold Box Game series: when BG1 was my 13 year-old-heart's special interest, I played them. It's really, really weird because so much of the story is in the manual and clunky as fuck. But I was itching to play anything DnD at the time.

In 1997, TSR was purchased in 1997 by Wizards of the Coast (WotC), though it allowed the continued development of yet another CRPG set in the Realms by a then unknown company called Bioware. In 1998, Bioware released Baldur's Gate and using the Infinity Engine Bioware, Black Isle, and WotC would continue to make several games including BG2, BG:TOB, and Neverwinter Nights before parting ways in 2006 with Bioware. Bioware would then focus on its own wildly successful CRPG IPs. 

By then, WotC was owned by Habsro (since 1999) and after two decades of excellent turn based CRPGs, they stopped focus on the genre when Neverwinter Nights 2 didn’t do as well as its predecessor and focused on different genres such as Hack’n’Slash, Action Adventure, and Boardgames - though they were all set in the Forgotten Realms.

However one of these games would reach the popularity of the Gold Box, Infinity, or Aurora engine based games (BG, Icewind Dale, and Planescape Torment) . The only turned based CRPGs that were released from 2007 to 2020  were remakes of the Infinity Engine games by Beamdog Studios who attempted to get the rights to make BG3.

WotC declined Beamdog, deciding to approach Larian studios instead for Baldur’s Gate 3 in 2016, likely wanting to approach a style closer to Neverwinter Nights rather than isometric. Due to D&D new popularity, both companies expected that BG3 would do well, but neither company had any idea how big Baldur’s Gate 3 would be. 

I'm likely going to do a post on the important historical events in the Realms mentioned in BG3 - and some that are not.

[sunday-autism]

i have almost no idea on how do antis behave in tumblr/discord/twt/any other foreign social media bc almost everything is banned in russia and im too lazy to turn on vpn all the time but i have something to say

in telegram(russian messaging app) antis do absolutely love to spam csem/snuff/any other illegal materials to proshippers(mostly minors)

and they do love doxxing proshippers (again, mostly minors) for absolutely no reason

but yk, theyre protecting real children, not like those stupid proshippers pdf files!!!!!!!!!!!!/sarc