#I don't put it past this site

[yoshi-self-ships]

Btw tiny-space-robot is a known pedophile and has touched kids and condones incest. Btw

Give me actual proof that they've touched children(and no, art of Pinocchio with Geppeto or something like that doesn't count as such)

[alsojnpie]

hey. um. i love him

[freckleslikestars]

genuinely do not get the point of replying to someone's gifset with 'I hate these characters. I stopped watching after they were introduced.' sorry you feel that way, but I don't actually give a shit. now get off my fucking post.

[daddyslittlegirlofsammy]

Calling all whovians boy's and girl's (if you understood the reference i love you) that like to do memes can y'all do something with this photos?

link from where i got the photos from: https://tragicalhistorytour.com/d01/1b-c/

[prolibytherium]

they're going to start introducing character limits on here on the basis that it's "too confusing" for the fragile new twitter migrants to see long sentences or something

[genshxn]

kinda wonder how many people have this sideblog blocked lmao

[shirogane-oushirou]

with everything going on w tumblr, just in case anyone's putting off backing up their blogs: i just used that doc to FINALLY install tumblr utils after putting it off for months... and despite never using python before, it took less than an hour to set up and like. 10mins to back this blog up + 10 more mins to back up my other, smaller sideblogs! and with the settings i used, it should only take a couple of minutes to periodically update the backups.

super easy and super fast, it explains Every Single Step you need to take, and even gives you tips on how to make repeated backups super simple. 🙏🏻

[zevrans]

.

[dravidious]

Writing as a medium

Cons: Restricted to silent words, never able to truly communicate the beauty of a landscape, the emotion in an expression, the serene sound of a bird's song, the tone of voice with which a line is spoken

Pros:

[boyruggeroii]

I know beating yourself up is pointless but when you make a decision even though you know exactly what the consequences are going to be, because it's habit at this point, then not beating yourself up is really hard cause the circumstances themselves are beating you up

[fallingbyjuleecruise]

the absolute hell of trying to find theater recordings so i can see assad zaman act bc i'm not watching hotel portofino

[enbyboiwonder]

Oh, good, enough p*rn blogs have followed me that I just had one show up in my recommended blogs, because apparently opening their blogs for like two seconds in order to block them means I’m interested in them. Lovely.

[queriesntheories]

REBLOGS ARE OFF CAUSE THIS GUIDE IS TERRIBLE AND YOU DESERVE BETTER

I will instead redirect you to THIS more comprehensive guide, and cobalt.tools. Cobalt solves the problem of low quality video when you're done with VLC, and it can also take videos from a dozen other social media platforms.

Support the cobalt dev and the better guide writer, not me. I'm just a person who boiled down a wikihow guide and a youtube tutorial into a TLDR. I did not do very much work. They have.

I might turn reblogs back on, but for now I implore you to put your attention where it's needed most. Thanks for understanding. (original post under the cut)

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alright i am sick of yt to mp4 sites being shady and full of viruses and finding websites that seem to be working and then don't work

so HERE'S HOW YOU DOWNLOAD YOUTUBE VIDEOS WITH VLC!! VLC FREAKIN RULES!!

get your youtube link

open vlc, go to media > open network stream

paste your url in the box and PRESS PLAY!

wait for the video to open then go to tools > codec information

copy the entire file location (click the box, then ctrl-a to select all, then ctrl-c to copy)

paste into your browser of choice (i use firefox)

right click video and press "save video as", choose your file format if you want

DONE! NO VIRUSES OR SKETCHY STUFF!

the quality might be a little crummy but if you don't mind that, then shabam! video on your computer! then you can email it to yourself and have it on your phone too if you want! if you need a guide with pictures wikihow has you covered my friends

happy downloading and stay safe on the internet :D

[sayruq]

It's actually crazy talking to friends and relatives about what's going on because very few of them know that this is a retaliatory attack. I keep seeing people online call the attack unprovoked too.

So those who don't know, on April 1st Israeli warplanes bombed Iran's consulate in Damascus. The attack killed 7 of Iran’s military advisers including 3 senior commanders.

Reuters reporters at the site in the Mezzeh district of Damascus saw emergency workers clambering atop rubble of a destroyed building inside the diplomatic compound, adjacent to the main Iranian embassy building. Emergency vehicles were parked outside. An Iranian flag hung from a pole by the debris.

Iran's ambassador to Syria said the strike hit a consular building in the embassy compound and that his residence was on the top two floors. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement that seven Iranian military advisers died in the strike including Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in its Quds Force, which is an elite foreign espionage and paramilitary arm.

This attack on the embassy is against international law. Embassies are protected sites. But instead of condemning the attack and putting pressure on Israel, the US has spent the past week and a half calling West Asian countries to put pressure on Iran, with Biden going as far as to warn Iran not to attack Israel and saying that his support for Israel is 'iron clad'.

The West, the UN, and UN Security Council have largely failed to condemn the attack which means Iran has no choice but to retaliate with force in order to prevent future attacks. Otherwise, the country will look vulnerable and weak, especially to the Israeli occupation government which has spent months bombing neighbouring countries like Syria and Lebanon

[sophiamcdougall]

You're a reasonably informed person on the internet. You've experienced things like no longer being able to get files off an old storage device, media you've downloaded suddenly going poof, sites and forums with troves full of people's thoughts and ideas vanishing forever. You've heard of cybercrime. You've read articles about lost media. You have at least a basic understanding that digital data is vulnerable, is what I'm saying. I'm guessing that you're also aware that history is, you know... important? And that it's an ongoing study, requiring ... data about how people live? And that it's not just about stanning celebrities that happen to be dead? Congratulations, you are significantly better-informed than the British government! So they're currently like "Oh hai can we destroy all these historical documents pls? To save money? Because we'll digitise them first so it's fine! That'll be easy, cheap and reliable -- right? These wills from the 1850s will totally be fine for another 170 years as a PNG or whatever, yeah? We didn't need to do an impact assesment about this because it's clearly win-win! We'd keep the physical wills of Famous People™ though because Famous People™ actually matter, unlike you plebs. We don't think there are any equalities implications about this, either! Also the only examples of Famous People™ we can think of are all white and rich, only one is a woman and she got famous because of the guy she married. Kisses!"

Yes, this is the same Government that's like "Oh no removing a statue of slave trader is erasing history :(" You have, however, until 23 February 2024 to politely inquire of them what the fuck they are smoking. And they will have to publish a summary of the responses they receive. And it will look kind of bad if the feedback is well-argued, informative and overwhelmingly negative and they go ahead and do it anyway. I currently edit documents including responses to consultations like (but significantly less insane) than this one. Responses do actually matter. I would particularly encourage British people/people based in the UK to do this, but as far as I can see it doesn't say you have to be either. If you are, say, a historian or an archivist, or someone who specialises in digital data do say so and draw on your expertise in your answers. This isn't a question of filling out a form. You have to manually compose an email answering the 12 questions in the consultation paper at the link above. I'll put my own answers under the fold. Note -- I never know if I'm being too rude in these sorts of things. You probably shouldn't be ruder than I have been.

Please do not copy and paste any of this: that would defeat the purpose. This isn't a petition, they need to see a range of individual responses. But it may give you a jumping-off point.

Question 1: Should the current law providing for the inspection of wills be preserved?

Yes. Our ability to understand our shared past is a fundamental aspect of our heritage. It is not possible for any authority to know in advance what future insights they are supporting or impeding by their treatment of material evidence. Safeguarding the historical record for future generations should be considered an extremely important duty.

Question 2: Are there any reforms you would suggest to the current law enabling wills to be inspected?

No.

Question 3: Are there any reasons why the High Court should store original paper will documents on a permanent basis, as opposed to just retaining a digitised copy of that material?

Yes. I am amazed that the recent cyber attack on the British Library, which has effectively paralysed it completely, not been sufficient to answer this question for you.  I also refer you to the fate of the Domesday Project. Digital storage is useful and can help more people access information; however, it is also inherently fragile. Malice, accident, or eventual inevitable obsolescence not merely might occur, but absolutely should be expected. It is ludicrously naive and reflects a truly unpardonable ignorance to assume that information preserved only in digital form is somehow inviolable and safe, or that a physical document once digitised, never need be digitised again..At absolute minimum, it should be understood as certain that at least some of any digital-only archive will eventually be permanently lost. It is not remotely implausible that all of it would be. Preserving the physical documents provides a crucial failsafe. It also allows any errors in reproduction -- also inevitable-- to be, eventually, seen and corrected. Note that maintaining, upgrading and replacing digital infrastructure is not free, easy or reliable. Over the long term, risks to the data concerned can only accumulate.

"Unlike the methods for preserving analog documents that have been honed over millennia, there is no deep precedence to look to regarding the management of digital records. As such, the processing, long-term storage, and distribution potential of archival digital data are highly unresolved issues. [..] the more digital data is migrated, translated, and re-compressed into new formats, the more room there is for information to be lost, be it at the microbit-level of preservation. Any failure to contend with the instability of digital storage mediums, hardware obsolescence, and software obsolescence thus meets a terminal end—the definitive loss of information. The common belief that digital data is safe so long as it is backed up according to the 3-2-1 rule (3 copies on 2 different formats with 1 copy saved off site) belies the fact that it is fundamentally unclear how long digital information can or will remain intact. What is certain is that its unique vulnerabilities do become more pertinent with age."  -- James Boyda, On Loss in the 21st Century: Digital Decay and the Archive, Introduction.

Question 4: Do you agree that after a certain time original paper documents (from 1858 onwards) may be destroyed (other than for famous individuals)? Are there any alternatives, involving the public or private sector, you can suggest to their being destroyed?

Absolutely not. And I would have hoped we were past the "great man" theory of history. Firstly, you do not know which figures will still be considered "famous" in the future and which currently obscure individuals may deserve and eventually receive greater attention. I note that of the three figures you mention here as notable enough to have their wills preserved, all are white, the majority are male (the one woman having achieved fame through marriage) and all were wealthy at the time of their death. Any such approach will certainly cull evidence of the lives of women, people of colour and the poor from the historical record, and send a clear message about whose lives you consider worth remembering.

Secondly, the famous and successsful are only a small part of our history. Understanding the realities that shaped our past and continue to mould our present requires evidence of the lives of so-called "ordinary people"!

Did you even speak to any historians before coming up with this idea?

Entrusting the documents to the private sector would be similarly disastrous. What happens when a private company goes bust or decides that preserving this material is no longer profitable? What reasonable person, confronted with our crumbling privatised water infrastructure, would willingly consign any part of our heritage to a similar fate?

Question 5: Do you agree that there is equivalence between paper and digital copies of wills so that the ECA 2000 can be used?

No. And it raises serious questions about the skill and knowledge base within HMCTS and the government that the very basic concepts of data loss and the digital dark age appear to be unknown to you. I also refer you to the Domesday Project.

Question 6: Are there any other matters directly related to the retention of digital or paper wills that are not covered by the proposed exercise of the powers in the ECA 2000 that you consider are necessary?

Destroying the physical documents will always be an unforgivable dereliction of legal and moral duty.

Question 7: If the Government pursues preserving permanently only a digital copy of a will document, should it seek to reform the primary legislation by introducing a Bill or do so under the ECA 2000?

Destroying the physical documents will always be an unforgivable dereliction of legal and moral duty.

Question 8: If the Government moves to digital only copies of original will documents, what do you think the retention period for the original paper wills should be? Please give reasons and state what you believe the minimum retention period should be and whether you consider the Government’s suggestion of 25 years to be reasonable.

There is no good version of this plan. The physical documents should be preserved.

Question 9: Do you agree with the principle that wills of famous people should be preserved in the original paper form for historic interest?

This question betrays deep ignorance of what "historic interest" actually is. The study of history is not simply glorified celebrity gossip. If anything, the physical wills of currently famous people could be considered more expendable as it is likely that their contents are so widely diffused as to be relatively "safe", whereas the wills of so-called "ordinary people" will, especially in aggregate, provide insights that have not yet been explored.

Question 10: Do you have any initial suggestions on the criteria which should be adopted for identifying famous/historic figures whose original paper will document should be preserved permanently?

Abandon this entire lamentable plan. As previously discussed, you do not and cannot know who will be considered "famous" in the future, and fame is a profoundly flawed criterion of historical significance.

Question 11: Do you agree that the Probate Registries should only permanently retain wills and codicils from the documents submitted in support of a probate application? Please explain, if setting out the case for retention of any other documents.

No, all the documents should be preserved indefinitely.

Question 12: Do you agree that we have correctly identified the range and extent of the equalities impacts under each of these proposals set out in this consultation? Please give reasons and supply evidence of further equalities impacts as appropriate.

No. You appear to have neglected equalities impacts entirely. As discussed, in your drive to prioritise "famous people", your plan will certainly prioritise the white, wealthy and mostly the male, as your "Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin and Princess Diana" examples amply indicate. This plan will create a two-tier system where evidence of the lives of the privileged is carefully preserved while information regarding people of colour, women, the working class and other disadvantaged groups is disproportionately abandoned to digital decay and eventual loss. Current and future historians from, or specialising in the history of minority groups will be especially impoverished by this.  

[avaantares]

Fanfiction Authors: HEADS UP

(Non-authors, please RB to signal boost to your author friends!)

An astute reader informed me this morning that one of my fics (Children of the Future Age) had been pirated and was being sold as a novel on Amazon:

(And they weren't even creative with their cover design. If you're going to pirate something that I spent a full year of my life writing, at least give me a pretty screenshot to brag about later. Seriously.)

I promptly filed a DMCA complaint to have it removed, but I checked out the company that put it up -- Plush Books -- and it looks like A LOT of their books are pirated fic. They are by no means the only ones doing this, either -- the fact that """publishers""" can download stories from AO3 in ebook format and then reupload them to Amazon in just a few clicks makes fic piracy a common problem. There are a whole host of reasons why letting this continue is bad -- including actual legal risk to fanfiction archives -- but basically:

IF YOU ARE A FANFIC AUTHOR WITH LONG AND/OR POPULAR WORKS, PLEASE CHECK AMAZON TO SEE IF YOUR STORIES HAVE BEEN PIRATED.

You can search for your fics by title, or by text from the description (which is often just copied wholesale from AO3 as well). If you find that someone has stolen your work and is selling it as their own, you can lodge a DMCA complaint (Amazon.com/USA site; other countries have different systems). If you haven't done this before, it's easy! Here's a tutorial:

HOW TO FILE A COPYRIGHT COMPLAINT FOR STOLEN WORK ON AMAZON.COM:

First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.

Select the radio buttons/dropdown options (shown below) to indicate that you are the legal Rights Owner, you have a copyright concern, and it is about a pirated product.

Enter the name of your story in the Name of Brand field.

In the Link to the Copyrighted Work box, enter a link to the story on AO3 or whatever site your work is posted on.

In the Additional Information box, explain that you are the author of the work and it is being sold without your permission. That's all you really need. If you want, you can include additional information that might be helpful in establishing the validity of your claim, but you don't have to go into great detail. You can simply write something like this:

I am the author of this work, which is being sold by [publisher] without my permission. I originally published this story in [date/year] on [name of site], and have provided a link to the original above. On request, I can provide documentation proving that I am the owner of the account that originally posted this story.

In the ASIN/ISBN-10 field, copy and paste the ID number from the pirated copy's URL. You'll find this ten-digit number in the Amazon URL after the word "product," as in the screenshot below. (If the URL extends beyond this number, you can ignore everything from the question mark on.) Once this number has been added, Amazon will pull the product information automatically and add it to the complaint form, so you can check the listing title and make sure it's correct.

Finally, add your contact information to the relevant fields, check the "I have read and accept the statements" box, and then click Submit. You should receive an email confirmation that Amazon has received the form.

Please share this information with your writer friends, keep an eye out for/report pirated works, and help us keep fanfiction free and legally protected!

NOTE: All of the above also applies to Amazon products featuring stolen artwork, etc., so fan artists should check too!