#I'm opting out

[hottakehoulihan]

Thank you for existing, trans men. Your very existence does so much good in so many ways, and we need you like we need trees and like the world needs the color green.

[spacedace]

Forced Arbitration Added to Discord's Terms

First up: forced arbitration is effectively a legal way (in the Unites States) for a company to stop you from suing them. It means if anything happens that is sue-worthy (say they massively fucked up and people's data got stolen en masse), you would not be allowed to sue them.

Instead you'd be forced into a process called arbitration which is private (you wouldn't be allowed to speak on what was going on publicly) removed from the courts and handled by arbiters who were selected by and beholden to the company that did the shady/illegal thing (Discord, in this case) so your odds of getting anywhere are basically zero.

The good news:

You can opt out of this bullshit pretty easily. You just need to send an email clearly stating that you are opting out from the email address associated with your discord account.

Unfortunately, you only have 30 days from April 15, 2024 (or 30 days from your account's creation if you made a new one) to send this opt out email. So you're gonna wanna get on that pretty quick, even if you don't ever imagine you needing to sue Discord, having the option taken away from you is never a good thing.

The email you need to message is:

arbitration-opt-out@discord.com

Again you need to send from the email inbox associated with your discord account, you should also save the email after you send it so if you need to pull it out and wave it in someone's face later you have it handy.

The email doesn't need to be in depth or long, just something direct and simple like:

"I am writing to opt out if the arbitration clause added in their most recent update to their Terms of Service."

Remember, just because you don't think you'll need to does not mean it's okay for them to be shady and take the option away from you.

Go forth and be spiteful my dudes

[teaandinanity]

I love my character in The Golden Rose so much. His stat screen is basically like

[matan4il]

I can't believe it's only Aug 12th and already there's a Xmas post on my dash.

Every single year I have to get through the non-Christian erasure that is Xmas season, the way that everyone acts as if the whole world celebrates Xmas, every year I have to feel like I'm being mean and raining on people's parades when I refuse to join in, or when I try to (as politely as I can) refuse to be greeted with Xmas wishes, every year I have to grit my teeth as every show has a Xmas special, every app and software has festive events and sales, changing into special Xmas versions of their icons, every media outlet wants to tell me about the joys of Xmas shopping and tourism, meanwhile I'm biting my tongue not to blurt out repeatedly that Xmas is when historically my people were targeted, brutalized and sometimes even MURDERED... and apparently Xmas season just keeps getting longer.

I don't mind that people who are religiously or culturally Christian celebrate it. I kinda mind it when non-Christians do, because that strikes me as the effects of commercialism and cultural colonialism, but hey. Other people are independent individuals, it's up to them to make their own choices, even if I personally make a different choice. And I'd never make anyone personally feel bad about their choice, either. What bothers me is that it's basically IMPOSSIBLE to opt out of Xmas celebrations if you're one of the people who don't want to participate. They're everywhere. They're in every place, they're in so many spaces that I otherwise love. And they just keep starting earlier every year. I wanna bang my head against the wall.

This is what religious / cultural coercion feels like. Yeah, even if it's done unintentionally by many.

[ruvviks]

SUBNAUTICA ➤ [3/?]

[bomberqueen17]

disturbing

I was writing a post and at the end I was adding tags, as I do, and I typed the singular first person pronoun, I, and a list of tags popped up as suggestions that took me the fuck out. It was so disturbing I took a screenshot.

[image ID: a list of suggested tags, screenshotted. It's titled "popular" and the list is "I want to [star emoji]ve" "i wanna lose weight" "i sell content" "i love him"]

I wanna star-emoji-ve???? Well there's some pro-ana shit for you.

I don't know if the kids these days remember this but back in Livejournal around the era of strikethrough (the '07-'09 time period is where I remember noticing it) there was a movement to censor pro-self-harm blogs, that were support groups mostly supporting one another in more and more extreme anorexic/self-destructive/eating-disordered behaviors.

This is absolutely that. And they were like "it's self-expression" and everyone else in the world was like "it is actually a toxic encouragement of self-harm" because they were like, concretely instructing one another and recruiting vulnerable people to join them in ways to literally starve to death, they were support groups for killing yourself more or less, and so those tags would occasionally get banned or delisted or removed from search or whatever, but remember this was very early in the history of such things, and there was no algorithm. But people did use the browsing of blogs' "interests" to find one another, it was a feature of how Livejournal worked, and there wasn't a lot of moderation but the deactivation or delisting of those self-harm-encouraging tags were a hotly-contested bit of debate.

And so they got more creative, and found other ways to find one another, and people starved to death or otherwise irreparably damaged their bodies and their mental health and so on. I cannot emphasize enough, this was not fiction. These were not fictional stories depicting fictional scenarios that weren't happening, these were real people posting stories and encouragement and photographs of their real selves, showing off how much damage to themselves they were doing, concretely encouraging one another to do the same. This was not fiction.

But they kept finding new ways to talk about it so it couldn't be censored.

And then LJ deleted blogs for posting about fiction instead, and we all kind of forgot about it and moved on.

Highly displeased to find that it's all alive and well on Tumblr, to the point that it's the number one suggestion when I type the fucking first-person pronoun into the tag field, and I can't opt out of seeing that. COOL.

[two-hands-toward-the-sun]

OKAY so in the comics whenever dream talks to anyone, they hear it in whatever language they speak or are most comfortable with (in dream's words, "you hear what you need to hear"), and now i'm thinking about how when dream comes to calliope at madoc's place...that's the first time calliope has heard greek spoken to her in more than sixty years.

[sysig]

Ooo requestober eh? Something I've been curious to see a bit more of maybe is Jake interracting with Scriabin. Edgar wondering about what the two of them talk about together alone got me curious too 👀

(Resending to the main for you :3)

Day 3 - Definitely not kissing! If that's what you think!

Meanwhile, Jake:

[welcometogrouchland]

Wait crying again bc I was rewatching The Intruder today (episode 4 of season 1) and I realized that like. The glyphs represent a few things in the narrative but one thing that's consistent is they're always there when Luz doesn't feel like she's good enough on her own. They appear to her as comfort in moments of self depreciation or self doubt, or she coincidentally learns them in episodes where she faces her fear of rejection or makes a mistake (at least this is true in terms of the first four base glyphs she discovers). It's the titans way of saying "you may have to do things differently, but you can do anything they can do" to Luz bc he cares about her

AND THEN. IN WATCHING AND DREAMING. WHEN THE TITAN PASSES ON AND THE GLYPHS DON'T WORK ANYMORE. IT'S BECAUSE NOW LUZ FINALLY FEELS LIKE SHE'S GOOD ENOUGH, ALL ON HER OWN. SHE'S LEARNED THAT SHE HAS INTRINSIC WORTH AS A PERSON AND SHE DOESN'T NEED TO MAKE UP FOR WHO SHE IS. SHE MIGHT DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY BUT SHE CAN DO EVERYTHING ANOTHER WITCH CAN DO- THIS TIME WITH HER OWN, MORE PERSONAL ACCESSIBILITY TOOL (HER PALISMEN) INSTEAD OF THE ONE THE TITAN GAVE HER. MAN!!!!!

[royalarchivist]

If you aren't already aware, Tumblr is pulling some BS stuff with AI, and I'm not a fan. I've been on this website for over a decade, but I'll be upfront and say I will not continue using Tumblr if they go through with this AI garbage.

What social media alternatives do people recommend? I've heard folks talk about Bluesky and Cohost, but I'm curious to know if people have other recommendations and/or if they have opinions on Bluesky / Cohost.

I'll keep running Royal Archivist as usual for now, but I wanted to give people a heads up about this AI stuff.

[bohioeveanga]

¡¡¡Feliz 38 a la Leyenda de Zelda!!!

Happy 38th to LoZ!!!

[mountmortar]

if any of you are nerds like me and find this whole "the-platform decay/enshittification-of-present-day-social-media" thing fascinating and want to read what other people have to say about it, these two posts written on dreamwidth in 2008 titled "why monetizing social media through advertising is doomed to failure" by synecdochic (part one here, part two here) are super fun reads; and, i think, pretty damn informative overall. they are decently long, though! and this one by phantomrose96 on here is a good read as well! for more bite-sized posts that aren't as detailed but are basically the same style of posting you would find on here, this one from six months ago and this one from six days ago on pillowfort are short, sweet & to-the-point.

[terrovaniadorm]

Happy new year!! I'm sick again on a new year (lol) but it's fine, i still managed to do something for the occasion i always wanted to draw the New years Kimono designs again so i hand you besties being besties ❤️

I'm very grateful for all my friends and people who just follow my silly blog, make ocs for Terrovania etc. I'm not good with words but i really appreciate everything, see yall in 2024 muwah muwah

[turtletaubwrites]

why am i so stressed out about the boops? 😭

[last-flight-of-fancy]

“Kingdom Hearts being an epic slow burn gay romance would be incredibly impactful to people both personally and as a landmark in queer representation by extremely popular and established characters. It has decades of legitimate buildup and has the potential to be both incredibly validating to queer fans everywhere and even possibly sway the minds of those who love the characters but may not have much contact or knowledge of queerness.”

and

“The Kingdom Hearts series is honestly kind of unique in its unabashed emotional sincerity. How it treats friendships and non-romantic bonds as being both extremely important and powerful, never giving the impression that friendship is lesser to romance, is depressingly still somewhat of a rarity in media. This is very important and validating to many, particularly aromantics but also most everyone who is just Tired of how friendships and romance are often presented in tiers of importance.”

are concepts that can and should co-exist.

[kweza]

trans ideology will have you believe that feeling like a woman and passing as a woman is what actually makes you a woman but like no. i could wake up tomorrow, shave my head, wear only masculine clothes, not feel particularly feminine and i'd still be 100% a woman.