#It should be a historical site

[tropicana-on-the-walkway]

Oh and One more thing. I think it's fucked up anyone can just go and explore the titanic wreckage. Because it's not just a wreckage it's a graveyard. A massive graveyard in the middle of the ocean. Out of the 1500 that died onboard only 337 bodies were found. But you don't find bodies you find shoes , because everything else like cloth and metal and flesh and bone has just been deteriorated and eaten away by the water and the creatures and the bacteria.

[cruelsister-moved2]

btw the fact that butch/femme relationships arent 'replicating heterosexuality' doesnt mean you as a feminine woman are incapable of having desires+expectations rooted in internalisation of the male gaze & then projecting that onto masc women. it means masc women dont "have a male gaze" & are in no position to actually benefit from it, it doesnt mean that you as a feminine woman fantasising about being a tradwife and regurgitating tiktok divine feminine bimbo nonsense needs no further exploration as long as u construct an internal voyeur in the shape of a masculine woman rather than a man

[matan4il]

שלום! אני חזרתי לארצות הברית ביום חמישי, אבל אני ממש מתגעגע את ארץ ישראל… (אין לי שאלות, אני רק אוהב את ישראל!)

אווווווווו, נוני, איזה כיף שנהנית מאוד מהביקור.

הדבר הטוב בארץ ישראל זה שהיא לא הולכת לשום מקום. היא תחכה לביקור הבא שלך! ובינתיים, אני מאוז מזדהה עם האהבה הזו לארץ ישראל.

שולחת חיבוק גדול וחם! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[lesbiancosimaniehaus]

What is interesting about it? if you weaponize jewishness to defend an ongoing genocide, obviously there are going to be revolts in Jewish cultural and historical landmarks... Both by Jews people and non Jews

What is interesting about being in a country with a remarkably horrible history of antisemitism? Like a few miles away from a site where people were victimized for their religious and ethnic heritage? Surely recognizing that antisemitism persists despite the apparently extensive efforts to come to terms with a horrible period in history can qualify as “interesting��.

You’d have to be completely blind, braindead and ignorant to not see how that history of antisemitism led to the creation of the state of Israel and all of the ensuing history, but that’s not really my point. I don’t think that’s “weaponizing” Jewishness, anymore than any other marginalized group bringing attention to the ways in which they have been and continue to be victimized is weaponizing anything.

Also how is anything I’ve written “defending genocide”? My personal position has been one of sympathy for the civilians whose lives are upended and affected by political conflicts that have no easy solutions. And of horror at the many occasions in which Jews get accused of having anything to do w the ongoing conflict by virtue of their ethnicity and religion. Threatening Jewish students in New York and being violent outside a synagogue in Berlin isn’t going to get the IDF to back down! That’s just antisemitism.

[notthatalex]

People are laughing at me now, doing long-time archival of fanwork I care about, but in the future bc of digital dark age, only my blorbos will have survived

*no one is laughing at me

**I have librarian/archivist disease

***I am not the only one doing this and I am not even doing it particularly well

[viaetor]

finally heading home! the adventures i went through took away some good 15 years out of my life ngl (thank you kier, umbra and tea for listening to my dumbass tales @ 3am) 😭 !! i'll start working on comms and requests this week, plus some uni and work stuff ~ but if you'd like me to send a small thing from your rb memes/prompts or a simple one-liner, like this post maybe?

[17yearcicada]

in another life i could have been a history buff

[squirrelno2]

ok the tumblr desktop layout changing is so bad for many reasons but like. man if i wanted my tumblr dash to look like a fucking app i would open the app on my phone. tumblr desktop is my safe space. my comfort zone. the app is my on the go serotonin boost or whatever but the desktop is where i can leave a post draft open for three hours in an unused tab before discarding the post completely and fucking off to some complete stranger’s blog to see what they’re hyperfixated on.

[ibroughtyoumybullets]

did Pinterest fuck with their algorithm or smth? their suggestions used to have me by the throat but lately theyre shit 

[dyslexicempress]

talkin to a prof earlier today about how its really difficult and mentally frustrating that i can’t get myself to write things like a normal person-- takes me literal hours to get started on writing even IF ITS THE ONLY THING I HAVE TO DO AND WOULD ONLY TAKE MAYBE AN HOUR OF APPLIED TIME 

she told me to drink about it. vent in tags

[hua-fei-hua]

the main reason i don’t take “i’m a native speaker of the source language” as the be-all, end-all for translation arguments in fandom specifically (as in, between fans who are not professional or even hobbyist translators) is bc, well. sometimes.......... native speakers............ are bad at their own language, too.

[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.  

[fenrislorsrai]

Justice 40

Joe Biden is boring and often bad at tooting his own horn, but by god, he is good at process.

Justice 40 is simple but powerful application of that. its a shift in how the executive branch works. 40% of money from a bunch of existing programs should go to census tracts that are overburdened with pollution, at higher risk for climate change, and have been historically underserved.

The shorthand here is basically "communities that don't have enough internal resources to deal with long term problems". So yes, communities that had been redlined for decades, ones that have Superfund sites, ones that have high rates of asthma from air pollution.

and this is by census tract. Not city. census tract. So parts of New York City qualify... but other parts don't. And the city HAS to use the money in the targeted part. it doesn't go into the communal pool. it's for THAT tract specifically.

Also all land federally recognized as belonging to a Native American tribe and all Alaskan Native Villages qualify, specifically.

And again, this is for existing programs that are already running and have existing staff and budgets. They're supposed to prioritize grants and projects for those areas specifically. And that's everything from Department of Agriculture, to FEMA, to Labor, to Environmental Protection.

Does it instantly get rid of all the baked in racism from decades past? No, not even close. But it puts in a countermeasure that has a concrete and measurable goal to aim for rather than a nebulous "suck less." even if the administration changes, many of those changes will stick.

And as things improve, some tracts may come off the list! Some may go on that weren't there before!

You can see a map here. Blue highlighted tracts are "disadvantaged" so qualify for that extra assistance! Check and see if you live in one or part of your town does. Because if you've been hearing constantly "we can't afford to fix X problem..." and you're in that tract.... there's money available. For you. Build that sidewalk, fix those lead pipes, get that brush truck your volunteer fire department has been asking for.

And tell your local officials that! "did you look at Justice 40 for funding". And even if they're doing their best, particularly people in little towns.... being a government official isn't their full time job. They may have missed it. Just asking them about the program may suddenly open a world of possibilities.

[owlyspirit]

Reading up on a the Beerwar between two german cities around 1450 and I faintly remembered someone telling me about it and like

Basically it's just Zittau arguing they should and could be allowed to sell their Beer in Görlitz without any border taxes and one time they tried delivering more beer and some teens attacked the delivery

Anyways move forwards and one Zittau poet made a poem that slams Görlitz bc might as well and one mad lad actually walked over to Görlitz to recite the poem (you know the poem that is all like you suck!") and got put to court and the Judge decided his punishment was to get beat the fuck up in the open like ????? okay????

And the only way for them to stop arguing was when Görlitz was like "pay us 300 Gulden for repairs!!!" Zittau went ofc "Nah bruh" so the cities and towns surrounding them collected the money instead for them to pay the toll so they would stop arguing 😭

[bluerosefox]

Tim in Infinite Realms (Feeling like Alice tbh)

'Note to self' Tim thought as he stared up at the different shades of greens and black shifting sky above him as he ignored the aching his body was in from the rough landing he had to take 'Make sure to give Bart and Kon the slowest and mind-numbing missions for like a week once I get back.'

Tim often forgot his parents used to be accomplished archeologists before they died. (He really didnt, he just really didn't like acknowledging the fact they'd rather dig up buried things from ages ago over being in the same country as him for most of his life)

It wasn't until, as he and his old team ("Yeah! Young Just US together again. Time for a new insane adventure! Hey remember that one time with-" "Shh!!" "Ooohhh right... Forgot. What happens in YJ stays in YJ...") were assigned a new mission that he was reminded of this fact.

The mission was to locate a forgotten relic that apparently could open 'doorways' into different Realms, and one of them was a Realm of powerful undead that if controlled would be unstoppable. They were meant to find it before "insert 'creative name' cult of the week here please" Who planned on subjecting the world to its power.

Now knowing about the relic and finding it was two wholly different things. Tim and the others managed to uncover just enough about the artifact that Tim had manged to narrow down the last city it had been last recorded to be seen in.

And the city's old name was something that Tim thought sounded familiar.

It wasn't until they were digging into the countries archeologist permission records, meaning the people who were given the okay to dig in the historical site, that he found out why it sounded familiar, his parents names were some of the last to have been granted permission before their deaths, and it was then Bart had jokelying said

"Hey what are are the odds Robs parents stored the relic away ages ago! Would be a tiny bit funny if this all powerful item is just collecting dust in some warehouse."

And although it was meant to be a joke. Tim stared at the description of the relic and couldn't help but question perhaps there was some merit to it. Tim, for the first time in years, opened up his parents archeologist records and went to looking.

And low and behold they found out. Still sitting in a warehouse outside of Gotham, as if his parents were going to trust Gotham with important and priceless relics unless it was in their house to study later.

So in short, retrieving the relic should had been easy enough, get in and remove it from storage. Lock it away so the cult looking for the damn thing couldn't use it. Simple.

But trust Bart goofing around with Kon and accidently bumping into Tim when he was inspecting the relic and turning it on.

It apparently opened a glowing green portal... a portal that opened under Tim and dropped him into an entirely new dimension of the Undead... Great, just great.

"Ooo a visitor, we don't get breathing guests here all too often." A voice spoke out behind him, it held an echoing in its tone. He turned around and was meet with glowing eyes and snow white hair. "Although you should probably find a way home or else Walker will find you, knowing him he'll toss you in prison for just breathing, and I'm not joking."

[bengesko]

AI Sellout

Used an email mask to read the whole article, pasting it below the cut.

Quick important points:

The tweet content is a list of things that are currently included, but were not SUPPOSED TO BE, and engineers are working to scrub it.

Automattic is supposedly going to add an opt out option.

Automattic did not respond to a question from 404 Media about whether it could guarantee that people who opt out will have their data deleted retroactively.

Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, according to a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documentation referring to the deals. 

The exact types of data from each platform going to each company are not spelled out in documentation we’ve reviewed, but internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platforms’ parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent.

The internal documentation details a messy and controversial process within Tumblr itself. One internal post made by Cyle Gage, a product manager at Tumblr, states that a query made to prepare data for OpenAI and Midjourney compiled a huge number of user posts that it wasn’t supposed to. It is not clear from Gage’s post whether this data has already been sent to OpenAI and Midjourney, or whether Gage was detailing a process for scrubbing the data before it was to be sent. 

Gage wrote:

“the way the data was queried for the initial data dump to Midjourney/OpenAI means we compiled a list of all tumblr’s public post content between 2014 and 2023, but also unfortunately it included, and should not have included:

private posts on public blogs

posts on deleted or suspended blogs

unanswered asks (normally these are not public until they’re answered)

private answers (these only show up to the receiver and are not public)

posts that are marked ‘explicit’ / NSFW / ‘mature’ by our more modern standards (this may not be a big deal, I don’t know)

content from premium partner blogs (special brand blogs like Apple’s former music blog, for example, who spent money with us on an ad campaign) that may have creative that doesn’t belong to us, and we don’t have the rights to share with this-parties; this one is kinda unknown to me, what deals are in place historically and what they should prevent us from doing.”

Gage’s post makes clear that engineers are working on compiling a list of post IDs that should not have been included, and that password-protected posts, DMs, and media flagged as CSAM and other community guidelines violations were not included.

Automattic plans to launch a new setting on Wednesday that will allow users to opt-out of data sharing with third parties, including AI companies, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and internal documents. A new FAQ section we reviewed is titled “What happens when you opt out?” states that “If you opt out from the start, we will block crawlers from accessing your content by adding your site on a disallowed list. If you change your mind later, we also plan to update any partners about people who newly opt-out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training.” 

404 Media has asked Automattic how it accidentally compiled data that it shouldn’t share, and whether any of that content was shared with OpenAI, but did not immediately hear back from the company. 404 Media asked Automattic about an imminent deal with Midjourney last week but did not hear back then, either.

Another internal document shows that, on February 23, an employee asked in a staff-only thread, “Do we have assurances that if a user opts out of their data being shared with third parties that our existing data partners will be notified of such a change and remove their data?”

Andrew Spittle, Automattic’s head of AI replied: “We will notify existing partners on a regular basis about anyone who's opted out since the last time we provided a list. I want this to be an ongoing process where we regularly advocate for past content to be excluded based on current preferences. We will ask that content be deleted and removed from any future training runs. I believe partners will honor this based on our conversations with them to this point. I don't think they gain much overall by retaining it.” Automattic did not respond to a question from 404 Media about whether it could guarantee that people who opt out will have their data deleted retroactively.

News about a deal between Tumblr and Midjourney has been rumored and speculated about on Tumblr for the last week. Someone claiming to be a former Tumblr employee announced in a Tumblr blog post that the platform was working on a deal with Midjourney, and the rumor made it onto Blind, an app for verified employees of companies to anonymously discuss their jobs. 404 Media has seen the Blind posts, in which what seems like an Automattic employee says, “I'm not sure why some of you are getting worked up or worried about this. It's totally legal, and sharing it publicly is perfectly fine since it's right there in the terms & conditions. So, go ahead and spread the word as much as you can with your friends and tech journalists, it's totally fine.”

Separately, 404 Media viewed a public, now-deleted post by Gage, the product manager, where he said that he was deleting all of his images off of Tumblr, and would be putting them on his personal website. A still-live post says, “i've deleted my photography from tumblr and will be moving it slowly but surely over to cylegage.com, which i'm building into a photography portfolio that i can control end-to-end.” At one point last week, his personal website had a specific note stating that he did not consent to AI scraping of his images. Gage’s original post has been deleted, and his website is now a blank page that just reads “Cyle.” Gage did not respond to a request for comment from 404 Media. 

Several online platforms have made similar deals with AI companies recently, including Reddit, which entered into an AI content licensing deal with Google and said in its SEC filing last week that it’s “in the early stages of monetizing [its] user base” by training AI on users’ posts. Last year, Shutterstock signed a six year deal with OpenAI to provide training data.

OpenAI and Midjourney did not respond to requests for comment.