#Simplify Access Management

[skillmine1]

5 reasons to choose Skillmine Authenticator

With SSO, organizations can enforce stronger authentication measures, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), for the initial login. This adds an extra layer of security to protect sensitive data and prevent unauthorized access. Additionally, SSO enables centralized control and monitoring of user access, simplifying user provisioning and de-provisioning processes. This helps organizations maintain compliance with data protection regulations and ensures that access privileges are granted and revoked in a timely manner.

Website: https://skill-mine.com/products/best-multifactor-authentication/

[haberai]

CELİKELCPA - PLATİNUM

Are you considering taking the exciting plunge into the dynamic Turkish market? Look no further than Celik El CPA, your trusted partner for seamless company formation and registration in Turkey. As an expert in navigating the complexities of business setup, our services cater to both local and international entrepreneurs eager to establish a foothold in this vibrant economy. With our knowledgeable Turkey accountants by your side, you can rest assured that your financial matters will be managed with precision and care. From navigating regulatory requirements to ensuring compliance, we simplify the process of starting a business in Turkey. 

Company Formation in Turkey

Setting up a business in Turkey can be an excellent decision for both local and foreign entrepreneurs. The process of company formation in Turkey is streamlined and relatively straightforward, making it a lucrative destination for investment. With the right guidance, including the assistance of professional Turkey accountants, you can navigate through legal requirements with ease.

One of the key aspects in securing a successful company registration in Turkey is understanding the various business structures available, such as limited liability companies (LLCs) and joint-stock companies. Each type has its unique benefits and requirements, which is why consulting with experts is advisable to choose the best option for your business model.

Moreover, Turkey's strategic location and growing economy provide a wealth of opportunities for business growth. Whether you're considering import-export businesses or tech startups, the benefits of entering the Turkish market are plentiful. You can leverage local resources and a young workforce, enhancing the potential for business success.

When you’re ready to start your business journey, ensure that you have all the necessary documents submitted accurately to avoid delays in the registration process. With the right support, how to start a business in Turkey can become a seamless experience!

Company Registration in Turkey

Company Registration in Turkey is a crucial step for entrepreneurs looking to establish a business presence in this vibrant market. The process involves several key steps that are designed to ensure compliance with local laws and regulations.

Step-by-Step Process

Choose Your Business Structure: Decide on the type of entity that best suits your business needs, such as a limited liability company (LLC) or joint-stock company.

Prepare Necessary Documentation: Gather all required documents, including your business plan, identity proof, and proof of address.

Open a Bank Account: Deposit the minimum required capital into a Turkish bank account and obtain a bank receipt.

Notary Public: Have your company’s articles of association drafted and notarized.

Register with the Trade Registry Office: Submit your documents to the local Trade Registry office to officially register your company.

Obtain Tax Registration: After registration, apply for a tax identification number from the Tax Office.

Benefits of Registering Your Company in Turkey

Completing the company registration process not only gives your business legal standing but also opens doors to various advantages such as:

Access to a growing market with a dynamic economy.

Eligibility for local and international contracts.

Enhanced credibility with clients and investors.

Engaging with experienced Turkey accountants such as those at Celikel CPA can significantly streamline your registration process. Their expert guidance ensures all steps are efficiently handled, allowing you to focus on your core business activities.

Ready to take the plunge and establish your presence in Turkey? Start your journey today with the support of dedicated professionals who are there to guide you through every step of How to Start a Business in Turkey.

Turkey Accountants

When planning for company formation in Turkey, selecting a skilled accountant is crucial to ensure compliance with local regulations. Experienced Turkey accountants possess in-depth knowledge of the Turkish tax system and can guide you through the intricacies of company registration in Turkey.

These professionals are adept at various services including bookkeeping, financial reporting, and tax planning, which are essential for new businesses. With their expertise, they help business owners navigate the complexities of local financial obligations, enabling you to focus on building your company.

If you are considering how to start a business in Turkey, partnering with the right accounting firm can significantly streamline your operations and enhance your chances of success. Ensure that your financial foundations are strong with professional help, positioning your business on the path to growth.

How to Start a Business in Turkey

How to starting a business in Turkey can be an exciting and rewarding venture. With its strategic location, dynamic market, and favorable investment climate, the country is an excellent choice for entrepreneurs. Here’s a concise guide to navigating the essential steps so you can move forward confidently.

Choose Your Business Structure: The first step is to decide on the type of business entity that suits your needs. Options include limited liability companies (LLCs), joint-stock companies (JSCs), and sole proprietorships. Each structure comes with its own regulatory requirements and tax implications, so it's essential to choose wisely.

These steps can set the foundation for your success in Turkey’s vibrant market landscape. With effective company registration in Turkey and the guidance of experienced Turkey accountants at your side, you will be well-equipped to launch and grow your business.

For more detailed assistance and tailored advice, don't hesitate to visit Celik & Co. CPA—your trusted partner in navigating the complexities of starting a business in Turkey.

[cognitivejustice]

Restoring Indigenous aquaculture heals both ecosystems and communities in Hawai‘i

For generations, native Hawaiians have understood that their aquaculture systems, fishponds known as loko i‘a, serve as nurseries that seed fish populations in surrounding waters. For the first time, a team of scientists from the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) have modeled this feat of Indigenous science in a study.

“We are using science to translate ‘ike kupuna, or Indigenous knowledge, into policy,” said study co-author Kawika Winter, an ecologist at HIMB and He‘eia National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR).

“The value of this paper is that it’s one of the first, if not the first, to really show that there are ways to do aquaculture in ways that benefit the system around it.”

In partnership with He‘eia NERR and Paepae o He‘eia, a nonprofit organization dedicated to stewarding the He‘eia loko i‘a, an ancient Hawaiian fishpond enclosing 36 hectares (88 acres) of brackish water, the team simulated different restoration scenarios in Kāne‘ohe Bay on O‘ahu Island based on a simplified food web. The study found that restoring more of the bay into fully functional loko iʻa would grow fish populations not just within the ponds, but across the bay.

“Aquaculture has a really bad reputation for basically destroying areas around it, but those are commercial approaches to aquaculture that aren’t holistic in their thinking or values-based like Indigenous management,” Winter said. “Rather than ensuring the health of the system, commercial aquaculture is concerned with maximizing profits.”

Winter attributed the success of the loko i’a design to Indigenous thought processes: “Indigenous thinking is operating within the opportunities and constraints of this system and figuring out a way to make things abundant within that context, sometimes even increasing abundance beyond natural levels.

Restoring ecosystems and relationships

Since co-founding Paepae o He‘eia in 2001, study co-author Hi‘ilei Kawelo, a sixth-generation Hawaiian from Kāne‘ohe Bay, has witnessed thousands of volunteers transform the He‘eia loko i‘a.

With the ongoing restoration, Paepae o He‘eia has seen both the aquatic environment and participants’ well-being improve with increased access to traditional foods, strengthening their relationship to place, and fortifying their family and community relationships. “For me and for a lot of our employees, this is one of our outlets, if not our primary outlet for exercising aloha ‘āina [love of the land],” Kawelo said.

“‘Āina is so important, because it is a term for a system that has the nature and its people in an inseparable reciprocal relationship,” Winter said. “The concept is core to this work because it’s about getting back into a way of thinking where there is no separation between the lands, the waters and us.”

While the overarching goal of Paepae o He‘eia and other fishponds is to revitalize Hawai‘i’s extensive Indigenous aquaculture system, Kotubetey said he knows the work may take generations.

[mavihuzun]

TOTAL BATTLE LOGİN - PRO+

Welcome to the ultimate gaming experience with Total Battle, a strategic online war game that challenges your tactical skills while immersing you in a captivating medieval world. In this article, we’ll explore the essentials that every player needs to know, including how to navigate the Total Battle login process, maximize your gameplay, and delve into comprehensive guides that will elevate your strategies. Whether you're a seasoned general or just starting your journey, you’ll find valuable insights and tips to help you conquer your foes and build a formidable empire.

Total Battle Login

Accessing your gaming experience has never been easier with the total battle login. This streamlined process allows players to quickly enter the highly immersive world of Total Battle, ensuring that your journey toward strategy and conquest begins without delay.

Once you reach the total battle login page, you'll find an intuitive interface designed to facilitate your entrance. Whether you're a seasoned commander or a new recruit, you can swiftly log in using your credentials and pick up right where you left off in your quest for dominance.

In addition to great accessibility, the total battle login ensures your data protection and provides a seamless connection across devices. This means you can enjoy your favorite strategies on-the-go, enhancing your gaming flexibility and freedom.

Don't let obstacles stand in your way! Experience the thrill of Total Battle with a fast, reliable login process. Explore the possibilities at your fingertips – dive into engaging gameplay today with the total battle login!

Total Battle

Total Battle offers an immersive gaming experience that combines strategic warfare with resource management, making it a go-to choice for gamers looking for depth and excitement. The focal point of the game revolves around building your empire, forming alliances, and engaging in epic battles. Players can expect to dive into various gameplay modes designed to enhance their strategic skills and test their tactical abilities.

One of the significant advantages of total battle is its comprehensive total battle guide that aids both new and experienced players. This guide provides players with vital information on unit formations, resource allocation, and battle tactics, ensuring that you always stay one step ahead of your opponents. With regular updates and community contributions, this guide evolves alongside the game, maintaining its relevance and usefulness.

When you visit totalbattle, you are welcomed with a user-friendly interface that simplifies the login process, allowing you to jump straight into action. The platform is designed to be intuitive, making it easy for players of all skill levels to navigate and find helpful tools and resources that enhance their gameplay experience.

Join a thriving community of players who engage in strategic discussions, share their experiences, and dominate the battlefield. With Total Battle's dynamic gameplay and community-driven atmosphere, you will not just be a player— you will become part of a unified force aimed at conquering new territories and achieving glorious victories.

Total Battle Guide

Welcome to your ultimate total battle guide, designed to help you navigate through the exciting world of Total Battle efficiently. Whether you are a newcomer seeking to understand the basics or a seasoned player looking for advanced strategies, this comprehensive guide is here to enhance your gameplay experience.

Understanding Game Mechanics

Total Battle combines elements of strategy, city-building, and warfare. Familiarize yourself with the core mechanics to maximize your success:

Resource Management: Balance your resources like gold, wood, and food to ensure steady growth of your empire.

Unit Types: Learn about the various units available, including infantry, cavalry, and siege equipment, and understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Buildings: Upgrade your city by constructing essential buildings that boost your economic and military might.

Strategic Gameplay Tips

To gain an edge over your opponents, implement these tips into your strategy:

Scout Before Attacking: Always scout enemy positions to make informed decisions before launching an attack.

Join an Alliance: Collaborating with other players provides support and enhances your strategic options.

Daily Login Rewards: Make sure to log in daily to claim valuable rewards that will assist you in your quest.

Explore Tactical Features

The game offers various tactical features to gain dominance over your rivals. Mastering these can lead to significant advantages:

Hero Development: Develop your heroes by equipping them with powerful gear and leveling them up for enhanced abilities.

Battle Tactics: Experiment with different formations and tactics to find the best approach during battles.

Event Participation: Engage in special events that often yield unique rewards and opportunities for bonuses.

Utilizing this total battle guide will empower you as you embark on your journey in Total Battle. For further assistance or in-depth lore, don’t forget to check out TotalBattleLogin.com. Start your adventure today and conquer your foes with confidence!

Totalbattle

Discover the captivating world of Totalbattle, where strategy and action collide! Immerse yourself in the exhilarating gameplay designed to challenge even the most seasoned gamers. From building your powerful empire to forging alliances with other players, the Total Battle experience is ever-evolving and engaging.

The game seamlessly blends elements of classic strategy with modern features, ensuring that every session is unique. Whether you are a newbie or a veteran, the Total Battle guide is your essential tool for mastering gameplay tactics and optimizing your journey.

Accessing the game through the Total Battle login portal opens doors to exclusive events, rewards, and updates that keep the excitement alive. Enhance your gameplay experience by diving into rich lore and strategic warfare mechanics that Total Battle has to offer.

Join a vibrant community of players who share tips, strategies, and camaraderie in their quest for dominance. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to enhance your skills and achieve greatness. Take the first step by visiting Total Battle and preparing yourself for an epic adventure!

[shijiujun]

A Summary: The Spirealm | 致命游戏 (Kaleidoscope of Death 死亡万花筒 Live Action) & Why You Should (Eventually) Watch It

Talk about the most short-lived drama release ever, not even totalling two hours if I recall. Creating this summary as I've seen a handful of confused friends, so here it goes!

It's going to be a long review because I sped through all 78 episodes and only properly watched the first two doors, but I got you. You'll get both the brief book rundown and the drama parts!

If you just wanna see the bromance (LOVE) parts please skip to section 4!!!!

1. Overview

Title: The Spirealm (kinda awful I'm sorry it's a mouthful) or 致命游戏 which means fatal game

Adapted From: Danmei (BL) Kaleidoscope of Death by Xi Zixu

Novel Prints: There are GORGEOUS Thai, Vietnamese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese versions printed, AND Singapore publisher Rosmei has signed the license for the ENGLISH version, probably going on sale this year (preview is here). You can still access fan translations by Taida on I think wordpress and someone else on Tumblr sorry bad memory (they did half and half each) if you'd like to read it for context. It is one of my FAVE danmeis EVER and I am a die-hard OG book fan, check out my full danmei review here.

Total Episodes: 78 (20 minutes each with the exception of last episode which 10 minutes, with several BTS not that I think we will get to see all of them yet)

Where to Watch (LOL): Erm considering that iQIYI China AND International took the episodes down, there is no legal way to watch this, BUT thanks to some cnetz with super fast and great wifi, we managed to get ripped HD versions without subs. iQIYI is very hard on copyright though, they've taken down several subbed and unsubbed versions already on YouTube, but you should type the titles of show into Twitter and the top tags will tell you where to access the raws and very little subbed episodes, that may also be taken down at any point. I have the Chinese raws but as it's hosted on a cloud, I had to pay to access it.

Main Characters: Lin Qiushi & Ruan Nanzhu/Ruan Baijie (in the novel) and Ling Jiushi & Ruan Nanzhu/Ruan Baijie (in the drama)

Produced By: iQIYI so for SURE they won't film it fully BL even if the original is, but I've seen enough bromance cuts

Main Actors: Xia Zhiguang (Ruan Nanzhu/Ruan Baijie) + Huang Junjie (Ling Jiushi)

2. Summary

Book (drama follows closely if not removing the supernatural premises): Lin Qiushi, a designer, opens the door to his home one day from inside and sees 12 iron doors outside. Confused, he opens one of them and arrives at a snow covered village in the mid of winter, and meets Ruan Baijie, who's a pretty, unusually tall and whiny/timid woman. They realise that they're in a horrifying door game, and they'll have to find a door and a key to get out, while battling a long-haired, human-eating deity. They, along with a few others, have to survive day after day until they get out, and on the first night, two people have died in gory ways. Ruan Baijie and Lin Qiushi partner each other, and despite seemingly timid and crying all the time, she saves Lin Qiushi a few times mysteriously, and Lin Qiushi finds himself trusting in Ruan Baijie.

They get through the door together and when they leave successfully, Lin Qiushi realizes that the people who died in the door will die in real life by some freak accident too - car accidents, forced suicides, a robbery gone wrong, a lift trapped in the air and going ablaze, and more. That night, Lin Qiushi wakes up to see a super handsome and tall Ruan Nanzhu at his bedside and this man feels familiar to him, but he can't put a finger on it. All he can think of when Ruan Nanzhu says his name is Ruan Baijie (ahem he would later find out who it is of course). Ruan Nanzhu takes him to his mansion in the suburbs where he meets a group of other people just like them, who're forced to go through the doors for survival. Ruan Nanzhu then invites him to join Obsidian, his organization.

Through various doors, Lin Qiushi grows and supports a super intelligent and powerful Ruan Nanzhu, falls in love with him, gets through many many scary doors with him and some of their other team members, makes friends, loses them to the cruelty of the doors as they ponder over what the door means, and what being alive/dying means.

And at the end of it, at the end of of it all, when they're all good and living their life, Lin Qiushi also finds out what Ruan Nanzhu's secret is, and the lengths to which Ruan Nanzhu went to, just to be with him.

Drama: Ling Jiushi is a VR game designer who gets pulled into a game, and he meets Ruan Baijie (in his male form) right off the bat (SO NOT CROSSDRESSING I AM SAD). All the parts are actually the same as the novel, albeit with the game setting and Ling Jiushi and Ruan Nanzhu's identity adjustments to suit the game premise. Most of the other doors and their lines are the same, just that the ending is a bit more confusing than it could be. There's a big bad as well and they actually show the opposing organizations when in the novel, these other organizations aside from Obsidian didn't even actually have a face or goal to them.

3. Characters

^ Them in the book (based on manhua that never got to go live LOL) (RNZ/RBJ left, LQS right)

^ Them in the show (LJS left, RNZ right)

Ruan Nanzhu/Ruan Baijie: MY HANDSOME CROSSDRESSING INTELLIGENT ALOOF BUT WHINY (WHEN IT COMES TO LIN QIUSHI) SASSY BOSS!!!! He's super mysterious and super thick-skinned too, and all he wants is Lin Qiushi's attention the moment he meets him. He's intrigued by Lin Qiushi's calm and his brains and the way he handles things, and has a lot of trust for him right from the get-go. This is also shown in the drama itself. As the leader of Obsidian, he cares a lot for his team members and his friends even if he doesn't show it most of the time, and the last thing he wants to do is lose Lin Qiushi, and he would do ANYTHING for Lin Qiushi, ANYTHING!!! Just look at him whining:

Ling Jiushi (Lin Qiushi): In the novel he's super calm, has quite a lot of brains, a little bit of a blur in the beginning but he's super smart as well. Worries a lot for Ruan Nanzhu and is also a loyal friend to some of his only friends, and feels a lot when he loses them. Falls gradually in love with Ruan Nanzhu in the novel, like they just belong together. In this drama, Ling Jiushi holds that same trust for Ruan Nanzhu, but in demeanour he seems a bit more like a klutz and and not as cool as he was in the novel, but I guess it's acceptable. Literally like the only thing he loves more than RNZ (maybe) is his cat Chestnut LOL and RNZ is NOT really happy about that but Chestnut LOVES RNZ

Yixie and Qianli: CUTEST TWINS ;-; WHO TREAT RNZ and LQS as their big brothers LOOK AT THEM BOWING AND RNZ/LJS like parents LMAO

A handful of other characters who will keep turning up and get your hearts ;-;

4. ALL FAVE BROMANCE MOMENTS + TROPES

THEY TOUCH EACH OTHER A LOT LIKE HOLDING HANDS AND TOUCHING FACES, PIGGY BACKING?!?! DID I MENTION FACE TOUCHING

WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP THEY HELP EACH OTHER WHEN HURT OR GET HURT FOR EACH OTHER

AND WHEN THEY WAKE UP IN BED THE OTHER IS AT THEIR BEDSIDE

AND DID I MENTION HE FEEDS HIM IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE

AND THAT THEY DATED UNDER THE FIREWORKS LIKE THE NOVEL DOES NOT EVEN HAVE THIS SHIT

AND THE KABEDONS

AND FINALLY RUAN NANZHU RIZZ OMG

5. Settings

They REALLY OUTDID THEMSELVES. THIS JUST FROM DOORS 1-6:

THEY LOOK EXACTLY LIKE THE NOVEL DESCRIBED!!!!

6. Overall Thoughts

PROS: This was NOT a cheap production, I'm telling you, they followed the cases very well and there're a lot of super recognisable lines, if not ALL of them, even if they changed the cases a little. I think they did it because in the novel originally, the author DOES leave a lot of details hanging like someone dies and you know he had a background and there are some shady things happening but the author NEVER actually goes into detail. So the drama did their best to cover these loopholes, even if it felt a little awkward at times. Money went into settings and attires and every damn thing, this looks EXPENSIVE. And if you've ever imagined each door and the bosses inside in your head, you might have felt chills go down your spine because damn did they really colour the book's settings for me (despite its differences). DID I MENTION that Xia Zhiguang really got the damn memo and he was a passable Ruan Nanzhu/Ruan Baijie who knew how to turn on his BL eyes. PLUS they really did some of the character deaths really well - they're technically some of the biggest parts of this story so ;-; (not two main of course)

CONS (maybe): They did away with the supernatural/horror premise and replaced it with a GAME premise, which means that there's a scientific element to it and the try to explain away stuff with the game, including the ending. I don't 100% get the ending, but the feel/vibe is about the same. Might not be for hardcore reader fans tho! They skipped out on a couple of doors, some of which were my faves, but it's fine, it's long enough LOL. They give away/explain some of the clues and surprises super early which means you don't get that added boom at the back as well. Despite that, I have to say they tried to round up the loopholes from the book as much as they could and give it an explanation while tying elements/conspiracies across doors (probably also to save cast fees LOL). And as always it's not a solid ending, it's an open confusing one, and even more confusing than the book itself because THERE IS NO CERTAIN HAPPILY EVER AFTER WITH HUBBY for it (there is in the book tho, they live together happily every after). Secondl,y, I'd say HJJ's acting is a bit stiff and OOC compared to the novel, but Xia Zhiguang really made up for it.

-------

HOPE THIS HELPS YOU GUYS!!! But I guess if you need subs it's going to be a long LONGGGG ride, considering that iQIYI doesn't seem to be going to be able to put it up anytime soon CRIES.

[dragonmarquise]

How to Deal with Windows 10/11 Nonsense

This is more for my own reference to keep all of this on one post. But hopefully others will find this useful too! So yeah, as the title says, this is a to organize links and resources related to handling/removing nonsense from Windows 10 and Windows 11. Especially bloatware and stuff like that Copilot AI thing.

First and foremost, there's O&O Software's ShutUp10++ (an antispy tool that help give you more control over Windows settings) and App Buster (helps remove bloatware and manage applications). I've used these myself for Windows 10 and they work great, and the developers have stated that these should work with Windows 11 too!

10AppsManager is another bloatware/app management tool, though at the moment it seems to only work on Windows 10.

Winaero Tweaker, similar to ShupUp10++ in that it gives you more control over Windows to disable some of the more annoying settings, such as disabling web search from the taskbar/start menu and disabling ads/tips/suggestions in different parts of the OS. I think ShupUp10++ covers the same options as this one, but I'm not entirely sure.

OpenShell, helps simplify the Start Menu and make it look more like the classic start menu from older versions of Windows. Should work with both 10 and 11 according to the readme.

Notes on how to remove that one horrible AI spying snapshots feature that's being rolled out on Windows 11 right now.

Article on how to remove Copilot (an AI assistant) from Windows 11. (Edit 11/20/2024) Plus a post with notes on how to remove it from Windows 10 too, since apparently it's not just limited to 11 now.

Win11Debloat, a simple script that can be used to automatically remove pretty much all of the bullshit from both 10 and 11, though a lot of its features are focused on fixing Windows 11 in particular (hence the name). Also has options you can set to pick and choose what changes you want!

Article on how to set up Windows 11 with a local account on a new computer, instead of having to log in with a Microsoft account. To me, this is especially important because I much prefer having a local account than let Microsoft have access to my stuff via a cloud account. Also note this article and this article for more or less the same process.

I will add to this as I find more resources. I'm hoping to avoid Windows 11 for as long as possible, and I've already been used the O&O apps to keep Windows 10 trimmed down and controlled. But if all else fails and I have to use Windows 11 on a new computer, then I plan to be as prepared as possible.

Edit 11/1/2024: Two extra things I wanted to add onto here.

A recommended Linux distro for people who want to use Linux instead of Windows.

How to run a Windows app on Linux, using Wine. Note that this will not work for every app out there, though a lot of people out there are working on testing different apps and figuring out how to get them to work in Wine.

The main app I use to help with my art (specifically for 3D models to make references when I need it) is Windows only. If I could get it to work on Linux, it would give me no reason to use Windows outside of my work computer tbh (which is a company laptop anyways).

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - February 22-28

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles! (This month’s doodles will be a little delayed since I wasn’t able to work on them throughout the month)

1. City trees absorb much more carbon than expected

“[A new measurement technique shows that trees in LA absorb] up to 60% of daytime CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion in spring and summer[….] Beyond offering shade and aesthetic value, these trees act as silent workhorses in the city’s climate resilience strategy[….]”

2. #AltGov: the secret network of federal workers resisting Doge from the inside

“Government employees fight the Trump administration’s chaos by organizing and publishing information on Bluesky[…. A group of government employees are] banding together to “expose harmful policies, defend public institutions and equip citizens with tools to push back against authoritarianism[….]””

3. An Ecuadorian hotspot shows how forests can claw back from destruction

“A December 2024 study described the recovery of ground birds and mammals like ocelots, and found their diversity and biomass in secondary forests was similar to those in old-growth forests after just 20 years. [… Some taxa recover] “earlier, some are later, but they all show a tendency to recover.””

4. Over 80 House Democrats demand Trump rescind gender-affirming care ban: 'We want trans kids to live'

“[89 House Democrats signed a letter stating,] "Trans young people, their parents and their doctors should be the ones making their health care decisions. No one should need to ask the President’s permission to access life-saving, evidence-based health care." "As Members of Congress, we stand united with trans young people and their families.”“

5. Boosting seafood production while protecting biodiversity

“A new study suggests that farming seafood from the ocean – known as mariculture – could be expanded to feed more people while reducing harm to marine biodiversity at the same time. […] “[… I]t’s not a foregone conclusion that the expansion of an industry is always going to have a proportionally negative impact on the environment[….]””

6. U.S. will spend up to $1 billion to combat bird flu, USDA secretary says

“The USDA will spend up to $500 million to provide free biosecurity audits to farms and $400 million to increase payment rates to farmers who need to kill their chickens due to bird flu[….] The USDA is exploring vaccines for chickens but is not yet authorizing their use[….]”

7. An Innovative Program Supporting the Protection of Irreplaceable Saline Lakes

“[… T]he program aims to provide comprehensive data on water availability and lake health, develop strategies to monitor and assess critical ecosystems, and identify knowledge gaps to guide future research and resource management.”

8. EU to unveil ​‘Clean Industrial Deal’ to cut CO2, boost energy security

“The bold plan aims to revitalize and decarbonize heavy industry, reduce reliance on gas, and make energy cheaper, cleaner, and more secure. […] By July, the EU said it will ​“simplify state aid rules” to ​“accelerate the roll-out of clean energy, deploy industrial decarbonisation and ensure sufficient capacity of clean-tech manufacturing” on the continent.”

9. Oyster Restoration Investments Net Positive Returns for Economy and Environment

“Researchers expect the restored oyster reefs to produce $38 million in ecosystem benefits through 2048. “This network protects nearly 350 million oysters[….]” [NOAA provided] $14.9 million to expand the sanctuary network to 500 acres by 2026 […] through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.”

10. Nations back $200 billion-a-year plan to reverse nature losses

“More than 140 countries adopted a strategy to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars a year to help reverse dramatic losses in biodiversity[….] A finance strategy adopted to applause and tears from delegates, underpins "our collective capacity to sustain life on this planet," said Susana Muhamad[….]”

February 15-21 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[akindplace]

The thing about romanticizing the tortured artist trope is that it takes very serious health conditions, physical, mental, and emotional ones, and it turns it into a very empty aesthetic made for consumption. It takes a life story, and it turns it into a punch line, an easy way out to explain a lifelong struggle while having no regard for the person who actually lived it.

It’s a way of simplifying something so complex as a whole life story, take away the good parts, the artist’s talent, and atribute years and year of studying and practicing their craft to an illness. As if it makes people feel better that maybe they aren’t geniuses but at least they aren’t “insane”.

Artists are constantly working to the bone to get people to see and understand their art, to change the current status quo, to perfect their craft. The most important thing is not how an artist died. It’s the life they lived, the work they’ve left behind, their mark on the world. Reducing people to a tragedy is not a way of appreciating their genius: their art is.

No one is a genius because of their illness, their trauma, their suffering, but because they studied and worked hard to develop the aptitude they were born with. Talent is not a miracle, it’s a lifelong effort.

This stereotype is extremely harmful to people who are currently struggling with those health problems, and it should not be used to “give pain a meaning”, because there is always so much more to someone’s life than suffering, and there is always so much more to your own life than romanticizing your own struggles and those of others.

Pain is meant to be worked through, not fed. And when you feed yourself the myth that an artist was brilliant because they were sick, you are erasing a big part of their life to try and make sense of yours. But you won’t find true meaning in life if you’re only feeding your sorrow instead of maybe, just maybe, doing what those artists did and work through it with your own art.

A lot of them did not have any access to healthcare because their conditions were unknown, but they did what they could to keep going. Their deaths don’t mean they gave up in a big tragic ending, and reducing them to that means you’re erasing everything they did to keep going, every fight, every effort they put into their own health and into their life’s work.

I love impressionist art ever since I was in elementary school, my favorite artist being Vincent Van Gogh. I was first introduced to his story as a man who had a mental illness and died a tragic death, while struggling financially and never being recognized properly during his lifetime.

But you see, Vincent Van Gogh had his brother Theo, who kept all the letters his older brother sent him, and sent his brother words of admiration, support, and unconditional love in his own.

He helped Vincent financially so he could pursue his paiting career. He saw the talent in his own brother even when others might’ve not. The period when Vincent was doing a little better with his health was actually when he was most prolific in his painting, which shuts down the idea that someone must be on the gutter and on the deepest pain and sickness to produce great art.

Most people in really poor health have a hard time managing daily life, and they probably won’t miraculously produce their best work yet while they in extreme suffering (I dare you to make the greatest work of art you’re capable of while you’re down with the flu, now imagine being in constant physical, mental and emotional distress and people think you can just make just about anything). Great art takes a lot of work. Genius and suffering don’t go hand in hand, and it reductive to explain away talent by an illness, as if any effort artists put into their craft was meaningless.

Theo named his own son after his brother, and after Vicent died, he still wanted to make his work known, and after his own death, his wife Johanna kept working on Theo’s mission besides her own political activism. She published the letters between the two brothers, and her own son helped in making Van Gogh’s work even more well known. Even though he was just a baby when his uncle died, he kept his memory alive by founding a world famous museum in his name.

Vincent Van Gogh was able to keep working because he was helped by his own family, financially, emocionally, and was given every encouragement so he could go on with his own career. He painted more when he got medical help, even though in his own time he would have had access to much simpler treatments, since the understanding of illnesses has largely changed in the last centuries.

Healthcare, support, compassion and understanding go a long way, and that’s why it’s important to keep pushing society to be more inclusive to people with illnesses - so they will get the help they need, so they won’t leave earlier than they should.

Vincent Van Gogh’s name is not well known just because of his own efforts, but also by the efforts of those who loved him and kept his name alive long after he was gone. He is not famous because he was a tortured artist. He is famous because those who loved him tried to help him in the ways they could, even after he was gone. His fame is not the result of his death, but of his life’s work and the work of those around him.

Love made him known. Support allowed him to keep working. Getting some help even at a time people did not understand his condition well enough meant he could paint more.

Van Gogh was only human, and he felt such a broad spectrum of emotions and lived through so many things, just as we all do. Behind those paintings, there is a person, a story, and so much hard work, and none of that can be reduced to the romanticized ideal of a tragic death of a tortured man.

It is not about his pain, his suffering, his death, you see. It’s about his life. And it’s about the life of those who loved him. He was able to do what he loved because he was loved, and that is the reason is remembered to this day.

I will end this long post with one of his most famous quotes:

“There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Demon-haunted computers are back, baby

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

As a science fiction writer, I am professionally irritated by a lot of sf movies. Not only do those writers get paid a lot more than I do, they insist on including things like "self-destruct" buttons on the bridges of their starships.

Look, I get it. When the evil empire is closing in on your flagship with its secret transdimensional technology, it's important that you keep those secrets out of the emperor's hand. An irrevocable self-destruct switch there on the bridge gets the job done! (It has to be irrevocable, otherwise the baddies'll just swarm the bridge and toggle it off).

But c'mon. If there's a facility built into your spaceship that causes it to explode no matter what the people on the bridge do, that is also a pretty big security risk! What if the bad guy figures out how to hijack the measure that – by design – the people who depend on the spaceship as a matter of life and death can't detect or override?

I mean, sure, you can try to simplify that self-destruct system to make it easier to audit and assure yourself that it doesn't have any bugs in it, but remember Schneier's Law: anyone can design a security system that works so well that they themselves can't think of a flaw in it. That doesn't mean you've made a security system that works – only that you've made a security system that works on people stupider than you.

I know it's weird to be worried about realism in movies that pretend we will ever find a practical means to visit other star systems and shuttle back and forth between them (which we are very, very unlikely to do):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

But this kind of foolishness galls me. It galls me even more when it happens in the real world of technology design, which is why I've spent the past quarter-century being very cross about Digital Rights Management in general, and trusted computing in particular.

It all starts in 2002, when a team from Microsoft visited our offices at EFF to tell us about this new thing they'd dreamed up called "trusted computing":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil

The big idea was to stick a second computer inside your computer, a very secure little co-processor, that you couldn't access directly, let alone reprogram or interfere with. As far as this "trusted platform module" was concerned, you were the enemy. The "trust" in trusted computing was about other people being able to trust your computer, even if they didn't trust you.

So that little TPM would do all kinds of cute tricks. It could observe and produce a cryptographically signed manifest of the entire boot-chain of your computer, which was meant to be an unforgeable certificate attesting to which kind of computer you were running and what software you were running on it. That meant that programs on other computers could decide whether to talk to your computer based on whether they agreed with your choices about which code to run.

This process, called "remote attestation," is generally billed as a way to identify and block computers that have been compromised by malware, or to identify gamers who are running cheats and refuse to play with them. But inevitably it turns into a way to refuse service to computers that have privacy blockers turned on, or are running stream-ripping software, or whose owners are blocking ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

After all, a system that treats the device's owner as an adversary is a natural ally for the owner's other, human adversaries. The rubric for treating the owner as an adversary focuses on the way that users can be fooled by bad people with bad programs. If your computer gets taken over by malicious software, that malware might intercept queries from your antivirus program and send it false data that lulls it into thinking your computer is fine, even as your private data is being plundered and your system is being used to launch malware attacks on others.

These separate, non-user-accessible, non-updateable secure systems serve a nubs of certainty, a remote fortress that observes and faithfully reports on the interior workings of your computer. This separate system can't be user-modifiable or field-updateable, because then malicious software could impersonate the user and disable the security chip.

It's true that compromised computers are a real and terrifying problem. Your computer is privy to your most intimate secrets and an attacker who can turn it against you can harm you in untold ways. But the widespread redesign of out computers to treat us as their enemies gives rise to a range of completely predictable and – I would argue – even worse harms. Building computers that treat their owners as untrusted parties is a system that works well, but fails badly.

First of all, there are the ways that trusted computing is designed to hurt you. The most reliable way to enshittify something is to supply it over a computer that runs programs you can't alter, and that rats you out to third parties if you run counter-programs that disenshittify the service you're using. That's how we get inkjet printers that refuse to use perfectly good third-party ink and cars that refuse to accept perfectly good engine repairs if they are performed by third-party mechanics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

It's how we get cursed devices and appliances, from the juicer that won't squeeze third-party juice to the insulin pump that won't connect to a third-party continuous glucose monitor:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

But trusted computing doesn't just create an opaque veil between your computer and the programs you use to inspect and control it. Trusted computing creates a no-go zone where programs can change their behavior based on whether they think they're being observed.

The most prominent example of this is Dieselgate, where auto manufacturers murdered hundreds of people by gimmicking their cars to emit illegal amount of NOX. Key to Dieselgate was a program that sought to determine whether it was being observed by regulators (it checked for the telltale signs of the standard test-suite) and changed its behavior to color within the lines.

Software that is seeking to harm the owner of the device that's running it must be able to detect when it is being run inside a simulation, a test-suite, a virtual machine, or any other hallucinatory virtual world. Just as Descartes couldn't know whether anything was real until he assured himself that he could trust his senses, malware is always questing to discover whether it is running in the real universe, or in a simulation created by a wicked god:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/28/descartes-was-an-optimist/#uh-oh

That's why mobile malware uses clever gambits like periodically checking for readings from your device's accelerometer, on the theory that a virtual mobile phone running on a security researcher's test bench won't have the fidelity to generate plausible jiggles to match the real data that comes from a phone in your pocket:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/google-play-malware-used-phones-motion-sensors-to-conceal-itself/

Sometimes this backfires in absolutely delightful ways. When the Wannacry ransomware was holding the world hostage, the security researcher Marcus Hutchins noticed that its code made reference to a very weird website: iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com. Hutchins stood up a website at that address and every Wannacry-infection in the world went instantly dormant:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#the-matrix

It turns out that Wannacry's authors were using that ferkakte URL the same way that mobile malware authors were using accelerometer readings – to fulfill Descartes' imperative to distinguish the Matrix from reality. The malware authors knew that security researchers often ran malicious code inside sandboxes that answered every network query with fake data in hopes of eliciting responses that could be analyzed for weaknesses. So the Wannacry worm would periodically poll this nonexistent website and, if it got an answer, it would assume that it was being monitored by a security researcher and it would retreat to an encrypted blob, ceasing to operate lest it give intelligence to the enemy. When Hutchins put a webserver up at iuqerfsodp9ifjaposdfjhgosurijfaewrwergwea.com, every Wannacry instance in the world was instantly convinced that it was running on an enemy's simulator and withdrew into sulky hibernation.

The arms race to distinguish simulation from reality is critical and the stakes only get higher by the day. Malware abounds, even as our devices grow more intimately woven through our lives. We put our bodies into computers – cars, buildings – and computers inside our bodies. We absolutely want our computers to be able to faithfully convey what's going on inside them.

But we keep running as hard as we can in the opposite direction, leaning harder into secure computing models built on subsystems in our computers that treat us as the threat. Take UEFI, the ubiquitous security system that observes your computer's boot process, halting it if it sees something it doesn't approve of. On the one hand, this has made installing GNU/Linux and other alternative OSes vastly harder across a wide variety of devices. This means that when a vendor end-of-lifes a gadget, no one can make an alternative OS for it, so off the landfill it goes.

It doesn't help that UEFI – and other trusted computing modules – are covered by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which makes it a felony to publish information that can bypass or weaken the system. The threat of a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine means that UEFI and other trusted computing systems are understudied, leaving them festering with longstanding bugs:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/09/free-sample/#que-viva

Here's where it gets really bad. If an attacker can get inside UEFI, they can run malicious software that – by design – no program running on our computers can detect or block. That badware is running in "Ring -1" – a zone of privilege that overrides the operating system itself.

Here's the bad news: UEFI malware has already been detected in the wild:

https://securelist.com/cosmicstrand-uefi-firmware-rootkit/106973/

And here's the worst news: researchers have just identified another exploitable UEFI bug, dubbed Pixiefail:

https://blog.quarkslab.com/pixiefail-nine-vulnerabilities-in-tianocores-edk-ii-ipv6-network-stack.html

Writing in Ars Technica, Dan Goodin breaks down Pixiefail, describing how anyone on the same LAN as a vulnerable computer can infect its firmware:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/01/new-uefi-vulnerabilities-send-firmware-devs-across-an-entire-ecosystem-scrambling/

That vulnerability extends to computers in a data-center where the attacker has a cloud computing instance. PXE – the system that Pixiefail attacks – isn't widely used in home or office environments, but it's very common in data-centers.

Again, once a computer is exploited with Pixiefail, software running on that computer can't detect or delete the Pixiefail code. When the compromised computer is queried by the operating system, Pixiefail undetectably lies to the OS. "Hey, OS, does this drive have a file called 'pixiefail?'" "Nope." "Hey, OS, are you running a process called 'pixiefail?'" "Nope."

This is a self-destruct switch that's been compromised by the enemy, and which no one on the bridge can de-activate – by design. It's not the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last.

There are models for helping your computer bust out of the Matrix. Back in 2016, Edward Snowden and bunnie Huang prototyped and published source code and schematics for an "introspection engine":

https://assets.pubpub.org/aacpjrja/AgainstTheLaw-CounteringLawfulAbusesofDigitalSurveillance.pdf

This is a single-board computer that lives in an ultraslim shim that you slide between your iPhone's mainboard and its case, leaving a ribbon cable poking out of the SIM slot. This connects to a case that has its own OLED display. The board has leads that physically contact each of the network interfaces on the phone, conveying any data they transit to the screen so that you can observe the data your phone is sending without having to trust your phone.

(I liked this gadget so much that I included it as a major plot point in my 2020 novel Attack Surface, the third book in the Little Brother series):

https://craphound.com/attacksurface/

We don't have to cede control over our devices in order to secure them. Indeed, we can't ever secure them unless we can control them. Self-destruct switches don't belong on the bridge of your spaceship, and trusted computing modules don't belong in your devices.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/17/descartes-delenda-est/#self-destruct-sequence-initiated

Image: Mike (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/stillwellmike/15676883261/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[finisnihil]

One HSR theory I don't really vibe with is that Ruan Mei will become an Aeon and my main reason is that it would antithetical to her character.

Ruan Mei is first and foremost a scientist, she wants to understand the nature of life and she purues this aggressively. Sure, on the surface, it does seem she would become an Aeon. She literally is trying to create an artificial Emanator. However, as a scientist, her entire character is built on change. Life thrives on because species evolve to suit their environment. Science itself it constantly changing as we grow and broaden/sharpen our understanding of things.

Aeons are inherently stagnant beings. Tail confirms as much in the 2.5 event, "Even the Aeons must walk their paths". To be an Aeon is to become the embodiment of a single concept, to pursue a concept so aggressively and to devote so much of yourself to it that it consumes you and removes your humanity to make total room for it. Lan can never kill Yaoshi because Lan's entire ascension can be simplified to wanting to kill Yaoshi. If Lan kills Yaoshi, Lan's path of The Hunt crumbles with the conclusion of that hunt. Nanook is so devoted to destruction they welcome the destruction of themself.

This is why Sunday becoming an Aeon would've been a tragedy, it was a cage he'd never escape from and us defeating him before he reached that point was supposed to parallel the charmony dove of his childhood crashing to its death after being set free.

Ruan Mei couldn't be an Aeon because it would make her a stagnant being and a stagnant being cannot understand life, life changes too much and too rapidly for a stagnant being to understand. This is literally why Yaoshi is the way they are. Ruan Mei would just become Yaoshi.

If any member of the Godslayer Protocol were to become a new Aeon of Life it would be Luocha. This isn't just my Luocha bias talking, the man is possibly an Emanator of Yaoshi.

Emanators, as beings who can access an Aeon's power and be seen as a vessel of an Aeon, are half stagnant. Acheron must remain stagnant because if she doesn't, she'll be devoured by IX. Self-Annihilators aren't in battle to escape IX, they're in a battle to stay as far as possible so IX doesn't consume them, trying not to be dragged even inches closer. Phantylia is a very flexible entity but her stagnation is only being able to invoke destruction from the inside, she always fails in approaches of direct destruction.

If Luocha is an Emanator, part of his stagnation would be his emotion. Mara is based in emotion, with extreme emotion causing major flare ups. Blade and Jingliu manage their emotions and the memories related to control the Mara. Luocha rarely shows extreme emotion, he's perpetually calm and unbothered. The few times we do see extreme emotion, like in his voice line about Yukong, it's abruptly cut off and the tone becomes comical or confusing because he reigns it in so violently.

If anyone were to replace Yaoshi in a bid to reduce their harm, it would have to be Luocha, who harbors a love for life but a hate for Yaoshi's approach to it. Luocha would become stagnant in a way that deviates from Yaoshi's path. He has a ton of Jesus parallels, it would fit if he martyred himself to his god in this way to save those suffering.

Ruan Mei loves life and the study of it too much to ever sacrifice that for Aeonhood. Her Emanators will always be artificial.

[skillmine1]

Benefits of Single Sign-on

SSO simplifies the user experience by eliminating the need for users to remember multiple sets of credentials. With a single login, users gain access to all authorized applications and systems, enhancing productivity and saving valuable time. Skillmine’s indigenously developed solution Authenticator provides a seamless experience offering Single-Sign-On (SSO) and Multi-Factor-Authentication (MFA). It also offers an additional layer of security coupled with customer identity secrecy at the highest level compatible across different platforms supporting multiple protocols.

Website: https://skill-mine.com/products/best-multifactor-authentication/

[plumlace]

Personal Assistant - EARLY ACCESS

Upgrade your Sims' lives with the revolutionary "Personal Assistant" mod! Introducing a sophisticated helper that not only autonomously manages household chores but also offers a range of interactive tasks to make your Sims' lives more exciting and dynamic. Your personal assistant is a hirable NPC from the 'home' icon in your phone.

Please read entire description!

Key Features:

Autonomous Household Management:

Your personal assistant takes care of the basics, from taking out the trash to reading to toddlers and infants, ensuring a clean and nurturing environment for your Sims.

Rapport System:

Each interaction will cost a certain amount of rapport you have with the personal assistant. You can gain rapport with the personal assistant by praising them and giving them tips. You can lose rapport by reprimanding the personal assistant. Each task will have a specific rapport level needed for the personal assistant to complete the task.

Access a menu to choose specific tasks for your personal assistant, including:

Write Blog Post:

Let the assistant craft engaging blog posts, with a chance to earn your Sims some extra Simoleons based on the post's success. Requires 75 rapport.

Sell Canvas Painting:

Your personal assistant can market and sell finished canvas paintings, contributing to your Sims' financial prosperity. If the personal assistant fails to make a sale, they will become frustrated and try again. Requires 80 rapport.

Water Plants:

Keep your garden flourishing by instructing the assistant to water plants regularly. Requires 30 rapport.

Cook Food:

Delegate meal preparation to the assistant, ensuring your Sims enjoy delicious homemade dishes. Requires 90 rapport.

Order Groceries:

Simplify shopping by having the personal assistant order groceries for your Sims. Requires 75 rapport.

Pay Bills:

Ensure bills are paid on time without any hassle, as your personal assistant takes care of financial responsibilities. Requires 50 rapport.

Check Email:

Stay connected and informed by having your assistant check and manage your Sims' emails. Requires 30 rapport.

Check Social Media:

Stay up-to-date with the virtual world by monitoring and updating your Sims' social media accounts. Requires 30 rapport.

How to Use:

Hire an NPC Personal Assistant through the phone under the 'home' icon.

Choose from a variety of tasks and interactions to tailor your assistant's actions to your Sims' preferences and needs. You can select up to six, and you may also revoke the task by clicking it again to deselect.

DOWNLOAD

Public access 2/13

[artdotpage]

Problems facing modern artists & creators

I've talked with hundreds of artists and creators about the difficulties they face trying to earn a living from their craft.

This post covers two of the big ones (social media algorithms & bargain basement marketplaces), and what tools are available to grow your business despite these issues.

Social Media Algorithms and Audience Ownership

Social media platforms are a godsend for getting your work in front of potential clients and building a loyal fan base.

However as you will all have experienced, it can take a mastermind to figure out what kind of content the algorithm wants you to post, and if you don't do that you'd be as well throwing your content into the void as even your own followers might not see your post, never mind new viewers.

It also means you don't truly own your audience, if you post something slightly controversial your account could be deleted without warning, or perhaps a billionaire buys the site and everyone flocks to a new platform where you have to start growing your following all over again.

Solution: Build a mailing list

This is perhaps the single best marketing tool available to any business, and is sorely overlooked by artists and creators.

It's cost effective and because you own your mailing list it doesn't matter what's happening on social sites, you can always keep in touch with them.

The tricky part is converting people into mailing list subscribers. However I've seen plenty of creators successfully build one by offering incentives including free digital downloads, early access to content, discounts on your store etc.

Those who sign up to your mailing list would be considered high quality followers, someone who is much more likely to convert to a paid client and buy from you again in the future compared to the average follower on social media.

Tools

https://art.page/

https://substack.com/

https://convertkit.com/

Losing clients to undercutting competitors on the same platform/marketplace

If you run your business on a marketplace or platform, your clients are one click away from finding plenty of other choices who are willing to undercut everyone else to land a sale.

These sites have no incentive to make sure that traffic you drive to your profile actually purchase from you. Whether a sale is made through your listing or another seller, they collect their fee either way.

They also use uniform designs which reduce you to a generic product listing. Whilst this can simplify the customer experience, it means you have no control over the sales funnel and ability to differentiate yourself, making it harder to convert potential clients into paying customers.

Solution: Direct clients to your own site

Use your own personal website to make sales from, there are plenty of options with no monthly charge and lower fees than marketplaces. This lets you make dedicated marketing pages showcasing your best work to make a client excited about doing business with you, instead of just being a generic product listing.

Take advantage of marketplaces purely for their customer base. Don't rely on them as your sole business platform. This way, any fees you pay are worthwhile to generate sales you wouldn't have had otherwise. 

Tools

https://art.page/

https://www.bigcartel.com/

https://squareup.com/

Interested in more?

There's plenty more I have to share on this topic, including:

How to properly use Print on Demand without getting ripped off

Streamline managing your business so you spend more time creating and growing your business.

How to better utilize your brand to connect with clients and increase sales

So let me know if you’re interested and I’ll get writing!

Transparency

I'm building https://art.page to solve these exact issues, with the goal to create the best all in one site builder for artists and creators that makes running your business easy.

[loud-n]

What's up with Roshar's Money and Why is Sapphire so Valuable

I recently started my reread of Stormlight Archive to prepare for book 5, and coincidentally, this happened at roughly the same time the cosmere rpg started kickstarting. So, reading TWoK and the beta rules of the rpg at the same time, a few things happened to come together. For one, the rpg had this table:

I thought this was very interesting. I hadn't ever seen anything like this (though, checking coppermind, a similar chart has been available since an interview in 2018 that I wasn't aware of). It's a nice way for me to contextualize just how much money Shallan throws around at the beginning of TWoK (for example, based on remarks from Yalb in chapter 3, we know that a week's wages for a sailor is roughly one ruby mark/firemark, or 10 diamond marks/clearmarks), and while it seems like it might be simplified for gameplay purposes, it's also broadly consistent with the other sources.

So I kept reading until I got to this line:

"Emeralds were the most valuable, for they could be used by soulcasters to create food." (The Way of Kings ch. 3, pg. 72 on the trade paperback)

This line lays out explicitly that the soulcasting traits of a gem are the primary way (or at least a very significant one) that these values were assigned. This makes a lot of sense: the ability to soulcast food is the key component that allows Roshar the kind of military structures it has, and would provide an extremely valuable way to compensate for issues with harvests that might come with Roshar's 'temperamental' weather patterns.

(some major oathbringer spoilers below the cut)

I then wanted to know how this translates to the other types of gem. Many of these make a lot of sense: amethyst can be used to soulcast metal, which is important and difficult to obtain on roshar (coppermind notes that this may also be the only way to get aluminum on Roshar); ruby, smokestone, and zircon are all used as part of infrastructure for food preparation and waste management (and rubies seem especially common in the fabrials we've seen); garnet, heliodor, and topaz all provide less vital (though still useful) and less valuable materials; and diamond can be used to soulcast quartz, glass, and crystal, none of which are particularly valuable (especially given easy access to even light with stormlight and danger from highstorms making windows difficult and less valuable).

However, one gem caught my eye here.

Why is sapphire so valuable?

Sapphire's soulcasting can produce translucent gas or air, which seems a bit redundant with smokestone, a stone we know is regularly used. To my knowledge, we don't see any characters ever use soulcasting powered by a sapphire (please correct me if I'm wrong, I may be forgetting or confusing an instance with smokestone). So unless there's something we're missing or something to come, it doesn't seem like sapphire's value is because it is especially useful in soulcasting.

If this isn't the case, I can think of three possible explanations for why sapphire is worth so much:

Sapphire is less common. We know that obtaining emerald is a major part of the Rosharan economy and a significant reason for the continued occupation of the shattered plains at the start of the series. This might also be the case for sapphire: greatshells with sapphire gemhearts may be less common or more difficult to farm, making sapphire more scarce and thus more valuable.

Sapphire is especially useful in fabrials. So far, we've only seen one fabrial using sapphire that I can remember: the soul-harvesting dagger used to kill Jezrien (Oathbringer ch. 121). Even this may not be a specific trait of all sapphires, but rather due to the fact that sapphires are associated with Jezrien and the windrunners. I think it's possible and maybe even likely that sapphires are the gems used in half-shards, since none of the examples ever specify what gem is used and Taravangian states that the spren within could have graced a knight radiant (Oathbringer ch. 100) - possibly an honorspren trapped within a sapphire. This may also have been Taravangian lying, though.

The value is somehow associated with Jezrien and the Windrunners. This one seems the most far-fetched to me: at the start of the series, the knights radiant are not viewed especially fondly, and I doubt the Windrunners would have enough staying power to change the value of a gem. The idea that it may be association with Jezrien seems to me to have more merit; Jezrien seems to generally be elevated to a point beyond the other heralds.

Based on the information we have, I think that my second proposal has the highest chance of being at least partially correct. Association with Jezrien seems far-fetched, sapphire being especially scarce seems like something too far off course to get significant confirmation of in-text, and fabrials are one of the elements of the world still being developed in universe that we also don't have a lot of extra information about.

If any of this is going to be answered, I honestly think it might come through the rpg: the first wave of releases will include a world guide with canon information that might shed some light on these elements less important to the actual story, and the rules will also detail a lot of information about fabrials that could answer my questions about half-shards. Until then, though, I'm just going to have to sit here and wonder (and keep a special eye out for mentions of sapphire on my reread for anything I missed).

[unforth]

Hello! Forgive me for the strange and invasive question I’m about to ask, but I noticed in your bio that you’re a mother and you seem to be a danmei fan as well, and my question pertains to that.

I’m in my mid 20s and enjoy danmei. I read 2ha before the published paperbacks came out and was pretty excited to be able to eventually own physical copies of the story i love so much. But I somehow end up feeling very self conscious about buying them, since they contain multiple explicit scenes and I’m worried if someone were to browse my bookshelf someday and come across these, they’d judge me harshly. I’m not sure if marriage is in the cards for me, but if/when I do end up getting married and having children, how exactly would I explain having these books to my husband and kid(s)? In my country, joint families are fairly common so I also might end up having to live with my husband’s parents and I’d be toast if they were to come across these 😬. I know it seems silly to be worried about a hypothetical future husband and children but I’m afraid I can’t help it. Since you have kids, how do you manage keeping your danmei novels? Do you hide them, or just tell them they’re books for adults?

Anon you sound like you've got some pretty incredible hang-ups about sex. Are you this worried about if my kids find the scene in MDZS where Wen Chao has to eat is own legs? Or if I allow your hypothetical, are you worried what your spouse and kids would think of that kind of content?

The 2ha books are books. I keep them with the books. I have a dedicated shelf for danmei in my bedroom, and they're there. My kids have seen me reading them and can access them anytime and have never given a single fuck or shown any interest whatsoever in what I'm reading, EXCEPT when I'm reading shounen manga and then they're excited. Oh or that time I read some Pokémon manga. And sometimes they're interested in the YA queer graphic novels I get from tbe library. Okay yeah if I'm reading comics they sometimes care. But a prose book? Zero fucks given. I tell them nothing, because they don't ask, but if they did ask, I'd tell them a simplified version of the truth, and I know my kids: zero fucks would continue to be given.

This whole "omg ~sex~" thing doesn't exist unless you as the adult make it exist. I don't act like there's some great mystery they're missing out on but will be ~initiated into the secrets of~ when they're older. That is the surest way to make them desperate to know things they're not ready for. They've had some age-appropriate sex-ed in the Our Whole Lives program offered at our church, and the one time I made the mistake of thinking my son knew more than he did (he knew sperm + egg = baby, so I assumed he knew penis inside vagina was the process. I assumed wrong.) his reaction was a hilarious, "they do WHAT?" and he has never brought it up again. The other day we read a book that included a joke about a teenage man being given a shirt that says "I make chicks hot" (he was going to work at a fast good joint, the joke was its about literal chicken) and my son looked me dead in the eye and said "that joke is NOT age appropriate." He's almost 9, so I told him puberty is coming whether he wants it to or not, and I'd rather he know these feelings exist before the first time they happen than be blindsided when they do (I didn't say, "if they do," I figure the nuances of my utterly asexual non-awakening aren't a detail he needs quite yet.)

All of which is to say, I find this ask utterly baffling and it honestly feels like a trap, but I'm trying to take it in good faith, and in good faith, anon, I'm telling you this:

If the hypothetical husband in your scenario would disapprove of what you're reading, then why the fuck is hypothetical you marrying him?

If the hypothetical kids in this scenario might find age-inappropriate materials, why aren't you worried about the violence? Or the horror parts? And why is hypothetical you telling the hypothetical kids anything at all about the books? Did they ask??? Or are you thinking hypothetical future you is so terrified of being caught with sexy books that you're the one bringing up adult stuff, unsolicited, to these kids? Cause THAT'S the weird thing to do. Going "and just so you know, kids, these books are for ADULTS" when they haven't paid any attention at all is going to create a problem where none exists. I'm not gonna pretend the kid doesn't exist who isn't more interested in what their parents read than mine are about my reading, and of course some kids will end up in traumatic situations that result in them knowing more than they normally would about these topics, and that's tragic that some kids have that happen. But in my experience of the kids I used to run into when I worked in schools, my own kids, their friends, etc., these kids have absolutely zero, zilch interest. When my kids ask what kinds of books I'm reading, I say books about men in ancient China. That leads to immediate negative interest cause it sounds dry and boring to them. Problem (no actual problem existed) solved.

You want to know what IS hard to talk about?

Warning them about predators.

When it's never once crossed their minds that anyone would have any interest in their private parts - because they're just a normal part of their body - having to explain that if a grown-up touches them in certain places, or asks to look at them naked, or tries to get them alone, etc., then they have to say no and find an adult they trust. When they were younger, explaining THAT was hard.

I'm not afraid of what my kids might find in a book. They're not interested, and even if they were, these books are above their literacy level right now (my son has nearly finished his first chapter book! It's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I'm very proud of him). And if they could somehow read a book this hard, and understand it, and accidentally read an age inappropriate part, and and and... well, then, we'd talk about it. I trust them to come to me if they run into media they're uncomfortable with, and I also check in periodically to open the door. And they have sometimes brought up concerns, and we talk about it, and that's that. The hardest right now to explain? What the alt-right pipeline might look like in a Minecraft YouTuber video. Fuck but that is HARD to communicate to kids who have only the vaguely idea of the current political situation.

Honestly I'm more worried they'll read the part where the demon mom eats her own child alive. That is the most triggering scene I've ever encountered in fiction. I've never read the whole chapter.

But you didn't even think of that. Because you're too busy thinking about how to tell your non-existent kids that these books have SEX and it's not for KIDS and they shouldn't read it.

Anon, I'm not afraid of what my kids might get exposed to in books.

I'm afraid of what real people might do to hurt my kids, and how I prepare them for actual trauma.

A book can't hurt them. Well, maybe if someone throws it at them. But if they read something that freaks them out they know to just. Stop reading. And they can ask us about it and we can help unpack it.

But preparing them for the harm actual humans can do to them? Explaining why we're at a BLM protest? Explaining why they have to be wary of any stranger OR NON-STRANGER (because most abuse is by someone the child knows!) who wants access to their body isn't okay? Having to wrap my head around "I don't think any of our relatives are sex abusers but IF they secretly are what language do I use to convey to my child that their aunt, uncle, cousin, grandparent, shouldn't have access to their body in certain ways but still can touch you to wipe poop off"? Trying to say "I know you like this person's minecraft persona but if they start saying mean things about a group of people different from them you have to stop watching and tell a grown-up"? Knowing there's no warning on the planet that can prepare them for all the actual harm that can come to them from real people? That's the hardest part of parenting. I can't protect them without smothering them. I have to let them face some risks or else they'll never develop. I hate this. It's so fucking hard.

Anyway.

That's the hard stuff anon.

You are entirely and utterly worried about the wrong problem.

If this was a good faith ask... you should sit and unpack why you are uniquely worried about the sex parts of 2ha and not the violence parts. You should ask yourself why you think you'd love and marry and raise a family with someone who'd disapprove of your taste in books. You should ask yourself why this is your hang-up, and why you think you'd have to say anything at all about the books to a person browsing your shelf, a spouse, an in-law, a kid.

If this wasn't a good faith ask...idk what you're fishing for, anon, but the fact that you think I'd say anything at all about the contents of a book they are absolutely not ready for is fucking weird. I will say something when they ask and not a moment before, and when they do ask I'll tell them honestly it's a book with a lot of violence and sex and adult stuff and if somehow that didn't drive them away (it would right now, instantly) then that'd suggest maybe they're ready to know more, and I'd steer them to more age-appropriate ways to learn a bit more about sex. There, the problem you made up is solved.

Good luck, anon. Whether this was good faith or not, you have a lot of mental baggage to sort through.

*

I just reread the ask in preparation for posting, and as a few final notes: 1. My wife (no husbands here) knows what I read, 2. My father lives with us, and he knows what I read, 3. My mother in law also knows what I read, and it makes her uncomfortable I think but she recognizes that's a "her" problem and leaves me alone, and 4. My mother is chomping at the bit to get her hands on my 2ha, she's been very disappointed that most of the danmei she's borrowed post MDZS and SVSSS hasn't been more "like that." So don't assume your in-laws will flip out. Most people know books are just books. But I also don't know your culture/country/situation. I was raised by incredibly progressive people in one of the most socially progressive cities in the world (New York City, we have race problems but in other areas we're not bad), and like. My entire cultural surroundings are chill about stuff. I'm also not Christian. Obviously in another culture with stricter mores I can see why this could be more of an issue but you asked how I handle it and I can only give an honest answer from the actual reality I live in, which is that it never has crossed my mind anyone would care and sure enough, no one has cared. 🤷 I'm sorry if that's led me to be dismissive of legitimate concerns, it's very hard to know what anons on tumblr are well intentioned and which are from people who are just waiting to go HA THAT EVIL PERSON PUTS THE NAUGHTY DIRTY BAD PORN WHERE THE KIDS CAN GET IT. Considering that people have been sending me asks recently that my son should die, or that he will grow up to be a rapist because that's what men do, because my post that maybe people shouldn't hate men has brought enough attention that the fucking weirdos think lashing out at an 8 year old is an entirely normal and reasonable response to "stop virulently hating men just because they are men," I hope you can understand why my tone is what it is and why I have to consider that this ask is not being sent in good faith. Those anons I block and delete unanswered, so me writing this response is already giving you some benefit of the doubt.

Regardless. Work on you first, anon. You deserve people who will love you even knowing that sometimes you read kinky shit, and do not under any circumstances tell your kids, should you have them, a word more than they need to know. If they're very precocious early readers MAYBE move the books, but otherwise odds are they won't be able to even read the back blurbs, much less the inside, until they're old enough to know a little about how life works, and you can frame what you tell them to what they know then.

Alright, I'll shut up now.

[maxwell-mtv]

Maxwell_MTV's Store Swap AU for SDV!

[I've been working a lot as always, so it's been hard to write. But... I guess the stars are aligning because one of my fave artists and mutuals ( @vilochkaaa ) posted their own Store Swap AU art today (WHICH IS SUPER COOL YOU SHOULD CHECK IT IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT ALREADY!!!) and I was also planning on posting my own Store Swap AU stuff today that I've been working on...

I hope everyone enjoys! I've put my extra braincells into spicing this up. Written stuff is below the cut... I was allowed to cook and I made the best meal I could for all you wonderful folks out there lol]

Morris: You ever feel like you're doing better in another life?

The general idea:

In this universe, Pierre finds success after a long career as a professional boxer and manages to somehow use his fame to open a chain of convenience stores after he retires. This, of course, competes directly with Joja and while it’s not enough to drive them completely out of business, it manages to split business fairly evenly between the two.

While Pierre reaps the daily grind of those beneath him as the CEO of what is simplified to being called “Pierre’s”, someone else finds himself settling into a small town to try and live out his own dreams of running a store.

Morris:

While Pierre is living the dream, Morris has been put through the wringer. 

With the success of “Pierre’s”, many JojaMarts were forced to shut down as a result.

Morris was on a fast track to his first promotion to be a manager when his store had to shut down no thanks to “Pierre’s” success in that part of the city.

With the store shutting down, many were laid off (only current management got to relocate to other stores) so Morris became ✨unemployed✨.

While Morris began with quite the rising confidence as he gained notoriety in his store, him being laid off brought all that to a crashing halt.

So, with a new sense of humility given his circumstances, he gathers what he can and searches for a new path in life.

He finds himself in a small town by the seaside, a village, really, with how small the populace was. 

But during his time soaking in the calming charm of Pelican Town, he notices an issue with the locals.

All of them needed to take a day’s trip to the city to purchase their groceries for the week. A huge inconvenience for those who needed small, simple necessities like bread or toilet paper. And when it came to purchasing from the locals, many farmers were out of seasonal stock by the time the locals needed them.

So Morris takes the initiative and opens up what he calls “Morris’s Market” in the semi-vacant building next to the clinic.

Semi-vacant, only because of the public access to Yoba’s altar.

Morris runs a successful business, feeling himself renewed as he gains a positive reputation amongst the locals. 

But still there’s this feeling deep inside of him as though something had gone astray in his story. Like something in his fate had been tampered with to have stolen his dreams from him.

But thanks to time, he finds himself proud and content with his small success as a small businessman.

That is, until someone decides to break ground in his small town, which leads him to a dizzying disparaging of his confidence once again.

Morris, in a desperate plea to keep what he has, often finds himself praying in front of the altar beneath his home. Although he’s never been religious, he doesn’t think he can take another blow to his ego. At the end of the day, when numbers are crunched and sales are charted, he doesn’t see himself doing anything but this.

It is evident that in this universe, unlike canon, Morris is more humble and anxious. Where his insecurities were buried deep beneath the corporate mask JojaMart had given him in canon, he has nothing but his more organic self to offer to a fairly organic town. Polite, tired all the time, and just doing his best…  

Pierre:

After his famous career as a boxer comes to an honorable end, he retires and uses his fortune to start a business. With the charms of what is reminiscent of a small business, Pierre’s General Store (later simplified to “Pierre’s” for better mass marketing) goes toe-to-toe with Joja’s long time success as the better box store.

Competing with a conglomerate like Joja isn’t easy, but “Pierre’s” values that are taken straight from the founder himself aid in toppling them to a mere equal competitor.

"A family business from humble beginnings with the drive to give back to the farmers who give them their produce to sell."

It feels like a more country version of a Trader Joe’s. And (not to intentionally out my current geography) competes against Joja like Meijers does with a Kroger. 

On vaster scale, it’s like Walmart/Sam's Club against Costco…

Hard to explain but that’s the general vibes of “Pierre’s.”

After a little vacation to Pelican Town with his wife and daughter, he decides to take on a capital expenditure which challenges the very competence of his title as a CEO.

Seeing that the only store these people in the middle of the Valley were confined to were either his stores in the city or a “pathetic excuse of a general store” (his words, not mine), he has a little talk with the Mayor.

Breaking ground in Pelican Town was easy, a convenient plot of land was just over the bridge from where "Morris’s Market" was and so customers would be a breeze to snatch up.

Despite what his advisors warned him against, Pierre ignores all odds and sets his eyes on the prize. Not even JojaMart could do what he was about to do, and that would catapult him from just an equal competitor to the top dog. 

It was easy enough to draw a crowd, but there was a growing issue with his store just barely breaking even each week. It seemed that though the town flocked to him for most things, the majority tended to stick with “Morris’s Market” in the name of loyalty. I mean, it wasn’t like his prices were much better than Morris’s store anyways since he aimed for both profit and quality. 

As he contemplated it each morning as he hit the gym, the problem became all too clear to him. It wasn’t his prices or the quality of products, rather it was the sense of community amongst the town.

I mean, just look how they all gathered every month (sometimes more!) in that old, barely functional Community Center to hold meetings, plan festivities, hold celebrations, and just socialize and bond!

If only there was someway he could break that and shatter that sense of loyalty they had in the name of supporting their fellow townie.

It would be a shame, really… if someone were to report that sad, beaten building to the proper authorities for an inspection. Without the Mayor knowing of it, he might be able to convince them that the building wasn't just “well loved” as the Mayor put it and was hardly still up to code, if at all.

If only he could prove it wasn’t up to code…

Damn his advisors, damn his wife, and damn everyone in this "hick town". He will succeed at all costs… even if he loses his charms along the way. 

Pierre uses his charms as an admittedly still good looking man. If you ignore the small crook in his nose from it being broken too many times before, you’d see why his wife still stayed with him despite her seeming too sweet and meek for his own good. 

It would be easy, if he laid it on thick, to sway the town amongst a tragedy to lean on him in some regard. Just a little wink, an offer of setting up events every month outside his store. Hey, maybe if he could drive Morris’s store out of business he could buy that storefront from him and use it as the new gathering place. It seemed fitting seeing as half the town gathered there every Sunday for Yoba’s altar anyways.

It’s too bad his daughter puts a dent in his plans though… She never did outgrow that rebellious phase…

Pierre works out often in this universe, having the time and freedom to make his own schedule as CEO. He treats his family well enough, although he’s never home long enough to let them see the monster he’s let himself become. But his daughter can see glimpses in the way he talks to her and her mother that he’s not the same father he had once been. It’s like something changed in him along the way to make him worse than he’d been before…

Having never lost a match in his career, only when it was planned for ticket sales, Pierre has an inflated ego which blinds him to his own faults. In his eyes, this is the life he’s always been destined for. To be on the top of the world and determined to never fall from grace.

His daughter, on the other hand, would say otherwise. She often has a similar epiphany as Morris. Where an existential feeling of dread consumes her and deep down, despite her fairly privileged life, she knows this was not what she was destined for.

(I'd like to think Pierre just doesn't bother with the "no-homo" stuff and constantly flirts with Morris in this AU just to rile him up and throw him off his game. Especially when they get into fights about ethics and business and blah blah typical enemies to still enemies but also lovers stuff.)