#and well. 2020 is itself

[autistme]

Laura + guitars souls

2008 IFeelSickToMyStomach blogpost 2016 She Shreds interview 2018 Making of Park Life Forever (reupload) 2020 Reverb interview

[isabelguerra]

I always make an effort to look at paranatural through the ~2013 era lens it was conceptualized from, back when it was at it’s most subversive, in tandem alongside its contemporary lens. Because thats what Paranatural was, for those who aren’t aware — paranatural played off of & against the common shonen & cartoon tropes and character expectations that were prevalent in that age: the wise and just mentor, the prejudiced bully, the action girl implemented to pushback against sexism + the subversion of the action girl, the excited rare skilled selfless battleprone protagonist, etc.

most new fans will likely see the comic and take it at face value — why shouldn’t they? — when in reality there’s so much more of a dialogue happening underneath the hood. There is so much underlying, forgotten context that makes paranatural, paranatural

[orengejoshi]

do u write fanfics? i need to GOON 💔

damn brother, you just gonna come at me like that? alright I see you

that's a great question tho! I have indeed thought about writing a fic... for years tbh...

but there's a myriad of problems

well first of all I'm not native in english. that is probably noticeable more often than not. I sometimes even use a translator, I always secretly got google/dict.cc open in a second tab. didn't formally learn english, I just snagged it by proxy listening to American Youtubers and reading manga online. that's why I prefer to ramble a bit in public or to my damn self in private areas than live-texting 1 on 1/in groups; bc I can take more time totally judgement-free. you're gonna see me "typing..." for 30 minutes and wonder wtf is taking this mf so long?!

apart from that there's dyslexia. I can't spell one word correctly without swipe-to-type autocorrect. I think all arguments I've gotten into stem from me mistyping, using completely wrong words, messing up the sentence structure etc

my brain is a single dense cloud of fog that'll occasionally split open to drizzle down a bunch of jumbled thoughts that I could turn into barely cohesive words if I'm brave enough and exude copious amounts of energy.

so my linguistic skills are not up to par. my intelligence lies more in... intrapersonal and existential departments.

unsurprisingly I've thus become a visual artist to express myself.

the catch is... that I understand paperhat, I do.

but I can't seem to draw toxic dynamics. my head is just empty about how to depict it. it's like it doesn't come naturally to me. not without going overboard and making a whole comic that I would likely abandon before even reaching the half mark. I've been given these angelic skills along with the curse that I shall only draw joyous, bright scenes.

however if I could write it... now we're talking.

as a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure that most of my ideas are way too dark and sober. people don't know me like that so I'm petrified about the presumably shocked response when and if I did drop smth like that.

I'm not ready for that... I have really severe OCD (that the internet is making way worse with their anxious tendencies to interpret smth sinister into any and all fiction that is not happiness and rainbows. which seems new to me, idk where this mindset to read so deep into shit is suddenly coming from. I was here 2017-19, left for like 3 years and all of a sudden everybody's fallen off their rockers)

writing domestic stuff is too boring for me... there's gotta be gut-wrenching horrors and drama and tragedy and conflict!

none of this would be PG (which is what I assume you're asking for anyway) I'd just write smut with sprinkles of character studies and a pinch of comedy mayhaps, but I used to do that about 10 years ago and it was so bad. the way I describe these scenes comes off very plump and cringe

I... might. dip my toes into it later this year.

I'll drop a few ideas in the tags... maybe 2 ideas. very roughly. without spoilers, just in case.

[evilmagician430]

mabeline/jonah wolf in my 2020s timeskip au! read my tags for more information about her

[jklpopcorn]

tfw you forget to plug in your phone the night before

[whatudottu]

And finally, not part of the 12 hour marathon but certainly at the end of the drawing spree, here's Ido with very incredibly rough but present Meridi, a galvan mechanist pirate that let Ido borrow her human mecha's face to use it to hide the fact Ido is a petrosapien :P

And technically! This characters are both the first and final Ben 10 based characters I've used for rp purposes (as in, ttrpg rp purposes where these characters have actual stats), Meridi being one of the firsts and Ido tying with Gali as last. Well I say 'last' as in I've been using the excuse one of my DMs that runs a lot of my games loves crossovers and so I got to be a Ben 10 character while others were more original and specific to the setting- but also it's because sometimes I want to subtly play as something Ben 10 themed and not be BEN TENNYSON HIMSELF *stares at 16 pages of custom character sheet*

ANYWAY! Have these final sketches :)

[grimark]

feeling the overwhelming urge to write a deeply self-indulgent doctor who/star trek crossover fic right now, because you know who else would fall so fucking hard for the master's goofy little spy schtick? julian bashir, that's who.

[sonknuxadow]

the sonic movie is 4 years old now ............. god damn

[bmpmp3]

dear mario. do NOT come to the castle. ive tuned an absolutely dogshit vocal synth cover. just completely fucked it up. im sorry. peach.

[smolycule]

btw this is the longest one of my smosh hyperfixation phases has been in a LONG time, like since i first got into smosh games and i was fully hooked for a long while starting in 2013. to contrast the past few years i would get back into smosh content but the hyperfixation would fizzle out after a month or two each time. but this one has lasted Intensely for 5 months and has no signs of stopping (esp considering the Anthony deal LMFAO like i am ofc INVESTED.) ig it just speaks to how good their content has been lately even before anthony officially rejoined :P

[darcyolsson]

in loving memory of tumblr's april fools' pranks 💐 2014 - 2024

icymi, tumblr used to do an elaborate april fool's prank every year, but this year they suddenly stopped. here's a somewhat detailed recap of everything they did over the decade:

2013 - mishapocalypse (honourable mention): tumblr staff didn’t start doing april fools until 2014, but the mishapocalypse happened on tumblr in 2013 and i feel like this list would be incomplete without it

2014 - tumblrpro: upon opening your dash you were greeted by an “inspirational” video, that ended with the option to get “tumblrpro (for free)”. all it did was put a top hat on your icon.

2015 - tumblr executivesuite/coppy: a copying machine appeared in the corner of your dash. it would offer tips on how to use tumblr, like clippy the paperclip used to do in microsoft word. as the day went on, it slowly broke down and died right in front of your eyes. many people hated him (but not me). you could also make a (small) spreadsheet. @executivesuite2016 is the official blog.

2016 - this is decision/lizard election/tumblrdecides: a parody of the 2016 US elections. there were 4 lizards (well, one of them turned out to be a salamander in a scandal) to vote for. the dash looked different and there was a live news report with election updates, as well as an election blog for each lizard. they all had their own slogans and you would get an "i voted" button after you voted that would get slapped next to your icon. there were built-in functions to make an election poster for your favourite lizard and to create a text post that supported your lizard of choice that autogenerated a statement for all your followers to read. imo tumblr’s april fools peak. @thisisdecision2016-blog is the official blog, @mop-2016-blog @wretchedtooth @timefordeborah-blog were candidates. rick also had a blog (rick-official) but that now seems to have vanished because he ended up dropping out of the election. mop won, if you're curious. by far the most elaborate prank tumblr ever did.

2017 - horse friend: a tamagotchi-inspired game where you had to take care of a little horse in the corner of your screen. it came with a randomly generated name, and you had to feed and clean up after it. if you didnt take good care of it, it died. you could then hatch (yes, hatch) a new one. there was also an option to look at the names of all your dead horses. this is now available to buy in the tumblr shop. @horse-friends is the official blog.

2018 - tumblcoin: a parody of cryptocurrency (this was the year bitcoin took off). you could ‘invest’ in tumblcoin, with which you could in turn buy things with to spice up your dash, including last year’s horse friend, coppy from 2015, and a frame for around your icon. you could share the amount of tumblcoin you owned in an automatically generated gif post which would be tagged #tbc2018 and #tumblcoin. @tumblcoin is the official blog.

2019 - @memories: this blog still functions the way it did on april fools itself! it's like mad libs, where it takes post templates and then adds in tags you use a lot and users you frequently interact with on your main blog. like a personalized shitpost bot.

2020 - group chat prank/@storybot: it was so hard to find info on this because it was contained entirely in the now-defunct group chat function, which no one used. i had to go through the notes of this post for information because no one cared enough to actually write anything explaining it. turns out, you could write a story with your mutuals by adding storybot to your group chat. it also kept working after april fools (well, up until the group chats were deleted) just like memories. many people missed out on it entirely because they did not use the group chat function.

2021 - tumblcryptids: tumblr allowed you to adopt “non-fungible tumblcryptids”, a parody of NFTs. clicking a button that said "Summon thy Tumblrcryptid" would spawn an image of a little blob-shaped creature with a short description, which would always read "Hi! My name is [randomly generated name]. I love [thing most people like]. I hate [thing most people dislike]. Like my parent, I can't get enough of #[tag from your main blog]." you could share them in a post, which would automatically add the tag #NFTumblcryptids to your post. and yes, people on the piss on the poor website freaked out about it because they thought they were real NFTs harming the environment. @tumblcryptidadoptioncenter is the official blog.

2022 - click-a-thon: when you clicked a light switch on your dashboard, a bunch of colourful things showed up, like a sponge you could move around, an "engagament meter", clickable buttons, and a “Summon Crab!” button, which would summon a crab when you clicked it. you could. the crabs, like horse friend, are still available in the tumblr store as of 2025. here's some screenshots. there were various ways to share your crab activities, which would all get tagged #april fools 2022. the prank was presented as a marketing technique created by Brick Whartley, a fictional businessman character created by tumblr, who (afaik) originated in a post on the official blog of the 2018 april fools prank, albeit originally in a different role. around this time he also started functioning as the mascot for tumblr's shop ( @emporium )

2023 - abstract reactions (emoji reacts): buttons were added to every post that allowed you to add emoji reactions, many of them based on tumblr inside jokes (horse as a reference to horse plinko/horse friend, vanilla for the vanilla extract meme, pikaman, bug for bug race, and brick whartley, who wasn't a meme but staff really wanted him to be). if one specific emoji was used a certain amount of times it would add an effect to the post, eg many cheese emoji reacts would cover the post in cheese. this was also attributed to Brick Whartley ("his" blog @brickwhartley also documented the day)

2024 - boop-o-meter: allowed you to “boop” other users who had opted in to the booping, like facebook’s poke feature back in the day. depending on how long you held the button, you would either boop, super boop, or evil boop. on the dashboard there was a counter for both how many times you had booped others and how many times others had booped you, as well as how many boops were given side-wide. when booping someone, an image of a cat paw appeared. you would get badges (which can still be used) for booping 1, 100 and 1000 times. if you gave/received more than 999 boops, the counter would switch to showing a three-letter word (see this post for specifics). this was brought back for halloween 2024 (as BOOp-o-meter. get it), with a ghost, skeleton and mummy paw. no official blog, but here's an official recap for april first from staff. i believe this was the only april fools prank that was mobile user friendly.

2025 - @fandom is running some polls, i guess

[mewos-laptop]

I genuinely don't think the trans/queer community at large has separated itself from the transphobic idea that everything trans men do is embarrassing and cringe, and it rlly shows in the way some of you talk abt your questioning of your gender back in 2020, as well as artists and people associated with teenage/young transman/masc culture, and it's rlly disappointing to see, esp since it's so common in the transmasc community itself

[cesium-sheep]

the kirby dr moricky pillow in beige (the color I wanted cuz it has the drawing I didn't get on the mat I will eventually hang up or the storage case) is on sale for $10 rn. but I've already got 3 multi week purchases in the queue and buying that still sets everything back by another week even if I'm lucky and shipping is cheap. (preorder a lauraillustrates tapestry blanket ($140), buy the princess peach game ($67), buy The Rug for soon-to-be-just-my room ($300).) I got paid extra for the unicorn but that only means I can get the blanket first instead of having to push it to the very end of the preorder window.

decisions are hard and $40 a week is very very small even when someone else is taking care of the bills. (once my credit card is paid off I can raise my allowance because I actually get allotted now $300/mo but I put everything above the current allowance rate to the credit card, but that's still got $1330 left on it even with matt helping me out last week. originally once arin finally started getting paid in 2022 I negotiated $250/mo to cover 5 weeks of allowance (for the months that have 5 mondays), plus a minimum card payment of $50, but months that don't have 5 mondays I'd put the extra $40 on it too more often than not. and sometimes scraping some out of personal savings if it seems unlikely to be immediately necessary. (plus for a while the minimum payment was actually $60 but it's not like she was available for further negotiations.) mom's still a co-signer on that card and I really just need it fucking gone already, but it took a lot of hits getting through the past couple years.)

theoretically my disability compensation appeal is still in the queue somewhere. I'm sure they'll email me in a couple weeks with my quarterly reassurance that it is. maybe I'll be really, incredibly fortunate, and it'll get scheduled for after the immunologist tells me about a powerhouse treatment that'll turn my bones to dust but let me fucking live again, but before the treatment actually takes effect, so I'm still as pathetic as possible for the hearing but not quite so fuckin defeated. (as if I have been truly no-silver-linings fortunate even one time in this whole fucking travesty.)

[princessaffirms]

you don’t hope to shift — you COLLAPSE the WAVE FUNCTION. 🍎✨

the SCIENCE of reality shifting/law of assumption

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

is there any SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that reality shifting is real? what about the law of assumption? you might be surprised by how much QUANTUM PHYSICS already aligns with the shifting/loa concepts you know and love.

in quantum mechanics, there’s this core concept called WAVE FUNCTION COLLAPSE, first introduced by the copenhagen interpretation. it says that particles like electrons or photons don’t exist in one set state — instead, they exist in a state of SUPERPOSITION, meaning all possible states at once. but the moment they are observed, the wave function collapses into a SINGLE OUTCOME (zeilinger, 1999).

Figure 3. The Copenhagen Interpretation: Wave Function Collapse (World Science Association, 2020).

before observation, there is NO FIXED STATE. reality exists as an infinite, limitless wave of probabilities. and the observer’s awareness is what selects one of those possibilities and collapses it into experience (zeilinger, 1999). this doesn’t just tweak physics. it REDEFINES what we call reality.

and in quantum mechanics? this isn’t just hopeful theorizing.

this is experimentally proven FACT.

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

🤍✨ THE DOUBLE SLIT EXPERIMENT

this experiment is currently one of the CLEAREST PROOFS of how observation determines outcomes. when particles like electrons are fired through two slits without being observed, they act like waves — creating an interference pattern. they behave as if they went through both slits at once (arndt et al., 1999).

but the moment you observe which slit they go through, the interference disappears. the particle behaves like a solid object and chooses one path. the act of observation alone changes the result (arndt et al., 1999). this collapse is not metaphorical — it literally happens.

^ a visual of this experiment! courtesy of tumblr <3

this experiment is truly powerful because it physically DEMONSTRATES how conscious measurement collapses potential into outcome. aka, HOW YOU CONSCIOUSLY SELECT THE REALITY YOU EXPERIENCE!

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

🤍✨ REALITY SHIFTING = WAVE FUNCTION COLLAPSE

this is what reality shifting and the law of assumption point to. you’re ALWAYS FOCUSING your awareness (consciousness, identity, energy, whatever you want to call it) into ONE specific reality from an infinite quantum field (thaheld, 2005).

that INTENTIONAL ASSUMPTION collapses the wave function, making that version real for you. you don’t chase it. you don’t pull it in. you assume it’s already yours, and the quantum field reflects.

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

🤍✨ BELL’S THEOREM & EXPERIMENTAL CONFIRMATION

“but what if the particles are ALREADY in a fixed state, even with no observer present?”

WELL…physicist john bell mathematically proved that NO HIDDEN VARIABLES (aka no underlying mechanics) can explain quantum behaviour, UNLESS we accept that observation itself changes outcomes.

(which is literally THE BASIS OF SHIFTING/LOA!! 🤭)

his theory was put to the test in the ASPECT EXPERIMENTS, and the results confirmed it: entangled particles (more on quantum entanglement soon!) react to each other instantly, across vast distances, and ONLY WHEN OBSERVED (aspect, dalibard, & roger, 1982). these interactions defy space and time, and yet they STILL depend on measurement (aka observation).

“SO WHAT’S THE IMPLICATION OF THIS?” 🤨

form doesn’t exist until it’s consciously interacted with. MEANING: realities don’t “lock in” until your awareness CHOOSES one.

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

🤍✨ WHAT THIS MEANS FOR SHIFTING + LOA

so when we say reality shifting and loa are real, we’re not talking fiction — we’re talking PHYSICS. the universe literally doesn’t finalize outcomes until you observe them. your assumption is the observation. your inner state is the collapse (chalmers & mcqueen, 2021).

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

🤍✨ FINAL THOUGHTS?

this isn’t “woo”. this is physics.

the universe is built on PROBABILITIES, and you are the one collapsing the wave function. every assumption, every shift of identity is a quantum-level decision.

your chosen reality is always waiting. so which version are you READY to assume?

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

i tried my best to simplify this info so it’s more easily digestible, but as always i recommend doing your own research and reading up on the sources listed below if you’re interested in more! i hope this post helped bring you some insights and clarity. 🫶

love and light always <3

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

🍎✨ REFERENCES

feynman, r. p., leighton, r. b., & sands, m. l. (1965). The Feynman lectures on physics: Vol. 3 Quantum mechanics. Addison-Wesley.

aspect, a., dalibard, j., & roger, g. (1982). Experimental test of Bell’s inequalities using time‐varying analyzers. Physical Review Letters, 49(25), 1804–1807. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.49.1804

zeilinger, a. (1999). A foundational principle for quantum mechanics. Foundations of Physics, 29(4), 631–643. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018820410908

arndt, m., et al. (1999). Wave–particle duality of C60 molecules. Nature, 401(6754), 680–682. https://doi.org/10.1038/44348

thaheld, f. h. (2005). Does consciousness really collapse the wave function? BioSystems, 81(2), 113–123. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0303264705000237

chalmers, d. j., & mcqueen, k. j. (2021). Consciousness and the collapse of the wave function. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.02314

a study on the interaction between human consciousness and artificial intelligence in refik anadol’s quantum memories: the creation of quantum memories by the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics – scientific figure on researchgate. (2020). world science association. available from: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Copenhagen-Interpretation-Wave-Function-Collapse-World-Science-Association-2020_fig2_380334190

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A sexy, skinny defeat device for your HP ink cartridge

Animals keep evolving into crabs; it's a process called "carcinisation" and it's pretty weird. Crabs just turn out to be extremely evolutionarily fit for our current environment:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-animals-keep-evolving-into-crabs/

By the same token, all kinds of business keep evolving into something like a printer company. It turns out that in this enshittified, poorly regulated, rentier-friendly world, the parasitic, inkjet business model is extremely adaptive. Printerinisation is everywhere.

All that stuff you hate about your car? Trapping you into using their mechanics, spying on you, planned obsolescence? All lifted from the inkjet printer business model:

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

That GE fridge that won't make ice or dispense water unless you spend $50 for a proprietary charcoal filter instead of using a $10 generic? Pure printerism:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/12/digital-feudalism/#filtergate

The software update to your Sonos speakers that makes them half as useful and takes away your right to play your stored music, forcing you to buy streaming music subscriptions? Straight out of the HP playbook:

https://www.wired.com/story/sonos-admits-its-recent-app-update-was-a-colossal-mistake/

But as printerinized as all these gadgets are, none can quite attain the level of high enshittification that the OG inkjet bastards attain on a daily basis. In the world championships of effortlessly authentic fuckery, no one can lay a glove on the sociopathic monsters of HP.

For example: when HP wanted to soften us all up for a new world of "subscription ink" (where you have to pre-pay every month for a certain number of pages' worth of printing, which your printer enforces by spying on you and ratting you out to HP over the internet), they offered a "lifetime subscription" plan. With this "lifetime" plan, you paid just once and your HP printer would print out 15 pages a month for so long as you owned your printer, with HP shipping you new ink every time you ran low.

Well, eventually, HP got bored of not making you pay rent on your own fucking printer, so they just turned that plan off. Yeah, it was a lifetime plan, but the "lifetime" in question was the lifetime of HP's patience for not fucking you over, and that patience has the longevity of a mayfly:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/06/horrible-products/#inkwars

It would take many pages to list all of HP's sins here. This is a company that ships printers with half-full ink cartridges and charges more than the printer cost to buy a replacement set. The company that won't let you print a black-and-white page if you're out of yellow ink. The company that won't let you scan or send a fax if you're out of any of your ink.

They make you "recalibrate" your printer or "clean your heads" by forcing you to print sheets of ink-dense paper. They also refuse to let you use your ink cartridges after they "expire."

HP raised the price of ink to over $10,000 per gallon, then went to war against third-party ink cartridge makers, cartridge remanufacturers, and cartridge refillers. They added "security chips" to their cartridges whose job was to watch the ink levels in your cartridge and, when they dip below a certain level (long before the cartridge is actually empty), declare the cartridge to be dry and permanently out of use.

Even if you refill that cartridge, it will still declare itself to be empty to your printer, which will therefore refuse to print.

Third party ink companies have options here. One thing they could do is reverse-engineer the security chip, and make compatible ones that say, "Actually, I'm full." The problem with this is that laws like Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) potentially makes this into a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine, for a first offense.

DMCA 1201 bans bypassing "an effective means of access control" to a copyrighted work. So if HP writes a copyrighted "I'm empty" program for its security chip and then adds some kind of access restriction to prevent you from dumping and reverse-engineering that program, you can end up a felon, thanks to the DMCA.

Another countermove is to harvest security chips out of dead cartridges that have been sent overseas as e-waste (one consequence of HP's $10,000/gallon ink racket is that it generates mountains of immortal, toxic e-waste that mostly ends up poisoning poor countries in the global south). These can be integrated into new cartridges, or remanufactured ones.

In practice, ink companies do all of this and more, and total normie HP printer owners go to extremely improbable lengths to find third party ink cartridges and figure out how to use them. It turns out that even people who find technology tinkering intimidating or confusing or dull can be motivated to learn and practice a lot of esoteric tech stuff as an alternative to paying $10,000/gallon for colored water.

HP has lots of countermoves for this. One truly unhinged piece of fuckery is to ask Customs and Border Patrol to block third-party ink cartridges with genuine HP security chips that have been pried loose from e-waste shipments. HP claims that these are "counterfeits" (because they were removed and re-used without permission), even though they came out of real HP cartridges, and CBP takes them at their word, seizing shipments.

Even sleazier: HP pushes out fake security updates to its printers. You get a message telling you there's an urgent security update, you click OK, and your printer shows you a downloading/installing progress bar and reboots itself. As far as you can tell, nothing has changed. But these aren't "security" updates, they're updates that block third-party ink, and HP has designed them not to kick in for several months. That way, HP owners who get tricked into installing this downgrade don't raise hell online and warn everyone else until they've installed it too, and it's too late:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

This is the infectious pathogen business model: one reason covid spread so quickly was that people were infectious before they developed symptoms. That meant that the virus could spread before the spreader knew they had it. By adding a long fuse to its logic bomb, HP greatly increases the spread of its malware.

But life finds a way. $10,000/gallon ink is an irresistible target for tinkerers, security researchers and competitors. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but the true parent of jaw-dropping ingenuity is callous, sadistic greed. That's why America's army of prisoners are the source of so many of the most beautiful and exciting forms of innovation seen today:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/09/king-rat/#mother-of-invention

Despite harsh legal penalties and the vast resources of HP, third-party ink continues to thrive, and every time HP figures out how to block one technique, three even cooler ones pop up.

Last week, Jay Summet published a video tearing down a third-party ink cartridge compatible with an HP 61XL:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ya184uaTE

The third-party cartridge has what appears to be a genuine HP security chip, but it is overlaid with a paper-thin, flexible, adhesive-backed circuit board that is skinny enough that the cartridge still fits in an HP printer.

This flexible circuit board has its own little microchip. Summet theorizes that it is designed to pass the "are you a real HP cartridge" challenge pass to the security chip, but to block the followup "are you empty or full?" message. When the printer issues that challenge, the "man in the middle" chip answers, "Oh, I'm definitely full."

In their writeup, Hackaday identifies the chip as "a single IC in a QFN package." This is just so clever and delightful:

https://hackaday.com/2024/09/28/man-in-the-middle-pcb-unlocks-hp-ink-cartridges/

Hackaday also notes that HP CEO Enrique J Lores recently threatened to brick any printer discovered to be using third-party ink:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/hp-ceo-blocking-third-party-ink-from-printers-fights-viruses/

As William Gibson famously quipped, "the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." As our enshittification-rich environment drives more and more companies to evolve into rent-seeking enterprises through printerinisation, HP offers us a glimpse of the horrors of the late enshittocene.

It's just as Orwell prophesied: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a HP installing malware on your printer to force you to spend $10,000/gallon on ink – forever."

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

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/2024/09/30/life-finds-a-way/#ink-stained-wretches

Image: Jay Summet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ya184uaTE

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Smash Mouth - All Star 1999

"All Star" is a song by the American rockband Smash Mouth, released as the first single from their second studio album, Astro Lounge (1999). It was one of the last tracks to be written for Astro Lounge, after the band's record label Interscope requested more songs that could be released as singles. In writing it, guitarist Greg Camp drew musical influence from contemporary music by artists like Sugar Ray and Third Eye Blind, and sought out to create an "anthem" for outcasts. In contrast to the more ska punk style of Smash Mouth's debut album Fush Yu Mang (1997), the song features a more radio-friendly style.

It received generally positive reviews from music critics, who praised its musical progression from Fush Yu Mang as well as its catchy tone. It was nominated for the Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals at the 42nd Annual Grammy Awards. Subsequent reviews from critics have regarded "All Star" favourably, with some ranking it as one of the best songs of 1999. The song charted around the world, ranking in the top 10 of the charts in Australia, Canada, and on the US Billboard Hot 100, while topping the Billboard Adult Top 40 and Mainstream Top 40 charts.

The song's accompanying music video features characters from the 1999 superhero film Mystery Men, which itself prominently featured "All Star". The song became ubiquitous in popular culture following multiple appearances in films, most notably in DreamWorks Animation's 2001 film Shrek. It received renewed popularity in the 2010s as an internet meme and has ranked as one of the most-streamed rock songs from 2017 to 2021 in the US. In June 2019, the music video was remastered in high definition and received subtitles in commemoration of its 20th anniversary. By that point, it had received over 219 million views on Youtube. In 2020, The New York Times listed the song as #1 in their top ten climate change songs.

"All Star" received a total of 90,9% yes votes!