#i was in a lot of Facebook groups as a kid so that is technically my first fandom exposure

[monggay]

holy fucking shit you guys. um. i came across. a treasure trove. of um, my past self. came across an old group chat w some friends back when i was like, 12-13, and. holy shit.

good news: apparently i did use to be somewhat talkative and not quite as anxious to talk and interact ! i used to be able to carry conversations! not well or inawkwardly but very much plenty! i used to be able to talk and joke around without taking a million psychic damage just trying to send a message and even just saying whats on my mind carefree without being anxious that itll be weird or that they didnt want me to say that or that i didnt have to scramble for words or be unable to come up with quips or anything to reply other than just 'lol' or 'lmao'!! i feel like these days i only know how to talk and word things in a given or meme way aka all my vocabulary is just. tumblr memes.

bad news: holy fucking shit i was so cringe. like. on another level. on levels unimaginable. i was straight up just. weird. you know, horny preteen discovering sex jokes and crude language and sex humor for the first time? straight up had no filter, loved to ramble, except also had zero social sense still and rambled to a weird and overly and uncomfortable degree where it was just awkward and often said things that just. made the conversation weird? i embraced that weirdness and like, good on me i guess, but i think i just usually ended up saying things? blurting anything on my mind, that well. technically arent bad? or seriously fucked up or anything but just like. will probably haunt me for the rest of my life if i look at it now.

also like. i dont remember any of it ??????? i vaguely remember a Few conversations, but a lot of it? just straight up. unfamiliar to me who the fuck is that i dont remember saying any of that shit that past me is so fundamentally different and alien to me i literally dont recognize or remember anything i did then anymore

apparently i was just a giant nerd who read way too much smut and was just a little too unashamed and had very little sense of appropriateness which yeah i get given my age then its that. age of you know. just got exposed to people being vulgar, recently transitioned to high school from elementary, which is probably like. a way more. fucked up thing that people realize sometimes. cause in elementary i always thought i was still like you know. a little kid. but going into high school (which is younger than in US hs, at 12 y/o) youre suddenly treated or like, expected? to be older? more knowleadgeable? you know that thing about how kids these days are all trying to be adults now and how theres really no more media like the disney teenage live shows that separate little girl to grown lady? i think that jut like, hit me a lot in 7-8th grade + the introduction of nsfw shit and fandom and the internet (cause like. i did not have internet in elementary school, At All. and then suddenly in high school i was supposed to have a messenger account for school, i had a phone, i could use the laptop, i think i had a weird relationship w the internet then, cause at that point all my friends were already exploring facebook and posting etc, but i was so anxious and shy about that already that i just never started (which like, continues to today, i still dont use fb at all, cuase it feels so weird and awkward to start now when i was so adamant against not using it in the past) aaaand ive lost my train of thought and the point of this sentence

[calmlythrilling]

GET TO KNOW ME MEME

Name: Prinny, or on a very select few gaming platforms, Ele Pronouns: She/he/they Sexuality: I prefer to not label it Single/Taken: Taken, I think it's been 5 years? (i'm horrible with time)

THREE FACTS

- I technically made one singular game sprite for a pokemon fangame when I was in highschool. - I really like ciphers. I blame Gravity Falls, genuinely. The one cipher I've never seem to get right is Affine. It uses two different algebraic equations and it frustrates me to no end that I was in advanced math classes but never could properly understand how to use those equations. Every now and again I try again anyway to understand. Affine's my mortal enemy and I will defeat her one day. - I own like thirty different Olaf related Things. As in the Frozen snowman, yes. My favorite is this off putting garden gnome you could only nab at Kmart. Here's a picture of one if you're curious on what it looks like. I love talking about him.

EXPERIENCE

HOW LONG - Since out of the womb. I'm...almost not kidding, preschool age I did a lot of "playing pretend" and it was usually as pokemon with this one other pokemon obsessed kid, and at the time I was really obsessed with Chatot. Otherwise, my brother really liked starting up larp sessions with his nerf toys well into 7th grade I want to guess. For text based roleplay I'd have to guess when I was about 10 or so - parents gave me early access to facebook and at that time undertale was really popular.

WHAT PLATFORMS - Facebook was my first one, and then after that was either deviantart or minecraft - I don't really recall. After that I went to discord for rps and eventually twitter, and now I write on here!

BEST EXPERIENCE - Discord was really good functions wise if that makes sense(the organization you can put into it seperate chatrooms themed roleplays stuff like that) but I think I met the wrong group of people - they had it drilled into me for a WHILE that writing characters from canons was the equivalent of stealing someone else's stuff and you deserved to be bashed for doing such. You could only ever write and make ocs. If you wanted to write a canon character they endorsed just using the guy as a faceclaim and using a different name though! Twitter was where I have met my current friend group, and that has to count for something I think. Tumblr's has been the best in terms of people though.

MUSE TYPE

FEMALE OR MALE - Males. I guess my favorite types of characters tend to be men? As a kid I always loved the neurodivergent coded nerds or those that said they just say they were inventors, scientists, journalists, etc, or those labelled as evil/villains. The media I watch typically have these guys be men.

FLUFF, ANGST, OR SMUT - if anyone comes to me anymore about writing smut i think I'd just block them on the spot. I think otherwise I tend to write angst over fluff - even though writing angst can make me worry more over not writing properly, if that makes sense.

PLOT OR MEMES - memes. 100%. I can plot if needed but once that's been done I find myself having a lot of anxiety about "doing it right" and it's worse with plotted dynamics - I think I rush them because I know the end goal is X thing. With memes I find myself a lot less worried - I go with the flow and just writing on instinct and find myself more focused on getting the reply done and what could happen in the future - maybe this, or this, or this.

LONG OR SHORT REPLIES - I find myself writing longer replies whether I want to or not. For others, though, I just want a length I can respond to - I never really want people to both trying to match my length.

BEST TIME TO WRITE - I'm at my computer and phone a lot, so I think I'm pretty flexible? It's moreso however the day goes for me, if I end up sick or if my mood is really low or if I'm just mentally exhausted. So I can't really say for certain. I do have more struggles when it's winter though - seasonal depression issues - so hopefully when summer comes about it won't be so severe.

ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSES? - Half of the time I don't like answering this - I don't like being told I'm just like my villain muses, my anxiety tries enough to convince me I'm a terrible person when I'm likely not, so for mental sanity I will be saying no in regards to those people. There's my other half of muses though that are like Stanford or Zane, that I'm a lot more comfortable with saying yes I am like them, even if just a little bit.

[rockinlibrarian]

9 people tag game

Tagged by @e-louise-bates, who tagged only me (and no, I don't believe I've done this one, recently at least), so I'm assuming the "9 People" in the title isn't NECESSARILY how many people I have to tag.

last song: All I've been hearing for the past two hours is the background music to Splatoon, which my son is playing on the big tv in this room. Last song I actually listened to? I think it was Led Zeppelin. Yeah, when I turned my car off I left auxiliary on for a bit, as one does, and it was some Zeppelin-- "Whole Lotta Love," that was it.

last movie: Honestly, I am not sure when I last watched a movie? Possibly not since Arsenic and Old Lace at New Years. I just don't get around to it! Also, Splatoon is always running on the big tv.

currently watching: Okay, I almost thought of this as a movie, but I have been watching a TV show the past week or so! Muppets Mayhem, which is only 10 half-hour episodes long but I've still only watched 7, that's how much I'm not watching ANYTHING lately. Okay, I am unable to tell if it is objectively good to the average person-- I think it's mixed, some very good stuff, some eh-- because it is basically a made-for-me show (it got shuttled to the top of my watch list when a friend-- an online friend I've never met in real life even-- specifically tagged me on Facebook after she watched it because she thought of me the whole time). I have said, for the record, that The Electric Mayhem is my favorite fictional band. They genuinely do rock. And the music (and the music nerd references) is the highlight of the show. And the Get Back-themed episode was indeed an absolute delight.

currently reading: Kids and I are towards the middle of the end of The Sun and the Star, Mark Oshiro's Riordanverse book about Nico and Will in the Underworld, which isn't quite as delightful as Riordan's originals in voice, but still has some good stuff in it. I've also brought home Nowhere Boy by Katherine Marsh, which I am considering sampling for the older group at Summer Quest this week. Hence bringing it home to actually read those chapters before reading it to them. I also left off in the middle of a multichapter fanfic last night, something Umbrella Academy of course because I'm still only in the S's in my alphabetical by author browse-through. It's "the desperation murmur of a heartbeat" by slytherincosette-- good enough for me to keep reading beyond the first chapter (or even the first paragraph) at least. Haven't finished it yet.

last thing researched for writing purposes: Huh. Well, that depends on your definition of all those words, I suppose. I think, using the broadest definitions, the last thing I researched for my writing was synonyms for "flawless"-- I was looking for the word "foolproof" but couldn't think of it, so I put "flawless" in Thesaurus.com and browsed until I spotted it. Yay, thesaurus! And for this particular fic I also have looked up the transcripts to The Wizard of Oz (which is the AU) and various episodes of Legion (which it is a fanfic of), if THAT counts as research. I am looking at my google search history now but I don't think any of this was used for writing. A few minutes ago I looked up how many inches are 143 centimeters which I THINK was for some ART that @sunnymarbles was drawing, but that's drawing, not writing, and also not mine. I have researched various snack recipes from around the world so as to write up some handouts for Summer Quest, which was technically writing, and mine. Honestly the only research session for fictional-not-educational writing purposes that really stands out in my memory was the day (2 1/2 years ago) I spent researching electric guitars just so I could say what Marty McFly's dream guitar would have been in 1980, for one sentence in a less-than-900-word fanfic. But I learned a lot of interesting things about electric guitars, so there.

Who the heck should I tag. I usually tag Louise, but she got me first. @stephsageek, @alihahdnaid, @sharkneto, @rebel-by-default, @littlerit, @steeple-sinderby --those are the first I-know-are-writers in my notifications (not counting Louise) before the scrolldown makes me click "see more." There's also @dannypageoflight who draws more than he writes but who knows, maybe he's done some research for writing purposes lately. That's seven. And two more people! Have fun, two more people! @sunnymarbles! You were already technically tagged in this, and I already told everyone what you're reading and also probably what you're listening to right now because you are also in the room with Splatoon (can't tell if you have earbuds in) and also that I looked up the last thing you wanted to research half an hour ago or whenever it was! And you don't write! But you can also do this if you really wanted to!

[girl4pay]

hiya, i'm an 18 y/o who's disabled, and i'm thinking of becoming an au pair or nanny. i don't have much experience however and i'm worried that will lead ppl 2 count me out. i'm wondering what kinda experience u gained b4 starting in ur job, and any advice u might have? thank u xo

hi! when i started it out i was a little younger than you are but not much and the way i found clients was just telling literally everyone in mine my family + my friends parent’s social circles that i was a babysitter. if you belong to a church or any kind of community org that’s even better you can ask to put up a flyer or again just let ppl know. even if they don’t have kids themselves everyone knows someone who has a kid you know. if you have ever taken care of a child before in your life - counting family members - you have technically been a babysitter! an easy way to get around lack of experience is affinity bcus both are about trust. a person saying ‘oh you need a babysitter? i know anon i can put you in touch with them’ is about the same impact as saying on an internet ad ‘i have x years of experience and can provide references’. and absolutely 0 insult intended to your childcare abilities but in terms of ease of getting started. frankly people are kind of less strict about who they let watch their kids than i would think they would be esp when things are kind of last minute and once you’re in as long as you don’t do anything catastrophic you’ll be in their roster of like people they can call for childcare and they will also hopefully start recommending you to their friends!

i would recommend getting a first aid certification if you don’t have one because it’s an easy way to show you’re serious. the last time i took it i think it was about $100, it may be less in other countries! if clients ask about experience you take literally any time you took care of a child and just expand it a little. obviously don’t full out lie but you can say oh i’ve taken care of kids as favors before and i enjoyed it so i wanted to start doing it to earn some money. try and focus on non sibling care if you can or if you ever did anything like tutoring younger kids or really anything at all that shows you like interacting with kids that’s something to bring up. also be as available as possible like in my experience when people know that you’re most likely going to answer they think of you first when they need someone. + once you have like at least 3 clients you have good relationships with those are your references and that’s a good start to applying to more full time/regular childcare. this is definitely not the only way to get started but it’s what i did and i think it gave me a space to build up my confidence in what i could do before like overcommitting myself, and i liked the freedom it gave me to kind of run my ‘business’ on my own terms. there are lots of babysitter groups on facebook and reddit and other forums where you can find people with different experiences to get a fuller idea of your options!

the one thing i will say is be little wary of study or work abroad au pair programs. i never was part of one but i got to know people who were and more than once they told me that it wasn’t what they had been expecting or told it would be by the program and that the program didn’t provide the support they needed. i’m sure this isnt universal but i’ve seen that that system is a little exploitative and it’s good idea to really do your research as much as possible.

good luck and if you have any other questions i can try to answer them! i will be rooting for you ❤️❤️

[pandemic-posts2023]

Zoom-Bombing To The Top

"Get off your phone and go outside." With the modern generation, many parents seemed to consistently reiterate this to their tech-addicted kids. However, that all changed around March 2020. With the unprecedented spread of the pandemic, parents had to practically beg their kids to stay indoors for months on end as a means to stop the spread.

This is where zoom comes into play. As the message of "physical distancing" not social distancing was relayed, a way for many individuals to stay connected and get through this once in a century situation together was on this video-conferencing platform. However, the profits generated from zoom came as jobs had to quickly pivot to an online setting to continue some level of production. The firm saw a rise of 370% within the last three months of 2020, absolutely unprecedented growth fueled by the pandemic.

To provide some context, Zoom Video Communications was founded in 2011 by Eric Yuan, a former Cisco executive. The company's goal was to create a video conferencing platform that was easy to use and accessible to everyone. In the early days, Zoom faced competition from established players like Skype and Google Hangouts. However, the company's focus on user experience, reliability, and security helped it gain traction among businesses and individuals alike. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 further accelerated Zoom's growth, as remote work and virtual meetings became the norm. As of 2021, Zoom is one of the most widely used video conferencing platforms in the world, with over 300 million daily meeting participants.

But how did zoom become so popular and exhibit signs of a monopoly? Well, the reasons are rather simple. As mentioned before, zoom was the platform everyone could turn to during the pandemic from the smallest kids looking for fun to grandmas enjoying knitting classes there was a place for everyone. It was as simple as joining through the link leading to an array of possibiities. Customizable backgrounds, screen-sharing and so on. One thing that helped me personally was the recording of specific sessions that I could re-watch so that I could continue playing on my x-box :). Jokes aside, zoom saw this reliance as a way to maximize profits. While the free version still has neat features, payment of simple licenses could allow up to 300 members to join a call for a large amount of time. This was very convenient for companies having large team gatherings, college seminars with a lot of students, or online parties where your neighbor is telling you to keep it down at 3 am. Zoom could charge different prices to different groups since they had the power to do so. Essentially, the uniqueness of zoom during the pandemic allowed them to maximize profits through price discrimination, all of which are characteristics of monopolies in monopolistic markets.

With research finding that employees actually show more productivity in an online setting as opposed to in person ones, the future of zoom is here to stay especially as the company transitions towards Zoom business for a more corporate lense. But let's be honest, we all want to get up at 9 am and show up to meeting from the comfort of our bed (I know I do for sure). Regardless, zoom showed that when there is a need for a product much like Google and Facebook, a company can take advantage and take the market by storm. Rise in Demand Due to Covid (Figure 1). Rise in Supply Due to Technical Improvements and Mass Production from Covid demand (Figure 2)

https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/economics/monopolistic-markets/

[econ23econlive]

Zoom-Bombing To The Top

"Get off your phone and go outside." With the modern generation, many parents seemed to consistently reiterate this to their tech-addicted kids. However, that all changed around March 2020. With the unprecedented spread of the pandemic, parents had to practically beg their kids to stay indoors for months on end as a means to stop the spread.

This is where zoom comes into play. As the message of "physical distancing" not social distancing was relayed, a way for many individuals to stay connected and get through this once in a century situation together was on this video-conferencing platform. However, the profits generated from zoom came as jobs had to quickly pivot to an online setting to continue some level of production. The firm saw a rise of 370% within the last three months of 2020, absolutely unprecedented growth fueled by the pandemic.

To provide some context, Zoom Video Communications was founded in 2011 by Eric Yuan, a former Cisco executive. The company's goal was to create a video conferencing platform that was easy to use and accessible to everyone. In the early days, Zoom faced competition from established players like Skype and Google Hangouts. However, the company's focus on user experience, reliability, and security helped it gain traction among businesses and individuals alike. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 further accelerated Zoom's growth, as remote work and virtual meetings became the norm. As of 2021, Zoom is one of the most widely used video conferencing platforms in the world, with over 300 million daily meeting participants.

But how did zoom become so popular and exhibit signs of a monopoly? Well, the reasons are rather simple. As mentioned before, zoom was the platform everyone could turn to during the pandemic from the smallest kids looking for fun to grandmas enjoying knitting classes there was a place for everyone. It was as simple as joining through the link leading to an array of possibiities. Customizable backgrounds, screen-sharing and so on. One thing that helped me personally was the recording of specific sessions that I could re-watch so that I could continue playing on my x-box :). Jokes aside, zoom saw this reliance as a way to maximize profits. While the free version still has neat features, payment of simple licenses could allow up to 300 members to join a call for a large amount of time. This was very convenient for companies having large team gatherings, college seminars with a lot of students, or online parties where your neighbor is telling you to keep it down at 3 am. Zoom could charge different prices to different groups since they had the power to do so. Essentially, the uniqueness of zoom during the pandemic allowed them to maximize profits through price discrimination, all of which are characteristics of monopolies in monopolistic markets.

With research finding that employees actually show more productivity in an online setting as opposed to in-person ones, the future of zoom is here to stay especially as the company transitions towards Zoom business for a more corporate lense. But let's be honest, we all want to get up at 9 am and show up to the meeting from the comfort of our bed (I know I do for sure). Regardless, zoom showed that when there is a need for a product much like Google and Facebook, a company can take advantage and take the market by storm. Rise in Demand Due to Covid (Figure 1). Rise in Supply Due to Technical Improvements and Mass Production from Covid demand (Figure 2)

Aboas Hassankhil (55982678), Tuesday 7-7:50pm

Sayan Banerjee (55328317), Tuesday 8-8:50-pm

Heba Mansoor (35124978), Tuesday 8-8:50pm

Gabriel Hanks Camacho, (50827489) Wednesday 4-4:50pm

Michael Perez-Lorenz (22382928), Friday 11-11:50am

[stormiepassions]

Open Letter to the Good Omens Fandom

Fellow Good Omens Fans,

The past few weeks, maybe even a month or longer really, things have been tense. There is a lot of drama going on within the fandom and I thought it was time for me to say something. 

What on the Almighty’s green earth is happening here?

When I first found the Fandom, it was after I saw Good Omens on Amazon Prime. I saw an Angel and a Demon completely mess everything up (”Just imagine how awful it might have been if we'd been at all competent.”) but still save the world from Armageddon. I saw an Angel and Demon who were friends, even if their respected sides were not and I saw them love one another (”To the World”). I also a kid deciding that his life, family, and friends were more important than power. I saw a witch who decided to break free from her familial expectations and burn the second book of prophecies. I fell in love with all of them and I found the most amazing group of people who loved this tale too, everyone was open and loving and welcoming writers and artists and readers and musicians... Queer friendly and cheered one another on. It was awesome. 

I slowly became brave myself and decided to take a stab at writing fan fiction and frankly reading that story now make my eyes hurt, it was bad. But again, there were cheerleaders out there who rooted for my writing and I have never felt so much support in my life. 

Then, things started to change. I think I was subconsciously effected by the shift because I stopped spending a lot of time in the Facebook groups and I never really got into Twitter until recently. My favorite writers and artists were no longer active in the groups. One of the most supportive writers (and beta) was kicked out of a group. Writers who weren’t the Select Few were getting less and less readers and support. Artists who also weren’t the Select Few were getting less support and love. Whispers started about bullying and blacklisting writers.

 Now I am, as someone who loves Good Omens and these characters, is stressed about everything that has been happening. It is difficult to write when you hear about “Two Pies” and if you’re going to be next in someone saying you’re copying them. It’s horrible to see this amazing group of artists and writers fight for Power... The Select Few can destroy a new, inexperienced writer or artist; just the fact that they only interact with one another’s fics and art creates a line of Us and them. Gatekeeping is a term that I just recently learned but it fits the bill on what is happening within the Fandom.

It hurts my heart. 

The only person who should have any say within this Fandom is Neil Gaiman. (Terry is no longer with us but if he were, he too would be right next to Neil) Us writers and artists should be grateful that Neil likes that we create. We could love a tale that the Original Writer would try to shut us down for creating fan fiction but instead we have the lovely Mr. Gaiman. If you want to be technical, we’re stealing from him his characters to tell stories that we want to tell and put them into situations that, perhaps, Neil wouldn’t want them in. But he lets us and supports us. 

I don’t want to walk away from this Fandom. It has helped me make it through my own issues with Depression and ADHD, survive Covid, stay a float when things got hard. I have made a few friends that I can’t imagine not talking to on a regular bases because of this Fandom. It gets so hard with the power struggles and the cattiness and watching people want to stay on top just as much as they want to keep people down. 

It hurts my head.

I plan to continue to write, at least my most recent WIP and I plan to continue to read whoever’s fics and look at whoever’s art. I enjoy them, kudos them, might write a comment if I have time and then read some more. But something has to give, this Fandom is going to destroy itself because of people sense of Self importance. We should love and support one another. Enjoy the gift that we have in Good Omens and Neil. The Select Few are not Gatekeepers if we don’t let them be Gatekeepers. 

Everything Hurts.

Lets build each other up. No one else will do it for us. 

Much love to you all.

Stormie

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Watomatic, for lower Whatsapp switching costs

Any discussion of monopolization of the web is bound to include the term “network effects,” and its constant companion, “natural monopolies.” This econojargon is certainly relevant to the discussion, but really needs the oft-MIA idea of “switching costs.”

A technology has “network effects” when its value grows as its users increase, attracting more users, making it more valuable, attracting more users.

The classic example is the fax machine: one fax is useless, two is better, but when everyone has a fax, you need one too.

Social media and messaging obviously benefit significantly from network effects: if all your friends are on Facebook (or if it’s where your kid’s Little League games are organized, or how your work colleagues plan fun activities), you’ll feel enormous pressure to join.

Indeed, in these days of Facebook’s cratering reputation, it’s common to hear people say, “I’m only on FB because my friends are there,” and then your friends say, “I’m only there because you are there.”

It’s a form of mutual hostage-taking.

That hostage situation illustrates (yet) another economic idea: “collective action problems.” There are lots of alternatives to Facebook, but unless you can convince everyone on Facebook to pick one and move en masse, you’ll just end up with yet another social account.

This combination of network effects and collective action problems leads some apologists for tech concentration to call the whole thing a “natural monopoly” — a system that tends to be dominated by a single company, no matter how hard we try.

Railroads are canonical “natural monopolies.” Between the costs of labor and capital and the difficulty in securing pencil-straight rights-of-way across long distances, it’s hard to make the case for running a second set of parallel tracks for a competing company’s engines.

Other examples of natural monopolies include cable and telephone systems, water and gas systems, sewer systems, public roads, and electric grids.

Not coincidentally, these are often operated as public utilities, to keep natural monopolies from being abused by greedy jerks.

But the internet isn’t a railroad. Digital is different, because computers are universal in a way that railroads aren’t — all computers can run all programs that can be expressed in symbolic logic, and that means we can almost always connect new systems to existing ones.

Open up a doc in your favorite word processor and choose “Save As…” and just stare in awe and wonder at all the different file-formats you can read and write with a single program. Some of those formats are standardized, while others are proprietary and/or obsolete.

It’s easier to implement support for a standard, documented format, but even proprietary formats pose only a small challenge relative to the challenge presented by, say, railroads.

Throw some reverse-engineering and experimentation at a format like MS DOC and you can make Apple Pages, which reads and writes MS’s formats (which were standardized shortly after Pages’ release, that is, after the proprietary advantage of the format was annihilated).

This is not to dismiss the ingenuity of the Apple engineers who reversed Microsoft’s hairball of a file-format, but rather, to stress how much harder their lives would have been if they were dealing with railroads instead of word-processors.

During Australia’s colonization, every state had its own governance and its own would-be rail-barons. Each state laid its own gauge of rail-track, producing the “multi-gauge muddle” — which is why, 150+ years later, you can’t get a train from one end of Oz to the other.

Hundreds of designs for interoperable rolling stock have been tried, but it’s proven impossible to make a reliable car that retracts one set of wheels and drops a different one.

The solution to the middle-gauge muddle? Tear up and re-lay thousands of kilometers of track.

Contrast that with the Windows users who discovered that Pages would read and write the thousands of documents they’d authored and had to exchange with colleagues: if they heeded the advice of the Apple Switch ads, they could buy a Mac, move their files over, and voila!

Which brings me to switching costs. The thing that make natural monopolies out of digital goods and services are high switching costs, including the collective action problem of convincing everyone to quit Facebook or start using a different word-processor.

These switching costs aren’t naturally occurring: they are deliberately introduced by dominant firms that want to keep their users locked in.

Microsoft used file format obfuscation and dirty tricks (like making a shoddy Mac Office suite that only offered partial compatibility with Windows Word files) to keep the switching costs high.

By reverse-engineering and reimplementing Word support, Apple obliterated those switching costs — and with them, the collective action problem that created Word’s natural monopoly.

Once Pages was a thing, you didn’t have to convince your friends to switch to a Mac at the same time as you in order to continue collaborating with them.

Once you get an email-to-fax program, you can discard your fax machine without convincing everyone else to do the same.

Interoperability generally lowers switching costs. But adversarial interoperability — making something new that connects to something that already exists, without its manufacturer’s consent — specifically lowers deliberate switching costs.

Adversarial interoperability (or “competitive compatibility,” AKA “comcom”) is part of the origin story of every dominant tech company today. But those same companies have gone to extraordinary lengths to extinguish it.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Just as a new company may endorse standardization when it’s trying to attract customers who would otherwise be locked into a “ecosystem” of apps, service, protocols and parts, so too do new companies endorse reverse-engineering and comcom to “fix” proprietary tech.

But every pirate wants to be an admiral. Once companies attain dominance, they start adding proprietary extensions to the standard and fighting comcom-based interoperability, decrying it as “hacking” or “theft of intellectual property.”

In the decades since Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook were upstarts, luring users away from the giants of their days, these same companies have labored to stretch copyright law, terms of service, trade secrecy, patents and other rules to ban the tactics they once used.

This has all but extinguished comcom as a commercial practice. Today’s comcom practitioners risk civil and criminal liability and struggle to get a sympathetic hearing from lawmakers or the press, who have generally forgotten that comcom was once a completely normal tactic.

The obliteration of comcom is why network effects produce such sturdy monopolies in tech — and there’s nothing “natural” about those monopolies.

If you could leave Facebook but still exchange messages with your friends who hadn’t wised up, there’d be no reason to stay.

In other words, the collective action problem that the prisoners of tech monopolies struggle with is the result of a deliberate strategy of imposing high technical and legal burdens to comcom, in order to impose insurmountable switching costs.

I wrote about this for Wired UK back in April, comparing the “switching costs” the USSR imposed on my grandmother when she fled to Canada in the 1940s to the low switching costs I endured when I emigrated from Canada to the UK to the USA:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/social-media-competitive-compatibility

Today, there’s a group of tech monopoly hostages who are stuck behind their own digital iron curtain, thanks to Facebook’s deliberate lock-in tactics: the users of Whatsapp, a messaging company that FB bought in 2014.

Whatsapp was a startup success: founded by privacy-focused technologists who sensed users were growing weary of commercial surveillance, they pitched their $1 service as an alternative to Facebook and other companies whose “free” products extracted a high privacy price.

Facebook bought Whatsapp, stopped the $1 charge, and started spying. In response to public outcry, the Facebook product managers responsible for the app assured its users that the surveillance data WA extracted wouldn’t be blended with Facebook’s vast database of kompromat.

That ended this year, when every Whatsapp user in the world got a message warning them that Facebook had unilaterally changed Whatsapp’s terms of service and would henceforth use the app’s surveillance data alongside the data it acquired on billions of people by other means.

Downloads of Whatsapp alternatives like Signal and Telegram surged, and Facebook announced it would hold off on implementing the change for three months. Three months later, on May 15, Facebook implemented the change and commenced with the promised, more aggressive spying.

Why not? After all, despite all of the downloads of those rival apps, Whatsapp usage did not appreciably fall. Convincing all your friends to quit Whatsapp and switch to Signal is a lot of work.

If the holdout is — say — a beloved elder whom you haven’t seen in a year due to lockdown, then the temptation to keep Whatsapp installed is hard to resist.

What if there was a way to lower those collective action costs?

It turns out there is. Watomatic is a free/open source “autoresponder” utility for Whatsapp and Facebook that automatically replies to messages with instructions for reaching you on a rival service.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.parishod.watomatic

It’s not full interoperability — not a way to stay connected to those friends who won’t or can’t leave Facebook’s services behind — but it’s still a huge improvement on the nagging feeling that people you love are wondering why you aren’t replying to their messages.

The project’s sourcecode is live on Github, so you can satisfy yourself that there isn’t any sneaky spying going on here:

https://github.com/adeekshith/watomatic

It’s part of a wider constellation of Whatsapp mods, which have their origins in a Syrian reverse-engineer whose Whatsapp comcom project was picked up and extended by African modders who produced a constellation of Whatsapp-compatible apps.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/african-whatsapp-modders-are-masters-worldwide-adversarial-interoperability

These apps are often targeted for legal retaliation by Facebook, so it’s hard to find them in official app stores where they might be vetted for malicious code.

It’s a strategy that imposes a new switching cost on Whatsapp’s hostages, in the form of malware risk.

Legal threats are Facebook’s default response to comcom. That’s how they responded to NYU’s Ad Observer, a plugin that lets users scrape and repost the political ads they’re served.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/553000000-reasons-not-let-facebook-make-decisions-about-your-privacy

Ad Observer lets independent researchers and journalists track whether Facebook is living up to its promises to block paid political disinformation. Facebook has made dire legal threats to shut this down, arguing that we should trust the company to mark its own homework.

Whatsapp lured users in by promising privacy. It held onto them post-acquisition by promising them their data would be siloed from Facebook’s main databases.

When it reneged on both promises, it papered this over by with a dialog box where they had to click I AGREE.

This “agreement” is a prime example of “consent theater,” the laughable pretense that Facebook is “making an offer” and the public is “accepting the offer.”

https://onezero.medium.com/consent-theater-a32b98cd8d96

Most people never read terms of service — but even when they do, “agreements” are subject to unilateral “renegotiation” by companies that engineered high switching costs as a means of corralling you into clicking “I agree” to things no rational person would ever agree to.

Consent theater lays bare the fiction of agreement. Real agreement is based on negotiation, and markets are based on price-signals in which buyers and sellers make counteroffers.

A “market” isn’t a place where a dominant seller names a price and then takes it from you.

Comcom is a mechanism for making these counteroffers. Take ad-blockers, which Doc Searls calls “the largest consumer boycott in history.” More than a quarter of internet users have installed an ad-block, fed up with commercial surveillance.

This is negotiation, a counteroffer. Big Tech — and the publications it colonizes — demand you give them everything, all the data they can extract, for every purpose they can imagine, forever, as a condition of access.

Ad-block lets you say “Nah.”

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

The fiction that tech barons have “discovered” the “price” that the public is willing to pay for having a digital life is a parody of market doctrine. Without the ability to counteroffer — in code, as well as in law — there is no price discovery.

Rather, there is price-setting.

Not coincidentally, “the ability to set prices” is the textbook definition of an illegal monopoly.

[peachyteabuck]

what is a quilt purist, please go off

oh my god oh my GOD - this is less abt craft puritans and more about what happened but like. hear me out.

i don't even know where to begin because it's genuinely so insane.

so okay. for context: in the crafting community there are a LOT of very weirdly strict people (mostly white women) who are dedicated to being the Absolute Worst. like, PINNACLE of being a karen. in quilting they only care about one type of quilt, and any other type of quilt (t shirt quilts come to mind) aren't "real" quilts

this is insane for like, 2 main reasons.

1) quilting refers to a WAY OF DOING SOMETHING (e.g. vera wang products are quilted but not quilts) not necessarily a specific physical craft

2) the way quilting has been done has changed A TON over time. in the 90s "mock quilts" became popular, where the quilt top was printed on a single piece of fabric, the crazy quilt vs. crumb quilt distinction, the invention of long arms, mass produced fabric, the transition of monetizing patterns. like quilting has been around for AWHILE (long enough i'm promised a 300 year old quilt in my mother's will), but how i quilt today is different from how people quilted then, and i (a person who does everything by hand) quilts different from someone who does everything with a machine. there are people who don't use "real" batting, instead using thick vintage blankets.

so anyway. there was a thread in this quilting group of animals on the quilts people had made. and obvi im gonna post this pic of cowboy because like

because LOOK AT HIM!! this is one of my favorite pictures of him.

so i post this, and then shit hits the FAN

within minutes i've got at least 3 women in the comment thread barating me for

wait for it

having this quilt on the floor

and for awhile i was like - hey listen, my cat is old, this is when i first got him and he wasn't very confident jumping on things. he wanted to hang out with me but didn't have a place to be other than the floor, and so i put this decently small/bulky quilt down. it's made of blocks MY GRANDMOTHER MADE that i inherited, and is really small and made especially for him with really thick batting (the inside of a quilt). plus (PLUS!!!)

PLUS

I TOOK THIS PIC TODAY. OVER A YEAR AND A HALF, TWO APARTMENTS, HUNDREDS OF WASHINGS. THIS IS HAS LAST ME OVER A YEAR AND A FUCKING HALF. IT'S FINE. IT'S FUCKING FINE. IT NEEDS TO BE DARNED IN LIKE 2 SPOTS BUT IT'S FUCKING FINE!!!

but eventually im like ?? okay, this is just fucking weird. like all yalls facebooks are decently public, y'all either got kids to raise or retirements to enjoy. why are you arguing with some rando on facebook about the proper way to "take care" of a quilt when it's still washed properly and kept out of the sun.

so like 2 hours later with breaks to do my job im kicked out of this quilting group that i really only used for inspo pics, with like 3 new friends added on facebook because not everyone is down to clown with narrow definitions of their hobbies.

EDIT: saw this right before posting

okay TECHNICALLY i answered this above but for clarities sake:

quilting is a technique that refers to something done with three layers:

top layer

middle layer (normally batting, this layer is not seen)

bottom layer

it's common to refer to quilts as a blanket "sandwich," but that's not really accurate because the inside is hidden as the edges are combines with bias tape. it's really a fabric uncrustable.

these layers are held together with basting, which is the stitches you feel that go through all three years.

the little squares you're referring to are "blocks," which just refers to the individual pieces that come together to make a quilt top. there are several methods of putting blocks together that aren't relevant, and some blocks are more complicated than others, but it's like how puzzles are made of puzzle pieces.

so yeah. quilting puritanism. it's fucking insane. and very very dumb.

[rpmemesbyarat]

Hello Tumblr people. I’m 31 years old and I’ve been on Tumblr since 2014. That’s not really old, and that’s not really a long time, but I know it’s older and longer than a lot of other folks. Tumblr is a space mainly populated by teens and twenties, and I know when I was in that age group, I thought 31 was a Real Adult (TM) Which, shit, it’s not, it’s really not, especially not for me, but nonetheless, I have learned some things in my time that I wish I could impart to my younger self, and instead will impart to y’all. Take what you like and what works for you and leave the rest, I’m no expert or guru or authority on anything, I’m just trying to be helpful. Being nice costs nothing. I once was standoffish to someone who came and chatted to me in IMs. That guy later died. True story. I feel terrible about it to this day. I was wary and kind of snotty in those days and I regret that. It’s one thing to be careful about strangers approaching but that wasn’t what I did here. It costs nothing to be nice. It costs nothing to be friendly. To do stuff like show interest in others, care about what they have to say, comment when they share things about their day. These are tiny things that cost nothing but give so much. Don’t pass the opportunity by. And definitely don’t snub someone for no reason. If you don’t want to interact, you don’t have to, but don’t be cold about it unless it’s legitimately because you’re uncomfy with this person and want them to go away. Your safety and comfort do come before any obligation to be nice, but I hope it’s clear that’s not what I’m talking about here. Be a candle that lights other candles. You know what else costs nothing? Encouragement. There’s nothing stopping you from telling others what you like about their content, what they post, what they create, what thoughts they have, the things they say, or just how passionate they are about something. There’s nothing stopping you from saying you hope the best for someone going through a rough time, or how cute their pets are, or how you’re glad they got themselves a treat today. You don’t need to be someone’s therapist ---I know I sure don’t have the emotional energy for that--or have solutions for them, you don’t need to force yourself to say anything insincere or that you don’t have the spoons for, but when you can, say something positive to others. First impressions can be wrong but gut feelings are often right. Like I said, being nice should NEVER trump your own comfort or safety. If you get weird vibes from someone, book it. Sure, you could be wrong. I’ve been wrong about a lot of people. I’ve also been right about others, and should have left when I had the chance before they could prove to me how right I was. Technically, there was nothing stopping me. It was online, after all. I could have just vanished and they’d probably never have tracked me down or made contact again. But I was lonely, and socially awkward, and like many people, most of my human contact was online, and I thought that this was worth it. It’s not. Whatever kind of friendship or therapeutic RP or free art or support or compliments or advice you’re getting from someone online. . . it’s not worth it if they’re mean or creepy too. Whatever you are getting, you can find it somewhere else, in someone else, who won’t make you have to put up with that kind of crap for it. If something feels wrong, don’t wait around for it to get worse. Yes, you may be incorrectly judging a situation and running from nothing, but it’s better you run from nothing than NOT run from SOMETHING. And I know that things like anxiety disorders, trauma, and just different communication styles can make it hard to judge these things (I’ve thought people didn’t like me before just because they were far less effusive in their typing style than I am, and I was wrong) but if you really feel uncomfortable, like this person has said mean or sexual things to you, it’s not just the brain weasels telling you lies. If you’re truly in doubt, get another person’s opinion, but also don’t let them convince you “it’s nothing” if it feels like something. Trust yourself. Creeps, like children, will test your boundaries. Kids will do shit just to see what they can get away and how far they can push you before you put your foot down. Creeps are the same. They’ll start with stuff that you can easily ignore, brush off, and put up with without feeling it’s worth ditching the whole friendship over. But they’ll rarely let it stay there. They’ll typically escalate it if they’re not rebuked. Rebuke them. It can be scary. It can be hard. I know this. I know it firsthand. But feel no sympathy. Feel no fear. Tell them off and pack your bags. They want to know how much you’ll put up with? Show them----nothing at all, that’s what. Don’t be afraid to change your views but don’t feel the need to broadcast it. I’m never getting a personal Tumblr. Because I’m glad they weren’t around when I was a teen. I would have posted things I don’t believe now. Same for when I’m in my 20s. And I bet that will the be the case in my 40s, 50s, and 60s too. Our lives are journeys of changing, learning, and unlearning. And that’s great. But if you post every step of your journey for the world to see, there are those who will use it against you, even if it was stuff from years ago that you should be applauded for growing from, not derided for having ever believed in. Not to mention that what’s the most up-to-date woke terminology and politics changes very rapidly, and what was acceptable when I was a teen is not the preferred lingo now, and it’s likely going to keep changing, and there will be people who find your posts and don’t care about that either. I realize Tumblr gives us a format to metaphorically scream our present beliefs and show how right what you believe is, and the urge to reblog when you see something you agree with wholeheartedly is strong. And if you’ve got a blog that doesn’t easily connect back with you, or you don’t plan to have for the next five years, or whatever, go ahead. But if your blog can be easily connected to you, and therefore could be connected to you again in the future, it wouldn’t hurt to be a bit judicious. I’m not saying “don’t take a stand on anything ever because you might change your mind and/or someone might drag you”, I am saying that in the age of cancel culture and people deep digging for ancient receipts, young people are no longer getting to have their journeys, with all their rooms for fuckups and re-thinkings, that I and those before me got to have, and I think that sucks. By all means, take a stand on what you believe in now, fight for it with all your heart, just also don’t make it too easy for other people to use it against you should you ever change your mind---and don’t be afraid to change your mind either, even when it’s against the grain of what’s presently popular opinion. Find things out for yourself when possible You know how when they taught you things in school about history and America and whatnot and now you’ve found out that there’s so much they DIDN’T tell you, and at least half of what they did is a very edited sack of hooey? Well, the same is true of Tumblr, Facebook, and other online spaces as well as real life. We all laugh at our Boomer parents and grandparents who share clearly false stories on Facebook because they can’t tell that it was clearly crafted to incite their anger or endorsement based on how it’s tailored to validate their beliefs, but I see the same thing happen here. Loads of tale gets touted as “true” on Tumblr because they have been made to appeal to us emotionally by validating our beliefs. But just because our beliefs may be good or progressive or what have you, does not mean that everything that appeals to them is going to be true. When you see a post circulating that claims something really cool about history or such is true, I suggest fact-checking it. This will help halt the spread of misinformation---even if it’s harmless---and help you build your critical thinking and research skills. This does not mean “you must change your views” it means “be skeptical even when something validates your views” People on our own side can lie, and that’s not harmless even if it seems so---contributing to a culture of misinformation is NOT harmless, and we’re less likely to be skeptical of claims that validate what we already believe. Don’t fall for this. That’s all. I hope something in here was valuable to you. If not, thank you for reading and I hope you have a great day!

[23rdhunter]

@salt-and-bramble tagged me in this questionnaire, good to see these things going around again! nature is healing etc. etc.

What was your:

Last beverage: technically beverage excludes water so sparkling water mixed with lemonade

Last phone call: guy at the garage with sweet tattoo sleeves letting me know my tires are fixed

Last text message: like 6 pictures of some kids I work with having a blast flying kites

Last song you listened to: Plant Life by Owl City (it's a waltz!)

Last time you cried: a few weeks ago

Have you ever:

Dated someone twice: nope

Kissed someone and regretted it: no

Lost someone special: yes

Been depressed: very yes

Drunk and threw up: never been drunk actually

List 3 favorite colors: green, brown, gray

Last year, have you:

Made a new friend: yes, and leveled up existing friendships

Fallen out of love: not this year

Laughed until you cried: yeah I do this a lot

Found out who your true friends are: not this year!

Found out someone was talking about you: I like salt-and-bramble's perspective here so I'm stealing it. It's nice to know people remember I exist when I'm not around

Anyone on your fb friends list: this year? I miiight have logged in to Facebook in the last 12 months but I definitely haven't done anything with it so whatever this means, no.

General:

How many people on your fb friends list do you know in real life: all of them? Isn't that the point? Facebook must have changed since I've been gone

Firsts:

First surgery: eardrums when I was muy pequeño

First piercing: none

First best friend: ow.

First sport you joined: soccer. It sucked! Later on I figured out soccer actually rocks it's just competitive attitudes that suck.

Vacation: that I remember? Camping. There were mice with red eyes and they used the cabin's rodent-proof mattress cage as a baby cage and for a very long time afterwards I thought cabins were supposed to come equipped with baby cages.

First pair of trainers: how does anyone remember this? I /did/ have a pair of sketchers last a decade once though. They were white & orange but slowly turned gray from all the duct tape.

Right now:

Eating: nothing

Drinking: water

I’m about to: either start dinner or kidnap someone to practice this dance step with

Your future:

Want kids: in ideal circumstances only

Get married: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm fond of the idea of life partners you grow old with?

Career: ??

Which is better:

Lips or eyes: no preference

Hugs or kisses: pretty big fan of both

Shorter or taller: do not care

Older or younger: historically the answer to this has been older but I think the key here is "definitely an adult" at approximately my life stage rather than any particular age group

Romantic or spontaneous: Romantic. Spontaneity is something I'm trying to get better with but mostly is rather nerve-wracking.

Nice stomach or nice arms: I don't understand how people evaluate this.

Sensitive or loud: why not both in some measure? This is not a good either/or question.

Hook-up or relationship: relationship

Trouble maker or hesitant: hesitant? Or a very very patient troublemaker would be okay.

Have you ever: (again?????)

Kissed a stranger: nah

Drank hard liquor: yeah

Lost glasses/contacts: constantly

Sex on first date: nope

Broke someone’s heart: yes

Arrested: nah

Turned someone down: yes

Cried when someone died: yes

Fallen for a friend: yes

Do you believe in:

Yourself: yeah? In the sense that I can look at past trends and extrapolate how I might be in the future? I trust myself. I also believe in myself as in consider myself to be acceptable.

Miracles: I am going to skip all the religion questions.

Heaven:

Santa Claus:

Kiss on the first date: if the mood is right

Angels:

Tagging (no pressure): @otterknowbynow @change-the-rules @rusalkii @spiralingintocontrol @just-evo-now

[kirankickskancer]

DMX

Funny story guys - remember how I said it felt too good to be true that I was getting off easy with a lumpectomy? Turns out it was too good to be true. Tomorrow morning at 6am I am heading in for a double mastectomy (DMX) and an axillary lymph node dissection (ALND.) Like the character in the movie Saw, I have to make a choice between my life or my body part. At my post-lumpectomy visit with Dr. Cody, he explained with his trademark diagrams on the back of the pathology report how my margins were not clean. Lots of the bubbles he drew around a breast silhouette (that looked nothing like mine) had question marks and one had a big fat cross. Then he sent me up to radiology to get magnified mammograms to prove his point. This just felt like a cruel joke - getting a mammogram on a healthy breast is bad enough, but getting one on a breast that has just been split from armpit to nipple and sewn up again two weeks ago, was pure torture. A fellow survivor on my Facebook group likened it to running over a dead animal (this is why I love these ladies - that made me LOL!)

Dr. Cody’s verdict after seeing the mammogram was that even he, the famous breast conservationist from MSK, recommended a mastectomy. Even if he got the positive margins, there would still be too many far-spread calcifications left behind. (Hello Doc, the calcifications were there since the beginning, so then why did you suggest a lumpectomy?)

I was feeling less than confident with the whole staff at MSK - swanky hospital, efficient service, top notch research but the personal touch was lacking. At my post-lumpectomy visit, I was not asked how I was feeling or the range of motion in my arm. I didn’t even realize I had developed cording, which affects a quarter of all breast cancer surgical patients and is a result of scar tissue developing under the arm where the lymph nodes are removed. A simple exam on their part would have proved that I couldn't stretch my arm above my head or reach out to pick up something without pain, which are symptoms of cording. If it wasn't for my groups, I wouldn’t even have known what I was experiencing or how to make it better (PT, massage, heat and stretches to increase range of motion.)

Feeling disillusioned with my doctor, and upon the advice of my oncologist brother-in-law, I got a second opinion from the surgeon who practises in Hartford. Dr. Niamey Wilson came highly recommended by my beloved oncologist Dr. DeFusco who was in charge of my chemo treatments all summer. I had met with her over the summer when we were going back and forth between having the surgery in NYC or CT. We finally settled on NYC because MSK had the best technical capabilities including frozen section and so I could be near the kids during their school year in NYC. Dr. Wilson agreed that mastectomy is the way to go. She also thought that more nodes should be removed in addition to the 2 sentinel nodes removed by Dr. Cody.

At this point I had way too many decisions to make - Single mastectomy or double? Reconstruction or not? Sentinel nodes or Axillary node removal? New York or Avon, CT? After soul-searching for a week, long walks in Central Park and conversations with other survivors (Thanks Laura, Anu, Deb) I finally decided: Double, because I don’t want to look like Dr. Wendy Sage from The Simpsons (much as I admire all single-breasted women.) Flat, because I would rather have no boobs than fake boobs that have no sensation. Axillary node removal because cancer is a sneaky fucker and I will play hard (even if it means I have to wear a lymphedema compression sleeve 12 hours a day) - I tried to get away easy and it didn’t work so I will give it all I have this time around to make sure I win. Avon, because I need the mental and physical space to recover and even though it feels selfish to think of myself first, it is what my kids need from me in the long run.

So, here I sit, in my big empty house in Avon, with all the space I need and crave, to come to terms with my loss. I grieve for the body I have to give up, and look forward to the new person that will emerge after the scars and the trauma has healed. I ask myself Why me? And the answer comes to me: Why not me? This is my path to tread. I am not brave, I am not a warrior, I am just a woman taking one more step forward because that is all we can ever do.

[etraytin]

Desert Bus for Hope 2021

Last night I finished watching Desert Bus 2021 and collapsed into bed at 8:30, which is what I am assuming most of the performers did as well. Desert Bus For Hope is a personal highlight of my year, especially this last couple of years. It is a week off from the sometimes relentless press of “the world is scary and lots of people are not good” that pervades so much of the year. During Desert Bus Week, every time I go to the computer it is not to doomscroll Facebook or Twitter or try to ignore The Discourse on Tumblr, it’s to go straight to Twitch and watch the 24-hour stream of funny people raising money for kids in hospitals while the most wholesome chat community on the internet cheers them on.

 Fifteen years ago, Desert Bus 1 raised 22,000 of a hoped-for 5000 dollars as their planned weekend marathon stretched to Wednesday morning. This year, DB2021 ran for 167 hours and raised nearly 1.9 million dollars from over 8,000 individual donors. All the money goes to Child’s Play, a charity founded by the gaming community to put games and toys into hospitals and domestic violence shelters all over the world. Nobody else makes money on the event except probably the local fast food places and the utility companies providing 24 hour electricity and internet. The comedy group that puts it on, Loading Ready Run, stops all their other production and streaming for two weeks to volunteer their time and equipment, and then dozens of other volunteers join in to provide entertainment, technical equipment and expertise, logistical support, and everything else that is needed. Companies and individuals donate prizes to be raffled or auctioned off throughout the run. Members of the community (”the chat”) save up sometimes for the entire year between Desert Buses to have money to donate to their favorite charity event. It’s an amazing confluence of good people joining together to do an amazing thing. 

The day after Desert Bus is always a little sad, just from the letdown of an amazing thing being over, but it the good kind of “that was amazing, I can’t wait for next year” kind of sadness. Last year’s DBFH had to be entirely virtual, a major technological accomplishment in itself. This year was partly virtual because they were being very pandemic-careful despite everyone being vaccinated. Next year... god, I have such high hopes for next year! In the meantime, almost every moment of the whole run has been captured by another dedicated team of volunteers on the Desert Bus For Hope Youtube, so I get to spend another bunch of hours watching everything I was asleep or away for. Good times! 

[surveysonfleek]

1584.

What’s the latest youtube channel you’ve discovered and binge-watched?   hmm during work i found this girl who does true crime style videos. it’s like a visual podcast. so i listened to a couple of those in the bg

What’s one thing that makes your shoulders hurt?   getting a massage and they apply too much pressure but my introvert ass is too shy to say anything lol

Does it snow where you live? no. it snows about 2 hours away but tbh there wasnt much news about it this year

Do you think your hair looks better long or short? long

Do you look best with or without bangs?   i kinda prefer no bangs but side bangs are ok too

What stereotype would you say you fit the most?   none

Do you enjoy editing photos on your phone? haha i cant say i enjoy it but sometimes its needed

What’s your favorite thing to do on your phone?   insta, tiktok, fb. social media i guess

Which season do you wish would last longer?   autumn! love autumn, perfect weather all around

Do you like the name Eliana?   its cute

Do you know anyone named Claire? Veronica? Cescily? Marcella? Miranda?   i have a cousin named veronica

Haw many outdoor birthday parties have you had?   i dont remember having an outdoor bday ever!

How much taller or shorter are you than your mom?   taller by a few inches

Who is your favorite sibling? i only have one sibling, so her!

Do you have neat handwriting? its not neat but its def not messy

Do you enjoy journaling?   haha no. i havent journaled since 2017 maybe

What is your most recent new favorite food you’ve discovered? not super new but i do love poke bowls now

Do you like sushi?   yes! love it

Have you ever tried seaweed? yup :)

How often do you wash your hair?   around three times a week

Do you have an actual pig-shaped piggy bank?   nope

Would you rather hike a mountain or dive into the sea?   omg none. dive into the sea if i really had to but only to snorkel Would you rather grow wings or a tail? lmao wings i guess

Which Barbie doll was your favorite? i had a lot as a kid and its so sad i dont remember any in particular! 

Do you prefer cheetah or zebra print? chevron or polka dots? paisleys or plaid? stripes or stars? cheetah, polka dots, paisleys and stripes

Do you like your natural hair color? yeah its fine

What is your natural hair color?   dark brown

Did you dream of becoming famous as a kid?   yes. that was like my life goal. howeverrrr, i had no creative talent. i couldnt sing, act, dance etc lmao. but i always wanted to be famous. this was way before social media was introduced though

What show did you want to be on? the saddle club lol

Have you ever been to a gynecologist? no but technically my doctor is one. they’re a gp but certified gyno if that makes sense

Do you use the Bitmoji app on your phone? i used to 

Do you get on facebook every day? yeah but nowhere near as often as i used to

What is your Instagram screenname? totally not sharing that here lol

Do you remember the very first episode of Spongebob when it first came out? nope

Did you watch the Kids Choice Awards when you were a kid?   no because i didnt have cable tv lol

What was your favorite girl group when you were growing up? spice girls, duh!

Would you ever consider naming a child after a family member?   nah, im starting fresh

List three names that sound similar to your name.   no List three spelling of your name that you are glad you don’t have. lol haha no

What were you almost named?   erica, so weird

Do you like your name?   yes :)

What are your top three favorite girl’s names? boy names? i dont know. i feel like this question comes up alot but i can never think of an answer. i need to start a note of it on my phone lol

What is something you always wanted to do that your parents never let you? get me a tickle me elmo

Do you have any symptoms of COVID-19 right now? nah, double vaxxed baby!

Have you made your own mask to help prevent the spread of the virus?   no but i wear them anyways

Do you know anyone who has the virus? not personally. actually i had a friend that got it but he lives in cali

What was the last grocery store you shopped at?   coles

What does your name mean? goddess of something

What countries have you visited? plenty. just too lazy to list them

Do you have any regrets? i do but i dont dwell on it

Do you ever wish you had someone to hug?   haha no, i can hug my fiance whenever

Do you ever sleep on your bedroom floor?   no

[reginaofdoctorwho]

weird shit that would probably have something to do with me in a horror movie

no one wanted this but i’m bored and found a bottle so you’re all getting it. yes these are all true. check the tags, if u think i’ve missed something please let me know!

there was a murder (technically, i don’t really count it as a murder) next door when i was four years old on christmas morning

the weird antique glass bottle i found half-buried in the woods in the woods yesterday with living bugs in it that made no attempt to leave it once i uncovered it

there is a local cult in the next town over. this is not the same as the local cult that was in the other town over where my mom grew up

random completed animal skeletons in the woods behind our house, i’m talking prey and predator, both laid out like in a goddamn scientific diagram. for a while there’d be ones in the middle of our yard, always the same type of animal, always just the bones and nothing else, laid out like it was posed. this has been happening for over half a decade and we have no fucking clue how, why, or who is doing it

the screaming from the woods that i’m going to assume is a fox

my sister almost dated a murderer. his niece or something is in my class

there is a house that is now part of a “local ghost tour” that belonged to my great+ grand parents during the civil war where my great+ aunt died allegedly murdered by her husband who is actually blood related to me. family history says she died of childbirth, which given that it was the 1800s... probably is true

there was an actual murderer in our family a few generations back but he married in and killed his wife and her sister. they didn’t find out about it until they read his journals after he died where it apparently told everything he did and they decided. “well, that wouldn’t look good for the family, and they’re already dead anyway” and just kept it hidden??

the fact we have my great great grandmother’s dress from probably 1890s or 1900s. even more so the fact that i fit in it. if this was fantasy horror (vampires, some immortal thing or ghost) i’d be fucking dead or cursed

fairly certain i was possessed by the ghost of a puritan as a kid

my family seems to have a curse with babies and nurses? my great uncle died when he was born because long story short, hospitals were the new hot thing, he was perfectly healthy, then a nurse dropped him and he died instantly. my sister died when she was a toddler and the hospital actively tried to delete her hospital records to cover it up and ended up getting fined by the state for it. the nurses responsible were not arrested or punished in any way.

my family all has fucked up connective tissue, in my brother it was bad enough he had to get a steel bar in his chest so it wouldn’t cave in.

the many times i have almost drowned, sometimes due to intentional actions by humans (my dad, it was my dad)

this in addition to the other fucked up shit he did before the divorce when he still lived here, including but not limited to: killing my mom’s favorite pet goat, hanging its skull in a tree, and leaving the body in the woods. not letting his kids learn how to cook. anytime someone asked him to cook he’d put as much pepper/hot sauce in as he could (even for like, scrambled eggs) and give it to the youngest person, usually a toddler. this was me at times. taking his kids out to the woods and threatening murder. taking his kids out to the woods and threatening burning. purposely locked the basement from the inside so we couldn’t get the gaping hole in the stairs leading to one of three kids rooms fixed. tearing up pictures of the kids whenever my mom did something he didn’t like. i had more here but i tried to cut it down a litttle

people have threatened to murder me before. one time a girl didn’t threaten, and actually acted like she was starting to like me, but her cousin read her diary or something and found out she was planning to commit a lot of murder, and told her parents and she got sent to a psychiatric ward for a couple weeks

my mom lived down the street from a family that got axe-murdered by one of their two sons when she was a kid. the murderer did get out on an insanity plea and is still in the area. also their neighbor’s mom “lost her mind” (how the story was told) when she had to protect their kids while her husband went over to try to protect the non murderer son when he got home from school and ran over screaming about his brother trying to kill him and had killed their parents

also she knew a girl who almost got kidnapped by this really fucked up traveling serial killer that has his own wikipedia page that is,,, lengthy. the girl had [alleged] mafia ties, and the guy ended up dying shot by police despite them being told to bring him in, which sounds kinda suspicious

long story short i’d probably be the sequel where one comes back

apparently i go to the “bad” school, which i found out in a coffee shop when i overheard two girls talking about how one’s dad went there and how horrible and dangerous it is

school fights are weird. either they don’t happen or they come freakishly close to murder. people slam heads into lockers, stomp on bones, drag people by hair along the ground. one time in my brother’s class a 4′9″ girl sent a 6′2″ football player to the hospital. there was video of a fight a couple years ago that’s still around. it was brutal, but also one of the girls fighting was taking one for the team in it and got the other kicked out

we don’t have a ceiling in all of the third floor, and the cafeteria has 2. this is not relevant in any way, but it’s important to me that you know this

also the guys kept ripping the heating vents/radiators/whatever off the walls in their bathrooms and got almost all the bathrooms locked. including the girls’ ones.

also everyone kept punching holes in the walls so on some of them it’s just,,, metal sheeting down the whole hallway

there are so many fucking shootings in the next town over. literally five years ago it was this nice place where kids would go on history tours, i did when my sister worked for that group. now there is pretty much one business that has not been held up at gunpoint, and if u look up to the serial killer bullet point, it is for v similar ties. it’s a pizza place and if u ever stop by u gotta try it

women in my family have weirdly good intuition but every couple generations we get doubtful. my great grandma didn’t want a hospital birth but decided “hey it’s the hot new thing for a reason”, my mom switched churches based on nothing but intuition and it turned out someone was a pedophile there (found out years later), i instantly could tell my friend’s boyfriend was a pos and wasn’t surprised later when he told her he’d murder and dismember me in front of her, and upon meeting him told him he was a fucking coward and couldn’t do it. he broke up with her a month later.

i was really good friends for a while with two guys that burned a building down. yes they were arrested. i was friends before and after the fire. they’re pretty nice, but this girl they used to date (at different times, they were brothers, yes it was fucking weird and uncomfortable for everyone involved except her but that’s it’s own thing) said some fucked up shit and it was the closest i ever got to starting a fight. anyway i’m still friends with both on facebook. one of them shares a lot of king of the hill memes

speaking of that fight, i 100% would’ve tried to kill her in that moment. u know that john mulaney quote like “i didn’t understand how a person could want to kill another person. then i got cheated on, and i was like ‘oh, okay.’”? that was me, but replace “cheated on” with she told me it was good my five year old sister was dead because she was a waste, and told me she hoped i’d die of covid”. it was mainly the sister thing. i couldn’t move because if i did i’d start a fight with the [way] above mentioned shit.

my family has a literal feud with a local farming family. i mean, we keep farm animals (sheep, goats, chickens), these people have that, pigs, and crops too. the feud was because their great uncle (or great grand uncle, i’m a little fuzzy on the details) published an autobiography (despite not being anyone famous/important) and in it talked about when he was friends with my grandfather and how creepy my great grandfather was (this was the one with the dead firstborn son) because he kept newspaper clippings of the Lindbergh baby’s kidnapping and murder pinned to a board on the wall of his office/basement. also because he was a child of german immigrants who wanted to fight against nazis in WW2 (how suspicious [sarcasm]). members of their family are in my grade. they charged my sister for almost half an extra pound of goods, too, which just revitalized it.

i live by corn fields. i am surrounded by cornfields. (joke one)

i was friends for a while with this girl whose baby teeth,,, didn’t really fall out completely? she was 17 the last time i saw her in person, she’s probably 19 now and judging by her facebook pictures they’re still Like That. she had a very symmetrical mouth/teeth, which made it weirder. just to clarify, she had some of her baby teeth pushed forward and up, so they kind pointed out a little? and all her adult teeth. she was literally so pretty.

a teacher who is v sexual with his female students came into my english class (he is a science teacher) to demand why i wasn’t signed up for his class. we then both became increasingly passive aggressive and he told the whole class where i live with specific directions and landmarks. the guy sitting next to me had to try to tone things down despite being obviously confused as to why it was even happening (me too buddy). he lives down the road from my sister. when my niece had her birthday party at our house i was outside setting things up and he slowed his car down and honked at me. fuckin creep

[purplesurveys]

1264

Who are you subscribed to on YouTube?  Oh man, I’m probably subscribed to over a hundred, if not 200. I’ve subscribed to channels relevant to interests I’ve had over the years, and since it’s not my habit to do spring cleaning on my feeds, the subscriptions have just keep piling up even if I no longer keep up with literally like 98% of them.

Do you like to go to the farmer's market?  I don’t think I’ve ever been in one yet. They aren’t very common here and the ones we do have are pricey and mostly inaccessible to the everyday consumer, I’m sure.

What will (or was) the color of your wedding dress be?  I wouldn’t want any other color than white.

What's your favorite melon?  I don’t like fruits.

What was the name of the last pet of yours that died?  Arlee. Technically my family mostly considered her as just Nina’s pet, but the sting was felt all the same when we learned she died.

When was the last time you wished the day would just get over with?  Yesterday, because it was Friday. Pretty self-explanatory, I wanted to get to the weekend so I can finally let go of work for a couple of days.

Name one person you've never had a fight with:  Andi. I think we’re both afraid of pissing the other off, which works out for us lol.

What are you currently listening to?  I can just hear the really loud whirring of my electric fan because it’s a grossly humid day today.

What would you rather have: cat or dog?  Dogs.

Who is your least favorite person in real life?  I have a lot of uncles I just don’t like.

Do you ever watch anybody's live stream of... anything, really?  Technically, yeah. I will sometimes tune in to livestreams of lofi music on YouTube, but I do it to listen, not to watch. 

Does your house have security cameras?  No.

If you go grey as you age, would you dye your hair or let it be?  I think I might dye it for a certain period of time, but I also think I would eventually reach the point where I’ll just accept it and slowly let go of the dye.

What was the last establishment you stopped going to due to bad service? What happened?  I haven’t run into much bad service, but I’ll never forget how long my order and bill took for Mad Mark’s. I never really vowed per se to never go back there again and I definitely didn’t confront the staff, but I haven’t eaten there since that incident.

What soundtrack do you listen to the most?  Not a big soundtrack listener.

Was there a family secret you weren’t told about until you were an adult?  Nah, they’re kept from us until now. The biggest one I’ve heard about was having a kleptomaniac in the family but we were never told who it is.

Do you have an opinion most people you meet seem to disagree with you?  Yeah, my dislike for fruits.

What’s something you like to have many options to choose from?  Clothes, I guess, like bucket hats. I don’t shop a lot and clothes aren’t a priority in my budget, so when I do pick out clothes, it has to be exactly what I want so that I don’t feel it was a waste of money.

What’s the strangest decorative object you own?  We have several quirky, disconnected decor in the living room from gifts we’ve acquired over the years. One object I can tell you about is the polar bear glass figurine we have on the coffee table.

What’s a thing you couldn’t imagine doing with your life right now?  Dating around.

What’s been your proudest moment?  Managing to stay alive this year and turn my life around for the better when I thought there was no hope.

What’s the filthiest non-pornographic movie you’ve seen?  Eyes Wide Shut, probably.

Do you know anyone who doesn't seem to be fond of animals?  I don’t think so. Like any animal...? I would find that quite odd, honestly. And I wouldn’t want to be friends with them if we weren’t already close .

Are you planning any outings or trips anytime soon? Whereabouts?  No, nothing set in stone. I do want to fly out to South Korea soon, though.

Do you know anyone who has a phobia of a certain animal?  I know a few people who are afraid of dogs.

Is there a particular brand of technology/electronics that you prefer?  Yeah, Apple.

Is there a singer whose voice gives you goosebumps/chills?  Hayley Williams and Jin, especially when he’s belting; and I don’t listen to her much, but I find that Billie Eilish has a unique voice that sounds really nice.

And is there a singer whose voice you simply can't stand?  Selena Gomez for some of her songs, Meghan Trainor for most of her songs.

Are there any authors that are particularly dominant on your bookshelf?  No.

Have you seen any photographs or videos that made you smile today?  Sure.

Which item in your fridge are you most looking forward to consuming? My aunt sent over this gigantic-ass slab of salmon that I can’t wait to eat as sashimi. I already had a few pieces last night and it was hea ven ly.

Has anyone you know got into a new relationship lately?  Hmm, I don’t think so. I know my coworker Dev got into a relationship a few weeks ago but it fizzled out as soon as it started because the guy was shitty.

If you menstruate, do you experience much PMS prior to it?  Only on the emotional side; I rarely get physical symptoms. I usually feel down or emotionally heavy a few days before my period.

Have you ever had a tattoo covered up or added to?  No, I don’t have any tattoos. Can you remember the last time you had a sudden change of mind?  Hmm, like last night. I wanted to stay up to maximize the weekend, buuuut I decided against it and slept instead since I had been up since 2 in the morning.

When was the last time you did something on a whim?  Two weeks ago when I impulsively dropped a thousand bucks to have cheese tarts delivered to Angela and Reena, hahaha.

Were you raised by both of your parents? If not, then who raised you?  My mom, grandma, and one of my aunts were the main people who raised me. Dad works overseas, so he was never at home much.

Have you ever began a relationship with someone you knew for less than a week?  No, I wouldn’t do that.

Has one of your friends ever tried to ‘hook you up?’  Mik tried to pair me with one of his friends just days before I finally implied on social media that I was no longer in a relationship. It was a cool ego boost but I declined, since my emotions were still super turbulent then. Andi tried to initiate sex with me once too, but I also declined.

What is your card game of choice?  I hate card games; I can never seem to understand them lmao, though that’s really more of a me problem than anything else.

What is your favourite books series?  Growing up, I really loved the Septimus Heap series. But the thing about it was that I got into it while the series was still ongoing; and with how bad my attention span is, I always forgot the events/plot whenever the newest book came out. 

So whenever that happened I had to read the entire series from Book 1; eventually the number of books I had to reread/revisit became too many (it was a seven-part series) and I simply just lost the time to read and I never got to know about the conclusion.

Do you prefer landmarks or street names when being given directions?  Street names – more precise. Landmarks to me can be pretty subjective – a green building might look blue to me, and I could just end up being lost.

Do you read the prologues in the beginnings of books?  Sure.

What was your favourite gym class moment?  If I genuinely like or already play the sport that was being taught. That’s why PE table tennis was a lot of fun for me.

Do you think that ocean boardwalks are fun?  I’ve never been on one but I imagine they are fun, yeah.

Do you dread when people ask you to sign their yearbooks?  That’s not a tradition here.

Do you have a favourite Scooby-Doo movie?  No. I was too young for Scooby-Doo in a sense that I do remember watching the movies as a 3/4 year old as they were kept on in the background at home, but I didn’t get any of the plots/didn’t really appreciate the films.

Do you think it’s cute when toddlers try to run away and fall down?  Sometimes, yeah. If the fall looked nasty I would obviously be concerned.

Do you enjoy listening to your grandparents tell stories of their past?  Honestly, only one of my grandparents would be the type to do this but he’s been dead for six years now. It’s a big shame he passed before I could bond with him the way I had always wanted to. My three other grandparents are either too closed off or too quiet to share stories from their youth.

Do you have a crush on someone? Nah, nothing more than a celebrity crush.

If so... what does his/her name begin with? 

What attracts you to them? 

Do they know that you like them? 

If they don't know, why didn't you tell them? 

Name two people that you miss:  Angela and Laurice.

Have you ever seen Titanic?  More times than I can count. I’m sure I memorize like 80% of the script, too.

Have you ever swam with dolphins?  No. I’m not so sure if I’ve seen dolphins, either. Maybe I have? Or maybe I’m confusing it with whales...idrk.

When was the last time you had a stomachache?  Wednesday.

What's going to bed early for you?  11 PM or midnight.

Do you want to have a big family in the future?  I used to, but I don’t think that’s the future I want anymore. One or two kids should be okay.

What was the last thing you did that gave you a rush?  Technically speaking, an orgasm, I guess?? Lmao idk

Favorite Nicholas Cage movie?  I don’t think I have one.

Have you had your Covid vaccine yet? Which one, if you have?  Yeah, I’m fully dosed. Sinovac.

If you've had your vaccine, did you experience any side effects?  I was suuuuuuper tired right after my first dose and I wanted to be knocked the fuck out, but I went right back to work after the shot because I am allergic to filing leaves hahaha. Second dose went smoothly.

What's the next item of clothing that you intend to buy for yourself?  A bucket hat or maybe one of the Fila x BTS shirts because the collection is actually quite cute!

What Facebook groups have you found the most helpful?  I join Facebook groups to be entertained, not because I actively look for advice.

Do you like your butt? Why or why not?  Yeah. It...has a good form hahahahahaha.

Have you ever personally been a victim of homophobia?  Yes, a few years ago I went to a food park with my ex-girlfriend. I was already not feeling my best that day to begin with, so having to see an old woman stare daggers at us for what felt like years really stung. I felt small under her look and almost cried, but in the end I felt angry that I momentarily felt shame about my relationship. I decided to just piss the woman off on purpose and do PDA right in front of her.

Do you think you’d be happier if you had a pet? I have two dogs at present and I know they make me extremely happy.

Who was the last person you went on a date with?  Gabie.

Were you ever hospitalized as a little kid?  No. The first and only time I was hospitalized (other than being birthed), I was about 12, I think.

What’s your favorite way to curl your hair?  I don’t do that. I rarely style my hair.

At what age did you start swearing?  I was 11.

What is something you physically can’t do?  Ride a bike.

What do like better, apples or oranges?  I don’t like any fruits; but in terms of flavored stuff, I like orange-flavored food, especially chewy candy, slightly more.

Around the holidays, do you hope for snow?  Well, no.

What are your top two favorite bands?  Paramore and Against Me!

How many people do you 100% trust?  There are a handful. I generally trust easily just because I like to believe all people are kind and loyal – but I can also take it away in the snap of a finger.

Do you care what others think about you?  Not so much.

Has anyone ever called you a bitch?  Sure.

Did you watch Teletubbies when you were younger?  Yeah but just super super faint memories. It wasn’t one of my main shows.

Do you have any licenses other than your driver's license?  I don’t.

Could you live the rest of your life without eating meat?  I doubt it. I could try, but I think I’d get cranky and start looking for meat way earlier than I would like to admit.

Have you ever had a rolling backpack?  Yup, if you mean a stroller. I think I’ve answered this on a previous survey.

Did you make any money today?  No, because it’s a weekend. What was the highest place you've ever jumped from?  Nothing dramatically high. I’ve had acrophobia-themed nightmares in the past, so even though I don’t actually have a fear of heights, the idea of jumping from a high place still makes me antsy.

Have you ever gone swimming in a river?  Not that I can recall.

What was the last souvenir someone got you?  I dunno if it counts but Andi bought merch from the AEW shop but made sure to also get a CM Punk sticker set for me :(

Do you have a favorite remix of a song?  Remixes have never been my thing. What do you think is the most saddest sounding instrument?  Piano.

Do you really pay attention to the ratings on movies?  Yeah they can definitely affect the level of appreciation I hold towards a film. For instance, if I genuinely enjoyed a movie only to find out it has average to bad reviews, it invites me to think more critically about the movie.

Do you have a favorite species of wild cat (tiger/lion/cougar/etc.)?  No.

If you had $500,000, what would you do with it?  Give half to my parents and let them do whatever they wish it. With the remaining P12,500,000, I’d probably get myself my own condo and have it fully furnished, then get braces, then get a new phone and laptop. I’ll have a bunch of money still left, I’m pretty sure – the rest of it I’ll save.

Did the last person you touched lips with have a kid?  No. I mean, I have honestly no clue what’s going on in her life now, but I know she doesn’t want kids so this is very unlikely.

"First loves are never really over." Is this true for you?  It’s true in a sense that she left me a lot of trauma and self-esteem issues that will irrevocably always be a part of me now even though I’ve worked hard to resolved most of them by myself.

Did you like Michael Jackson before he died?  Yes, because he has always been my favorite singer’s role model.

What are some things that would make you break up with someone?  I don’t know how to answer this question, honestly. All the red flags were thrown and tossed and slapped into my face and down my throat for six years yet I never left. I don’t actually know what my limits are, and I believe it’s because my coping mechanism has to just accept things and suck them up no matter how bad they get. That’s what I’m trying to change for myself now.

What was the worst breakup you've ever had?  I’ve had two breakups with the same person, and the second one was worse.