#modem era

[jahbillah]

On ragga rude boy

#raggamuffin Clint Eastwood and General Saint Although Seaga‘s Jamaica, Thatcher‘s England, and Reagan‘s America gave ragga the kind of painful birth necessary for their mythic function, they really were always there. They were overshadowed by the spectacle of Rasta and its pious moralisms, but they were there nonetheless, stalking Jamaica’s neocolonial streets and consuming American cowboy and…

[moodsintosh]

[seat-safety-switch]

Everything around us is made of a series of little miracles. Look at an airplane: that shit is objectively crazy on the face of it. We're just used to the whole thing. You would show the airplane to a caveman and he would drop stone dead on the spot, his brain leaking out of his ears onto the Paleolithic tundra, preferring to die rather than to believe such a thing is possible. And that's before you start pulling the airplane apart.

We are lucky, all of us, to be in this era where not only are crazy stunts of engineering and manufacturing prowess possible, but that they are common. You can walk your ass down to the Auto Value and pick yourself up a wheel bearing, which itself is made out of many near-identical and precisely-constructed and ball bearings to a degree that would have been impossible a hundred years ago, for five fucking dollars. That's the cheap shit one, too, so don't put that in your car. It won't last more than 200,000 km, not like the seven-dollar one will.

Charles Babbage, the guy who invented the mechanical computer? You know what he spent most of his time doing? Hiring folks to make screws that were all the same kind. Yeah. The idea of being able to just buy a screw and put it in a consistent hole was not a thing in his era. Hell, he even got into a fight with the Queen about how wide to make railroad tracks ("all the same," he said. "a bunch of crazy fucking different sizes," said England.) Nope, it's the computer made with all of those screws that our history books are all psyched about. It goes clickity-clack and tells us that four times four is sixteen!

A biologist would tell us that we're just trying to emulate the greatest miracle of all, the existence of organic life, blah blah who cares? I got that for free from my parents. What I didn't get was a radio modem the size of a fingernail that lets me send poop emojis to Egypt at the speed of thought. Apologies to all of my distant ancestors who had to work out how to evolve, like, toes and stuff. That was probably really hard, but now I'm reaping the benefits. For instance, without toes, I wouldn't appreciate the machine I just now saw on YouTube that weaves brand-new socks out of planet-killing industrial microplastic waste. Pretty rad! I bet it's got some very precise screws in it.

[foone]

So, regarding Cartrivision and how the Red Tapes were effectively play-once, this idea of "you buy/rent a tape but you can only play it for a short while" so was enticing an idea that it keeps coming back. There's obviously ways this can be implemented on streaming services, but it was tried at least twice in the optical disc era, but amusingly in two entirely different ways.

And it was backwards from how you might think. The older one seems like it should have come later!

So first was DIVX (the disc format: it's unrelated to the Codec of the same name)

This came out in 1998, just as DVD was starting to catch on. They got a bunch of movie studios to sign on to only release their films on DIVX, not DVD, and tried to backdoor the format into acceptance: it was heavily pushed by Circuit City, then a major retailer. All DIVX players were also DVD players, so they would try to convince you to buy a DIVX player so you could play both.

How it worked is pretty simple: it is basically a DVD that's been encrypted. To decrypt it, you need a license. The DIVX player can talk to the DIVX server and let you purchase a license to watch the film, and the license would be valid for 48 hours before deleting itself. So the idea was that you'd pick up a disc for very cheap, like a rental, but when you could hang onto it for later, and re-axtivate the license by just paying the license free (a couple dollars) again. And if you didn't like the movie? No need to take the film back to blockbuster, you can just toss it in the garbage! (you could also pay a higher fee to get an unlimited license to the film, effectively converting it into a DVD)

But this was 1998, remember: very few people have always-on internet. How's it talk to the DIVX server?

Simple. It's got a modem. You plug your DIVX player into the phone line, and it dials up DVD HQ and talks to them over that connection. It's a very 1990s solution.

Anyway it died. People interested in DVD universally hated the idea, especially the part where some studios were only going to release films as DIVX. People had had VHS tapes for a while now, and they were used to buying and owning their films. Going to a time-limited rental system seems like a big step back.

And of course, movie rental companies hated the idea too, as it basically would destroy them as a business (years before streaming destroyed them anyway). So they refused to entertain the idea. So it failed, and it took down Circuit City with it. The funniest part? Remember how it talks to a server? Well, guess what happened to that server when the format was discontinued!

Yep, all DIVX discs are unplayable now. They announced the discontinuation in 1999, and by 2001 the servers were turned off. All DIVX discs (even the ones upgraded to forever-playable) are just paperweights. (and btw: I've looked into the feasibility of hacking the encryption. They used 3DES, which is far from the best but is still pretty secure. Give me a million dollars and a year of computation time and I'll be able to watch one film.)

So, with DIVX dying such a quick and painful death that it took out the major retailer that invented it, surely no one else would even consider this idea again, right?

Welcome to FlexPlay. A 2003 format where you buy a DVD for cheap, and you can watch it for 24-48 hours. Even better than DIVX, because you don't need a special player and you don't even depend on talking to a server!

Wow. What weird technical tricks did they do to make this work? Is there a special program on the disc? Some kind of computer code? Special encryption? Can you only play it on a PC with some DRM software installed?

Nope! While DVDs have anti-copying DRM and DIVX added limited-playback DRM, FlexPlay goes completely the other route and has Analog Rights Management: the limited playback is enforced by CHEMISTRY.

Yep. See, the way optical discs work is by shining a layer through the clear plastic and bouncing it off a mirrored layer of aluminium in the center of the disc. (Well, for pre-pressed discs. MO and CD-R/RW discs work differently)

But FlexPlay discs add a layer of dye between the aluminum and the plastic. This dye is initially transparent to the red laser used by DVD players (did you know that's why blu-rays are called that? They use blue lasers instead of the red lasers used by DVD , and the infrared lasers used by CDs), so it can be read just fine.

But they made the dye react with oxygen. As soon as the airless bag the disc is stored in is opened, the dye starts darkening, eventually becoming unreadable. So once you have opened the disc, you better watch it soon, or it will be unreadable.

This format technically lived on until 2011 before being discontinued, but it doesn't seem like it was terribly popular at any point. Part of this was probably that it couldn't live up to the dream of selling a film on a disc you made for pennies, and making tons of profit. Making the discs was tricky, as you had to make them in special inert-atmosphere conditions to keep them from prematurely darkening.

Anyway the final joke of FlexPlay is that they haven't been made since 2011, and while they were sold in air-tight packages, nothing is PERFECTLY airtight. So all the ones for sale have had the bags leak over the last 12+ years, and are prematurely unreadable. Whoops.

Anyway now that physical media is dead, movie companies finally have their time-limited rental they've always wanted. Streaming makes this trivial.

And two final notes:

1. There's not really any lost-media risk with these two formats. All DIVX-only films were later released on DVD when the format ranked. And all FlexPlay films had already gotten DVD releases, so there was never any risk.

2. My buddy Technology Connections did a video in FlexPlay a while ago, if you want to learn more about it.

[cutewebgraphics]

would you want to live your life at your current age but back in the 2000s when websites like MySpace and stuff were still around so you'd have more cool stuff to put on ur blog n share w/ ppl?

Hi!

That's a really really good question ...... within the scope of blogging and graphics hoarding, yes! Antiquated operating systems, the dial-up to modem transition... I would have loved to live during the custom HTML heyday, watch as visual trends wax and wane, learn editing techniques of the time using era-appropriate software, see the graphics world grow in front of my very eyes... <3 It sounds sooo so dreamy, I've thought of it myself and sometimes I kick my legs and fawn over the idea @//@ I'm no longer a teen, so maybe it would be a lot of fun if I could dial my age a few years back and go through my teen years then - more time to waste on the computer, right? x)

Not all hope is lost though! I went out to a gig a few weeks ago and stumbled upon someone who is also super into NeoCities and web graphics in real life. 20,000 followers (woah!) has to mean something about the life left in this community, too. Sooo exciting that the amateur Web is quietly making a comeback...!!!!

[commodorez]

What kind of work can be done on a commodore 64 or those other old computers? The tech back then was extremely limited but I keep seeing portable IBMs and such for office guys.

I asked a handful of friends for good examples, and while this isn't an exhaustive list, it should give you a taste.

I'll lean into the Commodore 64 as a baseline for what era to hone in one, let's take a look at 1982 +/-5 years.

A C64 can do home finances, spreadsheets, word processing, some math programming, and all sorts of other other basic productivity work. Games were the big thing you bought a C64 for, but we're not talking about games here -- we're talking about work. I bought one that someone used to write and maintain a local user group newsletter on both a C64C and C128D for years, printing labels and letters with their own home equipment, mailing floppies full of software around, that sorta thing.

IBM PCs eventually became capable of handling computer aided design (CAD) work, along with a bunch of other standard productivity software. The famous AutoCAD was mostly used on this platform, but it began life on S-100 based systems from the 1970s.

Spreadsheets were a really big deal for some platforms. Visicalc was the killer app that the Apple II can credit its initial success with. Many other platforms had clones of Visicalc (and eventually ports) because it was groundbreaking to do that sort of list-based mathematical work so quickly, and so error-free. I can't forget to mention Lotus 1-2-3 on the IBM PC compatibles, a staple of offices for a long time before Microsoft Office dominance.

CP/M machines like Kaypro luggables were an inexpensive way of making a "portable" productivity box, handling some of the lighter tasks mentioned above (as they had no graphics functionality).

The TRS-80 Model 100 was able to do alot of computing (mostly word processing) on nothing but a few AA batteries. They were a staple of field correspondence for newspaper journalists because they had an integrated modem. They're little slabs of computer, but they're awesomely portable, and great for writing on the go. Everyone you hear going nuts over cyberdecks gets that because of the Model 100.

Centurion minicomputers were mostly doing finances and general ledger work for oil companies out of Texas, but were used for all sorts of other comparable work. They were multi-user systems, running several terminals and atleast one printer on one central database. These were not high-performance machines, but entire offices were built around them.

Tandy, Panasonic, Sharp, and other brands of pocket computers were used for things like portable math, credit, loan, etc. calculation for car dealerships. Aircraft calculations, replacing slide rules were one other application available on cassette. These went beyond what a standard pocket calculator could do without a whole lot of extra work.

Even something like the IBM 5340 with an incredibly limited amount of RAM but it could handle tracking a general ledger, accounts receivable, inventory management, storing service orders for your company. Small bank branches uses them because they had peripherals that could handle automatic reading of the magnetic ink used on checks. Boring stuff, but important stuff.

I haven't even mentioned Digital Equipment Corporation, Data General, or a dozen other manufacturers.

I'm curious which portable IBM you were referring to initially.

All of these examples are limited by today's standards, but these were considered standard or even top of the line machines at the time. If you write software to take advantage of the hardware you have, however limited, you can do a surprising amount of work on a computer of that era.

[earthstellar]

it is time to be old on the internet: TFP Ratchet's hatred of 2010 era human tech is hilarious

every time Ratchet complains about shitty human technology in TFP, it's so funny to me, that shit is so good

because, I mean, I grew up with the first computer in my house being a fucking Tandy 1000, which to be fair wasn't exactly the hottest model even then, but still LMAO

the first modem I ever messed with as a kid was the wood box phone receiver type, the acoustic coupler ones, which was my dad's, and he only had it because his job at a local university meant he could borrow one from their tech lab (so we didn't technically own it)

if I remember correctly, the one we had ran at 300 baud, which was fucking amazing for such a set up at the time. slightly later AOL dial up looked like lightning speed compared to that shit.

my first chat rooms were BBS/Usenet (whenever I could connect) and IRC chats. now everyone has Discord and I still don't understand how that shit works lmao but that's more of a me problem and less of an age problem, I think

we got dial up (in the "modern" sense of it being AOL dial up service with the infamous hell noises) in my household in 1994, back when it was pretty much a brand new thing (at least for AOL), and I remember the Eternal September Usenet rush, lmao

imagine if TFP took place in the 80s/90s, oh my god

(I'm assuming TFP takes place in roughly 2010 because that's when the show premiered, and Miko has some kind of Razr-inspired flip phone, so if we assume it's supposed to be based on the first model of Razr, then at the earliest that places the show in 2004)

Ratchet would have gone completely insane with old school internet capable consumer level human tech

Ratchet: "How do I look at photos on this monitor?"

80s Raf: "what"

Ratchet: "what"

oh god now I want an 80s/90s TFP AU so fucking bad. imagine 80s Raf. it's so good

oh god, IMAGINE 90s RAF. just getting traumatised by terrifying shitty mid-90s FMV horror games. this poor boy. but imagine his hype when the PS1 would come out in the USA in 1995. the hype would be so fucking real. lmao

also for those of you who are Younger and Blessed With Good Internet From An Early Age, if you want a good idea of old school internet shit, go ahead and watch WarGames (1983) and look up 2600 Magazine and Mondo 2000 if you don't already know about those.

(personally I consider WarGames and Hackers (1995) to be the two best simultaneously dumbest and best movie depictions of computer bullshit in their respective eras, although Hackers was more of a thing that informed cyber culture after it released rather than reflecting actual hacker culture as it was at that exact time but anyway, please watch them if you have not seen them already, you will love this shit lmao)

I assume almost all of you already know about this stuff, but just in case, I want to mention it. those two movies are really good. lol

anyway, Ratchet dealing with early internet. early shitty human tech. or at least the 90s shit. imagine Ratchet having to listen to the fucking dial up screeching. the kids having to look through geocities webrings to see if any images of the bots had been leaked on any conspiracy websites. just 10/10 lmaooo

"I hate talking to machines" Ratchet, buddy, you have NO IDEA how bad it could have been!!!

anyway I'm old, I guess that's the point of this post LOL

[madhattersez]

Hell yeah! Had an awesome find at a thrift shop today - A 1929 Southwestern Bell Telephone technical manual and installation guide for phones of the era.

Maybe you're asking why I think this is awesome? Haha. That makes sense - Well, first of all, I -live- vintage stuff. Antiques, old books, weird ephemera of the past. This definitely fits in with all of that, and has a gorgeous, punched leather cover with the gold stamping. Such a slick piece of history.

Second, I'm an old computer nerd cat. Back in the early '90s, I was a phone phreak - a phone hacker back before mobile phones and even alphanumeric pagers were a thing. It was in these days that "Ma Bell" (Southwestern Bell) was a big Queen on the scene, in her prime.

What were common phreaker practices back in the day? Well, it was all about exploration and curiosity. We would wardial (using our home landline connections and modems to dial a huge list of numbers in a row to try and find systems on the other end rather than regular phones - I'd leave it on all day and come back with a shorter list of various systems to dial in and play around on), we would build blue (and other color) boxes from RadioShack parts to use payphones to make free calls and do all sorts of rad tricks, we would prank folks that deserved it or use said tricks to disrupt schools and business, we would navigate voicemail systems and change automatic messages, and we would generate credit card numbers (which was incredibly easy back in the day) to make free calls to our first girlfriends in Canada. Well, that last one was mostly a me thing, haha.

Basically, payphones and early phone systems were a wonderful, incredible playground for me and I have SO many fond memories of these times. To have a book like this in my hands feels like I just looked inside the Ark of the Covenant and instead of melting my face off, it just glowed real bright and whistled a 2600hz tone sweetly into my ears.

This has so many cool photos like the ones above, and lots of radical technical diagrams, too.

As a bonus, there are hand-typed notes from a division head telephone engineer that wrote about systems they were building in Galveston, TX in the '60s:

Anyways, this is such a cool relic and I'll probably not be able to bring myself to sell it.

Did you know I wrote a verse about being a phreaker for a song with Nerdcore legend YTCracker wayyyyyy back in 2010? Well, now you do. You can hear that here (I'm the second dude, of course):

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Enshitternet

Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.

On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

This week on my podcast, I read "Enshitternet: The old, good internet deserves a new, good internet," my recent Medium column about building a better internet:

https://doctorow.medium.com/enshitternet-c1d4252e5c6b

As John @hodgman is fond of reminding us, "nostalgia is a toxic impulse." It is easy for an old net.hand like me to fall into the trap of shaking his fist at the cloud. Having been on the other side of that dynamic, I can tell you it's no fun.

When I got on BBSes in the early 1980s, there was an omnipresent chorus of grumps insisting that the move from honest acoustic couplers to decadent modems was the end of the Golden Age of telecommunications:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler

When I got on Usenet shortly thereafter, the Unix Greybeard set never passed up an opportunity to tell us newcomers that the Fidonet-Usenet bridge allowed the barbarian hordes to overwhelm their Athenian marketplace of ideas:

https://technicshistory.com/2020/06/25/the-era-of-fragmentation-part-4-the-anarchists/

When I joined The WELL in the late 1980s, I was repeatedly assured that the good times were over, and that we would never see their like again:

https://www.well.com/

Now that I'm 52, I've learned to recognize this dynamic, from the Eternal September:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

to the moral panic over menuing systems replacing CLIs:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/02/gopher-when-adversarial-interoperability-burrowed-under-gatekeepers-fortresses

to the culture wars over what would happen when the net got a normie-friendly GUI:

https://www.dejavu.org/1993win.htm

And yeah, I've done it too, explaining "Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either)":

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

But there's a key difference between my own warnings about the enshittification that new "user friendly" technologies would engender and all those other AARP members' complaints: they were wrong, and I was right.

As Tom Eastman reminded us, the internet really was better, back before it became "five giant websites filled with screenshots of text of the other four":

https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

The underlying pathology of that enshittification wasn't the UI, or whether it involved an app store. As the Luddites knew, the important thing about a technology isn't what it does, but who it does it for and who it does it to:

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

The problem wasn't which technology we used. There is nothing inherent about touchscreens that makes them into prisons that trap users, rather than walled gardens that protect them.

Likewise, the problem wasn't who made that technology. We didn't swap wise UUCP Monks for venal tech bros. The early tech world was full of public-spirited sysops, but it was also full of would-be monopolists who tried – and failed – to get us to "stop talking to each other and start buying things":

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start

If it wasn't the technology that killed the old, good internet, and if it wasn't the people who killed the old, good internet, where did the enshitternet come from?

It wasn't the wrong tech, it wasn't the wrong people: it was the wrong rules. After all, the Apple ][+ went on sale the year Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail. Consumer tech was the first industry born after antitrust was dismantled, and it created the modern monopoly playbook: buying and merging with competitors. The resulting unity of purpose and anticompetitive profit margins allowed tech to capture its regulators and secure favorable court and legislative outcomes.

The simultaneous drawdown of antitrust enforcement and growth of tech meant that tech's long-standing cycle of renewal was ended. Tech companies that owed their existence to their ability to reverse-engineer incumbent companies' products and make interoperable replacements and add-ons were able to ban anyone else from doing unto them as they did unto the giants that came before them:

https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980

The pirates became admirals, and set about creating a "felony contempt of business model":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/03/painful-burning-dribble/#law-of-intended-consequences

They changed the rules to ensure that they could "disrupt" anyone they chose, but could themselves mobilize the full might of the US government to prevent anyone from disrupting them:

https://locusmag.com/2019/01/cory-doctorow-disruption-for-thee-but-not-for-me/

The old, good internet was the internet we we able to make while tech was still realizing the new anticompetitive powers it had at its disposal, and it disappeared because every administration, R and D, from Reagan to Trump, yanked more and more Jenga blocks out of the antitrust tower.

In other words: the old, good internet was always doomed, because it was being frantically built in an ever-contracting zone of freedom to tinker, where technologies could be operated by and for the people who used them.

Today, the Biden administration has ushered in a new era of antitrust renewal, planting the seeds of a disenshittification movement that will tame corporate power rather than nurturing it:

https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

In other words, we are living in the first days of a better nation.

In other words, rather than restoring the old, good internet, we should build a new, good internet.

What is a new, good internet? It's an internet where it's legal to:

reverse-engineer the products and services you use, to add interoperability to them so you can leave a social network without leaving your friends:

https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook

jailbreak devices to remove antifeatures, like surveillance, ink-locking, or repair-blocking:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/17/have-you-tried-not-spying/#coppa

move your media files and apps from any platform to any device or service, even if the company that sold them to you objects:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate

A new, good internet gives powers to users, and takes power away from corporations:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

On a new, good internet, companies can't practice algorithmic wage discrimination:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

They can't turn search into an auction between companies that match your query and companies that want to sell you fakes and knockoffs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

They can't charge rent to the people whose feeds you asked to read for the privilege of reaching you:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

In fact, a new, good internet is one where we euthanize rentiers:

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

On the new good internet, your boss can't use bossware to turn "work from home" into "live at work":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

And on top of that, you have the right to hack that bossware to undetectably disable it (and hackers have the right to sell or give you that hack):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/tech-rights-are-workers-rights-doordash-edition

On the new, good internet, we stop pretending that tech is stealing content from news companies, and focus on how tech steals money from the news, with app taxes, rigged ad markets, surveillance ads, and payola:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

The new, good internet is an internet where we seize the means of computation. It's an internet operated by and for the people who use it.

Hodgman is right. Nostalgia is a toxic impulse. The point of making a new, good internet isn't to revive the old, good internet. There were plenty of problems with the old, good internet. The point is to make a new, good internet that is the worthy successor to the old, good internet – and to consign the enshitternet to the scrapheap of history, an unfortunate transitional stage between one good internet and another.

Here's a link to the podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/news/2023/08/21/enshitternet-the-old-good-internet-deserves-a-new-good-internet/

and here's a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they'll host your stuff for free, forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_448/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_448_-_Enshitternet.mp3

and here's a link to my podcast's RSS feed:

https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/22/the-new-good-internet/#the-old-good-internet

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[booklovershouse]

Oi oi, booklovers!

Mais um da série "fatos sobre mim", hj vamos falar do meu celular e dos aplicativos que tenho instalados aqui 🤠 ~ além do Tumblr, óbvio

🌷| Trio básico: YouTube, Instagram e Pinterest

(estou excluindo o Whatsapp do básico pq não tem nada pra falar sobre ele kkkkkk)

YouTube: apesar de ter duas contas do Google, minha principal é a criada em 2019 - parece até que tudo na minha vida aconteceu em 2019, mas é isso mesmo kkkkk. Meu YouTube é formado por:

• Estudos: sigo vários canais de matemática, cursinhos, resolução de questões do ENEM...toda e qualquer matéria.

• Maquiagem: nem uso (meu máximo é passar gloss/hidratante labial), mas costumo assistir a Jana Taffarel.

• Papelaria: aqui é um pouco mais a minha área. Gosto muuito da Fernanda Moreira (New Judge), acho que sigo há mais de um ano.

• Nostalgia: tem o canal 90 (nasci pouco antes de 2010, porém vi coisas dessa época. Pois é, galera +30, nós adolescentes tbm vimos objetos pré-históricos como DVD's e jornais impressos. Eu, particularmente, vi até TV de tubo e aquele modem de internet 😅). Aqui tbm tem o NickRewind, voltado pro pessoal que viu séries como iCarly e Victorious.

Insta: na rede vizinha sigo 1001 contas sobre livros, alguns artistas, umas contas de estudos, escritores, memes, editoras e MBTI. Nenhuma celebridade.

Pinterest: eu sou MALUCA pelo Pinterest, é simplesmente um dos melhores apps já criados! É ótimo, tudo organizadinho, dá pra visualizar as ideias direito, pegar inspiração...perfeito demais!!! Tenho uma pasta de livros (fanarts, memes, aesthetic), wallpapers, icons, MBTI e outras que uso pros meus livros (com personagens, estilo, paleta de cores, aesthetic e etc).

🌷| Livrossss

Nessa parte, estão os seguintes apps:

• ReadEra: serve basicamente pra PDFs do colégio.

• Skoob: a rede social queridinha dos leitores, onde vc pode organizar suas estantes, postar seus surtos, ler resenhas e ver as reações dos outros.

• Googleplay Livros: aqui eu vejo vááárias amostras dos livros que estão na lista "Dar uma olhadinha" - se dá pra ver amostras pela Amazon usando o navegador, desconheço essa função. Às vezes pego umas recomendações que aparecem lá, mas normalmente não tem nada útil.

• Biblion: é onde leio a maioria dos livros atualmente. Claro, não tem vários que eu quero, às vezes dá bug, NÃO DÁ PRA COPIAR A CITAÇÃO NEM TIRAR PRINT, às vezes a reserva demora 92727 anos pra cair...mas enfim, é legal para os leitores tão lisos quanto sabonete (estou incluída) e que não querem ir pra pirataria.

• Amazon Kindle: tipo a Biblion só que não totalmente de graça e com a opção de copiar e tirar print - a maluca das citações agradece. Recomendo a vocês tentarem pegar uns e-books gratuitos na Amazon - tem funcionado pra mim, que tenho quase 300 pra ler 🤡

🌷| Outros

• Pluto TV: app de graça e legalizado por onde eu assisto minhas séries queridinhas da Nick - tem vários filmes/séries antigas pra qm quiser tbm, só não vá esperando achar um lançamento.

• Lady Popular: comecei a jogar no computador lá em 2019 - atualmente estou mais no celular, mas no PC é mil vezes melhor. Ao mesmo tempo que gosto desse jogo por ser "calmo", às vezes acho parado demais. Sei lá, parecia mais legal na época que era tudo "mato". Agr eu cheguei ao nível 55 e finalmente casei (após séculos), então não tem nada de muito interessante pra fazer.

Inclusive, as jogadoras começaram a se manifestar pq eles lançaram um evento simplesmente ridículo de caro e impossível de completar. Sinceramente, ninguém aguenta mais ficar gastando tantas esmeraldas e diamantes. Já tem algum tempo (uns 2/3 meses) que tô pensando em sair, mas sei lá, demorei 5 anos pra chegar nesse nível...

• ColorNote: eu AMO esse app de notas, uso desde 2019 (como disse anteriormente, tudo aconteceu em 2019 KKKKKKK). Separação por cores realmente funciona pra mim, fora q ele é super simples e fácil de mexer.

Tem mais alguns, porém vou parar por aqui 🙃

Bjs e boas leiturassss <333

[metalheadsforblacklivesmatter]

Fun fact. If you look at the etymology of the word "villain" it's no suprise that while 2023 is many people's "villain era" we've also seen the rise of class consciousness.

The root of "Villain" actually contains the word "villa" while is a farm town. That's the same root at which we get terms like "village" as well as the route which we get cities like Louisville.

Originally "villa" was the word for "farm" and from such the word villanus came about to be "farmhand".

From there we get the word "vilain" which is a farmer or commoner.

Then we get the original word "villain" to mean someone that's uncouth or has bad manners.

In which we get the modem word for "villain" which is a scoundrel or criminal.

The entire basis of the word "villain" is classist labeling the working class as having bad manners. So it's no suprise when the working class starts entering their "villain era" they're realizing the ruling class still sees us as less than.

(Obligatory source because I know I'm going to see comments like "That's a reach.")

(If you don't like my post because you think my connection between the rise of the villain era and the rise of class consciousness is "a reach". You can suck my dick. Fun facts like this is how I end up learning shit like "White people don't season their food because of classism." Which is another post I made.)

-fae

[taylorswiftstylequestions]

Happy Speak Now Day! Speak Now was my first ever album (I technically got into Taylor during Fearless era but only through the singles, Speak Now was the first full album of any artist I ever owned and listened to myself). The disc I had was messed up a little bit, so it would always glitch out a bit during the bridge of Long Live. It basically went like: “tell them how the crowds went wild / tell them how I <electronic crackling distorting Taylor’s voice> hope they shine <electronic crackling distorting Taylor’s voice> / long <even louder electronic crackling distortion Taylor’s voice> -ive the walls we crashed through.” When I got my first iPhone my dad downloaded all my Taylor cds to iTunes so I could listen on that, and so the Long Live glitch persisted. I don’t use streaming services for my music, I still just listen to what I have bought on iTunes, so until the TV came out last year the glitchy version of Long Live was the only one I ever listened to. I still cannot get used to it being so smooth and normal on the TV 😂 when it first came out my sister and I were listening to the album together and without planning/talking about it beforehand we both made the glitchy noises when that part of the song came on and it was hilarious

Omg this is so funny I love this ejrhejrhrh

You: Shouldn't there be [DIAL UP MODEM SCREECH] here? 🤨

[maileater]

I hate how ISPs and other tech giants keep trying to impede/discourage the very idea of torrents just in the name of piracy. Like, even if you don't like piracy (which would make you a square, to be clear), torrents weren't even made for piracy or are even exclusively used for piracy. They were just invented to speed up download times in an era of sluggish modems, and are still useful when downloading things like operating systems or databases. And now even those are being threatened to defend a couple of suits on wallstreet and I hate everything about it.

[oddmawd]

Finally figured out how to ask a question on mobile cause I’m an idiot.

BUT!!

You’ve established that Brooks’ Occult storyline takes place as a prequel to the rest of the series, I was wondering (if it wasn’t spoilery) where some of the other plots take place in the timeline?

oh i love this ask...i actually have the OCCULT PIECE universe mapped out with three distinct eras into which i slot stories as they occur to me:

The Antique Era: The the town during its founding. Set in the distant past (1800s and prior). Only immortal characters or time travelers will appear in this era as well as in other, future eras. The Not-So-Distant Past: Likely the 1990s. Flip phones, landlines, limited internet access with dial-up modems. Most mortal adult characters from “The Present Day” are children at this point in history. The Present Day: Roughly set in the modern day (2020s). People have smartphones, social media, and easy internet access. But the use of it feels a little behind the times, as noted by some OCs who are new to town. People still read the paper and watch programmed TV. Cell reception isn’t always great in this part of the world due to supernatural interference.

there may be some distinct eras between the Not-So-Distant Past and the Antique Era but i haven't written any plots for them so i haven't bothered defining them yet LMAO (although the Great Void Fire referenced in Rumbar Boulevard happens between The Antique Era and the Not-So-Distant Past fwiw)

SO FAR we have only seen stories in the Not-So-Distant Past and the Present Day...here's the timeline thus far, featuring written fics and my many untitled WIPs:

Untitled Buggy/Reader

The House on Rumbar Boulevard (Eldritch Horror!Brook/Reader)

Untitled Mihawk/Reader

Untitled Shanks/Reader

Untitled Pedro/Reader (bonus: this is a covid fanfic LOL)

Untitled Marco/Reader

The Most Coveted of Thrones (Demon!Doffy Reader)

The Beast Inside (Werewolf!Zoro/reader)

The Baker & the Beast (Katakuri/Reader)

Untitled Crocodile/Reader

Untitled Sabo/Reader

Untitled Smoker/Reader

Untitled Luffy & Reader (platonic)

DISCLAIMER: i am not entirely sure about the placement of some of these, as i could see certain stories taking place in other times, but...this is the timeline i'm currently working with

i guess this turned into a sneak peek for what i have planned haha...at some point i'll have to drop more hints about my plans for the reader characters

thank you for this ask!!!

[ladlez]

a/n edit: I'm so MAD i typed this out about 5 days ago then didn't post it, and now with the update it's slightly irrelevant because it is being more discussed BUT here this is anyway –

sorry but I'm thinking about how we recently learned that Wild knew an older/ghost(?) Twilight during his journey. I've read so many fics with this premise but 95% of the time it's a younger twi who remembers being a companion, and now we have a canon that is clearly not that...

thinking back over the content of the comic so far I'm going crazy thinking about how for all that time, for every moment we've seen so far, wild knew.

Twi has been brooding and tight-lipped about his connection to Time, but it's been an underlying thing we (the readers) are aware of. And it's pure tragedy, for us and for Twi, knowing what Time's fate will be. Wild, meanwhile, must know something of Twilight's fate. which, narratively, is [dial-up-modem noises]. It's about the time-travel-fuckery!!! It's about the tragedy of one having met the other before, but the other doesn't know— but for three people! Twi silently bears the loneliness of knowing someone who doesn't know him, of knowing a version of Time who doesn't yet exist. Twi carries this burden of knowledge, while (apparently?) being oblivious to the fact that the other member of the chain he's particularly close to carries the same knowledge about him. [edit: yesterday's update implies that wild has explained to twilight that they've met before, but we still don't know how much he revealed, so...]

we've seen the way the knowledge affects twi

But we haven't until now seen any hint of how knowing of Twilight's fate affects wild. We haven't even seen a hint that he knew more. Why????

His close relationship to twilight is evident but there's an easiness between them. Wild has never gazed after twilight solemnly...

...has never had the air of secrecy and tension with twi that twi has with time.

And ok this could just be something jojo missed or didn't think about, but why did wild say this about companions, if he apparently had one the whole time?

Wild has been a largely light-hearted personality among the group so far and he has appeared to be very honest about his journey, but this maybe blows that all open by implying how much he's been hiding about what he knows. He can't have told twi much of anything, if twi thinks he had no companion.

AND while we know the story of Twilight and Time from TP (except any changes jojo might have made that we haven't seen), what happened between Wild and Wolfie is a complete mystery to us! It's a story that's entirely jojo's creation! So... What was their relationship like? What was Twi like, being noticeably older? Was he alive and dragged to another time, or was he a spirit? We saw him with both wild and zelda—

wild's long hair implies this moment didn't occur pre-calamity, while zelda's long hair implies it was before the point pre-TOTK when she cut it shorter, so probably not long after they defeated ganon? Which means wolfie, having met wild soon after he emerged from the shrine of resurrection, was still around after wild's journey? What happened to him? Did he leave, and did they get to say goodbye? Or were they still together when wild hopped through that portal? Did wild ever know wolfie was actually Hylian, let alone a hero, or did he have to figure that out when he met Twilight for the first time? Was twi ever able to turn into his human form and actually speak to wild? Who or what brought him to the botw era?

If he's a spirit, same as Time - what is twilight going to regret so much that he sticks around?

Has wild altered his interactions with twi because of this? knowing that whatever twi finds out about him now, could prepare him for when he meets the younger wild... [edit: Plus now we know wild had some kind of intense reaction upon first meeting twi]

obviously i imagine (hope) we get answers to some of these in the comic, but i also think this new info is so ripe for us making content and I've hardly seen anything beyond the initial keysmash reactions. because this is genuinely making me 🤯🧐 Especially the parallel but clearly different dynamics of twilight & time VS. wild and twilight; the knowing and not knowing, the "one day you'll meet a younger me, and I won't know you, but here and now, i know you while you don't know me".

And, as a sidenote, all this is making me think— is wind the only one who has been honest about what he knows about his predecessor...?

[abatelunare]

Di cose di cui capacitarsi

Accadon cose, qui, di cui ben poco mi capacito. Stamattina la luce è saltata per due secondi appena. Giusto il tempo di spegnermi il modem e riavviarlo. Mi puzza assai di presa per il tafanario. Come qualche sera fa che il palazzo rimane al buio. Senza alcun motivi plausibile, dato che tutti gli altri della via sono ben illuminati. Si scopre che l'inconveniente era dovuto a due contatori con la levetta abbassata. E sì che li abbiamo cambiati tutti perché inadeguati alla maggiore potenza della caldaia nuova ma bisbetica. (Ho anche già mandato a quel paese due voci registrate al telefono, ma di quelle mi capacito eccome).