#yahoo groups

[oldwebmlp]

From: http://web.archive.org/web/20040904123436/http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OnePonyWorld/

[labelleizzy]

Sometimes I just have to go back to old habits. Like back in the day, I was getting daily emails from the website Flylady.net.

Got my shoes on. Got my kitchen timer on. Challenged myself to see how much better I could make the kitchen look in 10 minutes.

I cleared the kitchen island. Put away all the food, got all the dirty dishes into the sink. Started a load of laundry. Made up my third cup of coffee. Washed out some recycling and got it to the bin. Oh, now I can see the acetaminophen which I need to take today.

Do I still have a big mess? Yes I do. I came home from 2-week trip, and I'm still finding stuff I need to put away and laundry I need to do.

But my ADHD ass developed the self-care habits, routines, tips and tricks, originally in the late '90s due to this nice southern lady. She used to send out daily emails encouraging us to take care of ourselves and giving us ideas on how to tackle big home care projects, self-care projects, but mostly home care.

It was a lot of email. And not being Christian, I didn't always appreciate her dropping of God references. But without her structure, without her having figured out that there was tons of us out there, struggling with our lives and managing our shit...

She helped me a lot. The chaos is mostly controlled. (She used to backronym CHAOS as "Can't Have Anybody Over Syndrome" heh)

I'm no longer ashamed of my habitat (and also, thank you, @unfuckyourhabitat for continuing the momentum of this particular way of working).

Gonna finish my coffee ☕ and then set the timer for another 10 minutes. Got a friend coming over for dinner 🍽️ and I can stand to do a bit more tidying up.

Use the tools that work for you!

[thisweekinfandomhistory]

Another week, another purge… this week, Emily and V take a stroll back to Yahoo! Groups for a crash course on what they were, how they worked, and why they mattered. The episode takes a surprisingly sad turn as they consider how draining it is to constantly report on purges of huge portions of fannish history and what it really means when a company axes a huge repository of people's hard work, creativity, and passion. Then of course it gets a bit silly again at the end. Join us -- group pun! -- won't you?

This Week In Fandom History is a fandom-centric podcast that tells you… what happened this week in fandom history!

[yahoo-geddon]

A new Yahoo Groups #Dreamwidth community has been started where you can keep up with the progress of the Yahoo Gedden Rescue Team as they process and add metadata to the (gulp) million groups they saved https://yahoogroups.dreamwidth.org

(Dec 7, 2023)

[deadlyflan]

TLDR: I’m from old-fandom, decades ago when bullying was not acceptable. Please respect your fellow fandom freaks. Because you're one too.

TMNT fandom used to be an incredibly accepting place. We were all horrible little freaks with a weird and socially-unacceptable habit of day dreaming and writing and drawing and, honestly, obsessing about hidden turtle men in the sewers. 

Social pressure from real life kept us humble and grateful for the existence of others like us online. Because outside of fandom, the world was full of  people who had normal hobbies, like sports or crafting or gardening or volunteering for soup kitchens. Those normal people could talk about their interests in public! Mention their safe pursuits in mixed company! Claim their talents and their results in the social circles at school or at work or at church!

Make-believe man-turtle enthusiasts had nowhere in our real lives where it was okay to admit the depth of our interests without being bullied or shunned or branded as a complete freak. Whether you were a kid or an adult! 

And I have said nothing about shipping or smut or specific versions of our mutants.

If you wrote/drew/enjoyed the tamest, sweetest, most pure turtle content, you were still an IRL freak!

That's why, when us fans found each other online, space was made for all of us. Our only requirement: love the turtles. 

I get that newer fans don't have those extreme social pressures. Times have changed. 'Fandom' is not mainstream, but it's understood to exist for thousands of TV shows and movies and games. Now, the internet is everywhere and it's easier than ever to find people who agree with you. Heck, there's every expectation that there are people who agree with you; you don’t have to wonder if you’re alone.

Loving the TMNT is not an isolating experience anymore.

That's great.

But it also means that current fandom takes its fans for granted. Fans that write the wrong kinds of fiction are bullied. Fans who draw the wrong arrangement of characters are shunned. Fans who enjoy more than one type of story are disposable, worthless, and unwelcome to speak or share with the larger group. 

Fandom is meant to be a refuge for all us freaks.

How did the real world become kinder while fandom got meaner? How does that make sense? Why are the people who have the most in common doing the most damage to each other?

Of course, rate your content, tag your content, respect requests not to discuss certain topics/ships in specific settings or with specific people. Yes, yes, yes. Consideration and respect for each other's boundaries is fundamental in fandom and is how we have been able to co-exist for so long!

But respect and consideration are built on treating each other--all of each other--as if we all have value and worth and dignity. 

Every member of fandom is a real person with feelings. 

Every member of fandom likes a variety of content. 

Every member of fandom deserves to have a safe space where they are not insulted or tormented or excluded for their thoughts or creations.

Please, live and let live. Co-exist. Respect your fellow freak, you fandom weirdo.

[tellurian-in-aristasia]

Above is a snippet from the Yahoo Group. It's in reply to someone saying they picked up an up-to-date book called Etiquette For Women, that they believe bears a shocking resemblance to the way the Aristasians acted in the 1996 BBC documentary, and it includes the addition of a woman named Miss Trent, which they believe this is the cincher for their theory that this book was the inspiration for Aristasia. This poster thinks that OP is full of it, and posts this quite ironic statement: "If Miss Martindale was so fond of the name 'Trent' then why didn't she call herself Miss Trent?" Ah, but she did! You can see on the back cover of Children of the Void, Claire Trent is another persona of the woman also known as Miss Martindale! Perhaps this book was a great influence on Aristasia after all. For the curious, this is the book in question.

[understandingbimbos]

One thing that's hard not to notice (yet went unnoticed by me for a fairly long time) is that a lot of bimbofication, bimbo transformation art, writing, etc -- is MtF. There's also an overlap with "sissyfication," and a lot of bimbo TF writers and artists are actually trans women. Even quite a few of the bimbo sex workers I follow online are trans. And while I've been unable to find a definite source for this (and aren't multilingual), according to @bitter69uk, when Lolo Ferrari got all her surgeries it was an attempt to resemble Coccinelle (AKA Jacqueline Charlotte Dufresnoy) -- a transgender French actress, cabaret star, activist, and media sensation. I've also read at least one account from a self ID'd bimbo discussing how this fetish served as a sort of gateway to her trans realization.

There are obvious conclusions that can be drawn, really, assumptions that can be made. But as a cis man these aren't my assumptions to make. And I wouldn't be comfortable making them anyway. Research is a little more definite because its research but regarding this topic I wouldn't even know where to begin. The one thing I do know is that this association seems to have existed from very early on, going as far back to the bimbofication Yahoo groups. I did see a post on here saying bimbofication is "deeply tied to fetishisation of trans women (or transmisogynistic constructions)," and that could be true, but considering how many trans women have actively contributed to or participate in this fetish is that, maybe, a bit misleading? I don't know. I can't answer that question, but what I do know is that this fetish can't be properly or fully discussed without acknowledging the influence of trans women, or perhaps the confluence, that exists.

[sleptsolong2002]

Times like these I miss the old Vampire Louis list on Yahoo groups. I really wish we all could get together like we used to and talk about the IwtV AMC series. Like we used to do about the books and films.

When I say "we" I mean the "Musketeers" and "Knights". Those who were there years ago would understand.

I remember we all loved Louis some of us had a soft spot for Lestat, and most of us hated Armand. It started going downhill(for me at least) when LegendaireLestat (or whatever the handle was) joined up she stirred up all sorts of 💩💩💩 especially when the QotD film was released (sadly only a few of us there actually like the movie, myself included)

I don't have AMC+ so I'm pondering this:

Unless it's explicitly stated otherwise. What if Rashid is not Armand but the Body Thief from book 4 of the VC. I can see why people think or want to think that he's Armand but I like the possibility that he could be James Raglan (been so long I forget how it's spelled). I know I'm probably wrong but I like that theory.

See this is where AMC+ ruins it for other people who don't have it. I miss the good one days when people found out spoilers all at the same time as they watched all atnonce on TV, streaming has ruined that for me and probably others.

[launch-cronch]

i miss yahoo groups so much, there were actual people inside of them who were willing to give up their experience without all the community approval hoops and automods (oh, the Tanya's Feline CKD group was just invaluable when we had elderly cats battling it) . i miss livejournal, too (though i was shocked to learn thee vaginapagina was still up despite all the censorship and purging that happened when livejournal was bought out. It really was the OG resource for figuring out the body horrors as a kid with no sex ed).

quizilla, too. yeah, i even miss yahoo answers.

it's fascinating, in a trainwreck sorta way, how these sort of communities develop into complex networks of human experiences and info and output, only to get taken out back and axed when they fail to lay the golden egg, so to speak. even more compelling is how we keep throwing an unfathomable amount of cash, electricity, and server space at AI, trying to get its string puppet body to even emulate these networks.

minds take up too much space because you can't sell them

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The long bezzle

Going to Defcon this weekend? I’m giving a keynote, “An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse,” on Saturday at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826

When it comes to the modern world of enshittified, terrible businesses, no addition to your vocabulary is more essential than "bezzle," JK Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/09/accounting-gimmicks/#unter

The bezzle is contained by two forces.

First, Stein's Law: "Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop."

Second, Keynes's: "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

On the one hand, extremely badly run businesses that strip all the value out of the firm, making things progressively worse for its suppliers, workers and customers will eventually fail (Stein's Law).

On the other hand, as the private equity sector has repeatedly demonstrated, there are all kinds of accounting tricks, subsidies and frauds that can animate a decaying, zombie firm long after its best-before date (Keynes's irrational markets):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

One company that has done an admirable job of balancing on a knife edge between Stein and Keynes is Verizon, a monopoly telecoms firm that has proven that a business can remain large, its products relied upon by millions, its stock actively traded and its market cap buoyant, despite manifest, repeated incompetence and waste on an unimaginable scale.

This week, Verizon shut down Bluejeans, an also-ran videoconferencing service the company bought for $400 million in 2020 as a panic-buy to keep up with Zoom. As they lit that $400 mil on fire, Verizon praised its own vision, calling Bluejeans "an award-winning product that connects our customers around the world, but we have made this decision due to the changing market landscape":

https://9to5google.com/2023/08/08/verizon-bluejeans-shutting-down/

Writing for Techdirt, Karl Bode runs down a partial list of all the unbelievably terrible business decisions Verizon has made without losing investor confidence or going under, in a kind of tribute to Keynes's maxim:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/10/verizon-fails-again-shutters-attempted-zoom-alternative-bluejeans-after-paying-400-million-for-it/

Remember Go90, the "dud" streaming service launched in 2015 and shuttered in 2018? You probably don't, and neither (apparently) do Verizon's shareholders, who lost $1.2 billion on this folly:

https://www.techdirt.com/2018/07/02/verizons-sad-attempt-to-woo-millennials-falls-flat-face/

Then there was Verizon's bid to rescue Redbox with a new joint-venture streaming service, Redbox Instant, launched 2012, killed in 2014, $450,000,000 later:

https://variety.com/2014/digital/news/verizon-redbox-to-pull-plug-on-video-streaming-service-1201321484/

Then there was Sugarstring, a tech "news" website where journalists were prohibited from saying nice things about Net Neutrality or surveillance – born 2014, died 2014:

https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/2/7324063/verizon-kills-off-sugarstring

An app store, started in 2010, killed in 2012:

https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/5/3605618/verizon-apps-store-closing-january-2013

Vcast, 2005-2012, yet another failed streaming service (pray that someday you find someone who loves you as much as Verizon's C-suite loves doomed streaming services):

https://venturebeat.com/media/verizon-vcast-shutting-down/

And the granddaddy of them all, Oath, Verizon's 2017, $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo/AOL, whose name refers to the fact that the company's mismanagement provoked involuntary, protracted swearing from all who witnessed the $4.6 billion write-down the company took a year later:

https://www.techdirt.com/2018/12/12/if-youre-surprised-verizons-aol-yahoo-face-plant-you-dont-know-verizon/

Verizon isn't just bad at being a phone company that does non-phone-company things – it's incredibly bad at being a phone company, too. As Bode points out, Verizon's only real competency is in capturing its regulators at the FCC:

https://www.techdirt.com/2017/05/02/new-verizon-video-blatantly-lies-about-whats-happening-to-net-neutrality/

And sucking up massive public subsidies from rubes in the state houses of New York:

https://www.techdirt.com/2017/03/14/new-york-city-sues-verizon-fiber-optic-bait-switch/

New Jersey:

https://www.techdirt.com/2014/04/25/verizon-knows-youre-sucker-takes-taxpayer-subsidies-broadband-doesnt-deliver-lobbies-to-drop-requirements/

and Pennsylvania:

https://www.techdirt.com/2017/06/15/verizon-gets-wrist-slap-years-neglecting-broadband-networks-new-jersey-pennsylvania/

Despite all this, and vast unfunded liabilities – like remediating the population-destroying lead in their cables – they remain solvent:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/verizon-sued-by-investors-over-lead-cables-environmental-statements-2023-08-02/

Verizon has remained irrational longer than any short seller could remain solvent.

Short-sellers – who bet against companies and get paid when their stock prices go down – get a bad rap: billionaire shorts were the villains of the Gamestop squeeze, accused of running negative PR campaigns against beloved businesses to drive them under and pay their bets off:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/30/meme-stocks/#stockstonks

But shorts can do the lord's work. Writing for Bloomberg, Kathy Burton tells the story of Nate Anderson, whose Hindenburg Research has cost some of the world's wealthiest people over $99 billion by publishing investigative reports on their balance-sheet shell-games just this year:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-08-06/how-much-did-hindenburg-make-from-shorting-adani-dorsey-icahn

Anderson started off trying to earn a living as a SEC whistleblower, identifying financial shenanigans and collecting the bounties on offer, but that didn't pan out. So he turned his forensic research skills to preparing mediagenic, viral reports on the scams underpinning the financial boasts of giant companies…after taking a short position in them.

This year, Anderson's targets have included Carl Icahn, whose company lost $17b in market cap after Anderson accused it of overvaluing its assets. He went after the world's fourth-richest man, Gautam Adani, accusing him of "accounting fraud and stock manipulation," wiping out 34% of his net worth. He took on Jack Dorsey, whose payment processor Square renamed itself Block and went all in on the cryptocurrency bezzle, lopping 16% off its share price.

Burton points out that Anderson's upside for these massive bloodletting was comparatively modest. A perfectly timed exit from the $17b Icahn report would have netted $56m. What's more, Anderson faces legal threats and worse – one short seller was attacked by a man wearing brass-knuckles, an attack attributed to her short activism.

Shorts are lauded as one of capitalism's self-correcting mechanisms, and Hindenberg certainly has taken some big, successful swings at some of the great bezzles of our time. But as Verizon shows, shorts alone can't discipline a market where profits and investor confidence are totally decoupled from competence or providing a decent product or service.

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

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/2023/08/10/smartest-guys-in-the-room/#can-you-hear-me-now

[brokenbackmountain]

South Asian Music Recs 2 fast 2 furious

India (pt 2)

Soulmate (genre: blues rock): formed in 2003, based in shillong. they mostly sing in english. i would recommend love you, voodoo woman, shillong (sier lapalang)

Indian Ocean (genre: multi. mostly jazz and rock and folk fusion): formed in 1990, based in delhi. they sing in multiple languages. i would recommend bagh aayore, shoonya, jaadu maaya

Moheener Ghoraguli (genre: multi; rock (folk and blues), jazz, baul, american folk): formed in 1975, based in kolkata. they sang in bengali. i would recommend ei shomoy amar shomoy, amar priyo caffe, sei phuler daal

chandrabindoo (genre: rock, multi): formed in 1998, based in kolkata. they sing in bengali. famous music composer pritam was a part of chandrabindoo! recommended: hridoy, geet gobindo, ami amar mone

Pakistan:

Junoon (genre: sufi rock): formed in 1990, based in lahore and nyc. multilingual. i would recommend: sayonee, yaar bina, azadi

Entity Paradigm (genre: rock): formed in 2000 (but they kept breaking up and rebanding every few years. also entity and paradigm used to be separate bands till they joined. yes this is the one with fawad khan. this is very mainstream. (<- girl saying this as if half the others are Not) anyway), based in lahore. they mostly sing in urdu afaik. recommended: hamesha, waqt, fitrat

Mekaal Hasan Band (genre: sufi rock, alternative rock): formed in 2001, based in lahore. they are multilingual, but mostly urdu afaik. recommended: raba, ranjha, ghunghat

noori: formed in 1996, based in lahore. multilingual. recommended: yariyaan, meray log, dil ki qasam

part 1

[oldwebmlp]

From: http://web.archive.org/web/20030422023857/http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mylittleponyendofthedream/messages/490

[leet911]

Today on "I don't do AUs but here I am thinking about it anyway":

Sci-fi world where Laudna is alone drifting across the periphery of the galaxy in her decrepit spaceship. The ship's AI is named Pâté, and he's a little weird (and quite horny, even for a ship AI). Both the ship and Laudna are in a pretty sorry state, but there's a nanobot infestation on board running a variant of the Briarwood virus that's somehow keeping Laudna and the ship alive. The virus program calls itself Delilah.

And because of the virus, Laudna isn't welcome on any of the core worlds. She wanders the fringes of civilization gathering whatever she can to keep moving. She was from planet Whitestone a long time ago, but then the Briarwood blight came and eradicated most of her homeworld. Laudna was killed and somehow resurrected by the virus (she doesn't understand how any of this works). And she's heard that the old ruling family of the de Rolos have returned and reclaimed the planet, but she's so far away now that it just feels like a bed time story.

So she's drifting through the periphery when she comes across the planet Gelvaan, which is quite low-tech in comparison to the core worlds. They don't have sophisticated scanners, so Laudna can hide out in system, recharge her ship and resupply. Then she meets Imogen, another loner who leaves the planet surface every now and then to get away from the people. Imogen's ship is named Flora, and Flora isn't a true AI, more like a finicky navigation system. Flora doesn't even talk.

And Imogen is human, mostly. She says her father was a regular guy, but her mother must have been augmented or gene-modded. Because Imogen's mother had some wild mind powers, and Imogen has them too. Imogen dreams of red moons and red storms, she can hear the thoughts of other people, even without trying sometimes, so staying on the planet is very hard on her. Imogen thinks of leaving Gelvaan, of venturing out into the galaxy to learn about her mother.

So when Laudna says they should go together, Imogen leaps at the chance. Here's someone whose thoughts don't hurt. And sure, maybe Laudna can look a little scary sometimes, but she's a nice person, even if Pâté is a little weird. And Laudna is thrilled, because no one has ever wanted to stay with her before. So yes, Laudna will take Imogen to Jrusar, even if it's light-years away and she has no idea how to get there. She will risk going to one of the core worlds if Imogen wants to go.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Okay so I've been eating your art for a few days? Weeks? Months? Ever since I found you through my Welcome Home hyperfixation help it has me in it's death grips and just, admiring all the details you put into your pieces?

Like, I can't tag every little detail I come across and like from what you post, because I would be too distracting from the contents of the post and my gushing and speculating derived from that alone, but I see and like them even if I don't say too much about it.

For instance, don't think I didn't see the grime at the edges of Frank's frown and mouth in your Lights Out AU post! It is such a small detail to notice, but it really sells the idea of the puppets becoming grimy, scruffy, and dirtier as time goes on and they are stuck in the dark with little to nothing to clean themselves. I feel like it is most noticeable with their hair, as my gosh do they all need a hair brush by the time we see the group interactions of the unlikely four, but I enjoy seeing their disheveled selves as they try to go through life in the dark. While I won't pick up on every little detail, the stuff I do see is really interesting a think about, that you didn't need to add it but you did because you enjoyed making it l, and it's pretty heartwarming in a way for me you know?

Anyways, as a fellow artist, it's both cool and concerning because I get the gist of how much time and energy it can take to make stuff! I enjoy and adore your art and thoughts a ton, just remember to take care of yourself and not to push too hard on yourself to make stuff! Stretch and drink water, etc etc etc, and remember there are always people who will like what you make, be it dragons, welcome home stuff, and oc thingies!

AH IM

WHY ARE ALL OF YOU SO NICE!!! MY STUNTED EMOTIONS CANT HANDLE IT!!!! no but seriously i had to take a break reading this to walk through my house and Simmer Down bc man... the reaction pic is accurate.... i made Several dying animal noises!

i'm beyond happy that the details are being Noticed and are Enjoyable! i like to include as many as i can (when i Think of them, which happens less often than i'd like). i rarely have it in me to scribble Full Things, so i try to make up for it with the little things! it seems to be working, yippee! and it Is fun to include them, yeah <3

you take care of yourself as well! actually, get some water as soon as you read this. All Of Ya's. im takin a hefty sip rn so you all better get hydrated with me. no diedrating on this blog no sirree!! but yes um thank you so much for the very kind ask! mentally i am printing it out and pinning it to my wall! i will be thinking about it every time i Add Little Details!

[yahoo-geddon]

Hi. I'm trying to find some of my stuff from the group CSI-GrissomSara. It was a yahoo group, which was a victim of the great purge of 2020. Could you possibly help me? Thank you so much, and I appreciate you!

We did save that group. Right now we don't have bandwidth* to look up individual groups. If you'd like access to it sooner, you're welcome to volunteer to tag a tab.

*(It takes extra time to dig up individual group data from the mess of data it ended up in, it's done only as a perk to those helping with the organization process.)

You're also welcome to join our Discord server (https://discord.gg/UyJdffhw2b) and/or Dreamwidth community (https://yahoogroups.dreamwidth.org/profile).

[ooeygooeyghoul]

I've had this alt for like months now and never touched him but for some reason he's been really living inside my brain recently.

His name is Kodran Wolfstead and he has like 2 braincells (unconfirmed) and smorks weed probably. Debating on whether I want to make him another WoL or just an OC.... thingking...