thefunnyandthoughtful

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cr: 张力天zhang litian

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when a pelican bites you there's no malice in their eyes. they aren't upset at you. they are just hungry and want to see if you fit in their mouths. and if you don't then it's no problem and everything is fine. and if you do then well i guess your fate is sealed but that's ok it's a beautiful animal

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Hey students, here’s a pro tip: do not write an email to your prof while you’re seriously sick.

Signed, a person who somehow came up with “dear hello, I am sick and not sure if I’ll be alive to come tomorrow and I’m sorry, best slutantions, [name]”.

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The Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River superimposed on a map of Europe

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So here's the link to the PDF of the bill for those of you interested in reading it.

I had a hard time parsing the legal jargon, so don't take me at my word (and please correct me I'm wrong), but here's an outline of the bill's points from what I can understand (with line citations so y'all can look for yourselves). It's definitely about more than CSAM:

The wording is intentionally detailed and vague to, I assume, leave discretion of what counts as bad to the courts. I color-coded it to hopefully help folks follow the definitions. Bold and underline added by me.

Section 1:

The bill starts by defining and banning "child sexual abuse material". (p. 1) I'm skipping over the punishments for this, but it's there for you to read.

In defining CSAM, it also defines "obscene" (p. 2 lines 14-23), "sexually explicit conduct" (p. 3 lines 3-18), and "unlawful pornography" (p. 3 lines 22-24 and p. 4 lines 1-18).

Obscene includes any form or medium in which the content presents offensive content that "represents or displays sexually explicit conduct in a patently offensive way" and that "a reasonable person would find the material" "lacks serious literary, artistic, educational, political, or scientific value."

Sexually explicit conduct includes anything to do with sex in any form.

Unlawful pornography refers to any medium including but not limited to various visual media that demonstrate two people having sex or having uncovered body parts that could sexually stimulate the viewer.

Again on page 6 (lines 16-23) they further stress that "unlawful pornography" includes "depictions of sexual conduct which are patently offensive under contemporary community standards in this state, and have as their dominant theme an appeal to prurient interest in sex under contemporary community standards of this state, and may not be produced or distributed within this state if they lack serious literary, artistic, educational, political, or scientific purposes or value."*

On page 7 in states that anyone who creates, distributes, or engages with CSAM or unlawful pornography can be brought to a civil suit by anyone who knows. Punishments are described.

Section 2 Contains an Amendment (p. 8)

In this amendment, it bans the purchase, procurement, or possession of CSAM, obscene materials, or unlawful pornography that lacks serious literary, artistic, educational, political, or scientific value.*

This is where it outlines the punishment for unlawful pornography in the article - up to 10 years in prison and a fine of no more than $100,000 for each violation.

Section 3 contains another amendment (p. 10)

No person shall knowingly photograph, act in, pose for, model for, print, sell, offer for sale, give away, exhibit, publish, offer to publish, or otherwise distribute, display, or exhibit any book, magazine, story, pamphlet, paper, writing, card, advertisement, circular, print, picture, photograph, motion picture film, electronic video game or recording, image, cast, slide, figure, instrument, statue, drawing, presentation, or other article which is obscene material, unlawful pornography, or child sexual abuse material. (p. 10 lines 4-12)

It also bans the mailing of this material.

It states that anyone who violates this section of obscene materials or unlawful porn can be jailed for no more than a year and fined $2000 or more (or both).

It makes CSAM in this section a felony punishable by 3-20 years in prison, a fine of $10,000 or more (or both). Further violations will be given longer sentences and harsher fines, and they will be required to register as a sex offender after release.

The last line says this act will become effective November 1, 2025.

*Note, that there is no outline for what constitutes "serious literary, artistic, educational, political, or scientific purposes or value," so I assume that it's at the court's discretion. It also bases a lot of judgments on "contemporary community standards."

So, there's your summary! I highly recommend you go read the bill itself, but hopefully this will help people understand what's going on a bit better.

Oklahoma is attempting to pass a bill that would ban explicit romance novels. Authors, narrators, and sellers could all face fines of up to $100,000 and up to 10 years in jail for each instance.

If you live in OK, call your representative and tell them this bill should not be allowed to pass.

This is likely a test case. Republicans will try to pass it in OK and if it passes other states will likely try to pass similar laws.

In the meantime, get physical copies of books you like. Download those pdfs. Archive your AO3 stories and keep them on a physical hard drive. (Storing those files in the cloud could be problematic in the future as the company managing the cloud service can see what your files are)

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25 ways to be a little more punk in 2025

Cut fast fashion - buy used, learn to mend and/or make your own clothes, buy fewer clothes less often so you can save up for ethically made quality

Cancel subscriptions - relearn how to pirate media, spend $10/month buying a digital album from a small artist instead of on Spotify, stream on free services since the paid ones make you watch ads anyway

Green your community - there's lots of ways to do this, like seedbombing or joining a community garden or organizing neighborhood trash pickups

Be kind - stop to give directions, check on stopped cars, smile at kids, let people cut you in line, offer to get stuff off the high shelf, hold the door, ask people if they're okay

Intervene - learn bystander intervention techniques and be prepared to use them, even if it feels awkward

Get closer to your food - grow it yourself, can and preserve it, buy from a farmstand, learn where it's from, go fishing, make it from scratch, learn a new ingredient

Use opensource software - try LibreOffice, try Reaper, learn Linux, use a free Photoshop clone. The next time an app tries to force you to pay, look to see if there's an opensource alternative

Make less trash - start a compost, be mindful of packaging, find another use for that plastic, make it a challenge for yourself!

Get involved in local politics - show up at meetings for city council, the zoning commission, the park district, school boards; fight the NIMBYs that always show up and force them to focus on the things impacting the most vulnerable folks in your community

DIY > fashion - shake off the obsession with pristine presentation that you've been taught! Cut your own hair, use homemade cosmetics, exchange mani/pedis with friends, make your own jewelry, duct tape those broken headphones!

Ditch Google - Chromium browsers (which is almost all of them) are now bloated spyware, and Google search sucks now, so why not finally make the jump to Firefox and another search like DuckDuckGo? Or put the Wikipedia app on your phone and look things up there?

Forage - learn about local edible plants and how to safely and sustainably harvest them or go find fruit trees and such accessible to the public.

Volunteer - every week tutoring at the library or once a month at the humane society or twice a year serving food at the soup kitchen, you can find something that matches your availability

Help your neighbors - which means you have to meet them first and find out how you can help (including your unhoused neighbors), like elderly or disabled folks that might need help with yardwork or who that escape artist dog belongs to or whether the police have been hassling people sleeping rough

Fix stuff - the next time something breaks (a small appliance, an electronic, a piece of furniture, etc.), see if you can figure out what's wrong with it, if there are tutorials on fixing it, or if you can order a replacement part from the manufacturer instead of trashing the whole thing

Mix up your transit - find out what's walkable, try biking instead of driving, try public transit and complain to the city if it sucks, take a train instead of a plane, start a carpool at work

Engage in the arts - go see a local play, check out an art gallery or a small museum, buy art from the farmer's market

Go to the library - to check out a book or a movie or a CD, to use the computers or the printer, to find out if they have other weird rentals like a seed library or luggage, to use meeting space, to file your taxes, to take a class, to ask question

Listen local - see what's happening at local music venues or other events where local musicians will be performing, stop for buskers, find a favorite artist, and support them

Buy local - it's less convenient than online shopping or going to a big box store that sells everything, but try buying what you can from small local shops in your area

Become unmarketable - there are a lot of ways you can disrupt your online marketing surveillance, including buying less, using decoy emails, deleting or removing permissions from apps that spy on you, checking your privacy settings, not clicking advertising links, and...

Use cash - go to the bank and take out cash instead of using your credit card or e-payment for everything! It's better on small businesses and it's untraceable

Give what you can - as capitalism churns on, normal shmucks have less and less, so think about what you can give (time, money, skills, space, stuff) and how it will make the most impact

Talk about wages - with your coworkers, with your friends, while unionizing! Stop thinking about wages as a measure of your worth and talk about whether or not the bosses are paying fairly for the labor they receive

Think about wealthflow - there are a thousand little mechanisms that corporations and billionaires use to capture wealth from the lower class: fees for transactions, interest, vendor platforms, subscriptions, and more. Start thinking about where your money goes, how and where it's getting captured and removed from our class, and where you have the ability to cut off the flow and pass cash directly to your fellow working class people

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English added by me :)

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Chinese dancer on xiaohongshu display bellydance in fox style (cr 舞贝勒）

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by Vita Fellig

Ohio State University senior Adam Kling estimates that he’s seen between 50 and 100 anti-Israel protests on campus in the last four years. But what the Jewish biomedical engineering student experienced on Jan. 27, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, was new to him.

On Monday evening, some 60 antisemitic protesters braved near-freezing temperatures to chant and yell outside of the Schottenstein Chabad House at OSU in an effort to disrupt presentations by two former Israeli soldiers about their experiences being injured while responding to Hamas’s terror attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Although the Jewish center bears the public university’s name, it’s not an official Ohio State University entity, and its current building is off-campus. Kling told JNS that it was unusual for protesters to target a site that wasn’t on the university grounds.

“It’s one thing to do it on campus. It is a public university, and you have free speech, which I 100% support your right to go out and protest what you believe right on campus,” he said. “This is the first time that they’ve taken the step to go from campus to surrounding us at our own home, a religious building on campus where people are supposed to feel safe.”

Kling told JNS that he is “obviously not a law expert” but is “just struggling to see where the line is when it comes to religious intimidation when you stand outside a religious building and scream threats to all the Jewish people in there, calling them ‘terrorists,’ ‘baby killers’ and ‘war criminals.’”

“We are in Columbus, Ohio, 6,000 miles away from the Middle East,” he said. “I don’t understand how intimidating and threatening me off campus at a Jewish place of worship has anything to do with politics or does anything to support your cause.”

“It is 2025 and the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz being liberated, and there is someone Jewish in Ohio, in America, that is scared to walk home,” he said. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

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Hey y'all. Here's something for you.

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thriftbooks better world books half-price books wonder book pangobooks libgen archive.org ubuweb kanopy (library card required; free) tubi pluto tv

storygraph

abebooks, book depository, and goodreads are all owned my amazon.

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Hey do y’all remember when Boeing fucking killed a guy last year. And we all said “huh I guess Boeing fucking killed a guy” and then went on with our lives. And everybody knew that Boeing had fully just fucking executed a guy and nothing came of it. Like there was no police investigation no justice no nothing. Like literally EVERYBODY knew that Boeing had full on murdered a guy to silence him and there wasn’t any consequences for them. Kinda crazy.

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Source

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In case anyone is having a bad night

(The best of this post and its reblogs, but with links that work)

Here is a website where you can scroll down to all the different levels of the ocean 

Here is a website where you can see the future of the universe

Here is a website where you can press a ‘make everything okay’ button, over and over, until things really are okay

Here is a website that you can read if you feel like a burden

Here is a website where you can look at strobe illusions (TW strobe/flashing)

Here is a website where you can cut stuff up (TW blood/sh)

Here and here are websites where you can play with sand

Here is a website where you can draw with macaroni and other fun foods

Here is a website where you can paint someone’s nails

Here is a website where you can grow a garden with emojis

Here is a website with hundreds of videos of people hugging you (rightfully dubbed ‘the nicest place on the internet’ because it really is, y’all, it made me cry)

Here is a website that will take you to other useless websites

Here is a website where you can make a tiny cat play bongo drums (and other instruments!)

Here is a website to help give you gentle reminders <3

Here is a website where you can grow a tiny farm

Here is a website where you can take a bunch of scientific personality tests

Here is a website of calm rain noise

Take a breath. It’s going to be okay, I promise.