So funny when people make posts like "if you REALLY had [disability here] you wouldn't be ABLE to have a social media account" like god forbid disabled people do anything that isn't lament in total isolation until they are Fixed or until they die.

Final round-up of fan fic asks

I've gotten a few more interesting responses to the fan fic discussion so I'm going to round them all up here. This will be my final post on the topic until/unless there's a dramatic new development, or a particularly notable response I want to highlight. Thanks to everyone who brought their thoughts and experiences to the topic. I hope everyone at least feels heard.

The biggest piece of advice that I would like to offer is for everyone to focus on what they love rather than what they hate. If we all did that, the world would be a better place. Alongside that, I'd like to remind everyone to please support authors whose work you like. It's so important. Give them a kudos, give them a nice comment, recommend their work to others. You never know what kind of grief and harassment they are dealing with to bring you these great stories, and our support means a lot.

This is in reference to previous posts here and here.

Anonymous asked:

With regard to fandom and fan fic issue, my years of experience being part of very large fandoms has led me to believe that big accounts are v important in facilitating and enforcing the general consensus of the whole fandom. Unless there will be big accs who'll remind everyone of being respectful & just not being a dick over other's preferences, nothing will change.

This is also the reason why I think certain solo fandoms have adapted weird and twisted narratives as their general fandom story because no big acc has tried to police them & and say hey pls be rational. Whether we like it or not, in a place where how far voices, ideas, tweets, posts get heard is based on the number of followers you have, big accs will have the power and influence in creating/curating/shifting the narratives.

So, if you want to know why your/our fandom thinks like this in general, look at what big accs are tweeting/posting, look at what ideas & values they follow, look at their preferences or how strongly they react to certain situations. it's taxing and toxic for big accs given the nature of social media these days, but it's also the reality of system, the more followers/audience you have, the more influence you will have.

So to anyone reading this I hope we all practice more restraint and reflection before we post anything. Remember that words, no matter what medium you write it in, will always carry weight.

So true. It is easy - even for myself who spends a fair chunk of time answering people's asks - to forget that people can sometimes be impressionable and what we say can influence people whether that's our intent or not. I get used to thinking of myself as a regular guy just doing my own thing when sometimes my thoughts and words go well beyond where I initially posted them.

I think it's important for us to be careful what we say, and it's equally important to be careful what we take from what other people say. Especially when it comes to big claims. Always get a second, third, fourth opinion and don't be afraid to ask for clarification if something doesn't sit right or sounds confusing.

It's also important to reflect on how our words and actions might affect other people's experience of fandom, and err on the side of 'live and let live' wherever possible. It's great to have our own preferences and to champion them, but we should try to do so in a way that leaves space for other people and perspectives.

The more unique perspectives and the more friendly, open dialog there is, the healthier the community will be as a whole.

There's nothing wrong with encouraging and guiding growth in the particular areas we are interested in, as long as it doesn't step on, oppress or attack those who are peacefully enjoying something different.

Anonymous 2 asked: bjyx fans attacking gdgdbaby for including zsww/lsfy dynamics in an event named bjyx then turning right around and attacking the zsww/lsfy event organizer for excluding bjyx? god, can you hear my facepalm and sigh of resignation and incredulity from over there? im genuinely not surprised that they're trying to drive an entire part of the fandom out by disgusting them (and me) with these immature tactics. i believe what im about to say next will sound quite bait-y and i respect your decision 1/?

should you choose not to post this. but i do know that it is not only me, in fact there are many out there, that is of this opinion. we just dont talk about it on twitter to avoid the potential mess it will bring lol. okay, here goes nothing. (do note that im talking about the majority here, not every single person is like this) so bjyx fans tend to be cishet females whereas zsww/lsfy fans are more diverse in terms of age and gender, and most of them are part of the queer community too 2/?

i would like to clarify that most of these zsww/lsfy fans are not dynamic exclusive (in the sense that they are friendly and interact with all ggdd fans) they just prefer to "identify" themselves as zsww/lsfy fans (on twitter specifically) just to form a distinction from bjyx fans who mostly are dynamic exclusive (as in; they do not consume non-bjyx content, and straightup refuse to interact with non-bjyx fans, often blocking them). as a result, id say that the zsww/lsfy communiy is way more 3/?

mature and respectful (after all, they're mostly queer people talking about a queer ship) whereas many problems in this fandom, such as the homophobia, adamantly insisting on "drawing lines" between dynamics, stem from the bjyx exclusive fans, comprised of cishet females who "may not know better". so, it is of no surprise to me that they're resorting to these immature tactics of calling gg unsavory names, and organizing retaliatory events with controversial topics in an attempt to "purify". 4/4

I trust that you have arrived at that theory through your own experience and observation. I haven't personally spent much time immersed in this stuff so I can't claim to have any real insight or expertise. If you say that's your experience of it, then at the very least that's how you've seen things up to this point.

I just want to say that I think we should always be careful about making assumptions about people's age, gender/gender identity, etc.

There are plenty of good reasons to avoid doing that; because those assumptions could be very wrong, because those assumptions are often laced with ageism, sexism, etc., because those assumptions - even when correct - might not be an accurate basis for the conclusions we draw.

But the primary reason I recommend avoiding those type of assumptions is because anything that enables us to clump a group of people together in our minds like that will tend to make them easier to demonize and dehumanize. They are no longer individuals who are each responsible for their own unique perspectives, they are now 'the X group' who is known for 'A B C series of easily attackable ideas or behaviors'.

If we attribute undesirable traits and behaviors to a group of people we feel opposed to in some way, that makes us feel more righteous and justified in behaving unfairly toward them, dismissing their humanity and warring with them. It's just risky behavior to engage in, even when it's well-intentioned.

There might actually be some truth to what you're saying. It could very well be that most of these people are young, inexperienced, heteronormative, etc. but if that's the case then we should try to use those traits to better understand and empathize rather than to better dismiss and discredit.

Just my two cents on that.

It can be really frustrating dealing with what feels like other people attacking us, trying to oppress us, etc. - especially when there are more of them than there are of us. In my experience the best solutions to that sort of problem are generally the ones that focus on what we are doing and want to do rather than what they are doing that we don't want them to do.

As I am always preaching, we can't control what other people say, do or think. The only thing we have any control over is what we say, do and think (and how we respond to what they say, do and think).

I have found in my experience that the moment I step out of a conflict mindset and instead step into a problem-solving mindset, everything starts to come together. I feel better, my outlook is more positive, I can begin to see solutions and allies rather than problems and enemies, and most of all, I become more focused on what I am doing than what others are doing.

So I would recommend everyone who is invested in resolving these conflicts focus on that. "How can we best showcase and encourage the types of stories we enjoy?" instead of "How can we stop these other people from doing things we dislike?"

Anonymous 3 asked:

Hello again! It’s anon #3 from the fanfic post. I really do appreciate reading your thoughts on various issues like this, so thank you for always taking time to write in depth. As for supporting without going to war, the simplest way has always been to just show appreciation for the creators, hype them up. Kudos are the easiest way on ao3 but comments in addition are great. This goes for all content—art, fics, vids..etc. Creators love to see and read how people react to their content. Sharing is also great, fic recs are very helpful, just be cautious with art and reposting though. Hope this helps a bit!

Thanks so much, Anon. I think this is excellent advice. And it's true that appreciation is great, but helping to expand the audience is also great. Recommending stories, pointing people to the pages/websites of artists we like (as opposed to reposting), sharing our own ideas and approaches, encouraging people to try new things... all of this helps build healthier communities.

And here's another one: WRITE! DRAW! CREATE!

I urge anyone with creative interests or talents to bring their voices to the community because we all can benefit from hearing from you.

Thanks again everyone for sharing your thoughts on this issue. I hope that over time we can all work in positive ways to improve the situation.

I think this subject has been well-covered now so I'm going to retire it for the time being. If anyone still feels they want to discuss it further please feel free to message me privately. Thanks.

Hey I've been following you all for a while and I like the idea of a liberation martial arts gym but I am seriously not capable of starting anything like it on my own. Do you know of any LMA gyms that people can join? Specifcally in Louisiana?

Sadly I don’t personally know any in Louisiana but if you can check out general martial arts spaces around you and see their social media and check if they lean towards the ideas you find good at least, even if they may not be what you’d primarily want check your current pandemic situation and if there’s very few cases around consider going there with a mask(if you can also get vaccinated even better). Some activist collectives do basic self-defense training too-be it BLM,or LGBTQ groups, women focused groups or union organizations,see if any near you do something similar and whether you may be able to join or find a contact via those folks to get to someone that may be appropriate for you.

Also if things around you still aren’t safe in terms of the pandemic but you want to get started you may want to check out people doing online classes. Doing stuff via zoom or skype definitely has limitations but it can still help people learn the basics of movement, of proper mechanics and one can learn a lot about tactics and principles just by listening even without doing anything. Without actually training with another person next to you you’re limited in what you can achieve as there’s no drilling or sparring that way,but objectively speaking there’s still a lot a good instructor can impart online. If you’ve been following this blog for a bit and are asking this question you likely noticed the Southpaw guide.They also have a facebook page where you may ask for recommendations on good gyms and online trainers via messages. If you’re interests skew more towards HEMA then a more general HEMA United facebook group may be a good place to ask further questions unless you’re interested in a specific system and the like.

Also don’t sell yourself short-while starting anything like a gym/school/dojo/club can be very difficult and demanding if all you want is to train a bit you don’t need to start with a big sports hall with lots of equipment and a ready teaching curriculum. Sure that can be great longterm and if you want a good space around you and dont know any that may become necessary longterm but in the meantime you can definitely start with a lot less.

For example having two friends that are vaccinated and/or really really careful(meaning all their social contacts are the group in which you three meet and the rest of the time they take care,wear a mask etc.),ideally both, and are ok with helping you out you can start by meeting once a week and going through some very basic things. You can do it once a week for like half an hour or so, you can extend this to 1 or 2 or 3 hours with time if you’ve got the time and energy for it, but unless your physical conditioning is amazing right now going too hard at the start is likely going to be counterproductive.

Start with what feels most comfortable-be it footwork,breakfalls,striking,grappling,or if you;re more into historical fencing maybe thrusting/cutting etc. There’s loads of useful material online and while it can be difficult to know what’s useful and what’s good feel free to ask  about specific things and you’ll get an answer here. Three folks training bit by bit can go a long way even with no gear. That being said don’t do breakfalls too much or intense grappling if you don’t have mats(or alternatively access to a very soft natural terrain), don’t do hard sparring of any sort immediately,start light and easy and build over time. You can also use pool noodles instead of punching each other to work on the most basic defences and parries while using old slippers instead of pads for padwork at the start. 

You can also mix this with approaches from above. Meaning meeting in person with two friends once a week, doing online classes one or two times a week and maybe going to a live class that’s covid-safe as it can be but not super-near once in a month or two. That way you can combine the consistency of local practice with other more experienced people helping you move forward while staying safe.

Hope you find this information useful and feel free to ask follow up questions.

I absolutely LOVED reading your kingdom review. You gave me such an insight in things I never even considered, especially since our rankings are so different from each other. The Boyz was my favorite, the narrative was about RTK. How they felt bad for having to compete against their friends but eventually the groups only lifted each other up and it helped TBZ grow into the group they are now through the hardships and mental dilemma, falling into the next challenge right after they reached the top. It should have been more obvious though, I agree, it wasn't really visible for anyone who didn't know. I was wondering how you felt about the dancing in general? my reason for not ranking BTOB high was lack of choreo (and Peniel's verse), same goes for SF9. Mostly because I don't feel the hype when watching, it doesn't keep my focus on the stage. As a baby-performer myself, my goal is to make the viewer curious about what's next. is that the wrong way to look at it? that's what I've always been told, building the tension up and down to create focus. would love to hear your feedback on that! thank you so much for sharing, we need more reviews of people who actually know what they're talking about.

i'm glad that you got some insight from it! like i answered in the previous ask im here to hopefully bring some more depth and understanding for people that care and are curious!

you unintentionally proved my point about tbz’s performance: that is way too complicated! even the most talented solo dancers i can think of would have trouble distilling that down to something readable in 100 seconds, much less a group of like, a dozen people! the introductory stages are meant to show us the character of the group and their abilities in the most concise way possible, it's not the stage to do deep philosophical and emotional introspection. for a full stage? absolutely, go hog wild! but for this stage it was too ambitious and ultimately was ineffective to anyone that isn't a fan of them specifically. 

by dancing in general do you mean like, every group? i put most of my opinions on the dancing where i had them in each of the individual rankings but honestly? unless there is something that really stands out positively or negatively, a lot of ‘average’ kpop dance looks the same to me. i know it’s not, obviously, and if pressed i probably could do a more serious breakdown, but dance is only one element of performance. it has equal weight with all the others in my mind, and therefore i notice when it is either 

very good

does something unique

very bad, or

interferes with another element

which is the same as how i evaluate every element, if that makes sense. 

hmmmm. i thought about this a lot in the shower and turns out i had more opinions that i expected so i'll put them under a cut.

firstly, i don't think lack of choreo should be penalized or considered an ‘incomplete’ performance. at the end of the day, these are bands, and a part of their brand/product they sell is the music. complex choreo does not need to be attached to that to make it a successful performance. also, btob did have choreo. any movement on stage is technically choreography. but this terminology can cause confusion so usually non-dance choreo is referred to as ‘blocking.’ but they also did include the song’s original point choreo at 1.41. the blocking in their performance was well thought out and suited the arrangement, by placing spatial emphasis on each part of the song that needed it. obviously it comes down to personal taste if the performance is ultimately ‘successful,’ because all art is subjective, but just because something isn't as visually complex as something else doesn’t mean it doesn't have the same level of thought. think of it like this: one is a super clean-lined post-post-modern grey/white living room, and the other is a kitsch goth basement. both share interior design principles and have obvious care put into the space, but they are vastly different styles that appeal to different tastes.

part of the job of production designer/AD is to decide what gets emphasis. a question you're always asking yourself is ‘is this important to the story that we’re trying to tell?’ and btob/their AD made a very smart choice with their introductory stage because it says a lot about them and their abilities in a short amount of time. that stage said ‘our foundation is strong, we have the training and experience and confidence to be up here and not rely on visual tricks.’ because they know they physically cannot do the things the 4th gen groups can; they're a decade older and they only have four members, it's just not feasible. something you learn with experience is the power that specific and pointed emphasis holds, which segues into my answer to your last question. i don't necessarily think that ‘building hype’ is the wrong way to perform something, but i do think it is a flawed way to approach creating a performance.

i think that ‘hype’ is flawed concept at its core, and one that focuses on the idea that there’s always being something more, something next, beyond the work itself. now there’s nothing wrong with playing with tension within the internal structure of a piece, that's exactly how constructing a narrative happens. however, the flaws come once we extrapolate beyond the boundaries of that individual work. the idea of ‘whats next’ implies that you have to constantly be promoting, have a sequel coming, building hype etc so people will keep engaged with your work. which is deeply capitalistic in nature and operates on the assumption that art exists purely as a product to be sold. and in order to keep selling you need to keep making a bigger and better and more spectacular product. and this is not the case at all. marketability is not the essence of art, it merely a factor of creating it under this insufferable system. kpop in particular suffers from this because the industry is specifically fabricated to produce capitol. we can have discussions all day about idols and their artistic integrity but at the end of that day, they are all cogs working with a system that was specifically made up by essentially one person to be culturally exported and to just print buckets of money. so in following that train of thought, there is a constant attitude of bigger and better because shock value (whether positive or negative) gets social media attention and therefore it sells. and it has become exponentially easier (and also seemingly required) to make things that are bigger and better than ever before. i remember being blown away by the projection floor at the sochi 2014 olympics because something of that scale and complexity would never have been possible without literally having the funding of the olympics. now that technology is easily accessible to anyone with an amazon account and the time to learn how isadora works. in comparison, it took 2400 YEARS for just the job of a ‘theatre designer’ to be even become a job at all.

because of kpop’s fan culture it is especially prone to ‘hype’ behaviour. in general with the accessibility of the internet and social media, everything has turned into a competition, and who can generate the most buzz ‘wins’. but ultimately that has taken away the general public’s ability to recognize that you can enjoy something quietly and you can enjoy something slowly. that the enjoyment of something doesn’t need to be all exclamation marks and keysmashes and trending hashtags on twitter. there is value in a work engaging in an emotion within you that is not just excitement. most of the artists and companies that i consume the work of i don’t do so because their work makes me excited, i do so because i liked the experience of engaging with that work. several years ago i saw the eternal tides by legend lin dance theatre, which you can watch a really short clip of here. that is not slow motion, that is actually how slow the dancers are moving. and 90% of the show is performed like that. and its two hours long. and it was one of the most incredible performances i've ever seen. if i ever get the chance I will go see another one of their shows again, not because i care about how they can top that experience i had, but because i know they can produce that experience, and that is enough to make me want to seek them out again. the speed of the internet has also loosened the general public’s understanding of just exactly how long creating a performance work can take. the lead dancer in the eternal tides was with the company for eight years before she and the piece were ready enough to be performed. large scale operas, musicals, and plays often have a year or more of pre-production before they even get to rehearsal. smaller theatre companies workshop new pieces for years at a time. performance is hard and it takes time. you can eliminate some of that with sheer amounts of money and people, which is what the kpop industry has done, but it speeds up the cycle of consumption to a degree that is not sustainable, especially for companies and creators who do not have that kind of access. performers and performance makers often don't put enough trust in their audiences. if they like what they see, they will come back. they dont need to be constantly bombarded with content at all times.

now that i’ve said a bit about why i think hype is a flawed concept, let's bring it back to kingdom. sf9 did something very interesting with their stage in that they actively chose to limit their dance time. and this plays very well off the performance film stage that taeyang did a couple of weeks ago. taeyang is talented and confident (for good reason), and his solo was incredible. but when it came to the intro stage, instead of trying to one-up the solo stage, the group instead said ‘well people are going to be looking at us because taeyang is insanely talented, so let's show them that we ALL have the confidence and the attitude to be up here.’ no need for flashy theatrics, they had the foresight to do something that would make them stand out from the rest of the groups. even if i was just casually watching the stages without doing any analysis on them (like i did for rtk), i would still be able to distinguish them because they had the stones to stand around for half their stage time. now i recognize them and would like to see what else they can do. same principle as what btob and also what ikon did. there is a fine line between anticipation and hype that gets equated in media consumption nowadays, but the two are not the same.

i think the tldr on this is that you dont need to ‘build hype’ or ‘go all out’ to make an interesting work. just focus on telling the narrative that you want to tell, and the people that recognize that will come. i could have a lot more things to say about peoples shrinking attention spans and the constant stream of information that we consume on a daily basis that devalues the labour done by artists in the eyes of the public and promotes hustle culture that is burning out and damaging creators at a rate that is both exponential and frightening, but that’s probably for another time, because this is SO LONG

Candy 18-21

oh, oh no

I’ve heard things about Jane x Gamzee

now I get to experience them, oh boy...

Gamzee gets, strangely serious about stuff for once, huh, who would have thunk it

yeah, It’s clear Jane’s political stuff seem to stem from some kind of fear that one day humanity won’t exist on Earth C for whatever reason

that over time, the population of trolls versus humans will eventually skew so much that there won’t be any adam and eve left to match up with each other

in her mind she really doesn’t hate trolls, cuz its not really about the trolls, not at all, but obviously her actions are equivalent to someone who does hate them and she just doesn’t get that

and like, yeah if you just left them to their own devices, maybe that would happen, but then (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) Gamzee has an extremely good point that they already did that when they plopped all the ectokids down and called it a day for a 1000 years, like, they managed to figure it out on their own just fine

and also

ectobiology will literally never stop being a thing so like, as long as some of the god kids stick around, eventually you can just make more humans it’s no big deal to restart the human gene pool since it will be identical to the first time they started it

there’s no reason to make sure this system runs smoothly the “natural way” it won’t, this situation is unnatural for both species

Jane’s just gotta realize that if she wants humans to keep sticking around, she just has to keep supporting the human population, that’s it, whatever trolls do or don’t do doesn’t matter for that goal

course it doesn’t help to compare trolls to animals when talking about their breeding rate and how it naturally evolved over time unlike the apparently non animal humans Janey

Also Alternian society is def not how troll society naturally is but like how could she know that? And how could any troll near her really explain that? 

aaaand I got so up in taking this seriously I forget who was talking

Jane’s into troll blackrom though that’s interesting and unexpected 

oh wow, Jake was there the whole time

Did they really name Jake and Jane’s baby Tavros??? oh jeesus

Yeah Kinda figured the Jane x Jake thing wasn’t gonna actually be happy

I’m really surprised Jane’s version of happiness apparently involves boinking a weird funny man I mean, she canonically likes clowns and jokes, so at the same time I’m not surprised, I mean, she WAS raised by the condesce, it’s just weird how that influence comes out in her sometimes versus how it doesn’t come out in her

literal Jake nightmare scenario though I think lol

really hammering home how the passions of youth don’t really translate well to happy adult relationships

Oh, so there’s the part where Jade reveals she has Bec biology, considering the fandom reaction you’d think we were gonna get some kind of gross M rated sex scene where she pegs Karkat or something

but all she does is talk about how she’d love a normal family and home life and lament that her circumstances ended up not really allowing that and giving enough hints that we can figure out why that would be

it’s not handled grossly at all, even if the subject matter is odd and it doesn’t come off as some sort of character sabotage

this whole time what we’ve known all Jade was that she was lonely and just wanted a family, not that hard to figure out why, girl’s got the same complex as Joey Claire about her family situation, but she’s more reserved about her feelings since she didn’t get to have a comparison of role models like Joey did with her babysitter and also Jade’s food and shelter needs were somewhat taken care by a planet guardian so the affect was somewhat lessened on the outside, she just didnt get the same chances as Joey to be able to articulate her emotional turmoil about it

aww Jade’s not happy either, well, that’s how it goes when you make relationship decisions based on flimsy passions that are more about fulfilling the needs of the self than about actually wanting good things for a partner

More like Jade’s sort of realized that Karkat and Dave don’t have a genuine romantic interest in her and she’s the only one keeping this ship afloat

oh shit, a dead younger jade, oh damn wait she’s the one from Meat that was trapped in the house juju and then immediately died from space razors

Yeah’s she’s a bloody symbol of meat that’s for sure, theyre making that pretty clear

“Her eyes go wide and she feels the breath go out of her for a moment. She looks directly upward. Where did this body come from?”

Again, if we take that symbolism circle of Breath = Sugar = Drugged up High =  Breath

This little dash of meat falling into wonderland would break the breathy haze for a bit wouldn’t it?

So if this kind of thing can happen to others besides John, there’s hope yet for something of value to come from Candy

“ There’s a peaked skylight at the top of the foyer that splits the morning sun like a prism, spilling multicolored dots across every surface below. Amongst those dots are drips of teen-Jade’s blood. It’s so dark on the spotless tile that it looks nearly black. “

I wish I could draw things, I’d love to draw this exact scene here, it’s pretty and morbid

Yeah, the relationship theme of Candy seems to be that everyone’s jumping into Kismesis plus Matesprite threesomes, that seem to be neither of what anyone actually wants in totality

There’s some realization that their Candy filled atmosphere is actually more a drug or a poison, teen jade can’t be revived, and it’s not because of what happened to her, but more because of the environment she is in now

Ah Roxy, ever the social chameleon people pleaser, not working this time though

Jade’s is easily explained already as she has the social graces of an elephant

It is kinda sad tho to see most of the human characters actually aren’t that good at being cool about troll stuff

“CALLIOPE: pUrple roses traditionally represent love at first sight, however these roses are actUally red roses that we prepared Using a blUe dye.CALLIOPE: the blUe rose is the most elUsive and mysterioUs of all flowers.CALLIOPE: the combination of red and blUe in this context is meant to evoke the dUal natUre of death, in that there is nothing more mysterioUs and impossible to comprehend than the vast void of the afterlife, bUt also there is nothing that makes Us appreciate the life and and love that we already have than the mystery of death.CALLIOPE: while death is terrifying, there is always joy to be foUnd among the sorrow. each time we witness death, we fall in love with the important people in oUr lives all over again.“

Why do I get the feeling Calliope is talking about actual rose here somehow?

Is it because she started off with “here’s the symbolism of Purple Roses”?

a Red Rose dyed Blue

Now if Cascade taught us anything Blue and Red certainly represent a mutual destruction of opposites coming together to create a third new thing in the blaze of the aftermath, but that thing was a Green Sun, not something purple, so why bring Rose into mind for all of this?

We have been seeing the effects of what happens when people in candyland awaken from their drug haze with a smattering of blood, but in that case why not make the symbolism more clear by saying a Blue Candied Rose dyed Red as if with Bloodied Meat?

is it more to mean that the correct path lies NOT in Candy being dyed Red, but in Meat being dyed Raspberry Blue?

I Mean, Candy!Rose certainly seems shaken here, having gotten jolted out of her drugged haze at some point, but unable to See, and she’s actually starting to be concerned about that and Meat!Rose is kind of out of commission at this point, So I guess to get things back on track, Candy!Rose would have to go back to the Meat somehow, or might be the influence needed to snap Meat Rose out of her daze

Though I don’t like how this is taking place in the context of a funeral, specifically bringing to mind how Dirk did the same thing using the vessel of Death, I hope Candy Rose doesn’t try to just, off herself

with Dirk taking control of Rose’s ultimate self in Meat, Candy!Rose might be the only true Rose left to take heroic action

Aww, Callie is still head over heels for Roxy, I’m really surprised with this theme of threesomes that nothing ever came of a John x Roxy x Callie, but then again all the threesomes so far have been painted Black and Red, and unless John or Roxy was to form a Kismesis with Callie, I don’t see it happening at all

OH SHIT SPEAKING OF RED AND BLUE

Damn, Sollux and Aradia are here

“KARKAT: MAYBE FUCKING NEPETA IS ABOUT TO POUNCE FROM BEHIND THAT GROTESQUE STATUE OF THE HUMAN SUFFERER T-POSING OVER THERE.”

Karkat don’t tease me about Nepeta but also again WHY is actual Jesus here.

Is Roxy a christian in this timeline? Was she legit just praying to actual Human Jesus? That’s so, weird, especially for Roxy to do, what the fuck in Roxy’s upbringing on an apocalypse earth would make her want to worship Jesus?

Oh wait, that’s obviously what she thinks that every other human sincerely does, since she only had human media to go off of, and like, technically no human has ever said they DONT worship christian gods to her.

“GAMZEE: wHeN tHe DoOr Of ThAt FrIdGe pOpPeD oPeN iT wAs LikE i Be AlL sEeIn ThE lIgHt AnD sHiT.

SOLLUX: well yeah

SOLLUX: that’s what happens when s0me0ne 0pens a d00r t0 a t0tally dark encl0sure.“

Gamzee has had a weirdly meta understanding of what’s going on so far, for some reason, I can’t fathom what could be the Lighty influence that he’s gotten

unless...

Dirk really IS starting to subsume Ultimate Rose, and that’s bleeding over to every Ultimate self connected to Dirk

the more Gamzee knows meta shit and says oddly correct things, the more we know Dirk is “winning” over Rose

Oh, that’s why Gamzee is really here isn’t he? I mean, storywise? He’s a Dirk thermometer/gauge/thing, he’s our way of measuring how far Dirk’s influences are going in Meat

“ARADIA: its so nice that you believe all that gamzee

ARADIA: i think i can honestly say

ARADIA: im reasonably happy for you?“

lol

“blue smoke”

You don’t really tend to describe Smoke as being Blue right? At least, I don’t think that’s usual

But if we’re straight up associating Candy with Blue  to complement Meat with Red now, it’s just making the whole Sugar = Breath thing that much stronger

*EDIT* DUH OF COURSE OF CANDY’S COLOR IS BLUE

BLUE GUSHERS. OBVIOUSLY. *end edit*

and I mean, what is Breath but a weird bluey smoke?

Roxy just wants to be happy with all her friends, that’s all

It is a good shake at trying to explain the nature of infinite possibility, that in reality, there isn’t really more weight put into one possibility over others, that’s how it works in real life anyway

unfortunately a storyline of canon is going to favor some version of events over others, and people make choices because they have preferences for that choice over other choices, something that seems kind of lost on Candy!Roxy who seems to just be okay with going along with anything because everything has an equal chance for having happytimes in this place

Roxy may be starting to lose her sense of self as well, and with her knowledge on things and how’s she’s been described as immutable so far, I wouldn’t be surprised at her having easily and subtly slipped into Ultimate Self hood herself and just being really okay with the idea that there is no one true Roxy, that she is just one piece of many, and not like, needing to delve into that further, not needing to connect with all her alternate selves, happy just being singular but at the same time completely malleable

Oh! Baby time.

Oh fuck, Al!Calliope in Jade time.

Why is Callie so afraid of Alt!Callie? That didn’t come across in their meetings in Homestuck as much, so why is that different here?

Is it because of Jade’s earlier comment of “there can only be one instance of a person here” and Callie doesn’t think she can win against Alltie?

Also, all these instances of Alltie appearing in Jade’s body is making me worried Alltie is doing something to both of their Ultimate Selves, like she’s subsuming Jade somehow like Dirk is subsuming Rose

I mean, they are fighting one another, so if Dirk’s doing something she has to keep pace right? In her mind, it’s probably totally justified

this is getting long enough for this post though, off we go again but I’m still reading

W.I.T.C.H. Reboot! W.I.T.C.H. Reboot! W.I.T.C.H. Reboot!

hi love! so, with the plethora of reboots kicking around mainstream media these days, its no surprise that the question of a w.i.t.c.h reboot has been broached by its fans. i have so, so, so many thoughts and this, but ill divide them into three categories for the purpose of brevity: firstly, general thoughts on what i would like to see if a w.i.t.c.h reboot is on the cards; secondly, what i would like to see in a live-action w.i.t.c.h reboot; and finally, what a decent animated reboot of w.i.t.c.h might entail. this is not an exhaustive list so please feel free to add onto this if youve any more thoughts! without further ado because jesus, we might be here a while….

general thoughts:

a w.i.t.c.h live action reboot should largely use the comics are source material. while the cartoons are beloved by many including myself, i reckon the good parts of each should be combined to be thematically consistent, fix plot holes etc. but the comics should be the bible here

the target demographic of younger women and girls would need to be established early on by the producers (personally i would love to see a slightly more mature, w.i.t.c.h college AU where the target demographic could be teens/young adult women and girls, but more on that later). this isnt to say that young men and boys would be absolutely excluded as an audience, but misogyny is alive and well in 2019, and our voices as women need to be uplifted. this is exemplified by the fact that caleb was given far, far, far too much screentime in the cartoon so that the show could reach a young, male audience, and his characters was mangled by chauvinistic tendencies. thank u, next.

i have my own preferences wrt to ships, but i think we can all agree that introducing male characters as mere plot devices for drama/conflict only to put them ‘on a bus’ when theyre no longer useful is just plain bad writing. this is a critique levelled both at the cartoon and comics, but largely the comics (see: Eric)(rip in peace).

i also believe that sticking to the conventions of a particular genre, or hybrid genre, would be preferable if a w.i.t.c.h reboot were to take place. some shows get it right, but I’ve seen a ton of shows go off the rails when they try to be a fantasy/comedy/crime/drama/horror/sci-fi/occult/soap-opera extravaganza all in one. i reckon a YA fantasy drama with comedic moments, something with a similar vibe to Shadowhunters or The Shannara Chronicles, could work really well. if we’re talking animated reboot, something with a similar tonal atmosphere to The Dragon Prince or Into the Spiderverse, would also be great

this shouldnt even need to be said but please, for the love of god, no musical episodes (heres looking at you, Riverdale).

i think i speak on everyones behalf when i say that, irrespective of the age demographic of the show, LGBT rep in w.i.t.c.h would be amazing. irma/cornelia have always been a practically canon fan favourite, but cassidy and nerissa’s relationship is definitely more than strictly platonic, so that could be developed upon too. trans/nonbinary!will is also a popular headcanon that could work. once there are lgbt heroes, and not just lgbt villains, i think we’ll all be happy.

similarly, seeing some neurodivergency in the characters could also be great: elyon dealing with pts after the fallout with phobos; irma struggling with adhd in school or college; hay lin and taranee also exhibit some traits of anxiety in canon. autistic!will would also work, and someone else in the squad is bound to be affected by depression given its pervasive nature these days.

much and all as i adore the guardian outfits, i think there would need to be a few changes made. the midriff-and-leg-baring get-ups, though very cute, become very jarring when you realise the characters are meant to range in age from 12 to 14. i dont have any specific thoughts on how improvements could be made, but lengthening hemlines could be a start. if anyone has any more thoughts, i’d love to hear them!

of course, there needs to be women in the writers room, lgbt people in the writers room, poc in the writers room, people with neurodivergencies in the writers room, etc. we all know what happens when writers rooms lack diversity, and it sure as hell aint pretty.

body diversity was something that was tentatively approached in the comics (irma is curvier than the others, at least in her mundane form), but eschewed almost entirely in the cartoon, with all the girls maintaining similar heights and waifish proportions. it would be worthwhile, not to mention realistic, for the girls to go through some body-image hang ups. maybe will is insecure about her ‘underdeveloped’ body, or maybe taranee longs to have the same curvaceous figures as other dancers her age. i think if they were to go for a message of body positivity, irma, loud and brash with no fucks to give, should love every inch of her fat body and encourage the girls to adopt her 'devil-may-care’ attitude. the patriarchy be damned.

one flaw with the comics AND the cartoons are that they dont really explore the worldbuilding a lot. we do spend some time on meridian in the comics and the cartoon, but largely from the perspective of either elyon, or caleb and the rebels. i wonder what a day on meridian would look like for the average meridianite peasant? what do meridianites do for fun? what language(s) do they speak? what are their religious/spiritual belief(s)? what are the styles of dress dictated by? meridian is based on medieval societies, and a caste system is suggested, but i would have loved to see the social hierarchies expanded on a little more. does the matriarchal nature of meridian rule value women and their labour? what about LGBT people on meridian? people with disabilities and neurodivergencies? is there any discrimination against the different species on meridian? in fact, i dont know if it was ever explicitly outlined to us the different species of peoples on meridian, in the cartoon or the comics. honestly id be happy to see a filler, AtLA Tales of Ba Sing Se-esque episode on meridian to cover all of these bases

one thing i loved from the comics that didnt translate as well in the cartoon were the girls’ passions and interests. will is obsessed with frogs, she rides her bike to her job at pet store, she swims, stresses over math homework. irma loves music and talking to her pet turtle, leafy; i could totally see her doing a stint at the college radio station or working part time at a record store. cornelia loves ice skating and has received tons of awards and accolades for her achievements on the ice. taranee is an avid photographer and dancer, but i could totally see her spending her spare time at rallies and protests too. hay lin is a proficient artist, making her own clothes and poring over paintings between shifts at the silver dragon. all of these things and more are what make these characters so well-rounded, relatable, likeable. their hobbies need to be weaved into the fabric of the show (not just brought up once for a silly plot device in cornelia’s case, or never brought up at all in taranee’s, as seen in the cartoon) in order for it to work

live action reboot thoughts:

this should go out without saying, but a live action w.i.t.c.h reboot should cast actors of colour to play characters of colour. hay lin, and by extension her family, need to be played by Chinese actors, while taranee needs to be played by a black actor, preferably one of east asian descent, etc. if they add a little more diversity to the cast i would be totally pleased. latina!irma is a popular headcanon that i ascribe to, and will has always been kinda ambiguously brown, so adding less ambiguous representation for poc to the cast would really be excellent

of course, age-appropriate casting is a must. more specifically, there should not be any 25-30 year olds playing characters in their mid-late teens, unless ofc they could actually pass for the age they are trying to play. shows like The OA and The End of the Fucking World really get this right (most other teen/YA dramas, not so much. less of the chiseled abs and rock hard pecs on teens, please)

this one might be tricky to get right, particularly with budget constraints, but i think a really good CGI/visual effects team is necessary for a w.i.t.c.h reboot to work. unless an adequate amount of the budget is spent on making sure the magic looks realistic, almost plausible, it will make everything else look cheap by comparison

also, this is more of a personal preference, but i’d love to see someone with a really beautiful visual aesthetic and scope of cinematography. i’m talking Sense8-esque levels of cinematographic beauty

i’m really rambling now but, similarly, it’d be so cool to see someone who could use lighting/colour theory in very particular ways. in Marvel’s Netflix Originals, each character has their own theme colour; in Jessica Jones, for example, all of the scenes are very blue and almost leeched of warmth, while in Luke Cage there seems to be a warm yellow filter over everything. how cool would it be if all Taranee-centric scenes had a slight gold hue? or if all of cornelia’s scenes were lit with green? maybe all of the colours could combine in the a subtle yet effective way when all of the guardians are together to show their unity and combined strength.

thoughts on an animated reboot:

i know very little about animation so these thoughts will be brief, but an art and animation style something like that of Into the Spiderverse would be really gorgeous. it is fluid, dynamic, beautiful to look at and, most importantly, reflects the comic format in a moving image perfectly. alternatively, the animation studio behind The Legend of Korra could also be wonderful. the visual effects used for magic would look absolutely incredible

one thing i have to praise the Jetix cartoon for is their choice of voice actors, which were, in many cases, spot on. while cornelia’s VA was annoying and shrill, the actors playing characters of colour were themselves people of colour. if an animated reboot was on the cards, i think it could be a great opportunity to once again include some diversity to the cast, namely hiring actors of colour to play characters of colour

please let no one who worked on voltron near a w.i.t.c.h animated reboot with a ten foot pole. no i will not elaborate

tl;dr at the risk of sounding like an entitled millennial, a w.i.t.c.h reboot should be less about creating something entirely new for a brand new audience, and more about building on what the longtime fans of w.i.t.c.h already love and bringing it forward for the older generation. all on all, we grew up with w.i.t.c.h, so it’s time for us to have our reboot. thanks for coming to my TED talk!

Heya purge! I saw in one of your tags that you’d been consuming fic for around 20 years! That’s like my whole life. Mind telling us how things have changed? I’m sure places like ao3 have changed things a lot. I’m just really curious in fandom and fanfic culture! :3 x

Ao3 is a fucking godsend let me tell you. I won’t make a lot of the same points and stuff that fannish history folks have already documented (how it literally changed, and all the fic we’ve lost that isn’t backed up on floppy disk somewhere… I’d say we’ve lost an equivalent to the digital burning of alexandria honestly) but i can tell you my experience :3

I’ll stick it under a cut cuz i kind of rambled… but i had fun doing so ahahha xD sorry you unleashed the tiger from the cage xD

We all make jokes about ‘being there’ when stuff in fandom history happened, but i’ve been around since all the major purges (LOL my name is so fitting in retrospect ahahha). ff.net’s various purges (and the whole anne rice suing fanfic writers and shit… i never DID agree to their new terms of service haha), geocities sites going down, obviously the more recent shit too, but like I’ve been around even for the creations of certain, older fanfic sites too (one of the oldest slash forums for lord of the rings fics for example… I was there, Gandalf LOLOL!!… and now that i check the date on that i feel old as balls thanks anon xDDD and wow my one fic is still up there PFFFFT) but like, I come from an era where you took your floppy disk and copy/pasted shit from online (once it even loaded) for later reading, and also so you could find it again, because also before ff.net it was hard to find stuff. I’m pre-google ya’ll xD You dont UNDERSTAND the horrors of trying to find anything pre-google. Ya’ll have it so fucking good D:

There was never an abundance of content like there is today, and so you can bet your shit we were grateful as fuck for what was out there, let alone for someone with a decent command of writing and storytelling. Everyone commented on everything (once that was something even implemented… it was email lists before that, and comments sent in that way… i still have my e-mailed comments from fic readers haha), and it was (and still is, in my honest opinion because people entitled as FUCK now) one of the GREATEST faux paus you could do to be reading a fic (esp. multi-chaptered) and not comment. The indignity of not giving back a little (and it still is a little, which is why i get so damn fired up on this subject) for aaaaaaaall the words and story and everything you just read was a serious sin against fanfic writers. I still think its seriously fucked up not to comment (and again, i’ve mentioned that if you dont got the spoons, thats obviously different) but like, the entitlement that runs rampant today did not even exist back then. Yeah, you still had the assholes whose comment would literally consist only of “where’s the rest?” with ZERO actual thanks or input while expecting/thinking they deserve more (and THEN you could remove chapters or stories, cuz god giveth and damn does she taketh away xD), but it wasn’t nearly as prolific as it is today.

The commenting culture today and the backlash against writers wanting comments on their work in return for providing said free content makes me mad enough to wanna curb stomp some people. I’m a bartender, I don’t put up with shit HAHA xD But the entitlement especially now and people who act like writers are being uppity for wanting a small return on their craft are disgusting. Same type of entitlement as art thieves (we all know the type). We didn’t put up with that shit back then. People acting like little bitches wanting free stuff for literally nothing? We’d pull the whole fic. And the community would handle it and it usually turned into a teaching moment about how damn important it is to comment and just how much freaking control writers DO have over their media. We’d pull it from public view unless amends were made (whether that be a private note from someone entitled finally paying their fucking due with proper humility, or reaching a comment count when you had hundreds of people reading but not commenting). Damn i miss taking away fic xD We played hardball back then xD

That was the fucking worst and people were rightfully denied access to fic if hits didn’t coincide with comments. You could publish a chapter and then decide to remove it from view (either for editing, or hostage taking for comments…. which i miss dearly AHAHAH it forced people to learn to be proper commenters and interact with those whose media they were consuming). It’s a big part of what I miss because just like a proper community, people kept each other in check and made sure everyone played nice. You enjoyed a fic? You sure as hell let that writer know. Now though…. the entitlement drives me up the fucking absolute walls and makes me wanna put stuff behind a paywall sometimes…. everyone is lucky im lazy as shit tho AHAHAH and im usually fine after venting xD

But yeah, fanfic culture in general has shifted in a major way to constantly consume and NEVER give back, either in comments, or creating new content yourself to also add to the community (for example as i’m sure we’re all aware, like ALL the people who bitch about certain ships or ‘why ship this when you can ship THIS?’…. Like, instead of bitching that ‘WAH WAH this author doesnt WRITE the ship I LIKE why can’t they write THAT??’ people came up with the radical idea of CREATING the content they wanted to see :| And if weren’t that good of a writer/artist to do so? Well then you SUPPORTED the writers/artists you enjoyed by leaving comments on their shit OR getting a commission… Goddamn i remember when even ‘commissioning’ people was a wild concept… Ya’ll dont know ahahah xD

I do believe that this is a huge source of where Anti-shipper behavior has stemmed from; entitlement gone berserk. And public schools and shit are still largely full of my parents’ generation who were not computer-literate either in function or courtesy, so even as internet social skills are not being taught correctly (or safety; they scared the SHIT out of us back in the day and now everyone has all their shit and pictures online haha) so there’s also a huge disconnect socially which i think has impacted online fandom spaces and what is considered acceptable or not. People also turn into fucking swine when they think they’re anonymous online (and boy do they change their tune fucking quickly when you out them) and i think the whole anonymity thing is also a factor of this whole entitlement issue in fandom spaces; making demands without giving ANYTHING back. Like I’ve mentioned in the past, I don’t put up with that shit, and it’s not a coincidence I was going to work for the CIA after I just left Japan about 3yrs back (thank fuck I didn’t cuz FUUUUCK this administration) cuz people are dumb as shit and basic tracking skills to call someone out on their bullshit has been my bread and butter since i was like 12 haha. You act dishonest and entitled, and it’s gonna come back to you in some shape or form. You’re going to reap what you sow. That was the motto back then and I still believe in it today.

Hell, it has shocked the FUCK out of me the few times i’ve had people tell me ‘omg me and my friend were talking about your latest update!’ and i’m just like O_O????? because also back in the day, ‘fanfiction’ was kind of a taboo word. You never said you were into fanfic in mixed company. You more or less NEVER discussed it publicly (I’m not even talking dirty stuff, just normal, sfw fanfiction) because it primarily existed only online (for me; i’m post-fan magazines but pre-internet fanfic sites LOLOL). Hell, I got my college english professor into fanfiction. She didn’t even know what it was, let alone that something like that existed, and I had to explain it to her my first year of college kind of with a red face xD She was a writing-professor too so like, let that date the culture a bit. Like, if that was literally her major field of expertise and she didn’t know about it, that should tell you how not-mainstream fanfic was.

I’m kind of out of touch with that myself. Do kids (ya’ll are kids to me okay? xD) mention fanfiction as a reading/entertainment medium in normal conversation? Like, you could mention, without getting weird looks, ‘oh i enjoy reading fanfiction’ or (and i’m like internally gasping at the idea here) being able to say ‘yeah i enjoy writing fanfiction’? Is that a thing? I sure as hell don’t tell my peers that I write fanfic, let alone that i’m approaching 1million words for borderlands stuff alone AHAHAH It’s STILL taboo and seen as a lesser writing medium to folks my age. If you weren’t in a ‘geek’ circle (and i mean, i had friends who played D&D at lunch, and one friend who we mentioned fanfic together with) then culturally, as an art form, it wasn’t acceptable to discuss. Like, i’m STILL in that mindset that fanfic is not something to be discussed off the internet with people and it makes me very very uncomfortable to do so unless i know 100% I can speak discretely with someone. That’s what the offline culture was. I know its way different in some respects, like me and my youngest sister are 10yrs apart and her experiences with fandom are wildly different, but the idea of people actually talking about someone’s fic together with friends absolutely blows my fucking mind.

So, it’s changed in good ways too xD I just fucking HATE people who think they’re entitled to never comment or give back to the community sooooo i tend to get stuck on that issue, ESPECIALLY, again, as a writer approaching 1million words. *salute* doing my duty to the fandom community LOLOL or polluting the fandom community if you’re an anti AHAHAH antis can suck my entire ass and i’ll go on to put another million words of what they HATE into the world and they cant stop me ;3 spite is a fabulous motivator xD

The tools back then were a lot more crude, abilities and functionality was limited (but also better in some ways; moving fic to the ‘backroom’ so to speak), and even finding stuff was hard and relied on the hushed whispers of friends, but damn the community was better. So much better. So much more positive and accountability made people decent. So like, I do LOVE a lot of what we have now, but we have lost SO much. Both in terms of content and sense of community. I wish people would put more positivity into the content they’re consuming and lift up others. It’s why i try my damnedest to leave commenting tags on EVERY SINGLE THING i ever reblog here, because i *know* firsthand how much it means. To scream your art into the silence and only get the equivalent of stares back is maddening.

So yeah. Stuff has changed. Capitalism and censorship are running especially rampant hand-in-hand right now, and lord forbid we come full circle where there are no more places for us. I mean, if we have to go back to email lists, hell I’m already ready and an old veteran to that system anyhow. I’d miss all the content we all have access to…. but then there’s also that 90% commenting rate you get with that kind of system so HEEEEEY let it all fall down! bahahah xD

hasan anon from a couple of days ago under the cut ^-^ pls don’t apologize for sending long asks i love hearing ppl’s thoughts on this especially when they’re as well thought out as yours !!

i’m not sure if i’m misunderstanding you but the “lots of ppl don’t understand that advocating for sos and actually doing something to get to that point r very different” is more abt armchair leftists only reading theory n getting into fights w other armchair leftists on social media or exerting energy into bringing up pointless issues (like hasan’s house) instead of... making an effort to actually organize or immerse. i see this a lot with the global north Lol, especially for people within our age group who r like.. Praxis :) eat the rich :] 

agree that the end goal is to destroy the system that makes goods these unattainable for most people in the first place, which you really can’t do under us imperialism, so unless that gets overhauled, all you can really do is heavily tax the rich + provide social amelioration for the poor to narrow the wage gap. 3 million isn’t even massive wealth in the grand scheme of american capitalism. he’s far from a class enemy and shouldn’t be treated as one. 

and i don’t think hasan “profiting off socialism” is an issue either tbh. he makes money as ethically as he can, through voluntary subs and donos. he’s never promised anything he has to do with those donos except... use the money for himself. i think he also makes merch under a company with unionized workers and refuses sponsors unless he’s sure it’s a good fit for his content. he’s at least aware of the privilege he has . like if people think he’s deceiving them then it is that hard to just.. refrain from donating 💀

i don’t really have a problem with him buying the house since. housing in la is extremely expensive so it’s not like it was this grand indulgence in luxury (especially if u consider he has to consider his own security, so it’s probably also expensive bc of that). bc of that i dont think it’s decadence anymore either because decadence would be. more indulging in extreme luxuries. 

if it were decadence, that would be a Discussion in closer leftist circles where you’re expected to have. dedicated most of your time and resources to the movement. especially when you’re petty bourgeoisie (or whatever the equivalent is) it can get pretty easy to want to retreat back into a bubble of your privilege when you think issues can’t hurt you, like spending the entire day on twitter or excessively drinking. the point is that the time and money is better spent elsewhere rather than excessively on yourself. we have to remember that a lot of these luxuries are luxuries because of capitalism, so as much as we fight to end cap we also have to undergo a cultural revolution to. gradually remove the Desire for excess in society. poor cultural revolution is why socialist societies revert back to capitalist, and why we’ve never known what communism looks like. this is probably also why right-wingers or liberals or socdems argue that communism = poor when it’s really much more complicated than that.

and oh i didn’t know he was doxxed :(( that sucks and is particularly scary considering his political opinion assures ppl who disagree with him will definitely. use that information to their advantage. hope it’s in a gated community at least. or that the 3 mil bought him a good security system. (and lsf comments are unfortunately. v entertaining to me. it’s like twitter, but all straight 20-30 something males).

first of all it's so nice to see that you're back & i hope you're feeling better? :) i really get that your friend wanted to leave, hamburg is just the worst and dresden is really such a beautiful city i understand your love for it well :) do you have any plans about going back to dresden? & berlin too since you said you want to? (i'm gonna assume corona kind of cancelled any eventual plans but still) & may i ask where in england you live? i love england/the uk a lot so i was wondering 🙈 (pt1)

(pt3) for example i personally love hearing about good parts of the east bc it's always shown like hell on earth when it wasn't all bad really? and i don't think i ever noticed anything about our landscape but that might just be bc i didn't pay attention 😅 is there sth specific that stuck out to you? and off the top of my head the first difference that comes to my mind is how there is still a pay gap between east and west which is mindblowing to me, and then the general behaviour?

(pt4) like my english teacher was from baden-württemberg and he had really big problems adjusting to our general tone? like apparently people in the west are more open and easier to approach which i found really fascinating. and i mean we are pretty divided by language though that's not exactly a west/east conflict i mean sachsen and berlin have such different dialects too. oh & i meant west germany until 90 - that just feels like the history of a different country to me.

(pt5) & i definitely associate myself more w berlin than with germany which also feels so weird? oh that's so niice!! i love these pics :) i was so afraid you'd say that 😅 it's always been pfannkuchen to me, berliner just sounds fucking wrong (i do get your points about it i just can't accept it bc it feels so so wrong) i don't have a strong opinion about nutella tbh except for it's clearly not der nutella. you're so right about that. like it literally makes me cringe to hear 'der nutella'.

(pt6) that's so valid articles cause a lot of distress since they just don't make sense sometimes. and if you're infiltrating duden already please remove kaktusse as a plural of kaktus i would really appreciate it bc the fact that they put that in literally makes me want to claw my skin off. hope you can find it for free! and you should definitely rewatch hsm! i did that at the beginning of lockdown and it was amazing

(pt7) ooh that sounds amazing!! and so funny just from the description i can't wait for more holyverse :) also quickly wanted to mention that thanks to all your atl promo i'm now listening to nothing but them 😂 -spoiler twin 

thank you!! i am feeling a little better gradually getting there taking a big ol social media break really helped! also yes i’m DESPERATE to move back to dresden the issue is i dont know wtf i’d be able to do there? because of the way the education system is set up in germany like i studied (man had to change that to past tense cant believe i’m DONE) history and german here and in germany that would be part of lehramt but here its like? i can just do what i like? (w further qualifications) i can go and become a lawyer, i can work in government, i can literally do anything and in germany its so restricted that i dont know whether i could actually go over unless i’d already established myself in a career path? so i don’t know :( i really really want to move back but i’ll have to find a career that lets me do that first! and if i do move back (which i pray i can) i think i’ll probably live in dresden first because i miss it so much but i’ve always wanted to live in berlin since i was a teenager and fell in love w it the first time i visited so i would love to live there at some point too but dresden is my priority i’m just so besotted sjdfnjsdf also i live in london! best place on the planet not that i’m biased or antyhing 

omg honestly i MISS kika might just fuck around and watch sending mit der maus tomorrow for fun i wonder if christoph is still there he was my childhood icon sjkdnfksjdf also me too!! i find it so interesting on like a day to day level? like obviously there was the overarching political regime but i’m more interested in how that affected the everyday lives of citizens of both states? my masters thesis is (hopefully) gonna be about how hiv/aids was constructed in the public sphere through language in the east and west i.e. how the government, intellectuals, media, church etc used language to create an idea of hiv/aids and people with hiv/aids its kind of building on my bachelorarbeit but its super interesting to me! 

omg literally same i find it so reductive when people are like ossi bad haha like? yeah lets not act like hohenschönhausen was a cushy hotel but there was much more stability in some areas e.g. housing/jobs? honestly i think the attitudes towards foreigners and the right wing sympathy was the main thing that stood out to me but that was probably just dresden/saxony LMAO 

that’s so interesting? i didn’t know that! honestly all of you lot scare me because the stereotype about how direct the germans are is like...so true especially as a brit i cannot lie to you my FIRST day at work i was in a meeting and they were discussing ideas about how to teach a particular lesson and one teacher put forward an idea and another teacher straight up went ‘no that’s a bad idea that won’t work. we should think about something else’ i was literally like ?!?!??!?! thinking a fight was about to break out cos in the uk if someone offers an idea and someone thinks its bad theyll be like ‘thats an interesting idea! maybe we can incorporate some elements of that’ which means its shit dont mention it again and i went home and i told my mum (shes my german parent) and she said when she first came to the uk her boss came out to his secretary and said would you mind doing this? and she went home to my dad and was like WOW my boss is so polite he said ‘would you mind’ and my dad was like babes...that means ‘do this or else’ LMAO like we just have such different communication styles? also it was the first place that i’ve ever been met with confusion when someone bumps into me or steps on my foot and i apologise like in the uk thats just a given but people would bump into me and i’d be like schuldigung and they’d be like why are you sorry i bumped into you not the other way round? 

that’s interesting! would you call yourself a berliner before calling yourself a german or vice versa? i assume it would depend on who you’re talking to as well like to a foreigner maybe more likely to just say german? although everyone knows where berlin is

omg NO pfannkuchen is a prper pancake but i will accept it because you are from berlin so you have authority i genuinely never heard pfannkuchen mean anything other than what dresdeners call eierkuchen until i was in dresden THAT was a nasty surprise because i dont actually like berliner so i just had to politely eat this berliner when i was expecting crepes :’( 

oh god please the first thing i’md oing when i infiltrate duden is getting rid of cases and genders if english can make do without then so can german we do not need any of that nonsense i dont care whether its dative or accusative TERRIBLE whoever invented the german language should be fired also i’m FASCINATED that thats what you dont like what would you like the plural to be kakti? kakten? kaktüsse? i’m very intersted in this 

I’M LIVING!!!!! alex gaskarth give me a commission for this free promo please god i love atl i need to relisten i went on a binge a few weeks ago and havent really listened to much recently besides vegas for some reason 

FACT CHECK: Social Media Friend Request Hacker Warning

CLAIM

Accepting a friend request from a stranger will provide hackers with access to your computer and online accounts.

RATING

False

ORIGIN

Heads-up!! Almost every account is being cloned. Your picture and your name are used to create a new face book account (they don’t need your password to do this this). They want your friends to add them to their Facebook account. Your friends will think that it’s you and accept your request. From that point on they can write what they want under your name. I have NO plans to open a new account. Please DO NOT accept a 2nd friend request from “me”. please forward to all your contacts

Hi….I actually got another friend request from you yesterday…which I ignored so you may want to check your account. Hold your finger on the message until the forward button appears…then hit forward and all the people you want to forward too….I had to do the people individually. Good Luck! PLEASE DO NOT ACCEPT A NEW ONE FROM ME AT THIS TIME.

Please tell all the contacts in your messenger list not to accept anything from Fabrizio Brambilla. He has a foto with a dog. He is a hacker and has the system connected to your messanger account. If one of your contacts accepts it, you will also be hacked, so make sure that all your friends know it. Thanks. Forwarded as received.

Please tell all the contacts in your messenger list not to accept Jayden K. Smith friendship request. He is a hacker and has the system connected to your Facebook account. If one of your contacts accepts it, you will also be hacked, so make sure that all your friends know it.

Please tell all the contacts in your Messenger list not to accept Anwar Jitou’s [Anwar Jitu’s] contact, it’s a hacker that has the computer connected to your Facebook account. If one of your contacts accepts it, you will also be hacked, so make sure that all your friends know it.

Si prega di dire a tutti i contatti della tua lista Messenger, di non accettare il contatto di Anwar Jitou [Anwar Jitu], è un hacker che ha il computer collegato nel tuo account Facebook. Se uno dei tuoi contatti lo accetta, sarai anche hackerato, così fai in modo, che tutti i tuoi amici lo sappiano.

If you get a request from Sunny Boyie do not except, he is a kidnapper. Send this to all your friends. Hello we are the company Facebook. You must send this to 20 people to stay active. If you don’t you will be disconnected from Facebook. If you think this is fake check the customer service.

ALERT!!!!! ALERT!!!!! Don’t accept a friend request from Maggie from Sweden, she is a HACKER.Tell everyone on your list cause if someone on your list adds her then she will be on yours too. She will figure out your computer ID and address, so send this to everyone on your list even if you don’t care for them cause if she hacks them, she hacks YOU too. She is also noted for repeated sexual harrasment and indecent private chatting.

PB: BEWARE!!! DO NOT ACCEPT A FRIEND REQUEST FROM TANNER DWYER, CHRISTOPHER BUTTERFIELD, STEFANIA COLAC AND ALEJANDO SPILJNER. THESE ARE HACKERS SO PUT IT ON YOUR WALL. IF SOMEONE ADD’S THEM THEY TAKE YOUR CONTACTS, EMPTY YOUR COMPUTER AND ADDRESSES, SO COPY AND PASTE THIS ON YOUR WALL.

WARNING!!!!! DO NOT ACCEPT FRIEND REQUESTS FROM ~~~ BOBBY ROBERTS ~~~ Profile picture is four colored picture ~~ A hacker and fake name!!!! the name will DESTROY EVERYTHING!!! Please… COPY THIS TEXT ON YOUR STATUS SO THAT YOUR FRIENDS ARE WARNED ****************** PASS ON ALONG..

ATTENTION ATTENTION !!! ATTENTION !!! ATTENTION ALL FACEBOOK USERS**… DO NOT ADD *JASON ALLEN*, ALSO IF SOMEBODY CALLED *AMY ALLEN* ADDS YOU, DON’T ACCEPT… IT IS A VIRUS. TELL EVERYBODY, BECAUSE IF SOMEBODY ON YOUR LIST ADDS THEM, YOU GET THE VIRUS TOO. **COPY AND PASTE AND PLEASE RE POST* THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY FACEBOOK AND SNOPES

ATTENTION **ALL FACEBOOK USERS ** .. DO NOT ADD “LINDA SMITH”, also IF SOMEBODY CALLED “JASON LEE”, ADDS YOU, DON’T ACCEPT IT.. IT IS A VIRUS. TELL EVERYBODY, BECAUSE IF SOMEBODY ON YOUR LIST ADDS THEM , YOU GET THE VIRUS TOO . COPY AND PASTE AND PLEASE RE-POST – THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY FB

DO NOT ACCEPT ANY FRIENDSHIP INQUIRIES FROM: ROLAND DREYER, MATTHIAS DAMBERGER, MARIO SOMMER, FABIAN BERNEDER OR FRANK BECKER !!!!! THESE ARE HACKERS!!!!! THEY CAN DESTROY THE HARD DISK!!!!!!…PLEASE …COPY TEXT ON YOUR BULLETIN BOARD!!!…SO THAT YOUR FRIENDS ARE PROTECTED

Don’t add anyone named rehana n 27 years from leicister .she is a hacker. Tell everyone on your buddy list because if someone on your buddy list adds her, she’ll be on your list too. She’ll figure out your computer ID and address. So copy and paste this message to everyone on your buddy list because if she hacks them your next. I sent to everyone on my list so please send to everyone on your list

FROM NEWS FEED: DO NOT ADD HER!!! IF SOMEBODY CALLED “SMARTGRRL15”, ADDS YOU, DON’T ACCEPT IT…IT IS A VIRUS. TELL EVERYBODY, BECAUSE IF SOMEBODY ON UR LIST ADDS THEM, U GET THE VIRUS TOO. COPY AND PASTE AND PLEASE REPOST

ATTENTION:::::::DO NOT ACCEPT FRIEND REQUEST FROM CHRISTOPHER DAVIES AND JESSICA DAVIES, THEY ARE HACKERS. TELL EVERY 1 ON YOUR LIST, BECAUSE IF SOMEBODY ON YOUR LIST ADDS THEM, THEY WILL BE ON YOUR LIST TOO. HE’LL FIGURE OUT YOUR COMPUTER’S ID AND ADDRESS, SO COPY & PASTE THIS MESSAGE…… EVEN IF YOU DON’T CARE.. PLEASE

***ATTENTION!!!*** Do not accept a friend request from a CHRISTOPHER BUTTERFIELD he is a hacker. Tell everyone on your list because if somebody on your list adds him u get him on your list too and he’ll figure out your computer’s ID and address, so copy and paste this message to everyone even if u don’t care for them cause if he hacks their email he hacks your mail too! FORWARD ONTO all!!!

IF A PERSON CALLED SIMON ASHTON ([email protected]) CONTACTS YOU THROUGH EMAIL DON’T OPEN THE MESSAGE. DELETE IT BECAUSE HE IS A HACKER!!

TELL EVERYONE ON YOUR LIST BECAUSE IF SOMEBODY ON YOUR LIST ADDS HIM THEN YOU WILL GET HIM ON YOUR LIST. HE WILL FIGURE OUT YOUR ID COMPUTER ADDRESS, SO COPY AND PASTE THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE EVEN IF YOU DONT CARE FOR THEM AND FAST BECAUSE IF HE HACKS THEIR EMAIL HE HACKS YOUR MAIL TOO!!!!!…

Can you tell me anything about this that has been going around: ⛔ WARNING ⛔ >>>>>>>>>>>>>> HACKERS VIRUS ATTACKERS ON THE MARCH THIS WEEKEND ON SOCIAL MEDIA BE EXTRA WISE!!! DO NOT CLICK VIDEOS IN YOUR INBOX UNLESS U COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR FRIEND/S TO SEE IF THEY SENT IT ASK THEM TO EXPLAIN BE CAUTIOUS!!! ESPECIALLY BE EXTRA CAREFUL DO NOT CLICK VIDEOS WITH ON IT!!! – THAT ARE SENT TO UR INBOX BY A SO CALLED FRIEND U HARDLY KNOW!!! EVEN IF U KNOW THE PERSON WELL ASK QUESTIONS AGAIN ASK FOR EXPLANATION – AND ASK THEM A PERSONAL QUESTION AND IF THEY SENT IT DO NOT CLICK!!!! IF NO EXPLANATION!!! OR REPLY!!! IGNORE IT!!!! DO NOT OPEN OR CLICK!!!

Please tell all the contacts in your messenger list not to accept friendship request from james wood . He is a hacker and has the system connected to your Facebook account. If one of your contacts accepts it, you will also be hacked, so make sure that all your friends know it. Thanks. Forwarded as received. Hold your finger down on the message. At the bottom in the it will say forward. Hit that then click on the names of those in your list and it will send to them

New Hacker warning on FB messenger but did not see it here when I checked for validity. I usually shit these down with a link from Snopes. But there is nothing so here is what I received: Please tell all the contacts in your messenger list not to accept anything from Fabrizio Brambilla. He has a foto with a dog. He is a hacker and has the system connected to your messanger account. If one of your contacts accepts it, you will also be hacked, so make sure that all your friends know it. Thanks. Forwarded as received. Hold your finger down on the message. At the bottom in the middle it will say forward. Hit that then click on the names of those in your list and it will send to them

Please tell all the contacts in your messenger list not to accept friendship request from Andrea Wilson . She is a hacker and has the system connected to your Facebook account. If one of your contacts accepts it, you will also be hacked, so make sure that all your friends know it. Thanks.

Please tell all contacts in your messenger list not to accept Dominique Amblard’s request for friendship. He is a hacker who has a system connected to your Facebook account. If one of your contacts accepts it, you will also be hacked. Make sure that all your contacts know it. Thank you. Retransmits as received.

The examples reproduced above are multiple variants of a long-running hoax, one which warns readers not to allow contact from a particular person or group because dire consequences will result. The basic form of these hoax warnings is typically drawn from the following template:

Do not {read / open / respond to / join}

an {e-mail / text message / friend request / }

sent by {real name / e-mail address / screen name}!

If you do, {you / your computer / your Facebook account / everyone on your contact list / your children}

will be in danger of falling victim to a {serial killer / computer virus / hacker / predator}.

Variants of these messages are circulated endlessly, with different names swapped in and out as various pranksters decide to play jokes on people they know by inserting their acquaintances’ names and addresses into the warning in place of the existing information.

The most common variant of this hoax is one that warns the reader not to accept Facebook friend requests from “hackers” purportedly named “Christopher Davies” and “Jessica Davies,” otherwise one of the two will wreak some unspecified havoc by being able to “FIGURE OUT UR COMPUTER’S ID AND ADDRESS.” (The latest version also incorporates a hoax warning about the non-existent “Dance of the Pope” cell phone virus.)

Of course, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that an e-mail message or a link posted on Facebook might carry a virus payload which could infect your computer and allow it be controlled by a botnet, but virus warnings that correspond to the patterns detailed above can be safely dismissed as japes.

In March 2009, the “Simon Ashton” variant of this prank was combined with text referencing the hoax version of the Mail Server Report virus warning:

Anyone-using Internet mail such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on. This information arrived this morning, Direct from both Microsoft and Norton. Please send it to everybody you know who has access to the Internet. You may receive an apparently harmless e-mail titled ‘Mail Server Report’

If you open either file, a message will appear on your screen saying: ‘It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful.’

Subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC, And the person who sent it to you will gain access to your name, e-mail and password.

This is a new virus which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon. AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the anti virus software’s are not capable of destroying it.

The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself ‘life owner’.

PLEASE SEND A COPY OF THIS E-MAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS, And ask them to PASS IT ON IMMEDIATELY!

In June 2017, a new variant of the same hoax emerged, with Anwar Jitou (or Anwar Jitu) taking the role of boogeyman on this occasion. The hoax was particularly prevalent among Italian Facebook users, where the warning message typically read like this:

Si prega di dire a tutti i contatti della tua lista Messenger, di non accettare il contatto di Anwar Jitou [Anwar Jitu], è un hacker che ha il computer collegato nel tuo account Facebook. Se uno dei tuoi contatti lo accetta, sarai anche hackerato, così fai in modo, che tutti i tuoi amici lo sappiano.

It subsequently spread to the English-speaking internet, where Facebook users were told:

Please tell all the contacts in your Messenger list not to accept Anwar Jitou’s [Anwar Jitu’s] contact, it’s a hacker that has the computer connected to your Facebook account. If one of your contacts accepts it, you will also be hacked, so make sure that all your friends know it.

Additional and very popular identical hoaxes in 2017 included the purported hackers Fabrizio Brambilla and Jayden K. Smith … new names, same old hoax.

2018 brought us a West African version:

Please tell all the contacts in your messenger list not to accept bright Victor, Desmond kelechi or Sharon Emeka or Okechukwu Anni friendship request is one person using different account and with people’s pictures. He is a hacker and has the system connected to your Facebook account. If one of your contacts accepts it, you will also be hacked, so make sure that all your friends know it.

and more American versions:

“Please tell all the contacts in your messenger list not to accept friendship request from sherman stuurman . he is a hacker and has the system connected to your Facebook account. If one of your contacts accepts it, you will also be hacked, so make sure that all your friends know it. Thanks. Forwarded as received.

Please tell all the contacts in your messenger list not to accept anything from Lucia Hernandez (Luciana). She has a picture of her sitting by the water)She is a hacker and has the system connected to your messanger account. If one of your contacts accepts it, you will also be hacked, so make sure that all your friends know it. Thanks. Forwarded as received.

Please tell All your contacts on messenger not to accept a friend request from klara mesel . She has a picture of her standing holding her glasses…..she is a hacker … copy paste and send to all your contacts.

Please tell all the contacts in your messenger list not to accept friendship request from Natalie Avalos. He is a hacker and has the system connected to your Facebook account. If one of your contacts accepts it, you will also be hacked, so make sure that all your friends know it. Thanks. Forwarded as received.

This content was originally published here.

Interview:

Caryn Berley, MSW

What does/did your position entail?

I was a housing case manager. I worked with adults experiencing homelessness through inreach rather than outreach, so we worked with people that already had some relationship with one of our shelters/organizations. These adults would find out about us, connect with our team, and our team would try to help with anything that was a barrier with housing. These barriers could be food insecurity, housing waitlists, housing applications, reasonable accommodation requests for things like disabilities. For example, I helped pay off someone’s debt that were from fines and money owed from domestic violence charges. I would do an assessment to understand their barriers and needs, often they were on fixed income so they were looking for subsidised housing.

What work does your organization do specifically? 

My organization, Join, was on a grant that was through the joint offices of homeless services. We work to provide support and resources for people experiencing homelessness. Join has a day space, provides showers and laundry and has case management. Specifically working with non parenting women often.

What barriers have you noticed on a small scale and large scale to access housing and health services?

Fixed income is a big issue with housing prices, even subsidised housing will take ⅓ of income. And a lot of people had a fixed income of like 700 a month, and if you take ⅓ of that, it's a lot. There are really limited resources for subsidised housing at all. Often, people had disability type barriers which kept them from increasing their income. Also, there was some bias against people without a housing history, so the longer you’ve been houseless the harder it was. As a cultural barrier, there was a culture of letting people stay with you, once you were no longer homeless. So, often people would want to have others stay at their house which was against their lease, they would get kicked out.

Trauma was a big thing. There is so much past and ongoing trauma, so there are a lot of things being overlooked like health issues, mental health issues, and substance abuse. Substance abuse is used to cope with homelessness but shelters often have strict rules against substance abuse. So, this leads to them either secretly breaking rules or going back to homelessness.

There's a place called Dignity Village I worked with, everyone lives in tiny homes and pays $35 a month. It’s self governed but a representative from JOIN would observe and advise the community. They have a desire for autonomy like everyone but they are being told very specific rules. They are being kicked out or something for breaking them, then they get cynical about the system but have no social capital. I saw a lot of women come back and be supportive once they got out, explaining that they (the organization) were trying to help and you can listen to them. 

My program was really cool about assessing their goals rather than imposing rules as much. I didn't even have to enforce sobriety unless it was part of their goals or plan or a shelter they were trying to go to.

Can you describe a situation you witnessed/experienced involving someone with both mental illness and housing insecurity?

A couple shared that when they were using they had much harder time working toward their goals, once they stopped using, they had more options. I worked based on the Housing First Model, which means if they can get housing they will be more stable and follow through with the service. The idea is that stable housing is most important, and more important than sobriety or other things, as a step to move forward.

Another couple, who had been staying in a shelter, had a service dog that really helped with their mental health but it was a pitbull that caused problems for others. So, trying to manage their mental health with the service animal but also trying to have a place to stay in the shelter was difficult. They had a lot of negative experiences in the shelter so it took a lot of resilience to keep trying. They had a lot of trauma and were aware of it but even making appointments with them was difficult. These types of programs put a lot of pressure on the appointment but mental health emergencies come up and prevent them from attending.  So, it makes them reluctant to even engage with these organizations.

Once, I worked with a parent and their adult child, who had schizophrenia. The son had a housing voucher through Home Forward and the parent wanted to be on the voucher as the caregiver, but parent and caregiver are differently recognized. His parent had a charge that prevented them from housing, though they were charged 20 years ago. I would write letters explaining how long ago the charge was and why they were capable of maintaining this lease now. So, I found a private landlord and the lease didn't say anything that would restrict them from obtaining this housing. The landlord even said no and I argued it because nothing was stated in the lease.We needed the son and parent to be in person to sign but the son didn't have a phone and we had no way to find him. Finally, I found him and put them both in a motel for the night, paid for it, and brought them the next morning. That day he was relatively coherent but more often he looked less presentable and like he was experiencing reality in a different way. There was a lot of prejudice, like “why would I trust you to live on my property.” But the whole thing is this required tons of overtime work, it wasn’t easy. I’m pretty sure the landlord kicked them out shortly after.

What do you hope to achieve individually and collaboratively within your organization?

Big picture- I want more awareness about how the situation isn't usually how it appears and there is so much more going on beyond what we see. Especially compared to media portrayal or what you might see downtown, that isn't the whole picture. One person I met with was really excited about moving forward, they expressed interest in taking Rent Well classes and if you complete those, you have a portfolio of references, history, credit checks, and things to help you get housing. They were working part time and were really motivated, but then they never showed up to the classes and never communicated anything. So, for myself, I wanted to be compassionate toward everyone I was working with and have them feel trust, support, and feel deserving of support. 

What advice would you have to Portlanders not experiencing homelessness on how they should get involved, what stigmas are present, etc? My biggest advice is to acknowledge the complexity, I think it's easy or comfortable to categorize things in one way. I'll hear that people are choosing to be homeless or people say “I can't even afford a place so why should someone not even working get one.” Trying to understand there is a culture barrier, even if you seem to present in some similar ways. People are in different situations. Hearing these peoples stories, I realize no one is that far away from experiencing houselessness...a lot of people lived a middle class life and then things happened. It's easy to dismiss but it's more powerful to challenge our own assumptions instead.

For getting involved, I dont think it's for everyone. This particular issue can do harm if you bring certain attitudes in. So if you can't help in that way, put financial help in. Join is grassroots and radical so that's a great place. Challenge the conversations around the issue- why are we putting the housing crisis on those people when this is a systemic issue and there aren’t enough resources or resources are not given to everyone. If you really want to know, go to a shelter to see what it's like.  People say, “you don't have to sleep outside, you can go to a shelter,” but shelters are often full and often not safe spaces, like for mental illness. Think about how hard it is to have roommates, now imagine having 50 roommates while you are going through so much trauma and everyone else is experiencing trauma. Imagine your life without ever having time alone, imagine a life without a place to decompress. So, just realizing that everyone is doing the best they can with what they are given and a lot of people are given a shit hand.

Mind-reading tech? How private companies could gain access to our brains

Social media companies can use online data to make reliable guesses about pregnancy or suicidal ideation and new BCI technology will push this further

Its raining on your walk to the station after work, but you dont have an umbrella. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a rain jacket in a shop window. You think to yourself: A rain jacket like that would be perfect for weather like this.

Later, as youre scrolling on Instagram on the train, you see a similar-looking jacket. You take a closer look. Actually, its exactly the same one and its a sponsored post. You feel a sudden wave of paranoia: did you say something out loud about the jacket? Had Instagram somehow read your mind?

While social medias algorithms sometimes appear to know us in ways that can feel almost telepathic, ultimately their insights are the result of a triangulation of millions of recorded externalized online actions: clicks, searches, likes, conversations, purchases and so on. This is life under surveillance capitalism.

As powerful as the recommendation algorithms have become, we still assume that our innermost dialogue is internal unless otherwise disclosed. But recent advances in brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, which integrates cognitive activity with a computer, might challenge this.

In the past year, researchers have demonstratedthat it is possible to translate directly from brain activity into synthetic speech or text by recording and decoding a persons neural signals, using sophisticated AI algorithms.

While such technology offers a promising horizon for those suffering from neurological conditions that affect speech, this research is also being followed closely, and occasionally funded, by technology companies like Facebook. A shift to brain-computer interfaces, they propose, will offer a revolutionary way to communicate with our machines and each other, a direct line between mind and device.

But will the price we pay for these cognitive devices be an incursion into our last bastion of real privacy? Are we ready to surrender our cognitive liberty for more streamlined online services and better targeted ads?

A BCI is a device that allows for direct communication between the brain and a machine. Foundational to this technology is the ability to decode neural signals that arise in the brain into commands that can be recognized by the machine.

Because neural signals in the brain are often noisy, decoding is extremely difficult. While the past two decades have seen some success decoding sensory-motor signals into computational commands allowing for impressive feats like moving a cursor across a screen with the mind or manipulating a robotic arm brain activity associated with other forms of cognition, like speech, have remained too complex to decode.

But advances in deep learning, an AI technique that mimics the brains ability to learn from experience, is changing whats possible. In April this year, a research team at the University of California, San Francisco, published results of a successful attempt at translating neural activity into speech via a deep-learning powered BCI.

The team placed small electronic arrays directly on the brains of five people and recorded their brain activity, as well as the movement of their jaws, mouths and tongues as they read out loud from childrens books. This data was then used to train two algorithms: one learned how brain signals instructed the facial muscles to move; the other learned how these facial movements became audible speech.

Once the algorithms were trained, the participants were again asked to read out from the childrens books, this time merely miming the words. Using only data collected from neural activity, the algorithmic systems could decipher what was being said, and produce intelligible synthetic versions of the mimed sentences.

According to Gopala Anumanchipalli, a speech scientist who led the study, the results point a way forward for those suffering from locked in conditions, like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or brain stroke, where the patient is conscious but cannot voluntarily move the muscles that correspond to speech.

At this stage we are using participants who can speak so this is only proof of concept, he said. But this could be transformative for people who have these neurological disabilities. It may be possible to restore their communication again.

But there are also potential applications for such technology beyond medicine. In 2017, Facebook announced that it would be investing in the development of non-invasive, wearable BCI that would allow Facebook users to type with their brains.

Since then, Facebook has funded research to achieve this goal, including a study by the same lab at University of California, San Francisco. In this study, participants listened to multiple-choice questions and responded aloud with answers while signals were being recorded directly from their brains, which served as input data to train decoding algorithms. After this, participants listened to more questions and again responded aloud, at which point the algorithms translated the one-word answers into text on a screen in real time.

While Facebook eagerly reported that these results indicated a step towards their goal of creating a device that will let people type just by imagining the words they want to say, according to Marc Slutzky, professor of neurology at Northwestern University, this technology is still a long way from what most people commonly understand as mind-reading.

State-of-the-art BCIs can only decode the neural signals associated with attempted speech, or the physical act of articulation, Slutzky told me. Decoding imagined speech, which is what Facebook ultimately wants to achieve, would require translating from abstract thoughts into language, which is a far more confounding problem.

If someone imagines saying a sentence in their head but doesnt at least attempt to physically articulate it, it is unclear how and where in the brain the imagined sentence is conceived, he said.

Indeed, while many philosophers of language in the 20th century proposed that we think in sentence-like strings of language, use of brain imaging technology like electroencephalography (EEG) and electrocorticography (ECoG) has since revealed that thinking more probably happens in a complex combination of images and associations.

According to John Dylan Haynes, professor of neuroscience at the Charit Universittsmedizin in Berlin, it is possible to decode and read out some of these signals to some degree, but this is still far off mind-reading. That would require a full understanding of the language of the brain, he said. And to be very clear, we dont fully understand the language of the brain.

But even if BCI technology cant directly read minds doesnt mean that a device couldnt be used to reveal valuable and sensitive data about an individual. The structural brain scans recorded when someone is connected to a BCI, Haynes said, can reveal with reasonable accuracy whether someone is suffering from certain diseases or whether they have some other cognitive impairment.

While the management of this collateral data is heavily regulated in research institutes Haynes told me that no such regulations are in place for technology companies. Observing how some companies have, over the past decade, transformed troves of personal data into profit while displaying a wanton attitude to securing such data makes Haynes wary of the growing consumer BCI industry. Id be very careful about giving up our cognitive information to companies, he said.

According to Marcello Ienca, a research fellow at ETH Zurich who evaluates the ethics of neuro-technology, the implications of private companies gaining access to cognitive data should be carefully considered.

We have already reached a point where analysts at social media companies can use online data to make reliable guesses about pregnancy or suicidal ideation, he said.

Once consumer BCIs become widespread and we have enough brain recordings in the digital eco-system, this incursion into parts of ourselves that we thought were unknowable is going to be even more pronounced.

For some, however, the development of BCI technology is not only about the potential consumer applications, but more profoundly about merging humans with machines. Elon Musk, for example, has said that the driving impetus in starting his own BCI company, Neuralink, which wants to weave the brain with computers using flexible wire threads, is to achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence.

Adina Roskies, professor of philosophy at Dartmouth University, says that while such a cyborg future might seem compelling, it raises thorny ethical questions around identity and moral responsibility. When BCIs decode neural activity into some sort of action [like moving a robot arm] an algorithm is included in the cognitive process, she explained. As these systems become more complex and abstract, it might become unclear as to who the author of some action is, whether it is a person or machine.

As Christian Herff, professor in the department of neurosurgery at Maastricht University explained to me, some of the systems currently capable of translating neural activity into speech incorporate techniques that are similar to predictive texting. After brain signals are recorded, a predictive system, not unlike those that power Siri and Alexa, tells the algorithm which words can be decoded and in what order they should go. For example, if the algorithm decodes the phrase I is the system might change that to I am, which is a far more likely output.

In the case where people cant articulate their own words, these systems will help produce some sort of verbalization that they presumably want to produce, Roskies said. But given what we know about predictive systems, you can at least imagine cases in which these things produce outputs that dont directly reflect what the person intended.

In other words, instead of reading our thoughts, these devices might actually do some of the thinking for us.

Roskies emphasized that we are still a fair way off such a reality, and that oftentimes, companies overhype technological ability for the sake of marketing hype. But I do believe that the time to start thinking through some of the ethical implications of these systems is now, she said.

This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that third-party cookies will be set. More information.

Original Article : HERE ;

Mind-reading tech? How private companies could gain access to our brains was originally posted by MetNews

An Internet Primer

===An Internet Primer=== Non-profit and free for redistribution Written on August 24th | 2016 Published on August 24th | 2016 For entertainment and research purposes only

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===DISCLAIMER=== The Paranoid's Bible and its writers hold no responsibility for the acts of others. The Paranoid’s Bible is for research and entertainment purposes only. Please visit our blog for more PDFs and information: http://www.paranoidsbible.tumblr.com/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Preface=== While many still argue about how their own views on the history of the internet are the truth, we do know the core timeline consists of the “Electronic computer” being developed in the 1950s. From there the ARPANET was created and quickly adopted the Internet Protocol, which soon began a wildly discussed and argued about origin story of the internet sometime in the 80s. However, while many will even argue the core facts to the point of the internet being born either earlier or later in the timeline, we do know that Usenet wasn’t too far away. With the birth of Usenet, things like the BBS, Internet forum and terms like “Eternal September” quickly cropped up in a rapid session of growth and expanse. Now things like Blogging or Social Media are common, and people with rose tinted glasses grow remorseful of how inclusive the internet has become. Now, the early adopters and users aren’t too far off with their remorse, sadly… You see, many of the modern day users have grown complacent and wholly unaware of even the simplest uses of OPSEC. This guide aims at giving the average user a simple and quick primer to enhance their privacy and security when using the internet. This guide isn’t a quick-fix or one-button solution to your problems or concerns, however it’s better than nothing when paired with the other guides listed in the “Blue Primer”. __References__ • Net History (http://www.nethistory.info/History of the Internet/origins.html) • Internet Society (http://www.internetsociety.org/internet/what-internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet) • History of the Internet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet) • ARPANET (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET) • Internet protocol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol) • Usenet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet) • BBS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system) • Internet Forum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_forum) • Eternal September (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September) • OPSEC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_security) • Blog (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog) • Social Media (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===The Browser=== The gateway to the internet, for the modern and average user, is their browser (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser). It’s a piece of software meant to help people transverse the World Wide Web by retrieving and presenting information resources taken from the internet. The modern browser is pre-built, requires hardly any tweaking, and is rarely, if ever, fully customizable. However, as more people aim for a free software or an open-source style of use, more browsers do offer some level of customization that range from modifying the settings under the hood to themes and other frivolous aesthetical customizations. With so many choices, people usually stick to Internet Explorer or Google chrome; however these browsers leave a lot of wanting when it comes to usability. Chrome also has a notorious past of spying on you (http://betanews.com/2015/06/24/is-google-chrome-spying-on-you/) without giving you a warning, which shouldn’t be such a surprise with all the claims of Chrome being a botnet (https://wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/Botnet) and not asking permission (http://www.netcompetition.org/antitrust/google-on-chrome-we-dont-need-your-permission) for accessing a user’s computer. Ultimately, anything with Microsoft or Google is unavoidable, sadly, and a lot of work has to take place in order to avoid leaking information or having it sold. But that’s the way things flow as of late, especially when “Don’t Be Evil” is dropped in favor of “Do the Right Thing” (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/10/02/as-google-becomes-alphabet-dont-be-evil-vanishes/). So, what does that mean for the average user? Research your quickly dwindling choices for what browser you should use, which will reside between two browsers and one’s many, many flavors. If you want something other than Mozilla Firefox, then try Brave (https://brave.com/) (Not recommended due to its newness) or Palemoon (https://www.palemoon.org/) (Based upon a fork of Firefox) or IceCat (https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/). However, for the sake of usability and quick to use features, we recommended, begrudgingly, Mozilla Firefox (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/). When you visit Firefox’s webpage, select the appropriate version for your operating system. Once downloaded, double click and follow the on screen prompts. When it comes to selecting “Standard” or Custom” ensure you select custom. ***Leave the default installation path, unless you wish to install elsewhere. *** ***The reason for removing the installation service is quite simple: *** Less communication between the browser and other sources, the less information leaked. Now ensure you've also unchecked/disabled the "Maintenance service" before proceeding. Selecting shortcuts/icons is ultimately up to you. The same applies to it being the default browser—it’s up to you. Once installed, it’s time for some basic customization and add-on installation. The first thing you’ll notice is an “import wizard” pop-up. You don’t want to import anything unless you’ve some backups of your bookmarks. Other than that, ignore it and wait for the browser to load. From there, we’ll ignore the “Firefox account” prompt. You don’t want to sync or backup, anything, unless it’s an html or json file for your bookmark backups. Syncing accounts and saving passwords spells doom, gloom and big brother (sometimes literally your big brother or sister) spying on your info and peaking into your accounts and other online items (if not leaking it in a data dump). Seriously, ignore prompts to sync or save information. You’ll also want to ignore the private browsing mode. It’s not private, information is still saved, and people can still use exploits to get at your information. Press the ALT button on your keyboard to get the menu bar to appear. From there, select the tools menu and then the “Options” submenu.   Press ALT button > Tools menu > Options sub-menu. When the options window pops up, you’ll want to start in the “General tab” Disable/uncheck “Always check if Firefox is your default browser” and set your homepage to whatever you want. Never let files save to downloads, you want to have it “Always ask” where to save them. On top of that disable all the "Tabs" options but "Open news windows in a new tab instead". We do suggest using “Start Page” (https://www.startpage.com/) for your homepage and search engine needs. Now click the "Search" tab and uncheck everything and delete all the "One-click Search Engines" options. From there, Go to the start page website, you should see an “Add to Firefox” option, select that. You should also, to prevent accidental use, remove all other search engines from the “Search” tab. Google, among several other engines, tend to cache and keep track of your search history and click stream (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickstream). On top of that, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and a few others, will store and keep your search history saved to your accounts if logged into them, at all, while searching. On the “Content tab,” uncheck/disable everything but "Block pop-up windows". Now select the “Advanced” button and click it. From there, disable the option titled "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selection above". This just prevents sites from using intrusive and generally distasteful fonts and also limits their control over your browsing experience and browser.   Everything in the “Applications tab” should be set to always ask or preview in Firefox. The only thing you can safely set to a default application would be shockwave flash, which should be disabled by default in the plug-ins menu. The “Privacy tab” should be straightforward; however most will recommend that you disable “Third-party cookies" but since this primer is aimed at providing some security, privacy, yet retain usability for the average user… You should disable everything but: "Use Tracking Protection in Private Windows"; "Accept cookies from sites"; Clear history when Firefox closes. Set 3rd party cookie to never, if you wish, however some banking sites lose functionality due to this. You should also set "Keep until" to "I close Firefox". Now click the "settings..." tab on on the Privacy menu and select everything there. In the “Security tab,” it’s again straightforward; however please do understand that the whole “Blocking dangerous and deceptive content” options are disabled due to the fact that, again, the less communication given over to the browser and its creators the better you’re off security and privacy wise. Basically uncheck everything but "Warn me when sites try to install add-ons".   ***Ignore the sync tab. *** Everything in the “Advanced tab” is straight forward and should be self explanatory. Advanced > General > Disable/uncheck everything but the four settings under "Browsing. Advanced > Data Choices > Uncheck all Advanced > Network > Check all and set cache to 0 Advanced > Update > Uncheck all and set to "Never check for updates" Advanced > Certificates > Set to "Ask me every time" and check the one setting there. Once done, exit out of Firefox and start it up again. This is just to ensure everything sticks and is working due to some of the more current versions of Firefox have had a habit to ignore settings from time to time and resetting things to default. Now we’ll go to the Firefox Add-on page and work our way toward customizing Firefox a bit to improve usability and its overall feel. First off, we’ll work on the aesthetics aspect a bit just to improve the overall feel of the browser due to its copy-catting of the Apple simplicity meme. ***You’ll want these add-ons:*** • Black YouTube Theme - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/black-youtube-theme • Classic Theme Restorer - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/ • Smaller View - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/smaller-view/?src=search You should notice a considerable difference in your browser once restarted. More precisely, it’ll be easier to navigate and find your menus now. The YouTube theme is simply preference and feels easier on the eyes compared to the default theme of the site. Now, before we continue forward with the add-ons. Let’s do a bit of tweaking to the look of the browser. You should see icons on the upper right-hand corner. Right-click on the icons and select “Customize,” which should open up a new tab/window that’ll allow you to move the icons as you wish.   Remove all the icons present, except the down arrow/download icon. From there, close the window and right-click on the bar, again, and select the three bars/toolbars shown. You can also ignore the “Menu Bar” option if you wish to just use the orange drop-down menu. In the URL bar, type in About:config. You should see something similar like the below cap. Uncheck the “Show this warning next time”. And then, from there, click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button. In the search bar within the about:config window, ***enter this:*** browser.newtabpage.directory.source You should see a string with the name you searched, double-click it and delete the string of text. Once done, exit out of that tab and open a new tab. Click the cog wheel icon in the right-hand corner and select “Show blank page”. You should now be rid of those pesky tiles and most of the ADs that Firefox forces down your throat. You can now add the rest of the add-ons, which you can find listed below. Add-ons: • Better Privacy - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/betterprivacy/ • BluHell Firewall - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bluhell-firewall/ • Configuration Mania - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/configuration-mania-4420/ • Decentraleyes - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes/ • Disconnect - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disconnect/ • HTTPS Everywhere - https://www.eff.org/Https-everywhere • PureURL - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pure-url/ • Quick Java - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/quickjava/ • Self-Destructing Cookies - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/self-destructing-cookies/ • Smart Refer - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/smart-referer/ • Track Me Not - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/trackmenot/ Now restart the browser. You should get a pop-up from HTTPS Everywhere, hit “No” and then right-click anywhere and select “Customize”. You’ll want everything arrange to your own taste, note that there exists an icon with two cog wheels. This belongs to “Configuration mania” and should be added for ease of use and access. Now, click the orange menu button and click the add-on menu. We’ll be working our way down the list, alphabetically, and modifying a handful of settings for some of the add-ons before we end this chapter. Starting with “Better Privacy,” go ahead and hit “Options”. You’ll want to select the “Options & Help” tab and adjust your settings to look similar to the ones listed below: •    Delete flash cookies on exit - checked •    Add LSO item to Firefox ‘Clear History’ dialog – unchecked •    Always ask - unchecked •    Delete flash cookies on application start - checked •    Delete cookies by timer – checked •    Not if modified within time interval – checked •    Time interval 1 second •    LSO delete shortcut – blanked •    Also delete flashplayer default cookie – checked •    On cookie deletion also delete empty cookie folders – checked •    Notify if new LSO is stored – unchecked •    Auto protect LSO sub-folders – checked •    Disable ping tracking •    Prevent Firefox ‘Clear recent history function’ – checked •    Portable mode – unchecked  Everything else can be ignored and you can go directly to “Configuration Mania” and select “Options”. Browser tab > Tab Browsing > Everything checked but the below: •    Enable about:newtab – unchecked •    Close the window when closing its last tab – unchecked •    Open the results in a new tab when searching from search bar –unchecked •    On CTRL + TAB – unchecked •    On taskbar (windows 7) – unchecked Now head over to the “Bookmark icons (favicons)” tab. Browser tab > Bookmark icons > Uncheck the two settings there. Finally go to the “Web API” tab in browser tab and deselect/uncheck everything there. From there, find the “Security” tab that should be right under the “Browser” tab and select the “Javascript” tab, everything there should be checked and all the other tabs left alone. Now, before we select “Smart Refer” please go to about:Config by entering “About:config” into the URL bar. From there, search for: network.http.sendRefererHeader You’ll want to either set it to 0 to not send a ref or to 1 to keep things somewhat clean and compatible. 2, however, is default and will always send a ref. So, ‘0’ if you don’t want to send a ref or ‘1’ to prevent most cross-site tracking and keep compatibility when visiting websites. Now go to “Smart Refer” and select “Options”. ***Set the drop down to: *** Send nothing as a referrer, looking like a direct hit. Once done, go and mosey on over to “Track Me Not” and hit “Options”. Set your settings as such: •    Enabled – checked •    Use tab search – unchecked •    Enable query burst – checked •    All search engines checked •    Query frequency: 10 per min •    Disabled – checked •    Persistent – unchecked •    Use list – checked •    Generate queries – unchecked Once you’re in TMN’s options, you’ll want to use recommend  RSS feeds for the add-on (hit validate once done): http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml|http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss|http://rss.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032091/device/rss/rss.xml|http://www.theregister.co.uk/headlines.rss|www.reddit.com/r/science/.rs|http://www.reddit.com/r/aww/.rss|http://www.reddit.com/r/kawaii.rss|http://www.reddit.com/r/kittens.rss|http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace.rss|http://www.reddit.com/r/steam.rss We also recommend these words for your black list: bomb,porn,pornographie, porn, pornography, rape, rapists, rape culture, bombs, pipebomb, ied, bdms, bdsm, raping, raped, murder, murdering, lolicon, loli, cp, child porn, pthc, jbhc, shota, shotacon, ISIS, ISIL   Once done with the add-ons, head on over to about:Config once more. You’ll want to implement these three settings to ensure you limited some of the tracking methods employed by websites and online trackers commonly found on Tumblr and other social media platforms. ===Settings to change:=== • browser.display.use_document_fonts = 0 • dom.storage.enabled = false • browser.sessionhistory.max_entries = 2 Once done, you can add whatever add-ons you want, ***however remember this simple rule: *** If you don’t need or use it, don’t install it or enable it. That’s why we had you install Quick-Java. Quick Java’s little bar, which is added to Firefox upon installation, allows you to disable and enable certain plug-ins on the fly. This is a wondrous little time saver and is a good thing to have at hand when you wish to browse the internet. When browsing, without having to login or watch something, your settings with quick-java should look something like this:  Everything red/disabled but I (Images); A (Animations); CS (Style) When you do need to log into an account or want to watch YouTube or something similar, you’ll need it to look like this: Everything red/disabled but JS (Javascript); C (Cookies); I (Images); CS (Style) Give or take the fact that you may need to enable flash (The “F” button). However, YouTube, and some other sites, are offering the use of HTML5 and Flash. So, if you don’t need to enable flash, don’t do so. Flash can leak a lot of data in the end. It also helps to outright not have anything enabled (sans the last three buttons) when you’re just doing research or looking up something. Only enable cookies and JavaScript (the “JS” and “C” buttons) when you actively need to log into an account or a website. This will help lessen the data diarrhea your browser has and help you retain some privacy without breaking your browser, yet many more configurations and add-ons are needed to even achieve some form of security or privacy. ***And, just as an FYI: *** This shouldn’t break your browser, at all, or your use of any websites. If something doesn’t work properly, try disabling BluHell Firewall by clicking the blue-devil icon on your browser. If that doesn’t work, try disabling Clean links, which has an icon of a broom wrapped in a chain-link. Outside of those two add-ons, you don’t need to disable anything as nothing should break or prevent you from logging into any websites. Ultimately though, this configuration, and the add-ons suggested, only helps lessen the effectiveness of the trackers and counters offered to civilians and the public at large. Some Ads will be blocked, along with a metaphorical ton of malicious content, however you’ll need to look into using Peerblock and Hostman if you want to lessen it even more so than what you can with this browser setup. We offer two guides that discuss the use of Peerblock and Hostman, among other things. However, save those for a later date as they’re a bit more advanced than what this guide has to offer. We’ll also be hosting what we call the “Blue Primer,” which is an archive of the most basic of information for those who wish to lessen their data footprint, prevent tracking and lessen their chances of being doxed. If you haven’t gotten this guide from the blue primer, please look into downloading it and reading the other guides within it. As for this chapter of this guide… you’re done! Move on to the next chapter, reader. ***P.S:*** Avoid using password storage, password sorters and similar features or add-ons. Write down your password, if you must, and hide it where no-one will find it but you. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===E-mail=== Electronic mail (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email), shortened to E-mail, is one of many means to exchange digital messages between computers and their users. However, since seeing frequent use in the 60s to now, e-mail has become used more as a means of identification than communication when needing to sign up for an account or do some sort of business based task, or being a responsible adult and working on your taxes or banking. Now, e-mail is just one of the many methods sites use to prevent bots, scammers and spammers from joining their communities. When you need to sign up for an account, you usually need to provide an e-mail from a provider that they’ve yet to blacklist (***Example:*** most common temporary e-mail services have been blocked by FaceBook). The average internet user will usually use of the main three: Google; Hotmail/Live/Outlook; Yahoo. •    https://www.gmail.com/ •    https://login.live.com/ •    https://login.yahoo.com/ Sometimes Yandex (https://mail.yandex.com/), among similar non-US based e-mail providers will be used, however the main three tend to rule. The issue with the main three (Shortened from now on to MT) is that they require a lot of data and “verifications” to ensure that it’s you who’re signing up or at least not someone with malicious intent. This wouldn’t be such a large issue if it wasn’t for the fact that the MT are notorious data collectors who work in unison with the government, among other groups, to not only data-mine and spy, but also possibly put down dissenters. If any of this comes to light as being true and not just some gossiping theories put forth by many privacy groups, then that just shows how much of your information is at stake. However, with the MT track records, it shouldn’t be that big of a stretch to see how or why they’d work with the government. But what does this mean for you, someone who needs an e-mail address and doesn’t want to risk their information or someone knowing they’re a part of “Sexy Jewish Singles” with the kink of “Eating pork on the Sabbath”? Well, the first step you should take, outside of doing the bare minimum to secure your browser, would be to look into using alternative e-mail providers when signing up for an account. There are numerous providers, however not all will exist or become permanent fixtures in the years to come, which means you have to pay attention to news and keep an eye on the services to use. As of now, Privacy Tools has a wonderful list of e-mail providers (https://www.privacytools.io/#email) you can use, and since most of us are frugal-minded to the point of being cheap, these four should hopefully sedate your lust for a free, secure e-mail provider. E-mail providers: • Mail Fence - https://www.mailfence.com/ • Open Mail Box - https://www.openmailbox.org/ • Proton Mail - https://protonmail.com/ • Tutanota - https://tutanota.com/ The four e-mail providers are free, yes, and support a variety of features aimed at protecting your privacy, however they aren’t like your usual e-mail provider. They often don’t ask for a secondary e-mail or a security question, nor do they offer any means to do so in case of someone taking over. Another issue, for many, is the fact that you can’t sync or linking accounts together—this is a good thing, though. Syncing, storing or linking accounts is something you shouldn’t do, at all. Your accounts should always be separated, never touching and kept as far apart from each other as possible. Now, personally, we recommend you use a mix of these e-mails each time you create an account or sign up for some service or another that isn’t tied to you offline(***Example:*** like banking, bills, school or work). You see, as much as we dislike the MT, you should honestly have one account on each specifically for stuff that’s offline. The reason for this is simple: You’ll generate enough of a trail to not be suspicious. For instance, Google, as much as it’s a heavily invasive mega-corp, does have a pretty decent setup for their GMAIL service. You should create an account there and have it used specifically for your banking, bills and similar items. Hotmail/Outlook/Live mail is way below GMAIL, however you should use this specifically for school and similar items to keep people away from your financial records, yet close enough to a normal provider that no one will question you if you simply state that they can send it to you over e-mail instead on some social media site. Yahoo, as much as it’s a disastrous service and corporation, won’t look out of place for business related subjects or questions. It’s simply a matter of coming up with a professional sounding username for the MT accounts and keeping them separated from each other. Never using the same MT account for different applications or accounts, and never letting them touch each other. With that out of the way, however, you should try to keep each account, regardless of the provider, isolated from each other—never using the same user, password, secondary e-mail, or information, ever. The only time you should ever use your legitimate information is for the MT accounts, which should only be used for work, school or financial items. ***Remember:*** Never save your passwords on your computer and never use a password manager. Write down your password and the piece of paper with it somewhere safe and away from people trying to find it. Use a lockbox if you must, but never save this info on your computer. Also look into writing down each account’s information down and hiding that paper, too, so you never forgot it. ***Remember 2:*** Use one of the free e-mail services to create a mess free secondary e-mail to use with the MT e-mails. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Passwords=== Your password (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password) is the key to your account, without it you can’t login without going through an entire process of laziness meant to make it easier on the geeks who run the website you’re a part of or at least the “Help desk”. You see, that’s all a lost password request is: Laziness. It doesn’t mean you’re lazy, though, it just means you’re forgetful like everyone else. However, the people who run the site don’t want to deal with properly verifying your claim to your account, so they created these claims of simplicity where you submit a request to retrieve or change your password. That is where laziness comes in. Anyone who spent time researching you and applied a liberal dose of social engineering will be able to guess certain security questions and your e-mail addresses to the point of being able hijack your account(s). This is why it pays to keep e-mails separated, not to use the same username twice, and to have a strong password. Your password should be eight (8) to 15 (15) characters long and consist of randomly select characters that range from upper case letters (ABC) to lowercase letters (abc) to numbers (123), punctuation (.,;?!) and special characters ($%#). Your password will not only be hard to remember, but also hard to guess. This is why you should write it down on a piece of information and hide it in a lockbox or locked drawer where no one will get at it, ever. You should also avoid password managers, syncing your information, using “Master passwords,” reusing your password, or saving it on your computer or phone. Think of your password as a unique key and each account a unique door—you need a specific key for a specific door, ergo never use the same password twice. Always randomize your passwords, their length and the characters used to the point of each one never being overly similar. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Accounts=== An account is like a membership you apply for when you join a community or a website. And like a membership, the difficulty to obtain an account ranges from something as easy as a username + password or to the near-impossible where you need to provide an arm length’s of information and an invite code. Regardless of what you’re signing up for, however, you need to learn to compartmentalize each account and profile into its own isolated object. You don’t need to interlink your information, account or anything like that. You don’t even need to sync it up to your e-mails or our phone. You don’t need 40+ accounts across the internet. You need what you need, and at that, you only need it if there’s a reason for it. So, in theory, what accounts do you truly need? ===Steam or Origin?=== You don’t need them, however gaming is a decent way to unwind and do something mindlessly to try and clear your head of troublesome thoughts. Honestly, though, do you really need any of those accounts? Well, yes, if you don’t believe in piracy or simply wish to support the developers you prefer. But you don’t need it to live or survive. There are plenty of non-DRM options that range from freeware to physical media options that don’t need an internet connection in order to play it. ===YouTube?=== You don’t need to one to watch videos or enjoy them. You only need an account if you, yourself, plan to comment, rate or upload videos. Do you really need to do that? There hundreds of ways to express yourself that don’t require you sitting in a chair, staring at your computer, and reviewing bottles of Fuji water from when it first was released. You’ll need accounts or simply want to make an account, for whatever reason, and participate in the community or reap the benefits of releasing your information for that slim chance of being “Internet famous”. No matter the reason, though, you need to treat your account and its associated profile as a contained fire during a camping trip. You want to give only as much information as is required, not what they offer you to give up. For instance: Your username shouldn’t be your real name or a nick name that you’ve been called before. It should be completely unique and unrelated to anything else you’ve made, claimed, were called or even thought about using. It should also be different from the e-mail address that you’re using for the account. Ultimately, outside of paid accounts or billing information, not a single thing on your profile should lead back to you or be associated with you or anything related to you. You shouldn’t use the same password, e-mail address, username or anything that you’ve used on another account. And, at that, no account should be linked, synced or associated with each other in any way possible. These accounts and profiles, depending on their settings, should be made as private as possible and be as minimalistic as possible. You could, in theory, supply false information in your bio or “about me” to create a false digital trail just in case, however leaving no information is better than leaving some. And, truthfully, you should avoid having more than ten (10) accounts at any given time. When an account is no longer useful, you should just follow the Paranoid’s Bible PDF and how to properly dispose of an account and the information associated with it. Never leaving a trace behind and letting the account and its information pass peacefully away before deletion. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ===Afterword==== This is nothing more than the barest basics needed to keep some sort of privacy when using the internet and trying to avoid being doxed during some kind of discourse. This won’t make you 100% anonymous, nor will it make you undetectable when it comes to the government, yet it’s better than nothing.

8 Dos and Don’ts To Improve Your Social Media Marketing

There are dozens of social networks and while some marketers believe that signing-up for each and everyone is well-worth the effort, others agree that following that practice is rather futile.

In the following article, I am going to talk about the two big social networks – Facebook and Twitter.

As you certainly know (unless you’ve been living under a rock), those three social mediums are currently the ones marketers pay most of their attention to.

And it’s no wonder – each works on a different principle but either way the potential is there and if you are serious, you can also get some serious traffic.

Leaving that aside, below I will share some of the common practices people seem to follow on this social media trio, which ones are worth and which are plain myths.

  Facebook Dos and Don’ts

1. Do Share Your Own Content Every Day

That is the golden rule. There’s really nothing bad in self-promotion. But unless you’ve spent hundreds of dollars to advertise your fan page or to create sponsored stories, generating a buzz around your fan page and turning it into traffic is no easy task.

The Facebook page is yours, so there’s really nothing bad in sharing posts from your own blog. I’d say doing so is actually obligatory if you want to make Facebook a worthwhile time-investment.

Don’t expect that just the link in the fan page about field will get people clicking and reading your blog. 

  2. Be Careful not To Bore People

Yeah, your articles (or articles from other blogs for that matter) might all be interesting and they might all provide information, that’s worth the read.

However sometimes people just want to have fun.

And as serious as your niche might be, there should always be place for that.

Stories, comics, pictures – you need to mix things a little.

Those are the kinds of posts that get the bigger part of the likes, shares and comments.

  3. Be a Real Person, Not a Just the Next “Brand”

A Facebook page can either be very impersonal OR it can be a place where all kinds of folks come to share their own points of view on different matters. What you make out of it is all up to you and I’d highly recommend you the second option.

The first step is to start writing descriptions to each and every story you make. It doesn’t matter if it is an image that you are sharing, your latest blog post or an infographic you just came across. Whatever it is, make sure to tell people why you are sharing that specific piece and tell them why they should take a minute to check it out.

Additionally you should also pose different questions, reply to those who comment on them and thus create a discussion. Whenever someone leaves a comment, be it a positive or a negative one, you should always have a standpoint.

In short, show people you are a living, breathing organism, just like them! 

Here are 10 tips to creating engaging Page posts from Facebook for Business.

  4. Don’t Irritate Your Fans

Especially with the notification system that Facebook made available for the fan pages, you should pay even more attention to what you share.

Since that feature allows your fans to subscribe for your updates i.e. to get notified via the notifications icon on the top bar, you must make sure not to irritate them.

Basically consider factors such as how much stories per day you post (I wouldn’t recommend more than 2-4), how much promotional content you share (for instance reviews of products with affiliate links in them) and also what the ratio between publications with links, text only and images is.

Also make sure not to post too many images and quotes – although they tend to get lots of attention – they shouldn’t be the focal point of your Facebook marketing strategy.

  Twitter Dos and Don’ts

5. Don’t be Afraid to Use Automation

Over time I’ve seen lots of different opinions on the automation topic. It seems like lots of marketers don’t think of it is a genuine way to make progress in the social media realm.

But in the end, I can’t really see why so much criticism revolves around automation…

As bloggers our priority should come down to creating content. Looking from that perspective, every saved minute that goes towards writing, should be valued.

  6. Use Twitter for More than Sharing

Blog post ideas, new connections and lots of interesting discoveries are some of the things you can achieve by paying attention to Twitter not only when you need traffic. One of the biggest issues with the microblogging platform is namely self-promotion – it seems like everyone’s there for that and nothing else.

The system can’t function that way. There’d really be no point if everyone would be to log-in, tweet their own post and log-out. You also have to see what others have in store!

As a matter of fact you might be surprised by how much new things you can get to discover thanks to Twitter.

Adding your favorite bloggers to lists and taking five minutes to check some of their shares every day might turn out a doorway to new discussions with new people, new content for your to-read list, new blog post ideas and more traffic.

That’s how Twitter marketing should be done!

Read this post from HubSpot blog: 50 Tweetable Twitter Tips You Wish You Knew Years Ago

  7. Don’t Waste too Much Time on It

There’s no doubt – engaging with others is a crucial component to every successful social media campaign. However one counter-intuitive advice from me is don’t get carried away.

Discussions are a great thing, as they lead to new ideas. Saying thank you to those who’ve supported you is also important, since it helps you build trust. In the end of the day however, that is not the key to success.

Social media is just how you spread the word.

I would recommend you to set a schedule of some sort.

It’s simple the more time you spend on this, the less productive you actually are. 

  8. Care About Both Quality and Quantity

Quality over quantity – that seems to be a trend nowadays. Indeed one should focus on quality. Having inactive followers, who don’t even share your interests is worthless – there’s no denying.

But then again, why not keep the quality and ramp up the quantity factor simultaneously? 

Namely because, as I mentioned above, people rarely take  the time to check others’ work, tweets don’t get much exposure. It’s logical that the more followers you have, the more people will end up seeing your tweets and acting upon them.

So let me tell you one thing – start working on your following! As of now I have over 35,000 followers and Twitter traffic is going up with each and every new follower I get.

  Final Words

That’s all, folks!

What are your social media dos and don’ts?

What are some common misconceptions about the social networks in your opinion?

Please let me know by leaving a comment, thanks!

The post 8 Dos and Don'ts To Improve Your Social Media Marketing first appeared on Reviewz'n'Tips.

from Blogging Tips http://reviewzntips.com/social-media-dos-and-donts/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

No When-Then or Coulda-Woulda-Shoulda-Selah26-CMAW097

S = Something on My Heart

See 8/16 Pastor Adam Cook message from Union Church on the Power of saying Thanks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAcuskM-0nY.  I've spoken on this podcast before about the importance of being grateful to God about all of life but particularly as it relates to your heart while you're working.  I've talked about how work is a gift from God, how work is so important to God that it's the first thing he did after creating Adam and Even was to give them something to do. Work is inherently good and something we should be thankful for, and not just thankful for the money that it produces, though that should be part of what we're grateful for.  Pastor brought some fresh insight from his sermon that I wanted to pass along and add my own additional thoughts as well.  I'll provide a link for this sermon in the show notes.  First of all, Pastor Adam said that gratitude is not a one-time "Thank You" but a mindset and a way of seeing the world.  Probably the most often referenced scripture about giving thanks is 1 Thess 5:16-18, in the NIV version says "Rejoice alaways, pray continuously, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus".  One thing I like about this verse is that it specifically says being thankful is God's will.  I know I often struggle with wondering what God's will is for me and my life, and I think it's a good practice to particularly note verses that connect our actions to God's will.  Being grateful is one of those things that you dont' just hear about in the Christian world, people with all different belief systems talk about the power of having an attitude of gratitude.  You hear it in self help books, on motivational posters in the workplace, and on social media memes.  If you think about it, other than thanking another person for something they've done specifically, having an overall attitude of gratitude doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless you worship a God who has the abliity and has proven to have chosen to be a giver, a giver of all the good things in life.  Pastor Adam suggests 2 ways we can be grateful.  The first is to eliminate when/then thinking.  This is all about being present and being grateful for and appreciating and enjoying where we are right now, rather than longing for something that may happen in the future, or for something we had in the past.  It's easy for us to point fingers at the Children of Israel who complained about only having manna to eat int he wilderness and longing for when they were slaves in Egypt and had other food to eat.  The reality is I have been guilty of this type of thinking my whole adult life to different degrees and at different times, in my personal life and my professional life.  If I talked to my Mom when growing up about something that I should have done in the past or something that might have been, she would wisely respond "Oh shoulda-woulda-coulda".  With my own kids, I've more often tried to pass along in a similar situation the wise advice that they should do as Boston says and "Don't Look Back".  We can all think of things we don't like about our work.  That's easy.  What takes effort is to purposely focus on the good in our work. There's the income, of course, but there's also the feeling of satisfaction for a job well done, the opportunity to interact and collaborate with others on a common goal, the chance to sharpen our skills and get better, it provides a sense of purpose, and ig gives us unique opportunties to share our faith with others and to just love on them.  Psalm 118:24, in NKJV says "This is the day the Lord has made.  We will rejoice and be glad in it".  As my Pastor said, we should thank God not just for what He did, but for what He is doing TODAY. In John 5:17, Jesus said "My Father has been working until now, and I have been working". The 2nd suggestion Pastor Adam had for being thankful was to be the one who circles back.  In Luke 17:15-18, after Jesus heals 10 lepers, "

15 And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, 16 and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks. And he was a Samaritan.

17 So Jesus answered and said, “Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? 18 Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?”  I did one thing right this past year in this regard.  After finishing a project, I sent out an email to each of the contractors who had done work on the project and thanked them for the work they had done.  Sure, they had gotten paid for their work, and sure not everything went exactly as planned and mistakes were made, but I could not have completed the project without and I wanted to take the time to specifically thank them. Someone once said to me that it's a good idea to email a thank you after someone does something for you at work.  In my Handy Tips section I've been talking about how to be more effective with the use of email, and a big part of that is not sending out too many emails.  I think this is one exception, and its worth noting that you don't have to use email to say thanks you can pick up the phone.  If someone regularly does helpful things for you as part of their job, you may want to occasionally thank them rather than every time they do something, and when you do so try to be specific about the work they do, noting anything that is unique about what they do and how they do it.  When I sent the email to my contractors I didn't just thank them, for each of them I pointed out specific things they did that made a difference.  The great thing about circling back is that it will likely make a big impact on others, because most people, like the 9 ungrateful lepers, don't do this. A few final thoughts on this issue.  First, Pastor Adam said that every blessing in life that is not turned into praise is turned into pride.  We could spend multiple Selah episodes talking about the danger pride and the scripture that demonstrates that Gods hates it when we're prideful.  I think this point is a powerful motivator for us being thankful.  Yes, being thankful is the right thing to do and will produce great fruit in our lives and the lives of others, but if we dont' do it, it can and will lead to pride will create destruction and should be avoided at all cost.  Another thought I have is while we're focusing on being thankful for our work and thankful to our co-workers, remember at the end of your work day to be thankful to your wife.  There's a temptation to bring our best selves to the workplace and then only bring our frustrations and judgmental attitude to our wife and kids.  Whether she's out in the marketplace working or a stay-at-home Mom, our wives deserve our thanks every day and in a way that's meaningful to them.  For my final thought, I heard a song by Jeremy Camp called Keep Me in the Moment on the radio today on my way home from church and I'd like to read some of the lyrics from that song. 

I've been thinking 'bout time and where does it go How can I stop my life from passing me by, I don't know I've been thinking 'bout family and how it's going so fast Will I wake up one morning just wishing that I could go back?

I've been thinking 'bout lately, maybe I can make a change and let you change me So, with all of my heart this is my prayer

Singing oh Lord, keep me in the moment Help me live with my eyes wide open 'Cause I don't wanna miss what you have for me

Singing oh Lord, show me what matters Throw away what I'm chasing after 'Cause I don't wanna miss what you have for me (what you have for me)

Keep me in the moment Oh, keep me in the moment Keep me in the moment 'Cause I don't wanna miss what you have for me (oh)

When I wake up in the morning Lord, search my heart Don't let me stray I just wanna stay where you are

All I got is one shot, one try One go around in this beautiful life Nothing is wasted when everything's placed in your hands

Singing oh Lord, keep me in the moment Help me live with my eyes wide open 'Cause I don't wanna miss what you have for me (what you have for me)

Singing oh Lord, show me what matters Throw away what I'm chasing after 'Cause I don't wanna miss what you have for me (what you have for me)

Keep me in the moment (keep me in the moment) Lord keep me in the moment (keep me in the moment) Keep me in the moment 'Cause I don't wanna miss what you have for me

I've been thinking about heaven And the promise you hold So, it's all eyes on you Until the day you call me home

Singing oh Lord, keep me in the moment Help me live with my eyes wide open 'Cause I don't wanna miss what you have for me (I don't wanna miss, I don't wanna miss)

Singing oh Lord, show me what matters Throw away what I'm chasing after (oh) 'Cause I don't wanna miss what you have for me (yeah)

Keep me in the moment Oh, keep me in the moment Keep me in the moment 'Cause I don't wanna miss what you have for me

Keep me in the moment (keep me in the moment) Oh, keep me in the moment (keep me in the moment) Keep me in the moment 'Cause I don't wanna miss what you have for me (what you have for me)

  E=Example of Faith at work

  2 men From episode 096, when Leighton Ford was age 14, his mother left for a while and during that summer Leighton was lonely but went to a Bible Conference put on by a local business man.  A speaker talked about praying out loud from the Psalms and this was a turning point for Leighton. He felt God knew and understood that teenage boy.

When Leighton was 14 yrs old a man named Evan Hedley, came to his hometown to start "Youth for Christ" there and Leighton was appointed to be president.  Evan was a business man who had been in insurance.  He wasn't a preacher but he was an organizer and a mentor.  Evan lived to age 90 and 60 men including Leighton who had been mentored by Evan came to his funeral.

  L=Logos = Work verse

  “Imprint these words of mine on your hearts and minds, bind them as a sign on your hands, and let them be a symbol on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your city gates. Deuteronomy 11:18-20 - CSB

  A = Announcement

  “"The Classic Christian Rock podcast by WildMan & Steve encompasses all a Christian Music fan would want in a podcast. They interview Christian Rock artists twice a month- those from the past and the musicians who are rocking for Christ today. On the same podcast is a weekly radio show called Metal Talk where you will here great talk about politics, current events and faith- all while listening to great Metal music. Subscribe to their podcast today where ever you get your podcasts, find out more at WildManandsteve.com"”

  H=Handy tip to increase productivity and effectiveness 

Pretend CC doesn't exist, thing long and hard about who you're sending your email to.  Why is each and every person on there.  There should be a reason you can explain.  I do use the CC but I'm trying not to use the CC.  It's used to keep people informed, to cover our butt by making sure those cc'd know that we've done something, sometimes used to get someone in trouble or to point out to someone what someone is or is not doing. We can very easily damage relationships and trust using the CC the wrong way.  Another danger of using CC is if the email turns into a back and forth, some higher upper people that you just wanted to keep informed end up being dragged through a bunch of back and forth emails that you may not be able to stop or control.

  Check out this episode!