The concept of “spyware” has disappeared from the common internet lingo after it became the case that the word could now be used to describe nearly every major website and a huge percentage of the most commonly-used software.
Oh no I didn’t think about this
I think it was the rise of smartphones; what can you do when the hardware is spying on you?
This is reality now. Your activities are being recorded.
OK AM I IMAGINING THIS OR ARE THOSE SHOES DIFFERENT… AND SPARKLY… DID…. DID TEREZI STEAL JADE’S SHOES????
[those don’t belong to you]
You are imagining things. You are absolutely imagining things.
How on EARTH or in ANY realm of Paradox Space could Terezi have gotten Jade’s goddamn fucking shoes
Out of ALL the goddamn theories I’ve seen you post, this is by far the STUPIDEST
Terezi has just been BEATEN HALF TO DEATH by her ABUSIVE KISMISIS, seen/smelled two of her BEST FRIENDS DIE IN FRONT OF HER, got STABBED THROUGH THE GUT, AND was denied ANY SORT OF CLOSURE AGAINST THE PERSON WHO BLACKMAILED HER INTO GETTING HER EYESIGHT BACK AND THE PERSON WHO GAVE HER EYESIGHT BACK
But sure. Under ALL THE FUCKING STRESS SHE’S UNDER, not to mention SHE’S HALF FUCKING DEAD
She had time to go steal someone’s FUCKING SHOES when she had a pair of perfectly good shoes to begin with.
And before you say “THEY’RE ALL SPARKLY”, no. No, she just CRASH LANDED INTO THE GROUND. Is it too much to think that maybe, MAYBE, its DUST AND DIRT FROM CRASH LANDING FACE FIRST ON THE GROUND???
three years and this is still the funniest fucking homestuck post to ever exist
Heres your reminder to use literally anything but chrome
Anyone know what I should use beside Chrome ?
[image id: screenshot of a twitter post from EFF @EFF
A switch has been silently flipped in millions of instances of Google Chrome: those browsers will begin sorting their users into groups based on behavior, then sharing group labels with third-party trackers and advertisers around the web.
Below the text is an image of an eye-shape with a “G” in place of the iris and pupil.
More text: Google is Testing Its Controversial New Ad Targeting Tech in Millions
/end id]
As for what you should use instead of Chrome, you should use Firefox! It is put out by Mozilla, which is a non-profit developer devoted to an open internet, with emphasis on individual privacy and security. It is one of the very few browsers out there which is not based on Google’s Chromium engine–even Microsoft’s browsers are actually Chrome under the hood, but Firefox isn’t. Which means Google has no backdoor into the browser.
Now, given that like 90% of people use Chromium-based browsers these days, some websites design specifically for Chromium instead of for general browser use, which means they don’t work without Chrome. But this is a TINY proportion of websites; most work with Firefox just fine.
And the thing is, switching over is REALLY EASY.
You just download Firefox, and it will import all your bookmarks and history and shit from Chrome. And then you’re ready to go!
I also suggest using DuckDuckGo as a search engine instead of Google. Like Firefox, DuckDuckGo is devoted to privacy, and it’s really good. And there is an addon for Firefox that will make it your default search engine in the browser.
I just learned that some websites use cookies to adjust prices. That is, if you visit a certain website a lot the price will increase.
You can tell if that’s the case by checking the same web page on a different browser if you have a different number of stored cookies for that site. I checked something on Chegg and it was $14.95 on Chrome, $19.95 on Firefox, and $16.95 on Safari.
The fix? Clear your cookies for that website.
Reblog, save a wallet.
Plane tickets almost always do this!
PLANE TICKETS DO THIS ALL THE DAMN TIME
When you’re looking for plane tickets and waiting for prices to drop, ALWAYS clear your cookies beforehand and switch between browsers. A friend of mine was looking for a flight and getting prices that were the CHEAPEST at $800-1000, I sent her a link for a round trip that was like $495, and it read as $900 on her computer because she had been hounding the airline site.
alternatively: avoid all this headache by using incognito when shopping for plane tickets, text books, etc
Hotel rooms are notorious for this, as well. Just like, go on incognito mode to look at these sites, saves u a lot of time & hassle.
my favourite new arrival today to the Suez Canal party is this incredibly conspicuous Russian warship labelled as an oil tanker that’s just anchored amongst the stranded cargo ships. chillin.
realized what the map screenshot is reminding me of glgkdkkdkfjdksj
“russian warship 545 is unhappy”
“well life isn’t fucking fair is it russian warship 545”
Okay this just got INTERESTING
So I went back to check on my pal Russian Warship 545 (registration name KOLA), and being unable to find the red dot in the area, thought it had moved on. Curious as to when and where to, I ran a search on Vesselfinder for the name “Russian Warship 545”.
No results found.
“Okay, that’s fair. Maybe you can’t search for naval vessels by name. National security and all.” I said to myself. Then I remembered that I’d screenshotted the ID number (see above), so I ran a search for that instead.
This is when shit got weird.
So I mentioned just now that while the vessel showed up earlier today under the AIS tracking title “Russian Vessel 545”, the legal registration name listed at the bottom of its details page was “KOLA”. This isn’t that weird in and of itself — I was poking around home on the map earlier today, and found Canadian naval vessels with tracking titles like “Canadian Warship 707” and then the actual vessel name (HMCS FancyName or what have ye) listed as the registration name along with the flag country.
I mentioned also that I couldn’t find Russian Warship 545’s distinctive red dot (red is the colour for search and rescue, coast guard, and naval vessels in Vessel Finder) in the Red Sea anchorage field outside the canal when I went to check up on it.
So imagine my surprise when I type the ID number for “Russian Warship 545” into the search, and am told IT IS STILL LOCATED IN THE RED SEA ANCHORAGE.
Huh???
But not ONLY that.
It has now been switched to an ORANGE tanker vessel dot, and is showing up with “KOLA” as its AIS tracking name, looking for all intents and purposes like a regular oil tanker:
Except for the fact that when you open the details page on Vessel Finder, the image attached is VERY MUCH STILL A RUSSIAN WARSHIP:
And the specs and details are all the same as earlier, including being owned by what is still listed (due to the 1967 manufacturing date) as, I shit you not, “Soviet Navy”:
However!!!
On further investigation via Marine Tracker, I’ve found what seems to be a much less “stripped from Wikipedia”, and much less impressive, image of our friend Russian Warship 545 (which is still listed as the AIS name on Marine Tracker):
This page on Baltic Shipping also associates similar pictures with the same ID numbers, further corroborating this and giving a bit more extra backstory about the builder etc. “Kola” is listed as an Altay-class Russian military tanker with a matching 1967 build date on this List of Active Russian Military Vessels, and was actively doing stuff for the Russian Navy in the Mediterranean within the last two years (x) (x).
So.
My best guess at an explanation for all this weirdness?
Creaky old Soviet-built oil tanker KOLA, owned by Russian military, was doing regular oil-getting business in the area.
Said oil tanker is listed on some AIS records in the same manner as most military-owned vessels, “[nationality] warship [hull #]”, and with a red military ID dot.
Somebody working for Vessel Finder is really lazy about attaching a database image to the profile for KOLA. (Interestingly enough, reverse image search turned up no other instances of the warship image used on the listing).
Then, this week, Ever Given does the world’s worst parallel parking job and blocks up the Suez canal.
KOLA, gone to go get oil and bring it back to the fleet, is now stranded with many other oil tankers in the middle of the Red Sea, unable to pass back up through to the Black Sea or wherever the hell she was going.
At some point, perhaps somebody involved in the control/management of KOLA had the thought, possibly while sitting around at anchor for two days twiddling thumbs and playing cards, “hey, you don’t think our AIS designation would make us look like we’re up to some really sketchy shit out here, do you? given that hundreds if not thousands of random people are looking at vessel tracking sites right now?”
“Hm. Shit.”
(Alternatively, somebody onboard is killing time on their phone looking at the shipping carnage and notices their bright red tracking dot and alarming name).
Phone calls are made/things are updated and Creaky old Soviet-built military-owned oil tanker KOLA hastily has its AIS display name updated to read as its registration name instead of “Russian Warship 545”, now with an orange oil tanker classification marker.
This change has the unintended result of making them look EXPONENTIALLY sketchier than they did before.
ALTERNATIVELY: Less funny version, it may just be a glitch in Vessel Finder’s software that gets triggered by the two different names and the conflicting classifications. When I went to look at it again just a minute ago, we were back to a red indicator and “Russian Warship 545”:
Bottom line: do I think that anything freaky or untoward is ACTUALLY happening with this vessel? Not really.
Do I find this all EXTREMELY entertaining? You bet your ass I do.
Highly recommend just fucking around on vessel tracking sites for a few hours. Gosh what a fun time to be had.
unfortunately in my fact check I spent so long researching this tough and dependable 54-year-old Soviet naval refuelling vessel that I’ve accidentally become weirdly fond of it. she’s a sturdy old girl. I wish her well
Okay…I have to add onto this because things get really interesting and even funnier.
So, when I first heard about this. I did some research.
“Russian Warship 545″ 545 would usually refer to the hull designation. This is the number you see on the bow of a naval ship. It’s used for visual identification while at sea. So, a quick search on the internet DID identify a ship of the Russian navy with this designation.
But…it’s not the Kola…
The Ship with the Designation 545 is actually a Corvette. Named the Stoyky.
It’s weird though…as the Hull Designations should, under no circumstances EVER be changed. As the logistics system of the Russian navy would be fucked up to kingdom come.
So, why is the Kola being identified as Russian warship 545?? And all of it’s tracking stuff is suddenly changed? Weird huh?
Until…I did just a little more research on the Kola.
Turns out, the Kola was deployed not to long ago in Naval terms.
On Dec. 16th of 2020, the Kola was deployed as a part of a fleet detachment for training operations in the Indian, Atlantic and Mediterranean oceans. This detachment consisted of 3 vessels.
1. The Kola. Brought along for supply and support I would assume.
2. A sea tug, the Yakov Grebelsky.
3. A Corvette. The main ship of this detachment, this is the ship that would be doing all the training. All parts of the crew aboard are going to be training in different simulations and just representing the Russian Navy. Identified as the Stoyky.
…..The Stoyky.
A Russian Warship, with the Hull Designation of 545.
Here is the Russian defense ministry’s article about the Detachment’s deployment.
So there is the possibility that we are looking at an entire Fleet Detachment. That is sitting there in the red sea.
Or the possibility that they got separated somehow.
Or…that there is no sign of the Yakov Grebelsky or Stoyky, and they somehow just ditched the Kola.
Which gets even funnier, because apparently right around the time the suez canal first got blocked off. The Kola and another vessel got into a light collision.
So all in all. Our poor dearest Kola either got ditched, cut off, or is…in actuality hanging out with the rest of the detachment in the red sea and we can only see the Kola.
Either way, this is the most hilarious development.
OHHHHH that would TOTALLY explain the *picture* though!!!! The original incorrect picture is probably a photo of the Corvette!
Somebody whose ask I think I lost sent me this article from early February about Kola and Stoiky (and I think it mentions the tug as well near the end) transiting down through the canal in the first place, I assume this week was supposed to be the return journey. Maybe the tug moved on to work somewhere else?
If I had to hazard a guess, either Kola and Stoiky are sharing one AIS signal (I don’t think that’s a thing??), OR there’s been some sort of confusion (possibly human error) in a logging system somewhere that, when processing both of the vessels together as they passed through somewhere, ended up accidentally labelling Kola with Stoiky’s photo and hull number.
So I’m actually inclined to think that Vessel Finder (which I’m told by people in the notes is visually super-glitchy at the best of times because of how much data it has to handle) has somehow ended up turning the AIS signal for both ships (Kola and Stoiky) into only ONE display point/readout — but it does know geographically that both of them are there. Here’s why I say that:
Here is where Kola is currently anchored, in a berth next to what looks like an empty anchor berth:
Earlier today, I noticed something that struck me as weird when I was looking at Kola’s tracking line of recent movement, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time other than “huh, glitchy”.
On vessels that are mostly sitting still or anchored (like the Ever Given lol), the tracking line that shows the last couple of hours of movement mostly moves in small overlapping circles right underneath where the vessel is.
That is uh, not what Kola’s track does:
(The red dot on the right there is me selecting a point on the track) Soooo Kola’s track basically looks like she’s teleporting lol. Jumping back and forth across that distance so quickly that there are no progress dots in between, but still keeping that registered movement speed (seen in the blue box) at 0kts.
This morning, I thought that weirdness must just be a variance/glitch in how the tracker is picked up by satellite — like how you can sometimes watch your personal dot on Google Maps move around while you’re standing still. I assumed that Kola wasn’t really moving much (listed as anchored, 0kts), the calibration of the geo-tracker was just poor and resulted in the vessel signal “jumping” back and forth between two points and creating these lines.
But then I thought about your “two vessels, one weird hybrid AIS display on our screens” thing. And I thought about it a little more. And then I turned the nautical chart overlay back on:
And OH. The other end of that super-fast back and forth and back and forth tracking pattern between two completely still states lines up DIRECTLY with the centre of the neighbouring anchorage point.
So. If I had to theorize (in a semi-informed manner, based on the evidence at hand):
I would bet that BOTH Kola and the Corvette Stoiky (aka the elusive Russian Warship 545) are present here, but for reasons inexplicable to me (and possibly it just comes down to Program Is Hella Glitchy, or a weird method of entering their data, who knows), Vessel Finder (and by the looks of it, Marine Traffic too) is using the SAME ID number (6720004) for BOTH ships, resulting in them being combined into a weird hybrid profile that VesselFinder reads from which has:
1 photo (of a boat I’d bet my pants is the Corvette Stoiky or a similar model)
1 registered name (KOLA)
1 set of specifications (the ones for KOLA)
1 little cartoon ship marker (tied to the left-side geographic signal)
1 vessel class name (“oil products tanker”)
2 possible display names (“KOLA” and “Russian Warship 545”)
2 colour classifications (service vessel red and tanker orange)
2 geolocation signals (one signal coming from that left anchor point where the ship marker sits, and signal two coming from the right anchor point where the track marks point to).
When the program is reading from the data profile, it seems to be displaying all of the things on that list that only have 1 as constants, and then for everything where there are 2 (data from BOTH vessels), it simply jumps back and forth between reading from one, then the other, and back and forth. Probably every time the map refreshes itself or something. I think Marine Traffic might be doing the exact same thing, but with a photo of Kola instead of Stoiky.
Again, this is just a theory, but its the only thing I can currently think of that explains everything we’ve seen here so far!
Either through a glitch in the system, or an error in human entry, or a deliberate choice to register them under a combined profile with the idea they are not to be separated (perhaps in some misguided attempt to simplify registration), I think what we are seeing is a pair of ships, showing up as one single ship profile which has two names, two geolocations, and two class designations, and is flipping back and forth between those data sources based on whichever it picks up.
tl;dr: My new running theory is we’re seeing two ships which travel together, with two names, two geolocation signals, two classifications, grouped under one (1) profile and ID number, resulting in the program inconsistently displaying the duplicate values as it tries to represent two different vessels with a single visual datapoint and a single profile page.
And, lol, when I went back to look again and check something between getting those first couple screenshots, guess who’s back to the old tricks again… :)
God I’ve gotten so much serotonin out of this problem-solving challenge, along with the stress of a trillion notifications. But this has been….. fun??
In 1930 the Indiana Bell building was rotated 90°. Over 34 days, the 22-million-pound structure was moved 15 inch/hr… all while 600 employees still worked there. There was no interruption to gas, heat, electricity, water, sewage, or the telephone service they provided. No one inside felt it move.
I want this not to be real. It’s insane, but was possible. I saw it on the internet …
my favourite new arrival today to the Suez Canal party is this incredibly conspicuous Russian warship labelled as an oil tanker that’s just anchored amongst the stranded cargo ships. chillin.
realized what the map screenshot is reminding me of glgkdkkdkfjdksj
“russian warship 545 is unhappy”
“well life isn’t fucking fair is it russian warship 545”
Okay this just got INTERESTING
So I went back to check on my pal Russian Warship 545 (registration name KOLA), and being unable to find the red dot in the area, thought it had moved on. Curious as to when and where to, I ran a search on Vesselfinder for the name “Russian Warship 545”.
No results found.
“Okay, that’s fair. Maybe you can’t search for naval vessels by name. National security and all.” I said to myself. Then I remembered that I’d screenshotted the ID number (see above), so I ran a search for that instead.
This is when shit got weird.
So I mentioned just now that while the vessel showed up earlier today under the AIS tracking title “Russian Vessel 545”, the legal registration name listed at the bottom of its details page was “KOLA”. This isn’t that weird in and of itself — I was poking around home on the map earlier today, and found Canadian naval vessels with tracking titles like “Canadian Warship 707” and then the actual vessel name (HMCS FancyName or what have ye) listed as the registration name along with the flag country.
I mentioned also that I couldn’t find Russian Warship 545’s distinctive red dot (red is the colour for search and rescue, coast guard, and naval vessels in Vessel Finder) in the Red Sea anchorage field outside the canal when I went to check up on it.
So imagine my surprise when I type the ID number for “Russian Warship 545” into the search, and am told IT IS STILL LOCATED IN THE RED SEA ANCHORAGE.
Huh???
But not ONLY that.
It has now been switched to an ORANGE tanker vessel dot, and is showing up with “KOLA” as its AIS tracking name, looking for all intents and purposes like a regular oil tanker:
Except for the fact that when you open the details page on Vessel Finder, the image attached is VERY MUCH STILL A RUSSIAN WARSHIP:
And the specs and details are all the same as earlier, including being owned by what is still listed (due to the 1967 manufacturing date) as, I shit you not, “Soviet Navy”:
However!!!
On further investigation via Marine Tracker, I’ve found what seems to be a much less “stripped from Wikipedia”, and much less impressive, image of our friend Russian Warship 545 (which is still listed as the AIS name on Marine Tracker):
This page on Baltic Shipping also associates similar pictures with the same ID numbers, further corroborating this and giving a bit more extra backstory about the builder etc. “Kola” is listed as an Altay-class Russian military tanker with a matching 1967 build date on this List of Active Russian Military Vessels, and was actively doing stuff for the Russian Navy in the Mediterranean within the last two years (x) (x).
So.
My best guess at an explanation for all this weirdness?
Creaky old Soviet-built oil tanker KOLA, owned by Russian military, was doing regular oil-getting business in the area.
Said oil tanker is listed on some AIS records in the same manner as most military-owned vessels, “[nationality] warship [hull #]”, and with a red military ID dot.
Somebody working for Vessel Finder is really lazy about attaching a database image to the profile for KOLA. (Interestingly enough, reverse image search turned up no other instances of the warship image used on the listing).
Then, this week, Ever Given does the world’s worst parallel parking job and blocks up the Suez canal.
KOLA, gone to go get oil and bring it back to the fleet, is now stranded with many other oil tankers in the middle of the Red Sea, unable to pass back up through to the Black Sea or wherever the hell she was going.
At some point, perhaps somebody involved in the control/management of KOLA had the thought, possibly while sitting around at anchor for two days twiddling thumbs and playing cards, “hey, you don’t think our AIS designation would make us look like we’re up to some really sketchy shit out here, do you? given that hundreds if not thousands of random people are looking at vessel tracking sites right now?”
“Hm. Shit.”
(Alternatively, somebody onboard is killing time on their phone looking at the shipping carnage and notices their bright red tracking dot and alarming name).
Phone calls are made/things are updated and Creaky old Soviet-built military-owned oil tanker KOLA hastily has its AIS display name updated to read as its registration name instead of “Russian Warship 545”, now with an orange oil tanker classification marker.
This change has the unintended result of making them look EXPONENTIALLY sketchier than they did before.
ALTERNATIVELY: Less funny version, it may just be a glitch in Vessel Finder’s software that gets triggered by the two different names and the conflicting classifications. When I went to look at it again just a minute ago, we were back to a red indicator and “Russian Warship 545”:
Bottom line: do I think that anything freaky or untoward is ACTUALLY happening with this vessel? Not really.
Do I find this all EXTREMELY entertaining? You bet your ass I do.
Highly recommend just fucking around on vessel tracking sites for a few hours. Gosh what a fun time to be had.
unfortunately in my fact check I spent so long researching this tough and dependable 54-year-old Soviet naval refuelling vessel that I’ve accidentally become weirdly fond of it. she’s a sturdy old girl. I wish her well
[footage of the inside of an ordinary Eastern-European home, taken with a handheld phone camera, the man filming is walking from the living room to the back door of the house]
man, narrating in russian: Every fucking year, this time of the year, the pond at my backyard gets infested. What do ponds get infested with? Frogs? Poisonous weeds? Geese? No. Not my pond.
[The man opens the back door, stepping out into a garden. Three or four nude, human-like figures dash from the borders of a pond back into the water.]
man: Rusalki! I don’t know where they come from or how they get here, and I can’t afford to hire an exterminator every year. I can’t let my cat outside anymore. Last year a rusalka managed to drown a whole deer in my pond, the stench was unbearable.
[He walks as he speaks, approaching the pond. There are several eerily beautiful female beings peering at him from under the surface, their long hair floating in the murky water. Their eyes are gleaming in an unhuman way. The man holding the camera stops to film them.]
man, calm and deadpan: What the fuck are all of you staring at. Get jobs or something.
[One of the rusalki, smaller than the others and clearly not a fully matured adult, slowly reaches out of the water with her white, thin hand, grasping his ankle. He appears unconcerned.]
man: You can’t drown me, you little idiot. You’re too small. Shoo!
[A loud thud startles the rusalki, making them scatter. A second thud makes it clear these are the approaching footsteps of something massive. The man turns around and points the camera at what appears to be a house, walking past above the treeline with chicken-like legs]
man, now yelling: IF YOUR HOUSE SHITS ON MY YARD AGAIN I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD-
If you’ve ever had to deal with an abusive person in your life - like an abusive parent or partner - you’ve probably wondered what made them treat you that way. If you understand why abuse is happening, the thinking goes, you might be able to figure out how to make it stop.
So why do abusers do what they do? Do they have anger issues? Drinking problems? Past trauma? Personality disorders? Do they just need to get in touch with their feelings and learn how to communicate better?
Nope.
Abusive behaviours come from abusive beliefs. Abusers - whether consciously or unconsciously - hold specific beliefs about relationships that drive their behaviour and allow them to justify the horrible things they do. Even if your abuser has never put their beliefs into words, you’ll probably recognize a lot of these abusive beliefs:
You are responsible for my emotions. It is never my responsibility to reflect on my emotional reactions or learn better coping skills - it’s your responsibility to stop doing things that make me angry or upset.
I must act on my emotions. If I am angry, I am going to lash out. You have no right to criticize me for that, and it’s not my responsibility to learn to manage my emotions - you have to stop making me lash out at you. Asking me not to act on my emotions is controlling and wrong.
You will always be responsible for my emotions. Even if the relationship ends, you will continue to be responsible for my emotions, and I will expect you to continue to prioritize my feelings.
If I have feelings about something, it’s my business. If something you do or think causes an emotional reaction in me, then I have a right to get involved or tell you what to do. My feelings must be the priority. You don’t have the right to tell me that it’s none of my business.
You must judge me on my intentions, not my actions. If I didn’t mean to hurt you or scare you, then you don’t have the right to be hurt or scared. No one has the right to try to hold me accountable unless I meant to hurt someone.
I get to decide what your intentions were. If you hurt me, you meant to hurt me. If you make me jealous, you meant to make me jealous. Nothing you do is ever accidental or unintended - everything you do is intentional and malicious, even if it was a response to something I did.
My feelings are genuine; your feelings are manipulation. If I’m upset, my feelings are real and important. If you are upset, you have an ulterior motive - you’re just trying to be manipulative and get attention or sympathy for yourself.
You have freedoms because I allow you to. Every freedom you have in your life - like wearing what you want - it’s because I generously allow it. I expect you to be grateful to me for that. I have the right to take those freedoms away whenever I want, and I expect you to obey.
If you set boundaries with me, you are mistreating me. If you really loved me, you wouldn’t set boundaries with me. You are doing this to intentionally hurt me, which means I don’t have to respect those boundaries.
You holding me accountable for hurting you is worse than me hurting you. My pain at being called out is worse than your pain at being mistreated. If I feel bad about something I did, I have already been punished enough. You trying to discuss the issue or hold me accountable is just your way of abusing me.
If I apologized for something, you have to forgive me. If the relationship has ended, you have to reconcile with me. You don’t get to ask for more time apart or more discussion of the issue - once I’ve apologized, the matter is closed for good.
The relationship is not over until I say it is over. So long as I want a relationship with you, you must have a relationship with me. Your feelings are irrelevant. Even if we have broken up, you must remain available to me so we can get back together in the future. Not wanting a relationship with me means you are mistreating me or being immature.
I am the authority in this relationship. I am smarter and more perceptive than you. I know what is best for both of us. My version of events is always the correct one. I have superior judgement, taste and opinions. If you question me or disagree with me after I’ve given you the correct answer, you are disrespecting and mistreating me, or you are simply immature and incapable of knowing what’s good for you.
I have the right to control you. It is my absolute right to decide what you do and who you associate with. You have no right to disobey me. I am owed obedience and control; if you don’t give me those things, you are wronging me and cheating me out of the relationship I deserve.
If you resist my control, I am allowed to do whatever I think is necessary to get it back. Once you’ve resisted me, I am justified in whatever I do to regain control of you. I am not responsible for my actions when you resist my control; you forced me to do it, and it’s your own fault.
I should be your main focus. Everything else in your life comes secondary to me. When you make decisions, my feelings should be your first consideration. You are expected to make sacrifices for me and put me at the center of your life; I am not obligated to do the same for you.
If I spend money on you or do something for you, you are in debt to me. You spending money on me or doing things for me does not erase your debt to me, and I am never in debt to you. You are indebted to me for as long as I decide. I may decide that your belongings and earnings also belong to me, since I allow you to have them. I may also decide at any time that you owe me for gifts I gave you, even if they were meant to be gifts.
I am not abusive, and you are not allowed to tell me otherwise. I know what abuse is, and real abusers are significantly worse than me. If our relationship has ever had any good times or positive moments, it can’t possibly be abusive. If you accuse me of being abusive, you are the one abusing me, or you have been led astray by bad influences.
Relationships should be effortless (for me). I am owed a relationship that is peaceful and requires no real effort from me. It is your job to make sure we have that kind of relationship. If there is any tension or conflict in the relationship, it is your fault, and you are depriving me of the relationship I deserve to have.
Abusers and victims alike often buy into the narrative that abuse is rooted in anger issues - after all, abusers are frequently angry, and anger is an issue that can be treated. But this narrative just isn’t true. Abusers aren’t abusive because they are angry. Abusers are angry because they are abusive.
A non-abusive partner is not someone who has learned how to control their rage whenever you spend time with your friends or get home 15 minutes late from work. A non-abusive partner just doesn’t feel any rage in those situations. An abuser’s rage is firmly rooted in their beliefs about relationships - they feel entitled to a relationship that meets their impossible expectations, and when they inevitably don’t get it, they bubble over with fury. Whether they know it or not, they have firmly entrenched beliefs about how relationships should be, and those beliefs are at the heart of their abuse.
Can abusers stop believing these things? Maybe. If they can acknowledge that they have these beliefs, accept that these beliefs are dangerous and unreasonable and let go of these beliefs, maybe it’s possible for them to no longer be abusive in the future. Maybe. But it’s not your job to hang around and find out. If you’re in an abusive relationship of any kind, you deserve better. There are many people in this world who don’t hold abusive views of relationships, and you deserve to find happiness with them.
Human action is fundamentally about beleifs. That it that person’s subjective reality.
I can never find him when I want to, but he always finds me
This is referencing the very funny Grapefruit Technique video, which is good comedy in it’s own right, but this guy’s expressions and reactions and the fact he still manages to play it perfectly elevates this into a work of art.
this scene from the goes wrong show where they cast two different people as the head and hunky, semi-nude body of the same character during a live theatre production haunts my every waking moment
PLEASE GO WATCH THE GOES WRONG SHOW PEOPLE!! You won’t regret it :)
It’s just common sense! How do I know this sense I have is common? Well I mean I haven’t checked, but, I agree with it, and I presume everyone else agrees with me, so…
Common sense is a map of reality imposed by society into it’s participants. But of course everyone grows up differently, so no two maps are exactly the same. That’s just common sense.
“When I was 26, I went to Indonesia and the Philippines to do research for my first book, No Logo.
I had a simple goal: to meet the workers making the clothes and
electronics that my friends and I purchased. And I did. I spent evenings
on concrete floors in squalid dorm rooms where teenage girls—sweet and
giggly—spent their scarce nonworking hours. Eight or even 10 to a room.
They told me stories about not being able to leave their machines to
pee. About bosses who hit. About not having enough money to buy dried
fish to go with their rice.
They knew they were being badly exploited—that the garments
they were making were being sold for more than they would make in a
month. One 17-year-old said to me: “We make computers, but we don’t know
how to use them.”
So one thing I found slightly jarring was that some of these
same workers wore clothing festooned with knockoff trademarks of the
very multinationals that were responsible for these conditions: Disney
characters or Nike check marks. At one point, I asked a local labor
organizer about this. Wasn’t it strange—a contradiction?
It took a very long time for him to understand the question.
When he finally did, he looked at me like I was nuts. You see, for him
and his colleagues, individual consumption wasn’t considered to be in
the realm of politics at all. Power rested not in what you did as one
person, but what you did as many people, as one part of a large,
organized, and focused movement. For him, this meant organizing workers
to go on strike for better conditions, and eventually it meant winning
the right to unionize. What you ate for lunch or happened to be wearing
was of absolutely no concern whatsoever.
This was striking to me, because it was the mirror opposite
of my culture back home in Canada. Where I came from, you expressed your
political beliefs—firstly and very often lastly—through personal
lifestyle choices. By loudly proclaiming your vegetarianism. By shopping
fair trade and local and boycotting big, evil brands.
These very different understandings of social change came up
again and again a couple of years later, once my book came out. I would
give talks about the need for international protections for the right
to unionize. About the need to change our global trading system so it
didn’t encourage a race to the bottom. And yet at the end of those
talks, the first question from the audience was: “What kind of sneakers
are OK to buy?” “What brands are ethical?” “Where do you buy your
clothes?” “What can I do, as an individual, to change the world?”
Fifteen years after I published No Logo, I still
find myself facing very similar questions. These days, I give talks
about how the same economic model that superpowered multinationals to
seek out cheap labor in Indonesia and China also supercharged global
greenhouse-gas emissions. And, invariably, the hand goes up: “Tell me
what I can do as an individual.” Or maybe “as a business owner.”
The hard truth is that the answer to the question “What can
I, as an individual, do to stop climate change?” is: nothing. You can’t
do anything. In fact, the very idea that we—as atomized individuals,
even lots of atomized individuals—could play a significant part in
stabilizing the planet’s climate system, or changing the global economy,
is objectively nuts. We can only meet this tremendous challenge
together. As part of a massive and organized global movement.
The irony is that people with relatively little power tend
to understand this far better than those with a great deal more power.
The workers I met in Indonesia and the Philippines knew all too well
that governments and corporations did not value their voice or even
their lives as individuals. And because of this, they were driven to act
not only together, but to act on a rather large political canvas. To
try to change the policies in factories that employ thousands of
workers, or in export zones that employ tens of thousands. Or the labor
laws in an entire country of millions. Their sense of individual
powerlessness pushed them to be politically ambitious, to demand
structural changes.
In contrast, here in wealthy countries, we are told how
powerful we are as individuals all the time. As consumers. Even
individual activists. And the result is that, despite our power and
privilege, we often end up acting on canvases that are unnecessarily
small—the canvas of our own lifestyle, or maybe our neighborhood or
town. Meanwhile, we abandon the structural changes—the policy and legal
work— to others.”
This is why the media keeps pumping out articles about plastic straws and avocados that focuses on what we, individually, are doing to destroy the environment, when really the most pollution comes from multinational corporations and the only thing that will save us is global collective action.
I think about this quote all the time.
“Personal power” is an illusion. Those we consider powerful are merely capable of controlling others better. Seek to understand the world and make others understand as well and together the systems that rule the world, born from individual choices of people with “power”, can be changed.
if you don’t already have tinnitus, i really feel that you should actively be taking every possible precaution to not develop it. so here’s a couple of tips from someone who developed this awful (and, at the time of writing, incurable!) condition in his early teens:
always listen to music/audio at a reasonable volume. additionally, use over-ear headphones instead of earbuds whenever possible, preferably noise-cancelling ones as you won’t have to turn up the volume to drown out ambient sounds.
use earplugs when going to concerts/other loud places (cons, sport events, etc). if you’re worried about audio quality or not being able to hear people in a conversation, don’t be! many modern earplugs simply attenuate incoming sound without muffling it or otherwise deteriorating the sound (this is absolutely not an ad but Flare Audio’s Isolate is one example of earplugs that work like this). use of earplugs can in many cases result in an even better experience, as your ears will only perceive really loud audio as straight-up distortion anyway, a problem that earplugs fix quite effectively.
it’s also important to note that if anyone gives you shit for wearing earplugs, they are not your friend and you should absolutely not listen to anything they have to say (if you’re the kind of person who does this then please drop your address in my DMs so i can personally come punch you in the face, thanks!)
if you work in or otherwise frequent a noisy environment, try to find the time to give your ears some rest. just sitting/meditating in a quiet space on a somewhat regular basis is enough, and also has the added benefit of decreasing stress and anxiety, two other factors that can potentially lead to/worsen tinnitus.
this is all important because once you have tinnitus, it will not go away. while there are treatments that can help mitigate the symptoms or help you cope with them, there is no cure for tinnitus, and there is no guarantee that there ever will be.
i feel like i don’t need to put into words how detrimental it is to your overall quality of life to have a constant tone/noise playing in your ears, never being able to hear pure silence ever again.
if you’re curious about what it’s like for me specifically, go to this website, set the waveform to “sine”, put in 6800 hertz, drag the volume slider almost all the way to the left, then click play. this is approximately what i hear in my left ear constantly, even when there’s other sounds in the background. any everyday sounds in the same frequency range that i happen to hear also amplify this tone, so simply drowning it out is not an option.
Unfortunately, I do love you now that you can dance
ok, but honestly, it is unfortunate. you know how we’re always passing around that ‘you are not immune to propaganda’ meme? this is the propaganda it’s talking about.
it’s cute dancing robots! they have a cute robot dog! it’s cute! it’s friendly!
well, the robot dog friend? cute little jumpy guy, does some careful ballet-esque steps, often between the humanoid robots? so far, both the boston police and the nypd (heads up: autoplaying video, with sound) have ‘deployed’ the cute dog friend. both departments say that the robots are being used as ‘observation devices’, sent into buildings with lights and a camera that sends a videofeed back to the cops.
part of why i think this video (and others like it) is so interesting is because boston dynamics has defended police use of the robots, saying that there’s a clause that the robots can’t be used in a way that would ‘physically harm or intimidate people’. i don’t know about you, but if i were at, say, a protest, or honestly literally anywhere, and a robot dog started running towards me, i’d be pretty fucking intimidated. i’d assume that it was going to hurt me. if one of the humanoid robots were running towards me, i’d assume it was straight-up about to kill me.
but these videos do a lot of work to erode that assumption. how can anyone claim that they’re intimidated by, say, a line of robot dogs at a protest? the robot dogs do funny dances online! the video above has been live for about two months, and it has thirty million views. people love them! they can dance!
so when they start being used as mobile security cameras, or when they start being used to maintain a perimeter or for crowd control or whatever, it’s not really a violation of the contract. the robots are friendly! my bet is that when they start setting them out to do security or whatever—and i don’t doubt that they’ll be used for security, etc—they might even do funny little dances and interact with people who stop to gawk at them. anything to normalize increasingly autonomous roboticized policing. get one of the humanoid ones out in the field, and it’s a remarkably short step to autonomous, mobile cctv—that can also detain you if it doesn’t like what you’re doing, or if there was a crime and you’re in the area, or if your face looks like someone from a database, or—
and all that assumes, of course, that the no-harm clause stays there forever, and that police departments, so famous for their love of doing things by the book, adhere to it. but just for fun, watch that video again, and imagine even one of those robots weaponized, outfitted with even ‘nonlethal’ crowd control.
i’m not arguing that the robots are inherently bad, or that there’s no reasonable use for them, even by cops. but the time to get critical of them is now, not in five or ten years when their use has been largely normalized. this is cute propaganda, but it’s still propaganda, and we should acknowledge it for what it is.
Suspicion is rational. Fear is virtuous. Consider the implications of things.
My favourite kind of ghosts is “creepy but harmless”. Like the finnish manan väki, folk of the dead. They’re literally just people who are dead, who keep showing up. Most of the time it takes a special skill, the gift of a seer, to actually see them - some people are born with the gift, but I’ve heard of many magic spells one can do to get it (like washing your eyes with the same water that a corpse was washed in). Giving yourself the gift is risky, though, since some people will straight-up go insane from horror when they first see the dead, and once you start seeing them, there’s no way to go back to not seeing them.
And they just look like rotting corpses, exactly in the state that they are in in their graves. The newly dead just look slightly yellowed and pale, the more thoroughly decomposed can be missing limbs or so. Those who died violently will have their obvious wounds visible.
Very few who come haunt actually want to harm people. Mothers who died in childbirth will persistently appear, moving things around in attempts to help. Those who moved boundary stones between fields in their lives to steal farmland may be cursed to stand at the rightful border at night, haunting until their crime has been corrected.
There was a tale of a woman - rumoured as a witch during life - who was seen in her family’s cowshed two weeks after her own burial, her hand elbow-deep inside the mouth of her old favourite cow. The ghost explained that she is trying to fish out the communion wafer she once stole from church and fed to the cow as a part of a spell to make the cow thrive - the only way to find rest and go to Heaven is to undo all the magic that she had done in life.
And then there are those who keep showing up to complain about not being buried properly, to complain about how boring it is to lie in the grave, or who simply either haven’t realised that they’re dead, or are too fucking dense to read the room and understand it’s not polite to go around haunting people. The dead are just the same in death as they were in life - if your brother could never read the room while he was alive, being dead won’t grant him the ability either.
The logic of the world was less strict before. That’s a fun concept.
Congrats to Haato/Haachama on one million Haatons! Things have been kind of crazy on her channel right now, so here’s a handy timeline for anyone not keeping up with the lore.
![overtrolled-liveblog:
meme-loving-stuck:the-rogue-0f-light:
prince-of-space:
the-rogue-0f-light:
OK AM I IMAGINING THIS OR ARE THOSE SHOES DIFFERENT… AND SPARKLY… DID…. DID TEREZI STEAL JADE’S SHOES????
[those don’t belong to you]
You are imagining things. You are absolutely imagining things.
How on EARTH or in ANY realm of Paradox Space could Terezi have gotten Jade’s goddamn fucking shoes
Out of ALL the goddamn theories I’ve seen you post, this is by far the STUPIDEST
Terezi has just been BEATEN HALF TO DEATH by her ABUSIVE KISMISIS, seen/smelled two of her BEST FRIENDS DIE IN FRONT OF HER, got STABBED THROUGH THE GUT, AND was denied ANY SORT OF CLOSURE AGAINST THE PERSON WHO BLACKMAILED HER INTO GETTING HER EYESIGHT BACK AND THE PERSON WHO GAVE HER EYESIGHT BACK
But sure. Under ALL THE FUCKING STRESS SHE’S UNDER, not to mention SHE’S HALF FUCKING DEAD
She had time to go steal someone’s FUCKING SHOES when she had a pair of perfectly good shoes to begin with.
And before you say “THEY’RE ALL SPARKLY”, no. No, she just CRASH LANDED INTO THE GROUND. Is it too much to think that maybe, MAYBE, its DUST AND DIRT FROM CRASH LANDING FACE FIRST ON THE GROUND???
three years and this is still the funniest fucking homestuck post to ever exist
[7022-7025]
This is incredible. #Homestuck#a6a6#homestuck#hilarious#funny#webcomic#web comics #Homestuck is so good #swearing#death mention](https://64.media.tumblr.com/401120ce91397473377c40832fd40019/tumblr_net81nypwU1r0yv3eo1_500.gif)
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