The Vain One

@louvainne / louvainne.tumblr.com

Goes by Lou. Plays a variety of games, including FFXIV and Dragon Age. Best talent is procrastination.
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blows off the dust here

Guess I’ll be needing this place again, huh?

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reblogged

*has video game open* hm i dont feel like playing this right now actually *closes it* man i wish i was playing video game right now *opens it again* hm i dont feel like playing this right now actually *closes it

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Fiction doesn’t manifest brand new experiences out of thin air, fiction doesn’t infect people with never before thought about evil ideas. When we say ‘fiction affects reality’ we’re coming at it like those things never existed before that we interacted with ficiton. Assault, murder, death, queer romance, kink, whatever, and all other commonly censored topics existed before fiction had the audacity to immortalize them. 

Fiction amplifies reality. Jaws didn’t manifest a never before seen fear of sharks, it played on existing misconceptions and existing fears, and amplified them. The fear of sharks already existed. With or without Jaws we feared sharks, then a scary movie came out and those fears became amplified. 

But amplification isn’t exclusively bad

  • Nabokov’s Lolita, aka the most famous pedophilic story of all time and heavily censored for being “pornographic”, amplified our understanding of pedophilia, the kinds of people who commit it (charming, well educated, attractive people), and brought that conversation from hushed rooms to national attention.
  • Fifty Shades of Gray should have caused an uptick of relationship abuse and misuse of BDSM (and maybe it did), but it also caused a nationwide conversation on abuse, stalking, cult behavior, controlling relationships, and healthy BDSM. 
  • A lot of young girls first encountered female masturbation through Judy Blume’s Deenie (one of the ALA’s top 100 banned books of all time and a 40 year old woman writing about teen masturbation, a big tumblr no-no). Deenie’s impact was so important that it’s often cited as an invaluable validation for women and queer women who felt that their exploration was somehow immoral. There’s an entire book full of letters from readers to Blume about how important that book was to them. 

Take a scroll through some ‘top banned books’ lists and count to yourself how many of them were banned for specifically exploring sexual content in a liberating way. Or how many were banned for questioning the system.

Every single censorship movement and every single banned book has an army of people insisting that “fiction [only negatively] affects reality”. Books like Perks of Being a Wallflower for daring to talk about child sexual assault by a woman and depiction of a gay teenager. Or Speak for exploring the sexual assault and suicide attempts of a teenage girl. 

In reality, these books amplified reality and gave voices to the voiceless–those who felt purposefully stifled by society. Visually represented by this comic

Tl;dr: Fiction doesn’t change reality, fiction takes what’s already there and has the possibility of amplifying it–and of course you can pretend “bad fiction” only has “bad results”, but you have to be willing to silence the silenced while you support the people who aim to make fiction 1950s idyllic, oppressive silence. 

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phinarei

I remember being a young teen and watching The Famous Jett Jackson. There was an episode about Farenheit 451 being banned and the fight to be allowed to read it.

I also remember my church talking about how “that’s why it’s banned! It teaches rebellion! It teaches you to question authority!” I nodded along and assumed that those were bad things.

And then I read the book. I read it and I realised something.

The thing that that book taught me the most? Was to wonder WHY a book had been banned. Because once I read it I realized it wasn’t JUST about questioning authority, it was about questioning a system that enforces ignorance and conformity. Something that requires censorship to begin, control, and spread.

I’ve had moments in my life where I saw a piece of media and cringed. Where I was sick just knowing it exists. There are books and shows that I feel strongly against and have had passing thoughts about how they should be banned.

And then I remember reading Farenheit 451. And I remember to ask, “why do I want to ban it?” and “Who does banning this benefit and who does it harm?” as well as “If this is banned, what comes next? What else can be classified this way but is vital to society and the vulnerable people in it?”

Because fiction? Is an important exploration of humanity, good and bad. And it might amplify what’s already there in a bad way sometimes, but it also shines a light on the dark places that we can actually do something about. And if you take away that light, it doesn’t make the bad things go away, it just makes bad people able to hide in the dark.

There are any number of “objectionable” works that have changed society for the better. And we always need to ask ourselves, “is it banning this book I don’t like worth risking preventing someone else taking future generations to a better place because of it?” We don’t get to decide which piece of fiction does that because that isn’t how it works.

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spaceshipkat
Anonymous asked:

I feel like book piracy has become so normalized now and its honestly so ugly and disappointing. Like I totally understand that some people in other countries have straight up no library access but for people in the US/UK?? saying that pubs are their 'free trial' without even trying to use a library??? I truly think younger readers using them don't realize how badly it could fuck an author over

i think book piracy comes down to people not understanding the differences between the film industry and the book industry. i don’t fully understand the film industry bc it’s not my focus, but i do know that pirating movies or shows is not going to directly impact the actors and/or the little people behind the movie or show. (if someone wants to elaborate on how, please do! i’m not really sure.)

however, pirating books is going to directly impact authors, not publishers or CEOs or any other bigwigs. an author is paid thus: they sign a contract for a certain amount of money, say, $100,000 for a two-book deal. that means that each book will be (technically) worth $50,000. depending on the contract, a check will be written for $25,000 upon the author turning in the version of the manuscript that the editor bought. that check will go to the author’s agent, who will take their 15% commission, which will be $3,750. then, the agent will send the remaining $21,250 to the author, minus taxes. with that same scenario, a check with the remaining $25,000 will be written upon the author turning in the final copy of the manuscript, aka the version that will go to the printer, and the process repeats (the check is sent to the agent, the agent takes their 15%, the author gets the remaining $21,250, minus taxes). 

that’s not where this story ends, though: in every contract is a thorough section detailing royalties, aka how much the author will receive per sale of a copy of their book in the book’s entire lifespan. if an agent is good, this will be one of their most important areas they focus on during negotiations. it’s imperative that people know that royalties can make or break an author’s career. it’s better to have larger royalties than a larger advance, bc an advance is only once, whereas royalties will continue as long as the book continues to sell (hardcover, paperback, audiobook, ebook, etc). the higher the author’s advance, the more pressure there is for the author to break even, aka for the author to make back the $50,000 spent on that first book. in a worst case scenario, if an author doesn’t earn back their advance (a big turn of phrase in publishing), they could have book 2 canceled, or they could possibly never be able to sell another book to a publisher again due to a poor sales record. in that case, it’s likely the author will have to re-debut under a pen name so the publisher backing them can treat them like a debut author. or, you’ll see an author’s first printings tank between book 1 and 2 or book 2 and 3 etc etc. for instance, Enchantee by Gita Trelease had a first hardcover printing of 175,000 copies (which is big for a debut!), while book 2 of that series, Everything That Burns, has a first hardcover printing of 75,000 copies. now, i can’t see the sales numbers, but it seems likely a lack of sales is the culprit here. 

so when people say that pirating books will directly influence whether or not your favorite author gets to publish more books, they really mean it. it won’t affect the publisher (who has massive protections in place) nearly as much as it will affect the author (who doesn’t have those same protections), and it could mean that your favorite author never gets to finish that series you love or can never publish another book again. in conclusion, don’t pirate books, kids

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What is happening

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hampop

This guy, man. This guy is like a walking anomaly. It’s like he’s the host for the earth’s magnetic field for weird shit or smthn. That time he went to India instead of Indiana? That time he asked for a neck tattoo and the artist gave him a tattoo of his neck?? Wack.

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ralfmaximus

Years ago back when I worked in cubicle land, we were hiring junior software developers. They didn’t have to have a ton of experience, just a willingness to learn, and some demonstration of their software skills. Like: show me a program you wrote (any language) or a web site you designed. Anything.

And there was this one guy I talked with who seemed super sharp, but had virtually zero experience writing software. When it came time to do the show-n-tell part of the interview he whips out his laptop, brings up a website, and spins it around to show me what he made.

A website of tiny ceramic frogs.

Not for sale. Just… all these ceramic frogs, organized into categories. Frogs on bicycles, frogs with hats, frogs sitting on lily pads. It was a virtual museum of ceramic frogs in web form.

I scrolled through his online collection of frogs, slightly baffled.

“This is your website?” I asked finally.

“Yep!”

“You coded this yourself?” I popped into view-source mode and poked around some incredibly well-formatted, well-commented html. I nodded slowly. This guy was meticulous.

“Yep!”

“So… where’d all the frogs come from?”

“I made those too,” he says, beaming. 

And while I’m processing this he rummages in his bag and pulls out a little ceramic frog working at a computer terminal. He places it on the table before us, next to the laptop.

“And THIS one,” he says, “I made for you! As a thank you for the interview.”

It was adorable. I hired him on the spot. I mean, why not? Worst case he’d wash out in 90 days and we’d hire somebody else. He turned out to be one of the best developers on our team. 

And yes, his cubicle was loaded with ceramic frogs.

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reblogged

Eating while on shift is not permitted, staff are told. “If the system detects no keyboard stroke and mouse click, it will show you as idle for that particular duration, and it will be reported to your supervisor. So please avoid hampering your productivity.”

A training video about the webcam system, seen by the Guardian, says it “monitors and tracks real-time employee behaviour and detects any violations to pre-set business rules, and sends real-time alerts to managers to take corrective actions immediately”.

Capitalism is so exhausting

This is insane.

Capitalism is so innovative /s

Hi!  Want to completely fuck the keyboard-tracking system in the ass?  Want to do it in a way that they literally cannot do anything about without disabling primary Windows functions?

Step 1: Open Notepad.

Step 2: Copy the following text, line for line, omitting only the --- that caps either end of it. --- Dim objResult Set objShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell") Do While True   objResult = objShell.sendkeys("{NUMLOCK}{NUMLOCK}")   Wscript.Sleep (6000) Loop --- Step 3: Save this as whatever.vbs, put it somewhere you can access easily, and double click it when you start your computer.

What does this do?

This runs a very basic script, and every six seconds, your computer will double-tap the NumLock key (i.e., turn it on, and then off) in a single instant.  This counts as a key-press, occurs with a key that shouldn’t affect most things that you’re doing, occurs with no gap between them even if it could affect things you’re doing, and should prevent this kind of BS from engaging.  As an aside, this will also prevent your computer from automatically locking itself, so take that into account if you need to manually lock your computer when going to lunch or whatever.

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grucose

Damn, Tumblr back at it. Now we got coders coming in to save the day.

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barin-mclegg

Tumblr’s collective hate for capitalism is astounding every time but damn if I don’t love it

For all my call center readers.

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reblogged
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urlocalllama

Alex Hirsch is this close to fucking losing it and going on a murderous rampage through Disney’s corporate offices

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reblogged
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profeminist

“As the fight for LGBTQ rights became more mainstream, corporations have latched onto Pride Month as a way of courting the LGBTQ community, an important source of customers and skilled employees.

But do these corporations really support the LGBTQ movement? Popular Information has identified nine rainbow flag-waving corporations that gave $1 million or more to anti-gay politicians in the last election cycle.

Deconstructing corporate pride

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the most prominent organization dedicated to LGBTQ rights, produces a “Corporate Equality Index.” In 2019, 572 companies earned a perfect score. HRC says these companies are the “Best Places to Work for LGBTQ Equality.”

Popular Information identified nine corporations that received a perfect score from HRC but donated $1 million or more in the last election cycle to politicians that received a zero on the HRC Congressional scorecard. The donations were all from corporate PACs to politicians or their leadership PACs.”

Read the full piece here

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