I regret to inform you that Discord's new Terms of Service includes an arbitration clause. You can find it here https://discord.com/terms/#16. This clause includes an opt-out, which I have transcribed here:

You can decline this agreement to arbitrate by emailing an opt-out notice to arbitration-opt-out@discord.com within 30 days of April 15, 2024 or when you first register your Discord account, whichever is later; otherwise, you shall be bound to arbitrate disputes in accordance with the terms of these paragraphs. If you opt out of these arbitration provisions, Discord also will not be bound by them.

These clauses are underhanded ways that corporations seek to deprive you of your right to participate in class-action lawsuits and your right to a jury trial. (This does only apply to us users ,other people still spread the word though )

#whats arbitration someone help me

Bad news, @noodelzmop. Arbitration basically means that if you want to sue Discord for whatever reason, the dispute needs to be handled in house. Specifically, in their house. If you don't get this email out, you're basically signing away your right to legal recourse if they do criminally shitty stuff to you, like with the McDonalds app.

I have been told that emailing "I am confirming that as of the date of this email, I am choosing to opt out of binding arbitration to settle disputes with Discord." With the Email you used for your discord account is enough for the notice but take this with a grain of salt as this was not said by a lawyer

reiterating that this only applies to US users

THIRTY DAY LIMIT BTW. I suggest taking sixty seconds to fire off a quick email with op’s recommended text. I have no plans to sue discord but better safe than sorry

in a perfect world what character would you own a life size cardboard cutout of. you get one and I want you to answer in the tags with your heart. if you asked me right now I would say columbo

april will be a good month [staring into the sink mirror eyebags prominent the most upset person youve ever seen]

thinking abt how percy exploded that volcano but from annabeths perspective bc could you imagine being her and watching that bitch explode and being like “damn he really did have a plan he ate that up :)” and she’s waiting there for like half an hour and waiting for him to pop out of the woodwork but as time goes by he doesn’t she’s like “wait a damn minute…”

like ik that shit was traumatic as hell but how FUNNY IS THATTT

she’s like standing a ways away at the entrance to one of the labyrinth tunnels imagining percy walking away from the explosion and pulling her into another kiss after this crazy near death experience she’s probably thinking this is when their gonna start dating (or she’s thinking abt how they’re never going to speak again bc he doesn’t like her like that blah blah) and as she’s thinking abt this she’s like “hmm it’s been a while maybe i should look for him or smth” she’s like calling out his name and ever so slowly the last line of that prophecy starts playing in her head

like she prob went from “percy :) hey percy!! percy im over here !!” to “PERCYYYY‼️🔇🔇🔇PERCY WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU LERCY PERFYYYY PERUC PETYC WHere WHEREE ARE YOU PERRCYYYY‼️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️”

ik that girl was out searching for that man until the helicopters came and she had to dip

coming back to camp covered in soot and trauma thinking she just killed her best friend

Additional context because I know the radfems are going to get their hands on this and love it:

It's not just about hating men.

It's a political statement and protest for equality that specifically seeks to eliminate the way the way Korean women are used, abused, discarded within the patriarchy by their own refusal to participate in any of it or associate with anyone who benefits from it.

It's very specifically about Demanding equality from men in power by refusing to take part in the patriarchy and challenging the way it perceives women.

It's becoming a topic in the west now and so I wanted to add all this context with the addendum that this is NOT an inherently transphobic movement. It's also completely autonomous meaning there is no "leader" of it.

Each person will have their own reasons and method of participating in this movement. Anyone can join or be part of it. Yes this includes radfems and TERFs so when they eventually try to co-opt this movement as their own let's remember that they don't speak for all feminists and theyre definitely NOT the voice of oppressed Korean women who started this, and as such have No reason to put themselves in the spotlight of this movement. And we have no reason to let them.

The post above is incredible because it's actually just literally what allies of trans-exclusionary radical feminists say in South Korea when they're trying to show that they're not exterminationists about trans people while still saying that TERFs' behaviors towards trans women should be excused. For someone who is vehemently against TERFs, or so they say, the responder above has essentially ceded every ground that Korean "neutral" feminists have ceded in half a decade in one tumblr post.

For instance, Lee Nayoung's "Theorizing Sexuality and Feminist Sexual Politics: Development and Encounter of Feminism and Queer Theory" essentially also says that radical feminism is not about hating men, and that Queer Theorists (including transfeminists) should simply make up and hold hands with the same people who called for their extermination in the cademic space.

Lee hyomin's "Radical Reconstruction of Feminist Politics: Focusing on the Critical Analysis of 'TERF' in South Korea" essentially lists out every grievances that South Korean women have (and these are all, for the record, valid grievances), but come to the conclusion that even though TERFs are wrong, since South Korean women have it so hard, transgender people must excuse the fact that these women find comfort in radical feminism and really really need their female-only space that they enforce with violence against transgender women. But hey, Lee at least leaves open the possibility that when TERFs are ready, they should embrace intersectionality and join hands with trans women!

Yoon Jiyoung's "The Revolutionary Turning Point of Feminism Crisis: Is it Possible Radical Queer Feminism?" also essentially says that radical feminists aren't the face of Korean feminism and there should be a synthesis on queer, radical feminism.

Jeong Seunghwa's "Saving Radical Femnism from Queerphobia: Opinion on Alliance between Feminists and Queer Activists," straight up says that refusing to ally with queer activists is not the same as queer hate, and that "cisgender" as a construct is an oxymoronic concept within transfeminist theory, so wanting cisgender women to have a space for them only (once again, enforced with state violence, which necessarily invites cisgender men's violence upon transgender women) is not an inherently transphobic wish (her words; not mine; it's as nonsensical in Korean as it reads in English).

All the poster above has done, without knowing, is recycle these thinly-veiled trans exclusionary radical feminists' exact talking points. Somehow, this is supposed to be allyship for trans people and logic that this movement is not trans-exclusionary, but, like, South Korean feminist movement has had a huge issue with queerphobia, especially transmisogyny, for decades. Sure, 4B movement might not have a leader, but I (and other trans women in South Korea) have been very vocal about how trans women are actively, with violence, pushed out of activist spaces for women's liberation in Korea, including pamphlets handed out by organizers of rallies to report "men disguised as women" so that they can be "ejected" from rallies. These people might not be leaders of the movement, but they did organize the rallies where people gathered to protest under the same cause, and their resounding answer was that trans women, especially ones that haven't had bottom surgery, are not allowed!

If an organization whose in-person activism that includes this policy is "NOT an inherently transphobic movement," then Japan's far-right Liberal Democratic Party's policy on transgender people and their gender marker change (until a recent supreme court ruling) is not an inherently transphobic policy, despite the fact that an international community of trans healthcare providers have the policy akin to a genocidal policy.

There are transfeminists (such as Ruin) that exist in South Korea, and they do find allies with cis feminists, but these cis feminists, by virtue of working with transfeminists, are also pushed into a niche. This is all something that any LGBT+ South Korean person (let alone a trans South Korean person) that's tried to get involved in feminist activism can tell you, but apparently, for someone who wants to center the voices of the oppressed, the poster above couldn't even find a single South Korean LGBT+ person to ask about this.

This person has made up a version of South Korean bourgeoisie feminism that does not exist in real life because to yankees, South Korea is not a place to be seriously examined; it is an ideal of anti-whatever they want to project themselves onto, whether they're reactionary or otherwise, and this is by design! South Korea is a puppet state designed by the U.S. ruling class to be a symbol of whatever they want it to be, and they've propped up no less than 50 years of bloody far-right dictators that killed communists with little to no pushback and subsequent 20 (almost 30) more years of bourgeoisie "democratic" state that still crushes its most marginalized under its heels.

For this yankee who wants to "decolonize" the "left," they can't even decolonize the extreme reactionary ways in which they interact with the neocolony of a rotting corpse of an empire that they live in. This is what catchphrase-based, feel-good, "it sounds true" way of engaging with the world that doesn't study (or worse, actively shies away from) the material reality gets you.

You people will just say anything you want about Korea, North or South.

Before I scuttle off, though, please ask yourself why articles like these that talk about birthrate or lack of 1st graders or whatever in South Korea almost never discusses the fact that recently, the far-right capitalist regime has made it even harder for couples to afford kids, or historically, the fact that the decline in birthrate being sharp coincides with far-right regime at enforcing lower birthrate + "democratic" regime's neoliberalization in social welfare policies after the 1997 Asian financial collapse. It's almost as if critique of capitalism and its tangible harmful impact on human lives is impossible to conceive of (no pun intended) for these people. Women aren't "withholding reproductive labor," yankee reading this from their shitty suburban dwelling. People can't afford to see a gynecologist because the far-right regime modeled its social welfare policies after the USA's social welfare policies.

I thought I was done with this post (and this addition probably won't spread), but I wanted add one more thing that bothered me about the Other Post.

This isn't even the age that kids start school in South Korea. If Korean cis women really did do this since 2019, the kids that enter first grade would be....

2-3 years under the age that they normally enter kindergarten (kids do not just pop out of the woman right after sex! You'd have to account for the 8-9 months of pregnancy!). So now, we have to look at what happened 8-9 years ago. So what did happen 8-9 years ago?

THAT'S RIGHT! IT'S ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT LABOR! Park Geun-hye's awful far-right regime has made it impossible for Korean youth to even survive, let alone think about kids 9 years ago! Did you know that if you're working 60+ hrs a week because you lost your benefits in your "contractor" job, you tend to stop having sex (or any other leisure life)? It's always been about capitalism and its impact on human lives! Pretenidng otherwise is literally letting the capitalists hijack the narrative about their failure with flashy "causes" that do not line up! Reject any "analysis" that ignore the actual, tangible material causes to the phenomena in favor of sensationalism! It's like a key dangling in front of your face!

Mohammed El-Kurd, Are we indeed all Palestinians?

Fish, pointillist birds, grapple, Sondheim, and frank O’Hara

🍉🇵🇸 eSims for Gaza masterpost 🇵🇸🍉

Which eSims are currently being called for?

As of March 27th:

More eSims are urgently needed—the team has less than a day’s supply in their inbox right now. eSim plans being called for are:

If you sent an eSim more than two weeks ago and it is still valid and not yet activated, reply to the email in which you originally sent the eSim. To determine whether the eSim is still valid, scan the QR code with a smartphone; tap the yellow button that reads “Cellular plan”; when a screen comes up reading “Activate eSIM,” click the button that says “Continue.” If a message comes up reading “eSIM Cannot Be Added: This code is no longer valid. Contact your carrier for more information,” the eSim is activated, expired, or had an error in installation, and should not be sent. It is very important not to re-send invalid eSims, since people may walk several kilometers to access wifi to connect their eSims only to find out that they cannot be activated.

If a screen appears reading “Activate eSIM: An eSIM is ready to be activated” with a button asking you to “Continue,” do not click “Continue” to activate the eSim on your phone; exit out of the screen and reply to the email containing that QR code.

Be sure you're looking at the original post, as this will be continually updated. Any new instructions about replying to emails for specific types of unactivated plans will also appear here.

Check the notes of blackpearlblasts's eSim post, as well as fairuzfan's 'esim' tag, for referral and discount codes.

How do I purchase an eSim?

If you cannot download an app or manage an eSim yourself, send funds to Crips for eSims for Gaza (Visa; Mastercard; Paypal; AmEx; Canadian e-transfer), or to me (venmo @gothhabiba; paypal.me/Najia; cash app $NajiaK, with note “esims” or similar; check the notes of this post for updates on what I've purchased.)

You can purchase an eSim yourself using a mobile phone app, or on a desktop computer (with the exception of Simly, which does not have a desktop site). See this screenreader-accessible guide to purchasing an eSim through each of the five services that the Connecting Humanity team is calling for (Simly, Nomad, Mogo, Holafly, and Airalo).

Send a screenshot of the plan's QR code to gazaesims@gmail.com. Be sure to include the app used, the word "esim," the type of plan (when an app has more than one, aka "regional Middle East" versus "Palestine"), and the amount of data or time on the plan, in the subject line or body of your email.

Message me if you have any questions or if you need help purchasing an eSim through one of these apps.

If you’re going to be purchasing many eSims at once, see Jane Shi’s list of tips.

Which app should I use?

Try to buy an eSim from one of the apps that the team is currently calling for (see above).

If the team is calling for multiple apps:

How much data should I purchase?

Mirna el-Helbawi has been told that large families may all rely on the same plan for data (by setting up a hotspot). Some recipients of eSim plans may also be using them to upload video.

For those reasons I would recommend getting the largest plan you can afford for plans which cannot be topped up: namely, Simly "Middle East" plans, and Holafly plans (they say you can top them up, but I haven't heard of anyone who has gotten it to work yet).

For all other plans, get a relatively small amount of data (1-3 GB, a 3-day plan, etc.), and top up the plan with more data once it is activated. Go into the app’s settings and make sure low-data notifications are on, because a 1-GB eSIM can expire very quickly.

Is there anything else I need to do?

Check back regularly to see if the plan has been activated. Once it's been activated, check once a day to see if data is still being used, and how close the eSim is to running out of data or to expiring; make sure your notifications are on.

If the eSim hasn't been activated after three weeks or so, reply to the original email that you sent to Gaza eSims containing the QR code for that plan.

If you purchased the eSim through an app which has a policy of starting the countdown to auto-expiry a certain amount of time after the purchase of the eSim, rather than only upon activation (Nomad does this), then also reply to your original e-mail once you're within a few days of this date. If you're within 12 hours of that date, contact customer service and ask for a credit (not a refund) and use it to purchase and send another eSim.

How can I tell if my plan has been activated? How do I top up a plan?

The Connecting Humanity team recommends keeping your eSims topped up once they have been activated.

See this guide on how to tell if your plan has been activated, how to top up plans, and (for Nomad) how to tell when the auto-expiry will start. Keep topping up the eSim for as long as the data usage keeps ticking up. This keeps a person or family connected for longer, without the Connecting Humanity team having to go through another process of installing a new eSim.

If the data usage hasn't changed in a week or so, allow the plan to expire and purchase another one.

What if I can't afford a larger plan, or don't have time or money to keep topping up an eSim?

I have set up a pool of funds out of which to buy and top up eSims, which you can contribute to by sending funds to my venmo (@gothhabiba), PayPal (paypal.me/Najia), or cash app ($NajiaK) (with note “esims” or similar). Check the notes of this post for updates on what I've purchased, which plans are active, and how much data they've used.

Crips for eSims for Gaza also has a donation pool to purchase eSims and top them up.

Gaza Online (run by alumni of Gaza Sky Geeks) accepts monetary donations to purchase eSims as needed.

What if my eSim has not been activated, even after I replied to my email?

Make sure that the QR code you sent was a clear screenshot, and not a photo of a screen; and that you didn’t install the eSim on your own phone by scanning the QR code or clicking “install automatically."

Possible reasons for an eSim not having been activated include: it was given to a journalist as a back-up in case the plan they had activated expired or ran out of data; there was an error during installation or activation and the eSim could no longer be used; the eSim was installed, but not activated, and then Israeli bombings destroyed the phone, or forced someone to leave it behind.

An eSim that was sent but couldn’t be used is still part of an important effort and learning curve. Errors in installation, for example, are happening less often than they were in the beginning of the project.

Why should I purchase an eSim? Is there any proof that they work?

Israel is imposing near-constant communications blackouts on Gaza. The majority of the news that you are seeing come from Gaza is coming from people who are connected via eSim.

eSims also connect people to news. People are able to videochat with their family for the first time in months, to learn that their family members are still alive, to see their newborn children for the first time, and more, thanks to eSims.

Some of this sharing of news saves lives, as people have been able to flee or avoid areas under bombardment, or learn that they are on evacuation lists.

Why are different plans called for at different times?

Different eSims work in different areas of the Gaza Strip (and Egypt, where many refugees currently are). The team tries to keep a stockpile of each type of sim on hand.

Is there anything else I can do to help?

There is an urgent need for more eSims. Print out these posters and place them on bulletin boards, in local businesses, on telephone poles, or wherever people are likely to see them. Print out these foldable brochures to inform people about the initiative and distribute them at protests, cafes and restaurants, &c. Also feel free to make your own brochures using the wording from this post.

The Connecting Humanity team is very busy connecting people to eSims and don't often have time to answer questions. Check a few of Mirna El Helbawi's most recent tweets and see if anyone has commented with any questions that you can answer with the information in this post.

its so over

i know the slaughter of gaza has dominated everyone's news for the last half a year for good reason but to sum up the climate change news of the last months is that a. every single climate change goal has been failed and b. there will be no arable land anymore in a few decades

you are, literally, already dead

i wish everyone would get on the planned degrowth wave now because the unplanned degrowth is going to be horrible

the situation in sudan is dire. allied militants are targeting sudanese people in darfur on the basis of nothing but their ethnic identiy. telecommunications in sudan have all but shut down, impeding access to details of the atrocities that are being committed as we speak. people are being killed, their homes are being looted, they're having to relocate to other cities--only to fall prey to militant forces again, which are going out of their way to pillage more and more areas. although it's been difficult getting hold of footage in sudan, the ones that have managed to come out have been entirely horrific. just like palestine, sudan is falling victim to ethnic cleansing.

ramadan is coming soon, and it's a time of selfless giving and kindness. as we come closer and closer to it, please consider donating to ramadanforsudan--an initiative started by SAPA to raise humanitarian aid for sudan. as always, even the smallest penny counts. if you can't donate, make sure to spread this to someone who can. this is extremely time-sensitive, and it could use all the donations and coverage it can get.

if you haven’t seen any footage about sudan yet, it’s because they literally have a telecom blackout, giving militant forces the perfect chance to go on committing atrocities with no one the wiser. even so much as giving a sudanese journalist spotlight puts a target on their head—that’s how dire the situation is getting. it’s important to elevate sudanese voices that are trying to communicate the severity of the mass cleansing happening in real time.

with that in mind, please consider donating—however little it may be.

What can be said that hasn’t been said for these ethnic cleansing maniacs already? Fucking horrific would not even begin to cover it.

I see a lot of people joking about the adhd thing of "I have a appointment/phone call at 3pm, guess I won't do anything all day!"

But no one seems to make the connection that it's a time blindness thing. One of the symptoms of ADHD is not having a good and accurate sense of time. And not doing stuff prior to an event with a hard deadline is an obvious coping mechanism for that.

Can I go to the store? It's 10am and the appointment is at 3pm. How long does going to the store take? An hour? Three hours? Five hours? I DON'T KNOW!

I get anxious trying to do things before appointments because I'm aware that I don't know how long those things take, and that if I think I do, I may be very wrong. Too often I've been like "hey I can walk to the corner store and grab a drink, that'll take like 15 minutes!" and then an hour later I get back and whoops my rice has burnt.

Plus there's also the fact that ADHD people know that motivation and focus is a two-edged sword.

Like, let's say you decide to play a video game. You've got time, you can pause/save whenever, so this should be a perfect fit to make good use of your waiting-time. So you start playing and WHOOPS you get really focused for some reason today (because people with ADHD do not get to pick when their brain decides to focus) and the next time you look at the clock it's 2:49 and you haven't showered or dressed and the appointment is 30 minutes away. Fuck. (you could have set an alarm, but now you're asking people with the forgetting-things-and-time-ignoring condition to remember it set alarms)

And with motivation, it can be almost worse. Instead of playing a game, you so something useful or creative. You clean your room or fix your plumbing or write a story or draw a picture. And suddenly it's great. Your brain is firing on all cylinders. You've got all the motivation you can ask for, and you are FLYING. the ideas are brilliant, your hands are nimble, you're getting stuff done you've been putting off for weeks or months. And then the alarm goes off. Time to go to your appointment. Fuck.

You drive there, your brain still full of ideas and plans. But by the time you get back, the motivation is gone. You may still have the ideas but you don't have the drive to write them down. You can't force yourself to do it. Your sink is still in pieces. Your room is half-cleaned, and you have to shove all the sorted clothes into one big bin just so you have somewhere to sleep. You've left things half finished again, in a cycle that has been repeating your whole fucking life. It seems sometimes that nothing ever gets finished.

So next time you don't even start. There's not time. You've been burnt too many times. Why add another half-completed project to your pile of shame?

My point is that people seem to be going "lol I can't do anything all day if I have an appointment at 3pm" like this is a quirky "oh I'm so scatterbrained!" weirdness they alone have, and not a major complication of a disabling mental illness.

(and that's not even getting into the secondary effects. If you know that having an appointment ruins your whole damn day, you're going to avoid them. Even when it's things like "going to that party" or "meeting your friends for a drink/game" or "going to a movie with that cute girl from your math class". Things you should enjoy. Things that'd help you be social. Things that make you feel human.)

So apparently KOSA (2024 edition) is getting either thrown out until next year or put into effect in six days.

Update that's going in the main post at the top: it has enough support to pass.

It failed the last two times because people were voting against it.

This time, KOSA has traction among the pro-LGBTQ parties. Because nobody is fucking calling their bullshit and screaming from the rooftops that calling it the "Kids Online Safety Act" is misleading.

Nothing much, only prevent any education on LGBTQIA+ (it's that stupid fucking argument about us grooming kids again), shut down nearly every fandom space on the internet, and make it required for most big tech companies to have your ID.

Want to have resources for kids to discover their identity readily available? Yes? Then fucking speak up against this stupid fucking bill.

Fandom spaces like Tumblr, Twitter (? I thought the MAGA assholes liked Musk?), Tiktok, Archive Of Our Own, and any other website that hosts fanfic or fanart? Either shut down permanently, forced to uproot to a different country and down for a while (best case scenario, and they likely won't be able to send any data, and therefore fanfics, to the US), or gutted so that you only get to put G rated cishet ships on there, if any shipping at all. How to avoid that? I've already said it: Call your fucking representatives.

Want to avoid the fucking dystopic task of being legally obligated to give big tech your government issue ID? Again, cause an uproar. Call your goddamned representatives.

So, for fuck's sake, any Americans that can impact this stupid fucking bill and see this? Do everything in your power to shut it down because you have until February twenty sixth (26th) to send this bill back to where it belongs.

And if you can't do that? Reblog, copy my tags, and boost the signal.

And I just got confirmation from a second ex-colleague that a deal with midjourney has been brewing since months ago. Not any extra details, just that's a real thing.

Shit, I don't see any way for this to happen that doesn't make it an apocalyptic event the size of the porn ban. Fuck.

Shit. This may be pure chance and coincidence, and it's not he is in a position to be able to talk about anything, but seeing prominent staff members announcing they are moving their original photography out of tumblr just two weeks ago seems a pretty significant cue of shit to be about to hit the fan.

Just tested. It’s possible to swap out pictures on already-published posts. So in that case, a solution:

Nightshade your photo posts now.

Even if you don’t post your own art anymore, go back to your old stuff and watermark it.

Do it ASAP, before the deal goes through and the scraping begins.

This will not only protect your art, but has the opportunity to fuck over this deal on a pretty large scale. The more of these posts that are glazed or poisoned, the less valuable this deal becomes for tumblr and midjourney.

Share this with everyone. And i do mean everyone.