I am a Lemming

One of the best shot of Total Solar Eclipse from 08-04-2024.

Via @nasa-official

if I say "I have to Austin Powers my car out of a parking space," do you understand what i mean

like this?

#2, Brute?

Please don’t pay for his music.

also don’t listen to it, it’s extremely bad

He’s wanting to do this to his home: 

He submitted the proposal to the Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council and the plan was rejected because the proposed four-foot-high railings (fence) and simple cast iron gate (which was chosen purely privacy and security for the front of the home) were considered “too domestic” looking for the former industrial area. The council gave Sheeran a list of options for privacy “railings”, and after changing the proposal Sheeran was given permission that was more in line with the neighbourhood, which is in a conservation area.  A direct quote from Sheeran states: “Dear Natalie Edwards from The Sun newspaper. Your story is bollocks, I have done lots of work in the past for Crisis and Shelter and would never build railings outside my home for that reason.The reason was to keep the paps that you employ from being on my doorstep. Have a good day.” this comment has been substantiated by the local police and security companies that Sheeran and his neighbours have had to contact previously when paparazzi have been taking photographs not only of Sheeran’s house but inside his windows, and constantly knocking on his door and yelling outside his house.  Think about this for a moment, a guy bought a house and fixed it up, he was trying to gain some privacy by asking for a simple fence and gate to indicate the property line and gain some distance from the paps, - which the police and council said was fine - and the newspapers who can no longer use these ill-gotten photos and are probably pissed have managed to spin this story to make it seem that this guy (whether you like his music or not), is an asshole and is anti-homeless. And you’re all eating this shit up and believing the newspapers, even though the Sun and Telegraph are well known across the UK for making shit up and lying. smh. 

I don’t care about Ed Sheeran, but this is an exercise in media literacy

DENTAL PLAN!

LISA NEEDS BRACES!

DENTAL PLAN!

the Ides of March grows near

Has anybody else read The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu, because I’m honestly surprised its not more popular.

Its got such a great spin on the chosen one trope, where the chosen one is a boy who is kinda useless and very spoiled from the fact that nobody is going to question or hurt the Important and Powerful chosen one. Somehow though, he is still a very likeable character and its easy to sympathise with him in the later parts of the books.

So he’s very much a whiny looser at the start, and it takes Taishi, an elderly grandmaster war artist who is very grumpy about leaving retirement to make him…not that. She was such a great character, simultaneously grumpy and sharp tongued, but a softy underneath it all.

Thats not even mentioning the other POV characters who are also amazing, cool, badass, and flawed, and also show that there is no good and evil sides in war.

For a book about a young male chosen one there are so many badass older women while the male characters are all way less cool and competent (said with the greatest affection). So, would highly recommend giving it a read!

Here's the video version of my discussion of the leaked emails that prove the Hugo Awards removed finalists (me, RF Kuang, Paul Weimer, Neil Gaiman & Ep 6 of Sandman) for political reasons, despite us having the required votes. Because too many of you are making assumptions without bothering to read the full exposé.

There's a lot of nuance in this case that I hope people can acknowledge. No, it is not "sinophobic" to criticize the Chinese government's severe censorship policies when anyone who's spent more than ten minutes on the Chinese internet knows how bad it is, and there IS evidence of pressure in this case. There's nothing to accomplish by pretending like it's not a thing. You're not furthering the world proletarian revolution by speaking over the lived experiences of Chinese comrades and denying factually shitty aspects of your favorite AES.

Yes, the Western and presumably white members of the Hugo admin team DID circle back to racism by trying so hard to appease the Chinese government that they preemptively censored Chinese diaspora ~ to be safe ~ on extremely flimsy reasons without even reading our books. And of course, confusing Nepal for Tibet.

It's really not one or the other.

Remember, if someone asks you to censor something, you can say no. If they ask you to compile dossiers on problematic individuals, you can say no. You are allowed to not do the censors work for them. You can tell them to go [censored] themselves.

Mystery solved, everyone!

Emails between the Hugo Awards admin team last year were leaked and turns out the American & Canadian members willingly went through all the finalists and removed those of us who they thought might offend China.

The leaked emails

The full exposé

Edit: We can't yet say for sure if the team did this due to government pressure or not. If you read the exposé there's a piece of evidence that suggests the local Sichuan government had a hand, but there's no confirmation. The point is that the Western admins chose to actively comply instead of uphold the integrity of the awards.

Reblogging with additional context from the exposé because some of you cannot be bothered to read through it and think this has automatically cleared the Chinese government. Right now government pressure is UNCONFIRMED, but suspected with evidence. It can be simultaneously true that the admin team overcorrected in a racist way (preemptively disqualifying Chinese diaspora ~ just to be safe ~) AND that local pressure had a hand in their decisions

Some of you Internet communists on here who've never stepped foot in China cross the line from "critical support of AES" to "China can do nothing wrong ever" and it's really fucking annoying. It's called CRITICAL support for a reason. Pretending like censorship isn't an issue in China (as it ALSO IS IN THE WEST, AS WE HAVE CLEARLY SEEN THESE PAST FEW MONTHS) and accusing people who raise concerns about it of being paranoid conspiracy theorists doesn't help anyone.

I am so tired, tired, TIRED of people accusing me of lying because they mixed facts up in their head or never bothered to check what I've actually said

1. I have NEVER claimed the Hugo Awards censored me for being vocal about Palestine. The nominations were way before October and I know that, so that was obviously not the reason!!

2. I AM in a dispute with my publisher for Palestine-related reasons. I would not be making claims against a corporation that aren't true because that's grounds for a lawsuit. They did serve me legal papers, but not for any reason you think. You would NEVER guess the reason, actually, because it's such a petty technicality being used to intimidate me into shutting up. This is in the process of getting settled.

3. I didn't tell anyone to specifically go after the Chinese members of the Hugo Awards admin team. That would obviously be useless. If you actually watched my reel about it you would know my focus was on Dave McCarty, and guess what? The censorship was indeed spearheaded by him. But it also cannot be confirmed that he received 0 pressure from the Chinese government, because there's indeed a (now deleted) post by the Sichuan local government on WeChat saying they had 3 teams screening the 1500+ works relevant to the Hugo Awards. The screen cap is linked IN the exposé. If you can't read it you have no business speaking over actual Chinese people and our lived experiences. The idea that I would willingly contribute to sinophobia is laughable. You're not punk rock for licking the boot of the 2nd most powerful government in the world instead of the 1st.

So this was originally a response to this post:

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Which is about people wanting an AO3 app, but then it became large and way off topic, so here you go.

Nobody under the age of 20 knows how to use a computer or the internet. At all. They only know how to use apps. Their whole lives are in their phones or *maybe* a tablet/iPad if they're an artist. This is becoming a huge concern.

I'm a private tutor for middle- and high-school students, and since 2020 my business has been 100% virtual. Either the student's on a tablet, which comes with its own series of problems for screen-sharing and file access, or they're on mom's or dad's computer, and they have zero understanding of it.

They also don't know what the internet is, or even the absolute basics of how it works. You might not think that's an important thing to know, but stick with me.

Last week I accepted a new student. The first session is always about the tech -- I tell them this in advance, that they'll have to set up a few things, but once we're set up, we'll be good to go. They all say the same thing -- it won't be a problem because they're so "online" that they get technology easily.

I never laugh in their faces, but it's always a close thing. Because they are expecting an app. They are not expecting to be shown how little they actually know about tech.

I must say up front: this story is not an outlier. This is *every* student during their first session with me. Every single one. I go through this with each of them because most of them learn more, and more solidly, via discussion and discovery rather than direct instruction.

Once she logged in, I asked her to click on the icon for screen-sharing. I described the icon, then started with "Okay, move your mouse to the bottom right corner of the screen." She did the thing that those of us who are old enough to remember the beginnings of widespread home computers remember - picked up the mouse and moved it and then put it down. I explained she had to pull the mouse along the surface, and then click on the icon. She found this cumbersome. I asked if she was on a laptop or desktop computer. She didn't know what I meant. I asked if the computer screen was connected to the keyboard as one piece of machinery that you can open and close, or if there was a monitor - like a TV - and the keyboard was connected to another machine either by cord or by Bluetooth. Once we figured it out was a laptop, I asked her if she could use the touchpad, because it's similar (though not equivalent) to a phone screen in terms of touching clicking and dragging.

Once we got her using the touchpad, we tried screen-sharing again. We got it working, to an extent, but she was having trouble with... lots of things. I asked if she could email me a download or a photo of her homework instead, and we could both have a copy, and talk through it rather than put it on the screen, and we'd worry about learning more tech another day. She said she tried, but her email blocked her from sending anything to me.

This is because the only email address she has is for school, and she never uses email for any other purpose. I asked if her mom or dad could email it to me. They weren't home.

(Re: school email that blocks any emails not whitelisted by the school: that's great for kids as are all parental controls for young ones, but 16-year-olds really should be getting used to using an email that belongs to them, not an institution.)

I asked if the homework was on a paper handout, or in a book, or on the computer. She said it was on the computer. Great! I asked her where it was saved. She didn't know. I asked her to search for the name of the file. She said she already did that and now it was on her screen. Then, she said to me: "You can just search for it yourself - it's Chapter 5, page 11."

This is because homework is on the school's website, in her math class's homework section, which is where she searched. For her, that was "searching the internet."

Her concepts of "on my computer" "on the internet" or "on my school's website" are all the same thing. If something is displayed on the monitor, it's "on the internet" and "on my phone/tablet/computer" and "on the school's website."

She doesn't understand "upload" or "download," because she does her homework on the school's website and hits a "submit" button when she's done. I asked her how she shares photos and stuff with friends; she said she posts to Snapchat or TikTok, or she AirDrops. (She said she sometimes uses Insta, though she said Insta is more "for old people"). So in her world, there's a button for "post" or "share," and that's how you put things on "the internet".

She doesn't know how it works. None of it. And she doesn't know how to use it, either.

Also, none of them can type. Not a one. They don't want to learn how, because "everything is on my phone."

And you know, maybe that's where we're headed. Maybe one day, everything will be on "my phone" and computers as we know them will be a thing of the past. But for the time being, they're not. Students need to learn how to use computers. They need to learn how to type. No one is telling them this, because people think teenagers are "digital natives." And to an extent, they are, but the definition of that has changed radically in the last 20-30 years. Today it means "everything is on my phone."

we stopped having computer classes because 'everyone knows how to use a computer' and then we suddenly fucking didn't

i. i love him.

he’s there to flirt with men and good for him

uh… fellas?

It’s that month again folks! Happy February.

Homicide: Life On The Street 5.18 “Double Blind”