> get lamp

are there any life hacks for like. how to be worth anything and have anything you do deserve anyone giving a shit about it and to not get punished for the mere act of mentioning that it hurts to be wrong and not enough? answers on the back of a postcard

(and don't say "intimate friendships" like a couple of no doubt well-meaning folks did here. I have no idea how long it's been since I had one of those, never mind more than one. what a concept. the whole thing is there's not enough of me to achieve and sustain such a thing, even if I knew anyone with whom I would be comfortable trying it, which I don't. I barely get accepted into surface-level friendships. nor does "[you don't] need to reach a certain threshold to be allowed to live happily" make sense here because I'm talking about needing to reach a threshold to be accepted as belonging.)

The Mirror of Galadriel by Sepide-Donne

Been kinda absent for a couple of weeks because I was dealing with my dad being in hospital again ("again" in reference to when he was in late last October/early November) and the aftermath of that. Things are okay in the sense of immediate medical danger (and actually he turned out to never have been in any immediate danger) but this always comes with recuperation time and home nurse and physical therapy visits and yadda yadda. I'm catching up on my reading list now.

...just realized I haven't made any public posts since February and not even any to any filter that wasn't totally private since March, so already everyone would have been seeing a long absence. Oop. I just don't have much to say about general life these days, I guess.

Every member of Bandcamp union bargaining team was laid off in huge cuts at Oakland firm

Well THAT'S fucking great. I was thinking the other day that maybe I should buy some of the stuff I had bookmarked soon lest it become unavailable, but now I don't know if I want to give them money at a time like this...

(argh, apparently DW sanitizes a Tumblr embed down to just the link. That would have been easier than constructing this by hand. oh well.)

https://logan-galbraith.tumblr.com/post/712873216595591168/weve-got-a-problem-here-i-know-most-people-here:

j-thealchemist:
Here is a link to the US Restrict Act (commonly known as the TikTok ban) as it is currently written.

Please read the actual bill and share even if you do not live in the United States. The precedents this piece of legislation would set would have far reaching impacts on how the internet is used for everyone in the future.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/686/text

We’ve got a problem here. I know most people here probably hate tiktok, and for some good reasons, but believe it or not there’s actually a good amount of good on tiktok too.

But this isn’t about banning tiktok. That’s just a cover for this, given power thanks to Meta (Facebook) lobbyists pretty much paying the United States Government.

For the tldr: This act, while saying it’s to insure American’s personal information will be safe from foreign powers, it goes much deeper than that.

• It will give the United States Government the power to remove and ban ANY online service they deem “a security risk” while making it so they do not need just cause and do not need to clarify or release a public statement


• It allows them the power to gather American’s data without our knowledge or consent and even force us to submit documentation for anything they wish.


• It protects the government from scrutiny on this, and if you try to speak about it and inform people on what it ACTUALLY allows, they can claim it to be false information and charge you.


• It prevents you from using a VPN as it’s seen as a breach of information security, thus they can charge you.


• Failure to abide by these “guidelines” can lead to a fine up to ONE MILLION DOLLARS and/or 20 YEARS in prison.


• And above all it does NOTHING to prevent AMERICAN companies from collecting and selling your data.

And that’s not even everything it does. This isn’t about banning tiktok. It’s about control, taking away our freedom of speech, censorship, and selfish monetary gain. This doesn’t just affect tiktok users. This affects ALL Americans, small businesses, communities, and even those that use American online products, like Tumblr.

The US is turning into a fascist regime, where they are slowly but surely stripping away our rights and freedoms even more than they already have. And it terrifies me.

If you’re not an American, please share this. We already have a hard enough time knowing what goes on with those in other countries. This could make it all the more difficult.

And if you are an American, share this, then contact your state representative and your state senators. Email, phone, even mailing a physical letter for crying out loud. You can search “who is my representative and senators?” on Google, bing, duck-duck-go, or whatever, and it’ll take you to where you can find that out and even how to contact them.

Calmly and professionally tell them that not only do you NOT support the TikTok ban(since that is the cover they are using), but you DO NOT support the Restrict Act.

And let them know that if this bill is to pass, you will be spending all your time and energy supporting their opponents in the PRIMARIES. They do not expect Americans to contact them about this, so not only will they see us going out of our way to contact them, but by saying you’ll be supporting their OPPONENTS, they’ll have to either listen or have to spend thousands of not millions of dollars in campaigning so they don’t lose their nice day paychecks, and to them this is all about money so it’ll hit them where it hurts.

It doesn’t matter what political party you’re on, because BOTH parties in office want this. This is not about sides. This is about the ENTIRE government stripping our rights away so they can keep lining their own pockets.

Dear Apple:

QUIT FUCKING TURNING BLUETOOTH BACK ON WHEN I UPDATE IPADOS. Every other existing setting you leave untouched, afaict. Why is THIS the one I have to frob every single time???

We got omicron shots today, whee.

Hey WHAT THE FUCK

https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/06/23/supreme-court-limits-ability-to-enforce-miranda-rights/

I'm starting to fear that my (paper) tax return may have gotten lost after delivery, because I haven't received the refund. The certified mail tracking number says it was delivered on April 12th, which is 9 weeks ago. Generally they say "If it's been 6 weeks and you've heard nothing, call us", but ha ha, you can't really do that (see below). A COVID-specific processing times page does say there are 2021 tax returns still unprocessed as of June 1, but also claims they are opening mail within "normal timeframes", whatever that means. Everything we can find gives us the idea that the existence of the return should have been registered pretty quickly after delivery, even if the actual processing gets dragged out, but I can't confirm that that happened. I'm not (very) antsy about the refund itself, I'm just worried that they're going to think I never filed a return at all and that will have future consequences (read, penalties) that I don't want to have to try to fight. ( Read more... )

So all I've got at this point is the USPS's word that they delivered an envelope to a PO Box in Utah. What do?

These Bay Area trees existed nowhere else on the planet. Did they survive a devastating wildfire?

Again, what's with the clickbait headline? "The answer may surprise you!" grr. Anyway, they're talking about the Butano cypress, apparently a relic of a climate that existed millions of years ago in California. And the answer is yes: though the existing trees were reduced to charcoal and ash in the August 2020 CZU fire, their saplings are sprouting.