Teach a man to fish and the dude with the the thousand fishes will buy the lake where that person fishes and charge them a monthly fee to be able to fish and also take a % of the fish that they catch.
Just scrolled past a 30 second video of those guys from that hockey having sex but I can’t post a picture of my Black characters fully dressed standing still without a mature content warning. Cool cool cool
To be clear, this isn’t me grandstanding to say “THAT FILTH SHOULD BE CENSORED!” Because truthfully I don’t care.
I just want my posts to stop being marked mature when my Black characters are fully dressed and just standing there!
There was a massive shift in how our culture understood morality when, after World War II, the general public realized “just following orders” was not an excuse for crimes against humanity. Now we need another moral shift in which we decide, as a culture, that “for the benefit of the stockholders” is not an excuse for anything.
We kind of need to relearn the “just following orders” part again
AO3 does not live in “the cloud” because that is other people’s computers, and other people’s computers are vulnerable to censorship.
AO3 is on its own computers. It does still have to be housed somewhere, and I suppose a determined enough hater could try to find that place and go after it, but it’s a lot harder than sending spurious complaints to Amazon or whomever going “BadWrong things are hosted on your cloud service!”
Owning the servers is a core tenet of OTW/AO3.
Warming up a new database server….
When people involved with AO3 talk about “the cost of servers” they don’t mean “the cost to pay Amazon for space on their servers.” They mean, like, the cost to physically own them, and eventually replace them with new ones. And the operating costs to run them.
AO3 is not “in the cloud.” AO3 is stored on physical machines that the OTW owns.
While this is not a solution that can work for everyone who wants to deal with controversial content, it is why AO3ple sneer at alt-righters who complain about getting thrown off hosting platforms.
Because I want us to own the goddamned servers, ok? Because I want a place where we can’t be TOSed and where no one can turn the lights off or try to dictate to us what kind of stories we can tell each other.
AO3 is what a website looks like when you seize the means of production.
Please note that buying new servers and storage just became a shit load more expensive.
Because AI.
To paraphrase a comment on a Gamers Nexus video, the reason computer parts are getting so expensive is that a huge amount of RAM and storage that have not been produced yet were purchased with non-existent money to put in gpus and computers that have also not yet been produced to put in data centers that have not yet been built, to be powered by infrastructure that may never appear, to satisfy demand that does not actually exist, to obtain profit that is mathematically impossible.
So that’s fun. But it means that already owning computers that actually do the thing is SO MUCH BETTER than hiring other people to build more capacity to buy more computers to do the thing.
How bad is the RAM crisis? The price of ddr3, which is like 10-15yo tech, is going up. The price of DDR5 is now stupid expensive, 4+ times as expensive as it was a few months ago.
Mostly because there’s only one company in the world that is capable of generating the kind of chips needed and everyone uses that company because the modern world is a very precarious house of cards held together by tissue and string and we have a 50 foot toddler playing Godzilla with international trade.
Anyway AO3 is a goddamn miracle people need to respect.
I think this is especially worth pointing out now because if they start fundraising more then this is most probably why they need money. If anyone’s mad that AO3 needs extra dollars then, remember to blame AI.
Have you guys noticed how much the internet/technology just does not listen to you anymore? I click “don’t show this artist” on Spotify and I get recommended a music video by them on the front page. I click “skip this update” on a pop up every time I open a file organization app and it’s right back there every time. O click unsubscribe on a newsletter and it keeps showing up in my inbox!! I click “delete my account” and the next time I open the website they suggest I “reactivate”.
A little discussed tumblr experience is that when you add a new gif to a post, it goes into the gif library that everyone has access to
Every now and then you get a notification that a user has added your gif to their post and you are treated to a glimpse of a user you have never seen before in a fandom you have never heard of talking about something you will never see again
it is. sincerely really weird that 2016 nostalgia is a trend. like i knew this day would come but not for specifically 2016. the meme that year was about how this was the worst year ever for most people
one thing that works about the benoit blanc movies as a franchise that has tanked other franchises for me (aside from the stupendous acting, clever screenplays with meaningful commentary, and sheer passion for filmmaking done by people at the top of their game) is that the movies aren’t connected at all. yes i want 12 more of them. no there cannot be one single mention of any plot point of any of the other ones in any of them (and thankfully there never will be). there’s no fatigue of having to keep up with 20 characters’ storylines, or remember anything that has happened previously. it’s a blank slate every time. plus! they all admirably possess the same distinct style (thank you, rian johnson!) but at the same time are vastly different between them, in sets, costumes, types of characters, interactions between them, etc. so refreshing
B-17 bomber is riddled with German anti-aircraft fire but miraculously survives. Later they discover the explosive shells were all inert; sabotaged by Nazi slaves working in armament factories.
Inside one empty shell is a written note: it’s all we can do for you now.
The most important part of all this is that these small acts of bravery and noncompliance cannot be known as long as the enemy still stands, and might never be known. Just because it doesn’t seem like anyone is doing anything doesn’t mean it’s true. The best malicious compliance or subtle sabotage is the one that’s never detected, but makes ravages nonetheless.
A critical part of any resistance is
Do not post your crimes
Do not brag. Do not look for brownie points. Do not publicly recruit. Keep your mouth shut.
Hayden
| mid 30s | She/Her | Trans woman | I'm an artist living in the Pacific Northwest. I like Pokemon and Octopath Traveler. This is my personal blog, check out my art blog Frosted-Gears.
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