The Snap

Maybe you’ve heard about this, maybe you haven’t. Tumblr was dropped from Apple’s app store for the appearance of child porn on their website and as a result they decided to ban all adult content (although in fact this had been brewing for a while, the Apple thing just prompted them to do it sooner). While getting rid of child porn is dear god always a good thing, keep in mind that this website has a TON of users who have been advocating for child abuse and Tumblr has done nothing—nothing—to stop them. People report them all the time and nothing happens! No bans, no deletions. But the second Apple snaps its fingers, uh-oh, better ban all adult content because that will also somehow double their user base. I’m not making that up. They think that’s how it will work. It’s been likened to Thanos’s snap in Infinity Wars due to both how arbitrary it hits people and how ineffective it is in achieving the professed goal.

As someone who has actually been on Tumblr, I know for a fact that there are a huge amount of porn bots. They’re like, half my followers. I don’t really care because I’m not stupid enough to engage them and frankly, they’re spam, and that’s literally what my blog is about. But in Tumblr’s pervious attempt to curb the porn bots and adult content, literally nothing happened to them. But you know what does happen? Click here for an example of the posts that get flagged. Yeah. Not porn. Not adult.

And go take a look at Tumblr’s announcement about what’s no longer going to be allowed after December 17. First of all, female presenting nipples? So does this mean that if the nipples have mustaches, they’re okay? Or is it just an excuse to be able to single out trans people easier? Spoiler alert, it’s the latter. LGBTQA+ people already get flagged for “adult content” all the time so you can bet this so called algorithm is going to screw them over even more, and this is especially bad considering that Tumblr was a major place where they connected and shared with each other. But you know what isn’t banned or restricted on Tumblr at all? White supremacists. You can’t find any boobs and the chronic pain tag is banned, but want to kill all POC? Go right ahead.

For the kids, right?

I’m bummed about this. I generally enjoyed my time on there. It kept me up to date on the freshest of memes. So what’s going to happen to the Spamfiles after December 17. I don’t know, but I don’t think it’ll be on Tumblr anymore. It does occasionally mention sex after all. What a sad way to end the year.

Commentator

You know what I miss? Being emailed when I have comments on my blog, especially since as most of you know, that’s how I prefer to respond to them. Now I can’t even tell if I’ve gotten a new one unless I visit my blog to check. My life doesn’t revolve around my blog, you know! It revolves around email, obviously, but not my blog?

What is taking google so damn long to fix? This all started almost a month ago, when they starting “updating” the email system, so I’m assuming this has something to do with that. It feels like they don’t care about Blogger or the people who use it and so they’re not going to fix it, they’re just going to say they’re fixing it and wait for everyone to stop expecting it to be fixed. Then they’ll keep slowly breaking it until no one uses it anymore. You know, like Microsoft.

The last I checked, they had a possible fix posted that involved comment moderation… which I don’t have. And a bunch of other people still aren’t getting notifications either. But do you know what did work? That’s so freaking stupid I can’t stand it?

My comments were sent automatically to my email, by going to Blogger/Settings/Email. So I deleted that email and replaced it with another one (my old email address). Then it sent a “Subscribe to comments” message to that one and I hit yes. Then I went BACK to Email and put my normal account back in. And I got the “Subscribe to comments” email.

It works again. But how annoying. I may have to go punch something.

A Working Computer

After months and months of complaining about my laptop, I finally got a new one! And now that a month has passed and the novelty has worn off, I can now review it with some objectivity. It’s…not bad?

I got a Dell Inspiron that for some reason I keep trying to spell as “Inspirion” for some reason. It’s not exactly top of the line, but I don’t need anything fancy. It plays what I want it to and that’s all that matters.

It seems to work better than my last one, although that may just be because it hasn’t been bogged down by years of downloads. It doesn’t overheat from trying to use Flash, definitely a plus, actually plays videos when I’m streaming, and there have been a lot less internet connectivity issues that make me go berserk because it tells me to look for solutions online.

However, it’s not without its flaws. Big, huge, bothersome flaws. The touchpad is horrible. You need to use two fingers to scroll—like some kind of animal—and half the time when I hit the lower right corner to right click it just regular clicks because it’s a piece of crap. And can you change any of these functions to something you like? No! Not at all. Because it’s not enough to have a bad touchpad, you have to have a bad touchpad driver, too.

Plus there are other weird, stupid things. For some reason, it will not scroll in Word when I have a large document open. Say like one for a novel I’m trying to write. Yeah, it’s a bit of an issue. I can still scroll using the touchscreen for some reason and I do use it, but I hate it because I hate touchscreens. Which is why I didn’t order one. But I got one anyway. Although considering the scrolling/touchpad issues, I’ve been forced to use it. Which I hate. It gunks up the screen.

Now, as annoying as this is, it’s still a much better computer. When I first turned it on, I was shocked at some of the colors that I had been missing on a clearly inferior screen. It was like getting new glasses and seeing the world clearly for the first time. And, like I said, it just plain runs better. Hell, we might have had the last comic that involves me throwing my computer out the window in frustration.

Well, maybe.

Personal Space

One thing that bothers me when I’m with my family (well, only one thing that I’m willing to get into): a lot of them are huggers.

For someone who can’t stand having her personal space breached, this is most distressing. If I run into someone I know at a store, I cringe, knowing they’re going to grab me into a hug no matter how much I ask them not to. Other people like this, I gather, but not me. It sets off alarm bells in my head and makes me want to body check them, which I’ve been told is not an appropriate thing to do.

The point I want to get across is that just because someone doesn’t want to hug doesn’t mean they don’t like you/care about you/love you. And I can’t stress this enough, it is not a personal insult (unless you haven’t been showering). It means they feel incredibly uncomfortable when hugging. That’s all.

I’m really not sure why it’s a big deal, but I’ve been called rude for refusing to hug. But I have to wonder, if it’s rude to not hug, is it rude to force a hug? It seems like it should be. People wouldn’t like it if I went up to them and licked their face. Most people. I hope. The same principle applies, though. Others have different boundaries, and it’s important to respect them. It’s a lot easier not to hug someone than it is for them to recover from a hugging induced panic attack.

Alternatives to Hugging (from least to most awesome)

1. Nod

2. Using words (“Hey, great to see you!”)

3. Handshake

4. Fist bump

5. Best friend handshake

Death Knell

For, like, the second or third time, the death knell of cursive has been sounded. The so-called faster, more fluid way to write is being replaced in elementary school curriculums by (gasp) typing and computer literacy.

As I made abundantly clear in an earlier post, I am not a fan of cursive. Learning it didn’t help me write (my handwriting is still a “child-like scrawl”) and it never made me any faster. Plus all that instruction never let me decipher cursive writing any better. The m’s and n’s look the same! And if someone forgets the dot over the i, forget being able to figure out if it’s an e or an o. And is it a d or is it a c and an l? You’d think context would be able to help me figure this out, but I’d have to be able to understand the rest of the sentence first.

And the nerve, replacing it with typing. It’s not like I can type sixty words a minute on a slow day and actually understand what’s on the page.

Damn these new-fangled ways of communication! There’s no way a text or an email can be filled with as much thought and consideration as a letter just because it’s faster. Soon those beautiful, curved letters forming coherent sentences will be replaced by txt spk and no 1 wll b abl 2 undrstnd ech othr NEmre. Except the people who take the time to understand text speak. For the rest of you, that sentence is just an unbreakable cipher, isn’t it?

Seriously, I don’t even know if that’s real text speak. I’m actually one of those people who spells out everything. But still, I get the gist of it a lot more than I understand cursive.

So, in summation, good riddance, cursive, and the hand cramps you gave me. I’ll stick with the carpal tunnel from spending all day at the computer, thank you.

Playing Nice

It’s going to be a rant this week. I gave you something fun last week, so now you must listen to…read my complaints. Although honestly, I think this is something that should be complained about.

In general, people don’t play nice on the internet—see GIFT or the comment section on any YouTube video for further reference. What I’ve never understood is why, why people act like bullying jerks just because they can get away with it. I don’t get why treating someone like total shit is in anyway beneficial.

For example, several months ago I saw a tweet that said something like “If you unfollow me because of what I say, I will block AND report you!” First, let’s get it out of the way:  block and report on Twitter doesn't automatically result in ANYTHING. If you get a Direct Message that says “LOL look at this picture of you I found online” or accidentally mention the word computer and get fifty million replies to buy one, you can click on the options button and select “Block and report for spam” and it keeps the person from tweeting at you again. It does not necessarily suspend them, although having a report can cause sometimes non-spammers to be suspended. Now, f you are being harassed, you can fill out a form to report people, but that’s not what this person threatened to do (not like that would have been right, either).

This person used the block-and-report as a threat. Keep following me (and listening to my unpleasant rants) or I’ll get you in trouble. I had to deal with this crap in middle school. It was why I was happy to get out of there. People told me that things were supposed to get better once I was out of school. Well, they lied.

These days, the internet is freaking middle school, and we’re all students trying to psychologically destroy each other. The teachers are the social networking sites, the YouTubes, the Twitters, the Facebooks, who have these rules and don’t really enforce them because they don’t really care, but might if someone screams loud enough—and that’s usually the bullies. Follow me or I’ll report you.

What did I do about that Tweeter? Blocked her, naturally. One benefit of being bullied for six solid years in school is that I have no interest in giving in. If you act vicious and hateful online (not that any of you would, thankfully), I will stop following you. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences.

Smile!

Okay, it’s rant time. I know I should be posting about writing here, but I couldn’t think of a better place for it.

Maybe this is just one of those rumors going around on the internet, but I heard a man is actually walking up to women and telling to smile, or just that they’d be prettier if they smiled.

I assume this is what he looks like, except replace the yellow circle with a horse's butt.

What.

Sounds like a good way to get punched in the throat to me. It’s quite an insult to women in general, as if by smiling some magic unicorn will appear dancing on a rainbow to poop puppies and pee starlight. And it’ll make them pretty? Puh-lease. You don’t need to smile to look pretty the same way you don’t need to frown to look pretty.

Then there’s the whole invalidation of being told that you’ll only be acceptable if you smile. I don’t know if I have a funny face or something, but I’ve had a few people yell at me for my facial expression even though I have no idea what I did to deserve it. The clearest example is when I was in sixth grade and a teacher flipped out at me for giving her a “dirty look” when I glanced at her in passing. Her reaction was so over the top (not to mention humiliating) that I’m still extremely uncomfortable allowing my face to emote. Which in turn means I get called “grumpy” and “mad” even when I’m not.

Yeah, it’s kind of a sensitive subject for me. I’ve been judged for how I appear in a minor, yet not insignificant, way. So I don’t like hearing someone tell me if I look a certain way, I’ll somehow be better. I like the way I am even if I look "grumpy".

Thoughts? Am I taking this too seriously (well, obviously)? What would you do if someone came up to you and told you to smile?

The “E” Really Does Matter

I found a typo in the newspaper the other day. This isn’t the first time but this was in a headline, for crying out loud. “Water, Fertilize, Breath Better.” Total facepalm (they did correct it in the online edition, I’m pleased to note).

The synonym for inhale is breathe, not breath. I often see these words interchanged. Not usually in newspapers, though.

Breath is a noun. It can belong to me or you or that guy over there. It can be cold or hot or smell like garlic. But it can’t be what you are doing. You can’t breath! It makes no sense, unless you’re vaporous, partially carbon dioxide and effusing throughout the room. 

Breathe is the verb, what you do. You can “take a deep breath” or “breathe deep.” But note the difference! You take (verb) a breath (noun), like you take a nap. You breathe (verb), like you nap.[Yes, I'm aware this is coming from someone who can’t be trusted to spell a name correctly. No need to point that out.]

Man, I think this post should be listed under the Language of Confusion moniker. It’s not etymology, but it sure is confusing! I wonder if other languages have homophones or near homophones that are two different types of words.

Okay. Rant is done. I’ll go back in my cage now. Hey, it’s Saturday. This isn’t going to be freaking WAR AND PEACE.