The Horse Heaven Hills, near Prosser Washington, get lots of fog. It’s been a week or more since the sun was last seen (assuming it’s still out there) and the ice from the fog is really building up.
remember when ao3’s servers used to go down occasionally (even though they had less traffic than they do now)? remember the time when people legally HAD to say “i don’t own the intellectual property or characters or [et cetera] featured in this work and am not using this for any commercial reasons” or smth along those lines? remember all those fanfic posting sites with a million ads? remember how many sites stole the rights to your works when it was posted there? if you don’t, shut up about ao3 asking for donations to keep the fucking site running
-sincerely,
someone who has been writing fanfic since 2009
Supported by someone whose has been wiring fanfic since 2000
the thing about millennials who don’t want kids is I feel like a lot of them are deeply On Board for their friends’ kids
like I’m among the minority of my friends in definitely for sure wanting kids someday
but each of my parenthood-eschewing friends has claimed a different role in my future offspring’s life and they seem very excited to play it
so we as a generation may have fewer children
but I feel like they’ll be the most supported and loved children imaginable
As a millennial who doesn’t want children, I am seconding this, because it’s not like we don’t want children to exist in the world! We do! Children can be lovely and amazing and they are literally our future! It’s just So Very Difficult to raise children in our nuclear-family society, especially as a millennial, and you want to do the job RIGHT.
Well, if you can’t do the job right yourself, the least you can do is help a friend raise THEIR child right, help take the burden off their shoulders, and give that kid all the love and attention they can stand.
I’d be damned excited to do that, too.
this generation is so excited and ready to be weird uncle/aunt so-and-so
I hope this generation makes communal families a thing again and this time it won’t be treated like a “taboo hippie thing”
I can understand a family having two cars. Two or more adults needing to get to work or do their own thing….but why did rich fucks get 10+ cars that’ll never leave a garage? They’re literally bragging rights, no actual use. I don’t care if they’re classics or something, they’re tools that many families desperately need.
Or like, you’re rich so you get a yacht. Ok. I think that’s over the top but ok, you wanted a nice ass boat. But….2? 3? 4? 10? Why? What use are they but sitting there and being bragging rights?
Everyone needs shelter. Rich people having a home makes sense. Two I think is greedy, but whatever devils advocate summer and winter homes whatever. But why the fuck does the richest man on earth have over 30 homes? Once again, that’s bragging rights and greed. There’s no fucking use for that.
I get collecting shit, we all have stuff we like to collect. But I think there’s a sheer difference between collecting kamen rider merch and collecting tools that are necessary to life that serve no use to you.
hey ao3 can you like give the extra $38k you made from this month’s funds drive to charity
You know it legally is a charity, right?
If x charity aims for £10, but gets £15, would you expect then to give back the extra five or give it then to another charity? No. Any extra costs go into the “rainy day” fund; sometimes servers crash or break, sometimes false reports are made that require the legal team, sometimes you need to hire coders or what not to implement new features or fix bugs or deal with broken code …
The money they aimed for is the bare minimum, which goes towards things like basic server costs and domain names and legal advice and so forth, but they don’t just “pocket” the rest (as people claim). It’s not a business. It has no advertisements. It needs some “rainy day” cash to function.
You can’t ask a charity to give money to another charity.
They don’t “pocket” excess money. They have a
publicly accessible budget – waaaay more info than most charities, in
fact. In it, you can clearly see where each dollar goes. (Also, you are
vastly underestimating either how much traffic AO3 gets or how much
servers/hosting costs.)
In my experience, people who don’t work in web design and hosting just have no concept of how heavy a load something like AO3 would have. Not only is the traffic absolutely buck wild, but the quantity of data that archive needs to store is fuckoff crazy.
I’m talking “more than the library of congress” crazy. The only reason
it doesn’t require Netflix levels of data serving is that it’s text
based rather than video.
AO3 is in the top 300 websites in the world, and the top 100 in the US. It is the number 2 literature website.
Number 2 in the entire world. JSTOR is 20.
It sees about 6 million people a day.
About 250k an hour. Each of those people is loading multiple pages, many are running
searches that execute on literally hundreds of potential variables per
search. The demands involved are astronomical.
JSTOR, btw, makes 85 million dollars a year.
It’s 18 ranks below AO3′s traffic, and takes in 650 times the amount of money.
But let’s say you think that’s an unfair comparison. Would you say that the Project Gutenberg Literature Archival Group- another text based archive that handles literature operating outside traditional copyright requirements- is more similar?
Because it sees all of 4% of the traffic that AO3 handles.
Care to guess its budget?
Double that of AO3.
AO3 is doing shit on the kind of shoestring budget that I fully, 100% cannot comprehend. And that’s just the archival service.
The 130k also pays for the OTW’s legal team, which they use to defend the right of fandom to fucking exist.
It’s
absolutely batshit fucked up that people are fighting to have the OTW
defunded and AO3 shut down. They are the only organized group that
actually stands directly between fandom- all the art and the fics and
the vids and the music and the chats and the memes and everything we
love about interactive, transformative work- and an incalculable amount of lawsuits.
One minor correction: the legal team donates their services. We legit could not afford them at the price they’re all worth. In fact, everybody’s a volunteer here: that’s how we make the shoestring budget work. Yes, that includes the accountants, the programmers, the sysadmins, the HR department, the publishing team for the peer-reviewed journal, the translators, the managers, and the entire Board. Everybody.
It’s wild, I know. If you convert time volunteered into cash based on opportunity costs, far more time is donated to the OTW than money every year. Far, far more.
The money is used for the servers, fees, and the tools we use to do our job. It’s indispensable, and I’m so incredibly overwhelmed with gratitude and honestly so damn proud of fandom for making this drive possibly the biggest donation success we’ve ever had.
I know the people attacking the OTW are somewhat visible right now because they timed their attacks to coincide with the donation drive. Honestly though, based on the number of donors and the incredible outpouring of love that’s coming into the org right now in the form of messages of thanks from users of our projects, they are a tiny, tiny minority. I encourage them all to read the budget and also find themselves a charity with as much joy and dedication as the OTW has toward building something. Because together we can build up things that none of us could make separately. And this world needs more building, more joy, more people giving and caring.
[Text of Tweet: George Takei: If you are turned away at the polls because your name is not on the register, don’t walk away. Say this: I REQUEST A PROVISIONAL BALLOT AS REQUIRED BY LAW.
Don’t let them steal your vote]
Additional info:
“Provisional Ballot Laws are laws that require a provisional ballot upon verficiation of the idenity of the voter if a voter fails to present proper identification at the polls or when registering before voter registration deadlines.”
Poll worker here! Let’s talk about this “I DEMAND A PROVISIONAL BALLOT AS PROVIDED BY LAW” thing.
== TL:DR; Yes, provisional ballots are important! And yes, you should absolutely ask for one if you need to. But there’s a couple of things to try first. A provisional ballot is a last resort. ==
It’s very common for voters to come up to the “check-in” desk, and not be found in the poll book. Some non-nefarious reasons why that might be the case:
1) The poll worker doesn’t understand how to spell your name. 2) You’re not in the right precinct (this happens ALLLL the time) 3) New married name? 4) You’re a college student, and you are registered, but you’re registered at home.
Here’s my recommendation for what to do: * Make sure the poll worker is looking in the right spot (the book will be right in front of you; you can help find your name.) * Mention your home address to the poll worker. THey may very well immediately say something like “Oh! Yes, you should be voting in the cafeteria. Here in the GYM, we are your next precinct over.” * Ask politely to speak to someone to verify your status with the county. They will get on the phone with county folks, who will look you up in their BIG COMPUTER.
The steps above will, eight times out of ten, change you from the scary status of “Huh? you don’t exist!” to “Oh, right! Okay, here you go, voter!”
If that doesn’t work, ask firmly and politely for a provisional ballot. If you say “AS PROVIDED BY LAWWWWW”, you will only get an eye-roll from a tired and hungry poll-worker. But hey, you do you – it really IS the law.
If you don’t get satisfaction, all is not lost. Step outside the precinct and call the ACLU, and they will send someone over to have some FIRM WORDS with the Judge of Elections.
How do I know? I’ve had ACLU lawyers sent to talk to me during an election: “Hey, we heard that you were turning voters away!” they said.
I wasn’t, but I DID NOT MIND having someone smart and informed come to check on what was up. The ACLU counsel was smart, engaged, and knew the rules. Had I been trying some crap, this person would have SHUT. IT. DOWN.
So, the BOTTOM bottom line is: 1) Provisional ballots are a last resort. You can read up on them; they’re definitely riskier than a full, “real” ballot. You want to vote at your proper precinct as your first choice. 2) Don’t panic if you’re not in the book. Are you in the right place? 3) If you decide you do need a provisional, be firm, polite, and persistent. There’s no “secret phrase” that’s going to make us poll workers hiss with dismay: “CURSESSSSSSS! They know about the provisionalssssss!” 4) But do stick up for yourself! And if you don’t get what you want, call it in! There’s LOTS of folks to help!
Artisan Scribbles 