dot-m-dot

[dot-m-dot]

Well now where the fuck are the kids going to go?

Do you want roaming packs of teenagers crushing through neighborhood streets? Because *closing the remaining 3rd spaces in the county* is how you do that!

"Awe man all this juvenile crime in our neighborhoods sure a bummer, let give 'em NOWHERE ELSE TO GO, surely that will fix them!! I am very smart."

[dot-m-dot]

General pieces of advice for 2024:

Switch to Firefox

Reblog stuff you enjoy for others to enjoy. Likes don't do much on this platform (I tend to think of them as tumblr bookmarks), but a reblog may make an artist's day

Cite your sources on images. The breadcrumbs you drop may lead to someone else's inspiration

Take pictures of the mundane, like your house -- never know when you will need to look back on that again for posterity or utility

Wear your face mask (KN95 or better, make sure it's a good seal) and keep up to date with your covid boosters. Not only do you not want to get sick, you don't want to be the reason someone else gets sick. It sucks, but getting long covid sucks more

Try to tag things accurately where you can

Install an adblocker

Ask questions (in general, not just on tumblr). Worst case scenario the answer is "I don't know"

Engage in good-faith discussions with your fellow user, you might find a new friend

Go to a Vintage Computer Festival if you can help it, there's cool stuff to see and things to do

Turn off "best stuff first" on your dashboard controls. It's your dashboard, you get to curate it, so might as well take full control

Take a moment to enjoy silence in your space

Take the old, original batteries out of your vintage computers so they don't burst and corrode the circuit boards within when you forget about them for a few years. You'll thank me later, mitigating a Varta meltdown is incredibly time consuming

Be good to each other

[dot-m-dot]

The Palestinian Relief Bundle is live! For an $8.00 donation to Palestine Children's Relief Fund, you get hundreds of amazing games, like Fostering Apocalypse, An Outcry, EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER, Magic Wand, and countless other unique experiences!

Free Palestine 🇵🇸 🍉

[dot-m-dot]

WHAT DO ALL OF THESE BOOKS HAVE IN COMMON?

ANSWER UNDER THE CUT

All of them have been banned, or access to them has been restricted, in a prison in America within the last ten years.

In many states, prisons have broad and vague guidelines for book restrictions -- N.J. Admin. Code § 10A:18-4.9 grants prisons the right to ban a book if it "Lacks, as a whole, serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value". In Arizona, "inmates are not permitted to send, receive, or present... Publications that depict nudity," and explicitly states that classical art is not an exception (DO 914: 8.2.1 and 8.2.1.1).

I volunteer at a nonprofit that sends free books to prisoners. From personal experience, I know there are sweeping book restrictions such as "no dictionaries," "no coloring books," or "no manga". While these books are not always strictly banned, inmates are frequently underpaid, or forced to labor without pay. That means many inmates cannot afford to purchase books, and rely on nonprofits for access.

Book bans in public libraries and schools are unconscionable, but they are usually not effective at restricting access. A high school student can usually still see an image of Michelangelo's David even if they cannot learn about it in class. In prison, a book ban on nudity can permanently prevent inmates from accessing great works of art, the shared heritage of humankind.

DONATE TO THE INSIDE BOOKS PROGRAM IF YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY. THEY SEND FREE BOOKS TO PEOPLE IN PRISONS.

Sources:

Found on Marshall Project

1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (banned in California according to Marshall Project

Basic Fundamentals of Modern Tattoo (Illinois)

No role playing games. A Practical Guide to Dragons. Abolish Prison Slavery. “A Multi Denominational Wicca Bible. (Montana)

101 Things to Do With Mac and Cheese (New Jersey)

“But, Didn’t You Kill Malcolm?” and “A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming” (North Carolina)

“100 Years of Chevrolet” “1000 Dot to Dot Animals” (Oregon)

“San Francisco Bay Newspaper” “Making Everyday Electronics Work” (Rhode Island)

“Marvel Encyclopedia” (South Carolina)

“A Brief History of Manga” (Texas)

“1001 Photographs You Must See in Your Lifetime” (Virginia)

“A Question of Freedom” Reginald Dwayne Betts (Wisconsin)

The Tennessean

A prison in Tennessee restricts access to The Quran, The Torah, The Bhagavad Gita, and books about Norse mythology. (The ban did not apply to the Bible.)

Personal Experience

I am not willing to dox myself, so I cannot name the nonprofit where I volunteer. However, I swear that I have seen book bans on manga, how-to-draw guides, coloring books, electronics books, dictionaries, and composition notebooks.

[dot-m-dot]

it goes against so much of what i stand for to share "palestinians are humans, they have hobbies, they have pets, they laugh and cry" kind of posts because i've spent so much of my life and career completely rejecting the notion that we should humanize ourselves, that we should ever be defensive, that we should entertain this racism at all

but it breaks my heart when i have to share them from people in gaza, who are using their five minutes of internet connection, their 25% of battery charge collected from a macguyvered car battery, emotionally exhausted, thirsty and hungry, sleeping in schools that have turned into refugee shelters and still making the time to say "please, i am human too, i am still alive, please fight for me" in english to appeal to the only people who have the power to help

i shared a tweet from a jjk artist in gaza i follow about a bts photocard being found in the middle of the rubble. even the love of anime and kpop and sports is no longer just a hobby, but an appeal to humanity. what was once a source of joy is now proof of life.

the worst part is that you won't find this content in arabic. palestinians don't post like this in arabic. but when they translate themselves, they recognize that they must humanize themselves first. it's an unspoken understanding of dehumanization, one that has dictated a whole region's understanding of the value of human life. in arabic they speak with dignity, with anger, with sorrow. in english, they appeal for their existence.

i share these posts not just because we have to reach everyone we can, because im being asked to and i will not refuse. but i also share them because they're evidence of how deep the racism has run. at what dehumanization leads to. of war crime after war crime. this too i will not forget.

[dot-m-dot]

Sometimes self-care is, actually, NOT getting onto the computer and little treats and watching youtube videos. Sometimes those things are self-care, but sometimes they're also avoidant behaviors.

Sometimes self care is waking up and just. Fucking getting in the car. And driving to the bank. And the store. And buying the cat litter. And changing the cat boxes you've been avoiding because your brains been stuck in a hole. And picking up the trash you've been piling up. And getting a load into the wash. And mowing the lawn before the village council sends you a formal complaint and potential-fines warning.

Like its hard and annoying to do because it sucks. It sucks so much. But if I don't start working on this pile of bullshit I've let build up because it stinks and i was stuck in deer-in-headlights mode, I risk letting it turn into fuckery. I do not have the patience for fuckery that I once - foolishly! - thought I had.

[dot-m-dot]

James baldwin’s the artists struggle for identity. Btw.

[dot-m-dot]

[dot-m-dot]

WHAT. oh my god instagram automatically limiting “political content” in their algorithm is so fucking heinous

[dot-m-dot]

Hamas just released its proposal for a permanent ceasefire. Israel has dismissed all of their proposals as “unrealistic” — and that has been echoed across the U.S. corporate media.

Here are the actual proposals from each side.

[dot-m-dot]

Is this a threat?

[dot-m-dot]

[dot-m-dot]

for anyone who cares about emulation, unfortunately today we lost both yuzu (switch) and citra (3ds) emulators due to the lawsuit nintendo filed against the management that handled both emulators. this is a major loss for emulation as a whole. if you support emulation i recc downloading emulators that you may want to have in the future in the case that they get taken down in similar lawsuits

[dot-m-dot]

When a progressive, Palestinian-American woman of color calls for freedom, Biden slanders her and throws her under the bus. But when a far-right, white supremacist MAGA Republican openly calls for genocide, Biden's completely silent.

[dot-m-dot]

When a meme is representing the "bad/wrong" opinion with an image of a drooling person with a dented head, especially contrasted to white people with blonde hair and blue eyes, maybe it's time to reconsider posting or reblogging it. Just a thought.

[dot-m-dot]

Like, obviously Matt deserves crap for how he's been handling this situation, but I feel like people have been focusing on the wrong thing.

[Image ID: An edit of the "Wow Cool Robot" meme. A Gundam, labelled "Predstrogen getting banned" fires a laser, which in turn is labelled "Transfems are targets of disinformation and false reports, and need all the love and support they can get." in the middle of the beam. Underneath the laser is an onlooker who remarks "Wow!! Fuck the CEO in particular!"/.End ID]

[dot-m-dot]

Just this week in games:

- EA laid off 700 workers

- Sony laid of 900 workers

- Rockstar announces in-person work mandates for all employees (a 'soft layoff' that will force some staff to quit, which likely means that actual layoffs are forthcoming)

In 2023 6,000 games workers were laid off. Now in 2024 over 10,000 workers have been laid off, and there's still 10 months to go.

Not to be hyperbolic, but I think this is perhaps the worst year for video games ever if we're measuring by number of layoffs.