#(did you mean for this to be an icq

[kufflesdiamond]

Incorrect Quotes [Ft Me and Friends!]

Black Yuu/Mc/Reader implied (Because I'm black!!!! and we need more.) Interpretation is up to you on some of these! Same au or different??

[ICQ: ITS TRUE BUT YOU SHOULDN'T SAY IT..]

Ortho reading Yuu's text to Idia: "Are you really sure or are you just saying that so you don't have to be in this conversation anymore like an introverted freak?"...

Yuu, struggling to not laugh: He had it coming.

[ICQ: WHAT A SWITCH UP.]

Ace talking of everyones height: Besides Riddle.

Riddle: Are you talking shit about me.

Ace: No Housewarden! 💗🦅

Ace whispering to Deuce: someone get their dog—

[ICQ: ITS FLOYDS FAULT]

Azul: Yuu, come close I have something REALLY important to tell you.

Yuu, backing away: No.. goodnight...

Azul, sweating: Please it's really important—

Yuu: I'm not talking to someone who says "squirt" in almost every sentence.

Azul, sweating more: THERE'S CONTEXT FOR THA—

[ICQ: PUNK ERA DEUCE COMMIT CRIME???]

Deuce clenching his fists: I want you to shut the fuck up.

Ace, as smug as ever: How about you get some bitches first?

Deuce: How about you get your GRADES up??

Ace: Jokes on you they are up!

Ace glancing at deuce: Higher up than your body count

Deuce: YOU...!? I have a high one!!!

Ace, jokingly: Murder is not what I meant.

Yuu & Grim looking over in silent shock:

Deuce, embarrassed: I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT MURDE—

[ICQ: YOU WON'T MEET ORTHO THAT WAY.]

Idia: I wonder how death feels like—

Yuu, tired of hearing this again: SHUT THE FUCK UP‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🦅🦅🦅🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥💯💯💯💯💯💯‼️‼️‼️

[ICQ: ITS NOT LIKE THE TIKTOK MEME]

Yuu typing: how to.. find out if... you like... your childhood... best friend....

Idia sliding in: Number one!

Ortho, teasingly: You like boysss!!!

Yuu: LEAVE ME ALONE YOU FUCKING DEMONS—

[ICQ: THIS IS EVERYDAY??]

Yuu falling flat on their face: oomph-

Kalim, laughing his ass off: THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT YOU GET!!!

Yuu: DON'T BULLY ME YOU GAY

Jamil: Average Ramshackle prefect L.

Yuu side eyeing them both: I hate you people.....

Kalim with a smug look: "you people".. That sounds...

Jamil: ...kinda racist, don't it?

Yuu: You are. so lucky there are people in this dorm otherwise I would've called you a SLUR.

Jamil, shrugging: L

Yuu: SHOVE THAT L UP YOUR ASS.

[ICQ: DONT EAT THA—]

Lilla: ...I want to eat a wall

Malleus: What??????

Lilla with a piece of wall in his hand: mmmm tasty

[ICQ: REAL????]

Jamil: Why are you so stupid... why didn't you just....

Kalim, crossing his arms: Says the stupid one!!

Yuu, placing their hands on their hips: Couldn't even do your own job right.. tsk tsk!!

Jamil: I look at you two and remember why I did what I did when I overbolted.

I lied most of these were hardly me and my FRIENDS and it was instead me and my alters but they were funny to me nonetheless ((no i wont give any context for any of these))

ICQ means 'Incorrect Quote' by the way!!

#◇ Kuffle Delivery! #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #twst #twst incorrect quotes #incorrect quotes #black reader #Black gn reader #gn reader #long post #?

[rametarin]

The cycle

It didn't start with Skype, you know. There was another service that allowed you to conference with voice that existed before the 00s. I don't mean Venrtilo, but that was also a 00s era program.

I'm talking about chat protocols like ICQ and Yahoo! Pager/Messenger. We used to use ICQ for everything. You wanted to talk to someone? You booted up ICQ and traded messages.

But eventually people stopped using ICQ. I'm not 100% sure why. It was a nice little service and did everything. But I know because my normy friends that weren't 12 layers deep in the internet didn't use it because they fell into the slot of using AIM Instant Messenger. So, I got an AIM account. And I guess in the interim, ICQ was abandoned by the majority.

Then Skype fulfilled the niche.

Then Skype got loaded down and pig disgusting; it was also extremely hackable. I in fact had someone hack my skype account and poke through my messages, once or twice. Which was a very cool thing. The person to do that was cool. Very nice.

So, we have Discord. And the signs are coming that some barnstorming programmers, be they old or young, need to pick up the torch and make the successor. Something so good, and free, everybody jumps ship.

Give it a while. You'll get caught in the social ripple. The successor is likely on its way, circa discord falling to the darkside.

[dippietheham]

Many stories in depression are difficult to tell or even recall. So today I'll attempt a happier one - the 19th year of my marriage to my beloved wife, and 26 years since I, emboldened by her admission that she did like me, declared that I was genuinely in love, and that I wanted to be able to take care of her even if we were apart. And no, it's not our anniversary - that was in August, which we don't celebrate. We celebrate our first handholding, which happened on the 27th of February 1997, on a bench in our senior high school, overlooking the field.

Please don't follow our example if you're still in high school, thanks. I'm sure many of you can already see the irony in my declaration too, since she's now my primary caregiver. But I digress.

I still treasure the fact that she's someone I can talk to about anything under the sky. It might not interest her but she'd still listen before changing the subject, sometimes not adroitly, but never meaning to be rude or dismissive. We started out that way actually. I'd called her on the phone at the behest of a mutual friend because P needed a neutral guy's opinion on what was turning out to be stalker like behaviour of an interested party, and possibly a bodyguard if need be.

See, we hated each other at first sight. We found reasons NOT to speak to each other. The only time we took a bus together was by pure accident, and we made sure we didn't even look at each other. So when I made that call, I was pretty reluctant and also sure that we'd hang up after some desultory conversation. She had the same impression - we made it clear that we were only talking because our mutual friend insisted.

By the end of that call, an hour? Two? had passed. It was definitely more of a 60 minute block. This was before ICQ had even come onto the scene in our lives. (If you don't know ICQ, think Whatsapp for web but much much earlier, and without Whatsapp) And somehow I had actually enjoyed that call. She must have too, because the calls became a regular thing.

I remember sitting at my PC/desk where my landline was (again, before cellphones were common or even smartphones were a thing), glued to the voice coming out of my phone receiver. She would sit on the ground floor of her home, enjoying the breeze while we shot the breeze. Some of the conversation was serious - with what I know now to be attachment issues, I was crushing hard on many young ladies who deigned to give me the time of day. P would be the person I ran to, to let loose my tears and to talk about what we looked for in our potential future partners. We discussed our pasts and dreams. We laughed at silly jokes not meant to impress, but to simply laugh. We enjoyed each other.

Little hints helped us along towards the almost inevitable outcome of any couple that starts out hating each other. We talked about things we never would have imagined telling another person. We reached school earliest - by habit, but also to rush to spend more time with each other. Our mutual friend once caught us sitting down at extreme ends of the same long table, mirroring each other's actions without being aware of it. She laughed but didn't push the issue. She knew, before we did.

In fact, when I travelled home for the holidays, she was the one who prompted me to write a letter to P. I grumbled because who writes letters to their friends?? But I did anyway because I realised I wanted to, and that I had quite a lot to say. I wanted her to know what I was doing. What I talked to my parents about. She sent a reply with a photo taken of her with some friends celebrating her birthday. I can't say I didn't feel something weird. Maybe it was jealousy at not being able to spend time with my friends. Maybe it was more. (Maybe it was because the stalker dude had turned up with cake...)

But I knew I'd fallen for her when one day, I tipped my chair in the lecture theatre back too far, and almost lost my balance. I joked that she'd laugh if I hit my head. She shook her head. "I won't laugh. I don't want to lose a good friend."

I was loved as myself and I fell hard.

I denied it for as long as I could, which was only about a month. As with most parts of this convoluted (and perhaps damning to myself) story, it was a little thing that broke the dam. She choked while drinking some water. It went on for longer than is generally considered healthy in most people. I was definitely worried.

A particularly acerbic classmate remarked snidely that as a "brother" and friend, I seemed way too concerned. I was devastated (hashtag devo-ed). Someone had seen through me. I was about to lose my best friend because of stupid dumb emotions and a lack of self control. I had to rein everything in. So I did the smartest thing I could - no other option, really. I refused to talk to P after that, even though we had a few more lectures together that day.

It was really weird on my part, in hindsight. We usually sat next to each other and passed notes and doodles to stay awake during lectures. This time, I made sure our good mutual friend stayed between us, and I refused to communicate, while I communicated volumes with my refusal to even look in P's direction. Our mutual friend was more astute than me, of course, and for the final lecture of the day, she engineered it such that I sat next to P whether I liked it or not. I believe a threat was involved to ensure my compliance, but my memory is hazy.

As we sat, and started to exchange notes, P kept asking me what was wrong. I refused to tell her. Until she asked me if I liked her. With a large arrow drawn pointing to a doodle of puke.

I nodded.

She crumpled up the paper and threw it away.

Of course the story doesn't end there, and it has a semi-good ending. (Only semi-good because she ended up with me as I am, but you know.) I'll try to share more another time if there's interest.

***

I wrote all this because the last few years have been difficult. But in this season of trying to find myself again in the midst of so many painful discoveries, I don't want her to feel like I've forgotten how far we've come. We've come a long long way. I know this.

It doesn't make the journey less painful, but it reminds me she's worth fighting for.

Thank you for listening to this story.

And thank you, my beloved wife, for always staying by me even when I hurt you the most.

#depression #choosing to be grateful #lovestory #no starry eyes #beginnings

[finderjust]

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[secretsofdbz]

So, a little preface info...

Recently-ish, I've been curious about updates to the fandom, because of Dragon Ball Super, and due to my students reading/watching, and me remembering how much I liked it back in the day, I just.. let the algorithm decide lol. So, after way too much DBZA, way too many manga chapters and spinoffs, and some sort of adult eyes, well. So I'm back into the fandom and discovering what the English speaking world has had to offer since 2004 lol. Things -have changed-, to say the least.

I've been a longtime Dragon Ball fan, ever since the mid 90s or so (Latin Americans and French speakers got widespread access to it far earlier than Anglosaxons), and like any girl into anime, I've been extremely original: Future Trunks has always been my fave.

Avatar comes from the Doujinshi Gracias, by Shin Minazuki (author in the circle PALS). If you ever find a way to contact them please let me know because their website and domain has been down for a decade :/

My hot takes, analysis and co will be tagged as "von rambles" :)

My recommendations would be under “Von recommends”

AO3 what if Future Trunks was a girl (and fixed a whole lot of minor plot holes) (also on FFNET) <- my fic, "a different baby". It's 12+ rated, has weird ass ships that may or may not sail, and has a time travel chart.

My Trunks, the tag I use for art or stuff involving my version of Trunks, for the fic :)

Don't hesitate to reach out for whatever!

Here are the rest of my links, including my "other blog" @dbfandom where I'm trying to explain how differrnt the fandoms are between English speakers and the West in general, and Japanese and Korean fandom (especially in terms of how people communicate)

Also when I mean it’s been a hot minute hiatus, you guys need to understand that I was in the thriving fandom from 98 to 2004. ICQ era. 56k to early ADSL era. Napster era. Geocities, forums and visitor books. You have no idea…

Here's a list of my hot takes and analysis and whatever (if the tags don't work, and I know they don't sometimes :/):

Self Pronouns in Z

Honorifics and "yous" in Z

Timelines in Z and DBS and why there's actually 7 of them in Z because of one cursed panel.

Trunks' SSJ transformation against Freeza is great.

Pink is a royal saiyan color (+ updates and more proof)

Vegeta's uses of pronouns and honorifics part 1

GT and nostalgia

Trunks isn't a good martial artist and that makes sense

Fixing the Goku Black arc (bullet points)

Trunks' hair color differences

Why Goku is the problem for DBS to work well

Some linguistics and localisation things

My Trunks, the tag I use for art or stuff involving my version of Trunks, for the fic :)

Did Goku meet baby Trunks before dying in the future Timeline? When did he die of the heart virus?

Dr Brief's cat, Tama (or Scratch) is immortal.

Akira Toriyama's death and some reactions that I gathered over the following days of the announcement for posterity.

#intro #dragon ball #von rambles #von recommends #self promo i guess

[kendochick-moor]

Comments/Kudos?

As someone who has seen a fair bit in her nearly 40 years on earth, please take this with a grain of salt.

When I learned how to navigate the internet in the early ‘90s (1990s) using Turbo Gopher, I was in an elementary classroom setting. A teacher watched over my class. We learned to be polite and use it as a learning tool.

When I gained more independence during my teenage years, in the mid-to-late ‘90s, I learned to use ICQ (peer-to-peer chat program), AOL, build my own websites, chatrooms, mIRC to talk to friends. It was more colloquial, internet safety became a buzzword and a set of rules, but still, we were raised with ‘what you do online can be seen/found by anyone, so be nice or it will come back on you’.

In the early 2000s, social media became a thing. You put your private life on display, including your photos, journal, whatever. It was all about showing off. 

In the 2005/2006 years roughly, I got into fanfic (reading/writing). I had a kid. I had finished university and had my degrees. Reading fic, I instinctively left comments to express how happy it made me, to let the writer know what it made me think about or feel. This was common. There was no kudos button. It was just a thing you did. Giving comments wasn’t seen as an onerous job--it was seen as complimenting someone on a job well done. And if you didn’t like it, that’s okay, you moved on. Even bad fic received good comments in those days, because it was a highly creative productive time. Giving comments was what you did, to say thank you to the writer for writing something for you for free. There was no monetizing your hobbies. There were no Ko-fi or Patreons or anything like that. People wrote for fun. And it was a common courtesy to leave a comment as a thank you. Because you don’t take something without giving something back.

Now...

Now.

This could just be a very specific Tumblr mindset; I’ve seen this on this media more than any other, so it could be generational-specific or socio-economic specific, I don’t know. 

But the same generation that talks about ‘Karens’ being ‘over entitled’ and the ‘boomers’ ‘ruining the future’ and that everyone needs to ‘eat the rich’... 

... are the ones who are sending pretty negative (anonymous) comments to those members in the community who are trying their best to promote good behaviours among readership and community members, to help grow the community and share positivity with writers who share their stories for free, and who maybe post a ko-fi link (if you’re so inclined to contribute, but no requirement if it’s outside your means!) if you’d like to send a little gift to your writer as a thank-you.

There’s a disconnect happening here. It lies with us, you and me.

I’m not saying you NEED TO LEAVE A BOOK REPORT in a comment on a fic (FYI that will always get you better updates with me, but I know it’s not possible for everyone). My chapter update(s) this past weekend were 30K words. Not everyone can do that--but the BIG REASON that fic got such a juicy, lush, emotional update? Is because that fic gets the best feedback. Statistically but more importantly (for me), comment-wise. I read those comments on my bad days and they will always, always get me coming back to write more. 

You contributing positively to your writing fandom is the BEST fuel. <3 It really is. We love it and write for ourselves, and also for you.

When you take, please consider giving back. It doesn’t have to be long--it doesn’t even have to be in English. (Trust me, we will pop your comments in Google Translate and try and figure them out--I even try to use Google Translate to write back to you, when I can!)

TL:DR:

When someone offers you a plate of food, you don’t take it and turn your back.

At the very least, please say “thank you”. 

If you like the food, tell us what your fav dish was. :)

... And then we’ll pile your plate high with plenty of it like your grandma, b/c that’s how we figure out what you like. :)

#let's feast together

[deadlifts-and-derrida]

Well, it's been a while since I posted any long form writing here. So how about I do that now? Let's get UNCOMFORTABLY CLOSE.

To tell the story of my first boyfriend, I need to tell the story of coming out to my mother.

I came out to my mother the week before I left to begin university. It didn't go as I hoped it would. I chose mom instead of dad because I thought mom would be easier. Girls and women seemed safer than boys and men. To teenaged me, active homophobia seemed mostly a masculine trait.

I'll stop there. I don't want to set mom up like she had the worst reaction. She didn't get mad. Mad, I could have handled. I was a bold, righteous, outspoken teen; I was equipped to deal with anger. Mom wasn't mad - mom was sad. As if a precious object had dropped to the floor and was now damaged - even if it could be repaired, the crack would always be there.

I couldn't handle sad. It was like I told her I had an inoperable cancer. That's a homophobic attitude just as much as throwing your kid out is, but it's… subtler. How do you respond to it? If you get angry she'll just get sadder. Her sadness hurts you to witness. You wish you hadn't spoken up, because you love your mother and you don't want to make her sad. You regret ever opening your mouth. By you I mean I.

I left for university a week later having had no follow-up discussion, having stuffed myself back into the closet, more or less. When I got to university I would be free to be as gay as I wanted, and I intended to be very. Very. Very. Gay.

Why do I need to tell this story before I get to Matthew? (His name was Matthew). Well. I guess I'm trying to explain why I was the way I was, and I'm hanging the blame on Mom. It's not really fair. Her reaction was bad, and it hurt me, it didn't give me the support I needed at a critical moment. But all of it - her reaction, the fact that I needed the support in the first place - is because of our damned stupid homophobic society, right? Mom and me, we're both just products of the hate machine that spat us out, right? Right?

I love my mother. I forgive her. She danced joyfully at my wedding. It's all fine. Everything is fine. The precious thing got repaired so well you can only really see the crack if you know where to look.

So Matthew.

I spent all of highschool wanting a boyfriend and sex. Unrequited crushes on unattainable men. But the fear. That was real, too. Not just fear that if you got caught checking out the wrong guy he'd gaybash you - although that was a real, potent fear. But also the fear that if you got caught checking out the right guy, then you'd have to go through with it.

Isn't that crazy? Being afraid to go through with the thing you want to go through with! But it's true. Actually attainable men? No. There was one other gay guy in my high school class, and we shared a friend group, although the two of us never really clicked. I was too weird and he was, for want of a better word, too basic. I was also very unfortunate-looking in high school. But in addition to all of this - there was the sense that I couldn't be attracted to him because if I was then something would have to happen and I wasn't ready for that.

But I wanted to be ready for it!

So Matthew, again.

When I got to university, free from my mother's terrible sadness, free from my high school self, I wanted to shed my skin like a snake and slither my way into a new me. Now that I was out and lived in a city (a small city, but the biggest one we had), I really femmed up. Glitter. Tight clothes. Limp wrists. Hair dye. Even eyeliner, sometimes. I wanted the world to know. In part because I was signalling to whoever around me who had the correct receptors: I'm here, I'm queer, for the love of god please do something about it.

Matthew picked up on that signal. He was a (female) friend's best friend. He was in his last year of high school in a town about 90 minutes away, but he made trips in on some weekends to see his best friend. One of those weekends, only a couple of weeks into my very first semester, he and I fell into each other's gravity. Nowadays, I know the sensation well. I'm sure most people will, too. You feel this tug between you and someone else. You draw closer. You look at each other. Closer. A few touches, at first passing it off as innocent. Then more touches. Closer.

We were so close our lips were brushing each other's as we spoke quietly. I don't remember how long the lip brushing lasted before it became kissing, but despite everything, despite the utter hell Matthew would eventually unleash on my life, I still think this is probably one of the best first-ever kisses on record.

(It wasn't his first-ever kiss. He already had an ex-boyfriend. I was his second. But it was my first-ever kiss).

Matthew wasn't my type. He had a shrill, harsh laugh. He had a giant mop of curly hair that he liked to dye. It was kind of like a clown's wig. I was still unfortunate-looking myself, please understand. He wasn't active, didn't exercise - which is fine, except all of my sexual fantasies focused on very muscular, large men. "Being young, gay, and mean isn't a personality," as the line goes. Matthew had a bit of that. But he was smart and funny, too. I shouldn't pretend he wasn't.

But I was so ready. Over-ready. I needed someone to fuck me, already, and I figured I would be lucky if anyone, anyone at all, would ever be willing to do it. So. It was Matthew because he was the first one who stepped up to the plate. Although attempts at sex were always awkward and we never really quite figured that out.

He became my boyfriend. It lasted for about four months. Because he lived 90 minutes away and was still in high school, I only saw him on weekends, but not every weekend. Maybe one weekend a month. This was 2001. Smartphones weren't a thing. Texting wasn't even really a thing. I wouldn't even own a cellphone until 2005. We messaged each other on ICQ and spoke on our landlines.

He broke up with me in January.

Did I love him? I don't know. I think I did. Or I loved the idea of him. I loved the icon I had built in his shape, a representative of all the things I wanted to achieve by Having A Boyfriend. I wanted it to affirm my sexuality. I wanted it to mean I wasn't unlovable. I wanted it to refute my mother's sadness.

It felt like a failure that I couldn't keep him. When he got a new boyfriend before I did, that felt like a failure too, like it had been a race to see who could land a new man first. Why was I thinking this way? Looking back, it's awful. I instrumentalized him, made him a symbol, and made relationships and sexual experimentation into some kind of… clout game. It wasn't about having fun and enjoying myself - it was about proving something, something to myself, something to my family, something to the world. Sex? A boyfriend? Things to acquire.

But maybe I did love him. I cried a lot, and it wasn't just over the insult to my ego and the setback to my plans. I remember distinctly walking through the underground tunnels that joined buildings on campus, thinking to myself - well, we're still friends, maybe we'll get back together in a few years. It was a story I told myself to comfort myself. It wasn't a forever breakup - he'd come back to me in a few years if I was just patient and kind, if I just waited.

When he got a new boyfriend, I needed to get one too. I found a guy on the gay.com chatroom, which is the closest thing we had to apps back then. He… had problems. Valentines was a couple of days after our first date and he got me an ostentatious bouquet of roses, an over-the-top gift that made me more uncomfortable than charmed. He already showered me with the l-word.  I remember waking up in his bed, the one night I spent at his place, him slipping his dick into me. It's this hazy nocturnal memory and I'm not even sure if it's real or false. If it's real, it was my first time successfully bottoming. If it was real, he didn't use a condom.

A few days later he told me that if I ever left him he'd kill himself. I didn't know what to do. I just turned very cold, hoping he'd break up with me. It worked. He dumped me after another few days. The whole thing didn't last more than two weeks.

Matthew was still with his new boyfriend and they seemed very happy together.

So. It's clear I reacted badly.

Around the time we broke up, I moved into a basement apartment with his best friend (remember, she was also a friend of mine) and a third party who was also a good friend. Our apartment was a bit of a party house. Matthew would come into the city on weekends, and he'd stay at our apartment - because his best friend lived there, and I lived there too, and even though we had broken up we were still friends, right?

I don't know what I did to deserve what he did to me. I don't think I was ever malicious to him. If I was ever cruel, it was a clueless and unintentional kind of cruelty.

He was staying with us. I was out of the house. He went into my bedroom and went on my computer. He snooped around and found folders of niche porn that I enjoyed. Should I say what sort it was? Is it pertinent to the story? It wasn't all that weird. It was basically bodybuilders. Muscle men. Some of them photoshopped to be bigger than would otherwise be possible (some much bigger). Some of them with exaggerated genitalia (some of them very exaggerated). I also had an interest in fat guys and I know there were some pictures of that nature in there too (some of them very fat).

But he was 17 and mean and judgemental. He showed my friends my secret porn in a deliberate attempt to humiliate me. He shared it around. He let everyone know, in a cruel, mocking way, about sexual interests I didn't yet feel strong enough to share with the world. Sexual interests I still felt a lot of shame about.

I only learned about this because my other friend who shared that apartment took me aside and told me what he had done. She did this because she thought it was wrong of him.

Despite this show of support from a friend who had the good sense not to follow the current of cruel mockery, I was beyond mortified. The shame was galling.

My new gay life ended there. My clothes became drab, baggier. My manner less femme. I stopped transmitting "I'm gay!" to the world. I stopped trying to fit in with the gay crowd Matthew had introduced me to. They all had a name for me now, anyway. Psychael. Like, psychotic Michael. How could I fight a battle when the first strike was nuclear? I quit. It seemed like the only move available to me.

It was 5 years before I'd kiss another man. I fled back into the embrace of my family. My coming out was never mentioned. I basically went back into the closet. At least the people in there loved… some version of me that I could maintain without that much effort. Just… close the door on the seven months when I had been an out gay man and pretend the whole thing didn't happen. Easy.

I don't hate him.

We were both very young.

We were both inexperienced.

I would hate for someone who only knew me as an 18 year old to think of me now, in my mid thirties, as if I was the same person. So I don't think of him as he was when he was 17. He's 34 now. He's probably a much better person.

Maybe he feels sorry.

Maybe he doesn't.

I wish I could have those years back. The long years I spent frightened to be myself.

I wish I had been strong enough to look him in the face and say "so what?" I wish I had been strong enough to own my sexual interests, none of which are immoral or wrong or even all that strange.

But I was weak. I was weak and alone. And wishing doesn't get you anywhere.

I don't know if there's much point to this story.

#me

[lorewytch]

Mun's asks: 8, 19, and 29

OMG YESSSSSSSS

8.Are there other websites you roleplay on that’s not on Tumblr?

(cries on the inside) Actually there were a few.....granted, I don't really RP much anymore. During my dark years of working that job I hated...I lost all drive to write, that included RPing..taking into account as well that I was between fandoms also I fell back on Fantasy Rping and found one board I started dabbling at. I've RP'd A LOT of places in my time and on several different platforms. A lot of places are closed now.

My very first place was WAYYYYYYY back in the yesteryears on a place called....Yahoo messageboards XDDD. oh man that place....always so chaotic...and I am dating myself severely with that ;_;. Anyways, most of my Rping was done on places like ICQ, AIM, yahoo IM etc etc...but I also did a lot of Rping on various fan message boards too.

I haven't really been able to RP anywhere else recently. Although I may have gotten one or two hopefuls on here for DT (prays they work out) I do so miss RPing with a passion and my last partner bowed out years ago. (Ahhh Hetalia fandom...I miss ye)

19. Give us a headcanon about your muse that you never shared to anyone else or wanting to explore deeper.

What being a Dimensional Witch really means. I do want to explore this deeper but hesitant to discuss much about it. Although I REALLY want to. The basic concept about being a Dimensional Witch is to save worlds from being destroyed by anomalies right?

Well.... it might actually end up being more complicated than that. There's a lot about being a Dimensional Witch Lore doesn't understand. She's mostly making it up as she goes along. No one told her anything about any of this so she's been finding out by scraps of info people are telling her through the different worlds. I'm not gonna say much more. Just...be prepared.

29.Which fandom(s) do you wanna roleplay in/crossover with but you’re too afraid to approach?

I dipped my toes in the Hetalia fandom but really didn't pursue the whole fandom really. Its a complicated bunch and its waned as of late. Also parts of the DT fandom since I'm still new here and I am lowkey terrified ^^;;;;;; (for a few reasons really. I really don't wanna mess this up ;_;) Also its just been kinda hard to find the RP groups anyways. I honestly dunno where to start looking for most of the rpers out there and even if they'd like to RP with me. (Shrugs)

[srebrnafh]

I haven’t been here long

I mean, I set my tumblr account up some time ago, yes, but I count active usage sometime from February this year. Like, when I started to interact with people and looking for stuff to follow...

So basically, I’m a newbie. I don’t know if certain things work like they do because they always did or because there is some deep meaning behind it (cue the old joke about cutting the turkey in half).

But as I’m using this site and several others (wordpress, twitter, Facebook, G+, blabler (which is like twitter in Polish), plus several different IMs and I’ve been around when ICQ was a new and fresh idea, so I’m basically as old as dirt compared to some) I have some observations as to what little tweaks to how the site works could have potentially made it so much more a happy place. Little stuff that gets on my nerves SO MUCH.

1. Notifications

1.1. They don’t work. I use tumblr on my ipad as an app and through chrome AND I use chrome on my laptop. There are situations when EACH shows me a different set of notifications. Including the fact that the ones through WWW don’t show me replies to my posts where I would have loved to reply back.

1.2. Everything is mixed up. I wish I could have likes in one tab, reblogs in another and replies in another. If I was fanciful, I’d like to see separation between reactions to my original stuff and to the reblogs AND to the reblogs which I commented on when posting. Because I feel I’d like to have it properly categorised, in a way.

1.3. Ability to see further reblogs of what I reblogged (case in point: someone posts a prompt; I reblog with some comment and promise I’ll write it; another person reblogs and asks to be tagged (I see that) and ANOTHER reblogs that and asks to be tagged (I don’t get a notification...!) - if they don’t specifically tag me there)

2. Single/in blog/in dashboard posts difference. WHY? WHY...!? Why the ripple button is only when I check the post through the dashboard and not when I just open it single? That means checking the reblog tree of something requires me to click and search for where I posted it...! Why can’t we have “reply” button on all of these options? Why in mobile www version ‘reply” is now gone? Why editing from single post page reloads into the main dashboard page (forces load of the whoooole everything that is going on there AND the editor on top) when in all kinds of blogging systems editing just loads the editor control...?

3. Replies - can’t edit them, can’t delete them (or maybe I don’t know how...?), if I post one too quickly, it’s done and can’t take it back... 

4. The ipad app - dear heaven’s that is a pain in the backside!

4.1. Mobile site redirects me to the app on EVERY BLOODY CLICK. If I wanted to used the stupid app, I would have opened the stupid app. I like opening stuff in new tabs and I want to open stuff in tabs, dammit.

4.2. THEN if I by accident clicked on someone’s picture or who the hell knows what, the stupid mobile app opens bloody SAFARI to show me that picture. Because ipod apps are, as a rule, trying to use Safari, whatever I do. Which is infuriating, because I use CHROME. Why can’t they just... stay in the original browser if the app is going to open the bloody SECOND browser anyway?

Yeah, so, ranting.

Because why improve the user experience when you can just get rid of your userbase, right?

#rants #tumblr #features #user experience #ux

[blazehedgehog]

Would you be able to explain what it is about Hideo Kojima that everyone gravitates toward? As someone that doesn't like stealth games I've never played Metal Gear, and Death Stranding doesn't speak to me either.

There is only one Hideo Kojima. He’s an auteur. Watching the newest Death Stranding trailer, if I didn’t know anything else about that game up to now, just watching it, I would know it’s a Hideo Kojima game. It has his trademark style all over it.

Nobody tackles the topics he does in the way that he does. Now, I’ve never personally beaten Metal Gear Solid 2, but I know there’s a whole huge monologue at the end of that game, a game made 17 years ago, about “memetic information.” Today, meme is just dumb-teen shorthand for “joke” but it’s a real term to describe cyclic themes. Repeated information. And this monologue in MGS2 goes on and on about how memes in the age of the internet will go on to damage our ability to store information. Instead of only the most important information surviving to inform future generations, an endless sea of unfiltered, useless garbage is being preserved online, with no way to understand what’s important and what’s not. Signal-to-noise, where the noise overpowers everything. 

It goes a lot deeper than that (a lot) but it feels particularly prescient in the age of Twitter, Youtube, and Instagram. And it was written over a decade before any of those things even existed. In 2001, most of us were still using AIM or ICQ and didn’t even know what a blog was.

And this, in a game about bombers on rollerblades, vampires, cybernetic ninjas and a woman called “Fortune” who is said to be so lucky that when you try to shoot her, bullets curve around her body to avoid hitting her.

Whether you agree or disagree with that monologue in Metal Gear Solid 2, nobody was writing about that kind of stuff in 2001. Whether or not Kojima should make games or movies is a different topic altogether, but even the original Metal Gear Solid on the PS1 felt like one of the first games to really understand good acting and good directing. And it’s been consistently used to tell some of the weirdest, most unique stories in games.

Kojima’s games are also known for having tons of weird details put in to their gameplay systems, too. The way Snake can catch a cold in MGS1 and sneezing gives away his position, the way guards can identify you by your shadow in MGS2, the way you can make Snake vomit in MGS3 by spinning him around on the pause menu… again, Kojima is an auteur, and these sorts of tiny details are his signature.

I mean, we could spend a lot of this post just talking about Metal Gear Solid 3. About how one of the boss fights in that game is against an old man, and if you turn the game off for a couple weeks and come back to it, you’ll automatically win the fight because the old man has died of old age. Or, how, if Snake falls asleep at the right time in MGS3, he’ll have a dream where you play a completely different video game (there may be spoilers later on in the video I linked). I also think it was for MGS3 that Kojima wanted to make it so that if you got a game over, it deleted your save file, to fit in with the game’s survivalist theme. (Thankfully, that did not happen)

In short: Hideo Kojima is an extremely detail-oriented person with a weird streak that gives his games a personality that nobody else can replicate.

#questions #metal gear solid #death stranding #hideo kojima #memes #melcodriggs #question

[losingitinjersey]

Getting To Know Me Masterpost

Thanks to @marines-sweat-hard, @eatprayandbehappy and @prodigalbrad for tagging me in these getting to know you posts!   I did one of them relatively recently so I’m going to omit that one below and link to it here.  The others can be found below!

Relationship Status: Happily married to an incredible partner!

Favorite color: Green and blue!  

Lipstick or chapstick: Lipstick!  Every time I wear chapstick my hair gets stuck to it.  That and lipgloss.  So evil. 

Three favorite foods: Lol you think I can choose?!  Anything with bread and cheese.  Gosh, how am I on keto.  SANDWICHES!  Fun fact, I worked at a Togos/Baskin Robbins for a year and gained soooo0o0o much weight but damn was it a delicious year.  Pizza!  Gosh this third one is taking too long to decide.  Let’s go with burritos!  

Last song I listened to: “First Day of My Life” by Bright Eyes

Last movie I watched: The Do-Over  :)  If we’re talking about in theatres it would be Star Wars: The Last Jedi (twice!  But that’s mainly because the first time I saw it I fell asleep, whoops.  But who can stay awake for a movie that starts at 10:40 p.m.!  Gosh I’m old.  Or maybe just narcoleptic?  

Top 3 shows: Of all time or just now?!  If we’re talking about all time it would obviously be 1) Buffy the Vampire Slayer  2) Freaks & Geeks and let’s go with 3) Pushing Daisies.  Currently I’d say 1) Grace & Frankie 2) Jane The Virgin  3) Magicians

Three favorite bands: Eve6!!!!  Zee Avi, Green Day

Books I’m currently reading: Nothing... I should start the new Stephen King book, Sleeping Beauties

10 Facts About Myself

1. When at all possible I prefer to eat with plastic utensils. Mandatory for spoons and especially if I have to season something.  I can’t taste past the metal.  I had braces for like 7 years and feel like they permanently effed up my taste buds.   

2. Ever since I can remember I’ve loved squirrels, I attribute it to Sword In The Stone and just how playful and fun they are to watch.  I even asked for a squirrel themed birthday party when I was a kid.  They only had Rocky & Bullwinkle themed decorations back then so my Dad ended up drawing a squirrel on my cake :)

3. It is my lifelong goal to read every single Stephen King book written.  I’m currently about 35% of the way through which doesn’t sound like a lot but sure is when you think about how prolific a writer he is and how long his books are.  Plus I keep rereading my favorites of his :)   

4. I used to have a very large fear of dogs.  When I was a kid we had a dog for about 6 months before we gave him away due to being mean to my sister and I.  Then I tried to befriend two dogs who were having a fight and ended up underneath them.  Follow that with having an exbf who had a very possessive and mean mastiff it took me a very long time to not cross the street when I saw even the cutest doggo coming down the street.  

5. I grew up as quite the musical theatre nerd.  Not in the way that I was in drama class (though I was in middle school) but I was obsessed with listening to soundtracks and watching musicals at home and on stage with my mom in SF.  Give me a good Les Mis, Rent, Music Man, Singing In The Rain, Bye Bye Birdie, Newsies song any day and I will belt out all the words.  

6. Ever since I can remember I’ve watched the Oscars with my mom.  When I went away to school she would come up to visit me so we could watch them together or we’d watch them at the same time and text each other through it.  Knowing actor/movie trivia has always been a thing of ours that I cherish.  

7. I’ve changed a great deal throughout the last several years.  From being in a relationship to a deadbeat from age 20-29 to finally learning my worth and value and taking the scary step to end that relationship really helped set me on the path to where I am today.  My self confidence has grown exponentially along with my zeal for life.  

8. For a short stint I was in charge of group travel at my job and led a group of 75 adults to China for a 9 day tour.  The second trip I led was to Greece and on that trip the cruiseline we were booked on went bankrupt and we had to rebook all the tickets and adjust the timeline.  I met the CEO of the tour company and he told me I was one of the most organized leaders he’d ever met.  Mind you, I was 24 at the time.  I still use this line in interviews today.  

9. I have an 84 words per minute typing certificate.  Growing up my mom made me do Mavis Beacon Typing classes during the summer which helped but I really learned how to type fast thanks to AIM, ICQ and MSN Messenger.  This skill has helped earn me the role of taking minutes at all of our board meetings.  I’m not good at paraphrasing so I literally type verbatim during every meeting.  This makes for some very cramped hands at the end of the two hour meetings.  

10. I tend to be a very happy individual.  Being positive and joyful comes naturally, which I am grateful for, but it’s hard when I meet new people and they question my intentions or sincerity.  It immediately throws me off and makes me question who I am and how I should act more than it should.  Need to remember to be true to myself regardless of the situation.  Cue Mulan’s “True To Your Heart” song!

If you made it this far, kudos to you!!  Thanks for reading and learning a bit more about me :)

#getting to know me #everything you didn't need to know #introduction posts #feel free to ask any questions!

[thewul]

The rise of social networks

It started with a few, and not so long ago come to think of it, and it made the internet something more than forums, and something less because in forums users get expelled for being nonsensical, atleast in the forums that are worth something

What it did to the internet is make it more social maybe because you had a forum for your friends to express your feelings and thoughts and all of the things that you have trouble saying in person

People could like your empty pizza boxes and the company became valued a great deal until it was found that it was worth not much, and then Tumblr showed up, and Tumblr changed everything because it was a social blogging platform where if you wanted to have followers you needed to put up quality content, unlike that other famous social network where you could share pretty much anything with your friends, the friends that like pretty much anything

It almost made the internet useless, and there is a definitive before and after famous social network

That is as far as the critique goes, but there is a silver lining to social networks, they indeed brought people together online, now it was easy to communicate with your friends, to get organized, share content, follow personalities and brands, share your opinion about almost any topic you can think of, it made the internet more palatable for many, for whom the internet was well webpages, and forums for fewer of them

Of the reasons for their success, maybe the main reason is that they made it easy to be online, no domain name to buy, no hosting fees, no coding of webpages and their functionalities, everything you needed to be online was there out of the box and free, and for corporations and brands they seen their clientele materialize online be that same but different audience with which it could interact in many different and interactive ways, almost in real time, thus the new science of online community management that revolves mostly about managing the same audience across different social networks or putting up a social network for that community itself

Different social networks took different directions, we’re lucky to have them in the end they keep us in touch, allow us to share, keep informed and follow up on all the things we are interested in under one roof, critically their function is also to put us in touch with others around the world who share the same interests

They densified the internet beyond webpages and forums or instant messaging by meshing these different things on the same platforms, and they made your internet connection more worthwhile by blending the internet and telecoms into one

What do you do with it

Fulfilling a need and a role, take something as complex as BCS and put in perspective the many competencies needed to develop it and keep in focus that you need to do it in a cost effective manner with time to market in mind, now spread into so many projects ventures and tasks, and you realize that you need to harness social networks as tools to allow for the collaboration of the people involved in that effort around the world and around the clock

So the need here is breaking down geographical and time barriers, true you need to build up a group into a structure from top down but key to success is also your ability to flatten it into a single layer, and social networking will let you do that, put people in touch no matter where they are located and let them contribute within their timezone 

And if its its a very large organization or multinational what you have is a social networking layer that is spread around the world and around the clock, its important that if you want to do things in a cost effective manner time wise and no doubt that the layer you putting in place is going to let you do much more while giving your corporation or organization a new shape that is that of an online community

There is a great sense of empowerment at every level of your corporation to know that everyone involved in it is part of its social network, or rather say network of networks, that the person has a profile page listing his skills and projects and interests, that he is a node of the whole with so many connections and work groups where he takes part, that he is reachable not only via email but also via messaging or videoconferencing and even that he appears online or offline, maybe the person is busy too, whenever he may be located and at any time

There is a great sense of empowerment that comes from social networking within a corporation, true it is business oriented but like we said it is a community that you know you can rely on to get business done

So the role, breaking down geographical and time barriers, the need flattening the organization into a single layer and turning your Azure directory into an online community where your goal, that of Bombardier Workflow and Bombardier Teams becomes to push projects and follow up on them where those very projects can emanate from your online community itself, and where it’s not a give us your idea because you work here mindset but what is your idea, okay here is what it its worth according to the community and its managerial organization and here is what you can make of it both professionally and financially

Its built on a capacious reliable resilient and fast network which is taken in account in BCS through the implementation of GYES as both a centrally and P2P managed network relying on a proprietary infrastructure that is as far as its supernodes

Ideally since it’s your idea the corporation should provide you with the tools to carry it on, why Bombardier Teams is so important is because it’s going to put you in touch with the people interested in your idea

And why Workflow is so important is because time is still money, and Bombardier Workflow together with Teams is going to set a framework for turning your idea into a project and the project into a result in a cost effective and timely manner, with the people involved and as well the people that you need onboard to make your idea become a reality

How many do we need

We’re a community of communities, then there’s tasks, again looking back at BCS we find a wide range of competencies that are needed to carry it through, and so we can look at it from that perspective and under that perspective social networks address our need to shape these core and support competencies into online communities that are then going to regroup or recoup around projects and tasks

So different and diverse competencies, core competencies and support competencies, and different and diverse tasks mean one large audience that is the audience of BCS, and that of Bombardier as a group and the BGP and BPN, that is splintered in the end along so many different audiences meaning so many different but similar social networks, it’s not the network in itself that changes it’s the audience and the content that changes 

How many do we need, well we can have as many as we have the stomach for providing that the audience is there clearly defined goal and tasks or project oriented, with specialized content that it is going to both consume and produce

Its important that regrouping and recouping, take a project and you find that indeed many different competencies be core competencies or support competencies are needed to carry it through so these competencies or audiences are part of their own social networks that regroup them while being a network of networks you are going to recoup these different audiences along the lines of the tasks or goals or projects that constitutes your business 

And you can do so in a transparent way for the user while benefiting of this new social network that you’re setting up on the fly for your project or goal or tasks

One of the ways if not the main that the corporation is going to benefit from that is having it under one hood, take the Gunray for example list the many competencies that are needed to accomplish it, it’s not just engineering its also design and ergonomics and plane computing specialists, and you find out that the people involved are going to come from their own networks for engineers or for designers or developers, and that they are going to do business within the social network that is set up for the Gunray

And that’s a definitive plus not having to fetch things in different places but having it all under one hood, which is a simple set up because you already have the users you are just going to let them access another piece of virtual infrastructure and they can do so in an easy way, very simple to use and manage, and if someone asks you about the Gunray you can tell them well we have a social network for that

Which is rewarding for the people involved, who thanks to their skills can be associated with much more than a single network earn those badges that are visible on their profiles, you take a look at someone profile and its filled with badges you know from the first glance how much he or she is valuable to the company

You still have to keep it task and goal oriented meaning that you have to sum up things at some point close the project but the community can stay, close so many threads, and keep others open for contributing on that network or open new ones, its how you end up with veterans 

And as such they ought to be able to still contribute to the different social networks they’re part of after they retire because they are important members of the community and their experience is an asset, you don’t waste assets because of something called retirement

Its not how many do we need, it’s what role do they fulfill for our goals present and in the future

Social Netizens

It’s what citizens have become, take a minute and consider what is that we’re trying to achieve as a transporter, and you find out that it is also sustained by social networking, at first there was IRC, ICQ, MSN and other types of instant messaging services, then there was social networks and then came a new breed of social networking and applications that are also geolocalization based, so what we’re trying to achieve as a transporter is based on all of this and indeed our clientele is an online community for which we provide a whole range of services

Not only our core services but through GYES we also provide BPN and BGP services and you find out that we’re dealing with more than just clients, we are dealing with social netizens who are bound trough social networking and who are also bound to each others, and that offers wide possibilities much greater than saying we have an online community, we have so many nodes of a social network who constitutes Bombardier Citizens

Not to say that being a Bombardier Citizen means being a GYES user but it’s also that, our ability to reach you, to communicate with you, to offer you services and functional support, and to do so in a geolocalized manner worldwide and around the clock and even inflight and in space should be, is the envy of any government of the planet 

Bombonets

Build your own, I have been reading a very interesting Wikipedia article where it says that by exchanging ciphered keys with others through your favorite social networks you can actually create a larger network that functions as a VPN

Which means tapping into existing social networks, the ones you are using to create your Bombonet that is also a VPN, and where it gets really interesting is that those keys can be exchanged over any social network

Make it any and all networks and you get the idea that Bombonets might be able someday to mesh thousand of social networks, millions of them and even billions here and in space, where Bombonet becomes a network of networks itself composed of a limitless number of Bombonets

Not just the social networks yet to come, not just the exoplanets of the future and their social networks, yes we’re talking alien social networks as well

Now what makes you think that we have them and they don’t, the big idea is meshing any existing social networks into a VPN that is yours

Where rather than migrating existing accounts into Bombonet we are simply saying just exchange the keys over any other existing social network and that is your own Bombonet right there

Including the recurring functionalities social networks are known for, a wall, share content, friend suggestions and so forth, so it’s centrally managed also in the sense that of issuing the cipher keys and putting up the Bombonets or VPN’s online 

But it’s also P2P which allows for a nimble infrastructure where you are hosting your wall and content and so forth, it’s both actually Bombonet hosts a copy of your VPN and its contents for easy access meaning bandwidth while you are going to access locally the content that you are storing on your drives cut on the use of Bombonet’s bandwidth that way

#neo thunderstorm III

[humansofilsc]

Dave - A story about not waiting

We, from Humans of ILSC, believe that everyone in ILSC has a story worth telling.

Today’s worthy story is about Dave.

Dave is 40 years old teacher at ILSC. Born and raised in London-not the one in England, the one in Ontario-, Dave has lived in Toronto for 8 years and currently teaches English for foreigner students at our school.

Why move to Toronto?

“It’s kind of a long story I guess, but after I graduated from University I moved to Korea and lived in Seoul for 1 year.Then, I moved to Manila (Philippines) and stayed there for 9 years.So Seul has 20 million people and Manila has 15 million people, they are big cities. I didn’t want to stay abroad forever and I wanted to move back to Canada, but I didn’t want to move back to my hometown. After so many years of living in big cities, I wanted to continue living in a big city but still be close to my family.”

Whoa. Seul and Manila? What? We’re expecting something like “there are more job opportunities”. However, this obvious answer is not very far from his reality. Dave started teaching as a way to travel and, needless to say, to make money. Fortunately, teaching English was (and still is), for Dave, more than just making people understand another language, it is about connecting with new cultures.

“I liked being in Korea, but I didn’t like teaching kids. It was when I moved to Manila, to be with my girlfriend [Dave’s current wife nowadays], and started teaching adults, people my age like 22,23,24, that became much more interesting. […]I found some Korean owned English schools in Manila and that was basically my selling point. I think I learned more about Korea from teaching them than actually living in the country. […]After teaching Korean students, I started teaching Japanese students so I learned a lot about Japanese people and culture and that was also good…

Coming to Canada, then, you know, I never taught anyone from Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Turkey or Saudi Arabia. Having this opportunity became even more interesting and I think that is why I enjoy it.

Sometimes if I teach the same level every session people would say: “Dude, don’t you ever get bored?” No, because the students are always different and the personalities are different so they are the ones who makes things a little bit interesting every time, even if the book is the same. You can have really bad classes, could be the same book, the same material, and one session to another is totally different.”

What was the happiest moment of your life?

“I don’t know, that’s a tough question. I can’t think of any particular moment as the happiest.

Like I said, lived in Manila for a long time and got married in Manila, and then moved back to Canada. I don’t know if you know how the immigration process works […] In my case, I came here first and prepared all the paperwork and then sent to the government and six months later my wife was approved to come to Canada, so 1 month after that, she was here…That could be a happy moment.

So your wife is…?

“She’s Filipino. She’s a Canadian now because she took the test and became a Canadian citizen. That’s why I moved to Manila, to be with her. We’re together since 2001, got married in 2006 and moved back here in 2010.[…]It started as an online relationship. A lot of people are afraid of these things, but it can work if you make it work.

What is your love story?

“When I was in university, there was a chat program called ICQ. I wasn’t really looking for a girlfriend exactly, but I had a list of friends and one of my Canadian friends also had a list and I said ‘Hey man, do you have any girls in your list that I don’t know?’, so he sent me 3 contacts. I just wrote: ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ To the 3 anonymous girls and only one replied.

We just started chatting and I wasn’t looking for a girlfriend, she was in the Philippines and I was in London finishing my university degree. The timing was complete opposite: I would wake and it would be nighttime for her and then she would wake and it would be nighttime for me. We would talk about random things.This was like May of 2000, and then in October, I moved to Korea to teach.

Our chatting became phone calls because now we were in similar time zones, we started talking on the phone a little more and I said ‘I gotta meet this person for real’. In January of 2001, I decided to go to Manila to meet her and to see if this was something real.I stayed there for a week, and there was something more just than chatting and more than just phone calls. I went back to Korea to continue teaching and then in May of 2001, went back to Manila again to meet her again and decided: ‘okay, at the end of my contract in Korea, I’ll be back to Canada to say Hi and Goodbye to my family and friends, then move to Manila and try to find a job and a way to stay there’.”

And the rest we already know, he found a job at Koreans owned English schools. In fact, he got hired only 4-5 days after he moved to Manila.

One “Hey, how’s it going?” message led Dave to his wife. Led him to another country for 9 years. Led him also to understand that students can sometimes teach you more than you teach them (but, of course, in different ways).

“Because of my experience teaching Japanese students, I became interested in Japanese culture and Japanese people and then decided I wanted to visit Japan. I asked my students if they could teach me ‘survival’ Japanese just to enjoy Tokyo a little bit, and they agreed for free just to give me some private Japanese lessons after our English classes. […] When I went to Japan, I was able to use the language and they could understand me and I felt really encouraged.

When I moved back to Canada, I didn’t really have anyone to practice Japanese with anymore, so I stopped. That was about 8 years ago. I still remember somethings, but I’m not as strong as I used to be.”

What are you most afraid of right now?

“My mom is alone. She’s doing okay, I guess, but you never really know. She was a nurse for 45 years and couldn’t quite retire, just wanted to keep working.Now that she retired (about a year ago), she doesn’t have that kind of social environment anymore where she’s going to work all the time so she spends a lot of time at home. She visits my sister a lot, so that’s good. But I worry about her, like, she’s in London and it’s a little bit hard to visit all the time. The good thing is she can visit my sister and her family a lot.[…]In a sense, she’s like me and I am like her, she’s used to her work friends, but she doesn’t like being part of large crowds…She’s good in very small groups, but to meet new people suddenly, it’s a very hard thing for her to do.That’s one the thing that I worry about the most: to make sure that she’s doing okay.”

Who is the most influential person in your life?

“I like to think that my mom might be a strong influence, she’s a very strong woman, she had to deal with a lot and worked for a very long time…It would be nice to model my life a little bit like hers. But at the same time she’s a little bit stubborn sometimes, she’s the type of person who doesn’t want to ask for help because she is supposed to be the person to give the help and never to receive. She doesn’t want to put a burden on someone.

My wife too, she’s a much better person than I am. She doesn’t gossip about other people, genuinely cares about other people, she never says anything bad about anyone…I mean, it doesn’t mean she likes everyone, but she doesn’t want to bring to that kind of negativity. She never makes any mistakes. I make a lot of mistakes. Yeah, she’s a big influence, It’s good to have someone like that in my life.”

And lastly, our final question to Dave was:

Which piece of advice would you give to your younger self?

Probably: “Don’t wait for tomorrow”. There is always going to be a tomorrow and if you just keep waiting suddenly 10 years go by and nothing has happened. If you want to do something, just start, even if it’s something small and you wanna build something else, little by little, just start.[…]I do have plans to do other things than just teaching, 5 years ago I started studying Accounting and I have been doing that for 5 years to move on and try something else with my life.

I remember I was at a wedding contemplating this situation, “Should I do it?Should I study Accounting?” And then my friend was like “why not? Just sign-up. What’s the worst that can happen?”. Little by little I have been doing it, and now I’m coming very close to the end of this process.”

And that was Dave’s story. Dave did not wait to live his life to the fullest: going abroad to the other side of the world to teach English, meeting this amazing woman he only talked to online, going back to studying at university, learning a new language…Like he said, there is always going to be a tomorrow.

Life is not to be “waited”, but to be pursued.

[rairun]

The excerpt from Michael Bronski's “The Ever Changing World of Gay Men” that I've just reblogged reminded me of something I'd been mulling over and then forgot about. I'd been trying to explore why I felt so uncomfortable about the idea of using dating apps. I felt so isolated for so long - why didn't I ever think to give them a try?

I think the main answer is that I've never felt at ease with the idea of dating. I've written about this a lot here on Tumblr, so I don't want to repeat myself, but I've never felt capable of approaching people with romantic and/or sexual intent. I think I'm pretty forthcoming when I do have feelings for people - I like clarity and deliberate boundaries - but I find it very hard to think, "I'm looking for someone to fill a specific role in my life, does anyone out there think they'd be a good fit?" And I know that in real life, dating ends up being more nuanced than that, but I still find it uncomfortable to approach people through dating.

The above has been clear to me for a long time. But the other reason why I'm not very fond of dating apps is that they all seem so individualized. After spending my early teens feeling like an outcast in the late 90s, I felt my life really opened up and blossomed when I started joining online communities. We had a message board with hundreds of users; and within those, we had a General Forum, and a Music Forum, and an Art Forum, and a Philo Forum; and further still, we formed smaller groups in chat rooms. When we wanted to speak privately, we'd use private windows on IRC or instant messaging (ICQ, AIM and MSN Messenger all open at the same time). People gravitated towards and away from one another in that context.

I made some of my best friends in those days. And when the forums closed and the chat rooms slowly died, I did remain in touch with them, but something  important was lost. I don't mean the discussions we had in public with people I never saw again (though this was lost too, and it still saddens me); I just mean that my way of relating to my friends changed too. I've always been so fond of 1-2-1 time with people - it's when I am the most at ease, when I feel able to articulate my thoughts and listen with all my attention - but there's something strange to being two people flung out in space. It's strange to be in a relationship that is contained in itself.

Community keeps us grounded, and it keeps us accountable. My friends mean the world to me individually, but there is something very special about being part of a group where their loyalties don't lie entirely with you. When you approach a friend about an issue you are having with another friend, it's good to know that they will be looking after the other person too, when you perhaps aren't in the best position to do so yourself. And conversely, when you are the one mediating conflict or hearing good news, you are able to become more involved in a more meaningful and rewarding way. You can partake in their happiness or sadness, you can really share it, instead of just being "happy for them" from the outside.

This is something that doesn't come with dating apps. Even before they existed, it was possible to meet people out of context; it was possible to enter a relationship in isolation, where you have your friends, and they have their friends, and you two live in a bubble that isn't quite accessible to anyone else. In a way, dating and relationships and marriage and the nuclear family are conductive to this type of isolation. And I'm not saying that this sort of connection can't be meaningful, because it absolutely can. But I think that whenever I found myself in a bubble, my life was poorer for it. I found myself stuck in problems that escalated needlessly. And so I feel very reluctant to meet people by swiping a screen and zooming in on one person, because it seems almost designed to keep people in coupled isolation, even if you are in fact meeting a lot of people. I don't know. In the absence of an established community, I'd enjoy being introduced to people more often; I'd enjoy branching out by getting to know people my friends care about, and creating a community. I think that'd be ideal for me.

#personal

[6441blogsss]

Something awesome 4

Week 4 - Trojans

Blog

What is a trojan horse?

A trojan horse, or trojan, is defined as a type of malware that misleads users of its true intent. The term is derived from the Ancient Greek story of the deceptive wooden horse that led to the downfall of the city of Troy. Just like the trojan horse that appeared in the story, a trojan is a program in which malicious or harmful code is disguised as seemingly legitimate software that looks apparently harmless, allowing it to access the user’s data in such a way that it can get control and do its chosen form of damage, such as ruining the file allocation table on their hard disk. In one celebrated case, a trojan was a program that was supposed to find and destroy computer viruses. A trojan may be widely redistributed as part of a computer virus. Trojans often are not intended to be harmful but due to hijacking, severe or multiple security flaws, the victim downloading the software could also get a trojan.

Trojans may allow an attacker to access users’ personal information such as banking information, passwords, or personal identity. It can also delete a user’s files or infect other devices connected to the network. Ransomware attacks are often carried out using a Trojan.

Unlike computer viruses and worms, Trojans generally do not attempt to inject themselves into other files or otherwise propagate themselves

Different types of trojan horses

Backdoor  

A backdoor trojan gives malicious users remote control over the infected computer. They enable the author to do anything they wish on the infected computer – including sending, receiving, launching and deleting files, displaying data and rebooting the computer. Backdoor Trojans are often used to unite a group of victim computers to form a botnet or zombie network that can be used for criminal purposes.

Exploit  

Exploits are programs that contain data or code that takes advantage of a vulnerability within application software that is running on a user’s computer.

Rootkit

Rootkits are designed to conceal certain objects or activities in users’ systems. Often their main purpose is to prevent malicious programs being detected – in order to extend the period in which programs can run on an infected computer.

Trojan-Banker

Trojan-Banker programs are designed to steal users’ account data for online banking systems, e-payment systems and credit or debit cards. ===Trojan-DDoS===  These programs conduct DoS (Denial of Service) attacks against a targeted web address. By sending multiple requests – from the user’s computer and several other infected computers – the attack can overwhelm the target address, leading to a denial of service.

Trojan-Downloader

Trojan-Downloaders can download and install new versions of malicious programs onto users’ computers – including other Trojans and adware.

Trojan-Dropper  

These programs are used by hackers in order to install Trojans and/or viruses – or to prevent the detection of malicious programs. Not all antivirus programs are capable of scanning all of the components inside this type of Trojan.

Trojan-FakeAV

Trojan-FakeAV are also commonly known as Rogue Antivirus programs and simulate the activity of antivirus software. They are designed to extort money from users – in return for the detection and removal of threats, even though the threats that they report are actually non-existent.

Trojan-GameThief

This type of program steals user account information from online gamers.

Trojan-IM

Trojan-IM programs steal logins and passwords for instant messaging programs – such as ICQ, MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Pager, Skype and many more.

Trojan-Ransom  

This type of Trojan can modify data on users’ computers – so that their computers don’t run correctly or they can no longer use specific data. The criminal will only restore the user’s computer’s performance or unblock their data, after they have paid them the ransom money that they demand.

Trojan-SMS

These programs can cost users money – by sending text messages from theirmobile device to premium rate phone numbers.

Trojan-Spy

Trojan-Spy programs can spy on how users are using their computers – for example, by tracking the data they enter via their keyboard (also known as keylogging), taking screen shots or getting a list of running applications.

Trojan-Mailfinder

These programs can harvest email addresses from users’ computers.

Other types of Trojans include:

Trojan-ArcBomb

Trojan-Clicker

Trojan-Notifier

Trojan-Proxy

Trojan-PSW

Zeus

Zeus, ZeuS, or Zbot is a Trojan horse malware package that runs on versions of Microsoft Windows. First identified in July 2007 when it was used to steal information from the United States Department of Transportation, it became more widespread in March 2009. In June 2009 security company Prevx discovered that Zeus had compromised over 74,000 FTP accounts on websites of such companies as the Bank of America, NASA, Monster.com, ABC, Oracle, Play.com, Cisco, Amazon, and BusinessWeek. Similarly to Koobface, Zeus has also been used to trick victims of technical support scams into giving the scam artists money through pop-up messages that claim the user has a virus, when in reality they might have no viruses at all. The scam            mers may use programs such as Command prompt or Event viewer to make the user believe that their computer is infected.

The Zeus Virus can do a number of nasty things once it infects a computer, but it really has two major pieces of functionality.

1.       It creates a botnet (network of corrupted machines controlled by the malware’s owner, allowing the owner to collect massive amounts of information or execute large-scale attacks)

2.       Also acts as financial services Trojan designed to steal banking credentials from the machines it infects. This is accomplished through website monitoring and keylogging.

3.       It is also used to install the CryptoLocker ransomware.

Some forms of this malware also affect mobile devices, attempting to get around two-factor authentication that is gaining popularity in the financial services world.

Originally, the Trojan only affected computers running versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system, but some newer versions of the malware have been found on Symbian, BlackBerry and Android mobile devices.

The creator of the malware released the Zeus source code to the public in 2011, opening the doors for the creation of a number of new, updated versions of the malware. These days, even though the original Zeus malware has been largely neutralized, the Trojan lives on as its components are used (and built upon) in a large number of new and emerging malware.

Flashback

OSX.FlashBack, a Trojan horse affecting personal computer systems running Mac OS X, is responsible for the biggest Mac malware attack of all time in early 2012.The original variant used a fake installer of Adobe Flash Player to install the malware, hence the name “Flashback”.

Flashback is designed to grab passwords and other information from users through their Web browser and other applications such as Skype.

A later variant targeted a Java vulnerability on Mac OS X. The system was infected after the user was redirected to a compromised bogus site, where JavaScript code caused an applet containing an exploit to load. An executable file was saved on the local machine, which was used to download and run malicious code from a remote location. The malware also switched between various servers for optimized load balancing. Each bot was given a unique ID that was sent to the control server. The trojan, however, would only infect the user visiting the infected web page, meaning other users on the computer were not infected unless their user accounts had been infected separately.

Reflection

What techniques do trojans usually employ to attack?

Trojans are generally spread by some form of social engineering, for example where a user is duped into executing an e-mail attachment disguised to appear not suspicious, (e.g., a routine form to be filled in), or by clicking on some fake advertisement on social media or anywhere else.

Some Trojans take advantage of a security flaw in older versions of Internet Explorer and Google Chrome to use the host computer as an anonymizer proxy to effectively hide Internet usage, enabling the controller to use the Internet for illegal purposes while all potentially incriminating evidence indicates the infected computer or its IP address. The host’s computer may or may not show the internet history of the sites viewed using the computer as a proxy. The first generation of anonymizer Trojan horses tended to leave their tracks in the page view histories of the host computer. Later generations of the Trojan tend to “cover” their tracks more efficiently. Several versions of Sub7 have been widely circulated in the US and Europe and became the most widely distributed examples of this type of Trojan.

What did Zeus exploit?

·       Zeus is spread mainly through drive-by downloads and phishing schemes.

How can we combat?

Prevention through safe Internet practices is always the first step in staying safe from the Zeus malware. This means avoiding potentially dangerous websites, like those offering illegal free software, adult material or illegal downloads, as the owners of these types of websites often have no problem allowing malware owners to host their software on the site. Being safe also means not clicking on links in email or social media messages unless you were expecting the message. Even if the message is from a trusted source, if that source is afflicted with Zeus, the message could still be corrupt.

It’s very important to use an anti-virus, and while there are a number of antivirus solutions out there, it’s important to choose one that’s from a leader in the industry that updates their solutions constantly. The fact that the Zeus source code is public means that there will be no end to the damage that this malware can do, and every few years new versions of the malware will arise. Only a security vendor that is constantly vigilant against new threats has what it takes to truly protect a user from the Zeus Trojan in the future.

What did Flashback exploit?

·       One of the facts that Flashback was so widespread is because it looked pretty much identical to Adobe’s Flash in its initial incarnation

·       Also, Flashback exploited the fact that Apple stopped pre-installing Flash on Macs for around a year before the malware was created, therefore creating a pool of users more likely to run the installer to use popular websites that utilise Flash  

·       Oracle, the company that develops Java, fixed the vulnerability exploited to install Flashback on February 14, 2012. However, Apple maintains the Mac OS X version of Java and did not release an update containing the fix until April 3, 2012, after the flaw had already been exploited to install Flashback on 600,000 Macs. On April 12, 2015, the company issued a further update to remove the most common Flashback variants. The updated Java release was only made available for Mac OS X Lion and Mac OS X Snow Leopard; the removal utility was released for Intel versions of Mac OS X Leopard in addition to the two newer operating systems. Users of older operating systems were advised to disable Java. There are also some third party programs to detect and remove the Flashback trojan. Apple worked on a new process that would eventually lead to a release of a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) for Mac OS X at the same time it would be available for Windows, Linux, and Solaris users. As of January 9, 2014, about 22,000 Macs were still infected with the Flashback trojan.

What was it back then that made this attack possible?

Zeus is very difficult to detect with old antivirus programs and other old security software as it hides with powerful stealth techniques. It is considered that this is the primary reason why Zeus trojan has become the most powerful botnet on the Internet. Zeus has infected 3.6 million PCs in the United States in 2009.

Flashback was made during a time where most websites still needed Java and before JRE was released.

What do we have nowadays that is making this attack hard/still possible?

The fact that Zeus was made open source meant that new variants of the malware will keep on appearing, and each would be harder to combat than the last. However, new and updated antivirus software such as Malwarebytes are able to easily detect and delete Zeus, albeit only the original non-mutated Zeus.

As for Flashback, Apple now offers free updates to its operating system, and the only computers at risk from Flashback anymore are Power PC and first generation (non-64 bit) Intel-based Macs. The fact that Apple no longer distributes Java, and the decline in applications and websites that demand Java mean that less people are going to go to the effort to install it themselves. Meaning that nowadays, Flashback no longer pose a threat to the majority of the users.

Comics

[ytnonsense]

So I’m almost 27, and my 19 year old brother brought his new girlfriend over for dinner to meet the family. He brought up youtube afterwards cause it was something we both enjoyed, which seemed like a great idea. I asked her who she liked to watch and of course she likes all the cool kid channels like h3h3, and she liked game grumps more when Jontron was on it. (She did seem very nice, really, but i feel like people judge me when I say I prefer gg with Danny and I don’t watch h3h3 at all)

Anyway! She asked who I watched and I said I originally started watching youtube when I found Dan and Phil, then found more brits, Mark, Jack, the grumps, etc. But Dan and Phil were my most long term youtube channel commitment that I regularly kept up with.

She smiled and said “Oh yeah I used to watch them when I was younger!”

Now, i know she was just trying to tell me she liked them too, but i feel like I’ve gotten this response before. I have another friend that this happened to as well, she talked to someone at a party and they said their little sibling watched them and my friend felt judged for also liking them when she’s 28. We feel like that gif of Adam Sandler sitting in the classroom full of preschoolers :P

Like, even though I’m in the same age range as them, am I too old to enjoy Dan and Phil?

I mean, I know a large percentage of their fanbase are teenagers. I do. But because I’m their age I get to enjoy their nostalgic jokes, I remember the things they remember from growing up in the 90s and 2000s, I played pokemon blue when it came out and was blown away by Omega Ruby just like Dan was, I was a myspace emo loser when I was a teen, I used msn and icq every day, I had to watch Lost over the 6 years it spanned instead of quickly on netflix, I love buffy, The Ring also fucked me up SO BAD in jr high, I’m really passionate about sexuality and breaking gender roles/stereotypes, we have tons of similar musical and geeky interests, and I know what it’s like to struggle after high school. I really respect their opinions, I care about what happens to them, and they can always make laugh.

I feel silly sometimes when I realize I’m not in the majority, but I guess it shouldn’t matter as long as I enjoy them my way.

Anyway. Just my random thoughts today. Hope you are all well🖤 keep loving what you love!

#ramble #ignore me #my posts #danisnotonfire #amazingphil #dan and phil