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tswwwit · 2 years

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For no particular reason - though partly because I want to clear out the ol' inbox - here's a series of semi- to very NSFW asks that I'm gonna answer!

All that stuff under the cut.

I like it on occasion! I think it's a fun way to do a whole 'we have been/are attracted to each other and now we must bang with incredible fervor' kinda thing!

I had a concept for one that I was tossing around for a while - never got around to it; I ended up doing a different smut. Though I might come back to it at some point! The person who is affected is probably not who you think. It's Bill

Outside of the bedroom: Condescending, annoying. Punch Bill in the side.

In the bedroom: Face red, dick hard. 👍 Bill's smugness level +2.

I'll be honest - Bill was pretty average in bed their first time. And probably not that great a kisser! He hadn't really done any human-body stuff, but Dipper thought it was Extra Great because of his own inexperience. Oh, and general horniness.

Of course, by this point Bill's had a considerable amount of experience, and he's nothing if not a quick learner. Dipper's standards have risen accordingly.

Any reincarnation of Dipper is in for, shall we say, a pretty wild time.

When Dipper reincarnates and can sleep again? Yeah, probably! It seems like a thing Bill would be into, ngl.

In the current Dipper-lifetime, Bill's probably had a couple pleasant awakenings involving. Kisses. And such.

Dipper's doing fine for himself! Uhh.... I dunno, average? Ish?

Meanwhile, Bill's body is a metaphor, and he's a big..... jerk. The important thing is that Dipper has zero complaints about it.

Bonus that I would usually put in the tags:

Bill, as someone who hadn't really thought much about human genitalia until he ended up wearing a human body, has obviously spent some time getting accustomed to his situation. Regarding having a dick. Done, of course, with his usual zest for life.

Pictured here is a dramatic reenactment.

Dipper did not approve.

#Let's call this #Thirst ask thursday #No I'm not making that a thing I just think it's a funny name for it #Not Really Safe For Work #Uhhhh do I have any interesting tag facts I could throw in here #These two idiots have a very good time with each other #Good for them #There's likely a lot of lazy afternoons or take-their-time scenarios in the time gaps #They are in a long term relationship after all #But the smut I write is Pornblography and thus I only highlight the more intense encounters #Still thinking I'll do one after I get this miniseries done and probably write it after/alongside last chap of Confessing It #Hmmm anything else I can add that's interesting #I guess I have some crab rangoons and they're pretty good #Good for me #That's all folks!#Hope you have a great day!

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austerulous · 1 year

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I basically never participate in munday, but my daughter has taken to carrying around an old, dog-eared photograph of me and my husband. So here you go, Puffin c. 2007:

#we are babies 😭#anyway! i thought i'd be on last night but i crashed and fell asleep early #the perils of getting old #i'm here to make mischief today though #i'll be focusing on threads rather than dms or asks #might try to catch up with some ooc stuff tonight #i'll also be clearing out my follower list #that'll include folks who haven't shown much interest in interacting #or who i don't feel gel well with me and my gaggle of characters #it's nothing personal #anyway i hope you all have a good day and aren't feeling the monday blues ♡#◈ — ooc; puffin speaks

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forestofsprites · 2 years

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Orpheus and Eurydice

There are some very Orpheus and Eurydice themes in the narrative of Ed and Stede that do indeed make me feel many things. For the record, I'm using one specific take on the myth here (specifically not the one in Symposium), but as is standard for myths, there are many different opinions on the nuances- this is merely one of them.

First and foremost, we need death. Stede endures this in a more literal sense- legally, he is now dead. An act of devotion, perhaps, as he seeks to cultivate a fresh start with his love. Equally, however, Ed himself undergoes a death. Not only does he gift Stede a disordered burial at sea, but he invokes one for himself, too. In episode ten, he lets the red silk representing his heart sail steadfast across the ocean. Anyone who's familiar with the ending of Orpheus' life will know that upon his death, his head and dutiful lyre were sent floating down the Hebrus River, straight out to sea. While Ed is alive both literally and legally, he sacrificed his heart- washed to the ocean much like Orpheus himself.

Next up, we travel to the crux of the myth. The quintessential theme of mournful love. The deep and burning sort, the kind that drives you to the underworld in an attempt to rectify what was so tragically lost. In OFMD we need to backtrack to episode nine, to Edward and his act of grace declaration; a show of all he'd lose, all he would risk, to keep his love safe. He accepts the journey, perils and all! Stede mirrors this in episode ten by not simply closing the door on his past, but by going so far as killing himself off, playing with death, in order to truly live life alongside his love. Much like Orpheus, this poignantly speaks to the boundaries that need to be crossed- both that metaphorical death and journey, but also the literal treck he'll be undertaking as he pursues his lost love.

Orpheus finds himself underground because of this simple, grief-driven hope that death cannot be final- it must be negotiable. He brings his lyre, performing a most dismal tune, and the gods presiding over the Underworld are so utterly moved by his performance that a glimmer of hope is provided. Go on then, find Eurydice, but here is your caveat: have trust, have faith, know that she is there and do not allow your eyes to wander. It's the backbone of all relationships epitomized to the highest stakes. You need to trust in yourself that your partner will be there, to have that faith that when you make it to the Overworld, they'll be right behind you.

For Ed and Stede, this is episode nine. Edward returns from the Underworld, preparing for a new life- for them to enter the Overworld together- but his love is not there. This doesn't follow the myth's narrative to a T- but it does bring us back to the idea of trust and faith- both in your partner and moreso, in yourself. It's the nagging fear that this is too good to be true- that the excitement can snap back to grave reality in a heartbeat. Both Edward and Orpheus turn around with buoyant hope, and in doing so, they are instead faced with their worst fear.

(One possible reading of the myth could be that in season two, Stede will be making his journey to the Underworld, seeking out his lost love. All the while, Ed has already made his trip downstairs, lost his love, and had his heart utterly grief-stricken in the process. There are so many ways to slice up this myth, but the themes are wonderfully applicable!)

#check the tags for more rambling about this myth #OKAY THIS IS A LOT #AND WE CAN MAKE ARGUMENTS FOR BOTH ED AND STEDE BEING BOTH ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE #BUT THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT!! I'M GOING FOR THEMES AND NARRATIVE HERE- NOT KIN-ASSIGNING CHARACTERS TO GREEK MYTH #I'LL BE RIGHT BACK BECAUSE I HAVE MUCH MORE TO SAY HANG TIGHT FOLKS #our flag means death #ofmd meta #orpheus and eurydice #ofmd #rambling #our flag means death meta #I mentioned this in paragraph one but I'll say it again: there is no such thing as a right myth #myths are wonderful because they change with time and society- one original myth can offshoot into 500 variations and none is less or more #valid than the other. One may be more original- might date earlier- but at the end of the day they are myths and they are unique to #their time period and culture! I go with perhaps the classic telling of Orpheus and Eurydice- but Plato's edition spins it in another light #and so on and so forth!#You can very basically break it into two camps: Orpheus did it out of love versus Orpheus did all this and it proved he didn't truly #love her. The gods were playing a trick and we all laughed except Eurydice who was very dead. Their #argument there is a very classical Greek perspective of: if you loved them and they died- the solution is to kill yourself to join them #by trying to bring them back to life you are making a mockery of both death and the gods. etc etc etc #and that theme could be applied to Ed and Stede too!!

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couldbebetterforsure · 6 months

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Why the fuck you lyin'?

Why you always lyin'?

Hmmmmm Oh my god

Stop fucking lying!

#ensemble stars #midori takamine #ensemble stars spoilers #enstars spoilers #does this technically count as spoilers even though this came out many years ago for the original game???#I mean from what I can find I guess some folks haven't read the original game's stories and stuff so maybe??? I'll tag it just to be safe #yes OBVIOUSLY the first pic comes from before midori grows and spends enough time with everyone to realize how much he cares #but just go with it for the sake of the joke!!! do people even still use the why the fuck you lying meme anymore? am i behind the times?#anyways I LOVE the idea of midori spending months going 'this super sentai idol thing sucks I hate my life'#only to one day wake up and realize he now loves this so called stupid fucking super sentai themed idol group with all his heart #midori upon realizing this: ........god fucking dammit #I don't say this much but a really favorite trope of mine is 'person who was forced to/accidentally ended up joining a group'#'very blatant about how much they don't wanna be here and wanna leave and really don't come across as someone that devoted'#'only to eventually be revealed to have slowly grown to adore the group and want what's best for it despite not being that open about it'#so of course I was gonna become attached to midori...then again I love all of ryuseitai #but of course my sweetheart chiaki is my actual number one of both ryuseitai and enstars as a whole 😊

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izzy-b-hands · 1 year

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Ahh someone else came out and made them turn the music off entirely

I don’t know that that was necessary; they just needed to turn it down some!

My head does appreciate the quiet tho

#text post #aka been deleting out anons again and my mum wants some of my time today but like #she's being weirdly. neutral abt it and that usually means I've done something wrong and a lecture will accompany any time spent together #online or otherwise #but idk what I could have done rn to upset her #for the anons I do know that it's bc I'm still occasionally daring to post fic for o ur f l ag lmaooooo #untagged most of the time now but apparently the few times I dared tag in the last month or so were not to their liking #as if anything is to their liking like i am deeply aware of what they specifically dislike abt me personally #but unfortunately that does seem to pare down to just existing in the fandom at the same time as them!#the pirate special interest and nautical special interest and other! special interests of mine all combine with this show fsadjfk #so they're stuck with me for now RIP lmao #bc the special interests combined are always stronger than anything else and also despite these folks i do like my time here #i like the few mutuals I still have who still like me and talk to me or even just like my posts on a bad day #sorry emotions going into fic now I'll dip for a bit dskfjalj

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champagne121212 · 2 years

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folk punk (pat the bunny, ramshackle glory, wingnut dishwasher's union, johnny hobo and the freight trains) + hyperpop (devi mccallion, black dresses, girls rituals, mom, anarchy 99, cats millionaire) = having several influential bands turn out to be the various projects of just one central person and the other musicians they partner with at different time, surprising me every single time i find out another band is actually just half of a band i already know because i am essentially faceblind but for voices.

#these parallels brought to you by the fact that wdu was one of the first folk punk bands i listened to and i didn't find out it was #a pat the bunny project until three weeks ago!#also brought to you by me furiously googling escape from the zoo because 'is that voice familiar or is that just Folk Punk Guy Voice'#it's fucking days n daze's frontman.#this is what i get for never looking further into the bands i like than reading spotify bios. which folk punk bands never seem to have lol #i would say besides mcr but really all i know about them is what tumblr tells me. i have been an mcr fan since i was 14 i did not find out #about bert and gerard's whole deal until like early 2021 i think #massive fall out boy fan as well have been since middle school. still don't really understand the whole petekey thing #i read the little lj post ppl were circulating around here last month and wow that seems really vague is that really like. it.#i dunno i'll look into it at some point my problem is i hate longform youtube videos so i never watch that like band iceberg explained shit

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b4kuch1n · 4 months

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1/ this bout of comms almost done and 2. spawndate in 3 days so I have! been fixin up some stuff for the itch store. that'll go live on the 29th! right now there Is a pack of the lineart stuff I did last year for folks who found that agreeable, still free to grab! for practicing coloring, or if you wanna mess around with colors when ur not feelin like doing lineart, or if you wanna try to figure out colors in a drastically different style than what you usually go for. or if u just wanna look at it that's cool too. small announcement that is all see u in a few

#bakuspeech #update on the situation: is mostly contained. it'll take a fair bit to make up for how much it's kicked us in the nuts #but it's doable. just Very annoying and tedious and sudden and overall it just sucks #esp. like right up close to my birthday lmao. like if it happened earlier this year I'd be like alright. sucks shit but par for the course #this year has already been so fucked up. this might as well happen #but since it's happened in december it really brings on the feeling of like. fr bitch?#right in front of my cake? me the birthday boy? the specialest fucking boy?#but well. theres a Thing around here that's ur birthday usually being the unluckiest day #but also we're the kind of folks who track death dates rather than birthdays. like up until very recently #all four of my grandparents have unspecified birthdays. their birth years aren't even correct. on paper they're like #a few years older than they actually are #and my granddad on my dads side was even from a family of some means so it wasnt even a class thing #man. last year Something was happening around this time too. idr what but it also sucked #mmm. well. what is really just is. and I've already taken a hammer to it anyhows #I'll do the same for the birthday thing. it Will be fucking good. I take a hammer to it #I'm very glad I still get some commissions even tho it was practically right up to noel #you guys are very generous. I don't say it as often as I should I think but I'm very very thankful for the support #glad to hang out around here still. glad to have the folks I have here. thank u for chillin with me #please look forward to the itch store update. got a new thing along with the old things ported over. stay tuned

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macrocosmus · 2 years

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idk how dialectics go and this is a shitpost about my brain

part 1: my family (not my generation but the two or so before me) grew up in a part of the US where italian and jewish immigrants intermingled a lot and while im your average 3rd or 4th generation italian american or whatever, my family, particularly my grandmother, passed down a fair bit of this jewish-italian immigrant cultural exchange. It really just affects my vernacular, not realizing things I think everyone says are actually yiddish or whatever, but really I think it made me just use “kosher” to mean acceptable.

part b: so there’s this post that I saw about how vegans bemoan folk eating pork because a lot of reasons, but one is saying that pigs are smart and have personalities and should be people like us... or something. I have a faulty memory. Anyway, someone in the notes pointed out that pigs will eat you and other pigs.

Synthesis: me, misremembering the wording of the post and notes, repeating it to myself in my head in my own words, “If the pigs say it’s kosher I’ll eat them”

and that just feels silly to say

#please do not ask me about the jewish and italian cultural exchange i was not alive then #i am recounting some weird family lore here #also im using my first 5 tags to say random garbage to avoid this post getting traction #but go ahead and rebagel it if you want #but yeah #i'll eat the pork all day its cheaper than chicken some days #also my family is not from sicily so you fucking sicilians in the comments talking about how you make gravy fuck off #heavy gravy makers #cant even get through one course of your meals without getting full #sicilian-americans are actually cool its just fun to pretend to rag on them #and how their gravy recipes get in cookbooks #i showed some binging with babish vid to my grandmother and she said he cooks like a sicilian #what a life #i should also mention that theres a lot of times online where i mention im pagan and folks are surprised #they're like i thought you were jewish and im like no #i just accidentally do a few jewish things

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months

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How I got scammed

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

I wuz robbed.

More specifically, I was tricked by a phone-phisher pretending to be from my bank, and he convinced me to hand over my credit-card number, then did $8,000+ worth of fraud with it before I figured out what happened. And then he tried to do it again, a week later!

Here's what happened. Over the Christmas holiday, I traveled to New Orleans. The day we landed, I hit a Chase ATM in the French Quarter for some cash, but the machine declined the transaction. Later in the day, we passed a little credit-union's ATM and I used that one instead (I bank with a one-branch credit union and generally there's no fee to use another CU's ATM).

A couple days later, I got a call from my credit union. It was a weekend, during the holiday, and the guy who called was obviously working for my little CU's after-hours fraud contractor. I'd dealt with these folks before – they service a ton of little credit unions, and generally the call quality isn't great and the staff will often make mistakes like mispronouncing my credit union's name.

That's what happened here – the guy was on a terrible VOIP line and I had to ask him to readjust his mic before I could even understand him. He mispronounced my bank's name and then asked if I'd attempted to spend $1,000 at an Apple Store in NYC that day. No, I said, and groaned inwardly. What a pain in the ass. Obviously, I'd had my ATM card skimmed – either at the Chase ATM (maybe that was why the transaction failed), or at the other credit union's ATM (it had been a very cheap looking system).

I told the guy to block my card and we started going through the tedious business of running through recent transactions, verifying my identity, and so on. It dragged on and on. These were my last hours in New Orleans, and I'd left my family at home and gone out to see some of the pre-Mardi Gras krewe celebrations and get a muffalata, and I could tell that I was going to run out of time before I finished talking to this guy.

"Look," I said, "you've got all my details, you've frozen the card. I gotta go home and meet my family and head to the airport. I'll call you back on the after-hours number once I'm through security, all right?"

He was frustrated, but that was his problem. I hung up, got my sandwich, went to the airport, and we checked in. It was total chaos: an Alaska Air 737 Max had just lost its door-plug in mid-air and every Max in every airline's fleet had been grounded, so the check in was crammed with people trying to rebook. We got through to the gate and I sat down to call the CU's after-hours line. The person on the other end told me that she could only handle lost and stolen cards, not fraud, and given that I'd already frozen the card, I should just drop by the branch on Monday to get a new card.

We flew home, and later the next day, I logged into my account and made a list of all the fraudulent transactions and printed them out, and on Monday morning, I drove to the bank to deal with all the paperwork. The folks at the CU were even more pissed than I was. The fraud that run up to more than $8,000, and if Visa refused to take it out of the merchants where the card had been used, my little credit union would have to eat the loss.

I agreed and commiserated. I also pointed out that their outsource, after-hours fraud center bore some blame here: I'd canceled the card on Saturday but most of the fraud had taken place on Sunday. Something had gone wrong.

One cool thing about banking at a tiny credit-union is that you end up talking to people who have actual authority, responsibility and agency. It turned out the the woman who was processing my fraud paperwork was a VP, and she decided to look into it. A few minutes later she came back and told me that the fraud center had no record of having called me on Saturday.

"That was the fraudster," she said.

Oh, shit. I frantically rewound my conversation, trying to figure out if this could possibly be true. I hadn't given him anything apart from some very anodyne info, like what city I live in (which is in my Wikipedia entry), my date of birth (ditto), and the last four digits of my card.

Wait a sec.

He hadn't asked for the last four digits. He'd asked for the last seven digits. At the time, I'd found that very frustrating, but now – "The first nine digits are the same for every card you issue, right?" I asked the VP.

I'd given him my entire card number.

Goddammit.

The thing is, I know a lot about fraud. I'm writing an entire series of novels about this kind of scam:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

And most summers, I go to Defcon, and I always go to the "social engineering" competitions where an audience listens as a hacker in a soundproof booth cold-calls merchants (with the owner's permission) and tries to con whoever answers the phone into giving up important information.

But I'd been conned.

Now look, I knew I could be conned. I'd been conned before, 13 years ago, by a Twitter worm that successfully phished out of my password via DM:

https://locusmag.com/2010/05/cory-doctorow-persistence-pays-parasites/

That scam had required a miracle of timing. It started the day before, when I'd reset my phone to factory defaults and reinstalled all my apps. That same day, I'd published two big online features that a lot of people were talking about. The next morning, we were late getting out of the house, so by the time my wife and I dropped the kid at daycare and went to the coffee shop, it had a long line. Rather than wait in line with me, my wife sat down to read a newspaper, and so I pulled out my phone and found a Twitter DM from a friend asking "is this you?" with a URL.

Assuming this was something to do with those articles I'd published the day before, I clicked the link and got prompted for my Twitter login again. This had been happening all day because I'd done that mobile reinstall the day before and all my stored passwords had been wiped. I entered it but the page timed out. By that time, the coffees were ready. We sat and chatted for a bit, then went our own ways.

I was on my way to the office when I checked my phone again. I had a whole string of DMs from other friends. Each one read "is this you?" and had a URL.

Oh, shit, I'd been phished.

If I hadn't reinstalled my mobile OS the day before. If I hadn't published a pair of big articles the day before. If we hadn't been late getting out the door. If we had been a little more late getting out the door (so that I'd have seen the multiple DMs, which would have tipped me off).

There's a name for this in security circles: "Swiss-cheese security." Imagine multiple slices of Swiss cheese all stacked up, the holes in one slice blocked by the slice below it. All the slices move around and every now and again, a hole opens up that goes all the way through the stack. Zap!

The fraudster who tricked me out of my credit card number had Swiss cheese security on his side. Yes, he spoofed my bank's caller ID, but that wouldn't have been enough to fool me if I hadn't been on vacation, having just used a pair of dodgy ATMs, in a hurry and distracted. If the 737 Max disaster hadn't happened that day and I'd had more time at the gate, I'd have called my bank back. If my bank didn't use a slightly crappy outsource/out-of-hours fraud center that I'd already had sub-par experiences with. If, if, if.

The next Friday night, at 5:30PM, the fraudster called me back, pretending to be the bank's after-hours center. He told me my card had been compromised again. But: I hadn't removed my card from my wallet since I'd had it replaced. Also, it was half an hour after the bank closed for the long weekend, a very fraud-friendly time. And when I told him I'd call him back and asked for the after-hours fraud number, he got very threatening and warned me that because I'd now been notified about the fraud that any losses the bank suffered after I hung up the phone without completing the fraud protocol would be billed to me. I hung up on him. He called me back immediately. I hung up on him again and put my phone into do-not-disturb.

The following Tuesday, I called my bank and spoke to their head of risk-management. I went through everything I'd figured out about the fraudsters, and she told me that credit unions across America were being hit by this scam, by fraudsters who somehow knew CU customers' phone numbers and names, and which CU they banked at. This was key: my phone number is a reasonably well-kept secret. You can get it by spending money with Equifax or another nonconsensual doxing giant, but you can't just google it or get it at any of the free services. The fact that the fraudsters knew where I banked, knew my name, and had my phone number had really caused me to let down my guard.

The risk management person and I talked about how the credit union could mitigate this attack: for example, by better-training the after-hours card-loss staff to be on the alert for calls from people who had been contacted about supposed card fraud. We also went through the confusing phone-menu that had funneled me to the wrong department when I called in, and worked through alternate wording for the menu system that would be clearer (this is the best part about banking with a small CU – you can talk directly to the responsible person and have a productive discussion!). I even convinced her to buy a ticket to next summer's Defcon to attend the social engineering competitions.

There's a leak somewhere in the CU systems' supply chain. Maybe it's Zelle, or the small number of corresponding banks that CUs rely on for SWIFT transaction forwarding. Maybe it's even those after-hours fraud/card-loss centers. But all across the USA, CU customers are getting calls with spoofed caller IDs from fraudsters who know their registered phone numbers and where they bank.

I've been mulling this over for most of a month now, and one thing has really been eating at me: the way that AI is going to make this kind of problem much worse.

Not because AI is going to commit fraud, though.

One of the truest things I know about AI is: "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

I trusted this fraudster specifically because I knew that the outsource, out-of-hours contractors my bank uses have crummy headsets, don't know how to pronounce my bank's name, and have long-ass, tedious, and pointless standardized questionnaires they run through when taking fraud reports. All of this created cover for the fraudster, whose plausibility was enhanced by the rough edges in his pitch - they didn't raise red flags.

As this kind of fraud reporting and fraud contacting is increasingly outsourced to AI, bank customers will be conditioned to dealing with semi-automated systems that make stupid mistakes, force you to repeat yourself, ask you questions they should already know the answers to, and so on. In other words, AI will groom bank customers to be phishing victims.

This is a mistake the finance sector keeps making. 15 years ago, Ben Laurie excoriated the UK banks for their "Verified By Visa" system, which validated credit card transactions by taking users to a third party site and requiring them to re-enter parts of their password there:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090331094020/http://www.links.org/?p=591

This is exactly how a phishing attack works. As Laurie pointed out, this was the banks training their customers to be phished.

I came close to getting phished again today, as it happens. I got back from Berlin on Friday and my suitcase was damaged in transit. I've been dealing with the airline, which means I've really been dealing with their third-party, outsource luggage-damage service. They have a terrible website, their emails are incoherent, and they officiously demand the same information over and over again.

This morning, I got a scam email asking me for more information to complete my damaged luggage claim. It was a terrible email, from a noreply@ email address, and it was vague, officious, and dishearteningly bureaucratic. For just a moment, my finger hovered over the phishing link, and then I looked a little closer.

On any other day, it wouldn't have had a chance. Today – right after I had my luggage wrecked, while I'm still jetlagged, and after days of dealing with my airline's terrible outsource partner – it almost worked.

So much fraud is a Swiss-cheese attack, and while companies can't close all the holes, they can stop creating new ones.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to post about it whenever I get scammed. I find the inner workings of scams to be fascinating, and it's also important to remind people that everyone is vulnerable sometimes, and scammers are willing to try endless variations until an attack lands at just the right place, at just the right time, in just the right way. If you think you can't get scammed, that makes you especially vulnerable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #social engineering #phishing #ai #swiss cheese security #infosec #finance #fraud #carding

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girltomboy · 6 months

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Well, forget about the peaceful Saturday I was daydreaming about. As it always happens with my mom, she did her best to rattle and unsettle my spirits.

I was watching instagram reels in bed to tag my bf in, when she came into my room and sat on the bed next to me. Her footsteps sounded so rushed when I heard her walking towards my room that I thought she had something important to tell me, but she just came to hang out. And I could feel that something terrible was coming by the way she was stroking my hair, forcefully or forced, idk how to describe it. Mechanically almost. And then she asked me what I usually do on Saturdays. I told her I just lie in bed until noon, have a meal, chill inside or go for walks if it's nice outside. She then asked me if I don't feel bad spending my time alone, and I said no, I like being alone. The truth is that I'm almost never alone, because most of the time I'm on video calls with my boyfriend, or hanging out with my coworker. But I didn't even get to say that, because she asked me "wouldn't you like to find a boyfriend in that city?" I was like...? Huh? What for? Well, just to spend time and hang out and go on walks with... And just have a boyfriend. :-) I said well, I have a boyfriend. She replied "but he doesn't live in that city!" oh, I need one for every city? She was like "for all you know he could have someone else in his own city too". I was so mad I started shaking, I asked her why she would say something like that to me when she doesn't know anything about him, us, or me for that matter. She doesn't know our relationship, she's never cared about it, now suddenly she's worrying about me and who I spend my time with in my city? How can she say that to my face so casually like a joke, then smile? That is truly psycho behaviour and I shut that shit down immediately. She apologized (well, not really, she just told me to not be mad at her and tried to change the topic) and told me to tell my bf to take care of me. Like thanks, he's really gonna appreciate that after you just implied that he's cheating on me and suggested I do the same. Anyway, after this she told me the story of how she discovered that my stepdad had a mistress and about how so many ppl tried to tell her about it but couldn't because of him. And how they had so many fights because of that. I wanted to tell her to not allow this betrayal to project her insecurities and bad experiences onto me, but I just couldn't find the words, and we had to whisper so as to not be heard by him. It's terrible, I know she skipped some details because she also told me this story via text, and there were some truly truly barbaric and mind-shattering aspects of it. But after our discussion from before I couldn't find it in me to feel as terrible for her as I should have, or to display the affection she might have needed. I just started tweezing my eyebrows 💀 like, she could just put her money where her mouth is and divorce him like she did with my cheating dad, but then her living/housing situation would just worsen. I mean, not tragically, but she would have to move back home with grandma, and the last time she had to do that she got super depressed. I know that because we shared a room 🙃 and, well, it would just be really sad. I get it. Plus, I don't think my stepdad is still fooling around, although you can never know. She told me "men are just like that" as a justification for why she said that hurtful thing, and while I know she was just projecting and she was also kinda right, I just don't feel like it's the thing to say about a relationship you know next to nothing about, your daughter's relationship at that.

#anyway it's just one of those things that casually ruined my saturday - it's always the saturdays somehow #after that she literally just got up and left #like okay thanks for that i guess? so good being here again!#thinking about the fact that i spent 2 years just like this. every week & weekend was just like this #every interaction with her had potential to end up in this subject: her giving me anxiety and paranoia over something - anything #and then abruptly ending the conversation like that's all folks! good luck ruminating on that 😁#i have the consolation that it's a temporary visit this time and i'll be resuming my routine in a couple days which gives me #an enormous amount of strength like i don't even register what's happening to me here im literally just vibing #don't care didn't ask plus my safe apartment is waiting for me 🤗✌️♥️#anyway im not gonna stay mad at her. but i might tell my boyfriend about it #he already knows not to expect much consideration affection admiration appreciation support etc. from my mom/family #from that one discussion we had on dec 1st 2020 :-) he said it himself! but i just feel like telling someone like i feel like it's not #normal at all to hear stuff like this from ur mom of all people

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ms-demeanor · 6 months

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I think the eight alarms thing is usually a maladaptation. You've trained your brain to ignore the eight alarms because you kept avoiding the training of willpower following the first alarm would require. I think some sleep therapy might help?

Hey so first of all fuck you, thanks.

Second: I love it when you read literature on sleep disorders, especially if it's on sleep disorders among folks with ADHD, and you see time and time again "when allowed to sleep on their preferred schedule subjects maintained healthy, normal, restorative sleep cycles" and "effects were not lasting without ongoing intervention; resetting the sleep schedule is a permanent effort."

Like, if I sleep *great* from 6am to 2pm and I wake up feeling rested and alert with no special help but I need to turn off the lights in my house and shut down all electronics at 8pm and beam a spotlight into my face starting at 5am to wake up at seven and feel exhausted all day, I think perhaps it is not actually my sleep cycle that is wrong it is perhaps society that is wrong.

BELIEVE ME, when I find the job that pays well and has decent insurance that lets me exist as a cheerful nighttime ghoul I am jumping on that with both feet. But until then I literally feel better getting six hours of sleep and occasionally sleeping so hard that i can't hear my alarms because of chronic sleep deprivation than I do turning off all the lights in my house and ceasing all activity two and a half hours after I get off of work.

Also: the eight alarms aren't all there to wake me up, it's just that sometimes I *also* sleep through the ones that are supposed to remind me to go sit at my desk and start work. One of the first three usually gets me up, but on a day when I sleep through all three of those I will be sleeping through all eight of them and usually a phone call and someone trying to shake me awake to.

ANYWAY after being treated with melatonin and light therapy and staring listlessly at the ceiling in the dark bored out of my skull with racing thoughts for sleep disorders that I didn't have for like twenty years the single most effective intervention that allowed me to get more sleep as someone with both ADHD and DSPD was to start hanging out and being active in places where it would be easy to fall asleep if the sleep caught me there instead of turning my bedroom into a dark, silent shrine of snoozing. Giving myself permission to fall asleep late instead of laying awake chewing myself up with guilt for not being asleep helped too.

Actually here's some tips for the sleepy bitches in the crowd:

1 - If you're laying down and not falling asleep in half an hour, you're not actually sleepy; read something or get up and do something because you're more likely to get sleepy faster that way than you are staring at the clock going "if I fall asleep now I'll have three hours and forty five minutes of rest when I have to go to work; If I fall asleep now I'll have three hours and twenty minutes of sleep when I have to get up, etc. etc."

2 - Allow yourself to be ambushed by sleep. Fall asleep on your cozy couch. Fall asleep in the comfy chair. Let yourself sleep where you fall asleep instead of dragging yourself to where you're 'supposed' to sleep if doing so will wake you up.

3 - The mythbusters thing. If you just lay down and close your eyes and pretend to rest you will feel more rested when you get up than when you laid down. Laying down to rest is better than nothing, it literally causes cognitive improvements similar to sleep in tests, and knowing that can help take off some of the pressure of not being able to fall asleep and can thus help you fall asleep.

4 - It's okay to "hang out" in the area where you're going to sleep. Read in bed. Play games on your cellphone in bed. If you want to go to sleep put on comfy clothes and bring a chill activity and hang out in your bed to do it so that all you have to do when you start getting sleepy is close your eyes.

5 - It's better to get some sleep than no sleep. Sometimes you look at the clock and it's six AM and whoops, fuck it. Okay, time for bed, don't stress that you're only going to get a few hours, a few hours is better than nothing. Lay down to pretend to rest at least and you'll probably feel okay.

6 - This one sounds silly and might not work for a bunch of people for a bunch of reasons but apparently there's some research suggesting that "well-rested" is a state of mind? I've had a reasonable amount of success with just telling myself "Yeah, I actually feel pretty good," and pushing through the day on a couple of hours of sleep. I don't *recommend* that and you should try to get as much sleep as possible, but yeah the next time you're low on sleep see what happens if you just try to decide to not be tired. It sounded like bullshit to me when I first heard it but I've found some success with it.

7 - This shit is cumulative. If you're doing a couple nights a week on low sleep that's not ideal but you're probably going to be pretty functional and you can work on it. If you overbook and overextend yourself for too long - I'm looking at you college students and new parents - it's going to add up. Try as much as possible to at least keep your sleep deficit nights spread out. (This message brought to you by writing 60k words of fiction in october and completely frying my brain because i wasn't getting enough sleep).

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