End of Watch

Sep. 8th, 2025 04:47 pm
alobear: (Default)
[personal profile] alobear
My feelings about this last instalment in the Bill Hodges trilogy are very similar to those about the previous two - I liked the characters a lot, the plot was interesting, it made me shout at my phone quite a bit, it was really very grim in places, and the flashbacks to expand on stuff I already knew got a bit annoying over time.
I think I would have preferred the story to remain non-supernatural in nature, but those aspects didn't bother me too much in the end. I wasn't sure I'd want to continue with the spin-off series following Holly, but then the cutesy epilogue won me over and now I may well do.
I'm glad I saw this trilogy through to the end, even if my enjoyment went down a bit with each book.

Vid Con

Sep. 7th, 2025 03:39 pm
tablesaw: Supervillain Frita Kahlo says, 'Dolor!' (Que Dolor!)
[personal profile] tablesaw

Following up on the last post, Inbox Zero has been working well. I cleared out my main inbox back to about mid 2019, which appears to be the time that I arbitrarily marked everything in my inbox as read. When I started I had over twenty thousand unread conversations, and I finished with a Trash folder containing over twenty-seven thousand items. I'm now undertaking the same process on my real-name account, and it's going well.

And it's been a pretty good low-effort project to work on while dealing with my first case of COVID-19.

Last Thursday night (August 28), I was feeling unusually antsy regarding my sinuses so I decided to take a COVID test to put my mind at ease. It did not do that. Instead, I woke up Psyche and we figured out how we were going to deal with isolation. I logged into work to tell them that I'd tested positive, but the symptoms were minor, and I would not be working on Friday. I then proceeded to develop a raging fever for the next 24 hours or so. A few days later, Psyche tested positive despite our best efforts, and we have spent the rest of the week muddling through major fatigue coupled with relatively minor flu symptoms.

There is, of course, no good time to be laid out for over a week, but it was particularly rough because we had been the main people organizing the logistics for the 74th wedding anniversary of Psyche's grandparents, an event scheduled to take place last Sunday. So she had to spend a frantic few days collecting all of the remaining tasks and assigning them to various members of her family, all while having to sit at home while everyone enjoyed the party we threw.

As for contact-tracing, I believe I was exposed when visiting with Psyche's other grandmother, who had been sick (untested) earlier that week; and then I exposed Psyche before testing positive myself. Given the way our positive test results seem to be hanging on longer than our main symptoms, it's not too hard to believe that Grammy was still shedding virus when I visited. I didn't spend much time with her directly, but the windows were generally closed in the house.

It's been a week and a half of sleeping and hydrating and then doing it again but reversed.

In less plaguey developments, I'm looking forward to this year's Beyond Fest which will be announcing its full slate this week. So far, the only screenings announced or for a retrospective of Guillermo del Toro, and I have tickets to see his early works (Cronos, The Devil's Backbone, and Mimic) and a screening of Pan's Labyrinth. I will also be in New York at the beginning of October for a work trip and am making the time to see Reeves and Winters in Waiting for Godot before flying back home.

I just need a negative test soon...

My Brilliant Friend

Sep. 7th, 2025 07:58 pm
alobear: (Default)
[personal profile] alobear
I picked up My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante at my local station free book exchange and was prompted to read it (some months later) by then picking up the other three in the series, all together, a few days ago.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book - it's about two women who live in the same small neighbourhood of Naples and meet around the age of five of six (in the late 1940s). It supposedly tells the history of their great friendship over the course of their lives (the prologue is set around 2010 when they're both 66) - but they're both only 16 at the end of the book, and I wouldn't say they've ever really been friends...

I assume the other three books in the series continue the story, to bring it eventually back to where this one starts - and I'm definitely invested enough in the story and all the multifarious characters to want to read on.

But Elena, the narrator (interesting that she shares her name with the author), is very much that - the narrator. The book centres almost entirely around the other girl, Lila, since Elena is basically obsessed with her and largely subsumes herself to Lila's influence and control. During the periods when she's away from Lila, she attaches herself to other people instead, so really has very little character of her own.

Initially, the book is quite confusing because it tells things anecdotally and out of order, as if it's someone telling their life story without planning it out first, and so jumps around in time a lot. It does settle down into a more linear narrative after about 70 pages, which I was grateful for, but very little of note happens until about 100 pages from the end, at which point an awful lot happens in quick succession.

Before that point, I was thinking I'd give it a middling rating and not move on with the rest of the series - but it really picked up by the end and had me hooked. The writing is excellent throughout and it's all extremely well observed, with all the feuds and inter-relationships amongst all the families laid out in a very believable way.

Signal Boosting: Ladies' Bingo!

Sep. 6th, 2025 02:15 pm
althea_valara: A screenshot of Alisaie from Final Fantasy XIV. (alisaie)
[personal profile] althea_valara
[community profile] ladiesbingo, a Bingo challenge that is for fanworks about the relationships between women, is open for round 13! Here are the categories for the prompt list; you can request a card here.

Now, I don't read much fanfic so I don't know how much of this is true, but it does feel like there is a need for more fanworks exploring womens' relationships. I mean, my own fanworks are largely male-centered, with the exception of my Alisaie/Lyse fic, and even THAT fic was primarily from Alisaie's POV with not much Lyse in it. So I figured, let's get a card and be the change I want to see. Maybe? I mean, I still hardly write fanfic, but maybe a card will spur me on?

my card under cut )

At The Mountains of Madness

Sep. 5th, 2025 04:57 pm
alobear: (Default)
[personal profile] alobear
I have played both Arkham Horror and Call of Cthulhu, so I'm quite familiar with aspects of Lovecraftian horror - but I'd never read any actual Lovecraft fiction until now.
And - unfortunately, I really struggled with At The Mountains of Madness.
It's written from the viewpoint of a geologist who has gone on an expedition to Antarctica and is now writing what is supposed to be a report to dissuade anyone else from ever going there again. But the way it's put together makes very little sense, as he goes into huge amounts of detail about all the early aspects of the expedition, which he keeps saying are already on record because they provided comprehensive reports at the time, which were broadcast in both newspapers and on the radio.
Then, when he reaches the point at which things start going awry, he keeps saying how important it is that he gives the information clearly and in such a way as to be persuasive - but then, again, goes into massive amounts of detail about aspects that have little relevance to his message and deliberately skims over the details of the horror, because he says he can't bring himself to write them down...
Now, I understand that the whole point is that the eldritch horror of Lovecraft is indescribable and sends people mad - but it does mean that I found the large majority of this novella intensely boring.
It did manage to convey a certain sense of the horror in the end, but I didn't feel it worked overall - and I found the writing style extremely dense and quite difficult to follow.

Three Bags Full

Sep. 4th, 2025 10:53 am
alobear: (Default)
[personal profile] alobear
I was really excited about reading Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann, as it's a murder mystery where the investigators are sheep and it sounded like such a fantastic premise. And it started out quite well - I was initially drawn in and found the writing style amusing and clever.
But, as the story progressed, I found it harder and harder to follow what was going on (the sheep's perspectives are very confused and oblique), less and less interesting, at the same time as being quite unpleasant.
About 75 pages in, I found I was doing other things rather than picking up my book to read more, so I decided to give up on it.
I don't think this is a bad book at all - I just don't think I was in the right frame of mind to engage with it fully.

The Frozen People

Sep. 1st, 2025 10:41 pm
alobear: (Default)
[personal profile] alobear
My dad recommended The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths - I don't normally read police/murder mystery books but he thought I'd be interested in this one because the police team travels back in time to help solve cold cases. I was indeed intrigued by the premise. And there were a lot of great characters. And the plot was largely engaging and fun.

The main problem I had with this book, though, was that it clearly didn't get a developmental edit at any point. I mean, time travel stories rarely make any sense and this one was even more ridiculous than most. BUT - there were also tons of background details, worldbuilding details, minor plot points and general bits and pieces that either made no sense or were completely internally inconsistent.

One non-spoilery example: at one point, it says 'Victorian men's clothing was both comfortable and practical', which is directly followed by a whole paragraph detailing how every item of clothing the character then puts on is either uncomfortable or impractical.

There were also multiple occasions where something would be referenced that directly contradicted something that had been mentioned earlier (which is particularly annoying in a police procedural story).

I really wasn't keen on the conclusion of the main case from this book, either - though I did really like how it set things up for future instalments - which is even more annoying because now I'm tempted to give the next in the series a go when it comes out...

Crafting Update, August 2025

Sep. 1st, 2025 10:01 am
althea_valara: A picture of a striped crochet project, with the words, "STAND BACK! I have YARN!" (yarn2)
[personal profile] althea_valara
Most of this month was spent NOT crafting. I'm behind on checking in at [community profile] get_knitted because of it - I hope everyone there has been having success with their crafts!

It was an on month for Nerdopolis; we were in the third and final round for the current tournament, and I got inspired by some of the challenges.

The first challenge was the traditional Love What You Do challenge, in which teams pick their own themes. My team is all about gaming, and this month, we chose Mini-games as our theme. I immediately thought of the butterfly hunt in Final Fantasy X and dutifully searched for butterfly-related patterns. I found this butterfly shawl pattern. "It's crocheted - I can finish it in a month!" I said to myself. Reader, I did not finish it. Instead, I knocked out a quick crocheted hat yesterday that has the classic butterfly-made-of-chains on it. Apologies for poor picture.

A crocheted hat featuring a butterfly made of chain stitches.
[Image Description: A pink crocheted hat, featuring a butterfly made of chain stitches on the brim.]

Then there was the Boats challenge. Well, boats are often white in color, so I thought hey, let's make some white snowflakes! I chose this snowflake pattern, and tried it holding thread doubled. Alas, I got bored at the tediousness of it in the final round, and literally dropped it to finish it later... and it ended up under my desk, where it tangled with OTHER projects that have been dropped. BIG SIGH.

Anyway! I did not feel like unearthing it, so I decided to do something else instead. If you stand on the deck of a boat while it's in motion, it gets HECKIN' WINDY and your hair blows all over the place. So I started contemplating a hairband of some kind.

I considered yet another Lacy Crochet Kerchief - this pattern is like potato chips for me, I've made NINE of them. I did dutifully get yarn and started the chain/first row, but changed my mind. I considered a granny head scarf I found and even started that one, but the pattern called for fingering and I had just grabbed the first yarn/hook combo I found (worsted weight and a J hook) and it was coming out ugly. So I went back to the drawing board AGAIN, and finally whipped out this YESTERDAY:

A crocheted headband that features a patch of pumpkins.
[Image Description: A crocheted headband. It is tan in color and features bright orange pumpkins made of cluster stitches. A green vine meanders through the pumpkin patch.]

I left off round 2 and 6 because I didn't have much time. Even so, I barely finished this before the deadline. I'm happy with it, and it looks really cute on me and HEY I LOVE ALL THINGS PUMPKIN so now I have a seasonal headband - or will, once I weave in ends, oops.

For Nerd Cred, I tied to the All Saints' Wake in FFXIV, as there are plenty of pumpkin decorations then.. and also pumpkin cookies, as featured in this clip from one of my Twitch streams:



The Lab's theme this month was Paper Manipulation. I immediately thought PAPER QUILLING! Alas, I couldn't find my quilling pen, and didn't have the proper color paper for what I wanted to make anyway, so I bought more supplies, oops. I did start quilling a bird, but (a) it wasn't coming out too well (b) I ran out of time. So in desperation, I made an origami inflated box. HEY, IT COUNTS!

An inflated paper box, folded in the origami style.
[Image Description: An inflated paper box, folded in the origami style. Made with a piece of paper torn from a spiral notebook.]

I made a ton of these toys when I was a kid. The children's craft book I got it from said you could fill them when water and use them as water bombs, but wouldn't the paper disintegrate? Hmmm. Anyway, I used that "water bomb" idea for my Nerd Cred, and tied to Final Fantasy Tactics as there is a Water Ball throwing weapon in that game.

I did not work on my cardi at all this month, but did spend an hour starting the Sylvan Tee. I'd like to really put some work into that this month, maybe for [community profile] communal_creators? We'll see!
ashkitty: (wwx chenqing)
[personal profile] ashkitty
Some fics I forgot to post, since the last time I put them here was a year ago. Oops. Also, all my AO3 fics are locked to users now, because of AI scraping. It won't keep out the really determined, I know, and the horse has pretty much bolted already, but every little bit helps.

The Shape of Home
(MDZS, Wei Wuxian & Lan Sizhui)
~4800 words, rated G.

Started this a really long time ago, got most of it finished, and then let it sit there until prompted to finish. It's just a conversation between WWX and LSZ about forgiveness, and complicated families, and letting things go.

‘How do you do it? Stay here,’ Sizhui says, and his voice drops, as if they might be overheard, although the garden is silent and Hanguang-jun is not here. ‘Put up with it. The way they treat you — the way Elder Zhengyi spoke just now.’ The way they speak to him so often when Hanguang-jun is not there to hear it, their loathing toothless but barely concealed. ‘Live among people who wanted to kill you?’

‘Ah.’ Wei Wuxian meets Sizhui’s eyes, his face closed tight and asks, ‘How do you?’


Unnatural Consequences
(MDZS, Wangxian & Sizhui, casefic)
~12k, rated T

This was last year's Fandom Trumps Hate fic, and it deals with some of the lasting damage a war can do, but is mostly an excuse for badass power couple vibes.

Lan Wangji began to play, and Wei Wuxian poked through the wreckage of fallen trees. The guqin’s soothing song cleared some of the haze of resentment, and Wei Wuxian could feel his muscles relaxing, the dull throbbing ache at the tip of his spine beginning to fade away. He stepped carefully between shattered branches, nudging away the piles of leaves and debris. He was hardly even paying attention when he felt something…respond.
---
When Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji encounter a creature that even the two of them together can't defeat, it seems a little unbelievable that nobody in the surrounding area has heard of it. In the wilderness north of Gusu, they uncover a secret that has waited years for one particular answer - one it turns out they might be just the people to provide.



Examination of a Lost Fragment of a Poem on Calenhad, by Geoffrey de Montsimmard, Chantry Scholar
(Dragon Age, gen)
~2300 words, rated G.

The title is almost as long as the fic! This was my contribution to last year's Dragon Age Annual zine, and it's a pseudo-scholarly article in which Geoffrey of Monmouth Montsimmard finds a poem about Arthur and Merlin Calenhad and Aldenon, and has thoughts.

In 9:43 Dragon, Lady Sophie de Marais of Jader discovered a fragment of a poem in her late great-grandmother’s attic.


The Third Bow
(MDZS, wangxian)
~19k, rated M

This year's contribution to the MDZS Reverse Big Bang, wherein I was assigned the most stunningly gorgeous picture of WWX and strove to do it justice and get all the artist's ideas in. It's a feel-good fic, a bit soppy and silly, with the world's most awkward marriage proposal and just enough jealousy for a bit of plot. But mostly just a story about taking the long way around, and doing things your own way.

Finally Wei Ying drops onto the edge of the bed and blurts, ‘Lan Zhan, are we married?’
Lan Wangji’s hands freeze in place, the soft cloth slipping from between his fingers. Whatever he imagined Wei Ying was gathering the courage to say, this is a question he absolutely would not have predicted. He looks up, blindsided, to see Wei Ying shifting uncomfortably, fingers twisting in the folds of his robe.
‘We — what?’
----
Wei Wuxian has feelings. So does Lan Wangji. They figure it out.

Code deploy happening shortly

Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Per the [site community profile] dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

althea_valara: A cropped image of Feo Ul, a pixie with fiery orange hair, from the Final Fantasy XIV video game. The words "oh my adorable sapling!" are on the left side of the frame. (sapling)
[personal profile] althea_valara
LOOK AT THIS BANNER, ISN'T IT ADORBS?


Join us at [community profile] smallweb for Small Web September!


[community profile] smallweb is a community for folks building personal, small websites. I'll be taking part in Small Web September to spruce up my Final Fantasy Fan Script Fan Site. The goal is to complete porting over the stuff I've previously posted here, at the very least. If I can, I'd like to get FFXI: Chains of Promathia documented as well. And I really should go back to my FFXIV script, too; it's been over a year since I touched it and I'm still mid-Shadowbringers.




[community profile] communal_creators is a community for creative types, and will be starting its next round in mid September. ANY creativity counts! I am definitely going to double-dip and count working on the website, but I also hope to get some fiber arts done. We'll a supportive and chill community, so come join us if you need some cheering on for your creative projects!

Stopped moving for a little while

Aug. 30th, 2025 03:35 pm
ashkitty: (in a hole in the ground)
[personal profile] ashkitty
This summer has been crazy - July was the Gender and Medieval Studies conference and then the Celtic Studies summer school in Dublin, which was a lot - I don't remember the last time I had a full day of classes in anything, let alone Old Irish. But it was good, and fun, and I closed the whole thing out by turning up to a Kpop dance class - it's a thing I started doing during the pandemic when I couldn't go to the beach, and the teacher whose Youtube videos I was using is based in Dublin. So I thought as long as I was in the right city I'd go in person. It was great fun.

Then I met up with my sister to go travelling. We went to Helsinki and Stockholm, respectively, to visit some of my old Aber friends who now live in those places. Then she came back to Aber with me for a week, during which she was mostly sick and not up to doing much.

I came down with the same nasty cold just as she was leaving, and have mostly just been resting since. Not quite the productive resting week I'd hoped for, because I'm really supposed to be submitting a revised article this week and have just not had the brain power to finish it. Another conference next week (down to Bristol, where I'm not giving a paper but am on the society's committee so going anyway), and two more (where I am presenting) by mid-October. So I guess this is the rest I'm going to get.

Otherwise trying to enjoy being employed while it lasts, since the market for academics doing historical gender studies is frankly not at its best right now. One year to go.

The Listeners

Aug. 29th, 2025 07:48 pm
alobear: (Default)
[personal profile] alobear
I was really looking forward to this because I've loved a lot of Maggie Stiefvater's work in the past - and, while I did enjoy this overall, it wasn't as good as I'd hoped.
It's about German and Japanese diplomats being sent to a luxury hotel in the Appalachians after Pearl Harbour in 1942, and how this affects the staff of the hotel.
Our main protagonist is June, the general manager of the hotel - and I really liked her. Her story also has a lot of layers relating to both class and gender politics, which are all interesting and well done.
I also liked Hannelore, the autistic little girl who gets wrapped up in the story - though we didn't get enough of her.
And that's my main criticism of the book overall. Despite it being nearly 400 pages, it really felt as if almost nothing happened and there wasn't nearly enough time devoted to anything for me to invest in the relationships or be emotionally affected by any of the events.
So, it was fine - but I was hoping for more.

Murders and Meditations

Aug. 29th, 2025 11:14 am
alobear: (Default)
[personal profile] alobear
A Murder of Clones by Kristine Kathryn Rusch is book ten in the Retrieval Artist series and I really enjoyed returning to this world for another instalment. I think it's the best series I've read for portraying alien cultures and species as truly alien - and a lot of the books are about legal dilemmas for humans dealing with unfamiliar rule systems on far-off worlds. This book is a bit of a side-quest from the main plot thread, introducing all new characters but providing some insight and developments about the terrorist attack on the Moon that happened over the last couple of books.
I liked the new characters and am keen to find out what happens next, whether it includes them or not - though I'm hoping some of them will connect up with more familiar folks in upcoming books. I've still got five to go, but I'm determined to finish the series before too long.


Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman is a book about accepting the limitations of human existence and moving forwards from there by being more intentional about how you spend your time. It's more of a reflective exercise than a self-help book and Burkeman has to keep reminding the reader that acknowledging your limits doesn't mean giving up on your dreams or ambitions. There's a lot of useful reflective information here - it's designed for you to read a short chapter per day over the course of four weeks, which I largely did (with a break of a few days in the middle for a trip away) and it works at that scale. I'd come across a lot of the 'lessons' before, but it's always good to be reminded of these things - and some of it really did make me think. It came along at the perfect time for me, as I'm at a stage of taking a step back from all the things I've been working on or putting out into the world for years while I decide how I want to proceed. Definitely recommended if you feel overwhelmed by minutiae or are always striving towards a mythical point in the future when things will 'settle down' or 'get back to normal' and you'll have the time and space to work on the things that are really important to you.
TL;DR - that time will never come so let go off the stuff you don't need and start doing the important stuff now!

Zeroing In

Aug. 28th, 2025 12:23 am
tablesaw: "Tablesaw Techniques" (Techniques)
[personal profile] tablesaw

I'm idly trying to do an Inbox Zero type of thing, which is rough after something like two decades of ignoring it. But as terrible as it email is, it is at least reliable, with the ability to build one's own algorithms in even the most hostile of programs. It'll work, if I can work it.

So many of the writers who could have been bloggers are turning to email-list congregators as their post-Twitter platform. Much of it is for ease of use, but I've seen at least one person turn to a no-cost Patreon subscription primarily as a way to prevent AI scrapers from finding their writing.

I'm willing to consider an RSS reader, I guess, but every time I look into it, I still see other people looking for something that'll do what they want. And in my heart, I know that this is something that can probably help me greatly at this point. My inbox is a locus for attention that I do believe I can master, and I want my attention to be my own.

The Architect's Apprentice

Aug. 26th, 2025 06:50 pm
alobear: (Default)
[personal profile] alobear
The Architect's Apprentice is the second book I've tried by Elif Shafak - so I now have to acknowledge that this author is not really for me.
I loved the premise (and the cover) of this book - a young boy travels from India to Constantinople to present an elephant to the royal household. But it was, by turns, rather tedious and incredibly unpleasant. I did like both the boy and the elephant - but, when they were sent off to war, I decided I didn't want to follow them there and sadly gave up.

heads up: important news post

Aug. 26th, 2025 08:55 am
althea_valara: Photo of my cat sniffing a vase of roses  (Default)
[personal profile] althea_valara
There is a very important news post in [site community profile] dw_news that you all should read carefully.

TL;DR - Dreamwidth is forced to start blocking those accessing the site from a Mississippi IP address starting September 1st. This is because the state of Mississippi has passed a law requiring residents verify their age before accessing social media. As the burden of doing this is WAY HIGH for Dreamwidth (plus they don't want to do it anyway!), they have made the reluctant choice to block those users.

Dreamwidth is fighting the law in court with the help of Netchoice; [staff profile] denise is pretty confident they'll eventually win, but there's been a setback with one of the courts and thus are forced to take this action in the meantime.

I know I have some UK folks on my access list - I have not read all the comments on the news post yet but the very first comment from [staff profile] denise says the UK law doesn't apply to Dreamwdith because the number of users from the UK is too small.

I continue to be happy that Dreamwidth is one of my homes on the Internet. I stand by and agree with their principles.
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.