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.

August Media

Aug. 31st, 2025 10:18 pm
lil_m_moses: (books)
[personal profile] lil_m_moses
Books Finished
- A Gathering of Shadows by V.E. Schwab [e-audio]
- Making It So by Patrick Stewart [Kindle]
- Vengeful by V.E. Schwab [e-audio]
- A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab [e-audio]
- Gallant by V.E. Schwab [e-audio]
- This Savage Song by V.E. Schwab [e-audio]
- The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab [e-audio]
- The Outsorcerer's Apprentice by Tom Holt
- Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey [Kindle] (3rd? read)
- The Good, the Bad and the Smug by Tom Holt [e-audio]
- The Law by Jim Butcher [e-audio]
- Stay Fit and Healthy Until You're Dead by Dave Barry [e-audio]
- Dave Barry Talks Back by Dave Barry [e-audio]
- Dave Barry's Worst Songs and Other Hits by Dave Barry [e-audio]

Library DVDs/Streaming Programs Watched
- K-Pop Demon Hunters
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: S3D5-7 [3]
- Fisk: S3 [1 equiv]
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.

Something for Everyone

Aug. 30th, 2025 10:53 pm
lil_m_moses: (confused)
[personal profile] lil_m_moses
I think this wins the award for most confusing cross stitch pattern concept ever. It's the word BOO with a couple of shoebills, a crocogator, a chameleon, and a couple of spiders and maybe water lilies?

https://store.stoneycreek.com/mobile/the-blue-flower---spooky-shoebill-p52332.aspx

a cautionary note

Aug. 30th, 2025 06:46 pm
twistedchick: watercolor painting of coffee cup on wood table (Default)
[personal profile] twistedchick
Some years back, I was asked to spin the shed fur from a very fluffy dog so the owner could knit a coat out of it. There was definitely enough -- but the bags of fur she left me had not been washed. I carded them into rolags (outdoors) and gave them back to her, and asked her to find someone else to do it.

But in the process of doing that, I looked online and discovered that it was illegal, in the state I was living in, to sell any object or garment made from fur that could be construed as pet fur.

Why? Because nobody wanted to start having to deal with trapping pets and killing them for their fur. Never mind that it was shed fur and combed off a still-living pet. It was still illegal. I don't remember what the penalties were.

There are already enough dognappers stealing pets from hunting-type breeds to sell as 'trained hunting dogs.' One of my cousins lost a dog that way for a month, until he turned up in a neighboring town after running all the way back from the Adirondacks to Rochester, well over 100 miles. I still don't know how he survived.

So, a suggestion: check the laws in your state about this, if you plan to card and spin and knit something that isn't for yourself from Bowser's or Fifi's fur.

More from Launceston

Aug. 30th, 2025 12:45 pm
cmcmck: (Default)
[personal profile] cmcmck
More woodcarving from the church.

The sheep and the goats.


Here be pics: )
dewline: A fake starmap of the fictional Kitchissippi Sector (Sector)
[personal profile] dewline
Would you believe that there is a star that humans have catalogued as "COCONUTS-3A" (among other catalogue numbers) and that for Star Trek purposes, it is just coreward of places like Morska and Rura Penthe?

You can look it up on SIMBAD.

I wonder what the Klingons' identification of it is.

Grim and Perilous Adventures

Aug. 29th, 2025 02:27 pm
dorchadas: (Warhammer Fantasy)
[personal profile] dorchadas
Being watching the D&D Youtuber Mystic Arts lately, lured in by his Icelandic accent and actual production values on his videos, and it got me thinking about actually trying to run D&D again. The only problem is that the way I like my D&D is much more similar to OSR D&D, with relatively lower power scales, less flashy magic, where elves and dwarves are very different and not just the RPG equivalent of Fortnite skins, where the wilderness is wild and untamed, that kind of thing. I've heard people say that modern D&D is like anime (derogatory), with its cat-people and everyone using magic and bards seducing dragons, though to be fare, I've also heard people say modern D&D is like anime (affectionate) for the same reasons. Really, though, it comes back to modern D&D, and modern D&D players, being filtered through the medium of video games instead of pulp fantasy novels. Cloud, instead of Conan.

Alright, I could write multiple blog posts about that but that's not what I'm here for. I'm here to mention that yesterday I learned there's a new edition of a OSR/5e blend game I bought a while ago, originally called Low Fantasy Gaming and now called Tales of Argosa. It's got mostly humans, it has Advantage and Disadvantage, it has the 5e skill list, it has limited hit points, it has dangerous magic, you know, all of those classic points in the well that the OSR goes back to.

But, as my icon above indicates, so does Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

Point by point )

I don't have a group or anything waiting, so this is all theoretical at the moment, but it's getting the gears turning.

Indigenous Type

Aug. 29th, 2025 06:56 pm
dewline: "Aux armes pour les poches, tout le monde! (design)
[personal profile] dewline
I got wind of this via the League of Movable Type newsletter this morning, so it seems a good idea to share this with all of you reading this account. Because Indigenous type resources are part of the Comeback process as outlined by - among others - John Ralston Saul...

https://www.typotheque.com/blog/cherokee-osage-and-the-indigenous-north-american-type-collection

Launceston

Aug. 29th, 2025 02:58 pm
cmcmck: (Default)
[personal profile] cmcmck
Pronounced lawn-son.

An attractive small town in north Cornwall.

We entered town by one of the medieval town gates:

See more )See more: )

Comics: Jack Kirby Day

Aug. 28th, 2025 06:00 pm
dewline: Logo: Open comic book with Cdn. Leaf Symbol (comic books)
[personal profile] dewline
I understand that this is the anniversary of comics creator Jack Kirby's birth...?

Dessertless Update

Aug. 27th, 2025 11:12 am
dorchadas: (Maedhros A King Is He (No Text))
[personal profile] dorchadas
Follow-up to my complaint about dessert from yesterday. I went to the work restaurant today to find it open and there was a little dessert display set up near the check out with desserts from...Goddess & the Baker, so I got an almond bar. Delicious.

Riverwalk

Aug. 26th, 2025 03:42 pm
dorchadas: (Chicago)
[personal profile] dorchadas
Went on a walk along the river at lunch today. The weather was lovely, slightly cloudy with a cool breeze, and just a small smattering of droplets as I was coming back to work. And of course the restaurants by the river were almost deserted for some reason. A shame.

I'm mostly writing this because of my dessert saga. I walked by the overpriced gelato stand and thought I wanted some dessert, but not gelato, so on the way back I walked up the stairs to Goddess & the Baker. They had a lot of little cakes but no coconut bars, so I left and went back to the riverwalk. I stopped at the cafe at Tiny Tap but they only had ice cream, so I went back to work. But on the way, I realized that the restaurant at work has cookies, so I got in the elevator and went up the cafe only to be met with a locked door and a sign that said they were only open from 10 a.m. to noon due to Labor Day next week. I went back down to the lobby and checked the cafe there, but they didn't have any real desserts on the menu, so I went back to my desk and the long and short of it is that I did not get dessert.

Alas.

What a lovely fall day

Aug. 25th, 2025 07:09 pm
dorchadas: (Autumn Leaves Tunnel)
[personal profile] dorchadas
Today we woke up and it was 12°C! There was a cool breeze basically all day, coming through the window in the morning, it was nice and cool when I ate my lunch out on the balcony in the early afternoon after taking Laila to school, it was nice and cool when I took Laila to the bus to take her to school and then had to go back and take the car instead because the bus never came, and it was cool when we went to sleep at night. After July and most of early August being insanely hot for weeks at a time, I'll take it. And it's going to last for all of this week! Amazing, 11/10, no notes. 🍂

Last weekend we briefly went to [facebook.com profile] aaronhparker's housewarming. His girlfriend, long of Boston but now of Chicago, moved here a few months ago and got a job around the University of Chicago, so he moved down to Hyde Park and has been there for a couple weeks. We took the car that [instagram.com profile] sashagee's parents are loaning us and drove down, stayed for about half an hour, and then left because we had to get Laila back home to bed. We met [linkedin.com profile] yoni-labow-5693413a and [instagram.com profile] whoolia45 who were coming on as we were heading out--they had gotten a babysitter but we had not ([instagram.com profile] sashagee is leery of babysitters because of Laila's baby brain troubles), so it was only for a moment, but we'll see them next week at their son's first birthday.

[instagram.com profile] sashagee and I have both gotten into a game called Witch Spring R recently. I randomly saw it on Steam with an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating, looked into the reviews, and one of the top reviews was something like: "The main character is named Pieberry because her favorite foods are pie and strawberries. If that doesn't make you want to play the game I can't help you." It was on sale--and still is for a couple weeks as of this post--so we both bought it. She's already done with chapter one and wants me to play in tandem with her, so I started it up, but I'm playing in Japanese and I'm a bit out of practice so I'm playing through slower (I think I'm about half as far as her). You get to hunt ingredients and do alchemy, fight in turn-based battles, summon animal companions as your party members, fight witch-hunters and steal their pie, and leveling up involves a literal training montage--you pick various minigames and each has stats associated with it, like improving strength/speed has Pieberry doing pushups and improving pure magic has her throwing fireballs at targets. Do well on the minigame, and you gain extra stats. I screwed up pushups the first time because there was no tutorial popup and it went straight into the game so I couldn't read the instructions, but the same thing happened to [instagram.com profile] sashagee and she's playing in English. Anyway, I was going to play Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia or maybe start up Final Fantasy III but instead I'm playing a game about a pie-obsessed witch. Review when I beat it.

A couple days ago, [twitter.com profile] lisekatevans texted me out of the blue and invited me to a play/dinner, and I said I couldn't go to the play but I could go to dinner, so I met her and her husband and housemate at Beard and Belly and we spent a big chunk of time talking about D&D. She's running two D&D games--one for her friends, one for her coworkers--and playing in another game run by her husband, so D&D is now a big portion of her free time. She told me about a battle she was running set on a river, where they set up a boat (elevated, so it was obvious how deep the river was) and then put some tentacles around the boat from the water beast attacking the party, until her husband went, "Wait a minute, those aren't the tentacles" and went off and came back with some of his minis that [twitter.com profile] lisekatevans hadn't seen yet and plopped them down like "These are the tentacles."

I've never played with minis, so this whole experience is alien to me, but it sure sounds cool.

I got the burger of the month, called the Afterburner, which had spicy whipped goat cheese, spicy peppers, spicy sauce, and I had to eat some fries every two bites because it was insanely spicy. It was very good, though, and then we all topped it off with pie from the bakery next door and went home. It was really great to [twitter.com profile] lisekatevans after so many months--hopefully it won't be so long until the next time.

Plymouth

Aug. 26th, 2025 12:26 pm
cmcmck: (Default)
[personal profile] cmcmck
We've travelled through Plymouth many a time and changed trains at the station but we've never actually spent time taking a look at the city.

It was well worth the time to do so.

We explored the old seaport area, the Barbican and also the Hoe.

There is one heck of a lot of history to the place.

The Dolphin hotel is a pub with a very fine frontage:


More pics: )

well, I still have a cousin or two

Aug. 26th, 2025 12:23 am
twistedchick: watercolor painting of coffee cup on wood table (Default)
[personal profile] twistedchick
No, nobody died.

My elderly aunt -- who is the youngest and only remaining member of my father's generation, his little sister -- said something in an email that indicated that she, treasured and pampered last child, did not know the full story about her father's travels around the world. I grew up hearing stories of Grampa's travels from Dad and from his brother; I know all the details about what it was like to sail in a four-masted barque from Bremen to Cape Town to Sydney through the Straits of Magellan (in winter!) to Rio de Janiero to Genoa, a two-year voyage.

She took my offer as an insult; of course she'd been told everything (her version was "Nobody can know what happened."). And called me a liar, and worse. She said I was making it all up, or Dad had invented it, because nobody who wasn't there could know. (This is the woman who had a free ride to Purdue but dropped out after 1 semester because she couldn't be that far away from her mother. She has no idea about studying anything, let alone history, or about research. I'm amazed she got out of high school.)

I let out some of the head of steam this built in me (that has always been the worst insult for me, as a writer and journalist). Then I told her I was not a liar, nor did I invent family history. All that I knew had been verified not only by my father but by one of his brothers, and was truth. It was known, just not to her. All the family stories were softened when they were told to the baby of the family.

And just as I wasn't around in the 30s, she wasn't around at the turn of the century when Grandpa was on that trip.

She had also called me by my birth name, which is now an insult in the world; who wants to be a Karen these days? I told her my name has been Kit for more than 50 years, and signed the note that way.

I have never been one of her cherished nieces; they got all the attention long before I was born, and by the time I came around she had no room for anyone else.

So, if I am lucky, she will no longer leave snarky notes in my FB comment if I mention family history on that side of the family. She cannot put me 'in my place' as she sees it; I am far and away out of her range.

It is more of a relief than anything else, the thought that I probably will not have to deal with her. And, as I said in the header, I still have a cousin on that side of the family whom I get along with well, and several on the other side. None of them within 400 miles or so, but that's how it goes.

I do miss the departed members of that generation, that family, ones who accepted me as I am, who listened and to whom I listened, and who I know loved me. They're gone, but never forgotten.
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.

Stara woods and the Lynher valley

Aug. 25th, 2025 09:57 am
cmcmck: (Default)
[personal profile] cmcmck
The River Lynher (pronounced liner) in north Cornwall runs through Stara woods.

It's an attractive spot.

As we set out we were amused by the new sign on Farmer Walters' farm next door to Kathy's cottage. Their grandchildren are now at the getting about stage and there are pastures on both sides of the road. Kathy thinks he should add 'cats'.



See more: )

Checking In - 24 August 2025

Aug. 24th, 2025 08:21 pm
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
[personal profile] dewline
Mostly a quiet weekend but for visitations.

Tomorrow the job search resumes.
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