Delete Yourself From Web Services With JustDelete.me
JustDelete.me is a directory that allows you to permanently remove yourself from different web services such as Facebook, PayPal, Amazon, etc.
Why can’t you just go to the listed sites on your own and delete yourself that way, you ask? It’s not that easy.
A lot of sites have dark patterns — interfaces created to trick users into agreeing to terms they otherwise wouldn’t — and JustDelete.me is designed to work around those patterns.
For example, Facebook’s Account Settings menu only offers people the option to deactivate their accounts, so many think that it’s not possible to completely delete themselves from the site; the “Delete Account” button can only be found if you hunt it down. With JustDelete.me, you can click the Facebook link and be taken directly to the “Delete Account” page without all the hassle.
JustDelete.me even color codes web services by how difficult it is to delete yourself from each site, with green being the easiest, and black being impossible. (Good luck deleting yourself from Craigslist.)
I see this a lot, no one has actual names, or any reference for names, that are legit Native American, varying among the tribes, for their characters.
Babynames.com and shit like that will give you names made up by white people.
However, I’ve got your solution.
Native-Languages is a good website to turn to for knowledge on a lot of native things, including native names. If you’re unsure about the names you’ve picked, they even have a list of made up names here!
Please don’t trust names like babynames.com for native names, they’re made up and often quite offensive to the cultures themselves.
Hey you! Worried that tumblr might disappear? Want a place to express yourself online but don’t want to dive into the nazi ridden hell pit of twitter or the orwellian nightmare of facebook? Mastodon* might be just what you’re looking for!
What is Mastodon?
Imagine a social network, but instead of one giant service run by a faceless corporation, it’s a true network comprised of small, friendly instances (many of them run by queer people). Unlike the big corporate sites, where if you have a problem there’s no one to turn to, on Mastodon there’s a good chance you’ll know and be friends with your instance admin. Like twitter and tumblr, you can post text, photos and videos, follow and message your friends, reblog their posts and become part of a community.
What features does Mastodon have?
It has some great features that are sorely lacking from other platforms
Built in content warnings – whenever you post, you have the option to put a content warning on the post so that people can choose if they want to view it or not. Use of content warnings is strongly encouraged!
Built in image descriptors – any image or media posted can be given an image description that appears as alt text, improving accessibility
Built in blacklist/filtering –automatically hide posts that contain keywords you don’t want to see
Audience settings on a post by post basis – want to post something that only your followers can see? sure! want the whole world to see it? that’s fine too! you decide with every post, and don’t have to restrict your whole account
Approved followers – you can choose to approve new followers before they’re allowed to see your content
Ability to silence and block users – prevent them from interacting with you entirely, or simply hide their posts from your timeline
Chronological post order with no bullshit algorithms – this shouldn’t even be a thing, but unlike all the big social media platforms you get to see the posts from people you follow, in the order they were posted. No ‘posts we think’ll you’ll like’, promoted posts, adverts or any other bullshit affecting what you see and the order in which you see it
I’m in! Where do I sign up?
The first thing to remember is that Mastodon isn’t a single service, it’s hundreds of small ones. So there are many different instances to choose from. I recommend starting with this list of instances with good anti harassment and anti bigotry policies – https://instances.noct.zone/
Simply choose one that matches your interests and sign up. You can have accounts on more than one instance, so if the first one you pick doesn’t fit you then you can simply move to another. Make sure to read the rules and policies of your instance when you sign up, as each instance differs.
My friend signed up for a different instance, can I still follow them?
In most cases, yes. When you sign up for mastodon, your handle will be @username@instance.name – for example, I’m xaphania on the monsterpit.net instance so to find me you would follow @xaphania@monsterpit.net. Like email, if you use gmail and your friend uses hotmail, it’s still possible to communicate as long as you know their full address.
It is possible for the admins of an instance to silence or block other instances. This means that you may not be able to follow or see posts from that instance. This is usually only done in drastic cases to protect users, for example where an instance allows harassment or bigotry. You can also choose to block instances personally, if you want to avoid all people on a particular instance.
Do I need an app?
The short answer is no – you can access mastodon directly through the web page of your instance. It will automatically scale the site for mobile use, and looks great on my phone so this is how I choose to use mastodon. However there are a number of different apps for Android, iOS and other platforms, so check out your app store and try some out if you want
Sounds perfect – what’s the catch?
Well it’s far from perfect. Many of the problems of social media still exist, and harassment is still possible, though there are better tools to deal with it than some platforms, and it has a personal touch that’s missing in corporate social media. It’s also not a completely secure platform, so if there’s something you absolutely don’t want some people to see – don’t post it on mastodon. It’s possible (though generally unlikely) for an instance admin to see anything you post, including private messages. But then, it’s possible for employees of twitter or facebook to do the same! Also, since instances are generally run by hobbyists out of their own pockets or small donations, sometimes instances close down or disappear, taking your posts with them. So if you want to post something that will stay online forever, then find somewhere else to host it. But if the worst happens and your instance shuts down, there’s others you can move to!
*Technical note – Mastodon is the most common piece of server software in the wider network called ‘the fediverse’. There are other servers, such as pleroma which are similar but may have some different features. But because they all use the same protocol to communicate, it’s possible to follow and interact with someone regardless of what software their instance runs. For the interests of simplicity, I have used the term Mastodon throughout this post to refer to the whole network.
also many instances allow adult content (with appropriate content warnings) so if you want a place to post your lewds after 17th December check it out
Experiencing brutal cold for a period of time every year keeps you humble
That’s why Californians are like that
Time to plastic over the windows for the season.
????? Why??????????
You put the plastic on the windows to stop the heat from leaking out of your house from between the panes, through the glass itself, and where the window is attatched to the rest of the house. This does make a drastic difference in the temeprature of your house and the amount of gas/electricity needed to keep it warm.
Some other Winter Things:
If you think there’s going to be an exceptionally deep freeze, you open up all the cabinets in the house to warm the air in there and keep the pipes from freezing/bursting.
If you’re going to be away for a while in winter, it’s adviseable to turn your water off to avoid the same.
Putting an electric Blanket between your topcover and bedsheet and pre-heating your bed for half an hour so you don’t get a chill going to bed.
Applying literal vasaline to your lips if you’re going to be in the cold for an extended time (more than 10-20 min, depending on latitude), becuase chapstick won’t cut it and your lips will split and bleed and HURT
Doing the same to your nose
Your tears go from liquid to gooey trying to produce a similar protection for your eyes. You can also feel the water freeze on your eyes if you step directly out into the cold.
Also since I know you’re a socal person- in the far north you can get as little as eight hours of daylight. 7AM to 3 PM. You need to by the most obnoxiously bright light possible and sit beside it or you will actually literally develop psychosis in some cases. It’s 4:30 and you need to take the dog out? it’s pitch black out.
Everything is covered in ice, which will alternately cause you to slip and break something, burn, or actually tear off your skin.
Christmas and the pressure to be jolly is much stronger in places with Winter. Get your Holly Jolly On In this Frozen Black Hellscape!!! It’s why people go real bananas on the holiday lights. they’re trying to stave off the void.
Cannot recommend WDHDT highly enough. I’ve found it helpful not just for romantic relationships, but also for growing up w a “unexplainable/uncontrollable” dad.
IT HAS ALSO BEEN REALLY HELPFUL FOR UNDERSTANDING ONLINE MOB HARASSMENT.
So if you’ve ever been bombarded w threats to be raped/killed, (so…if you’re a minority and you’ve been on the Internet for a while), this book might be useful for getting clarity around the whole entitled, abusive mindset that drives certain kinds of people to behave that way. And by “getting clarity”, I mean (for me) being able to go “oh, that’s what’s happening” and not really feel scared anymore. Or angry, or drawn out into it, or anything.
And if you’re still standing around going “but how does something like GamerGate happen?” or “but why do men hit their wives?” or whatever – please read that book and learn something.
^^^^ truth WDHDT is fantastic at cutting down MRA bullshit and calling it what it really is
Please consider reading these. WDHDT is really, really helpful. And I know some of you are struggling with abusive relationships, friendships, families, etc. You’re not alone. There is help.
Yo. This family holiday, please, please take care of yourself. You aren’t there to be anybody else’s cushion.
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents
Reading any of these books does not mean you don’t love your parents or family. It’s just self care for helping you cope and not repeat the behaviors.
All the books in this thread are great; adding this one because it was the most helpful to me. Free pdf here
toxic parents is the book i checked out from the library last january that REALLY SINCERELY helped kickstart my road to recovery. even if you are not a victim of abuse, they are invaluable reasources, but help pass them around so people who have been abused can have access to material that actually, genuinely, sees them and provides them with concrete help
There is a really interesting blog called “Fluent Forever” that aids foreign language learners in tricks, tips and techniques to guide them to achieving fluency “quickly” and efficiently. One of the tricks is to learn these 625 vocab words in your target language, that way you have a basis to start delving into grammar with ease as you can understand a lot of vocab right off the bat. Plus this list of words are common across the world and will aid you in whatever language you are learning. Here is the list in thematic order :
I’m going to be making my own vocab lists using these words for my target languages of Korean, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese. I’ll be posting the vocab by theme on my blog, so make sure to follow me https://asian-lang-stubyblr.tumblr.com if you are interesting in seeing those!
So useful! I really want to use this for Spanish now!
when the capitalists die out either thru global warming or revolution will we be able to start homegrown internet
been reading about dual power and how to grow my own tomatoes and i’m wondering how and if we’ll be able to start commie internet lol
like obviously the internet is this huge electric capitalist controlled hardware infrastructure thing so after all that shuts down is there a way to do it ourselves lol
i want to come home from a hard day on the communal allotment, kiss my Wife, crank up my generator, and start sharing meams!
GOOD NEWS: the homegrown commie internet is in the works! Across the world, people fighting against censorship and for a more democratic internet are building mesh networks (meshnets) of long-range wifi (LoRa)
Since wifi is just a standard for sending data through radio waves, and radio waves can go a pretty long way if you use ‘em right, it’s not that difficult to connect two computers by wifi from across town. Then you just keep adding more computers to the network and you’ve got internet!
As for sharing fresh mëmês, the network to go to is Scuttlebutt. Unlike most social media, Scuttlebutt posts are stored on your computer and sent directly to your friends’ computers (rather than being stored on the cloud and sent to a central server). It works just fine over traditional internet, but you can also view and interact with it offline, and it has protocols for connecting over any means that two computers can share information – that includes LoRa, as well as hardwired connections, sneakernet (basically mailing a USB stick back and forth), etc
What that means is you always know that your info is just as safe as the network it’s sent on and the computer that receives it – no one even theoretically has the ability to collect and sell it all. And, since it’s all run on your computer, there’s no servers to go down or companies to go out of business that could destroy the whole thing
You can read more about this kind of stuff here (or here if it’s cloudy in Barcelona)!
there’s also the work being done by the DCPT, left-behind Detroiters meshing together their neighborhoods to share overpriced high-speed connections among the community and producing these good good educational documents, especially this rad resource page. building meshnets to share a global uplink is very similar to building meshnets for the purpose of intracommunication and these resources are useful in both cases
I’ve had a couple people ask about how to join/organize something like this, which is great! The best list of active projects I know of is here, though you should also do a search online if you don’t see one in your area in case they missed it. For those without a nearby group, put a pin here and try contacting nearby pins as well – you can use the instructions on buildyourowninter.net as well as the DCPT’s resources as linked above to get set up!
Please reblog this version so others can get involved!
Blog 