something I am grateful for today
Sep. 3rd, 2025 08:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Last night, when I removed my hearing aids for their overnight recharge, part of one of them stayed in my ear. (Wuh-oh.)
This morning, I took them back to Costco for a repair. And it was simply a matter of unplugging the broken cable and plugging in a new one — literally took less than thirty seconds. (Oh, and it was free: “Everything is covered by your membership.”) Gotta love it.
grumblings
Sep. 2nd, 2025 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
And I suddenly thought, This is too much. We weren't made for all this.
Code deploy happening shortly
Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png)
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Per the 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.
Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts
Aug. 31st, 2025 12:28 pm![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png)
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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.
No Idea: 1962
Aug. 29th, 2025 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

My 58th acrylic is sorta my 55th because I did the underdrawing for it back in January, then left it untouched til now. An attempt to let Expressionism [and maybe Fauvism] inform my approach a bit more than usual.
( the story behind it )
Ink to Film Podcast Recording at WorldCon
Aug. 29th, 2025 01:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-JRHSABM24
This includes the special message to me that the show's cast sent, which was awesome.
***
I'm still sick, but getting better bit by bit.
Back
Aug. 27th, 2025 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
More later, but one of my favorite things was the really wonderful piece that N.K. Jemisin wrote about me for the program book.
***
Big thing I wanted to mention here: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/martha-wells-murderbot-and-more-tor-books
This is a 14 ebook Humble Bundle from Tor, (DRM-free as usual) and you can select a portion of the price to donate to World Central Kitchen.