a warthog is a thog specialized for use in war

“so this week my town made the news for—” nope

“there’s a restaurant two miles from my house called—” nope

“today I learned [celeb] went to my high school—” nope nope nope nope nope

these are all real posts I’ve seen on the internet that allowed me to identify a user’s hometown instantly. if it’s a small town, that’s doubly dangerous, because a bad actor could trace you just by a unique first name or selfie you once posted. in an age where doxxing and stalking are some of the worst I’ve ever seen it, you HAVE to think twice about what you’re posting online.

i once saw a 13-year old post an image they noted as being “a few miles from their house.” it had a theater in the shot with a unique enough name to be local. one google maps search, now everyone knew not only what city they lived in, but the possible neighborhoods in that radius too. and they had a HUGE following…who all knew this was a 13-year-old child.

so yeah. not to sound like a 90s internet safety PSA…but I’m gonna be that PSA for a minute.

this stuff is flexible if you no longer live in your hometown, or if your city is particularly big, but there’s STILL no reason to tie yourself to your school, your workplace, or your street. you can call it paranoid, but as someone who’s seen my friends get literal death threats over fictional characters before, the last thing I want is someone willing to act on those threats finding out where they live.

anyway. PSA over. does a kickflip or whatever

Do the AI people know that the rest of us who never got on the bandwagon are still doing everything the same way we always have

The AI boom has changed literally nothing about my day to day life except I now have to work harder to get access to reliable information, all the important admin work is being done wrong, and I keep getting DMs letting me know the perfectly ordinary and plausible photo I liked was actually a fake image generated by a fascist to generate views and churn out ad money for the purpose of funding their tree-powered puppy disintegration beam

I don’t think we’re rick rolling each other enough anymore. 1. it CANNOT die out 2. this under saturated market is perfect for unsuspecting victims who’ve been lulled into a false sense of security. be the person you hate. bring back the dastardly link

someone actually studied the falling Rick Roll rate for their Ph.D dissertation recently and published the paper

okay but this made me wonder if there was actually any academic literature on rickrolling and YES THERE IS this is a paper about rickrolling WITHIN academic literature. As in, studies that attempt to rickroll the people reading them. Best part is no one is going to believe me and click that link even though it’s 100% true.

My friend's book is mentioned in this paper!!

There is no earthy way of convincing anyone that the rickroll study link is real. But for what it's worth. It is

I have a new goal in my almost-finished PhD dissertation.

Second link's good guys, truly

Teaboot's right, there is basically nothing on earth that could convince me to click the second link. I genuinely believe it might be real, but i'm not touching it.

First link is a rickroll, second is indeed an actual paper. Might be rickroll links on that page, however. I didn't look super closely.

oh 😮! you fed me a startleberry !

Ok... but what if the tumblr icon chain was a caterpillar...

This came to me in a vision when I was stimming with the icons on my phone.

I think you should be running this show tbh

Fishpond Mosaic designed by artist Gary Drostle

@copperbadge I feel like this is something you would appreciate.

Oh, that is lovely. And I always appreciate an artist attribution too!

Here's the artist's website.

He's been doing mosaics like this for a while. (I followed up on the one in the top illustration some while ago, when I first ran into it online. I think I remember discovering that the town in Surrey where it originally appeared has removed it: no idea why.)

that one rihanna ig post with Mine’s Bigger Than Yours written in the background w the caption My dick AND my forehead! is like poetry to me

it really speaks to me

they don’t tell you this but mama it’s OCD all the way down

Hey. If people aren't aware, Microsoft admitted they know who you and where you are at all times and will give your info to the police.

They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.

Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.

You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.

This article specifically notes:

Other important quotes:

What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.

Two things back that up:

Here's the complaint filed to the court, the primary source for the case mentioned in the article. You can find mentions of GDID on page 30 of the document or 34 of the PDF.

Thank you @just-call-me-zinnia for finding it!

Tumblr people!! I've figured out a way to delete GDID from your computer!

I also made a PDF version!!

Please do me a favor, reblog for reach!! This went through several days of research and testing!! THANKS