Upcoming JJ Essays (And Links To Old Ones)

Hunger Games didn’t really eat holes in my brain the way that it did for some other people but god the opening lines. The opening lines. Katniss wakes up in bed and immediately, instinctively reaches beside her, only to find the bed empty and cold. Before we even know her name – before we know literally anything about her or this world or her place in that world – we know that she loves someone. We know that she is reaching for where Prim should be, sleeping safe and warm beside her, but Prim is not there. She is not there, and her half of the bed is cold and empty. People talk about characters being “doomed by the narrative” when most of the time the character was literally just a well-foreshadowed death, but Prim WAS doomed by the narrative. It’s the very first thing we learned. It’s the most key, integral, important piece of information we’re given about everything that is about to happen: Every single choice Katniss makes is to protect her little sister, and it isn’t enough. In the end, Prim still dies. Prim was dead before the story even started. Katniss, reaching. Prim’s side of the bed was cold and empty. There is no version of this story where Prim could have been saved. Katniss, reaching. The very first thing she does in the series. She wakes, and she reaches, but Prim is already gone. THAT is how you do Doomed By The Narrative. Edit: Also it is key that there was literally nothing Katniss could have done differently. If she had not acted to save Prim, Prim would not have survived the Hunger Games. But by acting to save Prim, Katniss accidentally kicked off an entire rebellion and ultimately massively increased the amount of danger Prim was actually in. The key is that this is irrelevant. If Katniss had done literally anything differently, Prim still would have died. If Katniss had faltered or changed course at any point, Prim still would have died. There was never a point where Katniss could have changed Prim’s fate. There’s no version of this story where Prim lives to see the end of it. She’s dead before the story begins. That’s doomed by the narrative.

Fanfiction Trope MASH-UP

Rules: Send me two (2) tropes from this list + a ship and I’ll describe how I’d combine them in the same story. 

Historical AU 

Royal AU 

Modern AU 

Coffee Shop AU 

Bar/Restaurant AU 

Bookshop AU 

Florist AU  

Hospital AU 

Dance AU 

Airport/Travel AU 

Neighbour AU 

Roommate AU 

Detective AU 

Bodyguard AU 

Criminal AU 

Prison AU 

War AU 

Circus AU 

Summer Camp AU 

Teacher AU 

Dystopian AU 

Space AU 

Performer AU 

Soulmate AU 

Fairy Tale AU 

Massage Fic  

Sick/Injured Fic 

Proposal Fic  

Wedding Fic  

Holiday Fic  

Birthday Fic 

Pregnancy Fic  

Baby Fic 

Vacation Fic  

Bathtub Fic 

Text/Letter Fic 

Coming Out Fic   

Grief Fic  

Survival/Wilderness Fic  

Almost Kiss 

First Kiss 

The Big Damn Kiss 

Dance of Romance  

Flowers of Romance 

Chocolate of Romance  

Blind Date  

Not a Date  

Fake Dating 

Fake Married 

Arranged Marriage  

Accidentally Married 

Marriage of Convenience 

Mutual Pining 

Secret Relationship  

Established Relationship 

Awful First Meeting 

Forgotten First Meeting  

Accidental Eavesdropping  

Interrupted Declaration of Love 

Poorly Timed Confession 

Love Confession 

Love Confessor (Character A confessing their love for Character B to Character C)  

Everybody Knows/Mistaken for Couple 

Star Crossed Lovers  

It’s Not You, It’s Me 

It’s Not You, It’s My Enemies  

Character in Peril 

Heroic Sacrifice 

Flirting Under Fire 

Locked in a Room 

Twenty-Four Hours to Live  

Stranded on A Desert Island 

Stranded Due to Inclement Weather 

Huddling for Warmth 

Bed Sharing  

Did They or Didn’t They? 

In Vino Veritas  

Above the Influence  

Anger Born of Worry  

Green-Eyed Epiphany  

The Missus and the Ex 

Second Love  

Intimate Artistry  

Married to the Job  

Innocent Physical Contact 

I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On 

Aroused By Her Voice  

Erotic Dreams 

First Time 

Unexpected Virgin 

PWP 

Kink 

Makeovers 

Hair Brushing/Braiding 

Sleep Intimacy 

Scars  

Time Travel  

Curses 

Magical Accidents 

Accidentally Saving the Day   

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Exercises for all the homies who want to have a long career drawing.

The true problem with being an artist and drawing all day (as I wanted my whole life) is that human backs are not designed to hold that position, so it is very common for artists and designers to have really stiff shoulder blades, creating a chain of muscle strain towards the arm AND the back… and a lot of pain.

These are some physical exercises for artists and honestly anyone who works at a desk.

(all credit to my physiotherapist)

>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.

>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.

>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.

>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.

>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.

>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.

>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.

>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!

>Lemmings problem now solved.

>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.

>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.

>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.

>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.

>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.

>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.

you're laughing. charles dickens had a son named plorn and you're laughing

Random mansion generator

The Procgen Mansion Generator produces large three-dee dwellings to toy with your imagination, offering various architectural styles and other options. Each mansion even comes with floorplans:

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/12/random-mansion-generator.html

A skeleton crew doesn't mean a site is going away (though it likely won't get updates and bugs/outages will take longer to fix), but just in case anyone is concerned, here's a link to instructions to download your entire blog

Sims 4 page on Steam. Not to be controversial but I think the CEO of EA should be beheaded for this

US climate with equivalent cities from around the world.

Keep reading

New Things to Beware on the Internet

On May 3rd, Google released 8 new top-level domains (TLDs) -- these are new values like .com, .org, .biz, domain names. These new TLDs were made available for public registration via any domain registrar on May 10th.

Usually, this should be a cool info, move on with your life and largely ignore it moment.

Except a couple of these new domain names are common file type extensions: ".zip" and ".mov".

This means typing out a file name could resolve into a link that takes you to one of these new URLs, whether it's in an email, on your tumblr blog post, a tweet, or in file explorer on your desktop.

What was previously plain text could now resolve as link and go to a malicious website where people are expecting to go to a file and therefore download malware without realizing it.

Folk monitoring these new domain registrations are already seeing some clearly malicious actors registering and setting this up. Some are squatting the domain names trying to point out what a bad idea this was. Some already trying to steal your login in credentials and personal info.

This is what we're seeing only 12 days into the domains being available. Only 5 days being publicly available.

What can you do? For now, be very careful where you type in .zip or .mov, watch what website URLs you're on, don't enable automatic downloads, be very careful when visiting any site on these new domains, and do not type in file names without spaces or other interrupters.

I'm seeing security officers for companies talking about wholesale blocking .zip and .mov domains from within the company's internet, and that's probably wise.

Be cautious out there.