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.

mekachu04: off topics, comments (VOIDWALKER)
[personal profile] mekachu04 posting in [community profile] anime_manga
Fandom: One Piece
Author/Artist: Mekachu04
Title: July Punk Aibou Sketches
Pairing: Eustass Kidd & Killer
Rating: teen? it varies from gen/all audience to teen
Word Count: art
Highlight for Warnings: *some implied death/violence but nothing graphic. all are unfinished sketches so clothes might not all be there. *
Disclaimer: Kidd, Killer, the Kidd Pirates and other characters belong to the world of One Piece by Eiichiro Oda. I'm just playing in the sandbox
AN: I'm trying to draw something everyday. So most of these are drawn at about 3-5am in about an hour or two at work during the down time.


started a 50 sentence challenge toward the end of the month with a sketch for each sentance

thumbnails linking to each day under cut )
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.

Prompt table challenge starts today

Sep. 1st, 2025 01:49 am
xfirefly9x: (Mal and Inara)
[personal profile] xfirefly9x posting in [community profile] worderlands
Welcome to Worderlands' September challenge: a prompt table challenge with one prompt per day. You can find the prompt table (and code to copy it into your own journal) below.

The challenge is pretty straightforward:

Write stories (or a single story, if you're wanting a bigger challenge) based around each prompt. So long as it's clear the prompt was used, you're good.

There are no particular word count goals or minimums to aim for. Just write what works for you, whether it's a 3-sentence story per prompt, 100-word drabbles, flash fiction, one chapter of a novel per prompt, or something else.

Don't worry if you don't finish all the stories or prompts - you can take on as much as you'd like. And if you're not done by the time the challenge has ended, you can keep going in your own time (and even share your writing on the posts late) if desired.

++

That's about all you need to know, I think? If anyone has questions, just leave a comment.

I'll make weekly check-in posts (8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th), where you can share your writing or progress updates, and a wrap-up post on the 30th. For this week, feel free to share writing or progress updates on this post too, if you can't wait for the first check in.

Have fun, and I hope the words flow!


001.Fields of flowers 002.A dark hallway 003.Around a fire 004.Beneath a blue sky 005.Liminal spaces
006."I'm emotionally invested now." 007."You weren't there." 008."Stop being so cute." 009."I don't know if I love you or hate you." 010."Can we try again?"
011.Believing something strange 012.Hoping something works out 013.Packing something in a box 014.Setting something on fire 015.Leaving something unsaid
016.Blessed with this curse my whole life - Paradise Lost, The Used 017.Now it's not too late to change everything you wanna change - Better Days, Yellowcard 018.If I'm not broken like I used to be, will you still find me interesting? - Oh No!, All Time Low 019.I check the doors, check the windows, and pull the blinds - The Contract, Twenty One Pilots 020.Memories, they fill the wall, like paint and nails and frames that fall - Sleeping With The Lights On, Daniel Seavey
021.Light sources 022.Trickle of water 023.Touching grass 024.Smoke on the wind 025.A presence felt
026.Glance 027.Caress 028.Atmosphere 029.Scenery 030.Consume



Table code in case anyone wants a copy (please link back to Worderlands):
feurioo: (tv: the atypical family)
[personal profile] feurioo posting in [community profile] tv_talk
More about August 2025 releases here on Soompi.com.
More about September 2025 releases here on Koreaboo.com.


Upcoming fall shows preview

Aug. 31st, 2025 08:07 am
jo: (Default)
[personal profile] jo posting in [community profile] tv_talk
It's that time of year again -- the "best new shows of the fall" preview time! The Guardian has a "50 Best TV shows to watch this autumn" listing, with the usual caveat that the Guardian is a UK paper so many are British productions that may never air outside of the UK (and also lists where the show will be available to watch in the UK, so it may be a different streaming service outside of the UK -- e.g. HBO productions tend to air on Sky Atlantic in the UK). That said, I think this year's listing includes more non-British shows than in previous years. Are there any here that look interesting to you? 

Speak Up Saturday 🌞

Aug. 30th, 2025 02:55 pm
feurioo: (music: ms. furman grand mal)
[personal profile] feurioo posting in [community profile] tv_talk
Assortment of black and white speech bubbles

Welcome to the weekly roundup post! What are you watching this week? What are you excited about?

Worderlands Discord

Aug. 29th, 2025 10:15 pm
xfirefly9x: (Dean Winchester)
[personal profile] xfirefly9x posting in [community profile] worderlands
Ahead of the September event, I thought I'd launch the Discord server I set up for Worderlands a while back. It's been sitting there waiting for the right time, but I don't know when that time is, so why not now, impulsively as many of the previous events have been run?

If you'd like to join, you can do so by clicking this link.


A bit of background:

Worderlands was originally the name of my author blog on Goodreads.

The name is based around Borderlands, my fav game series, and Wonderlands, with small tweaks to change the focus to words.

Worderlands: lands of words and writers.


After I came up with the name for my Goodreads blog, I had a mental image of a writing community that I wanted to build. I created a dreamwidth community of the same name, taking some inspiration from my previous LJ communities. (That community is this one btw.)

The Discord I'm linking you to now was the next step.

You'll notice, as such, that the Discord has an area for my personal writing (a channel specific to my own writing journey), a section for events hosted on the Worderlands DW, and some additional areas that go a bit deeper for writing, editing, and publishing, and more. Some things aren't quite ready to go just yet, but you'll find placeholder channels for what I hope will be future events if there's enough interest.

I'm still figuring things out as I go (that should probably be the slogan for this community), but hopefully you'll view this Discord as a place that will open up more opportunities for writing and writing-related fun, should you wish to join in.

And meanwhile, the Worderlands dreamwidth will continue on as it has been, with challenges that pop up at random times in much the same format as we've been going so far + with the occasional bit of random experimentation with new ideas. (So, if you're not interested in Discord, just continue to hang out here for your regularly unprogrammed timetable of events.)

Thanks for your participation in all things Worderlands so far, and I hope to see you over at the Discord soon too. ♥

TV Tuesday: Style and Substance

Aug. 26th, 2025 11:47 am
yourlibrarian: Crimson Peak Loki (AVEN-Crimson Peak Loki - misbegotten.png)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian posting in [community profile] tv_talk

Laptop-TV combo with DVDs on top and smartphone on the desk



As the pressure to utilize AI across industries increases and creators go in on it, what do you think this could mean for television production and viewing?
yui_miyamoto: (Default)
[personal profile] yui_miyamoto posting in [community profile] anime_manga
Fandom : Yowamushi Pedal / 弱虫ペダル
Author : Yui_Miyamoto
Story Title : my Sleeping Beauty.
Rating : PG -13
Genre(s) : Romance, Humor
Main Character(s) : Makishima Yuusuke, Toudou Jinpachi
Summary : Before going abroad, Makishima visits Toudou.
Warning(s) : M/M.
Disclaimer : This title is owned by Watanabe Wataru-sensei. I’m just here because of all the cuteness. And the fact that Yamashita Daiki’s rendition of Love Hime lives rent free in my head.

Livejournal / Fanfiction.net / AO3

Spy X Family: Code White

Aug. 26th, 2025 01:59 am
fennectik: Anime (Anime)
[personal profile] fennectik posting in [community profile] anime_manga
Been watching the Anime movie Spy X Family: Code White and its quite fun. I really wish that I could watch new episodes of it. Characters are highly entertaining. Well, most. There's this character called Agent Nightfall who like Becky Blackbell, has an unhealthy crush on Loyd Forger. However she's a bit more annoying about it than little Becky bothered to be. Still, there's plenty of laughs and action with a dash of feel good moments and I can't quit it.

I just hope next time Anya sees a suspicious piece of candy in a box she refrains from eating it.

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.

Is it Writing or Other Factors?

Aug. 25th, 2025 12:20 pm
yourlibrarian: PlottingSam-starofthemorn (SPN-PlottingSam-starofthemorn)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian posting in [community profile] tv_talk
Too long ago now, I shared some DS9 related meta posts at [community profile] meta_warehouse and found that I was interested in the suggestions about older Trek being more character oriented than newer Trek shows. Although the post involved DS9 and Discovery, if we look at Star Trek Enterprise versus Discovery, "bad writing" doesn't cover it all. Read more... )

Speak Up Saturday

Aug. 23rd, 2025 11:11 am
feurioo: (Default)
[personal profile] feurioo posting in [community profile] tv_talk
Assortment of black and white speech bubbles

Welcome to the weekly roundup post! What are you watching this week? What are you excited about?
xfirefly9x: (River Tam)
[personal profile] xfirefly9x posting in [community profile] worderlands
I've just finished creating the prompt table for September's writing challenge, and I'm already looking forward to seeing what you all come up with. XD

As a sneak peek of sorts, the prompt table has 30 prompts, one for each day. There are six themes (five prompts each) across the prompt table, as below:

- Settings
- Dialogue
- Actions
- Song lyrics
- Elements
- Senses

The prompts might not be quite as obvious as those themes suggest when you get to see them (or maybe they will be? you'll have to tell me next month), but hopefully that'll give you somewhat of an idea of what you can expect next month. Time to start thinking about what you want to write!

Meanwhile, the surprise 3-sentence story challenge is there if you want to dive into something right away, or if you want to read some of the amazing stories already submitted. A great way to awaken the muse and spark some inspiration ahead of next event. :)

Summer mid-season anime impressions

Aug. 22nd, 2025 08:54 pm
petrea_mitchell: (Default)
[personal profile] petrea_mitchell posting in [community profile] anime_manga
(Crossposted from my journal.)

A bit late for first impressions, but I still feel the urge to get my thoughts out there.

Dekin no Mogura: The Earthbound Mole has ugly character designs and a ton of talking, and yet is a joy and a treasure and I can hardly wait for the next episode from week to week. This is an adaptation of a manga by Eguchi Natsumi, the author of Hozuki's Coolheadedness, and starts off with a similar mix of comedy and folklore geekery. But then it adds a lot more layers. First there's the giant supernatural cat antics, and then it turns out that Eguchi has been storing up a lot of thoughts about how girls and women are socialized to behave in contemporary society, and then there's the matter of the ongoing flashbacks to World War II.

Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show is great if you are well-versed in both the Cthulhu mythos and the anime death game genre, an overlap not likely to occur much outside Japan. The little problem with the subtitles in episode 1 has been ironed out and now my only complaint is that the new translator doesn't know how to spell Ticktockman. Because the show has borrowed him too, for some reason.

Sword of the Demon Hunter is getting into the big events of the late 1860s while shifting its tone ever further away from grimdark. It may be trying a little too hard at this point, particularly with a recent episode where it is implied that someone eventually reforms but we miss the most interesting part of their story.

Hanako-kun season 2 part 2 is still gorgeous to look at, but suffering badly from being watched the same day as Dekin no Mogura. It isn't dragging as badly as the previous cour, but it feels like it is ambling with unnecessary slowness toward an ending that can be seen a mile away.

I was all set to hate Ruri Rocks for the same reason the geology displays at some science museums annoy me. I hate when the exhibit is basically just "look at the pretty rocks" with no context for them. But this show actually wants to provide the geological context, so great! Plus it has really excellent character animation! Instead, it annoyed me by spending way too much time pointing at the camera at the chest and bottom of the adult lead, so I'm still not planning to watch a second episode.

Bullet/Bullet and Onmyo Kaiten Re: Birth Verse were okay for as far as I watched them (1 episode and 2 episodes respectively), I don't think I'd mind watching more, but I haven't gotten around to it, so clearly I didn't like them that much.

And nobody picked up the latest Cute High for streaming, so I don't know what I think of it.

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