Goldkin @Goldkin@awoo.space

Which I guess is a good reminder to be skeptical about what personal data to give corporations, even ones with relatively good data handling hygiene at the time.

Oh hey, Google+ is shutting down after it was shown to be exactly the privacy and accountability tar pit I was concerned about. And oh cool, people that provided their “real name” and real info had their data scraped by parties unknown, too.

I totally did not see that coming at all. </s>

(As a reminder, I work for a Google competitor, so opinions my own. None of these observations are based on privileged info.)

Speedrunners: Here are all of the ways I figured out how to break each of these and look amazing. I will now clip into the fifth plane and end the campaign before it even begins.

All DMs ever: *sigh*

Adventure games I’ve played lately as D&D DMs:

Tomb Raider 2013: Here’s a puzzle. You glitch into a wall. You die.

Rise of the Tomb Raider: Here’s a puzzle. The orcs three rooms away hear you solving it. You die.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Here’s a puzzle. You try to jump down from a ledge. You die.

Breath of the Wild: Here’s a puzzle. You rolled what now? Cool!

Celeste: Here’s a puzzle. Here are all of the ways you die before succeeding. You climbed that mountain. It was _amazing_.

And I guess I'm writing that here, in part, to get it out of my own head and so I take my own advice. Please take care of yourselves and remember that it is okay to just be you.

While it's important to remain engaged and present while all of this is happening (also, for the love of everything good, please vote), it's a good reminder that you don't need to constantly be immersed in what's happening.

It's entirely fine to be yourself, to protect your sense of self, while bad things are happening. And it's pragmatic to plan for a better future, instead of putting life constantly on hold because of situations outside your control.

When I was in an emotionally abusive household (with parties I will not name, as their situations have changed substantially since that time), my way out of the abusive pattern was limiting my exposure to it and planning for my own future. I spent a lot of time reading fiction, and many of my art projects focused on building a better world than my day-to-day lived existence.

It's taken me awhile to realize that that isn't escapism. It's pragmatism when existence takes on an unreal quality.

The K nomination battle this week is the first time the news has physically made me ill enough that I couldn't function. As before, I've had to disengage from the news for my health.

Some parting words on it: this is not "just how the world works." Our leaders have chosen dysfunction and power consolidation as their only viable strategy for weak governance.

It's easy to become cynical, when this is the closer to how abusers convince you there is no alternative to an abusive pattern. There is.

@Oasus@snouts.online Heh, I’d wondered if it was you when I saw the commentary tracker on Speedgaming. I’m assuming so, and I hope it’s been a blast!

Twitter just changed its policies to prevent distribution of dox materials, hacked content, and fake accounts (among others):
https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/company/2018/an-update-on-our-elections-integrity-work.html

This appears to be for US elections, but if they implement this generically, this might also help block some of the common targeted harassment scenarios.

Which doesn’t entice me to return, but I’ll be interested in how they roll this out.

TIL: there is a game named Pet the Pup at the Party, and it is the best thing ever.

I’ll append more if I can, but those are the big ones I can think of for now. Feel free to add your own to this thread if you know of any I missed.

(I’ve kept a therapist for about 5 years. It’s helped me get through a lot, and is strongly recommended as general maintenance. I cannot stress how much it helps if you can find one.)

Fourth, remember that not all disinfo is designed with a target in mind. Several campaigns are designed to mentally or emotionally paralyze you by bombarding you with too much info, making the truth hard to find, or trying to convince you to stop trying.

Ignore those outright.

Third, stay calm. It’s really easy to panic if you or a friend gets targeted. Step back, go offline for awhile if you need to, and make a plan to get through it. It’s going to be okay.

Some people, even people you care about, will fall for it. Reach out to people that haven’t and set up a support network for yourself. It’s often really easy to feel like everything is falling apart, but it isn’t.

Also, get yourself a therapist if you can. Seriously. It helps.

Second, don’t try to publicly refute the attackers or any online mobs they send your way. Protect yourself first. http://www.crashoverridenetwork.com provides actionable info that you can use to audit your online presence and handle being targeted.

Especially good here: get yourself a security key for your personal email. If you use Gmail, you can also set up Google Advanced Protection on your accounts: https://landing.google.com/advancedprotection/

Hey, so, a few words about disinfo campaigns, because I’m seeing a lot of people I know targeted as they flee birdsite or end up in the crosshairs of Internet hate groups:

First, trust but verify. If you can’t source a claim to a credible source, distrust it or at least remain skeptical. Quite a few hate groups launder fake info through seemingly credible websites and whisper campaigns, and it’s worth not trusting those until credible evidence comes forward.

I flag this “-“ because it’s been difficult to even follow along with. I know too many people who have suffered what she has — being seen as nothing more than an object by powerful men. And watching those same powerful men try to control the narrative in any way they can to discredit her _now_ has been the hardest part of watching this.

Fuck anyone that tries to sweep abuse under the rug to retain power. I know this won’t stop that from happening, but I hope her words send a powerful message.

I’ve had to mostly disengage from the daily horrible for my own emotional well-being, but some notes on Dr. Ford’s testimony today:

I cannot fathom how hard it must be to relive her trauma in front of the whole world, through a process engineered in extremely bad faith against her. I cannot imagine the resolve and poise that she must have, even when she knows that her detractors are doing everything they can to put her on trial, to tell her story.

Bless her for what she is doing.