Dearly Beloved: Here lies the optimism and dreams of an overly ambitious child. A more productive and outspoken woman has replaced her, and may the world never see me coming.
I’m currently rereading PJO and it is amazing how one’s perception of characters changes over time.
I just finished TTC. It’s been maybe 7 years since I last read it. For years, Thalia was a villain in my eyes. An enemy to Percy. Always trying to embarrass him, belittle him, make him known as the lesser halfblood. I’m not sure why I felt that way. I also thought she was selfish for putting the prophecy on Percy after spending a whole book “showing” that she was the better big 3 child. I suppose it’s because I’ve always related to Percy and saw myself in him. Some of it because loyalty is my fatal flaw as well. Therefore, I understood his frustration at how much “better” of a leader and fighter she was compared to him. I also was surprised at how easily she hesitated at the chance of sacrificing Bessie. She was so strong, seen as the child of the strongest god, so why was Percy able to resist so much easier? The mind of middle/high school me was very odd to have seen her as such a disliked character.
But in reality, she’s just a child. She had been at peace for 7 years. All she had to do was feel the sun warming her branches, the Breeze gently blowing her needles, simply exist and protect the camp without actually having to fight anything. Then to have that taken away in an instant and be thrown back into the world of constantly on guard. People dream of coming back as trees, gently swaying in the wind. And here she had that peace. Now as an adult, it makes so much sense why she put the prophecy on Percy. She just wanted to rest again. At least as a Hunter, she had the security of spending more time living at peace than as a halfblood. And, I think she knew somehow that Percy was the only one strong enough to carry that burden and succeed.
As a child, it’s hard to remind yourself as a reader that they are children themselves.
I slept in and just woke up, so here’s what I’ve been able to figure out while sipping coffee:
Twitter has officially rebranded to X just a day or two after the move was announced.
The official branding is that a tweet is now called “an X”, for which there are too many jokes to make.
The official account is still @twitter because someone else owns @X and they didn’t reclaim the username first.
The logo is 𝕏 which is the Unicode character Unicode U+1D54F so the logo cannot be copyrighted and it is highly likely that it cannot be protected as a trademark.
Outside the visual logo, the trademark for the use of the name “X” in social media is held by Meta/Facebook, while the trademark for “X” in finance/commerce is owned by Microsoft.
The rebranding has been stopped in Japan as the term “X Japan” is trademarked by the band X JAPAN.
Elon had workers taking down the “Twitter” name from the side of the building. He did not have any permits to do this. The building owner called the cops who stopped the crew midway through so the sign just says “er”.
He still plans to call his streaming and media hosting branch of the company as “Xvideo”. Nobody tell him.
This man wants you to give him control over all of your financial information.
Edit to add further developments:
Yes, this is all real. Check the notes and people have pictures. I understand the skepticism because it feels like a joke, but to the best of my knowledge, everything in the above is accurate.
Microsoft also owns the trademark on X for chatting and gaming because, y'know, X-box.
The logo came from a random podcaster who tweeted it at Musk.
The act of sending a tweet is now known as “Xeet”. They even added a guide for how to Xeet.
The branding change is inconsistent. Some icons have changed, some have not, and the words “tweet” and “Twitter” are still all over the place on the site.
TweetDeck is currently unaffected and I hope it’s because they forgot that it exists again. The complete negligence toward that tool and just leaving it the hell alone is the only thing that makes the site usable (and some of us are stuck on there for work).
This is likely because Musk was forced out of PayPal due to a failed credit line project and because he wanted to rename the site to “X-Paypal” and eventually just to “X”.
This became a big deal behind the scenes as Musk paid over $1 million for the domain X.com and wanted to rebrand the company that already had the brand awareness people were using it as a verb to “pay online” (as in “I’ll paypal you the money”)
X.com is not currently owned by Musk. It is held by a domain registrar (I believe GoDaddy but I’m not entirely sure). Meaning as long as he’s hung onto this idea of making X Corp a thing, he couldn’t be arsed to pay the $15/year domain renewal.
Bloomberg estimates the rebranding wiped between $4 to $20 billion from the valuation of Twitter due to the loss of brand awareness.
The company was already worth less than half of the $44 billion Musk paid for it in the first place, meaning this may end up a worse deal than when Yahoo bought Tumblr.
One estimation (though this is with a grain of salt) said that Twitter is three months from defaulting on its loans taken out to buy the site. Those loans were secured with Tesla stock. Meaning the bank will seize that stock and, since it won’t be enough to pay the debt (since it’s worth around 50-75% of what it was at the time of the loan), they can start seizing personal assets of Elon Musk including the Twitter company itself and his interest in SpaceX.
Sesame Street’s official accounts mocked the rebranding.
Just sos you knows, AO3 is down under a DDOS attack right now. They’ve been coming back in little blips and then disappearing again. It’s been several hours. (For reference, it’s currently 3 p.m. eastern, July 10, 2023.)
The culprit (as with a few other DDOS attacks recently) is Anonymous Sudan, a group that is likely Russian, not Sudanese. The ‘reason’ they gave–that AO3 is “full of disgusting smuts and other LGBTQ+ and NSFW things,” is thin and probably not completely legit, though still legitimately concerning.
DDOS protection is expensive especially for a high traffic site like ao3. And it’s uniquely vulnerable as an independent site without ads or other corporate support. SPECIFICALLY targeted bc of its queer works and yet ppl will still complain every time they ask for donations lmao
So, again, when AO3 comes back online, please don’t go hard with refreshing all your tabs. Please do remember to download fics you love early and often as you continue in your whole ~reading journey~. And please do support AO3 through a dono or becoming a donating member, if it is possible for you to do so.
I drew this poster for Jon Acuffand his FINISH book tour. Big thanks to Jon for this collaboration, his book has some great ideas about how to complete creative and life goals.
Love this, but reblogging it specifically for “Get rid of secret rules.” That’s one of the most amazing illustrations—and points—I’ve ever seen.
so important especially for perfectionists who procrastinate and never finish, or even start because they set such high standards for themselves.
“Kill until” and “get rid of secret rules” are, I have to say, what really did it for me.
I want everybody who’s calling Ken a Trophy Husband to know that he’s actually a Trophy Boyfriend, because when Ruth Handler invented Ken in the 1960s, she was adamant that he would never marry her and instead be her “handsome steady”, so that Barbie remained a figure of independence for the little girls and was never put in the position of housewife.
Her house is hers. She bought it and furnished it with money she made in her own job. In STEM, in politics, in healthcare, in fashion, in academy, in customer service. Her credit card is in her name (women in the US couldn’t have their own regardless of marital status until 1974). And it’s all pink and fashionable because femininity and badassness aren’t mutually exclusive. No matter who you are, you can be anything.
That’s why Barbie’s slogan is “you can be anything”. Teaching these ideals to little girls is why Barbie was created. Empowering women and empowering femininity is the original meaning of the Barbie doll. It’s not that you have to be all this to be a woman, but if you are all or some of this, you too are awesome.
And somehow pop culture deliberately changed that narrative. Sexualised, bimbofied, and villainised her, when she actually isn’t responsible for the impossible beauty standards — people are, she’s just a stylised, not-to-scale toy like most others.
Men are frothing because he’s just Ken and I guess they were expecting her to be just Barbie, but that’s exactly what Ken is. Canonically. A badass woman’s himbo boyfriend.
This movie has the potential to change the way we collectively see Barbie radically into what Ruth Handler’s intended, I’m so very excited
Some of you may have heard this already, but rural carriers in the USPS just got fucked over. (note: i myself am not a usps employee, but my partner is)
USPS and the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association (NRLCA) have disagreed on how to price the volume of work for the rural routes. City (walking) routes get paid hourly, but rural routes get paid salaried. After disagreeing, the matter went to arbitration and the arbitor chose a complicated algorithm for determining the pay by volume, and it goes into effect this week. People are losing thousands of $ a year. Most between 5%-30% of their wage just.. gone. My partner only lost $4000 off their wage, but someone he works with lost $10,000 off their yearly income. A person on reddit is saying they lost $18,000.
The USPS always gets the short end of the stick, but this is going to throw things into chaos. USPS workers are unable to strike, so they don’t have much ability to fight back. (though some have been talking about illegal strikes…) They can file a grievance within their union, but it’s a gamble on if it will work.
How you can help: please make a fuss about this. Contact your local reps. Share this on social media. Tell your friends.
I think it’s worth talking about that he couldn’t get another job between filming the movie and it coming out and lost his health insurance because of it. It’s shameful.
