i keep seeing ppl talking about those old stop motion chrismas movies nd im pissed bc everyone forgot this guy who has the funniest name ive ever fckin heard in my life
loved one: sorry, i can’t hang out! i have plans with other people
my hellbrain’s instincts: wow you love them more tha-
me, ignoring her and working on being a better person: that’s okay! i hope you have fun! can we hang out some other time?
I love this bc it’s a little snapshot of what the intermediate stage of recovery/treatment/growth can look like.
It might not be what you expect. I think people want to stop having those thoughts immediately, and if they can’t they feel that they’ve failed. But that’s not true! Challenging those old thought patterns is exactly what recovery looks like
I thought I should explain this on this blog because this is the only blog I have that regularly gets monthly patreon donations and its good to spread this information.
I’m not here to encourage you to donate or not donate to my patreon for this blog, I just want to explain what’s going on:
If you like my blog and want to continue donating to me, I’m grateful, but if not I can also understand that. I’ve already lost one monthly donor this month, probably because of the change in structure which heavily punishes those who make multiple donations.
If you think these proposed changes will hurt your chances of supporting my blogging in the future, I can look into other websites I can use instead. I’ve seen patreon users online who are already losing a fair amount of monthly donations due to this:
If you could share this so other Patreon creators are aware of these coming changes I’d appreciate it. This has the potential to negatively effect a lot of artists, bloggers, and creative people online who depend on donations just to survive.
🔥 With your help, we passed Title II net neutrality protections. Now we need to defend it.🔥
On December 14 the FCC will vote on Commissioner Pai’s plan to repeal Title II rules. This week he tried to justify that decision with a “myth busting” explainer where he makes a lot of sweeping claims he doesn’t think you’ll fact check.
So let’s go through his big points:
❌ Mr. Pai claims ISPs won’t block access or throttle content
These are the real facts. Before Title II, the internet was so “free and open” that…
AT&T blocked Skype from iPhones (Fortune) and, later, wanted FaceTime users to pay for a more expensive plan (Freepress).
MetroPCS blocked all streaming video except YouTube (Wired).
In today’s media market where the same huge companies make and deliver content, Commissioner Pai wants us to trust that corporations won’t use their dominance to bury competitive content or services.
❌ Mr. Pai claims Title II keeps ISPs from building new networks
Here’s another claim Commissioner Pai doesn’t want you to fact check, but:
AT&T’s own CEO told investors that the company would deploy more fiber optic networks in 2016 than 2015 when the FCC passed Title II protections (Investor call transcript).
Charter’s CEO said “Title II, it didn’t really hurt us; it hasn’t hurt us” (Ars Technica).
And Comcast actually increased investment in their network by 10% in Q1 of this year (Ars).
❌ Mr. Pai claims repealing Title II won’t hurt competition
As we mentioned above, ISPs tried to interfere with the services their customers could access and courts had to step in to stop them.
The FCC tried to craft net neutrality rules in 2010 called the Open Internet Order but the ISPs sued and won. The courts told the FCC that the only way to guarantee a free and open internet was using their Title II authority. Without those protections, any of these things would be legal:
Your ISP launches a streaming video service and starts throttling other streaming services until they’re unusable.
Your phone company cuts a deal with a popular music streaming service so it doesn’t count towards your data cap but lowers your overall data limit. If a better service comes along (or your favorite artist releases new tracks somewhere else) you can’t use it without incurring huge data fees.
A billionaire buys your ISP and blocks access to news sites that challenge their ideology.
Repealing Title II would be like letting a car company own the roads and banning a competitor from the highways.
❌ Mr. Pai claims there won’t be fast lanes and slow lanes
Let’s break this down: We won’t have fast lanes and slow lanes, we’ll have “priority access” and…non-priority access? Well gosh.
🚨 Please help us protect Title II one more time! 🚨
This week we co-signed a letter with more than 300 other companies—businesses Mr. Pai gleefully ignores—urging the FCC to retain the Title II internet protections. Now we need you.
Go to 👉 Battle For The Net 👈 to start a call with your representatives in Congress. Tell them to publicly support Title II protections.
The FCC votes on December 14.
We’re only powerful when we work together.
Oh, also: that post about automatically unfollowing the #net neutrality tag—it’s not true. It’s really not. That’s not who we are. Whatever happened, we haven’t been able to reproduce it. We tried. A lot.
But if it were true—which it’s not, we feel compelled to say again—THAT’S EXACTLY WHY YOU SHOULD CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES and demand a free, open, and neutral internet.