therealljidol, wheel of chaos: prompt 7, "oxytocin loop"
Aug. 26th, 2025 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
This was an intersection with
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Mississippi legal challenge: beginning 1 September, we will need to geoblock Mississippi IPs
Aug. 26th, 2025 12:24 am![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png)
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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.
all you love you are
Aug. 21st, 2025 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
1).
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Pros: IT WAS GREAT. 11/10 would host again, got to hang out in person and do all kinds of Ridiculous Nonsense, turns out that at least one of the cats adores them, friendship absolutely translated outside of the internet, ended up spending a ton of time just talking about Nothing Of Import and being ridiculous.
Cons: THEY LIVE ON THE OPPOSITE COAST AND SO I HAVE NO IDEA WHEN WE WILL MANAGE TO MEET UP AGAIN, AND THAT'S FUCKING PAINFUL.
(Genuinely: really excellent time, got to take them to see one of our other mutual internet friends who lives in Eugene, went to the beach &etc, there was a truly embarrassing amount of crying at the airport this morning, this is fine.)
2). Migraine last night verging into today. Was sort of — I fell asleep on the sofa while rereading A Deadly Education, woke up and just immediately started shivering and crying with no idea as to why. Like, absolutely despondent, weeping like a little kid who just dropped their ice cream, "what is emotional regulation? I DON'T KNOW" crying. Eventually stopped, stood up to get myself a glass of water, and it was like — oh, fuck, I am in a tremendous amount of pain.
Tried to ride it out (ibuprofen, no lights); finally caved and ended up taking half an edible at like 8:30pm because there was otherwise no way I was going to be functional enough to do anything. Worked; didn't actually get high (still something that's weird to me — that occasionally THC fixes the migraine symptoms but doesn't get me high...), managed to get myself to bed and get a reasonable amount of sleep.
Great times. Heat wave, apparently, it's supposed to hit 98F tomorrow. Max let me know over supper last night that we're potentially under a red flag warning this weekend (extremely dry, extremely hot, extremely windy; bad for fires). This may explain why all of my joints in my right hand are also on fire. (Typing is...an interesting exercise at this moment in time.) Being a human barometer is great? except, ah, no.
(Was supposed to work today, but. Called in because between the airport dropoff this morning and the migraine it was like, "I am not sure I am going to be a person the rest of this week". Was the right call, I think.)
3). Finally finalized plans for next weekend vis a vis: seeing Colin Meloy in Astoria. We picked up tickets ages and ages ago — like, literally, back in March I think? — but because this summer has been A LOT, I didn't get anything booked (and I'm usually the one that remembers to do it).
The long and short of it is that we're staying in a weird motel up in Washington that is more or less right on the beach. Cape Disappointment, here we come? Getting a suite for the three of us ($300) was less expensive than trying to get two hotel rooms ($249/room).
So! Manda has already texted me asking if I'm cool with dropping back through Tillamook on the way back the next day — "if we leave early enough, can we go to de Garde and the cheese factory", and I'm like, "...yes? We'll literally drive through Tillamook if we want to, no reason not to?"
(She's trying to be conscientious because I'm her ride up to Astoria, but also: it's my favorite brewery, like I'm going to say no. I'm like "whatever" about the cheese factory, but de Garde is fucking phenomenal if you like wild-fermented beer, and I do, so.)
I think that's most of it? Probably? For the moment, anyway — there's more, but most of it's like, "ah fuck I need to sit and think about Feelings and Stuff" and, like, I'm an adult and I can gaze at my own navel in the privacy of my home office, thank you.
(I really need to figure out where the hell my paper journal went to when Max cleaned up everything downstairs — it was on the table, and I know he wouldn't have read it or thrown it away, but where did it get to?)
I feel how close you are/I could see you miles away
Aug. 17th, 2025 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
This isn't like, oh, woe is me, it's more like — oh, this is how we love people.
(Yeah, it would have been possible to shuttle them down here, but it didn't feel very kind to go, "and now that you have made it to PDX, please catch a shuttle in a weird, unmarked location and I'll catch up with you at some point", not when the point of being out here is at least partially to maximize the time spent together.)
(I should also note that I'm fine, now — it was Bad but not so bad that I couldn't function; once I picked them up, that in and of itself was enough of a distraction that I was like "oh yes good I can Keep Going", and eventually it did mostly fade. Ish. It's trying to make a resurgence now, but I am also about to go to bed, so.)
I find myself thinking about loving people a lot lately. How do you show people you love them, do they know that you love them, &etc. Sometimes it's the big things — huge declarations and whatnot — and sometimes it's just...I saw that coffee yogurt you like was on sale at the fancy grocer, so I picked it up for you, or I saw this thing and I knew I had to show you, or I'll let you touch me when I don't let most people do that.
My parents didn't model unconditional love. I don't think they modeled love at all, really. I grew up in a household where we didn't touch each other, where there was this elaborate imaginary point system where you scored points by putting down your opponent — jokes, mostly, that made the other person look bad while you looked clever.
I wonder sometimes how I made it out of that without internalizing those lessons — that it was less important to be kind than to be clever; that showing any kind of vulnerability was weakness and would be used against you; that telling someone you loved them was gauche and the worst kind of vulnerability.
I know that the household I grew up in was dysfunctional. "Was" as though it's not still dysfunctional, somehow.
I just.
I don't think teenage rebellion is supposed to look like radical acceptance and kindness.
Is this why I don't feel like an adult very often? I've hit almost all the adult milestones: graduated (from a PhD program, even), have a house, am happily married, figured out the big identity pieces, mostly...
...but I guess I never did grow out of that teenage rebellion phase.
Mm.
I owe a debt of gratitude, I think, to everyone who has ever loved me and loved me well. A thank you for showing me what love is supposed to look like. It's not something I can repay, but how can I? The answer is "love them back", and I do, and I show them in the ways they want to be shown.