Thursday 28/08/2025

Aug. 28th, 2025 08:36 am
dark_kana: (3_good_things_a_day official icon)
[personal profile] dark_kana posting in [community profile] 3_good_things_a_day

1) a quick visit to the library to pick up some reserved books

2) a poke bowl for lunch 

3) a lazy evening

Wednesday 27/08/2025

Aug. 27th, 2025 09:39 am
dark_kana: (3_good_things_a_day official icon)
[personal profile] dark_kana posting in [community profile] 3_good_things_a_day

1) First physio appointment for my ankle and my knee. First time with this physio so we'll see how that goes. Hopefully way better than the previous one I tried...

2) A painkiller for the annoying headache

3) Going into town in a date with hubby this evening. Going to order some new manga, going out for dinner, and going to cinema :-)

Tuesday 26/08/2025

Aug. 26th, 2025 08:27 am
dark_kana: (3_good_things_a_day official icon)
[personal profile] dark_kana posting in [community profile] 3_good_things_a_day

1) a day off from work, to spend with my godchild :-) We're going to a place that has lots of huge inflatable bouncy castles *grins* 

2) a nice hot shower in the morning

3) gonna try and work some on my photo albums this evening :-)

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.

Monday 25/08/2025

Aug. 25th, 2025 01:53 pm
lhune: (3L)
[personal profile] lhune posting in [community profile] 3_good_things_a_day
1) Successfully tested a new rental bike ^__^ Don’t think I’ll be using the service a lot but I had been curious about it for quite some time

2) Reading my sunny balcony

3) Took care of the plants there that have survived my week of absence ^^’

Sunday 24/08/2025

Aug. 24th, 2025 12:51 pm
lhune: (3L)
[personal profile] lhune posting in [community profile] 3_good_things_a_day
1) Finishing our stay by the seaside in a different town by in the coastline

2) Lunch on a pier. Water surrounding us, even under us as we can see the waves under us ^__^

3) The weather has been much better than expected and there is more sun as we wave goodbye

Saturday 23/08/2025

Aug. 23rd, 2025 09:04 am
lhune: (3L)
[personal profile] lhune posting in [community profile] 3_good_things_a_day
1) last full day by the seaside

2) Delicious fish courses,om nom nom

3) last week we had better weather than expected ^_^

Semipalmated Plovers

Aug. 22nd, 2025 11:08 am
pauraque: bird flying (Default)
[personal profile] pauraque posting in [community profile] common_nature
I spotted these cuties on the shore of Lake Champlain.

three small brown and white shorebirds with black collars stand on a muddy lakeshore

Semipalmated Plovers breed in Alaska and northern Canada, and winter on the sea coast in the lower US, the Caribbean, and South America. During migration they can be seen just about anywhere in North America.

2 more photos )

Friday 22/08/2025

Aug. 22nd, 2025 12:55 pm
dark_kana: (3_good_things_a_day official icon)
[personal profile] dark_kana posting in [community profile] 3_good_things_a_day

1) our family weekend in the Ardennes has begun!

2) the world championships volley has started. Going to see if I can watch some of our national female team's games...

3) BBQ this evening

Shorelines

Aug. 21st, 2025 03:21 pm
yourlibrarian: Age of Sail on the AO3 (OTH-AO3AgeofSail-stultiloquentia)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian posting in [community profile] common_nature


A nearby beach had lots of surfers out. I liked the look of this tree high above them.

Read more... )

Thursday 21/08/2025

Aug. 21st, 2025 09:40 am
dark_kana: (3_good_things_a_day official icon)
[personal profile] dark_kana posting in [community profile] 3_good_things_a_day

1) having fun coloring. It's so relaxing ^^

2) trying to get things ready for our weekend to the Ardennes

3) going swimming this evening :-)

Wednesday 20/08/2025

Aug. 20th, 2025 10:35 am
dark_kana: (3_good_things_a_day official icon)
[personal profile] dark_kana posting in [community profile] 3_good_things_a_day

1) delicious tea

2) fun chats with colleagues ^^

3) colouring or reading this evening. And an early night in. 

Tuesday 19/08/2025

Aug. 19th, 2025 10:58 am
dark_kana: (3_good_things_a_day official icon)
[personal profile] dark_kana posting in [community profile] 3_good_things_a_day

1) a clean house!

2) going to watch Star Wars Rogue One again this evening

3) watching the adorable cats of our neighbour playing in the garden

Monday 18/08/2025

Aug. 18th, 2025 10:38 am
dark_kana: (3_good_things_a_day official icon)
[personal profile] dark_kana posting in [community profile] 3_good_things_a_day

1) Taking care of myself. Went to the doctor for a quick check-up (my ear hurts) and made a physio appointment for my ankle and my knee. Go me!

2) Probably going to the little fair around the corner with my daughter this afternoon. We're home alone this evening, so we're gonna have a good time. We'll probably end up eating pizza after the fair *grins*

3) Going to spend the evening reading or colouring. Bought a new mandala colour book *grins*

Sunday 17/08/2025

Aug. 17th, 2025 09:25 am
lhune: (3L)
[personal profile] lhune posting in [community profile] 3_good_things_a_day
1) Enjoyed a nice lie-in this morning simply listening to the birds

2) I returned some library books yesterday and couldn’t resist borrowing new ones. Love all those books ^_^

3) Dinner at my parents’s place and this time it will be cool enough to really enjoy their garden (and the canopied swing!)

Whale Watching

Aug. 16th, 2025 05:33 pm
yourlibrarian: Small Green Waterfall (NAT-Waterfall-niki_vakita)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian posting in [community profile] common_nature


I should immediately add that although we did see whales, I was not able to get any pics of them! Unfortunately the boat, which was not that large, was rocking too much to focus and the whales came and went too quickly even for the camera phone. Did catch the sea lions on the buoys but not even the ones briefly following us out of the docks as they were there and gone too quickly.

Read more... )

Saturday 16/08/2023

Aug. 16th, 2025 11:58 am
lhune: (3L)
[personal profile] lhune posting in [community profile] 3_good_things_a_day
1) Lazy day at home (with time te read?)

2) delicious vegetables for dinner with deliberate leftovers for later

3) Clean bedlinen for tonight now the heatwave seems to have passed

Nature diary

Aug. 15th, 2025 09:40 pm
signoftea: (Leucanthemum vulgare)
[personal profile] signoftea posting in [community profile] common_nature
Yesterday I stood on the balcony at half past nine, when it was a little less hot outside then inside my apartment. I listened for bird calls, but there were none. Even the swallows and the seagulls seemed to be asleep already. Instead, there were bats!
They weren't easy to see, but as I was looking at the sky, I noticed those little dark shapes fluttering by. They looked almost like leaves in the wind, but clearly had a mind of their own, flying back and forth in front of me.  
I wonder what species they were. It's impossible to tell. They could have been pipistrelles, given how small they were, but there's no way to be sure. During the day, they probably live in holes in the old trees beyond the lawn, or perhaps in little cracks in the walls of the building.
I hope they caught a lot of mosquitoes.

Friday 15/08/2025

Aug. 15th, 2025 11:29 am
dark_kana: (3_good_things_a_day official icon)
[personal profile] dark_kana posting in [community profile] 3_good_things_a_day

1) celebrating Mother's day ^^ Going out for breakfast with hubby's mother

2) I'm going for a quick library visit

3) there is a little fair near our house, so we're gonna spend the afternoon there with our daughter. 

Thursday 14/08/2025

Aug. 14th, 2025 10:42 am
dark_kana: (3_good_things_a_day official icon)
[personal profile] dark_kana posting in [community profile] 3_good_things_a_day

1) tea and homemade ice tea ^^

2) Reading manga

3) one cookie with caramel and sea salt. So delicious

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