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sethness

seth "ness"
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Currently, dA removes copyright-infriging art or writing about which they've received a DMCA cease-and-desist letter from the copyright holder.

That's all.

There's no follow-up to see that the dA member is not constantly repeating, in a long-standing pattern of copyright abuse before or since. There's no penalty to a dA member for continual copyright abuse-- in other words, it's a crime without punishment. WHY NOT keep up the piracy, if the only punishment is the removal of SOME of the material, and there's no long-term or more severe penalty?

Does dA even have a mechanism to alert staff when there's a pattern of repeated copyright infringement by a member?

dA should be doing more, imposing stiffer penalties for repeat offenders. For the worst offenders, lengthy or permanent suspension/termination of membership seems appropriate.

To do less seems negligent-- a systemic fault for which dA might be sued by a copyright owner whose work has been frequently pirated by one or more dA members.

Let me offer a case in point: dA member LaPurr's journals.

Rarely, there's a LaPurr journal that merely lists links to other websites' copyrighted material. There's nothing wrong with that-- it's worth encouraging. Here's one of those: lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…

The overwhelming majority, however, is cut-and-paste theft of copyrighted material, with no reference to copyright, the copyright holder, or the website from which the material's been stolen.

You can easily prove this to yourself by cut-and-pasting from LaPurr's journals into Google any material that looks like a unique quote. In every case you'll see that the material's been stolen from a website where it's listed as COPYRIGHTED. You'll see piracy in every LaPurr journal that has "overheard" in its title, and most others too.

Examples:
Overheard in New York lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
 comes from www.overheardinnewyork.com/arc…

Clients from Hell lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
comes from clientsfromhell.net/post/73965…

Ponderables lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
comes from grouchyrabbit.com/permalink.ph…

Overheard Everywhere lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
comes from www.overheardeverywhere.com/ar…

First World Problems lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
is stolen from first-world-problems.com/

Overheard: Compliments lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
is stolen from www.overheardeverywhere.com/ar…

Conspiracy Theorists lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
is stolen from www.godlikeproductions.com/for…

Yet More News of the Weird lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
is stolen from www.newsoftheweird.com/archive…

More News of the Weird lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
is stolen from www.newsoftheweird.com/archive…

News of the Weird lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
is stolen from www.newsoftheweird.com/archive…

Dear (Blank) Please (Blank) www.deviantart.com/messages/#v…
is stolen from dearblankpleaseblank.com/perma…

Overheard on the Bus lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
is stolen from www.overheardeverywhere.com/ar…

Overheard at College lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
is stolen from www.overheardeverywhere.com/ar…

When Parents Text lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
is stolen from whenparentstext.com/tag/food

Hell explained by a Chemistry Student lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
could have come from several sources: www.google.com/search?q=the+vo….

Not Always Working: Employees lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
is stolen from notalwayslearning.com/judge-no…

Not Always Romantic: Relationships lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
is stolen from notalwaysromantic.com/?s=cross…

Not Always Related: Family lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
is stolen from notalwaysrelated.com/?s=lesbia…

Not Always Learning: Education lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
is stolen from notalwayslearning.com/?s=texte…

Not Always Right: Customers lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
is stolen from notalwaysright.com/going-banan…

Fundies say the darnedest things lapurr.deviantart.com/journal/…
is stolen from www.fstdt.com/QuoteComment.asp…

...and that's just the theft LaPurr has committed in journals in the first three weeks of 2014.

LaPurr has been doing this copyright infringement for YEARS. dA has been many given DMCA copyright infringement notices from the legal owners of the materials, several years ago.

dA, you're clearly not doing enough. In LaPurr's case, LaPurr knows it's theft, knows it breaks dA terms of service, and yet continues to commit this theft.
Silence is assent, dA. Please take action so that repeat offenders on dA are not given a free pass to commit copyright infringement again...and again... and again.
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So I've been in a wheelchair since January.

It's....not that bad. At least, not that bad compared to crutches. Crutches are wobbly and tiring. Wheelchairs are a lot more relaxing to use, unless there's a staircase or uphill incline.

People have been, for the most part, overly kind and accommodating. Strangers give me a push. Even "standing" in line at a bank, kind people tell me to go to the head of the line as though the head of the line is a handicapped parking spot. ...As though I'm not sitting down while the rest of the people in line are standing. I try to point that out-- that I'm the only one in line who had the foresight to bring a chair.

I'm bummed that a wheelchair is optical birth control: it's a rare person who's attracted to the ...uhh... "Iron Man" look. Other than the OBC, though, I feel like I've been promoted to be everyone's favorite uncle. You've probably seen the same effect on a much grander scale any time a stranger brings a puppy/kitten/baby to the park: strangers gather around, start conversations, and feel far less stand-off-ish (afraid of?) the person with the puppy.

Maybe it's instant empathy, or just the realization that the guy sitting in the iron chair can't steal your wallet & run away. I don't know.

In general, the effect being in a wheelchair has had on me is not depressing. I guess I was emotionally prepared for it... even welcoming it after years of increasing reliance on tiring, wobbly crutches. So...not depressing, no. It's more like an engineering challenge. Every day I'm presented with puzzles like "That's a wheelchair-friendly bathroom? Really? How do I..." and "Why is this rest home for seniors and the disabled located at the end of a long empty road with a hill at the end?"

Every month, I get an idea for a handy improvement for wheelchairs. It's amazing how undeveloped they are... and when someone has developed and marketed an improvement or add-on, it's almost always less complicated than bicycle gears but inexplicably in the 3,000 to 7,000 manufacturer's-suggested-retail-price zone.

Things like cup holders, fold-away tray tables, backpacks that store UNDER the seat, and gears should be basic, not semi-exotic add-ons. Gears like "flip this switch and both wheels will move together in a straight line, even if you have a book in one hand" and "flip that switch and a ratchet gear prevents the chair from moving backward, so going uphill is easier".

A word of explanation: Much of the energy a wheelchair user spends going uphill is energy continually spent preventing the chair from rolling back down. If that part were gone, then going uphill would be reduced to a set of short pushes with the option for lots of easy rest stops in between pushes.

My perspective has changed, of course. Everyone seems tall, even 12-year-olds. Walking looks so....tipsy. 10 yards of sand between the road and the ocean looks like an impossible hurdle. The slightest tilt in a road or sidewalk means I'll have aching shoulders. Trips from bed to bathroom have an added element of risk: "Can I get there in time? If not, what'll I do?" Humanity in general, on an individual basis, seems... a lot nicer.

The doctors disagree about whether the chair's a permanent part of my future. In the meantime, I'm dealing with it one engineering problem at a time.Thank goodness I love puzzles.
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SPOILER ALERT
This essay contains Strong Language, and other words about reproduction, religion, and politricks.
If you don't mind cussin' and adult sexy talk, and you're a liberal Darwinist, you'll enjoy this essay.
Children and other small-minded people should probably stop reading here, if their reading skills allowed them to make it this far.
Kids, Creationists, and Conservatives, go play, pray or prey.

----------

Smart, broad-minded Darwinists, it's up to US to come up with a more accurate and sexier slogan for evolution. Our current slogan, "Survival of the Fittest", isn't a clear evolutionary improvement over Creationists' latest pithy slogan, "God! He started it!" Pith on that.

We need a better bumper sticker.

It's stoopid of us, but whether we accept a theory is greatly affected by the slogan that gets out and dances in front of that theory. It's like deciding the outcome of a football game based on who's got the better cheerleaders, or electing Obama because he looks better in a frilly dress than Hillary Clinton would.

"Survival of the Fittest" is catchy but, pardon the expression, it's not just sexy enough. It leaves out the sex at the heart of the matter: Evolution is based on successfully getting laid, not merely surviving. (In that way, Evolution is a lot like the two or three years you and I spent as College Freshmen.)

Hell, even Tea Partiers know that their survival depends on screwing other people-- they learned that lesson by watching Wall Street bankers. The Occupy Wall Street liberals are only now catching up on that research. Thank goodness they've chosen to occupy the best place to observe the 1% repeatedly screwing with ...well...everything except bears. www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=…

The Wall Street 1% are petrified (in the non-Viagra sense) of bears because Wall Street is deathly afraid of the so-called "bear" economy that's the inevitable outcome of screwing everyone. Ask anyone: Wall Street lives on copius amounts of bull, but dies if it faces a bear. www.investopedia.com/articles/basics/03/100303.asp

I digress.

www.google.com/search?q=puttin… Some great thinkers have suggested "F***ing, putting the 'win' in 'Darwin'!"  but prudes have said that using the F-bomb puts waaaay too MUCH sex into the slogan. It's feast or famine, 1% or 99%. What we really need is something halfway sexy., a slogan for an educated, well fed middle class Darwinist who realizes that for all of humanity to get ahead, we need for ALL share the loving, not just watch as the 1% screw the 99% to death.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_are_t…

Let's look at a few other examples in the wild. Sarah Palin, for example, needs an expensive wardrobe (apparently) www.google.com/search?q=sarah+… and a good slogan to make her look sexy in the public eye. Sarah, you will recall, is the Alaskan most famous for her appearance on nature documentaries while she hunts bears from helicopters. www.grizzlybay.org/SarahPalinI… She's badly in need of a survivable slogan, because right now only survivalists, people who hate bears, and other crazy folk from Wall Street would vote for her.

I blame her weak slogan. Right now Sarah Palin's "Tea Party" political group is using "We Support Sarah Palin, because she scared us into it. It's all that flying around in a helicopter armed with a shotgun and a camera. Who does she think she is, www.google.com/search?q=black+… the CIA? She might accidentally shoot us, friends, like Dick Cheney www.google.com/search?q=dick+c… does." Obviously, this slogan's problematic, because it's too long.

Also, it's only popular with the Tea Party in Alaska and on the unoccupied portions of Wall Street. Sure, they've locked in 1% of the vote, but what about the other 99%? The Tea Party needs a slogan that will appeal to EVERYONE, even the folks who Occupy Wall Street, the impoverished middle and lower classes, and the pinkos in the Castro section of San Francisco. www.google.com/search?q=castro+section+san+francisco

It's a little known fact, by the way, that the Castro section of San Francisco is home to a large indigenous population of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_%28… pink "bears". These bears are in no danger of reproducing out of control-- quite the reverse, actually. Their mating habits preclude Darwin's theory. Anyway their clothing and body fur are what the military calls "OCD", "Optical Contraceptive Devices". San Francisco's "bear" population is an endangered species not only because it lacks a sexy slogan and can't reproduce: it's also under attack by Tea Partiers and other conservatives who don't understand that bears, even ones with dark fur visible under hideous pink wedgie thongs, are a part of the balance of nature.

Maybe San Francisco "bears" need a catchier slogan more than the Tea Partiers do. How about "Bears: We'd be sexier if we had a Brazilian Bikini wax from a hairdresser, to hot-wax-peel our thong area." What do you think? beauty.about.com/od/hairremoval/ht/bikiniwax.htm

I digress.

Hey, it occurs to me that we've just explained the Black Helicopters that follow around paranoid liberals. As Woody Allen says, "You're not being paranoid if they're REALLY out to get you." Black Helicopters must be carrying crazed Starbucks-fed supercaffeinated Tea Partiers with rifles and cameras. Those heavily armed Black Helicopters aren't spying for political gain-- they're just hoping we'll lead them to the bears.

The party is just getting started.

This Tea Party slogan is, at least, better able to survive than its predecessor, "Tea baggers: Showing the lower classes and inferior races what we think of them, one forehead at a time". It's waaay better than their first slogan, "Feed the rich: Eat the poor" although that slogan was both short AND Darwinian. 'T'warn't sexy.

Their slogan is evolving. It's getting shorter and pithier, so it can hold the attention of even small-brained rodents, Republicans, and other reptiles. Tea Party researchers understand these three slow-witted, notoriously selfisish groups are the only places where they might recruit new Tea Party members. Therefore a short witty slogan is essential to the survival of the Tea Party as a species.

In this context, I mean "species" in the sense of a group of inbred animals who, for reasons usually genetic but sometimes financial or moral, can't successfully produce healthy fertile offspring by screwing other animals from outside their species. www.muttonbone.com/

It's not for lack of trying. For more information, consult Prof. H. R. H. Hoofenmaut's seminal survey, "Stay away from my sheep: a survey of mating rituals amongst the rural reactionaries." Be sure to read appendix G, with its short recommendation about barbed wire and inflatable sheep dolls.

I've heard that the Tea Party's next slogan will really pith people off: "Tea Party: It's where the Mad Hatters gather in Wonderland!" sabian.org/alice_in_wonderland…

Their slogan clearly needs to evolve. Tea Partiers, Creationists, and other small-minded dinosaurs too. www.google.com/search?q=evolut… If they don't evolve, they're surely going to win The Darwin Award by killing us all. www.darwinawards.com/

I think I have the perfect slogan to express the Tea Party's social Darwinist goals: "We want to screw you! Bring back the Bush!" As everyone knows, bush is essential for screwing successfully, Remember the so-called "Bush baby" years 2000 - 2008 and decades ago in the late 1980s time of Big Daddy Bush. Back then, the reptile, republican, and rodent populations flourished by screwing anything they could hold down while hiding behind a Bush.

That's enough writing about the small-minded. Instead read about higher life forms like flatworms, pond scum, educated folk, biologists, doctors, and all the other species that religious conservatives religiously associate with leeches.

So, how can we inject sex back into Darwin's theory of evolution? "Survival of the Fittest", a phrase coined in the Puritanical era of late 1800s England, robs the theory of its strong underlying link to sex and babymaking.

How about "Survival of the F.I.L.F. ...and M.I.LF."?

A MILF, of course, is a M-other I-'d L-ove to, uh, F-iretruck with a long hard ladder. A FILF is, of course, a Father who's gonna get lucky in the Darwinian way.

Good luck with evolving the slogan.

Meanwhile, I've got to go take a cold shower & clean up. I feel FILFy.

I digress.
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I think too often we're tempted to dismiss the power of humor, especially of cartoonists.

Sure, wars and fists and laws and cops have a big impact, but what those things do with stern-ness humor can often do too. Humor disarms us, and happily invites us to share a point of view and a punchline. Humor can even *gasp* unexpectedly affect things as serious as science.

Let's start with politics, and place it firmly in the distant past so that we don't offend anyone reading this journal today.

THOMAS NAST, in the mid- to late 1800s, was a well-known political cartoonist. After a lot of compelling work about slavery and the Civil War, he turned his attention to "Boss Tweed", the then-mayor of New York City and a thorough scoundrel. Tweed was at teh heart of a scandal in which police questioned what Tweed's group had done to make 200 MILLION dollars of taxpayers' money disappear-- and that was 1860s dollars!

For three years starting in 1968, Nast attacked Tweed in Harper's Weekly and The New York Times. Here's the best part: After Tweed was jailed, Tweed "escaped from jail and fled to Spain in 1876. He was recognized and arrested by a customs official who did not read English but had seen Nast's Harper's Weekly caricatures of Tweed."

Sources: cartoons.osu.edu/nast/bio.htm www2.truman.edu/parker/researc…

Next, look at science.

Would you believe that Gary Larson, the author of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_… "The Farside" one-frame cartoons, is responsible for en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomiz… the name of a dinosaur's tail? Think of the big rows of spikes on a images.google.co.th/images?q=s… stegosaur's en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tha… tail. Then read en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tha… the Farside cartoon, and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomiz… this article.

Poor Gary Larson. Although his cartoon led to the naming of a dinosaur's tail-- how cool!!-- Gary Larson himself was...ummm... "honored" in the biology community by having a variety of sucking louse named after him. Larson felt honored, but lamented that noone had named a species of swan after him.

Sources: www.evilmadscientist.com/artic… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigiph…

Have you ever read Bill Watterson's www.google.co.th/search?q="calvin+and+hobbes" "Calvin and Hobbes", a cartoon strip starring a small boy and his tiger pal? That comic strip is responsible for a growing trend to give a new, more exciting name to "The Big Bang" theory of the creation of the universe. On Sunday, June 21, 1992 the cartoonist complained through his characters that "The Big Bang" was a boring name, and suggested "The Horrendous Space Kablooie" as an alternative. The name got an enthusiastic informal following among scientists, who often abbreviate it "the HSK". The name is now even used in some textbooks and scientific papers.

Sources: www.fact-index.com/h/ho/horren… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_a…
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My friend signs off her www.genevacsd.org/North.cfm?su… web page like this:

-------

My philosophy:
Life should not be a journey to the grave
with the intention of arriving safely in an
attractive and well preserved body,
but rather to skid in sideways, Unified Nations
Medal of Honor in one hand, Kryptonian Laser
Beam of Kindness & Villain Detector in the
other, body thoroughly used up, totally
worn out and screaming
'WOO HOO What a ride!'

-------
Wow. That short mission statement makes me want to stand on a chair and applaud.

Or... I would, if I hadn't used up so many of my moving parts already. I've always believed that like a good amusement park ride, adventure has a price of admission. The only difference is that with real adventure, you pay the price at some random time during the adventure. So, I've had a wild life, scuba diving with sharks, motorbiking around Japan, spelunking and horseriding in El Paso. I've also paid with roughly 18 bone breaks over the years, and three limbs that don't move as freely as they used to.

I'd always imagined that life would end abruptly during one of these adventures-- that I'd "pay the ultimate price" and leave a good-looking fully functional corpse. Now I know that my fate is more like the fate of an old concrete patio: to slowly break up into smaller pieces. ;)

There are three things that make the future still wonderful:
1) the mission statement quoted above,
2) all the adventures I can still have..and could have even if I were superglued to a wheelchair for the last decades of my life,
and 3) the low cost and restorative power of knee replacement surgery. Woo-hoo!!! I'm gonna save my money for buying another ticket on this ride.
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Featured

dA Management, Stop Routine Copyright Abuse! by sethness, journal

Adjusting to Life in a Wheelchair by sethness, journal

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