binches:

gayllotine:

i think the hip new trans thing to do should be choosing as inconvenient a name as possible. like, you have a sibling of the same gender? choose their name. choose ur parent’s name. choose ur pet’s name. choose ur best friend’s name. make ur name a common noun (that isn’t already a name like lane is). call urself “chair.” open the dictionary to a random page and point, now That’s ur name. have a different name for each day of the week

endearingsalt:

conan-doyles-carnations:

Love being brutally called out by the British Library

Oh my gosh I went here a few days ago do you guys want to see the whole sign

lynati:

mikkeneko:

pandagnomeium:

blad-the-inhaler:

propinquitous:

gitwrecked:

viudanegraaa:

viudanegraaa:

Why are people still up in arms about AO3 needing donations to run? Their budget is publicly available. You can go onto the website, right now, and read it. If you donate more than a certain amount (pretty sure it’s more than $10), you can vote in their elections, because you’re considered a member, and that’s how memberships work.

It’s a free site to use, but not to run or to maintain, especially not with all these net neutrality battles.

Here’s a list of the OTW’s projects.

Here’s its Terms of Service.

Y’all gotta understand that it’s not just fanworks, there’s a lot more that goes into archiving.

Signal boosting this because it’s important af. OTW is a nonprofit organization, specifically a public charity as classified by the US tax code. That means they file a 990 tax report each year that lets you see all of their finances – what they’re spending money on, where their money comes from, etc. You can see their 2016 990 here if you’re so inclined.

And if you’re not sure about how OTW is using their donations? Ask questions. Get involved. Even if you’re not comfortable with or not in a position to donate, there are lots of opportunities to give your time; it’s an all-volunteer organization that recruits regularly. I know for a fact that I get more value out of what OTW provides than most, if not all, my other paid services combined, so $10 to be a member is more than worth it.

ao3 is routinely used as an example of an excellent digital archive in library and information schools – they’re not just a fansite; they’re held in high regard by people across the industry. they run initiatives to preserve old fansites and groups, in addition to the day to day work of hosting all of our work ad-free to ensure maximum creative freedom. ao3 is not just a place to post your fic; it catalogues and preserves our history and culture.

$130,000 a year though?

Dude, I don’t know if anyone’s gotten to you yet, but as someone who used to work for a server hosting company, that is NOT a lot of money. It feels like it, especially if you’re a part-time, paid-by-the-hour employee, but when it comes to tech services, that’s incredibly cheap. With the amount of content that AO3 has to host, they’re not dealing with one or two $1000 rackmount servers from Newegg.

Their facilities are going to look closer to this:

Or if they have nice ones, they may have a shelf of these:

They spend about $102,000 a year for server space, I’m rounding down to make the math a little nicer. That’s about $8,500 per month. That’s really, really not a lot.

Now, to be fair, I was on the documentation side of things and mostly wrote instructions on how to perform operations on servers, so I don’t actually know how many servers AO3 needs to house all their data. I also don’t know the exact volume of data AO3 has to handle, but $8,500 a month sounds like an entirely reasonable amount based on what I do know.

I already reblogged a different version of this post, but reblogging this one for some reference to how many server resources go into a project like this. Lots.

Given the sheer tonnage of material they host, I’m surprised their server budget is *only* $8,500 a month.

romephantom:

So no one told you life was gonna be this way *Phantom of the Opera overture*

that-weirdo-nextdoor:

colonelshootingstar:

What if Aliens think Humans look like pets?

Human: *is minding his own business, filing reports and reading documents at his desk*

Alien: Look at him, doin’ a work. What a good boy. Precious hooman. We don’t deserve them.

Human: You do realize your damn translator is on, right? I can hear and understand exactly what you’re saying. We may be “cute” to your species, but don’t patronize me. I let it slide for god knows how long-

Alien: *runs their “fingers” through his hair, messing up the carefully combed over “floof”* soft hooman, a n g e r y boy

Human: I dropped out of college and went through Martian boot camp for this.

This is just too funny not to reblog.