pptanuki | Reading

Monday was Wolfie's birthday so we decided to book the day off and have a three-day weekend. The main motivation here was that we were going to go on a Beer Cruise as part of Berlin Beer Week and I thought they were running them on Saturdays and Sundays. As it turned out, they're running them on Fridays and Saturdays (both last weekend and this coming one) and so the Monday recovery day we had initially booked off work turned out to be redundant. However, with it being 28C and Wolfie's actual birthday, we thought we might as well do something, even if, unlike last year, this year's celebration wasn't a milestone one. Rarely, I also hadn't bought him a present either as he's avoiding alcohol right now due to his mobility issues. The last thing I wanted to do was aggravate that with my usual bottle of whisky.

As luck would have it, our friend Raw Dog was staying in Berlin for a few days after Folsom. He dropped me a message on Saturday while at the fair and although we chatted briefly, he wanted to meet for longer. I wanted Sunday to be a chill day, but as we were off Monday, it afforded us the opportunity to meet a friend and go out for a meal. Qualgeist was also an option, but Wolfie wanted something simple (I think this maybe where Raw Dog wanted to go as he kept asking whether he'd need to change). So, after doing my secondary freelance gig, we headed into town at around 5pm.

We had arranged to meet at the Brewdog in Friedrichshain as this was close to the Stasi Museum, which Raw Dog was looking around. When we got there, we grabbed Wolfie's free birthday beer (and one for me) and opted to sit on one of the outside tables overlooking the busy interchange. There are two towers here, of high imposing Soviet design, so it wasn't just a case of watching traffic and people watching was fun too. Raw Dog showed up about 20 minutes later and grabbed a drink, after which the bar randomly closed for some reason. This was somewhat annoying, particularly as we weren't allowed to get an additional half, but this just spurred us to move on.

As Raw Dog hadn't seen much of the city before, we combined drinking with sightseeing, taking him to the nearby East Side Gallery and walking down the Spree with beers in hand. After this, we showed him the sights of Alexanderplatz, including the Weltzeituhr, TV Tower, Rotes Rathaus and Nikolai Viertel. He needed a pee, so we also called off at the ropy gay bar underneath the bridge at Alexanderplatz, our only previous visit being with Stray about 10 years ago. This is a Raucherlokal and I'm not a fan of smoky pubs, but the ambience was decent and it was a good place for a pee. After this and our sightseeing, we went to the Burgermeister around the corner, where Raw Dog fell in love with their cheese sauce.

It was drinking all the way after this, calling at Mikkeller and the Brewdog on Ackerstrasse before chaperoning Raw Dog back to Zoologischer Garten, where he was staying in a hotel with two friends who are very much in the fucking each other senseless stage of the relationship. It was a really fun night though and a great opportunity to catch up with a good friend. Not being able to see him was one of the main drawbacks of not attending Eurofurence this year, but now that we have, I do have much less FOMO seeing everyone making their way there. Wolfie also had a really good birthday and kept saying how much he enjoyed chilling with friends. It was also quite cheap as Raw Dog end up paying for a lot of it, which was appreciated.

Tuesday was going to be a similar day, with my writing friend Stripe in Berlin as part of a two-week long tour around many Central European cities. I had a dentist appointment at 4:30pm so I said I'd meet up afterwards, but he texted me shortly beforehand saying he wasn't feeling it. This was a shame, but it was no real inconvenience. My dentist appointment was very fast though - it was a routine check-up following the work I'd had done earlier in the Summer - but I thought they were going to bollock me for some more tartar on my bottom tooth. They didn't in the end, cleaning it diligently, so I was in and out of the place in about 15 minutes. This left me in a dilemma as I'd intended to go out east to a beer launch as part of Berlin Beer Week. This was the launch of a new beer by the first Arabic Craft Beer project in Berlin, but with Wolfie working from home rather than the office, and nearly an hour of travel to get there, we decided to bail. This was a shame as I am sure it would have been good, but with the dentist finishing way earlier than anticipated and my friend not meeting up, we thought it best to save money instead. There are loads of other good events as part of Berlin Beer Week this week, with things ramping up as the week progresses, so we thought we'd save ourselves for those instead. Consequently, tonight has been a standard night, although I have now booked some cheap flights for a trip back to the UK for my birthday in November. This should encompass both the LeedsFurs meet and Animalz in Manchester, so should be fun.

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Per the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

lupestripe

Having spent the previous nine days in a highly apprehensive state concerning Folsom weekend, it was upsetting to have many of those fears confirmed. The frustrating part in this regard was that on Friday, I actually had a good time. We went with a couple of friends to sinberlin at their request and we thought it was worth checking out. This is a rope bondage club we hadn't heard of before, and thought it would be a good opportunity to check a new place out. I thought we were going to get there early - it opened at 7:30pm - but with our group not wanting to get there until 9pm, in the end, Wolfie came back home and we went out later. By the time we got there, it was 10:30pm and the party was in full swing. We got a heads-up on the rules and were allowed to change. It was great being in rubber again, but boy was it hot, with my crotch basically a puddle. There was some interesting rope bondage going on and we got chatting to a nice Canadian who ended up being locked inside a giant metal orb. We didn't intend on doing any play though and the beer prices were a mite strong, at €6 a bottle. Considering we had paid €25 entry for the event too, our conclusion was that this isn't really a viable alternative for Qualgeist, despite it being about half an hour nearer to us. I think the drinks prices were also putting our friends off and we ended up leaving after about two hours, opting to go over to Muted Horn for a few drinks instead. This was a nice way to end the evening, sitting outside in their porch area with some good drinks, and it was good to discover that the barman was Swedish, like one of our party. In the end, we ended up coming back home at about 4am, far later than I had anticipated. I also had to go commando as I wasn't going to wear rubber to the craft beer bar, which was an odd experience.

Saturday was the Folsom Street Fair and I was intending to get down earlier than when I did. However, the local Fureigners group was poor at arranging things and it seemed to be a case of 'turn up and you'll find someone' which considering how rammed it usually is down there, seemed hopeful to me. What was complicating things was Wolfie's foot, which had gotten better, but Friday night's travails had aggravated it. In the end, I got down to the final hour and a half of the street fair and hung around with a few locals, along with the group from Friday night. I also met up with a cool guy from Chorley called Oscar, who just happened to be visiting Berlin for the weekend and had stumbled across Folsom. He was very tempted to go Animalz and Jamie had even transferred one of his tickets to him, but in the end, in the queue, he decided to go back to his accommodation all the way out in Spindelfeld. Meanwhile, I spent 90 minutes just chatting to everyone and having a beer, not once going into the fair to explore. In a way this was a shame, but this was the fifth year of me doing it and it's largely the same as always, so I didn't feel like I was missing out.

Animalz was next and we joined the rather long queue at around 10pm. With Oscar needing a pee, he headed off, while Spooky headed over to the supermarket to pick up some bottles of beer for us to drink while we waited. The queue lasted about half an hour and soon we were inside. The Metropol is a great venue - we had seen Placebo here at an intimate gig in March 2022 - and the acoustics worked for a dance event like Animalz. It was great seeing body shapes of all different sizes - one of my main fears going into the event - and the evening started well. The first set of music was something I quite liked, but it did go downhill from there. Furthermore, I learned that Wolfie wouldn't be coming out after all as he had fallen asleep. This was frustrating as I get overwhelmed at these sorts of thing and really needed a wingman. It was great hanging around with the few friends I had there, but many were in couples and I felt something of a spare part. It was also a little upsetting seeing my friends being approached for sexy fun times, but me largely being ignored. The key to all these things is confidence I guess and that's one of the things I don't have, particularly in a sexual context. I really wish I did - kink I'm perfectly happy with, but I don't know how to make a move, or flirt, or indeed do anything spontaneous like that. Whether people on the dance floor or in the dark rooms knew each other and it looked like they had just pulled or not, I'm unsure, but ultimately I started to feel like a fish out of water. What wasn't helping was the large queues at the bar, which meant I was buying two bottles at a time. No real issue, but it did mean I was using beer to supplement my nerves and this just furthered my descent. I had a good look around the venue and to be fair, it was thinning out by the time I left at 2:30am, but there was still over two hours to go. Still, I was there for four hours all told which wasn't too bad. Going back home alone in full dog suit was quite interesting, and I got accosted by some Polish people at Bismarkstrasse, but most people largely left me alone. Still, I was racked by disappointment and self-doubt, unloading it on Wolfie once I got home. I then had a very negative depressive episode from which I haven't yet recovered.

Confidence is a weird thing and Spooky was quite surprised when I told him on Tuesday about my lack of self-belief. This is why I had never been to all the other clubs he listed on Saturday too (Lab, KitKat etc.). We were out at BRLO for a few drinks with Notefox, who didn't particularly enjoy Spooky's smoking, but had a good time nonetheless. He did waltz in nearly 45 minutes late though due to a printing issue. It was a fun night though, although Wolfie didn't make it due to his feet issues again. I'm really enjoying the increased social time we're having in Berlin right now and I hope it continues, despite it being a mite more spendy than usual. Anyway, on Tuesday, I ended up having three beers before going home, with Notefox buying me a bottle for the train. He wasn't going to Folsom this weekend as it wasn't his thing and maybe I should think the same way. I bumped into my friend Raw Dog at Animalz too and he admitted the clubbing wasn't his thing either, leaving shortly after seeking me out at around 11pm. He had dropped me a message as I was going to Folsom asking if I could ring him, and I said I was on my way to Folsom so could it wait. He told me he was there, which was great to hear, as not seeing him was one of my main negatives about not being at Eurofurence this year. We have arranged to meet up later today, but what he said about Animalz has resonated with me. While I'd love to fit in and be part of the (furry and gay) mainstream, maybe, like with everything else, I'm not. I have a loving partner, really good friends and close playmates too. That's probably all I need. Maybe I should accept certain things aren't for me and move on. But then I do fear missing out too.

denise posting in

dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

denise posting in

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.

lupestripe

It's been a difficult week for mental health, particularly from Wednesday, which has seen some incredibly dark spells. I can't really put my finger on why, there certainly isn't a specific trigger, but I think it may be apprehension over Folsom this weekend. My poor body image does not help, nor does seeing loads of people going to events where I feel somewhat left out. I know I can't do everything, but it would be nice if someone took me under their wing. I guess I'm also a little frustrated that so many events are centered around clubbing and cruising, two things I don't really enjoy. However, when it comes to cruising in particular, it is my lack of body confidence that holds me back and this makes me feel horrible.

This is not to say I won't have a good time. I have quite a few friends going, while on Friday we went to the English-language BDSM munch in Volksbar, near Alexanderplatz. We were going to go two weeks ago, but we bottled out, largely because of my continuing fatigue. We were very close to doing so again, but I messaged one of the organisers mid-afternoon and she kindly guided us through. We couldn't stay long as I had my monthly writing group at 11:30pm, but we did go for two drinks. I'm really glad we did, as we got to meet a few nice people, and hopefully we can start meeting more over the coming weeks. Friday is a good day as I feel better about drinking, while Wolfie can call in on his way home from the office. Furthermore, if we have a strict two pints, we can still have the rest of the evening. The fact it's not in a craft beer bar may make this easier, so I am optimistic.

Wolfie went to the doctors on Monday for his recent gout and muscle issues, and received tablets to try and address the problem. They certainly seem to be working, as he is definitely more mobile up and down stairs, while he was out on Friday evening and some of Saturday too. On Saturday, I needed his help going to a post filiale after my crate of beer was dropped off there, and we also walked down to the local Warhammer store too. I had been pushing him to do this for four years and now he has bought a new Space Wolves set, it seemed like a good choice. They were just closing up, as they were in the final half hour of the day, but the man there was really friendly. He was wearing a Pingu t-shirt with the phrase Slipnoot Noot on it. Anyway, Wolfie bought some paint and was told about their store's birthday party in two weeks' time, where he can get more discounts and goodies. This includes metal dice for €220. He spent much of today painting one of his little men and he seemed happy for it. On the way back, I also showed him under the building south of the church. This now has the foundations of old Spandau on display, with some of the brickwork dating back to 1230. Tours are offered twice weekly, but you can see it all through the windows, with handy signs explaining the early history of the town. It was all rather fascinating and I'm glad I stumbled across it on one of my walks earlier in the week.

Today was a writing day. It was going to be a reading day, but the sunny weather predicted by the weather foreskin didn't arrive. It is a struggle right now and I am really low on confidence following so many rejections, but I'm trying to keep going. Distractions are proving difficult to ignore though and I should probably just get off social media. The general state of everything right now is really depressing me and things seem to be getting worse by the day.

We are heading out to see Spooky and Notefox this coming Tuesday, having seen the latter Tuesday last too. BRLO will likely be our venue again after a fantastic evening on the 12th. Wolfie is trying to cut down on alcohol now due to his leg and feet issues so may not be there, but it is odd that after such a long time of feeling isolated here, so much of our social life is starting to come together. I didn't go to the Fureigners Meet on Thursday - booking these things three weeks in advance is a little off-putting - but with a member of the Furry Writers' Guild moving to the city next month, there may be even more chance of socialising going forward. It's early days and we'll see how it goes, but I am feeling optimistic. I just hope I can find some self-worth from somewhere. I wrote to some more ADHD clinics on Saturday with the hope of getting an appointment, so hopefully one will come good. As in Britain, there seems to be few options, but I need to get this sorted now. I fear I'm reaching breaking point.