Documents can be replaced. They get lost, stolen, or destroyed all the time. You can explain to a clerk that your documents were stolen - technically the truth since they’re withheld from you without your consent - and if they press the issue you can explain that your abusive parents won’t give you access to them and you cannot ask them for access.

Think about how you frame the information - don’t say “my parents have them and won’t let me access them” because that sounds potentially benign to a bored clerk just trying to get through the day and not really paying attention. Say, “they were stolen by my abusive parents who I no longer live with,” since that front-loads the problem and frames you as the victim, rather than as someone’s child. If you can have a friend with you when you go to get your documents that can help. You haven’t said how old you are that I saw, so I’m assuming you’re still a teen, but even if you’re a young adult this can still matter. Okay, I see you said you’re an adult.

In an ideal world it shouldn’t make a difference, but the way you present what is technically the same information really does matter in getting bureaucrats to help you properly. They are people, and they don’t just follow rigid rules, they will be swayed by their emotions and learning to navigate that is a big part of getting the system to work for you.

Also documents like that usually have serial numbers. That’s so if they are stolen, they can be registered as invalid, so the thief can’t use them to steal your identity. So whatever is in the safe can be made worthless if you get that done. Getting replacements should automatically invalidate the old ones but not every system works the same, so double-check that the old copies will be invalidated.

It depends a little bit on where you are but in general I wouldn’t trust the cops to be helpful, unless you somehow know for a fact that they will help and not just return you to your family. I hate to say that but they fundamentally exist to protect property and a lot of them accept society’s logic that children are the property of their parents, and if you’re striking out on your own it’s important for you to learn that cops aren’t your frends. People like your dad & brother become cops specifically because it gives them power over others.

It’s also likely your parents will simply lie and try to convince the cops that you should be back with them. Not to say they will be successful, but once you’re away from the home I would absolutely try to eliminate any contact you make after that. I don’t want to scare you too much, but also these people have a pattern. They usually know how to talk to cops, since they tend to talk the same language. Your parents likely keep the documents away from you in order to keep you controlled, so they will know that this is an opportunity for them to reel you back in. I wouldn’t give them the chance.

I would look up teen shelters, and if you can find a group of people who you believe have your interests at heart then you can ask them for help. All of this will be a lot easier if you can find allies. If you can find any mutual aid organisations near you - “food not bombs” is a common name to look for - they may know other orgs willing & able to help, or they may just have people who are willing themselves.

Oof, yeah, those vibes are rancid. The website is covered in shady looking links and they want you to download an exe, which you don’t need for a simple registry edit which can be done with a text file.

This link shows you how to make the .reg file: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-take-ownership-files-using-right-click-context-menu-windows-10

For my money that’s way easier than doing it manually through the registry editor yourself, and you can inspect the code to see what it’s doing.

If you want to see the manual steps to take ownership without the registry entry, it looks like this: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-take-ownership-files-and-folders-windows-10

If that isn’t a dark pattern then I don’t know what is. They do not want you to have control over your machine, at all.

The way I do it is I have a script that adds an entry in file explorer called “Take Ownership”. I don’t have to use it often but when I do it’s a life saver, and it doesn’t blanket take ownership of the whole disk.

Obviously an elevated super user like linux has would be much more secure, but it’s windows, they’re not interested in security if it isn’t about their share price.

I’m not sure exactly why but I can’t think of anything after then that properly enriches my life.

Was that around the time you moved out of home?

We need to implement tarpits: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/ai-haters-build-tarpits-to-trap-and-trick-ai-scrapers-that-ignore-robots-txt/

There are examples yes, Dr Fatima on youtube talks a lot about the philosophy of science and how it’s not such a rigid, prescriptive process as a lot of people - including scientists - seem to think.

When Pseudoscience Beat Science: Three Stories About Knowing Things

That video has three stories of phenomena that were unknown to western science until ancestral knowledge revealed them. The first two you could argue are just traditionally acquired knowledge that has gained a veneer of supernatural language, but “voodoo death” is literally named after the fact that a voodoo curse can kill someone.

I’d reccommend her whole channel if this stuff interests you. Particularly Gravity is a Social Construct, and How Galileo Broke the Scientific Method.

Edit: the downvotes on this with absolutely no explanation of what’s wrong are a perfect example of why science struggles with these concepts. Anything that doesn’t immediately fit the schema of what western respectable rational people expect gets dismissed out of hand.

I know by making this edit I’m inviting the most incurious assholes to mansplain to me why I’m wrong, but maybe someone will actually engage with the points.

Yup, Behind the Bastards did an excellent two parter on forensic science in general:

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-the-bastards-of-forensic-170035753/ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-two-the-bastards-of-forensic-170702749/

They make a good point that real science is involved, but by the time it makes it into the police’s hands it’s mutated into essentially a mechanism to manufacture convictions. Grifters get hold of the science, and cops are like the perfect marks, because they’re just primed for anything that will confirm their existing biases, plus they’ve got massive state budgets to play with, and they’ll happily give the grifters legitimacy.

It would be nice if you could post something where we can examine the source. (EDIT: the link has been changed since I wrote this)

I found this article: https://www.techspot.com/news/108720-hidden-fingerprints-inside-3d-printed-ghost-guns.html

There they say that it’s not yet ready to be used in evidence, but the problem with that is that most forensic “science” is generally misapplied and nowhere near as conclusive as the police want us to think. They can usually massage the results to tell a jury what they want to be true. That would be my concern with this kind of technique.

Also, if you’re going to the trouble of making a 3d printed ghost gun that will be used in a crime, you could always hide the toolmarks with a sander. You could also treat the surface with resin which would make the markings practically unrecoverable. I’ve started doing both of these for my prints and I love the results just for the aesthetics, so it’s not such a stretch to imagine a gunsmith doing the same.

It’s also the smallest community unit that we can reasonably be broken up into whilst still reproducing labourers for the economy.

The more society is ground down and split apart the less we can help one another out of solidarity, and the more we have to spend on housing, transport, and every other appliance that needs to be duplicated for each separate dwelling, and the more dependent we are on money, capital and the state to provide for our needs. The lonelier we are, the more profitable we are and the less power we have.

You could argue that a lot of this was just a gradual evolution of society into a form that suits the ruling class, but also neoliberalism was a deliberate project to bring this about. Thatcher knew what she was doing when she said, “There is no such thing as society, there are individual men and women and there are families.”

I know right, people hold elaborate ceremonies that cost many thousands of dollars and invite all their family and friends for sometimes a week at a time just to announce, “Hey everybody, we’re fucking!” They even get small children to participate in these shameless sex rituals, they should all be locked up for child abuse.

Ban marriage.

“We’ll take our ball and go home, and you’ll all miss out on our fabulous AI products!”

“No. Wait. Don’t.”

Thanks, I’ve wanted to do this for ages, but I got this current phone before I knew about grapheneos and the compatibility issue. Now all I need is to fully switch my main email and I’ll be significantly de-googled.

I was writing a comment that my device is unsupported and all the supported pixel phones are flagship priced. Then I decided to check my work and look it up.

Long story short I have a refurbished pixel 6 on the way, it was cheaper than my current phone was.

“We are legion.”

I’m just perusing my old comments and came across this, 7 months later. This is an amazing article, thank you.

Facebook has had a strategy for a long time of monopolising the internet of countries that previously had very little internet. They essentially subsidise internet infrastructure and make that subsidy dependent on facebook being a central part of the network.

So I’m not surprised to hear this. They obviously have found ways to inveigle themselves into key infrastructure in lots of places, even if they couldn’t build it in from the ground up.

They are obviously not in a reasoning place. I wouldn’t try logic, but they are susceptible to emotional manipulation. That’s how they fell for fascist propaganda in the first place. I would go for emotional truth.

You have to judge if you’re safe to do this, but the next time they’re screaming about their absurd conspiracies, I would get a really sad look on my face, make direct eye contact, shake my head and say, “You’re so full of hate, and it’s really sad.” Just go full sincerity and show them how you see them.

You can even set them up for it. Next time you try telling them some fact that they’re going to have this hateful response to, you can have this in your back pocket. You start with a simple fact, they respond with hate, you reply by telling them they’re being hateful.

This is a modification of this strategy: https://youtu.be/tZzwO2B9b64

Basically, don’t waste time arguing with fascists, just point out that they’re being assholes.

Now, I say you need to judge how safe you feel doing this, because you might be surprised how ballistic they go. People stuck in abusive behaviour patterns hate nothing more than having that behaviour simply described to them. But when they do lose their shit, you can just describe it again.

Sometimes they will just short-circuit and try to ignore you, or chastise you for speaking out of turn. The authoritarian personality is deeply connected to authoritarian parenting attitudes. Just persist over time, and maybe they will notice that they can’t stop you from reflecting their ugly selves back at them.

I don’t know how old you are, how physically big you are, how prone they are to serious outbursts, but again, pay attention to your body and how much you’re feeling your flight instinct. Only if you feel safe.

I do this with my parents sometimes. Like if my mum is fussing over my kids in some way that I think is invasive, - this was a sore point in my upbringing, she has no filter and no boundaries - I don’t engage on the facts of what she’s saying. I don’t tell her, “That tiny red spot you’ve noticed isn’t a big problem,” because that’s also being invasive and speaking on their behalf. I say “People don’t like to be scrutinised like that. If that’s a real problem they can tell us.”

It’s honestly astonishing how fast this resolves some situations. That might have been a perennial argument about some fussy detail of my child’s appearance, all the time adding to the boundary-crossing scrutiny they experience, but shutting it down by pointing out her behaviour really makes her stop, and it communicates to my kids that they don’t have to put up with it. It teaches them that they have autonomy.

It’s taken many years of demonstrating to her that I won’t be pushed around or intimidated for me to get to this point though. It’s not an easy road, and often the way to know the tactic is working is by watching how unpleasant someone gets when you do it, at least at first.

Again: only if you feel safe.

Honestly less frantic gameplay sounds good to me, I got sick of the “oh god they’re after me now I fell oh well try again” parts of the gameplay. I might take a look. Thanks!

I played the first game and thought it was okay but not great. What were the changes? Maybe they’ll suit me since I’m not so attached to the original.

The argument could be made that because the image generator is essentially a regurgitator with no artistic interpretation, there is no transformative artistic value in it. It’s like applying a filter with extra steps.

Also the generators charge for access, so they are profiting off of the IP. That’s quite different to making something for personal use or releasing it for free.