While it’s true that mandatory identity verification will inevitably be leaked on a massive scale, the thing you need to understand when framing these arguments is that a lot of the folks in favour of such measures don’t see that as a bad thing. Full de-anonymisation of the Internet is their explicit goal. Like, the actual objective here is for everyone to have a public record of everything they say and do – online or otherwise – linked to their government ID. The universal panopticon is the good ending as far as these people are concerned.
So what’s the better way to frame these arguments? Is there one?
If your aim is to persuade, you can’t just stop at “your identity and activities will be made public”. A lot of the people you’re trying to convince don’t see that as bad in and of itself, and as far as they’re concerned, the fact that you do means you’ve got something you hide. You need to take it past “your identity and activities will be made public” and hit specific, actionable negative consequences of that disclosure.
Negative consequences such as, for example, identity theft going through the roof
-Identity Theft through the roof
-Kids stealing their [parent/older sibling/aunt/uncle/grandparent/babysitter]’s ID to access inappropriate content online
-Stalker’s Paradise!
-Bullies doxxing their targets just got WAY EASIER
-Burglers & Robbers want to know when YOU’VE been planning a vacation! Thanks to Everything You Do Online, including “researching beaches & tourist spots” and “purchasing plane-tickets” being PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE, these nefarious thieves KNOW that they can rob and/or vandalize your house when you’re out of town!
-Your Boss can now monitor if you’ve been searching online for other job-opportunities, researching employment-laws, or googling “how to start a union.” Your Boss can punish you for googling things.
I watched Leverage for the first time way too young, and a lot of things went over my head. I just rewatched “The Future Job” from Leverage and something about this scene just hit me.
“The idea that American health insurance companies are using AI to analyze and adjudicate claims for approval or denial sounds terrifying, but one North Carolinian is using AI to fight back.
When Raleigh resident Neal Shah had a claim denied for his wife’s chemotherapy drugs, he thought it was rare, that he was the only one, that it was just bad luck.
Litigating his case on phone calls that lasted for hours changed the husband and father, and he set about creating a sophisticated app that uses artificial intelligence to compare claims denial forms against health insurance contracts, before automatically drafting an appeal letter.
“For a doctor to write this, it’s not rocket science, but it still takes hours,” Shah told ABC News 11, adding that a well-written appeal letter, sent in immediately, can sometimes get denials reversed within days or weeks, but most people either don’t know they can appeal, or don’t know on what grounds they can appeal.
In fact, according to Shah’s research, 850 million claims denials occur every year, and less than 1% are ever appealed.
That’s where Counterforce Health comes in, a startup that’s created a free-to-use app for claims denials.
It’s all the more critical a service now that health insurance companies, already armed with statewide government-protected pseudo monopolies and duopolies, are using AI to deny claims within seconds of them being filed.
“Before, you used to have a reason you would deny it, and you used to have a doctor review or a nurse review it, but once AI rolled out, they could just have AI deny it,” Shah explained.
For Counterforce Health, Shah brought onboard Riyaa Jadhav, a Jill of all trades who has helped grow and expand the undertaking through her experience in both the business world and working alongside patients at Johns Hopkins University Hospital.
Together, they’ve built Counterforce to the point where it boasts a 70% success rate in appealing claims.
Thousands have already logged on; many going on to use the service.
“Sometimes when enough people get loud, enough people put pressure, then I think all of a sudden society wakes up, so I really feel like it’s really about to click,” Shah said.
-via Good News Network, August 5, 2025
Here’s the link to this organization, by the way. According to their numbers, less than 1% of denials in the US are appealed, but 75% of appeals are approved. This could do so much good.
Our sister publication’s new issue is a fantastic story by Matthew Wolfe about America’s first Black private eye. Thanks to the Atavist, as always, for allowing us to share an excerpt with Longreads readers.
Though Bruseaux has since been neglected by history, he was once a household name in the Black community. But as he prepared to take on the Granady case, the biggest of his career, his public persona revealed only part of his story. He had become wealthy and famous by unearthing other people’s secrets, but the man known as Sheridan Bruseaux was keeping a few of his own.
A Quebec man says he is outraged after the U.S. Coast Guard accused him of fishing in American waters and then arrested him before putting him in a jail cell for nearly two hours.
Edouard Lallemand, 60, said he nearly drowned during the ordeal last Sunday afternoon after the Coast Guard’s boat “pushed” his boat, causing it to capsize.
Days after the incident, he’s still shaken up.
“I’m never going to be the same,” he told CTV News.
Seconding that Americans should read and seek out foreign news. Seriously. The BBC, the CBC, the Guardian app, GroundNews, whatever. Stop relying on fucking…. the NYT or MSNBC or whatever y'all are watching.
(to say nothing of the incredible anger amongst Canadians for the annexation threats and tariffs attempting to create economic pressure to capitulate to the orange one’s bullshit, let alone stories like what happened to the man in the story linked above. We are NOT taking our tourism dollars south anytime soon)
Begging Americans to learn about the world outside of the US.
this cartoonist is like two degrees of separation from me socially, she was detained, shackled, held in an ICE detention centre for 19 days and banned from entering the US for ten years. for the crime of visiting as a tourist. no shit nobody wants to travel to the US.
As a Canadian… not going to the US and not flying through the US, unless I would absolutely have to. I stopped even before the Orange Disgrace, to avoid things regularly stolen from the luggage and stupid questions at the immigration.
They should add “On Horseback” option to Google Maps. For writers.
“Hevoslinja” (Trans-Horse) is a European art project started in 2014 by Finnish artist Eero Yli-Vakkuri - according to his own words ‘skilless in riding and afraid of animals’ at the start.
The aim of the project was to travel 270 km / 168 miles between Helsinki and Turku in Finland, and to highlight the possibility of horse travel in modern society. Since then they’ve took to promoting horseback efforts in urban landscapes with several European collaborators and artists.
Yli-Vakkuri and collaborators first spent eight months practicing riding to become safely self-sufficient in saddle, and bought a Finnhorse gelding Toivottu Poika ('Awaited Son’). The route followed, as closely as possible, the old coastal royal country road of the premodern era, Kuninkaantie/Suuri Rantatie, and took 9 days.
Toivottu Poika is a very average example of his breed, standing at some 155 cm / 15.1 hh tall. The Finnhorse is a relative of for example the North-Norwegian Lyngshest breed, the Icelandic horse, the Swedish Gotlandsruss pony and the Estonian landrace horse and Tori horse breed. It is a mid-sized light draught and trotter, a sensibly realistic mediaeval country travel horse equivalent.
For more hardcore short-term treks, looking into competitive endurance riding can be helpful. Mongol Derby might be one of the most intense races, as it recreates the Chinggis Khan era postal system of swapping horses continuously over a 1000 km / 620 mile route.
By only including skilled endurance riders, keeping up a constant fast speed and swapping horses every 40 km / 25 mil, the Mongol Derby route only takes 10 days even though it’s several times the length of the Trans-Horse project. This is the speed of highly organised imperial messengers with the supporting cultural infrastructure, professional marathon runners where Yli-Vakkuri and Toivottu poika were leisure hikers.
The Mongolian landrace horse is a very distant relative of the breeds above, but much lighter and smaller than the agriculturally focused modern Finnhorse - typicaly standing at 142 cm / 14 hh at most. (This would’ve also been common for Finnhorses before the 19th century.) What really differentiates them from Western breeds, however, is the way they’re trained and raised in semi-feral herds, and it’s said that while the rider may decide where the pair is headed, the horse is the one to decide how to get there.
also it’s not quite google maps, but there is a lovely site called Viabundus!
the last i checked, the map of roads stretches from Calais, France to Moscow, Russia west to east and from Košice, Slovakia to Tornio, Finland south to north. it doesn’t cover all of Europe, for example Sweden and Norway are empty at the moment, but it is quite extensive and still being worked on! in addition to showing the old roads, you can calculate the distance and travel time from one city to another, and there are a lot of options:
and that’s not all! here’s a description from the site itself (emphasis mine):
“Viabundus is a freely accessible online street map of late medieval and early modern northern Europe (1350-1650). Originally conceived as the digitisation of Friedrich Bruns and Hugo Weczerka’s Hansische Handelsstraßen (1962) atlas of land roads in the Hanseatic area, the Viabundus map moves beyond that. It includes among others: a database with information about settlements, towns, tolls, staple markets and other information relevant for the pre-modern traveller; a route calculator; a calendar of fairs; and additional land routes as well as water ways.”
it’s quite neat and also free! i hope someone else finds it as fascinating and cool as i did :)
Thank you so much for sending me this, @quandocoeli ! All very cool!
An interesting question: how much do horses help? There are situations (long-haul hikes) where they’re sort of as much of a liability as a help. They really walk at Human Speed, or close to it, and horses weirdly have less stamina over long hauls than humans do. I don’t think a lot of fantasy authors realise this. If you spend time around horses, you will realise it, though.
Human and horse walking speeds match very nicely.
Horses will walk for about as many hours a day as we do (about six-ish, especially if it’s day after day after day, I.e. long travel.)
You can go at faster gaits on a horse. They trot (similar to our jogging) canter (running lightly) and gallop (running fast.) they do not do this for long trav. you might get a horse to trot on and off all day, but would not, not even a little bit, trot from the Shire to Mordor.
If you push too hard and knacker your horse, you have to rest them.
Quite a lot of human history, from military to economic, has been about Dragging the Horses Around.
Anyway, a walking horse goes like 4mph. That’s on Google maps already. Pick the Walking route. It’s the same thing.
But that’s the automatic “it would take an hour for both myself and a horse, or myself ON the horse, to walk 4 miles” answer. Writers who are interested in the problem are probably picturing something slightly more plot-relevant than walking to the gas station for scratch tickets and an Arizona Iced Tea.
I was interested to know if this could connect and hold true in terms of a long-term travel - say, a LotR-esque quest over weeks and different terrains - and thanksfully, I have a relevant interest to hand. Once again, the Camino de Santiago.
today, you may complete the Camino de Santiago on foot or on horseback. There are many horse rental agencies. A reasonable middle of the road pace suggested by one is: Riding between 25-35 km for 6-7 hours a day (normal mode). Various routes include terrain like mountains and plains; they presume you’ll largely camp. You are not allowed to run the horse into the ground (they will get mad at you) and a pilgrimage should be an amble, not a march. Plus, it’s hot in Spain and there are mountains; you’re going to be mooching and drinking water to survive this six-week hike.
but like I said: a keen math-brained person will note that this is basically human walking speed. It’s also about the time walked and distance covered by the human-only hikers. This strongly suggests that experienced horse-rental long-haul pilgrims don’t break above a walk, or do so very infrequently to maintain the average speed. and certainly aren’t cantering the whole Camino.
(This is definitely a modern company being mindful of horse welfare, although pragmatic animal welfare probably doesn’t stray too far from pragmatic medieval people not wanting to kill their horse. But is also the far more immediate concern that 6 hours in a day about as long as an average human wants to be on an average horse. Like, cattle drives are the outliers.)
You’ll see that the matches up to the second post. The horse in the Finnish expedition went about 20 miles a day, which is at the top end of the human Camino pilgrim and about what a Camino horse does, but heat/hydration is a major consideration on the Camino and probably less of a worry in Finland. 20 miles a day at 4 mph is 5 hours of riding on flat perfect ground and wrinkles if you need to add hills and hydration.
As the pilgrimage has thousands of pilgrims per year and excellent travel records going back to the medieval era, it would be really interesting to work out if this is a “fast” or “slow” estimation of horseback travel by fantasy standards. Are we being nicer to horses? Did medieval horsemen make them walk 10 hours a day? Has better diet and better understanding of fitness/gear sped up humans or given us more stamina? Do roads make a difference? There are a million considerations. If any of them are helpful in your novel, there is a very well-documented horse/human walking route across Spain in which medieval records can be compared directly to 2025 forum posts - a very rich seam, if you know what your question is!
But in general, especially for long journeys over many days, human walking speed on google maps is actually a surprisingly good rule of thumb for horse walking speed.
Now that all three copies have made their way to the recipients, it’s time to post pictures of my first end-to-end book bind!
These are copies of @robotmango’s delightful Word of Honor novella, ’The wild geese.’ Featuring arranged-ish marriage, Feral Gremlin Accidentally Falls For Husband, and really more self-mutilation than you might think for what’s essentially a love story about finding freedom. I’ve loved this fic for a long time, and when I saw @rainsfalling’s gorgeous typeset (mountain chapter headers! and scene breaks!) for @renegadeguild’s Tiny Books Bang I was overcome with covetous glee >:D
…of course, then I had to actually print the thing, which took four separate goes around the Brother tech support phone line and a whole replacement printer, BUT! printer nemesis defeated, the bookmaking itself was a delight! This was my first time working with textblocks all the way up from a flat page to a book, and I was right, the sewing is the best bit. Naked unglued textblocks are extremely wobbly, though, and this is also very cute.
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Another piece of technology conquered: my Silhouette Cameo vinyl printer (cutter?), scavenged from the ruins of Joann’s demise and put hard to work cutting out so many tiny geese and mountain ranges. (Weeding is also very fun. Slightly less than sewing! But only because sometimes you lose pieces and have to swear about it.) Cover design remains a mystery, so I mostly copied @rainsfalling’s interior design work ^.^;
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One thing I knew I wanted was to make these three - one each for Rainsfalling and Orange and one for me to keep - to be sisters, not triplets. I got to try out faux double-core endbands at the Renegade Bindery retreat, and so swapping out a single colour in the endbands (and using different ribbons) seemed like a good way to change things up without making a ton more work for myself! (Pro tip, though: do not flirt with Thread Chicken while making end bands. It is very hard to keep an even tension with only two inches of tail!!!)
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All in all, I’m extremely happy with these as my first full project, & I feel like I learned a ton. (Much thanks to all the Renegade folks, particularly @runawaymarbles for letting me come over & slicing chunks off of these with her guillotine, without which the edges would be a far more jagged affair.) They’re real! They open! You can read them like real books! I… have already typeset & am partway through making three more octavo projects ^.^;
Soon my shelves will be overwhelmed with tiny fic binds and you know what? I’m okay with that.
“Starting August 13th 2025, AI will be used to tell whether or not a YouTube user is an adult or a minor. In the case that an adult is flagged as a minor to be able to use youtube again you have to use your credit card info, or ID, or a selfie. From the announcement-
‘How does it work?
The age estimation model uses a variety of signals such as YouTube activity and longevity of the account. If we determine you’re under 18, you’ll be notified. As always, you’ll have the option to verify your age (through government ID, selfie, or a credit card) if you believe our age estimation model is incorrect.’ ”
One of the largest problems with Centreoftheselights’ ship stats is that the numbers are not a count of actual fics. The figures are better understood as a point based scoring system, and the ranking is a list of tags with highest scores.
The points are assigned thus: A new unlocked fic is created: +1 The tag is added to an old fic: +1 An old fic is unlocked: +1 A tag wrangling descision syns an old fic into the tag: +1 A new chapter is added to an existing fic: +0 A new locked fic is created: +0 A new unlocked fic is created and then locked: +0 A new fic is created and then deleted: +0 An old fic is deleted: -1 An old fic is locked: -1 The tag is removed from an old fic: -1 A tag wrangling descision de-syns an old fic out of the tag: -1
We can have conversations about which fics should be counted when we’re talking about which ships are most popular within a timeframe. I like to use “created_by” searches in my posts about fic stats because those links are more futureproof, but an “updated_by” search, if you catch it close enough to the time, more accurately reflects fic-writing activity and quantity of new reading material. If we’re doing a deep dive, we need to talk about which searches we’re using and why.
We can also talk about if we should include archive locked works or not. I haven’t heard any convincing arguments for excluding locked works from year-end stats presented to regular users with accounts, but there is absolutely value in doing both counts and comparing them.
But all of the above assumes that the number we end up with is a tally of all the fics on the archive that meet our inclusion criteria, and I don’t think anyone is going to argue that a tag wrangling descision that re-sorts a ten year old fic reflects a ship being more or less popular this year.
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The bad fic stats chart tells us that Jayce/Viktor “gained” 13261 works between August 2 2024 - July 29 2025.
But that “works gained” column is mislabeled, because it’s actually that ship’s score. The thirteen thousand is not a count of individual fics, and so we cannot go looking at those fics to determine anything about them.
When I tell you that there are 14,621 works in the Jayce/Victor tag that were created August 2 2024 - July 29 2025 and give you this link as my source, you can click on it and go read the fics. You can check the same link both logged in and logged out to see how many are archive locked. You can let me know if I’m being an idiot and searched the wrong time frame by accident. You can make observations about Jayce/Victor fic posted during that timeframe – you can note, for example, that there are very few crossovers and that Trans!Victor is the top freeform tag. Maybe you’re interested in how the percentage of Trans!Victor fics might change over time, maybe you want to do an academic textual analysis of how Jayce’s ethnicity is approached by fic authors, maybe you’re curious about how long Jayce/Victor fics tend to be or what other ships tend to show up in this search. These are all things that you can do when you’re looking at a list of the actual fics.
And these are all things that you can’t do with a score that does not count actual fics.
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Since the numbers are scores and not counts, we can neither trust nor critique the info in other columns.
Multiple rounds of these stats have inspired wank over the fact that Hermione’s ethnicity is listed as “ambiguous”. Because the chart lists a score, all we can do is wank about canon. But if, instead of a score, if we’re looking at the actual nine thousand Hermione/Draco fics posted in the timeframe in question, we can further filter that search and see that only 33 of them are tagged POC Hermione. And if we have the time and skills for it, we can do a textual analyses of those fics and see how she’s protrayed when an ethnicity isn’t tagged.
Last January I made a stink about Kirk/Spock being listed as a ship from the reboot movies, despite All Media Types and TOS being more common for K/S fics posted in 2024. I noted at the time that we have no way of knowing if the reboot movies are actually the top fandom tag in the fics in her dataset or not, but on further reflection I realised that her dataset contains no fics at all. New fics are not excluded from the set when old fics are deleted, because her data was never counting fics that exist in the first place. It’s a point based score system that cannot be replicated or analysed, and that means absolutely nothing.
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