I recently wrote about Pinterest threatening to remove one of my boards. They deleted one yesterday and sent an infuriating email- it claims that the board contained many pictures that violated sexual and pornographic policy.
Let me tell you why this irritates me so much. First of all, Pinterest doesn’t allow such imagery and if you try to search for it, it doesn’t exist or at least it doesn’t provide search results. Second, the board that was deleted was a secret board with 10k pins of a wide array of topics and categories ranging from anime to zoology. Sure I had pretty girls, both drawn and real life, but they weren’t engaging in sexual acts or depicting penetration or displaying sexual fluids. I also had wild animals, space images, flowers, gems and minerals, cooking, pets, cg art, illustrations and designs, cocktails and more. Whenever Pinterest becomes aware of questionable content, they remove the pin from all boards and notify users. This time they went too far!
This time they deleted an entire board that was definitely not entirely questionable. This board had 10k pins and in the time since they last wrote vaguely stating that they MAY REMOVE ONE OF my boards I have been coming through it attempting to save what I could that mattered most to me. This has not been sufficient time to review every single pin, considering the sheer quantity. Even if I had nothing else to do during this time, but I do since I am also my mother’s caretaker and I have various chores and things to do otherwise, too. Another problem is trying to keep the board at the same place because over time it likes to periodically refresh and take me back to the top of the board or to the main page, which is extremely counter productive and means frequently trying to relocate where I was in he middle of my board, not to mention that it has trouble loading pins further on down the board and sometimes freezes or crashes. These obstacles are frustrating and hinder my efforts.
The email I received yesterday especially infuriated me because I had to discover first hand that my board was missing before I went coming through my emails. My mother uses Pinterest and frequently sends pins to me that she thinks I would enjoy or find useful. I had to tell her that almost everything she sent me was just deleted by Pinterest because most of what she sent me was in the secret board that they just deleted because of objectionable content. Not every pin of the 10k pins that I saved could have possibly been questionable, yet they just saw fit to delete the entire board rather than the individual pins. I am livid! The email said I could appeal this action, so I click the link and it thanks me for my appeal- I didn’t get to say anything and I don’t consider that I was allowed to make an appeal. That that action did was flag them to look again because I disagreed- hardly an appeal.
I can tell you this: I will not make a new board on Pinterest. I most likely will not search for images that once appealed to me. And I am not sure I want to use pinterest any further. I may even further protest and boycott Pinterest because I have concluded from personal experience that they are frighteningly unreliable. Even if they restore my board, which I doubt they will even though I want it back, they have done enough damage that I have little to no faith that they won’t do this again. I have even warned my mother that her boards may just as easily be at risk for excuses like copyright. She actually has public boards, organized and carefully compiled. She spent a lot of time on them as a labor of love and I know she would be hurt if her efforts were unceremoniously deleted without a second thought like mine were.
Monday, August 5, 2019
Sunday, July 28, 2019
disinterest in pinterest...
I advise against making boards on Pinterest. After years of keeping 2 private boards of pins I don’t generate, they tell me they “may delete one of” my boards. They don’t tell me which. Occasionally I get a note that one of my saved pins has been removed from all user boards because it violates a policy or a demand for removal has been granted. Sometimes they tell me which pins and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they tell me why but I have discovered that it isn’t always accurate but they won’t return it even when they have been informed that there is nothing wrong with the pin in question. Now I am told to review everything I have saved to make sure it doesn’t violate their policies or I may have a board removed- not just the pin but the entire board, without identifying what is even in question. I can’t tell you how much this infuriates me. I have over 10k pins saved on 2 private boards. I only own 2 boards and they are both private- I have not shared them publicly, I don’t share them, and I won’t share them ever; they are compiled by me for me. I now face a potential loss of years of accumulated pins. I have to comb through each board and saved what I can to my device since not every pin is outwardly savable, namely clips, loops, and other animated bits. I truly am annoyed with this latest experience and the inconvenience it has caused me. I can’t even bulk-export/download my pins so this is going to take hours or even days to process. I don’t think I will ever save a pin inside pinterest again because now I know that they may remove an entire board and I have no way of knowing what I may lose. Thank you, pinterest, for the lies and deception and for pushing your job of policy regulation on to me. Thank you, pinterest, for adding to the confusion by removing a picture of a fully clothed person and stating that it violated sexual/pornographic policy when there wasn’t anything sexual about the image. Thank you, pinterest, but no thanks! I may find items of interest hosted on your database, but I will never feel safe about saving anything to your boards ever again for fear that any thing can be removed at any time including an entire board, even if the entire board does not violate policy.
Pinterest removed this for sexual/pornographic reasons. Wrong!!! It’s cosplay and I say it’s viewable by all audiences.
Now they say I need to review what I have, but if this was determined offensive, then anything else is unknowingly at potential risk.
Pinterest may have a nice user-generated database, but because they cannot enforce policy better, everyone is at risk for losing not only pins but entire boards. Does that make me feel safe and wanted? No, it doesn’t.
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
so what now...
My apologies that the last post was so long, I even left out a lot of details trying to shorten it yet show why I have been inactive for so long. So yes, we live in an extended stay hotel out of town where it’s cheaper while many things have transpired. We lost our home, our belongings, my car, and our health has collectively deteriorated. The psychological impact that is created especially without immediate closure means that we don’t even know officially how much is lost until we unpack the few saved items remaining to see if they’re able to be kept. Not everything is replaceable. Some is decades old, handed through generations. Is your precious thing dead or not? Do you even still have it or not? Can you recall every last thing you have bought or made in the last 40 or more years? What of this can possibly be replaced? What can be afforded on such a limited budget without any new income coming in? These sorts of things keep pounding our heads daily while we struggle to emotionally recover from this hell. Losing so much all at once, yet not knowing what all is permanently gone yet is so very overwhelming. Equally overwhelming are the nearly 1000 images collected, documenting conditions and progress. It leaves me empty, sickened, depressed, and even feeling guilt over this catastrophe. I even feel embarrassed. My mother is disabled and I am her caretaker. Our dog/ her service dog is old and in declining health. I am getting older and my health is declining, too. I want to make her as comfortable and happy as possible and I feel like a failure at what I do, even though she insists on the opposite. I lost the only car I ever had due to disuse and I no longer have income and probably won’t again. I spend my days watching over my mom, being nearby and easily accessible, and doing chores as needed- hopefully without them piling up too much. I feel lost, unaccomplished, and inadequate. I feel like life has taken a permanent change. The last 4 years have amounted to something unthinkable and that was already on top of troublesome circumstances.
What will I do with my life now?
What will I do with this blog?
What will I do?
I have never been good at answering this question. Even as a child I had a variety of answers including uncertainty. As a teen and young adult I still had trouble answering. The passage of time hasn’t made it any easier. And with each hardship, obstacle, or change of path brings even more uncertainty. I think I have come to the point where I will just exist. I will try to keep myself and my mom and dog amused and healthy, try to get all the major things done, and maybe that will be enough. I don’t know about pursuits or interests because circumstances in life have create some rather permanent changes for me over time. I will keep the blog up and post occasionally. Lately it’s been more of a journal than a bulletin board and I am fine with that, however I still would like to post poems, thoughts on products, and announcements about my music- if I am lucky enough to work on that again. Generally speaking, I am not a quitter and carry on til the bitter end. So as long asI can find a worthy purpose, then I will push forward...
four years absent...
So much has happened, it’s hard to recall everything and keep it in chronological order. Plenty of times, I have thought about this blog, what it has meant to me, the things I wanted and still want to do with it, and even at times whether I wanted to return to it or not- not only because of low readership, but also because the setup I had for doing things changed so drastically that I questioned if I could even document things as I once had for sharing. In the long run, I wanted to return to this blog, but it was a matter of timing and motivation. To be honest, it still is. There may be more incidents of patches of time passing between posts; it seems to be unavoidable and I am sorry for that because it isn’t ever a lack of care that’s the cause.
So... why such an extended period of silence? It's actually been more than depression/motivation this time. A lot more.
In 2015, my mom started having some very serious medical issues, which haven’t been fully explained and never will be. She underwent medical treatment for pain and ended up in worse condition as a result. It’s far more than a mere coincidence to me, but officially proving it and forcing compensation is apparently not worth the trouble, esp if you’re poor, so we just live with the grave misfortune that this has happened. My mom is now immobile. If she stands, she is weak, dizzy, and/or lightheaded and can’t be on her feet longer than needed to get from one seat immediately to the next. This was proven in October that year when I guided her to the shower and turned to position her shower chair. My back was turned for literally no more than 3 seconds and she passed out, fell straight down from a standing position at the sink right on to her legs. She dislocated her ankle and broke it badly in three places. It required the permanent installation of plates and screws. She still experiences pain from this, but it is somewhat better than amputation. While in the hospital for this she also had a heart attack, which extended her stay even further.
There was no way that she could return home in a cast and try to use the stairs when she already had so much trouble with using them. In our home, her bedroom was on the upper level and mine was in the basement. My area also served as a kitchenette, art/design studio, music studio, dj booth, dark room, and more. Once my mom started having issues with low blood sugar levels and partial complex seizures, I had her staying in my room most of the time so that I could monitor her better. For her to return home would mean renovating the house so that she could live on the main floor, outfitting it with handicap bars, rails, and more, plus ramps outside for wheelchair access, and trying to convert a half-bathroom into something usable for bathing and possibly washing hair. At this time I was not driving anymore so I had to rely on an acquaintance to give me rides to the house and to do any other chores, and we stayed at a cheap hotel out of town while all this would happen. Fast forward 3.5 years and transplant us into an extended stay hotel and we are still out yet the circumstances became worse.
Between juggling so many things and finding the right conditions for making a 25 mile trek out to our house and getting back to the hotel before dark, left me with very little time to get things done alone. It meant that progress was exceedingly difficult and slow and frustrations were spiking occasionally as a result. My mom had to get her car because her contact was becoming increasingly unreliable and finally (nearly) completely disassociated himself from us soI was then relying on her for transportation, which at times wasn’t that much better for various reasons. We were essentially doing our best considering all obstacles we had to face, and there were quite a few.
Two days before my birthday in March 2018, we were taking a trip to the house to check mail, look for packages, and do a few other chores while we still had a few hours of daylight remaining. The winter had been hard and long with inclement weather, bad road conditions especially in that neighborhood, various ailments from which we all had been suffering. It had been a while since the last time we were there- about 3 months. What I would encounter would permanently affect our lives and it was barely the beginning of a long, horrible nightmare.
My prescription glasses were broken and I was alternating between two different readers, but I didn’t have my midrange focus with me and this was going to make what I was about to see difficult to assess. Upon trying to open the front door, I felt a lot of resistance and had to put my weight into it a couple times. There was a pile of mail behind it and it was very heavy. I started to realize that it was so heavy and difficult to push around because it was wet- soaking wet, turning into pulp and starting to show signs of mold and mildew. At first I thought a storm had leaked under the door. Then I realized that some other things nearby didn’t look right, either. Things were knocked over, it was darker than normal, I was stepping on something both spongey and crunchy, and I was hearing something that sounded like cross between static and a waterfall- I hadn’t even heard fire hydrants sound like this. As I entered the main floor of my home and my eyes were trying to adjust, I realized some very horrible things: the lights were not working, everything was wet and smelled pretty bad, water water was dripping from the ceiling, about 90% of the ceiling was missing and I was staring at rafters and the underside of soft-flooring (big planks of plywood). The drywall ceiling had collapsed and was on the floor, soaked and deteriorating, as I got to the middle of the house, the noise I was hearing was getting louder and then I saw the ceiling in the living room and realized there was water actively flooding the house at full pressure in a great white fan of water spraying out ceaselessly. I can tell you watching that fiasco become clear to me was about as bad as the time I ran a hatchet into my foot. It really was traumatic and I have recalled this moment as many times as that one. Absolutely everything was soaked and I knew that there was no way I could possibly handle it all alone. It filled me with dread and despair, because without knowing every last fact I knew we had just lost a ton of things. I just didn’t know how much worse it would become.
We had the county shut off the water supply within about 30 minutes and proceeded to take action as quickly as possible without knowing the first thing about what professionals were needed or how to go about accomplishing anything ourselves because everything was completely up to us to figure out how to handle. No insurance, no financial assistance, no knowledge of these matters- we were easy targets still are to some extent. The first person came highly recommended, however she ran a cleaning business and “saving” homes was only her hobby and she had never handled anything like this before. She hired a crew to do the bulk of the work. What was done was sporadic, took too long which allowed the mold and mildew to worsen, and upon going over there I discovered that things were missing that had no right to be missing nor purpose in being touched. This crew most likely had stolen items from our home, both inside and out. Eventually they bailed before finishing their job and became unreachable. We learned more about the matter and the terms and professionals involved, determined not to make the same mistake twice. After speaking to a few companies and getting prices, we settled on one that seemed very promising and within our limited budget. He turned out to be running a franchise branch and didn’t spend much time personally overseeing the work being accomplished. He couldn’t get the job done as quickly and as cheaply as proposed, items weren’t salvaged or cleaned properly beyond a few select items, parts of the house infrastructure were actually worse than he or his contractor acquaintance had claimed. Things were allowed to continue to rot and disintegrate after being loosely bagged and improperly stored, causing further damages. This was not learned until well after the job was complete and by that point he refused to do anything further that he had agreed to do unless we paid more money, which he had already extracted from us.
This leads into settling on a contractor and we went through a similar process to hopefully find the right one. When two leading internet companies referred the same contractor, we felt a glimmer of hope again, especially after meeting with a man who claimed to be the project manager. We finally felt like we were out of the woods and on the right path. This was not the case. They have virtually used every trick in the book to take advantage of us and after legal consultation it would appear that trying to take them to court to force completion in an affordable and expedited manner would cost more than it’s worth. I reached out online to various acquaintances and this was the best I got- a realtor who seemed to view our predicament as a couple of easy deals to be accomplished in ways we did not want. Eventually I stopped hearing from him- or at least at this point, I hope I have because I thought that he would help everything work out via field knowledge and experience as well as via contacts. I am so dismayed. So basically we are still at square one, trying to get the contractor to comply, communicate, and complete the job without any other costs or nasty surprises.
So... why such an extended period of silence? It's actually been more than depression/motivation this time. A lot more.
In 2015, my mom started having some very serious medical issues, which haven’t been fully explained and never will be. She underwent medical treatment for pain and ended up in worse condition as a result. It’s far more than a mere coincidence to me, but officially proving it and forcing compensation is apparently not worth the trouble, esp if you’re poor, so we just live with the grave misfortune that this has happened. My mom is now immobile. If she stands, she is weak, dizzy, and/or lightheaded and can’t be on her feet longer than needed to get from one seat immediately to the next. This was proven in October that year when I guided her to the shower and turned to position her shower chair. My back was turned for literally no more than 3 seconds and she passed out, fell straight down from a standing position at the sink right on to her legs. She dislocated her ankle and broke it badly in three places. It required the permanent installation of plates and screws. She still experiences pain from this, but it is somewhat better than amputation. While in the hospital for this she also had a heart attack, which extended her stay even further.
There was no way that she could return home in a cast and try to use the stairs when she already had so much trouble with using them. In our home, her bedroom was on the upper level and mine was in the basement. My area also served as a kitchenette, art/design studio, music studio, dj booth, dark room, and more. Once my mom started having issues with low blood sugar levels and partial complex seizures, I had her staying in my room most of the time so that I could monitor her better. For her to return home would mean renovating the house so that she could live on the main floor, outfitting it with handicap bars, rails, and more, plus ramps outside for wheelchair access, and trying to convert a half-bathroom into something usable for bathing and possibly washing hair. At this time I was not driving anymore so I had to rely on an acquaintance to give me rides to the house and to do any other chores, and we stayed at a cheap hotel out of town while all this would happen. Fast forward 3.5 years and transplant us into an extended stay hotel and we are still out yet the circumstances became worse.
Between juggling so many things and finding the right conditions for making a 25 mile trek out to our house and getting back to the hotel before dark, left me with very little time to get things done alone. It meant that progress was exceedingly difficult and slow and frustrations were spiking occasionally as a result. My mom had to get her car because her contact was becoming increasingly unreliable and finally (nearly) completely disassociated himself from us soI was then relying on her for transportation, which at times wasn’t that much better for various reasons. We were essentially doing our best considering all obstacles we had to face, and there were quite a few.
Two days before my birthday in March 2018, we were taking a trip to the house to check mail, look for packages, and do a few other chores while we still had a few hours of daylight remaining. The winter had been hard and long with inclement weather, bad road conditions especially in that neighborhood, various ailments from which we all had been suffering. It had been a while since the last time we were there- about 3 months. What I would encounter would permanently affect our lives and it was barely the beginning of a long, horrible nightmare.
My prescription glasses were broken and I was alternating between two different readers, but I didn’t have my midrange focus with me and this was going to make what I was about to see difficult to assess. Upon trying to open the front door, I felt a lot of resistance and had to put my weight into it a couple times. There was a pile of mail behind it and it was very heavy. I started to realize that it was so heavy and difficult to push around because it was wet- soaking wet, turning into pulp and starting to show signs of mold and mildew. At first I thought a storm had leaked under the door. Then I realized that some other things nearby didn’t look right, either. Things were knocked over, it was darker than normal, I was stepping on something both spongey and crunchy, and I was hearing something that sounded like cross between static and a waterfall- I hadn’t even heard fire hydrants sound like this. As I entered the main floor of my home and my eyes were trying to adjust, I realized some very horrible things: the lights were not working, everything was wet and smelled pretty bad, water water was dripping from the ceiling, about 90% of the ceiling was missing and I was staring at rafters and the underside of soft-flooring (big planks of plywood). The drywall ceiling had collapsed and was on the floor, soaked and deteriorating, as I got to the middle of the house, the noise I was hearing was getting louder and then I saw the ceiling in the living room and realized there was water actively flooding the house at full pressure in a great white fan of water spraying out ceaselessly. I can tell you watching that fiasco become clear to me was about as bad as the time I ran a hatchet into my foot. It really was traumatic and I have recalled this moment as many times as that one. Absolutely everything was soaked and I knew that there was no way I could possibly handle it all alone. It filled me with dread and despair, because without knowing every last fact I knew we had just lost a ton of things. I just didn’t know how much worse it would become.
We had the county shut off the water supply within about 30 minutes and proceeded to take action as quickly as possible without knowing the first thing about what professionals were needed or how to go about accomplishing anything ourselves because everything was completely up to us to figure out how to handle. No insurance, no financial assistance, no knowledge of these matters- we were easy targets still are to some extent. The first person came highly recommended, however she ran a cleaning business and “saving” homes was only her hobby and she had never handled anything like this before. She hired a crew to do the bulk of the work. What was done was sporadic, took too long which allowed the mold and mildew to worsen, and upon going over there I discovered that things were missing that had no right to be missing nor purpose in being touched. This crew most likely had stolen items from our home, both inside and out. Eventually they bailed before finishing their job and became unreachable. We learned more about the matter and the terms and professionals involved, determined not to make the same mistake twice. After speaking to a few companies and getting prices, we settled on one that seemed very promising and within our limited budget. He turned out to be running a franchise branch and didn’t spend much time personally overseeing the work being accomplished. He couldn’t get the job done as quickly and as cheaply as proposed, items weren’t salvaged or cleaned properly beyond a few select items, parts of the house infrastructure were actually worse than he or his contractor acquaintance had claimed. Things were allowed to continue to rot and disintegrate after being loosely bagged and improperly stored, causing further damages. This was not learned until well after the job was complete and by that point he refused to do anything further that he had agreed to do unless we paid more money, which he had already extracted from us.
This leads into settling on a contractor and we went through a similar process to hopefully find the right one. When two leading internet companies referred the same contractor, we felt a glimmer of hope again, especially after meeting with a man who claimed to be the project manager. We finally felt like we were out of the woods and on the right path. This was not the case. They have virtually used every trick in the book to take advantage of us and after legal consultation it would appear that trying to take them to court to force completion in an affordable and expedited manner would cost more than it’s worth. I reached out online to various acquaintances and this was the best I got- a realtor who seemed to view our predicament as a couple of easy deals to be accomplished in ways we did not want. Eventually I stopped hearing from him- or at least at this point, I hope I have because I thought that he would help everything work out via field knowledge and experience as well as via contacts. I am so dismayed. So basically we are still at square one, trying to get the contractor to comply, communicate, and complete the job without any other costs or nasty surprises.
Saturday, June 22, 2019
it's dead, jim- wait, no it isn't...
Yes, an amazing amount of time has passed since my last post. A lot of things have happened- some of it was motivational and some of it was way beyond my control. I have been debating posting anything further for months and this is the result of that debate. I have made some adjustments to the site, including layout, content, and updated the list of links to the right by removing dead and outdated links, plus with smart phones and tablets more commonly used, I have been given the option and set the site to appear as it would without requesting a desktop version anymore. Seriously, I'm not a big fan of mobile layouts and was pleased to finally have the option to get rid of it, especially since it was automated. I'm sorry I have not posted more regularly, but I will get more into why that has been the case in a subsequent post- possibly even the next one. For now, I'm simply announcing that this blog is not as dead as one might think.
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