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Code deploy happening shortly

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.

Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts

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.

Entry tags:

old dream

I came across this description of a dream I had a couple years ago, while searching through my notes for something else, and found it uncommonly funny in retrospect.

Dream: I was with a group of people (coworkers?) given the opportunity to go skydiving (over Columbia?). The opportunity was presented on short notice while we were doing some other group activity. My first thought was sure, sounds fun. So I got into the small plane with everyone else and sat in a seat in the middle on the right side. The chair felt small and uncomfortably close to the window. I realized that I'm terrified of heights and I'd refuse to jump out of the plane once it got up high in the air. So as the door was closing I said I couldn't do it and asked to be let out. But I think it was too late; they didn't want to open the door again. So I thought that I'd just have to stay in the plane after everyone else jumped out. After waking up and thinking about it I realized there had been no mention of nor training on how to use a parachute first, nor were we given parachutes.

.

It reminds me of the time in high school when I was standing on stage with other National Honor Society members and/or inductees. The speaker had been telling a story about being up in an airplane with the principal of the school, and I hadn't realized it was a joke until the punchline. Then, envisioning the principal jumping out of the plane without a parachute, I couldn't stop breaking out in (possibly well-concealed?) snorts of laughter for the rest of the ceremony. I didn't have anything against the principal, by the way, it just seemed so funny and incongruous.

Entry tags:

teeth

how many roots does a rooty toot tooth have

I sorta worry that the root canal may not have even fixed my tooth problems. Maybe I won't even be able to get a temp crown in 2 weeks, and will instead need more work done first. Or maybe I'll get a crown and then find out I need more work done. Maybe it would need to be removed.. but that's why my normal dentist likes to wait 2 weeks before doing a crown, to make sure the root canal was successful.

Ever since the throbbing pain started, I no longer noticed any sharp pains. But I haven't been chewing on that side of the mouth either.

In the first days after the root canal, I still got the throbbing pain a few times, which worried me but from what I read was normal.

But now it's been five days. After sipping a mostly melted milkshake, I still get pains.. mostly along the right gumlines. It's a delayed sensitivity to the cold. If it were only due to gum recession (I don't have gingivitis), I'd expect it to be on the left side too. And I don't know why would it feel so much worse now than it did in the past.
Gah.

.

By the way! You know when you see diagrams of molars, how they show 2 roots? But then sometimes you see 3-D models with 4 roots? (Or am I imagining that?)

According to what I've read now, the number of roots varies among teeth and among people! Bottom molars normally have 2 roots, but they are wide ones. One root can have more than one canal in it. (Maybe because the roots are really multiple fused roots is what I'm thinking.)

How many roots and root canals does a tooth have?

How many roots and canals your dentist actually finds, and therefore must ultimately treat when performing its endodontic therapy, can vary, even substantially, from what is considered “normal.”

In fact, the only valid axiom that can be given about this subject is that every tooth has at least one root and each root always contains at least one canal.

How Many Roots Does a Molar Typically Have?

Upper molars, also known as maxillary molars, have three roots. ...

Lower molars, or mandibular molars, have two roots. ... The mesial root often has two canals, while the distal root usually has one or two canals.

Wisdom teeth, or third molars, are known for their variable root structures. They can have a single fused root, two roots, or up to four roots, and their shapes can be unpredictable, sometimes curling or splaying.

Some molars may have supernumerary roots, which are extra roots beyond the typical number. These additional roots are often found in mandibular molars, especially third molars. Conversely, root fusion can occur, where two or more roots join, resulting in fewer distinct roots. Root fusion is more common in maxillary molars, particularly second molars, and can lead to complex internal canal systems.

Entry tags:

root canal, soft food

I'd been having sporadic sharp tooth pains while eating for the last year. They were very brief and didn't bother me much. My dentist didn't find the source but believed it could be a micro-fracture. I couldn't tell what tooth it was coming from, other than it being on the right side, and wasn't even certain if it was an upper or lower tooth.

But I had one filling in a molar, and that tooth was suspect. A few weeks ago, I got a very bad toothache; a deep dull throbbing with pain along the gum lines. It lasted a long time. On subsequent days, the pain wasn't as strong but returned on a regular basis half an hour to an hour after eating. It was odd in that it didn't hurt while eating, only later.

In retrospect, I wonder if the pain I sometimes get along my gum lines wasn't due only to gum recession, but possibly due to this tooth already having a problem for a long time.

So last week I got a root canal. The temporary filling has a rough surface which annoys my tongue.

I have to take two different antibiotic tablets 3 times a day for 10 days. The amoxicillin, I can swallow with water. The other, metronidazole, is uncoated with a rough surface. The first tablet I took nearly caught in my throat. Since then I've been crushing those tablets. The endodontist said I probably wouldn't want to crush it as it has a very bitter taste, but that it would be okay to do.

I tried mixing the metronidazole powder with orange juice. That tasted ok. Then I read that citrus juice might reduce its efficacy, so I tried it with unsweetened applesauce. That was awful. Since then I've mixed it with chocolate oatmilk, which ends up tasting like unsweetened cocoa. It's not very bad (especially if I add sugar), but I dislike having to do this routine 3 times a day and will be glad when it is over.

I'm also eating only soft food which doesn't need to be chewed, to avoid dislodging the temp filling. I've heard many stories of temp fillings coming out and even of the tooth cracking when that happens. Trying to avoid that.

At first I tried chewing only on the other side, but noticed how easy it is to stop paying attention and start chewing on both sides.

So. Oatmeal. Applesauce. Yogurt. Probiotic drinks, to help counter the antibiotics' effect on my gut flora. Mashed potatoes, mashed beans. Tofu. Hummus, baba ganoush. Smooth peanut butter. Ice cream, though it isn't very enjoyable right now. Pudding. Little cakes. I'm hungry. I'll be glad when I can finally eat corn chips again. My first appointment for getting a temporary crown is in two weeks. A video I watched on the process makes that part look worse than the root canal.

Getting the root canal itself wasn't bad. The dental assistant put a thick spacer between my teeth on the other side, which pushed my jaws distressingly apart. She also put a rubber sheet around the tooth which made it hard to breathe. I started to feel panic, but the endodontist moved the spacer to where it wasn't so bad, and cut away some of the sheet. Then the worst part was the continual feeling of phlegm in my throat, and lingering worries that I couldn't breathe well. The injections and the drilling didn't bother me.

It was interesting that it felt like an upper tooth was being drilled as well as the bottom tooth. But I had previously read about how that is due to the nerves: Why It's So Hard to Tell Which Tooth Has the Ache.

During the procedure, my legs and torso trembled and vibrated, which was strange. It felt as if my body was trembling with fear, even though I wasn't afraid. It must have been a side-effect of the anesthetic:
Why do I shake at the dentist?

One common phenomenon that patients may experience at the dentist is shaking or trembling. This involuntary shaking of the hands or body can be unsettling, but it is actually a relatively common side effect of local anesthesia.

Entry tags:

Lantana flowers

My lantana still brings all the butterflies (old video) to the yard.

I didn't see many insects on the flowers earlier in the year and was worried based on what I'd read about the massive decline of insects in the wild.

But maybe it wasn't the right time of year, as now there are many on the blossoms. I still haven't seen many bees though. In the evening closer to dusk, there are more moths. There's a type of dark-colored moth with a big body that seems like it should be too heavy for its wings. I even saw one hummingbird on the flowers two days ago!

Mississippi legal challenge: beginning 1 September, we will need to geoblock Mississippi IPs

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.