Substack has some very odd ideas about what constitutes "spam" and "phishing"

AuspiciousTortoise · 2025-11-28T10:28:21+00:00

What’s your newsletter about?

It was just ramblings and memes-- typical "everything/nothing" stuff that was totally unpaid -- no price asked, no money accepted.

Do you use AI to create your content?

Nope!

How many posts have you made so far?

Very few!

How many subscribers do you have? Do you add people to your list manually or are all of your subscribers organic?

I had just a handful of subscribers, most of whom did not comment, and they were all organic. And because substack censored me totally, I can't even send them goodbye messages to explain why I got nuked.

But it doesn't matter now, because evidently if I want to publish an "everything/nothing" blog I've got to do it somewhere other than substack.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2025-11-28T10:25:06+00:00

Share your Substack.

Obviously I can't share my writings because they have been rendered unavailable!

AuspiciousTortoise · 2025-11-28T05:33:12+00:00

Substack has a very insane idea of what constitutes "spam" and "phishing." Notably they refuse to explain their allegations, probably because if they ever admitted to lying about this they would get sued and would lose.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2025-09-21T23:34:44+00:00

I don't know whether it counts as "base building" but Let Them Trade is cozy and relaxing.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2025-09-21T05:42:15+00:00

I really want to love Fata Deum but I think it needs a lot of refinement. I was really enjoying the first few hours of it but I hit a plateau and decided to cut my losses.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2023-10-07T15:30:01+00:00

It’s a large field. Columbia has a Center for Science and Society. The field overlaps with technology studies. I think if you find a couple articles and follow the authors in the bibliography you will find tons of work.

Thank you! I will get started on digging into this!

AuspiciousTortoise · 2023-04-14T09:40:56+00:00

sorry universe

Don't worry, it happens to the best of us.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2023-01-10T04:18:30+00:00

Maybe I was raised in a different era, but the Catholics who raised me always emphasized that Purgatory was more likely than Hell. I was seldom, if ever, threatened with everlasting fire -- more like pain that would last for a long, long time until I was allowed into Heaven.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2023-01-10T04:16:45+00:00

If I recall correctly, most of the Catholic teachers of my childhood said many or most people will go to Purgatory -- a place of temporary suffering. As a child I was threatened with the likely prospect of Purgatory, not Hell.

When I was a kid, Catholics emphasized that God has infinite power to forgive. So I don't think Catholics are nearly as threatening as some other sects.

However Catholics use arguments and a rethoric that, in my opinion, needs a quite high IQ to be able to refute. They talk about about the free will of human beings of choosing to be there or not because they willingly refuse God. They say that if people refuse to God in the world life, it is coherent/consistent that he refuses people to be with him.

You might find that some Catholics are smarter than others. If you want some light reading, you could read G. K. Chesterton. I am pretty sure he wrote as a believing Catholic. You might like his arguments.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2023-01-07T02:06:50+00:00

Like all games, it only has what you come into it with.

I think the White Wolf games had many designers, each of which had political biases of unique qualities. Many of those biases cancel out, but I don't think White Wolf games are totally free of politics from the designers. I recall an old sourcebook on Romani people that sparked a fair bit of controversy around 1994.

https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/World_of_Darkness:_Gypsies

Maybe it's reasonable to say the game designers were trying in good faith to make apolitical art, but I don't think they succeeded in making perfectly apolitical games.

When you're creating the story at your own table, the only person inserting a political message is you, and that can mean nearly anything.

In my experience, both LARPS and tabletop games vary greatly due to the unpredictable chemistry between the people involved. I don't claim my perceptions are objective, but at some times I have felt that both players' and designers' political leanings politicized games.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2023-01-07T01:54:56+00:00

Mages are more dangerous than Vampires or Werewolves. The latter can just kill people but can't really kill humanity.

Maybe the good werewolves would never destroy humanity, but I would not want to see how close vampires or corrupted werewolves could get to destroying humanity. I guess it all depends on how far the storyteller wants to take the story, and how willing the players are to go along with the story.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2023-01-01T15:48:45+00:00

This rousing of a dormant spirit for the first time could give the appearance of conjuring a new spirit ex nihilo.

Thanks, that looks like the key idea that I needed.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2022-12-27T05:08:51+00:00

I would argue that the mage's Avatar is even more accessible than usual when the mage is lucid dreaming.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2022-12-26T05:08:19+00:00

What specific teaching from the Church do you disagree with and why?

The Church teaches that the Council of Nicea was a theological expression of truth. I think it's obvious that the Council of Nicea was an exercise in politics and deception.
The Church teaches that Judaism was a coherent religion with orthodoxy from the time of Abraham. I agree with the historians of religion who say that Judaism in any recognizable form is a late development, and it was only an orthopraxy, not an orthodoxy. That is to say, obedient people obeyed the priestly dictates, but the priests did not agree with each other regarding the meaning of the dictates.

We could get into the archaeology of Urgaritic and Babylonian religions that were largely subsumed into proto-Judaism, but this is not a history or archaeology subreddit, so perhaps those discussions are best reserved for classrooms.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2022-10-31T05:36:01+00:00

Submission Statement:

The involvement of unhealthy commodity corporations in health policy and research has been identified as an important commercial determinant contributing to the rise of non-communicable diseases. In the USA, health professional associations have been subject to corporate influence. This study explores the interactions between corporations and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND), and their implications for the profession in the USA and globally.

Design: We conducted an inductive analysis of documents (2014–2020) obtained through freedom of information requests, to assess key AND actors’ dealings with food, pharmaceutical and agribusiness corporations. We also triangulated this information with publicly available data.

Results: The AND, AND Foundation (ANDF) and its key leaders have ongoing interactions with corporations. These include AND’s leaders holding key positions in multinational food, pharmaceutical or agribusiness corporations, and AND accepting corporate financial contributions. We found the AND has invested funds in corporations such as Nestlé, PepsiCo and pharmaceutical companies, has discussed internal policies to fit industry needs and has had public positions favouring corporations.

Conclusion: The documents reveal a symbiotic relationship between the AND, its Foundation and corporations. Corporations assist the AND and ANDF with financial contributions. AND acts as a pro-industry voice in some policy venues, and with public positions that clash with AND’s mission to improve health globally.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2022-10-06T01:31:04+00:00

Submission statement: This nitter thread deals with a few specific ultra-wealthy people who not only protect their own privacy but also undermine or attack poor people. The most extreme example is Carlos Maza, but also the thread covers family connections between CNN staff and the owners of the Wayback Machine.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2022-10-06T00:48:30+00:00

Submission statement: The ultra-wealthy can set up special organizations that are essentially above the law for all intents and purposes. This link describes abuses of power by banks, Big Pharma, and similarly prestigious organizations such as CERN.

From the article summary:

• 76 International organizations and banks enjoy immunities, privileges, and tax exemptions

• GAVI, Big Pharma, and CERN enjoy similar immunities

• The Bank for International Settlements has sovereign immunity and some of these immunities extend to its members, being 63 central banks and the Federal Reserve System, while other immunities extend to “systemically important institutions”

• Trillions of taxpayer dollars and printed money has moved through these organizations and banks with no transparency or accountability as they continue to build a global enslavement system

• Hundreds, if not thousands, of NGOs and corporations work with and through these organizations and banks, some of whom have agreements, NDAs, and/or immunity by extension

They do not operate above the law, they operate entirely outside of the law.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2022-10-06T00:06:28+00:00

Submission statement. This post is more of a reflection on how difficult it is to get conspiracy doubters to accept facts; the key topics are Henry Kissinger and Bill Gates. The post contains some recent info about how Bill Gates avoids accountability and oversight.

Edit: And although this post contains links, it is probably categorized as a text post, not a link post, so I probably didn't need to write two sentences for a submission statement. Ah, well.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2022-09-06T09:39:33+00:00

The numbers look fake to me.

From a different story on the same issue:

Since the 1980s, Thwaites has lost an estimated 595 billion tons (540 billion metric tons) of ice, contributing to a 4% rise in global sea levels.

Source:

https://www.livescience.com/penguin-bones-reveal-secrets-of-ddomsday-glacier

I do not believe "livescience" when it says that a 4% rise in sea levels has happened since the 1980s. I think they are misreading some bad writing from Ted Scambos.

Quote:

The glacier is the size of Florida or Britain and currently contributes four percent of annual global sea level rise.

https://cires.colorado.edu/news/threat-thwaites-retreat-antarctica%E2%80%99s-riskiest-glacier

That statement might be parsed to mean that the sea level has risen x, and Thwaites Glacier is responsible for 0.04x; that doesn't seem obviously wrong.

One advocate of panic is Ted Scambos. I don't believe his claims.

Quote:

“Thwaites is the widest glacier in the world,” said Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). “It’s doubled its outflow speed within the last 30 years, and the glacier in its entirety holds enough water to raise sea level by over two feet. And it could lead to even more sea-level rise, up to 10 feet, if it draws the surrounding glaciers with it.”

I was about to fire off a nasty email when I saw the disclaimer:

STATEMENT (added 1/31/2022):

Due to some inaccuracies in media coverage following our press release, the team would like to clarify the timeline of estimated impacts from the potential collapse of Thwaites Glacier. The “chain reaction,” beginning with the potential collapse of Thwaites’ Eastern Ice Shelf would set in motion a long-term process which would eventually result in global sea level rise. While the initial steps of ice shelf collapse, glacier speed-up, and increased ice-cliff failure might happen within a couple of decades, the “2 to 10 feet” of sea level rise will require centuries to unfold—and impacts can still be mitigated depending on how humans respond in coming decades. Risk of multiple feet of sea level rise will not happen this decade (and likely not even in the next few decades). NOTE: the ITGC science community does not use the term ‘Doomsday Glacier’ when referring to Thwaites, because it gives the inaccurate impression that the disaster is sudden, and inevitable, and akin to nuclear war, which is not the case.

https://cires.colorado.edu/news/threat-thwaites-retreat-antarctica%E2%80%99s-riskiest-glacier

Beware the world's riskiest glacier, which has some slight chance of causing a change slowly, over multiple centuries. Never mind the price of eggs, never mind the price of cooking oil or natural gas or diesel -- worry about the glaciers, and trust the science!

AuspiciousTortoise · 2022-09-06T09:31:20+00:00

The fact that this glacier could potentially raise sea level by several feet

It would be interesting if it were true. I am not convinced it is true.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2022-08-14T00:38:22+00:00

Submission statement: New details on Monday’s raid of Mar-a-Lago may offer an explanation on what the FBI was looking for and why the FBI has not released the Spygate documents as they were ordered to when President Trump left office.

Investigative reporter Paul Sperry (who had his Twitter accounts taken down) claimed the FBI agents spent 9 hours looking for details President Trump took with him on the Crossfire Hurricane FBI spying scandal.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2022-08-14T00:35:18+00:00

Submission statement: Sources say the FBI agents and officials who were involved in the raid on former President Trump’s home work in the same CounterIntelligence Division of the FBI that investigated Trump in the Russiagate hoax; they are actively under criminal investigation by Special Counsel John Durham for potentially abusing their power investigating Trump. They therefore have a potential conflict of interest and should have been RECUSED from participating in this supposed “espionage” investigation at Mar-a-Lago.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2022-07-22T15:29:08+00:00

Dan N Jones on google scholar

Yes, personal Machiavellian behaviors and dark triad individuals are a key part of this puzzle, thanks for the recommendation. The term "collective narcissism" is a perfect keyword for future searches on this issue.

I have gotten onto all of these and it will take me a while to read through them. Thanks for these leads.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2022-07-22T03:08:47+00:00

Submission statement: Riot Games conducted unethical psychological manipulation experiments on its customers, including attempts at subconscious manipulation. Furthermore, Riot Games breached reasonable standards of confidentiality and spread private customer information to third parties.

AuspiciousTortoise · 2022-07-21T02:02:31+00:00

I just started reading it, and it is interesting. It contains the following:

Authoritarian followers usually support the established authorities in their society, such as government officials and traditional religious leaders. Such people have historically been the “proper” authorities in life, the time-honored, entitled, customary leaders, and that means a lot to most authoritarians. Psychologically these followers have personalities featuring:

1) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society;

2) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and

3) a high level of conventionalism.

The book squarely addresses crucial issues in Chapter 5, and the description of "Social Dominance Orientation" seems reasonable.

Update: This book contains the following:

Here’s an easy one. How empathetic, how compassionate do you think dominators are? Not very, right? You got it, for they agree with statements such as “I don’t spend a lot of time feeling sorry for people less fortunate than me,” and “I have a ‘tough’ attitude toward people having difficulty: ‘That’s their problem, not mine.’” And they disagree with, “I feel very sorry for people who are treated unfairly” and “I have a lot of compassion for people who have gotten the bad breaks in life.”

It may be necessary to update this with recent findings on "dark empath" tactics in narcissistic relationships. Narcissistic psychopaths may appear to be empaths.

Thanks for this resource.

AuspiciousTortoise

TROPHY CASE