In case anyone noticed a pattern this year…
3 minute read
December 5, 2021, 10:10 AM
I’m wondering if anyone noticed a pattern with the splash photos in 2021. Here’s what I did all year:
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
Every single splash photo in 2021 has me wearing tie-dye in some form or other. In January, I wore my rainbow tie-dye onesie. February, I was wearing a long-sleeve tie-dye t-shirt that I got on Amazon. March, I’m wearing my “Eat Your Greens” shirt that’s tie-dye with the broccoli on it. April, I’m wearing a different rainbow tie-dye that Elyse found. May, I’m wearing “Eat Your Greens” again. June, I’m wearing one that Elyse made for me last year. July, I’m wearing a red, white, and blue one that I bought because it’s patriotic colors for the Fourth of July. August, I’m wearing a short-sleeve version of the February shirt, from the same vendor. September, I’m wearing something that I bought from Ross. October, I’m wearing the February shirt again. November, I’m wearing the July shirt again. And then for December, I knew I had to do something fabulous, so I went on Etsy looking for a Christmas-themed tie-dye shirt, and found one. Here’s another photo of me in it that Elyse took on the same day. At least you can’t accuse me of not looking festive.
Then for what it’s worth, I also have a SpongeBob SquarePants tie-dye that I wore for Elyse’s birthday that I never ran as the splash. Here’s what that looks like:
I guess you could say that I like tie-dye. Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, Mr. Krabs is my favorite character on SpongeBob SquarePants (unless it’s Squidward when he is buying cigarettes).
In any case, this was not something that I had planned for 2021 from the outset, but then once I started with it, I decided to keep it up. January was “hey, I need a quick splash photo”, and decided to go with the onesie. Then after I did tie-dye again in February, I decided to carry it through the year. This tie-dye pattern also ensured that I wouldn’t skip a month and either not update it at all, or run a vintage photo (I usually have one or two misses a year). I have no childhood photos of myself in tie-dye, and skipping a month entirely would ruin the pattern. The pattern, however, ends with December. I have already prepared my splash photo for January, and I am wearing a dark blue shirt that says “Count the Vote”. That was deliberate, in order to keep it contained to one calendar year, and definitively break the pattern.
All in all, this was a fun little experiment, and I’m glad that I was able to carry it through the entire year. I might have to try something like this again some time.
Categories: Schumin Web meta
Why are you filing DMCA takedowns against usage of images you’ve posted on Wikipedia under a CC-BY-SA license? You’re causing people to get their Twitter accounts suspended with this behavior.
First of all, for some background information on this user’s complaint, this user is referencing a tweet that included a photo of Big Mavica from 2002. This image is one of my older images, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. That means that the person using the image is permitted to use it in any way that they see fit, provided that they follow the terms of the license, which, in this instance, means providing attribution to the author (i.e. a photo credit), and releasing the resulting work under the same license as the original. The user, in this instance, failed to ensure that the proper attribution was provided, and therefore, despite the Creative Commons license, this was still a copyright infringement, and therefore is a valid target for a DMCA takedown notice. After all, Creative Commons licenses do often come with strings attached, and it does not mean the same thing as public domain.
As far as the user’s complaining that I am causing people’s Twitter accounts to get suspended, I feel very little sympathy for them. I submitted one takedown notice regarding materials posted under their account. One takedown notice by itself, in a vacuum, does not equal an account suspension. If this was their only copyright violation, they would be fine, i.e. take your lumps and do better in the future. If my DMCA takedown notice was enough to get their Twitter account suspended, that means that my takedown notice just happened to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, i.e. the latest in a string of copyright violations, leading Twitter to issue a suspension. In other words, my takedown notice was not their first rodeo by any means when it came to copyright infringements. A pattern had been established, and Twitter finally determined that enough was enough.
I’ve said it many times before, that I treat people like adults and hold them responsible for their own poor choices. And it is often the case that they don’t like that sort of treatment. I find that to be a common thing: people demand to be treated like adults until you actually treat them like one, and then they get all upset that they actually have to be held to account for their own decisions.
Bottom line: ensure that you know the license that content is provided under, and follow it exactly. If you do that, you’ll stay out of trouble.