Tag: Mainstream

Stupid Tumblr (updated)

Many thanks to everyone who responded to my previous post. Clearly, when it comes to browsing porn, passions – quite rightly – run high.

As far as I can tell there are actually two independent factors at work here. One is an adult (safe mode) setting and one is a privacy setting. Some tumblrs (like mine) have neither set and can be easily viewed without logging in. Some (like Femdom Style Counsel) have the adult flag flipped, which means you have to be logged in, but they can still be viewed normally in a web browser once you are. Some (like alternative femdom) have the privacy setting flipped on, which means it is only viewed in your dashboard and you always get a crappy browsing experience.

I’m not really sure why anyone anonymously reposting random porn pictures to their anonymous tumblr would flip the privacy flag, but apparently that’s what is going on. The good news is that the iOS app makes for a slightly better experience for tumblrs tagged as private. The bad news is none of the suggestions I received fixed the web browser issues. So please, if you run an awesome femdom tumblr, don’t flip the privacy setting. It makes zero sense to do so and it’ll give a crappy experience to your viewers.

This is Cate Blanchett from an image found on the aforementioned Femdom Style Counsel tumblr.

Movie Night

I went to watch the new Blade Runner movie tonight. Paltego’s hot take is that it’s a good movie, where the original was a great movie. Ryan Gosling is a perfectly fine actor, but watching this made me appreciate just how good Harrison Ford was in his prime. The original is packed with classic scenes, and while this version has a lot of emotional depths to mine, it never really manages to find them. There’s certainly nothing to match the “I want more life, fucker” or the ‘tears in the rain‘ speech.

From the femdom angle it did strike me that Joe’s electronic companion is the ultimate tease and denial. Beautiful, flirty and entirely untouchable. I also loved the sequence of the woman blowing shit up while getting her nails done. That was a lovely contrast of elegance and controlled brutality.

Who are you?

This Gizmodo story is likely to strike fear into the heart of anyone who tries to maintain multiple and distinct identities on social media. A sex worker named Leilia had two separate Facebook accounts, one for her private life and one for her job. Despite keeping them distinct, with separate email and phone numbers, her friends and family account suddenly started suggesting her work clients as “People You Might Know.” Obviously Facebook’s algorithms had managed to link the data in someway and decided it was all one big happy social network.

Facebook coming up with surprising and unnerving friend suggestions isn’t a new story. This article, posted a few months ago, describes how it figured out the authors great aunt, despite the fact his father had been adopted as child and had no contact with that branch of the family. With the algorithms getting smarter, the amount of data online constantly growing, and neither of them easy to monitor or understand, I’m sure issues like this are going proliferate.

As a software guy, I find the situation somewhat perverse. Traditionally academic computer systems had very strong notions of user identity, because they were shared systems, where personal computers had no concept of it, because they weren’t powerful enough to support it. Companies like Microsoft and Apple worked for years to bring proper identify management and user isolation to PCs. No sooner had they achieved that goal – Windows XP being a major milestone – than smart phones, tablets and social media software arrived and turned everything into a inter-connected soup with no good way to managed different identities.

For now I suspect the only way to handle the problem is to not use the same social media platform with two different identities you wish to keep distinct. So if you have a Facebook account for a friends/family identity, don’t have one for your kink/sex identity. And if you want a tumblr account to share kinky porn, don’t also create a second tumblr account to share holiday snaps with friends. Pick the product most useful to each identity and don’t assume you can keep two accounts on the same platform distinct.

Life was so much simpler before the internet. It used to be only necessary to slip on a masquerade mask and you could attend any fancy ball of your choice in total anonymity.

This is from a shoot for Marie Claire by Koray Parlak and features Nina Reijnders with Victoria Lipatova.

A cunning plan

Trying to dig up dirt dirt on your political opponents is a time honored trick. Liberal Democrat candidate Dean Stone seemed to be giving it a shot when he emailed his opponent to ask if she had ‘anything embarrassing’ in her past. Admittedly, simply asking your opponent to simply volunteer political ammunition is pretty dumb, but at least it follows the basic formula. However, he then decided to give the old storyline a new twist, by sending her a naked picture of himself, partly dressed as a mouse and with a dominatrix. Presumably he thought she might not have been clear what he meant by ’embarrassing’, and thought that a personal example might really clarify his original request.

In today’s climate, it’s tough to set new standards for dumb political decisions. I really thought America had this sewn up. Yet Mr Stone has made a strong play here to bring Britain back into contention. Sadly, despite his cunning plan, he ended up coming 6th out of 6 candidates, so clearly the British voters aren’t on board with this new approach. Maybe he should try giving the White House a call? They seem to like out-of-the-box thinkers who can do exciting new things with social media.

Of course if Servitor had his way, male politicians and voters would be a thing of the past.

This wasn’t in Drivers Ed

Apparently in Japan it’s permissible for women to slap male drivers who don’t apply the brakes smoothly. I base this unlikely statement on this advert from Nissan and the fact that advertisers have never lied to me. Femdom fans should therefore avoid at all costs Nissan’s new e-Power system, with threatens to put an end to all to this facial brutality.

Based on its style, this face slapping artwork is clearly by Namio Harukawa.

Off on my travels

I’m taking off to San Francisco for a vacation. As is usual for my trips, good food and kinky fun is the plan of record. Like I did for LA earlier this year, I’m going to try playing with someone I know well and someone new. I figure that’s a good way to simultaneously broaden my experiences while also building on past relationships. Although, after getting beaten up multiple times in the space of a few days, my body might not be a fan of my plan.

Normally at this point I’d offer pre-apologies for a potential lack of blogging. But quite frankly, given my busy recent life and slack blogging, a vacation might actually give me chance to write more than usual. We’ll see how that works out.

I’ll leave you with an image that I like, but I have absolutely no context for. I originally assumed it was from a fashion shoot, but nothing like that showed up on an image search. I believe it’s the actress Gwendoline Christie, but exactly why she’s decided to grab this gentleman by the face, I’ve no idea.

The safeword is ‘lawyer’

Via the Detroit News comes this story of a domme called Temptress Nirvana facing prison time for blackmail. It’s hard to tell if this was a fin domme scene gone very badly wrong, a straight out extortion attempt or something in-between. The article seems to rely almost entirely on the police report, which is certainly damming, but hardly a trustworthy and unbiased source. The domme’s twitter feed looks like a lot of similar ones from other fin dommes. i.e. Lots of selfies, suggestions to send money and reports of cash gifts.

Whatever the details of this particular case, I can’t help thinking that this might be the kind of thing we see a lot more of in coming years. For one, it typically seems to involve horny older men with a humiliation and blackmail fetish talking to young and attractive but inexperienced women who want money. That seems like a combination primed for disaster. I’m sure there are some highly skilled and trustworth fin dommes out there but, like every area in life, the bad always outnumber the good.

The other things that makes me think this’ll be a repeating storyline is changing demographics. Fetishes are said to develop when people are children or adolescents. Most of today’s middle-aged men with money and blackmail fetishes will not have grown up with the internet. The generation that follows them will have. They’ll have experienced formative events involving social media, and I have to think that’ll play into what kinks are popular in the years to come. If doing online blackmail scenes becomes increasingly popular, then it’s inevitable there will be more spinning out control and ending up in court.

From a personal perspective, I don’t need help from someone like Temptress Nirvana to spend my money. Most of it has a very brief and passing relationship with my bank account at the best of times.

This is from the twitter feed of the domme in question.

Eve’s Glory

I hadn’t intended to continue the WWI theme beyond yesterday’s post. It’s not exactly a great femdom or feelgood topic. However, then I remembered an exhibition of photographs I’d stumbled across called Eve’s Glory. It was by the photographer A. Tamboly and featured women wearing classic military uniforms from the 19th and early 20th century. While at first it seems a bit gimmicky, I actually think it’s a really interesting way to look back at that era. They reminded me of cosplay, or a videogame, which speaks to the impossibility of the images. It’s inconceivable to imagine a woman in a senior military role of the time, and these images really make that resonate.

I believe this uniform is that of a German Field Marshall from pre-WWI.

Hurrah Germania!

It’s not often that femdom artwork intersects with momentous world events, but I believe this cartoon is one such case. I couldn’t find any background information for it but, given I’m an enormous history nerd, I can take an educated guess. Apologies if this ends up being a lot of history and very little femdom, but I think the cartoon has a fascinating connection to a historical turning point that shaped the entire 20th century.

The man being beaten by Lady Germania is Joseph Chamberlain, a key figure in the British government before the First World War and father of the infamous (to be) Neville. In Joseph’s era, Britain was the dominant world and naval power, and Germany was rapidly becoming the dominant European land power. Some elements of the two governments thought they should form an Anglo-German alliance, each concentrating on their respective strengths on land and at sea. Together with America, they believed this would allow them to divide up and dominate the world. This was opposed by those on the British side who thought it would just give Germany a chance consolidate their power in Europe before turning on Britain. In the German camp there was opposition from those who thought they could never be a world power without building a challenge to the Royal Navy, which Britain would never stand for.

Ironically, despite this cartoon, Joseph Chamberlain was actually one of the key British figures pushing for friendship and alliance with Germany in the late 1890’s. This cartoon was probably published around 1901 when his third attempt at negotiating an alliance had fallen through over a dispute on the conduct of British soldiers in the Boer war. Chamberlain in turn attacked the conduct of German troops, their press castigated him and Britain ultimately ended up allied with France and Russia against Germany.

It’s intriguing to think what would have happened if he’d succeeded. WWI clearly would have not happened or would have unfolded very differently. And WWI was the defining event of the 20th century. From it flowed the Russian revolution and communism, America’s transition to a world power, the collapse of European states in fascism and and ultimately WWII. From that flowed the Cold War, the collapse of the colonial empires, the rebuilding of Japan and the growth of China.

Of course it’s impossible to know what the world would have been like if Chamberlain hadn’t end up under the lash of progress by Lady Germania. I think it’s safe to say it would have been a very different place. I wonder what the artist would have thought if he’d known what was to come?

Google Translate doesn’t a good job of the top text, so if anyone can help with a translation there I’d be interested to know what it says. The bottom appears to be “A striking answer by the German people to the attacks of Chamberlain.”