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Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) – Then and Now

Posted on by Nikolai-The-Wolfdog

This piece was last updated 31 January at 03:32 GMT. As such, this may not reflect up-to-date information. Please visit who.int for real-time information.

• On 31 December 2019, the WHO China Country Office was informed of cases of pneumonia unknown etiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. From 31 December 2019 through 3 January 2020, a total of 44 case-patients with pneumonia of unknown etiology were reported to WHO by the national authorities in China. During this reported period, the causal agent was not identified.

• On 11 and 12 January 2020, WHO received further detailed information from the National Health Commission China that the outbreak is associated with exposures in one seafood market in Wuhan City.

• The Chinese authorities identified a new type of coronavirus, which was isolated on 7 January 2020.

• On 12 January 2020, China shared the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus for countries to use in developing specific diagnostic kits.

• On 13 January 2020, the Ministry of Public Health, Thailand reported the first imported case of lab-confirmed novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) from Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.

• On 15 January 2020, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan (MHLW) reported an imported case of laboratory-confirmed 2019-novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) from Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.

• On 20 January 2020, National IHR Focal Point (NFP) for Republic of Korea reported the first case of novel coronavirus in the Republic of Korea.

From “https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200121-sitrep-1-2019-ncov.pdf?sfvrsn=20a99c10_4”

21 January: 282 Cases
22 January: 314 Cases
23 January: 581 Cases
24 January: 846 Cases
25 January: 1,320 Cases
26 January: 2,014 Cases
27 January: 2,798 Cases
28 January: 4,593 Cases
29 January: 6,065 Cases
30 January: 7,818 Cases
31 January: 9,826 Cases

The Story of Linicks

Posted on by Nikolai-The-Wolfdog

Since I made the dumb mistake to make a WikiFur article on myself, and a certain user won’t allow me to revert it, I might as well explain what happened just to set the record straight.

Before I go on any further, I really don’t know why I said the “despite a clear link” part. I am the original author of Faux-Pa, so using that tone to incriminate myself was a very dumb mistake. I’ve honestly moved on from this entire situation (if you can even call it that…), but seeing as how I have some alternative opinions about things happening in the furry fandom and world, I know people will try to use it against me. You may find that I use offensive language when speaking to friends, but I am not racist, homophobic, transphobic or otherwise. This is just me being edgy, so if this is the hill you want me to die on, then it better be a damn large hill to fit the entirety of Reddit/4chan/etc. I find that the more offended people get when others use certain words, the more the words become powerful.

Around 3 years ago, on 31 October of 2016, I was accused and banned from e621.net for going into the Furnet IRC channel #e621 and impersonating an admin (Ratte). The person who had done this had then spammed (and I quote) “FUCK NIGGERS” over and over (Paste from an admin used to incriminate).

Just like I said in the email that I sent to NotMeNotYou upon realizing that I was banned, I was not in the IRC channel when this happened. This IRC nonsense happened several hours before I made, in hindsight, a cringy “open letter” to admins because my shitty art was being denied. I wouldn’t have spammed racial slurs in their chat then proceeded to create an “open letter” where I expected people to take me seriously. I’m glad they didn’t. Still, it took a great deal of persuasion to let me back onto the website. I had to go behind NMNY’s back and get the other admins to side with me (which wasn’t easy), and I’m not proud of having to do this.

I still stand by the fact that I was not the one to spam racial slurs in their IRC channel. I don’t know if my account was compromised, considering the person who did this was using the built-in IRC client on e621 at the time, Mibbit. With this client, it was directly attached to my e621 username and password protected through FurNet as well, so I have no clue how they were able to impersonate me impersonating an admin to be a racist troll.

One of the main reasons I’m creating this post that seems like old drama is because WikiFur craves completeness. Despite blanking the article twice, it has been reverted several times to it’s original state. I figured it was a good chance to clear the air, so I said “Fuck it, might as well”.

I’m not asking anyone to believe me, considering the only people who will see my WikiFur page won’t care anyways as they have their own agenda. To quote one of my favourite games:

Just… remove the Dedsec part and replace it with “I have”. Feel free to cringe.

Plus-Sized Models in Adult Media: A Rant

Posted on by Nikolai-The-Wolfdog

In the furry fandom, we seem to have a lot of body type representation in adult media- specifically plus-sized. It’s not something that’s absolutely necessary, but it’s refreshing to see. However, when you step outside of the furry realm into adult media at large, that body type diversity seems to disappear.

A large portion of male/gay pornography, whether it’s professional or amateur, is of fit muscular hunks or skinny twinks. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course. I get that some people just aren’t into the body type. It just comes off as if the adult media industry is inherently rigged against plus-sized people. It feels like if you don’t have washboard abs and a cock with the power of Mjölnir to match that you’re no use to anyone outside of the fetish circles. Why does my body type have to be a fetish in the first place? In these circles, it’s not even me that they would be sexually attracted to- it’d be my excess body weight.

You can’t even escape from this stereotype within the bear community, a community that plus-sized men typically flock towards unknowingly.

Many claim discrimination has increased within the bear community, as some men who self-identify as “bears” or “musclebears” do not welcome higher-bodyfat men (see chub) at their events…Fat (or lack of it) is seen by some as a political issue, some of whom see their overweight condition as a form of self-acceptance.

Bear (gay culture) – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_(gay_culture)

Like, this is ridiculous. If I have facial hair, body hair, and overall exude the characteristics of a typical bear, then my body type shouldn’t matter. Regardless of what the meatheads in the bear community think, I’ll still consider myself a bear.

I would hope that this chaotic rant would resonate with other people of my body type, but nobody reads these, so I don’t have high hopes.

“All About Me” Meme

Posted on by Nikolai-The-Wolfdog

“Ugh, one of these”. Shhh… I had to because I’m bored and it looked fun.

All About Me

– Name: Jonathin
– Single or taken: Single and ready to fix your router
– Sex: Buy me dinner first
– Birthday: 15 Dec, 1997
– Sign: Horse-dude with the pointy thing
– Hair color: Brown
– Eye color: Green
– Height: Tall enough
– Are you straight/bisexual/gay?: Gay af

Specifics

– What kind of shampoo do you use?: Tea Tree
– What are you listening to right now?: In general? Dunno why, but a lot of Ed Sheeran
– Who is the last person that called you?: My dad
– How many buddies are online right now?: 5

Favourites

– Animal: Aww, you’re going to make me pick one?
– Colour: Green
– Drink: Coffee
– Element: Uranium
– Food: Mexican
– Game: Rust
– Movie: Interstellar
– Song: Deep House, Metal, Classical, Old Country (think FO:NV)
– Subjects in school: Anything computer related
– TV: Burn Notice, Law and Order: SVU

Have You Ever…

– Given anyone a bath?: No
– Smoked?: Heh… yeah. Maybe once or twice…
– Bungee jumped?: Fuck no. Miss me with that shit.
– Made yourself throw up?: Yes
– Skinny dipped?: Hell no
– Ever been in love?: Yeah
– Made yourself cry to get out of trouble?: I think once
– Pictured your crush naked?: Fuck yeah
– Actually seen your crush naked?: Sort of
– Cried when someone died?: Yes
– Lied: Yes
– Fallen for your best friend?: Yes
– Used someone?: Yes
– Done something you regret?: Yes

Current

– Clothes: Black t-shirt, black jeans and blue plaid boxer shorts
– Desktop picture: Black Void
– CD in player: N/A
– DVD in player: N/A

Last Person…

– You touched: I’d tell you, but I can’t
– Hugged: My grandmother
– You kissed: My ex-FWB
– You IMed: My old friend
– Talk to online: My Discord buds
– You sexed it up with: Guy I met up with from Growlr (yes, he wore protection)

Are you…

– Understanding?: I mean, I try to be
– Open-minded?: Again, I try to be
– Arrogant?: Yes
– Insecure?: YES
– Random?: banana
– Hungry?: No
– Smart?: I mean, I feel smart when people ask me to fix their computers
– Moody?: “ArE yOu MoOdY?”
– Organized?: Hell no
– Shy?: no…
– Difficult?: I dunno
– Bored easily?: Yes
– Entertained easily?: I can always find something to keep my two brain cells occupied (hence why I’m writing this)
– Obsessed?: Yessir
– Lazy?: Oh god yes
– Angry?: WHO THE FUCK YOU CALLIN’ ANGRY
– Happy?: No
– Hyper?: I can be
– Trusting?: Sometimes too trusting

Random

– In the morning: I wake up, roll over onto my gut and smash my hands between my face and my pillow so I can still breathe. Don’t ask how it works. Even I can’t explain it.
– Love is: something I’ve never felt by anyone else except family.
– I dream about: nothing. At the very least, I just never remember them.
– What do you notice first in the sex you’re into: Their sexual bits. It sounds so shallow, but my mental issues have slowly turned me into this type of person.

Who…

– Makes you laugh the most: my Discord buds
– Makes you smile: Everyone who smiles at me. It’s contagious!
– Gives you a funny feeling when you see him/her: I’d tell you, but I can’t

Do you ever…

– Sit on the internet all night waiting for that special someone to message you?: No
– Wish you were a member of the opposite sex?: No
– Wish you were younger?: Yes
– Cry because someone said something to you?: Sometimes

Number…

– Of times I have had my heart broken?: 0
– Of Cd’s: Too many. Thank god ISOs can be written to USB Drives now
– Of scars on my body: 1
– Of bones I’ve broken: 1

This was fun.

Testing the FAAK Big Dog/Wolf Dildo

Posted on by Nikolai-The-Wolfdog

~ Before the experience ~

I’m not going to lie, this isn’t my first experience with toys, but I can’t go into much details about my true first experience.

I’m pretty excited to try out this toy that I got from a Chinese company called FAAK.

https://img.fasttechcdn.com/961/9616880/9616880-6.jpg

Being a cheap furry, this was naturally my first choice. I bought it off Wish.com before it was delisted for “being Inappropriate” (even though there were listings for adult toys with pictures of real horse penises). I paid about $12 USD for the dildo, and it took just under a month to arrive.

The store selling the toy claimed to have discreet packaging, but when it arrived, it clearly read “ANAL PLUG” on the outside. I understand why they had done that (Chinese and US Customs need to know what’s in the package to check for contraband and counterfeits), but I’m a little peeved that they would make a claim like that. I’m lucky that it was my brother who checked the mail and not my 72-year-old grandmother.

The shaft is about 14.5cm long and has a circumference of about 13.5cm at it’s thickest point. The knot is about 10.5cm wide from the front and side, making it a little anatomically incorrect. Either way, this $12 wolf toy’s knot has a 21cm circumference, so if you’re looking for anatomical correctness, then this toy is not for you.

Inexplicably, the tip of the toy has a strange 3.5cm cup that contributes to the anatomical issues. I’m not sure if this was by design or if this was a miscommunication between R&D and sales, but it’s still worth noting. My hope is that this won’t make cleaning the toy any more clumsy than I’m already anticipating.

I also noticed that my hands feel a bit dry after initially handling it. I’m not sure if this is because of their choice to use flexible PVC as opposed to medical silicone, but I hope this doesn’t affect my experience. Medical silicone can cost up to $16USD per kilo, so using PVC makes sense from a manufacturing standpoint.

Being that this is my first toy in my collection, I will need to ease onto the toy as to not hurt myself. Since I’m pretty chubby, my hope is that this won’t stop me from being able to take the knot.

~ After the experience ~

It… Kinda sucked. Being that I’m inexperienced in anal masturbation, I made a few mistakes.

First and foremost is not using enough petroleum jelly. When I initially put it in me, I felt like I had put enough on the toy. However, after using the toy for a few minutes then taking it out to clean it, I didn’t think I needed to put more on before continuing. All I can say is “ouch”.

Second was pushing myself too far. I got a little too excited and hurt myself. I won’t be walking straight for a couple of days, but I should be okay.

Third was not learning how to properly use it. I figured it was pretty straightforward, but I found myself fumbling about with the toy more than actually enjoying it. My weight doesn’t help at all, but when I did find the right angle, it felt pretty good. If I closed my eyes, I could almost believe that I was getting mounted by a beefy werewolf.

As I expected, the strange cup at the tip was a bit awkward to clean, but not too awkward. The knot being the way it is didn’t affect my ability to take it at all.

I think I just need to research how to do these sorts of things before doing them. Maybe I thought my approach to learning programming would work for further exploring my sexuality, but sadly, it didn’t. After extensive research, I’m looking forward to trying this toy again.

Kink vs. Fetish: What’s the difference?

Posted on by Nikolai-The-Wolfdog

Oh boy. Here come the keyboard warriors. Before you pollute my comment section, hear me out.

So in the furry fandom (more specifically the adult side of it), we’ve deemed this month “Kinktober” for whatever reason (a portmanteau of “kink” and “October”). While I’ve never been one to subscribe to most vanilla kinks, I’ve sort of brushed the idea off to the side.

That was until I started seeing some of the art being made for it. As soon as I did, I knew I had to make this.

So what got my jimmies all rustled? A piece of art popped up on FurAffinity’s homepage that claimed to be participating in Kinktober. It featured a bear plushie with a hole in in its bum with a dribble of cum seeping out. I thought nothing of it at first. “They’re into a harmless fetish that I’m not. Cool beans.”

As I continued down my feed, the realization hit me. That wasn’t a kink. That is the very nature of a fetish. “What does it matter, Nikolai?” I hear you ask. Bare with me now.

What’s the difference?

To understand why this irritates me, I need to explain to you what the difference between a kink and fetish is. A kink is something that enhances the sexual pleasure of your partner. For example, your sexual partner having thick thighs might be a kink. Another might be someone wearing a full leather suit while you spank them like the naughty boy/girl they are. You’re not attracted to the item itself, but rather the person you’re having sex with wearing or using said item.

On the other hand, a fetish completely replaces the sexual partner with an item. In the case of this bear plushy, people who enjoy this sort of art or item have a plushy fetish. People who enjoy having sex with inflatable pool toys have an inflatable pool toy fetish.

For the longest time, I thought I had a underwear fetish. I love bulges, tents and asses in underwear. 75% of the art that I’ve downloaded from e621 features it in one way or another. It gets my blood flowing and my engines revving. Since I thought that the main component of my kink was underwear, it had to be a fetish. I was sorely disappointed when I realized it was nothing more than a kink.

Why does it matter?

So why does this irritate me? Well, for obvious reasons- a kink is not a fetish, and a fetish is not a kink. I’ve been seeing the two being conflated, and it gets me knickers in a wad. Wikipedia even has the two mixed up:

“The term “kink” has been claimed by some who practice sexual fetishism as a term or synonym for their practices, indicating a range of sexual and sexualistic practices from playful to sexual objectification and certain paraphilias” From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kink_(sexuality)

A kink has nothing to do with paraphilia (the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects). Now, I may be wrong, but until a psychiatrist tells me otherwise, I think I rest my case.

What do you think? Do you think this was a fair breakdown? Leave a comment below.

IPv6, and why you should use it

Posted on by Nikolai-The-Wolfdog

If you’re on any Windows operating system since Windows Vista, IPv6 is enabled by default. If you’ve ever called upon by your family or friends to fix their internet, you’ve more than likely came across a reference to the protocol at least once.

But what is it? According to the FCC:

” In order to connect devices over the Internet, each device must have an Internet protocol (IP) address. The current IP system is Version 4 (IPv4), which makes available over four billion IP addresses…

…IPv6, the next-generation protocol, provides approximately 340 undecillion IP addresses (see Figure 1), ensuring availability of new IP addresses far into the future, as well as promoting the continued expansion and innovation of Internet technology. “

Internet Protocol Version 6: IPv6 for Consumers

Okay, that’s all fine and well, but how does that translate to us, the consumer? Luckily, there is no set day when IPv4 (e.g. 192.168.xxx.xxx) addresses will up and stop working, but more and more Service Providers are implementing and prioritizing IPv6 infrastructure to take advantage of the new IP addresses. With only 4 billion IP addresses possible under IPv4, the ISPs of the world have been scrambling to scoop up as many of them as possible to reserve for their customers. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority says they ran out of IP addresses to dish out back in 2011. That’s a pretty big deal.

I don’t see all the major Service Providers dropping everything to address this issue, with Microsoft taking nearly 6 years after the IANA ran out to even start playing around with the idea of using IPv6 internally. WordPress still doesn’t support IPv6, which is easily seen when accessing this blog with IPv6-only. Text and images (like images from my ad server and my logo) hosted on Hostinger show up, but any images hosted on WP’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) don’t show up. This is because WP, as well as big names in the tech industry, does not offer IPv6.

dig -6 i0.wp.com

From my research into IPv6, the only benefits of using it that I could find are:

  • IPv6 does not utilize Network Address Translation (NAT), which is sort of a bandwidth hog. This means devices can use Stateless Address Autoconfiguration (SLAAC) to configure themselves automatically when connected to an IPv6 network. This also means that devices can see a marginal increase in bandwidth, which is everything on slower networks.
  • ICMPv6 (the ICMP implementation for IPv6) implements IPSec, which authenticates and encrypts the packets of data sent over an network. This means that IPv6 is arguably more secure than IPv4.
  • IPv6 causes less strain on the network devices delivering content to your face because IPv6 requires less packet processing than IPv4.

On a Service-provider-level, these are all things that would make their lives easier. The only thing that is supposedly holding them back is the monetary cost of upgrading their existing single-stack infrastructures to dual-stack. I find this incredibly difficult to believe. According to The Wall Street Journal, Automattic (the company behind WordPress) is valued at $1.16 billion. According to GovTech.com, a recent unofficial analysis discovered only nine of 1,761 federal Web domains were found to be IPv6 compliant. Our own government refuses to see how important IPv6 adoption is.

So please. If you care about the internet and the wonderful services that it provides, then do you and every other netizen a favour and keep pushing for the widespread adoption of IPv6. At the rate that it is, it’ll take ages before it becomes the de facto standard that we can all benefit from.

If you want to support the fuzzball behind this blog and the content on it, then feel free to buy me a beer/coffee/etc. on my Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/nikolaithewolfdog. Want to become a monthly supporter of my content? Check out my Patreon at patreon.com/NikolaiTheWolfdog.

~ Nikolai

How To: Create Easy White “Sticker” Outlines Around Artwork In PaintTool SAI 2

Posted on by Nikolai-The-Wolfdog

If you want to watch a video tutorial on how to do this, keep an eye out for a new video on my YouTube channel (link in the sidebar).

While browsing around on FurAffinity and Instagram, I’ve found that a lot of artists (especially Telegram sticker artists) like to put a white outline around their art to make it sort of “pop” off the page. For some, it’s a way of making dark-coloured characters stand out when the artist knows that the commissioner uses dark-coloured themes in Telegram. More often than not, it’s simply an aesthetic thing.

So how do you do it?

Mordecai from Regular Show, artwork by me (https://www.furaffinity.net/view/32829801)

1. Make sure you have PaintTool SAI 2 open with your artwork of choice. You don’t have to mix down the layers, but I tend to do this when I’m done with the piece anyways, so it doesn’t matter to me.

2. Using the Magic Wand Tool, select the background around the character. After you’re done with this, do “Selection > Invert Selection” to just select your character. If your character has a background, just turn off the layer that it’s on. If you can’t (as you’ve mixed down all the layers), then skip to 2A.

2A. Again, using the Magic Wand Tool, select “All Similar Coloured Pixels”, set the “Range of Similar Colour” to something high (not too high, as we don’t want to select the background as well), then click around on your character. You can always use the Move Tool to move the selection around to make sure you got everything. If you didn’t, Ctrl+Z twice and try again.

3. With your character selected, do “Selection > Dilate Selection”. Zooming in on an edge of your character (as I’ve done here) might be helpful so you can see how thick the outline will be. How thick you make the outline of your piece is truly up to you, but I personally don’t like them very thick.

4. Do “Layer > Copy Layer” to make an exact duplicate of the layer (or group, for the more organized of SAI users out there) that your character exists on. Put this duplicate layer under the real layer, and feel free to name it something useful so you remember what it is later.

5. Making sure you are on the duplicate layer, use your brush and outline colour of choice to paint over everything. Since the selection is bigger than the character, you should now see a white outline around the character. In the image above, I deselected everything to show how it looks, but don’t do that. You’re not done yet.

6. Using “Selection > Dilate Selection” again, you’ll want to expand the existing selection around your character again. I was pretty liberal with the dilation in the image above in preparation for the next and final step.

7. Do “Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur”. Again, how much you blur the outline of your piece is truly up to you, but I personally don’t like my pieces’ outlines too jagged or too blurry.

And that’s it! Easy-peasy, right? Well, maybe not, but hey! At least you didn’t have to go back in and manually add it, right?

Feel free to share this post around! If this helped you, and you’d like to help me out, then consider sending me a coffee on my Ko-Fi!

Job hunting: the bane of my existence

Posted on by Nikolai-The-Wolfdog

If you’re thinking about walking out on your job, think twice. Unless you have years of experience in a high level position, or have a bachelor’s degree in “insert-meaningful-study”, it’s not worth it. Even if you absolutely despise everything about the job and the people you work with, it’s in your best interest to not walk out. Here’s why:

1. Nobody wants to hire a quitter. I have quit from 5 jobs, most of which are because I hated everyone I worked with. Nothing about the jobs were particularly difficult, but having to work with the people I did made me want to jump off the Hilton (I don’t care if it’s under new ownership) with a noose around my neck.

2. Nobody will hire you if you have many places on your resume/LinkedIn with only 2 months listed for each. I’ve been hopping from place-to-place, trying not to lose my head for the past 2 years, and because of this, nobody will hire me. Despite me being a certified network professional and me being in the process of studying for the Comptia A+ Certification Exam, nobody in their right mind would hire a weasel like me. Even if I explained to them that I’m actually a Wolfdog… Though that wouldn’t improve my case anyways.

3. Unless you have a hoard of gems in a dungeon somewhere, it’s going to be very difficult to pay for things with tears. Rent is due, loan tiger sharks are knocking down your door, and bank is repossessing your barely-working POS car. What do you do? Just whip up an excuse? Turn on the waterworks and hope they give you an extension? That’ll only work for so long, and then what?

Either way, I guess what I’m trying to say is “DON’T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES I MADE”. Had I not a savings to fall back on, and a generous family who really shouldn’t be putting up with my shit anymore, I’d be living in a homeless shelter and panhandling for change in a Walmart parking lot. Just don’t do it. Your well-being isn’t worth it.

D621.net: The Story of The Clone That Tried

Posted on by Nikolai-The-Wolfdog

Believe it or not (which it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to believe), but I used to operate my own e621.net clone. I didn’t have nearly the amount of experience needed to run an image booru, but I did. All I basically did was manually re-upload content from e621 onto the server that I was running on this sad little thing.

From in.pcmag.com/desktop/920/hp-pavillion-s7210n-slimline-pc

Lucky for me, the booru flopped (several times), but what happened to the domain? If I remember correctly, it first turned into a redirect link for some book being sold on Amazon. Now (at the time of this article’s writing), it’s a redirect link to a fake browser add-on that will steal your information.

Fun stuff.