Magic's Touch

Stand back, I'm going to try MAGIC!

[emiett]

This is a portfolio project from last year! I'm interested in chapter book illustration jobs, so I mocked up the cover and first five chapters of a childhood favorite, Dealing with Dragons.

[waspdefender]

Love this bit.

[waspdefender]

Happy pride.

[kawuli]

random PSA, I know a lot of people use duckduckgo as a Google alternative search engine, but it always kind of annoyed me when I was using it because it felt like No Name Brand Google

I have switched to using Startpage.com and vastly prefer it. for one thing, instead of displaying an "AI summary" at the top of the search results (unless you turn it off, yes I know), it displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, with link, whenever it finds one that's relevant.

also a waaayyyyy better sense of design than duckduckgo

also private, European based, least annoying search I've used lately (RIP old "don't be evil" Google)

[yomikoreadsbooks]

Keeping a list of Google alternatives just in case…

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

i have one of those, scraped from multiple different rec posts:

Search Engines

Infinity Search is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy

DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and are put off by the thought of their every query being tracked and logged. Uses bangs, ![site] for in-page search (sells your data to microsoft and draws from fucking bing)

WolframAlpha is a privately owned search engine that allows you to “compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.” A data search engine.

Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards. It allows you to search forums and then filter down results by date and language.

Based in France, Qwant is a privacy-based search engine that won’t record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses “&” as a bang search.

Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines. 

Offering unbiased results from several sources, SearX is a metasearch engine that aims to present a free, decentralized view of the internet. Can be self-hosted. 

Gibiru’s tagline is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy. 

Disconnect allows you to conduct anonymous searches through a search engine of your choice.

Swisscows provides fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. Built-in violence/porn filter cannot be overridden. 

MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” through its anonymised search. A plugin will allow it to be made a default.

Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers real-time information without tracking your data, keeping you hidden from marketers and spammers. Variety of filtration and refinement options for searching. 

Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the web. By not using any third-party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse. Has a Chrome extension to allow use in toolbar. 

https://search.marginalia.nu/ an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Use old-school searching rather than query-based for the best results. 

https://www.mojeek.com/ 

https://wiby.me/ - It’s goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. 

https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn’t have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it’s the best for research, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can.

https://www.searchenginemap.com/ for more on how search engines relate to each other.

https://yep.com/ is a crawler

https://www.etools.ch/ retrieves from Google, Mojeek, Bing, and Yandex, like Searx

https://www.dogpile.com/ 

https://searxng.org/ (next gen Searx)

https://luxxle.com/ - possibly conservative?

https://presearch.com/ - good for academic?

https://kagi.com/smallweb - free/randomised Kagi.

Other Searchers

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.https://cosine.club/ is an electronic music similarity search engine

[prokopetz]

With regards to that “text that makes clear the intended game design” thing mentioned at the end about the ask you got regarding DND’s in-game rules, do you have any examples of RPGs with good clarity of intended gameplay? What criteria do you have for a game’s text to be conveying that information well?

I’m trying to branch out what TTRPGs I play, and I’d love to know which ones do well at kind of “being what it says on the tin”!

(With reference to this post here.)

Funnily enough? Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. Basically a masterclass in transparent game design, one of the very best I've seen; it doesn't always succeed in achieving its stated design goals, particularly in the pre-Monster Manual 3 material, but it's never even slightly unclear what it is that it's trying to do.

(I have a completely unverifiable theory that Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast exercised their usual talent for taking exactly the wrong lesson from their experiences by concluding that 4E commercially underperformed because it was too transparent about its design goals, and that's part of why 5E's writing is Like That.)

[prokopetz]

@caseyuptobat replied:

2013 4e D&D was perhaps the best translation of a console tactical RPG back to its tabletop roots I could ever imagine.

I tend to summarise 4E's design goals as "imagine if some maniac decided to cross-breed Final Fantasy Tactics with Team Fortress 2". That's almost completely wrong in its particulars, but it gets the idea across wonderfully.

[offspring]

[snazzy-hats-and-adhd]

[rarebird22]

So cool!

Also, per a few google searches that is indeed an australian darter! The adult bird has similarly weird proportions.

[Image ID: four pictures of Australian Darters.]

[msnbcpundit]

REMEMBER SKIP-IT FROM THE 90’S

[apjvff]

my weapon of choice during school yard fights 

[almostvivian]

DnD campaign but the only weapons are 90′s toys @riskpig

[allisquish]

Distance weapon: those sky dancer propeller toys.

[riskpig]

I’ll allow it.

[sensitive-inferno]

I have but two words:

[durnesque-esque]

Are those a weapon or piece of armor?

[kaleymonster]

Party walks into the inn to rest and the pub looks like

[riskpig]

Perfection.

[medinaquirin]

@anotherspecter

[biglawbear]

I ride into battle on one of these

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

Animal Companions

[techcat]

Fresh combat

[themetaisawesome]

Monks have to use these

[ariassong]

Wizard’s Spell book

[ariassong]

Warlock Patrons

Archfey

Fiend

Celestial

Great Old One

The undying

[kalkris]

THE B A R D

[bardicknowledgeblogger]

It got better since I last saw it

[unfortunatelyimaginary]

This is so weird bc being born in 1997 I saw all these toys… old, dirty, and faded by the sun

it’s so weird to think of them as new and current toys rather than the relics of a bygone age

[thegirlinthebyakko]

Currency

[bfleuter]

Dungeon:

[katedrawscomics]

the party embarks upon a laser quest

[circus0shifter]

he is undercover or something like that

[archanonhiru]

I open Daemons of the Shadow Realm. I learn that the male protagonist is shorter than his sister because of lacking nutrients. I check off "milk propaganda" on my checklist.

[archanonhiru]

I've grown quite fond of this guy

[lesbianshepard]

Current twitter drama is Europeans confidently declaring that they don't need to drive or use overpriced public transport to get to the MetLife stadium for the World Cup; they will simply walk down the highway to get there. Girl it's New Jersey. They're gonna splatter you for fun.

[lesbianshepard]

I think a lot of Europeans think that the stadium is in the middle of a city and surrounded by infrastructure, which is why they keep insisting that they can just walk from point A to point B. It's not! It's in the fucking Meadowlands!!!! You have multi lane highways and a literal toxic swamp and that's it!

[lesbianshepard]

"Well if there are a LOT of football fans they'll stop for us!"

There's a video online of a trucker who accidentally hits a flock of sheep in the middle of the highway at full speed and splatters them. Has to turn the windshield wipers on to wipe away the blood. This is what every Jersey driver yearns to do once they get on the turnpike.

[lesbianshepard]

girl help they're now demanding NJ build a bridge over the highway (???? from where???) or shut down the fucking I-95 (one of the busiest highways in the country that everyone commutes on) for their little soccer game.

[effervescible]

I live close enough to the Meadowlands to regularly curse the hubris of the American Dream mall and this is the funniest shit I have read in YEARS. A lot of the European twitter people seem to think we are DEFENDING the Meadowlands and the general layout of the area like we think it was good urban planning. Girl no! It is a shithole, we know it is a shithole! (Although the actual swamp is kinda pretty from the window of a train heading to Secaucus Junction.) We are not trying to express pride, we are trying to save your life!!!!

I MEAN. I know people talk a lot of shit about American arrogance and they're not wrong to do so, but look at this, my fucking god.

[obama-stolemy-vcr]

._. Let them perish

Whats funny is they think ppl are defending the infrastructure. Like...no bitch we know it's ass. We are telling you it LITERALLY can't be done

[brehaaorgana]

Right like, no no. We KNOW it is horrible. We KNOW it should not exist like that. MetLife stadium shouldn't have been built in a swamp like that. Everything about its existence is bullshit. This is probably the WORST stadium to try and get to, considering that it is illegal to try and walk there.

FIFA has also intentionally MADE it worse. Because they're closing the parking lot. They're also preventing ride shares from what I can tell??

Meanwhile the governor of New Jersey is saying this is going to cost NJ $48 million to deal with the ridership, and wanted money to offset that, which FIFA doesn't ever do. So they decided to massively inflate train fares to offset the cost.

Again, while trying to prevent rideshare services from occurring.

Oh, ALSO people in New Jersey and New York City are all being told to "work from home" on days of the world cup matches because the public transit congestion is expected to be that bad, coincides with rush hour, and because for some of it, they're full closing off public transit to anyone who doesn't have FIFA tickets.

And then there are people complaining about our "shitty national stadium" and I don't even know how to begin to explain that MetLife isn't even the biggest capacity stadium in the US. It's not even in the top ten. (It is #15).

I genuinely do hope everyone is just being a bit of a troll when they say they're going to walk on the 95 or some shit because people will 1000% die. I don't even know what a comparable metaphor for this is.

But you cannot just shut this road down:

[bioluminescent-fungus]

#europeans owning the yanks by walking through the areas where the mafia dumped bodies#that twitter post that was like “just put it on pay per view and let americans watch europeans walk through new jersey”#that european gene that makes them refuse to listen to ~the colonists~

[sniperct]

"the more densely populated the better walking and cycling infrastructure have to be"

you'd THINK

btw this is what 95 looks like near the stadium, you do not want to walk this, there is no side walk, there are three lanes and the breakdown lane

the US is built for cars, not people

[cobaltegg]

so like, what if you were the last surviving animorph but it's been canonically established that you still had your best friend's DNA in your body

[gumy-shark]

aromanticism is so funny. listening to the romantic struggles of my coworkers and family members nodding my head intrigued writing on my imaginary clipboard. hmmm yes i see. my diagnosis is that “being in love” appears to suck a lot of the time. my condolences to you and your family

[nikfromtheinternet]

common grackle and red-winged blackbird best friends forever!!!

[girl-blorbo-polls]

Does your girl blorbo have more love or hate in her heart?

Love, by a wide margin

Love, by only a bit

Hate, by a wide margin

Hate, by only a bit

Exactly 50/50

Secret third thing

It’s all emptiness

Complicated/nuance

Voting ended onApr 19

[plaguedocboi]

Wait why is youtube now putting an ai button on videos that’s like “tell me what this video is about”??? Do they think we’re too stupid to watch video now?

[plaguedocboi]

Like is the pitch at this point really that we should be relying on ai to do our jobs, make our art, make our music, do our homework, do our chores, research for us, write our papers and emails and texts, summarize all our books and videos and movies into a single sentence, strap a chatbot to your physical body so it can tell you how to respond to people in real life, replace therapy and friends and partners, think for us, do for us, exist for us, and this is being sold as “convenience”? Wow ai saves me so much time! It’s so nice to have something that can live for me so I have more time to *checks notes scribbled on hand* uhh. Sit and stare blankly at a wall? I think that’s all that’s left really

[loveandlegacy]

as a rule it's always more interesting when two people who know each other outlive a third person that they both loved and then their relationship becomes So Much Weirder and more emotionally fraught, entangled, and charged when that third person dies

[artfray]

yay candy