Titled

I will probably spam your dash with a random fandom. Not a minor, but I have been down a mine.

[cowpokebeetle]

my piece for Half A Decade zine! so happy i get to show my contribution now

[tictacpbandai]

[magicmistral]

My uncle is really into warhammer and would win every miniature painting competition he was in. I have not very steady hands and he saw me messing up my nail polish for prom. He sat with me and carefully painted my nails and that moment meant so much to me all these years later.

[theresolutioner]

hes such a big baby

[gay-lotus]

31 hours deep into the insomniac’s gambit and i tried to microwave a popsicle

[gay-lotus]

31 hours deep into the insomniac’s gambit and i posted on the wrong blog again

[gay-lotus]

[samanitamusc-art-ia]

this is either the best or worst thing I've ever created. Is this how Frankenstein felt about his monster

[Video description: an edit of Duck from Don't Hug Me I'm Scared to Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels by Todrick Hall]

[the-real-seebs]

Someone linked me this beautiful poster, and I'm just really impressed.

My contribution:

[fyrenwater]

@silly-signs

[silly-signs]

Official silly sign

[kowafi]

did you know you can press j to skip long posts ? :-)

The chuck e cheese gag probably never happened in the admins' universe but it's really funny to imagine

[selanpike]

more concept art for story i probably won't start for a while......... just thinkin through ideas....................

[audliminal]

Thinking about the whole "there is no platonic explanation for this" thing and how it doesn't account for intense platonic situationships and anyways I think we should start saying "there is no casual explanation for this" bc really what we're talking about is the way the characters in question are Obsessed with each other

[selancastsvalor]

ahhhhhahahhahhh i'm finally done with all of the systems in my rpg maker gameeeee

of course that doesn't mean nothing will get tweaked. obviously the skill learning system needs lots more skills added, plus endless adjustments to progression pacing, and so on and so forth for all the rest of it

BUT

all the PIECES i need to puzzle this game together are done. what's left is fitting them together, one by one.

this was my goal for summer vacation!!! there was no way i could make this whole game in a summer, but getting it ready for continuous work in the coming year with clear examples already made of every type of scene i would need.... that i could do.

yayyyyayyy it's nice to achieve goals

[draculasdaughter]

This is about Sci-Hub. yeah we get it.. gatekeep knowledge and protect the interests of capital…

[three-blogs-in-a-trenchcoat]

Listen, this is serious.

Do not use the website called Sci-Hub!

It lets people access scientific articles for free. This is dangerous. It helps the free flow of knowledge and reduces the competitive edge of all the people who worked really hard to have been born into a wealth.

Like, it’s literally a website where you can type in the DOI of an article and read it, without ever having to pay the publisher who exploited the author.

So, again, do not, under any circumstance, use Sci-Hub. I mean, can you imagine a world where knowledge is free and easily accessible to everyone? Even, y'know, poor people?

[whateverthebeeswant]

Libgen also has many books online, including textbooks, searchable by name, author, and ISBN. Can you imagine textbook companies not getting their hard-earned income from poor college students? Here is the link just so you make sure that you never accidentally stumble across this horrible, unethical website.

[three-blogs-in-a-trenchcoat]

Oh, and while we’re talking about books, if you’ve managed to stay clear from Libgen, definitely don’t go to zlibrary, where you can also find a lot of textbooks, but unfortunately they’re completely free.

[teachingtales]

Reblogging so you know which sites to totally avoid

[professionalwritingnerd]

[irockasingranite]

Another inside tip from academia: Those papers in really expensive journals that are effectively inaccessible to anyone not in a university network? Depending on the discipline it’s very likely that same paper is on a “preprint” server somewhere, with no access restrictions.

Like if you want to read basically any physics, math, or CS paper, arXiv.org will have you covered, because everyone uploads their papers there before submitting to a journal (and generally updates it after peer review). I know all of my papers are on there. This is such common practice that journals have it baked into their licensing agreements that authors retain the right to upload their work to these places.

So the next time you get hit with that paywall, you may not even need sci-hub, just click the arxiv link on google scholar instead.

[twinkenjoyer-deactivated2023083]

if for some reason none of this works, the old “send a email nicely asking for the paper to the author” is always a good trick. remember most scientists hate the commercialisation of scientific knowledge

[afoxwithpenguins]

Don’t mind me, just gotta share this with my bf so that he knows what websites to avoid

[astudyinpanda]

Many authors of papers are on ResearchGate! You can ask for papers there, if they don’t just post a copy to download. If they’re associated with a college, you can usually find their email addresses in the department directory, also.

[viking369]

Always reblog.

[knightwithakay]

inspired tactic from our gm:

[knightwithakay]

[runawaymarbles]

The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.

Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.

[zz9pzza]

Op's tags

#I just started dropping '2.5 Billion page views a month'#into conversations as early as possible bc they would Not believe me otherwise#it was right up there with having to say 'csam attacks' to get them to take my compartmentalization of information concerns seriously#turns out those are the magic words#otw#op

[runawaymarbles]

The last part was kind of insane, honestly. When we started changing platforms for the donor database, I kept telling them that yes I was aware we already had an account for the volunteer database, and no that could not be connected to the donor database. And they said yes fine sure and then connected them anyway. And I called them back and said, excuse me, I'm confused, I can see both databases. And they said, well, yeah, but it's only you, someone has to be able to see both databases to give other users access. The other users can't see both. And I said, no, we have been asking for a completely separate database. I should not be able to see both. And they said, you are one organization, one organization can't have two databases. And I said, last year someone used our volunteer email list to commit approximately one thousand felonies. Please feel free to imagine how much worse it could have been had they had a way to use volunteers' email addresses to get their legal names. We do not want this to be something anyone can do no matter how much we trust them. Let me describe those felonies to you in more detail. And they emailed me two hours later and said, you can have two separate databases.

[kyraneko]

This post feels like watching an iceberg go by in clear water. The amount of stuff going on beneath the surface of AO3 just astonishes.

[jeffsatyr]

(ID in alt)

[elodieunderglass]

Approximately one THOUSAND felonies

[commiefaggoth]

so embarrassing to watch yourself become obsessed with a character that feels tailor made for you specifically to become obsessed with. feels like i fell into a trap made just for me. like damn they got me. those are all the things i like and go crazy for

[thelibrawrian-deactivated201912]

i was thinking about the weirdest phone calls i got when i still worked at the public library and i remembered this one phone call. it was probably less than 20 seconds long, but it still makes me laugh.

anyways, this woman called and without even saying hello after i said the usual “public library, how can i help you?” spiel, she said, “i have a very important question: when you shelve books, do you push them all to the front of the shelf or all the way back?”

it took me a second to process the question and then i answered that, at the library, we always shelve them so that they are even with the front edge so they’re easier to grab and see. she was obviously delighted by this answer and then, as if an afterthought, she asked, “okay, what about you? what do you do at home with your books?” i said i did the same thing. she hummed in obvious agreement and then just like that she said “thank you!” and hung up.

i never heard from her again. i hope she won whatever argument she was having.

[tehzii]

for about a year, i worked at a call center for sprint. i have a similar kind of story. a woman called, and said she had a question about the call history on her bill. “sure, let me just pull up your account-” and she cut me off going, “no, no, it’s not anything specific, it’s just. so, if you change the time on your phone, does that change the time on the bill?” “uh… no? the time on the phone doesn’t matter, the call history is recorded by the towers.” “ohhhh” she said in the saltiest voice i have ever heard “so even if you changed the timezone it wouldn’t change the time on the bill? to, say, the middle of the night?” i stg yall i looked into the camera like i was on the office. “um… no? it would still be the local time of the tower. is there anything else i can help you with?” to me, overly chipper: “nope! thank you! have a great day!” turning on someone as she hung up: “she says yoU’RE A LYING SACK OF-” i still mean-snicker every time i think about it.

[ladyzolstice]

i used to work in a call center for a roadside assistance company, from late 2015 to early 2016. it was easily the most miserable job i’ve ever had, and the turnover rate was very high. people stuck on the side of the road tend to be quick to anger - understandably so - and it wears on you after awhile.

so i had been having a string of very time-consuming, draining calls. my line rings again, i steel myself for another angry caller, and i pick up. “[redacted] roadside assistance, how can i help you?” i chirp, in my Customer Service Voice.

“yeah, hi,” a gentleman with a thick southern accent responds. “my motorcycle won’t start.”

i brace immediately for another long call. motorcycles were notoriously difficult to work with - a lot of insurance companies wouldn’t insure them, and a lot of tow companies refused to pick them up because they require a specific sort of trailer.

“i’m sorry to hear that, sir. what’s your current location?”

“oh, i’m just at my house. i was wondering if it would be okay for me to just load it into my trailer and take it to my buddy’s shop. would that interfere with my insurance?”

i click through his account and am Relieved to discover he’s in the clear. “No sir, it looks like you’re good to go. Can I help you with anything else?”

A pause. “Have you heard the good news?”

My Anxiety, which had been receding, suddenly spikes into the fucking stratosphere. I live in the rural south. The “good news” usually means “Jesus” and i was in no mood to be proselytized to for god knows how long.

i steel myself for the Religious Talk. “What news, sir?”

“McDonald’s is now serving breakfast all day!”

I laughed so hard I almost cried. I hope that guy ate as many hashbrowns as he could.

[hollowflight-propaganda]

Once in my old private school with only like 20 kids maximum, we started having a debate about this:

I’m not kidding.

One kid had a bag of goldfish crackers, and everyone somehow started to yell at each other about if the main fish is yellow or orange.

I became one of the spearheads for yellow, and my argument was that yellow was the base color and the orange is being used as shading, so it’s not actually orange. But the kid who was the spearhead for orange (let’s call him David) WOULD NOT listen to me. (he was always an asshole though, so it’s not too surprising)

This got so heated that the one guy who was in my grade (let’s call him Paul (half the kids had bible names anyway)) was looking at the back of the bag and found a phone number. I think it’s supposed to be there if there’s a problem with the food or something, but he thought he’d try to call to see what they’d say about our dilemma.

I don’t know exactly what the person told him at first, but Paul explained the situation to them and then they put him on hold for a couple minutes while we waited in suspense. I have no clue what they did to fact check this for us, but they pulled through, AND IT WAS YELLOW!!!!!!!!!!! EAT SHIT DAVID!!!!!! >:DDDD

We broke into a cacophony of either joyful cheers or enraged disappointment. I’m not sure if the person who answered our burning question could hear us, but I hope they did and got some joy out of it.

[bianca-hooks123]

I would have been on the side of goldfish being, ya know, GOLD.

[blumineck]

The Odyssey if the suitors were competent…

Go Check out Neet- she’s awesome (her socials are at the bottom of the linked page if you want to see some of the training videos for this and other silliness)

[dragon-in-a-fez]

anon hater just accused me of (among other things) "encouraging kids to install malware on their parents' computers". I don't remember ever doing that but it sounded like a fun concept for a post so here are some ideas for things to install on your parents' computers!

a custom DNS resolver that blocks access to Fox News and other right-wing propaganda outlets

a keylogger to capture the admin password for your router so you can disable parental controls

a VPN or a virtual machine running the Tor browser to bypass access restrictions and age verification checks

your own "parental controls" browser extension, set up to send you notifications if your parents visit websites that indicate they might be spying on you (e.g. Life360)

a userscript that adds a fake virus warning popup to the donation pages of fascist political parties

have fun! make sure to do loads of reading and learn how things work so you can break them safely and effectively!

oh, and anon, my advice to you is never stab a man who collects knives