We hope that you enjoy your stay

The personal blog of a computer scientist living in Washington. He-him, 26, Knight of Light. I tag my friends in stuff I think they will like.

[taigacryptid]

decentralize and clean up your life!!!

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega or proton drive instead of google drive.

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

use vetted sites on r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH for free movies, books, games, etc.

use trakt or letterboxd instead of imdb.

use storygraph instead of goodreads.

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use ground news to read unbiased news and find blind spots in news stories.

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause or ecosia to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use unroll.me to clean your email inboxes

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, tuta, or proton mail instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use NCH suite for free software like a file converter, image editor, video editors, pdf editor, etc.

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

last updated: march 18th 2025

[thatdisasterauthor]

I think the thing that annoys me most about AI on a personal, day to day, level is what it has done to grammar checkers. If you've never done a lot of editing, or used to 5+ years ago but haven't really in the last couple years, I can't even begin to describe how fucking BAD this shit has gotten. And as an author it is EXHAUSTING.

I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.

And yeah, I can ignore all the times it's trying to get me to cut out any semblance of my own voice, or shove things into the wrong tense, or make the most random suggestions on comma usage. But if it's getting all that WRONG, what is it just straight up missing that I SHOULD be correcting? What real spelling and grammar errors are still lurking in there?

[thatdisasterauthor]

"Use Libre Office."

I get why people keep saying this (and other versions of it like "Use Adobe alternatives" and "Use Google product alternatives."). But here's the problem: I do not create in isolation. Even my own 100% personal projects are getting sent to other people whether it's editors or printers or beta readers and unless every single person in that train is using the same products, things can get wonky.

Libre Office and Word handle formatting differently on the back end, which can completely break documents if you move them back and forth between the two. So if I write in Libre Office but my beta readers are still using Word, when I send them a manuscript for review there's a good chance things won't look right and my beta reader will not actually be reviewing what I sent them.

Industry standards are industry standards FOR A REASON. Having everyone on the same workflow can be crucial to getting things done effectively and correctly without creating a lot of extra work. And those things are not going to change overnight, as much as we might want them to.

[thatdisasterauthor]

:| :| :|

Yeah, Word, let me just leave this whole chunk of dialogue without the closing quotation marks. That's the thing to do. How dare I have two punctuation marks in a row. It's not like that's how closing quotation marks fucking work.

[thatdisasterauthor]

I am going to light something on fire.

[thatdisasterauthor]

And you know, for young writers, this has got to be so detrimental just from the perspective of opening your document and seeing a million corrections that, frankly, don't need to be there. If you're a young writer you're likely not going to have the background knowledge to know what is and isn't a good suggestion, you're just going to see a document that makes it look like you made every mistake possible so clearly you must be a terrible, stupid writer and should just give up.

[mandatalks]

I just had the best encounter with a child at Kmart. I was in the aisle shopping, and this girl and her dad come around the corner. The girl sees me and excitedly exclaims “There’s a human here!!” to which the father replied “Yes, there’s humans everywhere.”

[mandatalks]

It has officially been one year since I met aliens at Kmart and the Kmart in question no longer exists.

[karimitic]

The Aliens took the K-Mart back home with them?

[holeodemony]

THAT WAS MEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Literally me!!! Little girl!!! That was me!!! (I’m a guy now but that was me!!!)

Okay for context, long story short,

Our family is really weird. Really weird. We’re not aliens (at least not that I know of although it’d explain some things) and yet I was a weird kid. Normal autistim child. Mom says that I called everyone ‘humans’ which is really funny — shes always told me that humans are humans, and yet you dont have to be human to be a people (example: cats, bunnies, dogs, et cetera — not human, but still people). Aka mom never corrected me because i was right. Of course she also calls humans humans because we are. I still call people humans but yes. Back to story. Went off topic there.

A long while back, like maybe five years ago, I asked mom if I’m anywhere on the Internet, because given how weird our family is, that wouldn’t be surprising.

She replied that yes, she believes so, because she found a tumblr post that happened earlier that day mentioning an alien encounter in K mart. This exact post.

When she saw it, she was really confused, because wait. My child. With my husband (who transitioned a few years back so is now my other mom!!!). Earlier today. At K mart.

She checked with mom and yes, that interaction did happen, they laughed about it and went about their day. When she told me about this a few years back, she didn’t remember what store, only that it doesn’t exist.

Finally, it recently circulated in conversation again, and since mom remembered the name I have found the post!!!

TLDR; I’m the alien, and hi :) we’re doing fine

[shiftshapeing]

[watasnak]

what the fuck are my mutuals doing

[aflo]

Settlers of catan

[kokii-omii]

dungeon meshi ah dungeon meshi

[toskarin]

stop the presses: this new metroidvania has announced it is "combat-focused"

[toskarin]

when asked what differentiates new roguelite project "Knight Souls" from other games in the genre, developers explained that the game is played by electronically manipulating the program in response to visual feedback. cutting edge graphics will be produced through use of screen technology

[toskarin]

Q: What's the replay value?

A: You may replay the game as many times as you wish.

Q: Will player experiences vary between runs?

A: Yes. We could all die tomorrow.

[rosenkranz-does-things]

Suddenly I saw in front of me the Statue of the Faun, the Statue that I love above all others. There was his calm, faintly smiling face; there was his forefinger gently pressed to his lips. In the past I have always thought he meant to warn me of something with that gesture: Be careful! But today it seemed to mean something quite different: Hush! Be comforted! I climbed up on to his Plinth and flung Myself into his Arms, wrapping my arm around his Neck, intertwining my fingers with his Fingers. Safe in his embrace, I wept for my lost Sanity. Great, heaving sobs rose up, almost painfully, from my chest.

Hush! he told me. Be comforted!

I resolve to take better care of Myself.

[sealssometimes]

This must feel so good to do as a seal

[c-rowlesdraws]

Varishkava! I adored the flea caravan from the moment I met them--they're a cheerful light in a dark world. Way before I knew anything about Act III, I could imagine them inviting their new warrior friend to set down her weapon and enjoy their company and hospitality awhile before rushing off again on her quest.

And feeling inspired by the bug food other people have come up with in art and fics, I had to draw some, too. Everything here is made with blood--they're fleas!--and I think they'd mostly eat foods that keep well for traveling, with fresh-made foods as more of a special thing.

(also these drawings are set pre-Kratt because he'd spoil the vibe)

[c-rowlesdraws]

Oh big stretch!! And Lace letting an impulsive thought win.

[c-rowlesdraws]

opens a jar with holes punched in the lid and tips these out

[c-rowlesdraws]

sure

[c-rowlesdraws]

Oohhhh, big yawn!

It's cute and normal for a girl to have spidery fangs and sharp monstery teeth! Thank you to everyone drawing and writing Hornet with freaky mouthparts, it's inspiring.

[somacruz]

i keep seeing this cut off but the preceding “yessiree” is vital to it imo

[7777777awawawa7777777]

i had to transcribe it

[seased]

Visit Original Link

[justsomeectoplasm]

[noknowshame]

[alolantrubbish]

Memory from when Mercury was still a magnamite and Gumpy didn't quite understand that he was a living thing

[eggshellsareneat]

Alright, I think I like tumblr now.

A pun post crossed my dash, and I reblogged it with an equally bad pun in return. A couple of my followers find it funny, it's a good day for everyone.

That was on July 7th.

Virality on Reddit was entirely algorithmic. You could garner a couple crossposts, but the success of a post was entirely dependent on whether or not it hit r/all--the main page of Reddit. If your post does that, it's immediately exposed to 10x the number of people and immediately gets upvoted.

On my pun post, I get a couple reblogs. And those reblogs get a couple reblogs--nobody really adds any content to the post, it just gets a couple reblogs here and there.

There's a specific chain of reblogs that I'd like to focus on. The most popular post on this chain has about 25 reblogs on it. Half the posts have three reblogs or fewer. Five posts in this chain have just one reblog total.

But the reblog chain keeps going. And going. It breaches containment many times over. And finally, after a chain THIRTY SIX posts long, at 9:30 AM, July 22nd this morning, it hits a popular account.

99% percent of the people who have seen the post--virtually unchanged from how it left my dash--have seen it because it was curated by 36 different people. That's insane to me.

None of those 36 people know that they're part of this chain. They saw a post, reblogged it, and moved on. If any one of these people had not reblogged, the post would have a fraction of the impact it has.

And yet, after two weeks, the post has effectively hit the main page of tumblr. It was picked up, only because people liked it enough to show it to their followers. There were no algorithms necessary.

You really, truly, cannot get this on any other website.

[charl0ttan]

i heard about women today

[charl0ttan]

ohh golly.

[revengeofthescyths]

What'd you hear? Tell us of them, sister.

[charl0ttan]

their gosh darn Wonderful