the importance of being earnest gdrive link for anyone who missed it or wants to watch it again ✨
Keni

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
No title available
wallacepolsom

Kiana Khansmith
ojovivo
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH

@theartofmadeline
Claire Keane
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
RMH
No title available
occasionally subtle

#extradirty

izzy's playlists!
Sade Olutola
Misplaced Lens Cap
trying on a metaphor
seen from Malaysia
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seen from Greece
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seen from Malaysia

seen from United States
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seen from Malaysia
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@draw-your-weapons
the importance of being earnest gdrive link for anyone who missed it or wants to watch it again ✨
i'm chronically ill, wary of emergency rooms, and decently capable of learning biology and biochemistry. what resources would you recommend for me to use to learn to triage and address as wide a range of medical problems as possible in my home? i have an okay budget for physical books, and in some ways would prefer them as they can't be edited to be worse once they're in my house.
First of all, I have to be realistic with you: DIY medicine can get you into trouble really fast, even if you have done a lot of research and have a lot of reference materials.
There are a lot of things you can learn to recognize at home. There are a lot of things you can treat at home if you're willing to endure some additional risk and discomfort. Sometimes that might be your best option, depending on your circumstances. But you have to go into those circumstances understanding that you could be getting something disastrously, deadly wrong, and be willing to live (or not) with those consequences.
There is no substitute for a fully stocked emergency department and the medical professionals that work there.
That being said,
(this list is in order of acquiring improvised medical skills)
The first thing I usually recommend when people want to improve their ability to take care of themselves and others is taking a wilderness first aid course if one is offered in your area. While the content is generally specific to remote/back country activities, it gives you a good sense of what you can and cannot treat yourself, and gets you familiar with providing definitive care instead of just basic first aid.
You learn basic exam and history taking skills, how to figure out what medical problem you're dealing with, and how to treat it in the field or decide when you can't. Plus it gets you comfortable with medical improvisation. It's a good primer for what you're trying to do.
Once you take the course, I recommend NOLS Wilderness Medicine (cheaper option) or Auerbach's Wilderness Medicine, though there are many. The textbook that comes with the American Red Cross version of Wilderness and Remote First Aid is short, but good.
Building on the what you learned in wilderness first aid, Emergency Care and Transportation of the Sick and Injured is a classic EMT textbook that gives you a better understanding of the body systems and problems involved in emergency medicine.
The OTC Handbook, by Aaron Hermann is a short guide to the medications you will have available to you over the counter, and it's worth the read.
Where There Is No Doctor, by David Werner is a good text to have. While a lot of the conditions covered in the book are related to remote village medicine, it is written in very plain language and has easy to follow instructions. It is especially good for helping you figure out when you absolutely need more help.
The Complete Guide to Home Nursing, by Diana Hastings. This is an older book, and some of the information is outdated. However, they do not make good home nursing texts any more, so if you can find a copy of this, it's probably your best bet. You want a home nursing textbook, because there is a lot you can do with very little for a lot of different conditions when you look through the lens of lay nursing. It covers keeping people fed, comfortable, safe, and hydrated, which are absolutely vital things to know if you're riding something out at home.
The Merck Manual Home Health Guide is an easy-to-read guide on many common ailments and things you can do to take care of yourself at home. Not exactly what you're going for, but it casts a much wider net than a lot of the previous resources.
If you're at this point, you're going to need a medical terminology textbook to go further. This can literally be any medical terminology textbook, pick one that looks fun.
Bates Guide to Physical Exam and History Taking. Now we're getting into more complex stuff, but if you've made it this far and still want more, it's a good next option. I used to teach to this textbook and I like it a lot. It teaches how to collect information about a person's condition, which is vital to figuring out what is wrong and what can be done.
The Merck Manual. This is the professional version, but if you got through the Bates Guide and the medical terminology book okay it is a really good reference for just about any medical problem.
Improvised Medicine, by Kenneth V. Iserson. The professional-level treatment of many, many things from an improvised and low-resource perspective.
Hello! I got a request on how I learned anatomy so well! Outside of the very basic "Just keep drawing and you'll get better advice" I thought I'd offer some tips and tricks I used to help me understand anatomy better as an artist!
I also realize I do things a bit unconventionally. I'm mostly self taught and I still struggle with art and youtube tutorials are my best friends, but I can also acknowledge my skill and how far I've come from when I first started drawing people all the way back in 2011.
I know I'm also bad at explaining things, so I'm very sorry if some of this is just incomprehensible lol. If anyone wants clarification on something or a more in depth tutorial on how I do something, let me know and I can try and be more detailed about certain parts of my process! But this bad boy was getting long enough, so I decided to end it.
I hope this was at least a little bit helpful or at least insightful!
pet peeve is when you look up fashion references from a specific era and you keep getting modern day '[era]-inspired' fashion like NO i want authenticity damn it. i can see your 2020 photo quality and your 2020 hair and your 2020 makeup. youre not fooling me.
hello i'm a historical fashion researcher and i have a lot of experience looking up things! this is a very widely experienced irritation and you're definitely not alone in this, but i am here to share everything i know!
so, ways to get around this:
turn off AI results. they're literally nonsense to us
don't use pinterest because the sources/provenance is often hard to trace
a standard internet search can be okay, but museum collections are the top tier (list of collections below this list)
instead of broad terms like victorian, regency, tudor, renaissance etc. try using the decade you're looking for. if you're not sure of what decade it is but have a vague image in your head, look on the fashion history timeline and just jump around until you find it. but even changing to e.g. 19th century will give better results than victorian
including terms like womenswear/menswear, daywear, formal wear, evening wear, court dress should increase the value of your search too
including "fashion plates" in your search can give you a nice impression of the intended silhouettes of the era. some of these might be a little stylised but will show you what was considered in vogue
for pre-fashion plate eras or things like makeup and styling, you'll have to look at portraiture or manuscripts. these are harder to actually find what you're looking for, but searching museum collections and limiting results to specific date ranges will be your friend
when looking at art, do bear in mind sometimes artists would paint fabric extra flow-y to show off their skills. it might not have been exactly like that in terms of fabric weight or drape. so, a pinch of salt required!
if you find something on image search where the provenance is dubious, reverse image search and you might find a source! i've been able to trace random pinterest images to real sources, but this does take a lot of time and effort and is often not worth the headache
some online resources and museum collections:
fashion history timeline is an invaluable resource if you're trying to get a feel for everything and should be your first port of call. it'll also link to good examples
the met has a vast number of extant examples of clothing, as well as fashion plates
costume institute fashion plates is a subcollection of the met for fashion plates (1800s-1922)
v&a also has many extant garments, fashion plates, and incredible articles on clothing and aesthetics. read the details of the objects because they'll often reveal a lot about the piece
lacma is good for C19th-20th pieces
nypl digital collection for photographs
national portrait gallery or similar for portraiture, or literally any museum in your country that has historical art
national museums scotland can be useful situationally but might be oddly specific
stout style history is a great collection for finding image references for fat people wearing historical clothes. survival bias of a lot of museum pieces tends towards smaller clothing that couldn't be repurposed, but this aims to counter that. it's not sortable, but is still a really nice resource
wikimedia commons is surprisingly handy! and the images, if you should need to link/repost them, are public domain
auction websites sound like a funny one to recommend. some won't have mannequins and some will. just look up historical garment auctions and you'll find some!
anyway, i hope this has been a good place to start for anyone interested! there are probably some i've missed because there are so many museums across the world and i don't know about all of them or can't remember them. but these are the ones i've used the most! (my specialisation/jobs i've had to research for have only really been in western fashion, so my resources reflect that)
genuinely wild to me when I go to someone's house and we watch TV or listen to music or something and there are ads. I haven't seen an ad in my home since 2005. what do you mean you haven't set up multiple layers of digital infrastructure to banish corporate messaging to oblivion before it manifests? listen, this is important. this is the 21st century version of carving sigils on the wall to deny entry to demons or wearing bells to ward off the Unseelie. come on give me your router admin password and I'll show you how to cast a protective spell of Get Thee Tae Fuck, Capital
Share the knowledge
Okay, here we go! I'm gonna try and put this in order from least to most technical knowledge required. I'm not responsible if you accidentally create SkyNet etc.
Level 1: browser extensions
This one is basically impossible to get wrong, or at least to get wrong badly enough that it causes any problems.
Get Firefox, or a Firefox fork like Waterfox. If you use a fork, make sure it's one that will let you use add-ons. On a PC, pretty much any Firefox fork will take add-ons, but on mobile devices, many don't. Iceraven is one that does.
Get the add-ons uBlock Origin, YouTube Sponsorblock (if you use YouTube), and FBCleaner (if you use Facebook).
uBlock Origin comes with a built-in list of filters to block ads and trackers, but you can add your own filters to block any specific element of a website you don't like. You know those goddamn floating frames on fandom.com sites that block half the screen? Now you can zap 'em.
Sponsorblock uses crowdsourced timestamps to automatically skip sponsor spots and self-promotion in YouTube videos. Never listen to anyone say "hit like and subscribe" or "Raid Shadow Legends" again.
FBCleaner hides all content from your feed except posts from people, groups, and pages you've actually chosen to follow.
Level 2: leaving enshittified services
The software that's become standard over the years in a lot of fields is steadily selling more of your data, showing you more ads, and pushing you to buy more expensive subscriptions. Time to tell them to get fucked.
Dump Adobe apps for Affinity or Krita. Drop Microsoft for LibreOffice. Change your default search engine from Google to DuckDuckGo or Qwant. Use OpenStreetMaps instead of Google or Apple Maps.
Level 3: network-level DNS fuckery
DNS, or Domain Name Service, is the thing that tells your computer where www.website.com is actually located. By hacking your network's DNS you can force it to tell your devices that ad-hosting domains don't exist at all. Some of the steps on this one can get pretty technical, but because you're doing all the difficult stuff on a dedicated device, you can't really fuck up anything that seriously.
Get yourself a Raspberry Pi (a cheap older one like a model 3B will work just fine for this purpose), and follow a guide like this one to get it set up running AdGuard Home. AdGuard, like uBlock, has built-in filter lists, but you can also add your own if there are specific domains you want to block.
Once it's up and running, you'll need to change the DNS settings on your router to point to your AdGuard service. This is different for every router but will always start with logging into the admin panel with a password printed on a little sticker somewhere on the router.
With that done, every time a device on your home network looks for ads.website.com, it'll get back a message that says "sorry, can't find it", so it won't be able to load any ads.
Level 4: Android-specific DNS fuckery
Because AdGuard runs on your home network, it can't block ads on your phone when you're away from home - and what's worse, your phone will sometimes remember the addresses it got when you were out and about, and ads will get past your AdGuard wall even when you're home.
To avoid this, get AdAway for DNS-based ad-blocking directly on your phone. The easy, but less seamless, way of using AdAway is the "local VPN mode", which doesn't require you to do any mucking about with your phone's operating system.
Level 5: automated media piracy
The best way to stop seeing ads on all your streaming services is to stop using streaming services. There are loads of ways to do this, but the best ones involve setting up what's called an "arr stack" (Google that for setup guides) along with nzbget and a usenet account. Most of the time you'll want to set this stuff up on a dedicated device - an old laptop gathering dust in the closet is a great option, or you can grab something used from a charity shop or a local electronics recycler.
The great thing about usenet is that unlike with torrents, you don't have to do any sharing from your computer, so you're in a lot less legal jeopardy - legally speaking, distributing pirated content is waaayyy more serious than accessing it. I pay about £3 a month for a secure, high-bandwidth usenet service.
Once you start getting your own collection of media on your own computer, use the open-source media library manager Jellyfin to browse and play things from basically any device.
Oh, and don't be a dick. Pirate all you want from big corporations, but please pay independent small-time creators for their work.
Level 6: fucking with Android
Android phones are a lot more locked-down than they used to be, but depending on the device you own you can still do a lot of messing around under the hood. Note that if you get something wrong while doing this, there is always the possibility that it will turn your device into a paperweight.
Before you buy a device, check where it sits on the Bootloader Unlock Wall of Shame. Once you've bought it, check the xda-developer forums for guides on how to unlock it and "root" it (gain admin access) with Magisk.
Once Magisk is installed, you can add modules to do all sorts of cool stuff, including using AdAway in "root mode" which makes it basically invisible.
You can also install YouTube ReVanced, which will do all the ad- and sponsor blocking stuff we took care of in your Windows browser a few paragraphs ago. Be careful: there are a lot of fake sites out there pretending they're associated with the ReVanced project which might be injecting malware into their downloads. This Reddit post has the official instructions and links.
Also, try out the modded version of Facebook from APKmoddone, which will block most of the same shit as the FBcleaner add-on from earlier. There's always a possibility that modified apps like this are doing something dodgy, but I've never had any issues with this one personally.
Level 7: fucking with Windows
This one is scary because it can seriously fuck up your shit if something goes wrong, but some really cool people have actually made it very simple to strip all the bloat, ads, and spyware out of Windows. The tool I use is ReviOS. Start reading at https://www.revi.cc/docs. Basically, you'll need to download a tool called AME Wizard and the ReviOS "playbook" that tells AME what to do. Read the documentation before you do any of this.
Level 8: switching to Linux
I'm not going to pretend this is an option for everyone. Half the software I use on a weekly basis isn't available on Linux. But if you can switch? Do it. These days, Ubuntu - one of the most popular flavours of Linux - is built with people switching from Windows in mind, and a lot of things will be pretty intuitive. It also has great documentation and a huge community you can go to for help if you're confused about stuff.
And that, friends, is a comprehensive approach to banishing the demons of capitalism from your home!
A heavily underutilised aspect of the digital landscape is the ability to send someone a .zip care package featuring a few podcasts, a handful of indie ttrpgs, a couple webcomics, a digital mixtape, and the .epub or .pdf for some book nobody's ever heard of.
And hey, why stop there? Slip in some scientific articles, recipes, poetry, sewing patterns, films, or whatever else would appeal. Some of these things cost money, some don't. But recieving a curated collection of goodies? Guaranteed to be valued.
Since I'm not in a position to host a .zip for you all, here's a free little care package of links from myself to everyone out there:
The Far Meridian (Fiction Podcast)
Stories From Ylelmore (Fiction Podcast)
The Mistholme Museum of Mystery, Morbidity, and Mortality (Fiction Podcast)
The Tower (Fiction Podcast)
Skyjacks: Courier's Call (TTRPG Podcast) [You'll have to look this one up on your podcatcher. All podcasts listed here can be found on there too]
Urban Legend Club (TTRPG, 1+ players)
Apotheosis Janitors (Multiplayer TTRPG)
A Traveller in the City (Mapmaking TTRPG, 1+ players)
Keeper of the Silent Grove (Game)
Always Human (Webcomic)
Crow Time (Webcomic)
Forsythia (Poem)
Getting Started in Electronics (Non-Fiction Book)
The house of a thousand species: The untapped potential of comprehensive biodiversity censuses of urban properties (Scientific Article)
The Small Science Collective (Science Zine Collection/Archive)
How to make a moss jar terrarium (Tutorial)
Plush dogs (Sewing Patterns): Golden Retriever • Dalmation • Belgian Shepherd • Bull Terrier
Plush Pill Bug (Sewing Pattern)
Strawberry Shortcake (Recipe)
3-Ingredient French Onion Potato Bake (Recipe) [Personal note: you can as much as double the soup powder, also feel free to pad with milk. It might need to bake longer than listed but the ingredient amounts are very forgiving]
Easy No-knead Turkish Bread (Recipe)
Another free little care package for you all:
World Gone Wrong (Fiction Podcast)
Cryptonaturalist (Fiction Podcast) [Personally, I'd recommend starting on episode 3 and coming back to the first two once you've caught up]
Absolutely No Adventures (Fiction Podcast)
Monstrous Agonies (Fiction Podcast)
Where They Landed (Album)
The Norwegian Fjords - Life in the Twilight (Nature Documentary)
Mending A Rift (Short Comic)
Pia and the Little Tiny Things (Webcomic)
Here There Be Dragons (Webcomic)
And Another Lovely Day (Webcomic)
Bean Quest (Solo LARP)
The Last Tea Shop (Solo TTRPG)
Sentience (Interactive Novel)
Podvodsk (Puzzle-Adjacent Game)
Plush Manta Ray (Sewing Pattern)
Soft No-Knead Dinner Rolls (Recipe)
My Favourite Orange Sherbet (Recipe) (note: an icecream maker is NOT required: if you don't have access to one, you can instead put the liquid in a sturdy container, put that in your freezer, and just open your freezer every 45-60 minutes to give the freezing mixture a stir)
How to Make Yogurt (Recipe)
How To Make Jam (Recipe/Tutorial)
How to Make a Ginger Bug Starter for Natural Soda (Tutorial)
University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension - Clothing Repair (Instructional Booklet)
Another free little digital care package for the New Year:
Desert Skies (Fiction Podcast)
InCo (Fiction Podcast)
Starfall (Fiction Podcast)
The Vesta Clinic (Fiction Podcast)
Wolf Island Master - Little Pepper (Short Animation)
Memorial Engine (Animation)
Kuroiru (Anime Database) (Note: extremely convenient for finding new things to watch (and where))
Cornell FeederWatch Cam (Birdfeeder Livestream)
All-Purpose God (Short Comic)
Tailwind (Short Comic)
Death and the Maiden (Webcomic)
Seb & Spice (Webcomic)
Tiny Islands (Puzzle Game)
Making Stuff & Doing Things (Book/Zine Collection)
Paper Mache Sailboat (Instructional)
Leather Waist Bag/Belt Pouch (Sewing Pattern)
Myrtle the Turtle (Sewing Pattern)
Little Knit Pumpkins (Knitting Pattern)
Easy Soy Sauce Pan Fried Noodles (Recipe) (Note: I like to add ¼ tsp garlic to the sauce. This recipe will work with basically any noodles, and is also easy to customise with whatever you have in the house)
Sweet Shortcrust Pastry (Recipe) (Note: you don't actually have to pre-bake the dough if you're feeling particularly lazy. This is my FAVOURITE for making sweet pies and tarts, gets heaps of compliments)
And below the cut, four of my favourite pie fillings to go with it:
what are your top non Helen Hoang romance novels
god okay I'm about to out myself as someone who reads a lot of romance novels without reading very many Good romance novels, but:
You Made a Fool of Death With You Beauty (Akwaeke Emezi). obviously I'm an Emezi fan first and a person second but this book is genuinely so lush and life-affirming and sensual and it's so, so different from any other romance I've ever read. absolute genre-buster, this doesn't fall into any tropes or formulas you've ever read.
A Lady for a Duke (Alexis Hall). the last chunk of plot is absolute fluff and kind of non-essential but I looooooove seeing a trans woman living her best life in a historical romance, it's pure swoon. also shout out to the duke for being the most enlightened and open-minded English aristocrat who ever lived genuinely adore him.
Love, Hate & Clickbait (Liz Bowery). I wanted to be a hater sooo bad but honestly this one hits. the premise is absolute madness but emotionally it kind of works. spoiler alert but I love a story where the worst man on earth is reduced to a husk of his former self and becomes his loser bf's babygirl househusband.
also fuck it I'm including Raiders of the Lost Heart (Jo Segura), it really won me over and the female protag rules so hard, it's dumb but it's very fun.
and that's it I've been reading at least one romance novel a month since January of 2023 and those are the only ones that I would sincerely recommend to another human being
okay, great news: it's been over a year since I made this post, and things have gotten better since we last spoke.
just one month after this post I read Sarah Addler's Happy Medium, a delightful lightly paranormal (there's a ghost!) romance between a con woman posing as a medium who turns out to be able to see one actual, real ghost and a no-nonsense goat farmer who's being haunted.
I've read exactly one (1) Emily Henry book, Funny Story, and it was actually completely worth the hype. this book ruled.
Don't Want You Like A Best Friend is a delightful little romp of Victorian lesbianism, in which two young ladies try to set up their parents and end up falling in love with each other along the way.
KT Hoffman's The Prospects is a gay romance with a trans protag that takes place in the world of professional baseball while mercifully not requiring the reader to know or care much about baseball.
TJ Alexander's Triple Sec is a sweet and sexy THROUPLE romance, extremely rare
I read Farah Heron's Just Playing House because I thought the premise was insane, but it turns out a woman letting her long-estranged high school fling move in with her to help her recover from a double mastectomy can really work in the hands of the right author!
Adib Khorram's I'll Have What He's Having is just a really solid almost-middle-aged gay romance, really mature and unexpectedly sexy for a YA author's first jaunt into adult romance!
and Philip Ellis' We Could Be Heroes is probably my favorite romance of this year! really really sweet story about what it is to come out and live authentically and be part of both a queer community and a longer history of queer people, while also being surprisingly funny.
xoxo enjoy
in case y'all ain't seen this yet, it has resources on:
Prison Abolition
Police Abolition
Abolitionist Toolkits
Abolition and Coronavirus
Origin Stories
Criminalizing Blackness
Sexual Violence and Anti-Carceral Feminism
Restorative and Transformative Justice
Disability Justice
The Perils of Reform
Prison Organizing, Past and Present
Private Prisons and Prison Labor
Mutual Aid and/as Abolition
Child Welfare and Family Regulation
The Nonprofit Industrial Complex
Climate (In)Justice and Prisons
Crimmigration
LGBTQ Criminalization
Christianity and Prison Abolition
Abolition for Parents and Young People
Abolition, Surveillance, and “(Counter)Terrorism”
Should Killer Cops Go To Prison?
Abolition and Gun Violence/Control
“Sex Offenses” and Civil Commitment
Sex Work Decriminalization
Hate Crimes and White Supremacist Violence
Abolition and Universities
🏴ACAB WORLDWIDE BABEY🏴
This guide contains resources on the abolition of policing, prisons, and punishment. You can find another resource hub, created by Mariame K
Favorite Media - 2025
Books
Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Da'Shaun L. Harrison
Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen & Girlbosses Against Liberation by Sophie Lewis
Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel: Stories by Julian K. Jarboe
Intersexualization: The Clinic and the Colony by Lena Eckert
The Reformatory: A Novel by Tananarive Due
Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt
Film and Television
I'm a Virgo (2023) Directed by Boots Riley
The People's Joker (2022) Directed by Vera Drew
Sinners (2025) Directed by Ryan Coogler
Video Essays
After the Blue Pill: I Saw the TV Glow, The Matrix, and Trans Gnostic Stories by Ramblebable
Are Americans Irish? by The Leftist Cooks
Evil Children - Autism & Horror Movies by Ember Green
The Fascism of Happiness by marsintheory
Global Care Chains: How Neoliberal Migration Crisis is Causing Fascism! by JohntheDuncan
How to Advocate for Sudan (and how not to) by Politically Depressed
How to Think Like a Vietnamese Communist: Historical Materialism by Luna oi!
How Women Become Carceral Feminists by Olurinatti
Mukbangs: The New Crusade Against Fatness by Shanspeare
So you think Imperialism doesn't affect you?? That's because you don't know what it is by Mordecai Ogada
Trans Day of Vanishing by Lily Alexandre
Why Are All the Social Democrats Liberal Zionists? Deculturation will Explain by Millennials Are Killing Capitalism Live!
tagged by @anti-parent <3
I can't stress enough how much I miss StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon once sent me to a supercut of Lion King, Lion King 1 1/2, and Lion King II, the main edit being that the scenes of Lion King and Lion King 1 1/2 were interspersed so that they happened in the order they actually happened.
stumbleupon not existing anymore can be directly traced to a dramatic decline in my mental health, I could do a thesis on it.
bestie stumbleupon very much still exists its just called cloudhiker now. i use it all the time.
mini compilation of suggestions from the replies:
The Bored Button - "Press the Bored Button and be bored no more."
The Useless Web
Cloudhiker - "Discover the most interesting, weird and awesome websites of the Internet" (not really a rebrand, it's a different person running it but they have the same intention in mind)
Astronaut.io - "These videos come from YouTube. They were uploaded in the last week and have titles like DSC 1234 and IMG 4321. They have almost zero previous views. They are unnamed, unedited, and unseen (by anyone but you)."
Marginalia - "This is 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."
i saw someone say nobody needs to know what a .txt file is anymore. what the fuck is the world coming to
unironically i think we need to bring back computer labs because APPARENTLY some people WERENT taught basic computer literacy and internet safety in school
things about computers/the internet i think kids should be formally taught in schools because theyre important to know and the amount of soon to be grown adults i know who know NOTHING about any of these is quite frankly almost all of them (and resources to learn if you dont know these things, because its never to late to get better with computers)
how to troubleshoot by yourself when you have a technical problem
what common file types are
some very basics on how to use ""developer tools"" on your computer (because i cant think of a better way to refer to them) like task manager and command prompt (and their mac equivalents, terminal and activity monitor ofc)
how to read and understand a privacy policy and what your personal data is, as well as what it being collected actually means and steps you can take to keep it private
how to understand terms of service (hey. if you have trouble with reading legalese and worry about being able to understand these policies anyways, here's a site that gives basic summaries of privacy policies and ToS)
what a cookie actually is
internet privacy and your digital footprint!! seriously i dont know why we stopped teaching people that they shouldnt be putting their entire real identity online in a world where your online actions can ruin you irl
basic safety measures like antivirus software (and why you should use it or if the built in one on windows or mac is enough for you) and backing up your computer (also a mac guide)
common keyboard shortcuts (and on mac)
as an additional note: things i think everyone should know on computers and the internet but schools may bit hesitant to teach about for whatever moral/legal standards schools pretend to operate on
vpns and adblockers! (btw for most of these where you can pay for things im purposefully not recommending any specific software but seriously just use ublock origin for an adblocker)
how to not get a virus while pirating something
what a temporary email is and when to use one
red flags that you shouldn't trust a website (and how to quickly check the security of a site)
what javascript on a website does and how to disable it to get around paywalls
ok one last addition! if you want to take it one level higher, i think learning the very basics of at least one programming language is good for people. it makes computers less scary and it makes you feel very cool, and a lot of people get discouraged about it because it seems overly complicated and hard to learn outside a formal classroom setting, so heres some resources for learning the very basics of python (because i consider it the easiest language to learn and knowing one language will make it easier to learn others)
an online compiler so you dont need to download anything or worry about running code directly on your computer if that makes you nervous
a basic video guide to introduce you to python and walk you through beginner steps
a guide to some syntax and commands you should know (this was literally my lifeline in my first CS class)
some performance tasks to give you things to code to practice and assess yourself
005 Computer programming, programs, and data
Anti-Fascist Queer Book Recommendations
Find these books and more queer reads:
The shitty yanks who drive people off of this website for trying to share free access to books would be livid at this.
This book is incredible. My mouth is agape at how brilliantly scathing and forceful this is.
Please don’t just reblog or like this post. Read the book!!!!
Just to note its length…the PDF I’m using is at about 88 pages. It should not take you long to read it at all.
Would you be open to putting together a list of the books you've cited and recommended in your lessons?
White Fragility - Robin diAngelo
Misogynoir Transformed- Moya Bailey*
White Tears/Brown Scars- Ruby Hamad
Mediocre- Ijeoma Oluo
Dictionary- Merriam-Webster
The Black Guy Dies First- Robin R. Means Coleman and Mark H. Harris*
The Delectable Negro- Vincent Woodard
Mapping the Margins- Kimberle Crenshaw
Medical Apartheid- Harriet A. Washington
Black on Both Sides- C. Riley Snorton
The Mismeasure of Man- Stephen Jay Gould
Orientalism- Edward Said*
Between the World and Me- Ta-Nehisi Coates
Fearing The Black Body- Sabrina Strings*
Belly of the Beast- Da'Shaun L. Harrison
*haven't read yet or still reading
That should be it, though you can go through my lessons to double check (which, I would appreciate bc I work hard on those and if people don't wanna read the lesson, the books not any easier 😅). Tbr, not even just the lessons; if you can't get through that first book, the rest of these are gonna be hard to stomach and fathom in terms of Whiteness' role.
Internet archive links to books I've started to recommend if you care about indigenous people and anti-colonialism.
The Wretched of the Earth
Discourse On Colonialism
Making Space for Indigenous Feminism
Settlers: The Mythology Of The White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern
Red Skin, White Masks : Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition
Borderlands/La Frontera
As We Have Always Done
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
Books I couldn't find on the archive but still recommend you purchase or check out at the library:
we are NOT reclaiming "female hysteria". listen to me. women fucking died because their every issue was labelled "hysteria" in recent fucking history. we are not talking about the old times we are talking about my grandparents' generation. the legacy of the hysteria diagnosis is alive and well in many many forms we are not. under any circumstances. reclaiming this one
WE ARE NOT RECLAIMING HYSTERIA. I will kill you. your murder will be more peaceful than the myriad number of ways women have been killed by their doctors seeing every issue as "hysteria". you are not being controlled by the unruly nature of your uterus. for the love of god.
to be clear the end of Hysteria As A Diagnosis wasn't even the end of "hysteria". I cannot believe that. in a world where many women (and people perceived as such) still experience medical neglect at the hands of post-hysteria diagnoses. anyone would think it would ever be appropriate to go "haha hehe this is me and my female hysteria". don't even joke. I will kill you
To put some perspective on this in my pretty conservative but ""first world"" country (one of them post ussr places) I had to actively fight to not have my panic attacks and autistic meltdowns labeled as hysteria by my father, who had an education in psychiatry back in the 80s. By "actively fight" I mean I went my entire childhood thinking yep that's female hysteria and when I got any education on how that's fucked up the only thing that got my father to stop using it is me winning at arm wrestling match with that as a bet. The year when this happened is circa 2022. I still get hysteria thrown at me by doctors sometimes. This Is An Issue Right Now This Second outside of the anglocentric imperial core. Your haha funny hysteria joke is an active threat of forced medical intervention hanging over me. Just. Something to think about.
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