ba in classics & religious studies, trying to write more. this is a sideblog for collecting things, like inspiration and moodboards for my original projects
something i get increasingly frustrated about with historical work is the tendency to go 'most of our sources are from athens and we know most about athens therefore i will focus on athens' but then the chapter is named like. this and that phenomenon in ancient greece. way to uphold the athenian mirage!!1! fortunately there are also many scholars right now working on not just other regions and their cultural landscapes but also. the inherent bias and projection and misconceptions we have inherited from athens and everyone working from athens. and that work is hard because indeed much less is excavated and much less is there to be excavated and the textual sources are also scarce but nevertheless the results are so worth it. our ideas on ancient greece are changing every day
#i should read more about places that aren't athens#but yeah a lot of stuff is athens in disguise so thats a little tricky @est-pulcher
some stuff!
Aegina/Localism/Religion
Polinskaiļø aļø”, I. (with Jameson, M. H.). (2013). A local history of Greek polytheism: Gods, people and the land of Aigina, 800-400 BCE. Brill. -> full on methodological reconsideration of greek religion as we know it through the athenian lens, with the Dorian island Aegina as case study
E. Aston, Mixanthropoi: Animal-human hybrid deities in Greek religion. LiĆØge, 2001.
J. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture. Chicago and London, 2002.
Thessaly
Aston, E. (2024). Blessed Thessaly: The Identities of a Place and Its People from the Archaic Period to the Hellenistic. Liverpool University Press.
Mili, M. (2015). Religion and society in ancient Thessaly. University Press.
Arcadia
J. Roy, āOn Seeming Backward: How the Arkadians Did It.ā in Sociable Man: Essays on Ancient Greek Social Behaviour in Honour of Nick Fisher, ed. S. D. Lambert, Ā Ā Swansea, 2011, p. 67-86.
T. H. Nielsen, and J. Roy (eds.). Defining Ancient Arkadia. Acts of the Copenhagen Polis Centre 6. Copenhagen, 1999.
myth and landscape/regionalism
G. Hawes. Myths on the Map: The Storied Landscapes of Ancient Greece. Oxford, 2017.
R. Buxton, Imaginary Greece: The Contexts of Mythology. Cambridge, 1994.
i haven't researched northwest Greece or the western peloponnese much yet, so i don't have any scholarship on those regions soz. let alone the islands or colonial greek regions
#wanting more on the Argolid & Thebes & Aetolia @herb-on-a-stick
for Thebes/Boeotia I can vouch for Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece by Paul Cartledge! At least two of my friends (among which @allbeendonebefore, who has read more by Cartledge. See the replies) quite liked this book. Cartledge has also written on Sparta, Lakonia and Messenia, but I don't think the Argolid features in that. Cartledge did co-edit
Cartledge, P., & Christesen, P. (2024). The Oxford history of the archaic Greek world. Volume I, Argos to Corcyra. Oxford University Press.
but I haven't read this one yet myself.
I read Tomlinson, R. A. (1972). Argos and the Argolid: From the end of the Bronze Age to the Roman occupation. Routledge and Kegan Paul., but I was not super impressed, especially because of the reliance on Pausanias for local cults.
wish everyone could perceive the Vague Concepts in my head because i just know you would looove my Vague Concepts. you would think im so smart if you saw the misty clouds of Vague Concepts floating around in my head. #MyVagueConcepts
So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.
Pro GenAI websites/Programs:
Facebook
Instagram
X/Twitter (Remember, Grok gives people cancer)
Threads
Pro Writing Aid
Grammarly
Duolingo
Google Docs
Microsoft Word/all Microsoft products Takes from and will feed their machine.
Youtube (taking advantage of people who are hearing impaired. ==;;)
Adobe Products. All of them. If you HAVE to use them (Some businesses require it), save offline because there is a film of at least some privacy protections there, so if you have to sue, you can say it violates US privacy law. Remember, contracts do not circumvent US law.
Corel won't feed the machines, but still uses AI stolen from other artists. Which sucks since Corel Draw is the second best overall for vector programs. (Plus I love Painter, but I bought the offline version to avoid AI). (Canadian company)
Canva Takes and feeds their machine.
Deviant Art Not only supports AI, but put a tool in and said they are going to steal your work if you like it or not for their machine.
Sketchup went Pro-GenAI. The thing is that you can do the same thing in Blender these days with precise measurements.
Autodesk has stated they are Pro-Gen AI here. It is not clear if they will use your models to feed their machine. But be on guard. They make Maya and 3Dmax. You can replace it with Blender.
Neutral ground:
Tumblr (there is a way to opt out [Link] and they don't have an active AI machine.) https://www.tumblr.com/dookins/743519550598987776/heres-how-to-disable-third-parties-like-ai
Etsy allows GenAI, but still has some (minor) restrictions. I'd still be cautious. (Also be cautious of drop shippers). Complaints about too much AI and AI images+patterns made by Ai still exist on the website. They lean slightly more pro-AI, but still won't let it run completely amok, say like Facebook. They won't feed your work into a machine, but also don't ban it through robots.txt.
Bluesky They don't use an AI algorithm except for in the "Discover" section of their website, but while they are anti-GenAI strongly, they don't seem to block the Gen AI bots from entry, so you'd still have to use Nightshade or Glaze (links below). There is no opt-out because they don't need an opt out. (Leaning towards strong position on AI, but I wish they would block GenAI bots).
Searxng- If you super want to screw over Google, in general, and have some tech savvy, you can set up your own search engine through searxng. It's easier on Windows and Linux than it is on a Mac. (Mac you need Docker), but if you're determined on privacy, Searxng adds a layer of privacy. Some of it sometimes uses bits of AI, but most of it doesn't and you can fuss with the settings so it doesn't spit out AI results. At sheer minimum Google will stop spitting out weird videos on Youtube at you because in your private browsing, you searched for the origin of ball bearings while not logged in for a book and Google likes to break privacy laws.
Strong positions against AI:
Scrivener (Creator vowed against AI) Writing program. There is an active forum, and versions for Mac, Linux and PC. It is paid, but at ~60 USD, it's cheaper than most programs. There is usually a holiday sale around Christmas. It has a learning curve, but with an active forum with the programmer of it there to ask obscure questions it's not a dead zone. They often take suggestions and implement them over time. (Especially if you rank the importance, applications, etc) US company.
LibreOffice Open source and free Spreadsheet and Word processor program that can replace Microsoft Word. Some people might have seen older versions where it was called Neo Office (now extinct) and Open Office. LibreOffice is still populated, plus the forums are super helpful if you get stuck. The UX is pretty intuitive if you've used Microsoft Word. Scrivener, BTW, supports exporting to odt (the native file) as well as .doc, and this can open both. The slight thing is that sometimes it doesn't export to .doc smoothly. And I DO wish more magazines, and agent (big clue here) supported .odt files since it is free. Part of the reason .odt isn't as supported is because Microsoft and Adobe have a deal with the devil with each other, so Adobe's Book formatting program InDesign doesn't support ODT. (BTW, if you have a good open source replacement for InDesign that supports ODT, let me know.)
Dabble (as suggested by SF stories, see reblog) is a writing program. Similar to Scrivener. Has vowed against AI and to resist it. 108 dollars a year for Basic. It is almost twice the price of Scrivener who lets you update for fairly cheap. 29 dollars a month, v. 59 dollars for the whole program (Scrivener) for the same features of Premium. You choose.
yWriter is a free Writing program and like Scrivener, and has vowed against AI Last I looked it had some UX issues, but some people swear by it. The learning curve is higher than Scrivener which is saying something.
Ellipsus is an online writing program and vowed against AI. The main feature I like (which Scrivener doesn't have) is the ability to change spellcheck based on region/language. It is a requested feature of Scrivener, but lower priority. So if you have a Brit, you can get the spelling for the character. They are a British-based company.
Cara.app (The creator of the website sued GenAI there is no chance they'll convert) is an artist website. Cara is trying to institute an auto Glaze/Nightshade into the website if given enough funds. People see it as a soft replacement for deviant art. (which went fully AI) If you believe in human art, please donate if you can. Zhang Jingna, the Creator,is Chinese-Singporean. She lives in Singapore.
Clip Studio Paint added AI, but saw the light and decided to protect artists instead because of protest and removed it. There are tutorials and a good forum if you get super stuck. Based in Japan, so the UI and UX is really clean.
Davinci Resolve Pro is a film editing software that's super good. There is a free version and a paid version. The forums are responsive. The programmers aren't always present. There is a healthy group of tutorials. US company. Clean UX. It does take a little bit of time to remember the shortcuts.
Tahoma2D is anti-AI and open source animation program. Takes a little getting used to, but is good for animations and doesn't crash as often as Animate. Programmers are in the forums and some bugs are fixed within hours. The forums are super responsive and helpful.
Krita open source and free, no AI. I'd rank it secondary to Clip Studio Paint (which is paid) I haven't tried the forums, but it's pretty intuitive and can stand for a lower level replacement for Painter, and do a lot of the basics of Photoshop. It's usually ranked higher than the equally open source Gimp.
Writer P AKA Writer+ (app for when you're on the go) is a simple word processor app for your phone that doesn't use AI. The original programmer stopped updating, so Writer+ person took over and isn't out to make a profit since it's free in the spirit of the original app. It has subfolders you can use. Since it was programmed before GenAI it doesn't have AI. Intuitive, easy to use. Fairly easy to upload the files through three dots->share. The files can save to your card or phone with some settings fussing. Simple word processor.
Inkscape is a free vector program and no AI. It is harder to use than illustrator and has less features. But if you're doing smaller vectors for one-offs with less complexity, it'll do you after some learning curve. Best of the lot. I hate Affinity Designer which is the same thing, only paid. (Neither Affinity program was worth the money paid)
Affinity (Designer, etc) swore to be AI-free and does Vector and Photos. The UX is messy, I dislike the program and regret paying for it. Inkscape and Krita are better UX and do the same thing. The forums aren't as friendly since there has been an onslaught of people seeing it's supposed to be a replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator, but the programmers aren't present. The people on the forums are often on edge about this assertion. And the capabilities of the program don't outshine basically Krita or Inkscape capabilities (both free). What is usually intuitive is not. UK company. If you're going to pay for a program, go for Clip Studio Paint which rivals Corel Painter.
Blender is a 3D art program and does not use GenAI. It can do 2D animation, but Tahoma is easier to use in this regard. It's open source and free. Plus there are plenty of tutorials. The forums can be touch and go sometimes, but there are plenty of sub Blender communities that might be responsive. It can also do animation.
Handmade vowed against AI and promised to never sell itself for stock prices to prevent AI (as a replacement for Etsy.)
Discover a world of creativity and craftsmanship through Handmade, an innovative platform connecting passionate artisans with discerning buy
Proton (to replace Google Suite) as suggested by SF Stories (see reblog) Vowed against AI. They are missing a spreadsheet, but have online and offline capabilities, plus a built-in VPN.
But you need a pro website...
Look up robots.txt and AI bots: https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/block-openai-bard-bing-ai-crawler-bots-using-robots-txt-file/
Use cloudflare:
Use Nightshade:
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
which will poison the algorithm
Use Glaze:
Take Away:
The thing is you think you doing it alone will do nothing, but the more AI feeds on itself, AI images, the worse they become, and the less detailed so, denying it the images, adding poison or not being able to read the human text is eventually going to lead to an AI collapse.
Analysis shows that indiscriminately training generative artificial intelligence on real and generated content, usually done by scrapi
And why not help that along?
I don't want to give cancer to poor people [Link] or make the planet burn faster [Link]. So GenAI collapse is everything I dream of. GenAI apocalypse is not.
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)
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 ācompute expert-level answers using Wolframās breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.ā 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 wonāt record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses ā&ā as a bang search.
Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that usersā identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines.Ā
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.Ā
Gibiruās tagline is āUnfiltered private searchā and thatās exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy.Ā
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.Ā
MetaGer offers āPrivacy Protected Search & Findā 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.Ā
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.Ā
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.Ā
https://www.mojeek.com/Ā
https://wiby.me/ - Itās goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites.Ā
https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesnāt have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think itās 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/Ā
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
this recent trend of teenagers using genAI chatbots to talk to fictional characters is fucking grim. what you should be doing is roleplaying on private messages with your friends until the lines between you & the characters begin to blur & you develop some very complex & confusing feelings for each other that culminate in a massive fallout you dont have the tools to process nor understand
the realization that the unhealthy trait youāve given your favorite oc for funsies is actually something you unintentionally do is like watching a five year old innocently and perfectly mimic your bad habits
[image description: an illustration of an anglerfish but, instead of its usual lure, it has a branch with physalis flowers. the flower at the end has become a translucent husk, showing off a fruit in the center. end description.]
I am so tired of short-attention-span, trim-the-fat culture.
All writing advice these days is for how to write like Chuck Palahniuk. "Cut 'think', cut 'feel', cut 'wonder' - only action, only pushing forward, show and move and move and move." What if I could emulate this style, and still don't want to? What if I want to write like Henry James, with three paragraphs of introspective musings between each dialogue line?
The music advice is, "make it shortform, make it Tik-Tok compatible, make it punchy, hit the refrain as soon as possible." What if I want that 10-minute prog rock piece? What if I want that symphony? What if I want it slow and luxurious and lazy?
Movies. Series. Poetry. Bodies. Everything is "trimmed trimmed trimmed trimmed, stripped bare, you have three seconds to win me over, make it airport chic." I don't want to win you over, then, I guess.
I want the fat left it.
I want the pleasure and the indolence and the indulgence.
Fuck this art-advice that's always "your art needs Ozempic."
I know meant this broadly about a general cultural trend and not really about Chuck Palahniuk, but he doesn't actually do what you're complaining about. He has SO much fat in his writing.
An important note about that particular advice is that he means the opposite of how you summarise it as "only action". The advice was to teach you to unpack. Literally to show, not tell. Instead of writing "he felt angry", you write "his nails dug into his palms so hard he might soon draw blood", for example. Which, as you may notice, it NOT shorter, but it is more evocative.
Also, if you actually read a decent amount of Palahaniuk... Most of them don't have that much action/plot. He goes on ridiculous tangents like you wouldn't believe. One of my favourites, "Diary", opens with 3 solid pages that is 90% anatomy lesson.
In fact, I just opened it to a random page and got this:
What he actually does is write short sentences. You might still not like his style and that's fine! But trust me, he is ALL about atmosphere over action.
I'm just reblogging because I love Kristine's adoration of Chuck Palahniuk's writing and because that's a fantastically evocative page.
Clearly, if anyone points to Chuck as an example of "cutting the fat" when telling you that you should do it, you can tell them "no thanks, you clearly haven't read his work, so I don't think your advice holds much weight."
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