Just for the halibut

repelling loneliness with onlineness

[succubusboyfriend]

you have permission to pick that 2 year old "abandoned" project back up. it's not mad at you for setting it aside. and maybe time and distance have helped ease or erase the things that made you put it down in the first place.

[loreleywrites]

you solve the mystery of what to have for dinner one night and you think "hell yeah case closed forever" WRONG there is a dinner mystery the next night too

[wordfather]

idk if this is an usamerican thing or not but it always blows my mind as a small european country resident that yall have many names and types of apples???? what do you mean its not just red yellow or green??? why is it so complicated??? who is granny smith????

[wordfather]

'whats your favorite apple' 'red' 'no i mean like what type' '??????' actual conversatiom i've had with a mutual from usa

[wordfather]

THIRTY TWO??????

[phillyphillyphilly]

Listen that doesn’t even account for all the weird shit local farmers are getting up to.

May I present the best apple:

[wordfather]

the world is so big and beautiful

[yeehawpim]

I can be the ship and its sailors

[jimhenson-themuppetmaster]

Jim Henson performing Wilkins and Wontkins in the early days

[homunculus-argument]

How long do y'all think it took for people to forget mammoths? One generation, two, three? They got rarer and rarer, until the clan felled the last one that they would ever kill, and the hunters who were there would, for the rest of their lives, keep telling the story of how they once slayed the most elusive grand beast, that was only seen once a generation. And the youths would listen their descriptions of them, and though the description didn't make much sense - there was nothing else quite alike a mammoth that it could be compared to - they listened and thought that one day, they would encounter a mammoth, too.

They might tell their children and grandchildren of this, how the old hunters would tell them of a spectacular beast that one might see only three times in a lifetime, and perhaps kill just once. It must be true, since the clan still has the tusk of one, but no-one alive has seen one.

Their children and grandchildren would tell their own children only vague tales they used to hear the old folk tell, of grand beasts bigger than horses and bovines, the grandest game of them all, but no-one alive has met someone who has seen one.

[yuriskies]

Gonna step outside my usual programming a bit because that light pollution take and a lot of the responses to it aggravated me so much.

No, wanting to see the night sky isn't a twee retvrn to ghibli-ass take. It's not a matter of some anprim impulse to dismantle industrial society for ~nature aesthetics~, it's an extremely visible symptom of environmental degradation that gets downplayed because the externality seems trivial to most people: "Oh no, the night sky, what ever will we do without it."

But it actively disrupts light-sensitive circadian rhythms in plants and wildlife, which disrupts foraging patterns, reproductive and hibernation cycles, and contributes to wildlife population declines. It's not the major contributor to those declines, but it's an additional point of stress in an ecosystem already stressed by climate change and other forms of industrial pollution. And so much of it is wholly unnecessary.

I don't think people realize how far-reaching the problem is, either. That light isn't just confined to the places people use. You don't escape it by just taking the bus to the edge of town. That light carries, in some cases for hundreds of kilometers. Death Valley has some of the darkest skies in the US, and yet, the dome of light above Las Vegas is visible on the horizon over 250 km away! Anywhere within 50 km of a major urban center, just about anywhere in the world, never gets darker than a night under a full moon.

And this is very much a recent problem too. Before the switchover to LEDs, it was relatively expensive to light places. That meant actually accounting for the energy use and making sure it was being used where it was needed. That light was also warm-colored, so it didn't travel as far. With the decreased cost of lighting, it became standard to light places like daytime whenever they might be needed. Lighting didn't get safer, it just got more thoughtless.

The reason you see astronomy-types sounding the alarm most loudly is because they're the ones who have been seeing the full effects of light pollution and its encroachment on dark skies. It's a hobby for me too, but it's partly because I am a night owl who grew up in a small town with nothing else to do. I used to be able to clearly see the Milky Way horizon to horizon when I grew up in the mid-00s. The last time I visited about five years ago, I could only see it overhead. The population has fallen by like 10%, but the skies are brighter. I can tell when the college decided to leave the football stadium lights overnight. I can tell where the car dealerships that added overnight display lights are. I can even see when trucks with the fuckass LED light bars are coming over a hill from 5 km away.

I'm all for well-lit, safe, and accessible spaces for people to work and play at night. But there is an impact from lighting, and it can and should be regulated like any other point source pollution. It's a pretty straightforward and materialist assessment. But go off about the big scary anprims are coming for your society so people can see the stars I guess, that's not at all a reactionary response to hearing about a problem

[madgastronomer]

#also a lot of the time the solution to light pollution is so stupidly easy it should be a no brainer to do it#like using more directional shades on streetlights#or different color lights instead of bright white#like#you do not actually have to live in the dark all the time to mitigate this problem!!#this is easier than fixing the ozone and we did that!

Okay, but that's an important point! Don't leave the important point in tags!

[ironinkpen]

best thing about uncle iroh is that if you pay attention he is actually just as much of an idiot as zuko but has just mastered the art of coming across as a wise old man. the even better thing is that zuko is the only one on the planet who somewhat realizes this and no one would ever believe him because he's zuko

[ironinkpen]

like uncle iroh 100% does dumb shit on purpose sometimes to get people to underestimate him and keep zuko from capturing the avatar, but other times he just, and i cannot emphasize this enough, does impulsive dumb shit for no reason other than the fact that terminal stupid presumably runs in the royal family's blood

[ironinkpen]

uncle: "you never think things through, prince zuko!"

also uncle:

once got captured by the earth kingdom army buck ass naked bc he really wanted to go to a hot spring in enemy territory

betrayed zhao at the Northern Water Tribe with no escape plan and then spent 3 weeks starving on a boat

immediately went to a spa resort upon publicly committing treason

ate a poisonous plant and, in the spirit of Two Fish Hook Sokka, was going to solve the problem by eating another potentially poisonous plant

decided the safest place in the world they could go was the city he once FAMOUSLY laid siege to for 600 days

instead of lying low or giving a modicum of a shit about people recognizing him, overachieved himself into becoming one of the most well-known restaurant owners in said city

in fact overachieved so hard that he got an invite to meet the earth king (whose city he, again, once FAMOUSLY LAID SIEGE TO) which he fucking? accepted????

[prettybirdy979]

#no wonder zuko was constantly frothing at the mouth! he's the only one who knows the truth!#god just imagine the number of times people have seen zuko yelling at iroh#and assumed zuko was just being mean#when zuko was actually yelling at his uncle for wasting all their money bartering with pirates AGAIN#everyone assumes iroh is babysitting zuko but really they're pingponging responsibility back and forth#and zuko at least has the excuse of being 16#anyway I love Uncle Hypocrite so much; funniest motherfucker on the planet (via OP)

[draculagerard]

Gen AI is nothing special I can also draw / write badly, help you with math inconsistently, answer you dubiously, and consume amounts of water you would think are physically impossible

[mclennonyaoi]

love that he keeps doing this. genuinely my favorite fucking bit

[mclennonyaoi]

he has had like ten “final movies” and everytime i get sad about it. and then he makes another one. fucking love this guy

[garnavis]

[titenoute]

Comic strip by Boulet. You can find him on instagram.

[princesssokphanny]

A once-in-a-lifetime shot — the moon perfectly framed by a rainbow. Caught at just the right time. 🌈 🌕

[kedreeva]

Sourcing the photos as taken by Mark Ham on Instagram, according to one of the replies.

[leebrontide]

Happy Pride month to the moon

[the-cassquatch]

Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?

Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.

Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.

Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?

[dj-of-the-coven]

Long collection of resources under the cut.

You're right that the internet is smaller than it used to be, but there's still some cool stuff left in the corners. I'd recommend checking checking out Neocities if you haven't--it's an independent web hosting platform like Geocities of the old web, and there are hundreds of interesting and active pages discoverable both through their search function and through web buttons (links attached to small pictures with the title of a website) within the websites themselves. Here are three examples of web buttons you may find in link pages:

Most Neocities websites have link pages or button collections with anywhere from tens to hundreds of these. Don't be afraid to explore!

If you're looking for something more like a search engine, I can point you towards Marginalia. It's not a particularly smart engine, but it's perfectly usable if you've ever been taught to use search engines back when they were mostly run through keywords instead of full sentence comprehension. There's also an "about" and "tips" section on the front page with more information. The algorithm of Marginalia can be filtered by the user to allow, disallow, or require JavaScript depending on your needs, plus there are filters designed specifically to prioritize web 1.0 sites or mostly text-based ones. It is possible to search for modern websites with it, but it can return websites from just about any decade (since the invention of the web, obviously) so long as they contain the information you're looking for. For example, here are some random interesting sites I've found using Marginalia:

Native Languages of the Americas: Native American Cultures

BASIC HTML COMPETENCY IS THE NEW PUNK FOLK EXPLOSION!

Earthbound Text Labs by Bill Eager

The possibilities for discovery are truly endless.

Now you might want to know about directories. These make browsing for websites easier, but require you to read through and judge which ones to visit, as there aren't algorithms ranking the sites besides the whim of whoever coded the directory. Some of them have themes, others don't. Here are two that I've used:

Yesterlinks Directory

Ichigo Directory

Directories can be harder to come by just by surfing the net, but they aren't impossible to find. Many personal websites have their own directories of interesting sites hidden within them.

Webrings are similar to directories, but are actually more community-based. You have to register your website to be a part of a webring, usually by sending an email to whoever runs it and meeting some kind of entry criteria. For example, my personal website used to be a part of a webring called Sweet Dreams, which was for websites that heavily utilize color palettes and images of cute things, particularly sweets. Webrings will give you access to a widget upon entry that allow visitors and other members to browse between the registered websites in a massive ring, ergo, where the term gets its name. Webrings can have any theme or criteria for entry. If you can make a website about it, you can find a webring for it.

Now, you might be wondering about social media alternatives. I can't offer much, but I can nudge you towards the idea of forums. Here's one I found that could really use some traffic. I also browse a bit on MelonLand forum, which is actually closed right now--it's currently closed on Mondays--but on any other day of the week, you can find a fun community there dedicated to web revival. You can find it through MelonLand's main page. I'd also recommend checking out SpaceHey, which is a MySpace clone that's customizable and easy to use.

I hope this is of some help to you. The internet may feel less magical than it used to be, but that doesn't mean that the spark has completely died out. These types of indie websites need more attention if we ever hope to reverse the damage done to the internet by centralization and corporate interest. People are trying to make the web a cooler place to be, but we're going to have to do the work of finding and interacting with these projects in order to get them off the ground someday.

[xerxestexastoast]

ALSO you should consider browsing Virtual Pet List and seeing if there are any pet sites you might be interested in playing. There is a whole genre of browser games right under your nose

[biothreads]

Another one that I just found recently is this, which is a whole collection of blogs, organized by topic!

ooh.directory: a place to find good blogs that interest you

A collection of 1,966 blogs about every topic

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Look guys the real internet IS STILL THERE I'm going to cry

[headspace-hotel]

try Radiogarden

[rosiewitchescottage]

And it's amazing that you can find information that you looked for, just in the off chance, never expect ing that it would really be there.

Are you a word nerd like me, and my father before me?

Then may I introduce you to...

Online Etymology Dictionary

The online etymology dictionary (etymonline) is the internet's go-to source for quick and reliable accounts of the origin and history of Eng

Explore live radio by rotating the globe

Explore live radio by rotating the globe.

Thank you @headspace-hotel

[manibolly]

Anthony Head as Oliver Sampson in VR.5 (1995)

[gawkiebird]

Old enough for Anthony Stewart Head to have been my first crush on a grown-up when he played Oliver in VR5. I'm gonna miss him.

[teathattast]

[leighlew3]

ALL. OF. THIS.

[sleepnoises]

i want to do a painting of a tiger taking a bath to put in a bathroom (bathroom-themed bathroom) and to this end i made a little maquette out of clay and i suspect this will scope creep into having both a painting and sculpture of a tiger or perhaps only a sculpture of a tiger. if i do both should they be displayed together or separately

[sleepnoises]

Tiger maquette by the way 🐅

[sleepnoises]

Working on cutting out a large piece of wood to do the painting on, which is a constraint that will either be really fun or really annoying. Maybe both

[sleepnoises]

Wood primed and underpainted and sketch transferred mostly by cutting it out in different chunks and tracing around them. Stripes to be determined. Nobody let me work on this again for at least two weeks

[sleepnoises]

The finished Ms. Tigers

[buttpoems]