having been derailed by life and all of it's whims, i am relaunching the pasta revolution resolution! you'll be happy to know that altho i've failed you all by not posting pasta since... january???... i have actually kept up with a roughly one (1) pasta shape per week eating habit! so i have a backlog of scoring and notes to post. speaking of scoring...
with the help of my many Pasta EAs (Eating Assistants), i have overhauled the scoring rules, and because of the new Bonus Points opportunities, pasta shapes have ALL YEAR to rack up points, so we might have some late-breaking upsets.
Scoring Rules
First Take Points (0-5): How well did the pasta shape perform in whatever dish I used it in first? Hopefully I'm smart enough to choose a dish that complements the shape, but I have a feeling some of these shapes have some surprises in store.
Remix Bonus Points (no limit! available all year!): These are discretionary points that can be awarded if I like a pasta shape enough to put it in a different dish. This category also accepts "ghost points", because my EAs have already suggested amazing dishes that I really love in theory but in reality might never get around to making.
Amusement Points (0-5): How much fun is the pasta shape? Is the name fun to say? Is it cute? Does it resemble an animal or a replacement k'nex piece? Would it be fun at a party?
Annoyance Deductions (0-5): Does it stick to itself - or the spoon - or the pot - unnecessarily? Does it shatter into pieces that skitter under my oven where they will fossilize because nobody ever cleans under the oven? Does it require more than one utensil to ferry it to my mouth? Does it stick out of the pot because why would I have a pot that is the diameter of spaghetti?
Alternative Uses: Crowd sourced!! It's not just what I can dream up, it's about what YOU can imagine!!! My EAs have already proven to be wonderfully wild dreamers of pasta shape dreams, so I can't wait to see what's to come. There's no official scoring for this category; it will be used as a tie-break if needed.
New shapes will be posted with their temporary scores, but as noted, I (you, we!) have ALL YEAR to uncover the TRUE POTENTIAL of each pasta shape. May the best bizzarely shaped dried extrusion of dough win!
shoutout to my stellar EAs: @sideguitars @cinnis @waytooinvested-main @makicarn
Neighbors to the north, I know we’ve had beef recently but please avoid burning down.
On a serious note, if anyone has any donation links to help the communities under evacuation orders like the Mishkeegogamang First Nation, I’d love to share those.
Individuals who support the goals and vision of AN7GC can make a donation. The ways to donate: call us, mail your donation, use Paypal or Ca
100% of donations are dedicated to supporting Namaygoosisagagun emergency response and community recovery efforts.
Supporting Indigenous menstruators across Turtle Island by ensuring they have access to menstrual products, and by providing vital menstrual
Donations go towards making sure communities have access to menstral products during times of crisis.
True North Aid provides practical humanitarian support to northern and remote Indigenous communities in Canada through community-led project
True North Aid has a Wildfire Relief program and provides practical Support to remote indigenous communities.
Learn how the Ontario SPCA and Humane Society helps animals during emergencies with disaster response, preparedness resources and emergency
Ontario SPCA and Humane Society is helping with emergency food, supplies, transport, and first aid for displaced animals and are helping families keep their pets when they are displaced.
Little-known fact: although most people believe trains to be herbivores, they are actually opportunistic omnivores and will consume meat should it be made readily available.
oh it totally does, but you can’t hear it because space is a vacuum and sound can’t travel through a vacuum!
and that’s a good thing,
because the roar of the sun would clock in at around 120db heard from earth, about the equivalent to having a train’s horn go off three feet from your face.
constantly. all the time, even at NIGHT. there would be no escape.
so, the sun and the earth sound about how i would’ve expected, and a lot of other planets just make strong wind sounds which is perfectly reasonable but venus sounds like pure dread?!?! WHY IS SATURN SCREAMING?!? pluto isn’t bad and is actually kinda nice but it’s very strange to me too like Why Does It Do That. jupiter is super chill 10/10. pluto and jupiter need to collab i would buy that album
In Copenhagen you can visit The Round Tower. It used to be an astronomical observatory until light pollution and the vibrations from increased traffic in the streets made it useless for its original purpose.
Today it’s mostly famous for what it looks like on the inside.
It has an equestrian staircase though it’s so smooth it’s really just a gentle slope more than a staircase. It was build like that so our lazy bum king could ride his horse all the way to the top (king not in photo)
And naturally people have also driven cars up the tower
And held a bike race
For a while it was just sort of abandoned by the authorities and became a spiraling marketplace
But today it has been restored and become a tourist spot as well as a popular destination for school trips. And yes, you can still watch the cosmos at the top.
Fight back against censorship and empower your community with this close look at the book banning movement.
In a moving, compulsively readable call to arms for readers everywhere, Danny Caine, bestselling author of How to Resist Amazon and Why and How to Protect Bookstores and Why, offers an expertly-crafted confrontation of far-right, Christian nationalist attempts to reshape American culture through ban campaigns targeting schools, libraries, bookstores, and prisons, with the aim to silence marginalized identities in life and in literature.
From the first-ever banned books display at San Francisco's City Lights in the 1950s to the rapid rise of so-called Moms For Liberty during the COVID-19 pandemic to attempts to silence Palestinian authors, Caine charts the course of repressive censorship campaigns, along with the creative and sometimes unlikely activists who've stood up against them.
Each chapter is based on a particular book banning episode, bolstered by research and legal precedent, and concludes with helpful takeaways for further reading or resistance.
Throughout, Caine approaches these heated issues with gentle openness harkening back to his work as a public school teacher and a bookseller.
He emphasizes our collective responsibility towards art, free speech, and each other.
*Affiliate link above, this book was originally read as an ALC on Libro.fm*
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.
