Killer Zebras

Advice for the current global crisis Stuff to do while in isolation This is my tag for funny things Purple Tuesday Art Wednesday Cute Thursday

[theartofmadeline]

happy pride! this dragon is gay <3

[theartofmadeline]

yeah i'm wlw (wench loving wench)

(available as a print here!)

[chanafehs]

Palestinian Lesbians, happy pride to my Palesbians !

[isbergillustration]

Prideful Awooing

[chick-it-out]

[chick-it-out]

happy june!!!!! 💖🌈🌤

if you want, you can check out my #pride tag for lgbtq+ arts!!!

[sofas-can-read]

Happy Pride Month! It’s my first year celebrating and I decided I wanted to make an asexual cake! With the help of my extremely perfectionist mum, I think we managed to pull it off! I hope ya’ll are having an awesome pride month, whether you’re out, in the closet or somewhere in between 🏳️‍🌈

[hiccupdragonbornhaddock]

I know it's not perfect, but it's so far my best attempt at embroidering a heart. It's based on the asexual flag, and yes I know it's missing the white stripe, but that's because white thread on white felt wouldn't stand out very well. I made this as a patch for my battle vest. It's gonna be interesting to sew this onto thick denim 😂

[kateammann]

Happy International Asexuality Day!!! 🖤🩶🤍💜

[pokimoko]

Ace Week is upon us again, which means it's time for me to share some more silly little critters with you all! (If you like, you can also say hello to their friends from 2021, 2022 and 2023.) ✨Go and be as amazing as always, aces✨

[sonoyin]

Cosmic Cake Slice ✨

Asexuals I see you! 💜

[redstonedust]

thinking "everyone can tell im bad at this" as i stand completely motionless doing nothing in public

[ventela1]

I have possibly never seen a more Murderbot-coded post

[libraford]

Are YOU gonna let THE GOVERNMENT tell YOU what YOUR GENDER is? That doesn't sound like Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness to me! PROTECT your individual FREEDOMS and call your senator: we want the GOVERNMENT to stay OUT OF OUR PANTS! GENDER FREEDOM NOW!

[libraford]

Two men in your neighborhood are married... to EACH OTHER? Congratulate them for exercising their AMERICAN RIGHT to follow the footsteps of our FOUNDING FATHERS! They've got a fully AMERICAN spirit of FREEDOM and REBELLION! GOD BLESS THE USA.

[libraford]

Your coworker has a different RELIGION from yours? Well, that's just INTERESTING and you should talk about it on your UNION-APPROVED LUNCH BREAK. The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA was FOUNDED on Freedom of Religion and ANYONE should be allowed to seek the AMERICAN DREAM!

[libraford]

You think someone might be in this GREAT country ILLEGALLY? NO YOU DON'T! No one is in this country illegally! The minute anyone steps on our SOVEREIGN SOIL they're your FELLOW AMERICAN and where they come from is NO ONES BUSINESS.

[rosslynpaladin]

it's funny yeah, but guys this is actually how you reach the people who prefer these terms to frame all things Good and Correct.

[rosszulorzott]

[copperbadge]

"His grace, his excellency, the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes," the herald called.

King Gregory III, by birthright prince and election king of Askazer-Shivadlakia, bowed as low as his husband (King Theophile "Eddie" Rambler, dux a l'orange) had ever seen. He followed Greg's example, and heard a sardonic snort from the duke.

"If you don't stand up this minute, your majesty, I'll give you a walloping you haven't earned since the puffin incident," Sir Samuel said. He was a tough, weatherbeaten-looking man in a helmet, armor, leather trousers, and scuffed boots. Gregory laughed, straightened, and embraced the strange foreign duke in a hug.

"It's always a delight, Sam," Greg said. "My husband, by the way. King Theophile for formal occasions, but Eddie when he's at home."

"Eddie," Sir Samuel echoed. His handshake was strong, but not weirdly so.

"Sam's one of Dad's best friends. He keeps us out of trouble with Ankh-Morpork and he hates the monarchy with unbridled passion," Greg continued.

"Can I confess I've never heard of Ankh-Morpork?" Eddie said cautiously.

"Few have," Sir Samuel said with a grin. "Just as well. I don't hate you, Greg. You're elected. That's the proper way to go about things. Don't love that crown of yours though."

"It's decorative," Gregory said defensively.

"See that it stays that way. Where is the old bastard emeritus anyhow?" Sam asked.

"SIR SAMUEL!" came a shout across the ballroom, and Michaelis charged forward, meeting the duke in a hug.

"Retired, eh? Cowardly move," Sir Samuel said. "Never thought I'd see the day."

"Vetinari won the bet," Michaelis said cryptically. Eddie watched in fascination. "It's all right. The youngsters can have some fun for now."

"Fun, you call it," Sir Samuel replied, as Michaelis led him away.

"Come meet my grandchildren. How's Young Sam?" Michaelis asked, as their voices faded into the crowd at the ball.

"Sir Samuel is the worst diplomat who ever got the job," Gregory said to Eddie. "He's probably Dad's favorite politician in the world."

"He seems...." Eddie groped for words.

"He sure does," Gregory agreed. "But...he's important, Ed. He helped raise me. Everyone here -- me, Ger, Al...even Dad I think...we are who we are because of him. He believes in people and in the stupidity of people. He loves democracy. He understands imperfection."

"Sounds like a solid dude, as my parents would say," Eddie observed.

"None more solid," Gregory agreed, as the commander lifted Serafina out of Alanna's arm and tossed her up, catching her a second later. The lilacs in the palace garden, lightly disturbed by the movement, swayed back and forth, releasing their scent.

"Who's that Vetinari guy?" Eddie asked, as the party went on around them. Near the doorway to the palace, a man took a broad-brimmed hat from the rack and doffed it to Gregory before slipping away. Simon, nearby, continued to mix banana daiquiris for the waiting diplomats.

"Oh, you are in no way ready for Vetinari yet," Gregory assured him. "Come along. Time you met Lady Sybil."

[kawuli]

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)

[yomikoreadsbooks]

Keeping a list of Google alternatives just in case…

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

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 “compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.” 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 won’t record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses “&” as a bang search.

Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines. 

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. 

Gibiru’s tagline is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy. 

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. 

MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” 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. 

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. 

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. 

https://www.mojeek.com/ 

https://wiby.me/ - It’s goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. 

https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn’t have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it’s 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/ 

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

[smol-blue-bird]

I went to a library book sale this weekend and I found a very old book called “Electronic Life: How to Think About Computers,” which was published in I think 1975? I’ve been reading it kind of like how I would read a historical document, and it’s lowkey fascinating

[smol-blue-bird]

There’s a whole paragraph that’s like “okay, find the keyboard. Don’t panic if it has more keys than a typewriter, that’s normal. Really, it’s fine. The extra keys don’t make things harder. It’s FINE”

[smol-blue-bird]

Thought this section was particularly interesting:

Can the computer create something? At first glance it seems obvious that it can. Animated computer graphics, with their fluid transitions and whiplash perspectives, look strikingly new. And if one watches the machine doing animation work, there seem to be lengthy periods when the computer is acting “on its own.”

But if one observes these processes in more detail, it becomes clear that creation is not occurring within the machine. First of all, computer graphics are not unique. Computers have yet to generate anything that cannot be done by hand—and usually already has been done. Second, the apparent ability of the computer to “act on its own” is the outcome of thousands of hours of patient human effort to refine its instructions. The computer can manipulate a shape for us if we have already informed it what a shape is, what the rules for shape manipulation are, what this specific shape is, and so forth.

You can start an automobile engine and it will run by itself, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s being creative. It’s just running.

[theriu]

Somebody in 1975 had a better understanding of why artificial intelligence is not in any way “intelligence” than the majority of today’s intellectual minds.

[fiollaigean]

god firefly had it all. the soundtrack. the way every costume looks like it was pulled straight from a goodwill. zoe and mal's whole deal. the terrible chinese pronunciation. sex work being the most respectable and unionized profession of the lot. spaceship cargo hold full of cattle. "shiny." teenage girl with mysterious unexplained psychic powers. old traveling preacher with a mysterious unexplained past. chekov's compression coil. "pretty spry for a dead fella." wash's slutty little hawaiian shirts. kaylee and inarra's whole deal. mark sheppard is there.

[taraljc]

once you notice the lack of Asian actors--not even background--you'll never be able to watch it ever again, tho.

(and this is coming from someone who was deeply involved in the fandom and wrote a genuinely stupid amount of fanfic, I can't even think about it without wanting to bang my head against the wall.)

[beatrice-otter]

And let us not forget the Reavers! The ones Joss Whedon straight-up compared to Apaches! (Or rather, as fulfilling the role that Indians filled in 1950s westerns.)

[taraljc]

I saw that vid premiere at VividCon and you could hear a pin drop.

ETA: I really wish I had spellchecked my ElJay comment that ended up in the fanlore article that I just read in its entirety for the first time.

[sexysilverstrider]

the group chat when i ask whos available to hang out next week