Untitled

[lethelet]

Sometimes I hear people talking, on podcasts and such, and I'm just amazed that no one gets mad at them. They go through a whole complete thought like it's a normal thing to do. It feels like it's a broadcast from another planet. Every person I've met that I liked to talk to apologizes for talking too much. They always have ADHD. They are usually curious and engaged and enthusiastic. But at some point we've all been shamed for being verbally effervescent. But I'd rather talk with these people any day of the week. It's never boring. So much better than trying to read the minimal facial cues of the socially typical to try to figure out what I'm supposed to say.

[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

[cloudyeveniing]

Getting off of twitter and onto neocities has really healed me and I am so glad to see it is healing other people too ;u; let's retreat into the self-made digital woods and away from corporate bs pls, I am so tired

[nyx-shifts-222]

REBLOGGING

[lethelet]

To all the romantics of any sort: marriage is a joint business venture. It’s investment of the most precious kinds of capital: time, cognition, and health. Usually an unbalanced investment. It can also mean joint financial obligation, either to children or through taking on debt.

Our culture devalues domestic labor. Massively. And many non-domestic spouses, when they no longer feel attached, will not see the worth of what their partner has given up for the sake of the family. Or what they will continue to sacrifice to provide childcare.

So legal marriage and divorce provide the enforceable recognition that both parties have invested in the venture, and both parties should come out of it with some kind of gain.

It’s far from perfect. But we need something like this. I’ve known someone who was betrayed by a partner who they had lived with for decades. They had children. But they weren’t legally married, so my friend was homeless while the partner kept the children.

For myself, I’m a disabled SAHM with a disabled kid, going through a divorce. Legal protection is the only thing I can depend on.

[bogleech]

The christian family in these memes (which are absolutely all over facebook these days) genuinely do always look miserable. Who the fuck is relating to these stock mormon farm cultists. That is a couple who made love only once in pitch darkness with bags on their heads then celebrated the pregnancy with a feast of uncooked potatoes and warm tapwater. The baby seems intrigued though. Maybe only by the bottle of pills??

[sunshine-tattoo]

Could not leave this in the tags <3

[lethelet]

How did they try to draw this woman as pathetic, and somehow make her happy and adorable?

It really took me a minute not to see this as progressive outreach.

[lethelet]

Cooking tip: Burnt whiskey

I lake this as a flavor enhancer. It works with sweet and savory. Even in caramel or chocolate sauce. Also good in marinades.

Tools: large steel pan (cast iron might work), pan lid, spatula, fire lighter. Heat proof glass, ceramic, or steel food storage.

Put in a large steel pan:

1/8 cup cheap whiskey

1 tsp brown sugar

.5 tsp butter (est.)

Caution

Make sure there is a wide margin in 3 dimensions between the pan and anything else.

Do not walk away from a pan while it is on fire.

Keep the lid handy as you work. Like literally in your hand if you can.

Have a fire extinguisher close and know how to use it.

Instructions:

Warm contents slightly over lowest heat. Do not let vapor build up. Stir contents briefly.

Turn off flames and stove fan, if on.

Light the whiskey. Stir and tilt pan as needed to keep flames going, until they go out.

Pour contents into heat proof storage.

Do it again until you have lots.

[homunculus-argument]

We need to isolate and start selectively breeding the plastic eating bacteria so we can optimise their efficiency, and then somehow splice their DNA into the gut bacteria of an obligate carnivore, so we can put it in our cats gut biomes so they'll finally be free of having to choose between whether they want to eat plastic or whether they want to live.

[lethelet]

Plastic and string. Our cat’s favorite morning activity is to eat some string and then barf it over my sleeping body.

[lethelet]

People going nuts over AI is like watching the world get suddenly obsessed with the daily horoscope.

[lethelet]

I feel like “it’s all in your head,” meaning that what’s in your head isn’t real, and our national obsession with the power of free will, should cancel each other out.

If our internal experience is less real than the external, then will can’t be powerful, because it’s inside us too.

But the same people who dismiss emotions are the ones who see misfortune as a character flaw. A lack of will

It’s not really about what’s in your head, or not. It’s about a fantasy of control. What they mean is: don’t have uncontrolled emotions. Be dominant. Your unhappiness only demonstrates your failure.

It’s so tiring.

[escuerzoresucitado]

[lethelet]

I would like to offer for consideration the idea that avoiding the words “suicide” and “death” does not keep anyone from suicidal or deadly thoughts.

All that it does is make the discussion of such things taboo. It gives the words an aura of power. Which seems as though it could only increase a suicidal person’s sense of disconnection.

I think that, when one is so sad that death is appealing, it must come with a deep sense of loneliness. And the feeling that who you are and what you feel is something no one cares enough to know.

So when the word “suicide” is euphemized into an obscenity, while actual obscenities are tossed like confetti, it must be a constant reminder that no one wants to hear or see what you are going through. They just want to pretend it’s something else.

And I kind of despise that. It’s just cheap. The smallest possible gesture towards addressing a terrible problem.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

have you ever noticed that the majority of anti hate is towards sex/sex related "perversion"? I can guarantee you most of them are probably fine with murder as a trope.

the puritan mania never really went away.

yes, I’ve talked about this before. but absolutely yes.

anyway, fiction is not real. thought crimes are not real. as long as no one in real life is harmed, do whatever you want forever

[lethelet]

Except that communication has power, and art can promote the beliefs of the artist. Fiction isn’t real life, but it is a real act of communication. It influences people. I don’t mean to say that it should be censored, just that we should acknowledge that it can be powerful.

Freeing fiction also doesn’t really solve the problem of American Puritanism, with its false idea of perversity. Sexual diversity isn’t perverse. In the sense that perversity means a turning away from the good. CSA is perversity, and other such predations. They are very different things. Post-puritans conflate them, which seems like a twisted worldview. We shouldn’t accept their definition. They don’t own sexual diversity, they don’t get to name it.

[stjohnstarling]

C'mere. Listen. There are people out there whose sheer inability to write would dazzle you - lots of them - whose writing is so bad partly because they are so stunningly confident in their own ability that they have never even for a second questioned whether it's possible for them to improve.

These writers are indescribably better equipped to succeed - success, here, being gaining a readership and possibly an income - than writers who spend any amount of of time thinking critically about their skills and improving at their craft, simply because they're prepared at all times to promote their astonishingly bad writing.

This is the actual yard stick you're being measured against in the real world, not whatever standard you're holding yourself to in your head. You can't writhe around in fear of people judging you while the world lavishes that guy with attention and money.

[busket]

choosing to play oppression olympics isnt just mean and inconsiderate. like I feel when you call ppl out for it theyre like "does it hurt your feelings that I said your privileged?" like no you are actually doing some serious damage to your own cause

like the recent estrogen legislation. estrogen should never be made a controlled substance. everyone should have easy access to gender affirming care, including DIY. but when people try to spread awareness for this serious issue by acting like trans men arent as affected by institutional transphobia, it just becomes an argument about disinformation, because testosterone is ALREADY a controlled substance. I want estrogen to remain an uncontrolled substance because I want to save trans women from the bullshit than trans men have been having to deal with for over 30 years. and then you have a bunch of people arguing about this bullshit with each other while the law just plods on thru the government and everyone loses.

recently I saw a person talking about the recent, tragic murder of Juniper Blessing. but instead of honoring her memory, this person said that trans men dont experience the same danger. and of course that caused people to bring up the also very recent murder of Luca Redbeard. Both these violent hate crimes and murders happened THIS MONTH and it makes me sick that the trans community cant even honor their memories properly because theyre too up their own asses arguing about who has privilege and social power over the other, instead of seeing that we are all living the same fucking nightmare

[myjetpack]

My latest cartoon for New Scientist

[voroxpete]

To be clear, this isn't a bit. This is what they actually did. "Its too late" is the new "Climate change isn't real"... And its still a lie!

Every serious climate scientist agrees that there is no such as thing as too late, just as there is no such thing as too early. We should have done a lot more than we have to fight climate change, and the world will suffer for our inaction, but there is no point of no return. We can always work to reduce the amount of suffering that occurs, and eventually turn things around to the point where our planet is healing once again. Do not believe anyone who says it's "too late".

[lethelet]

This is similar to the “but I’m too old to find someone new/start a new job/go back to school/change my beliefs” argument. It’s the belief that only an ideal outcome is worth trying for. If that’s impossible, you might as well just stay miserable.

Most people know this is bad logic. Maybe we use it because we tend to see all outcomes conceptually until they happen to us. And most of us can’t intuit numbers past a certain point: 1 million and 1 billion can feel much closer than they are, because many minds just feel them both as “a lot” and “a lot lot.”

So maybe, on an emotional level, the billions of people affected don’t feel real. After all, we only know them as a quantity. And a potential quantity at that. We don’t know their hair or eye color if they are right or left-handed if their faces are thin or fat, if they like to solve puzzles or if they can’t sit still, they say like fast or ambient background noise if they are addicted to it if they watch the clock where they are too busy to see time passing if they like dogs or cats or iguanas if they ever chased their older sister with a spider if they ever challenged a bully if they had a favorite teacher, they had a favorite candy bar if they thought of changing their name if they got a bad tattoo if they cheated on a test if they cheated on a spouse if they know how to sing in harmony if they had to walk to school alone, if they had to leave their child at the hospital in the hands of a disapproving nurse if they had a goofy dad or a scary dad if they had a rebel friend who shoplifted mascara…  I mean, probably each of these things is true about someone who will be affected by climate change. But we don’t know for certain, so to our minds all we can say is that billions of people will be affected.

And to many minds, “billions“ is not a person or a group of people. It is a quantity. It can be hard to feel the importance of a quantity, when you can’t easily visualize what the quantity describes. 

So maybe, then, what people could relate to about the climate change issue was that it was caused by human error and greed, which is the secular version of original sin. It’s a label that non-believers can apply to their sense of inherited guilt. Despite the fact that sharing resources can create as much carbon as hoarding them. (I mean Christmas is fairly tough on the environment, and it is mostly motivated by the desire to make others happy.)



[lethelet]

It's funny to me that when the monkeys of the patriarchy want to shame a woman, they'll call her, in some way, unfuckable. Because they really, truly, can't imagine any other reason to have a woman around. It's like a child shouting at a dragon that she is not a very good dog. And she can only look at him and say, "...yes...?"

The essence of femininity is resilience.

[deathtokillian]

I gave a homeless woman $20 in a krogers parking lot and when I was walking to my car another lady told me “you shouldn’t have done that, she is probably an addict”. To which I said “it’s cool, I was gonna buy drugs and alcohol with it anyways”, and then just walked away.

[deathtokillian]

Also, and hear me out on this. What if she bought food with it? Or a motel? You don’t know what she is actually gonna use the money for. And if it is drugs or alcohol, I don’t care. It stoped being my money when I gave it to her, she can buy whatever she wants with it.

[safety-pin-punk]

Around here, the argument I often hear is that they probably aren't homeless and they just want peoples money. Which is wild to me.

But also. Your willingness to help a person whose situation you dont know says a lot more about you than in does about them. I don't care if they dont need it, I dont care what they do with it. Because I'd rather spread more love and kindness in the world than hate and cynicism.

[lethelet]

I hate the “they’re just going to buy drugs” thing. I’m pretty sure we’d all want drugs if we were on the street. Especially if mental or physical illness put us there.

Also, they do still need food. Maybe they already bought the drugs and they need a snack. Not going to fight homelessness on an empty stomach.

[lethelet]

I’m pretty sure that the massive AI hype is about getting it inserted into every part of daily life, so that it becomes the filter through which we see ourselves, each other and the world.

Because this will let them capture choice and data on a granular level. An AI interface selects the options you choose from. You wouldn’t even know there was anything else.

People talk about how the AI companies aren’t profitable, but no one mentions how much can be made off of controlling the behaviors of an entire economy.

And Claude was just caught lowering the ratings of pages that mentioned OpenClaw, so maybe it’s happening already.