If it's shiny, you probably shouldn't trust it.

20 years old. She/they. British. Anti-capitalist, but not communist. This blog is what happens when you take what should be several side blogs and mash them into one main blog. I'd list fandoms, but there's too many - I am a fairly reliable Tolkien fan though.

[bonesbeetle]

compilation of my all-time favorite tweets

[phantomrose96]

I'm very very glad that my knee-jerk, gut-feeling, primal-instinct reaction to seeing a Default Influencer is embarrassment. I think this saves me from a lot of bullshit.

[phantomrose96]

Some lip-filler lady on enough Ozempic to euthanize a horse: "The sad truth is an elite lifestyle takes money and discipline. Buy these brands on credit if you have to. Skip meals."

Me: "Oh. Oh I'm physically experiencing the effects of secondhand embarrassment. You live like this? This is your life? Your interiority? If I was anything like this I'd kill myself I think."

[phantomrose96]

To be clear ☝️, absolutely not gender-exclusive. Some broccoli-haired shirtless 23-year-old man on enough trenbolone to euthanize a different horse starts talking about how to be a high-value male and I start thinking instantly about how I'd have 4,000 slugs use me as a jungle-gym before I'd want this man within cootie-contagion distance of me.

[phantomrose96]

[refuzz]

[phantomrose96]

Respect for my soldiers… she’s saving him… the hons…

[ruinedchildhood]

[stardynamite]

THE WAY SHE POSED AFTERWARDS HFKFBDK

[stardynamite]

My artistic rendition:

[beardedmrbean]

this sounds like a party to me

[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

[kinehora]

probably the worst thing that's ever happened to me was when this one time i was wearing my shirt that says "I HATE PAGANS" in giant block letters that i wear to the ren faire so that gay people don't try to involve me in their roleplays or whatever and i somehow thru a series of events that i will omit bc it's boring & i don't understand it encountered some kind of temporal rift and ended up in a roman forum in like the 390s or something. and immediately these guys in armor are pointing at my shirt & getting very excited bc obviously paganism had just been outlawed in rome, and i'm trying to be like "no no you don't understand" but they don't speak english & i don't speak latin so i'm just gesturing frantically at the shirt and then at myself and doing like a thumbs up motion which i later learned is not a good gesture to make in ancient rome. they're getting increasingly animated and i'm trying to pantomime like "different kind of pagans, future pagans, neopagans" by pointing at the ground (to indicate here/now pagans) and then making a big X with my arms and then pointing at the sky (to indicate future/different pagans) but this apparently makes them think i am doing a bit about how the old gods are pathetic, and they're really into this like slapping their thighs and stuff. anyway they take me to this official-looking building & there's this older guy there who seems important & has better robes than everyone else and through a series of elaborate hand gestures and latin & ingvaeonic cognates i manage to express to him that i am jewish, and in my time there are these different people called also pagans who “stelen” from my “tribe,” and then i see him start to nod and he says something to the guards & i'm like oh good we've achieved understanding and i'm feeling pretty good about this intercultural exchange we're having & then i got stoned. like with rocks.

[doctornerdington]

Genius.

[felderwin]

cannot stop thinking about “a BEGUILIN’ corpse”

[not100bees]

I feel like my crocodile mom can protect my wife and girlfriend and my friend and that random old woman from the other crocodile while I rescue the money.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Your girlfriend and your wife are different people? Polyamory win I guess.

[asmuchasidliketo]

[chimaerakitten]

A while ago one of those posts went by that was like “the leads of the previous show you watched are now in the show you are currently watching. how do they handle it?” and I was like ok the heated rivalry boys in black sails would just. Die. They’d just die. RIP.

But the more I think about it the more I think the opposite is where the comedy is.

Like:

[manicpixiedckgirl]

[theaudientvoid]

There are multiple chapters that are set in hospitals where the characters are attempting to recover from injuries that never fully heal. I must once again stress that my experience in WWI was perfectly normal.

[aro-ace-from-outer-space22]

There is a giant horrible mudplain full of unrecoverable and perfectly preserved dead bodies that the characters have to walk through in a land where the air is poisoned gas, and on a compLETELY UNRELATED NOTE: WWI WAS TOTALLY FINE AND NORMAL!!

[kingercainedaddyissues]

Uh??? Tolkien did not claim that???

"One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918, all but one of my close friends were dead."

He talked about how WWI affected his writing all the time, he was not in denial for how it affected??? Am I missing something????

[alexseanchai]

https://www.tolkiensociety.org/blog/2017/09/tolkien-as-war-novelist-another-way-of-dealing-with-trauma-through-writing/

what Tolkien was adamant about, which has been confusing people for several decades now, is that he wasn't writing about World War Two

[beatrice-otter]

He was also very clear that he was not writing allegory. Now, some people are not very clear on what allegory means. "Allegory" and "symbols" are not the same thing. Allegory is a type of symbolism, but there are a lot of ways of doing symbolism that aren't allegory ... and a lot of people are kind of fuzzy on that. The way allegory is most commonly used in literary and religious analysis is that there is a direct, almost 1:1 correspondence between the literary figure and what it is standing in for.

So, for example, Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory of Christian salvation. It's sort of a novel? There are characters who do stuff? but also they are very one-dimensional. The main character is a guy named Christian--yes, really!--who is journeying from his hometown ("the city of destruction") to the Celestial City (heaven). There is not much subtlety to it. It is pretty much what it is. There is no slippage, no playing around with the theme, no places where the symbolism is ambiguous. John Bunyan, the author, is hitting you over the head every step of the way with the Meaning That You Are Supposed To Be Getting From The Story.

Not all allegories are that crude or simplistic; the Narnia books are also allegory for Christianity. They have a lot more subtlety to them and a lot more nuance, and there's a lot of stuff in there that isn't allegorical, but on the crucial matters there is still a 1:1 correspondence. Aslan is Jesus. He's not like Jesus, he's not a character that has some similarities to Jesus or takes themes from the stories of Jesus, he is Jesus.

Tolkien is not doing allegory. Tolkien is taking the material of his life--his faith, his experiences in WWI, his linguistic and historical knowledge, his favorite books--and using them as the building blocks of his story. The themes and imagery and symbols draw heavily from all of that, the characters and settings draw heavily from all of that, but they are too complex to be allegorical. There's a lot of symbolism! It's not allegory.

So, for example, let's take the Dead Marshes referenced above. Does the experience of walking through this muddy wasteland with corpses all around that are rotting but still look like people draw from Tolkien's WWI battlefield experience of dead bodies in the trenches? Of course it does! but there are also a lot of differences. These dead are not from the current war, they are from a previous one--they are a reminder of old conflicts, of the ways the systems and powers of the current war have not come out of nowhere, there is history here. There is meaning that is not drawn from the Somme. And they are also drawing from literary references Tolkien was familiar with--primarily William Morris. Modern readers don't get the references because we have generally not read The House of the Wolflings, but that doesn't mean that the references aren't there.

So people read Tolkien's insistence that he didn't write allegory, and take that to mean that he's saying there isn't symbolic and thematic references. And that isn't what he meant! And also, we focus so much on the thematic references to WWI and Christianity, and we miss most of the other references, which makes it seem like Tolkien's only drawing on WWI, when he's actually doing something more complex.

[christianstepmoms]

[lev-1athan]

Fucking crying at the tags

[markovchaingang]

of course, like anybody else would, the first thing i did upon getting my time machine was go back in time and kill hitler when he was just a child. but when i came back a cursory google search revealed that there was some other charismatic guy called jan krupp who staged a coup and took control of germany leading to ww2. so naturally i went back in time and killed him before he could grow up and commit genocide. but i soon discovered that he'd been replaced by another guy. so i continued on this path of killing and tbh i'm not sure how many german babies i've killed at this point and it's a little hard to find old german newspaper clippings from the ww2 period anymore because they underwent a population collapse around the turn of the 20th century. best i can tell it's this weird german serial killer they called "jack-of-the-cradle" who kept killing newborns. but googling "world war 2" doesn't come up with any results so really i think all i need to do is stop this jack guy and then that'll be mission accomplished

[ladystoneshart]

asoiaf characters who are canonically pro choice:

margaery tyrell (moon tea enthusiast)

grand maester pycelle (moon tea supplier)

catelyn stark (feminist. wishes jon had been aborted)

jon snow (male feminist. wishes he had been aborted)

melisandre (uses aborted shadow babies as murder weapons)

everyone in dorne (chronically based)

cersei lannister (had a coathanger abortion because her husband had bad vibes)

asha greyjoy (2 steps away from inventing the IUD)

val (late term abortion advocate)

characters who are pro abortion but NOT pro choice:

hoster tully

[todaysbird]

very cool but also kind of a dick move

[todaysbird]

Stop making Hannibal furry headcanons unless it’s this bird

[reggiemess]

It's apparently only ONE population of this species that does this. Everyone else hunts and caches normally. The other falcons probably talk shit about this fucked up torture family.

[skwerlly-squirrel]

Ooooh that’s even more fascinating. That means it’s a learned behavior they TAUGHT one another.

[righteousgrace]

[indigosfindings]

monty hall problem mods/house rules

the ultra monty hall problem: you are presented with three doors and told that one of them contains a car, the other two goats. after your initial choice the host reveals a fourth door & asks if you would like to switch your guess, but only to the fourth door. you are not given any hint as to whats behind the fourth door

monty hall scattershot: you are presented with three doors and are told that 10 cars & 10 goats are spread across them completely at random. after your initial guess the host opens the door you picked, then asks if you want to switch to another one

the discursive monty hall problem: exactly like the regular monty hall problem except each door has a 50/50 chance of having a goat or a car

the monty prison problem: you and a stranger in a separate room you cannot see, hear, or communicate with are each presented with three doors. if you and the stranger pick the same door, you both get a car: otherwise you both get a goat. after your initial pick the host will reveal a door that the stranger did not pick and ask if you want to switch your choice-- the stranger is being asked the same thing

the monty hall solution: three doors (1 car & 2 goats). after your initial choice the host opens the door you picked, revealing its contents, then asks if you want the contents or not. irrespective of whether you were correct he will say "are you sure" 5 times at minimum.

the monty corridor problem: the host presents you with three doors: two of them contain goats, and one leads to three further doors: of those doors, two contain slightly smaller goats, and one leads to three further doors. and so on

the monty hall problem unrated edition: as the regular monty hall problem, but if you dont change your initial choice, whatever prize you get is doubled

the monty hall consensus: you are one of twelve contestants being presented with three doors. one door has $120000, one has $60000, and the other has 120 litres of goat milk. all contestants who pick a given door will have its prize evenly split between them. three of the other contestants (you dont know which ones) have been told which doors contain which prizes. you are last in the picking order.

the monty trust problem: you are presented with three doors and told that one contains a car, the other two goats. after your initial pick the host says "oh, well that's wrong. door x is the one with the car." none of the doors are opened. you are asked if you want to switch

the monty twist problem: as "the monty trust problem", but you are also aware that one of the doors contains a cursed gem that will free the previous host and force you to become the new monty hall

hall of the monty king: the host presents you with 100 doors. 4 of them contain various ungulates, 1 contains a car, and 95 contain a ticket that allows you to pick another door.

the monty "hard mode" problem: after your initial guess all three doors will be opened. if your initial guess was incorrect, the car will be demolished on the spot. the host will then ask if you want to switch to the other goat

monty hall aim assist: as the monty hall problem, but if your initial guess was incorrect, the host will switch your choice to the correct door without asking permission

the monty hydra problem: as the monty hall problem, but if your initial guess is incorrect, two more doors are added to the group, & the car is reshuffled to a random door, then you have to guess again. this will be repeated for every incorrect guess. you keep going until you either find the car or give up

the monty hall tragedy: you are presented with three doors. all of them have a car behind them, but you dont know how to drive. youve always wanted a goat

the sleeping monty problem: theres a sleeping woman backstage. depending on whether you picked door 1, 2, or 3, she will be woken 1, 2, or 3 times, asked a question, then have her memories wiped & be put back to sleep. the question is: "which door did the contestant pick". you get one car times the number of times she answers correctly

the monty hall political cartoon: you are presented with three doors. instead of being numbered, the doors are labeled "deficit", "drugs", and "the voting public". whichever door you pick, the host will shake his head in disappointment

monty at 20000 halls: as the monty hall problem, but after your initial guess, the host opens a door that reveals a monster sabotaging the set. nobody believes you when you try to warn them

monty hall's temptation: the host presents you with three doors, each of which contain alluring & illustrious prizes. after your initial pick, monty hall will open all three doors and ask whether you want to keep your initial guess, switch to one of the others, or be permitted to wake up

[oneminutefiftysixseconds]

are you a male ski jumper alleged to be pursuing marginal gains that could yield up to a 5-8 metre increase in flight distance or are you just pleased to see me

[blond-shell]

ilya when shane says he can’t tell people on hockey twitter to kill themselves anymore