Why Hello There~

Here's a bunch of memes, BSD, and a plethora of writing that makes no sense at all

[maimabuhamda]

Please read this even if it hurts.

The world says the war is “over,” but tell me how is it over when my mother still wakes up gasping for breath? When every night I pray she survives until morning because I can’t afford the device that keeps her heart alive?

We lost our home. We lost everything. And now I’m watching the person who gave me life slowly fade in front of me —because we have nothing left but hope.

She needs a new heart device — $35,000 — to live. I’m begging you: don’t scroll past this like it’s just another post. Please donate, reblog, or share anything. Your act of kindness could literally save a life tonight.

💳 Donate here ➡️ PayPal ✅ Verified fundraiser 📢 Reblog don’t let her story be forgotten.

[damnwyverngems]

[damnwyverngems]

Crossplay CONFIRMED! As announced at Summer Game Fest, crossplay is coming to Monster Hunter Wilds! No matter where you are, hunters are stronger together. #MHWilds

[cheese-elite]

When your friend tells you something good, but utterly incomprehensible

[mintyfreshtea]

college is gonna kick my ass

I just realized within the next year I'll be starting my college classes for my associates in IT.

This just makes me sad at how life goes by way too quickly. It feels like I was only watching MLP a few seconds ago when it was really 10 years ago..

[rozentias-deactivated20240103]

in the latest cyber-news: the internet archive has lost their case against 4 major publishing houses (verge article). they’re going to appeal, but this is still a bad outcome. the fate of the internet is currently hanging in the balance because 4 multibillionare publishing groups missed out on like $15 of combined revenue during the pandemic because of the archive’s online library service. it’s so fucking stupid.

for those who don’t know what the internet archive is, it’s a virtual library full of media. books, magazines, recordings, visuals, flash games, websites - a lot of these things either don’t exist anymore or cannot be found & bought. heard of the wayback machine? that’s part of the internet archive. it is the most important website to exist, and i don’t say that lightly. if the internet archive goes down, the cultural loss will be immeasurable.

so how can you help?

boycott the publishing companies involved in this. they’re absolute ghouls, frankly, and don’t deserve a penny. the companies involved are harpercollins (imprints), wiley (imprints), penguin random house llc (imprints), and hachette book group (imprints). make sure the websites are set to your location as it may differ worldwide.

learn to torrent. download a torrent client (i recommend transmission), a vpn (i recommend protonvpn - sign up and choose the area that’s closest to your continent/country), and hit up /r/piracy on reddit for websites. with torrenting, you can get (almost) any media you want for free in high quality, with add-ons such as subtitles, and with no risks of loss. i would also recommend getting into the habit of watching stuff online for free. the less you can pay to a giant corporation, the better.

get into the habit of downloading and archiving materials. find a TB external hard drive, ideally the higher the better. it’ll probably cost around $60 for 1TB and continue to go up, but they’re so so useful. if you can’t afford a drive, look for any GB harddrives or memory sticks you have lying around and just fill them up. videos, pdfs, magazines, songs, movies, games - anything you can rip and download and fit on there, do it, because nothing is permanent.

donate to the internet archive. this is the most important option on the list. the IA relies entirely on funding, and it’s going to need more to fight this case. whatever you can donate, do it. i promise it’s helpful.

and finally…

[charaznablescanontoyota]

cannot stress enough that donating to the internet archive to help them appeal this without going broke is the most important thing you can do right now. my day job revolves around fulfilling digital article and book scan requests at an academic library and a huge part of that is borrowing from other libraries that do controlled digital lending (incl. the internet archive!). copyright law is already hugely restrictive on what we can and can't lend, and we absolutely don't have the option to pirate anything for our patrons due to being a large academic institution. it's difficult to overstate just how bad this ruling could end up being for libraries that have digital lending programs, esp ones that rely on CDR for old/archival/hard-to-find texts.

[montyshistoryblog]

I'm incredibly fucking disappointed at the bootlickers in the comments claiming that the IA steals from small creators. Eliminating a valuable research, academic and cultural resource because you've bought into the fiction that "potential sales" are lost sales is exactly what these big corporations want. You aren't saving small creators by swatting down a non-profit, you're allowing ginormous publishing monopolies to consolidate even further while they smile a snake's smile over independent creators.

[llyfrenfys]

The Internet Archive is absolutely vital for my work and research. Without it, a good chunk of Welsh LGBTQ+ history would be inaccessible. The Welsh books hosted on IA are indexed and searchable, meaning any Welsh LGBTQ+ terminology can be searched for. Otherwise, me sitting down to read every. single. Welsh book ever published *just in case* it contains one of the terms in my data is an impossible task (Welsh books have been published since 1546) . In fact, this is something I refer to in my methodology for this very reason.

I'm also broke as hell rn but when I get the chance I'm gonna donate. Without IA, you can kiss goodbye to a *massive* chunk of academia. My lecturers use IA. So not just like, undergrads and PhD students, but seasoned academics will lose access to a major resource if IA stopped existing.

The argument of "potential sales lost" also makes no sense from an author's perspective. Published authors are usually paid an advance before publication. After that point, they would have to sell an obscene amount of books to qualify for extra pay from those sales, so many authors are unbothered by someone reading their book for free. Libraries allow people to read books for free and IA is essentially one giant library. It even has a feature where if you're reading a book and "check it out" for an hour, no-one else can read the book your reading until the time runs out. Just like a normal library. Potential sales lost to the company is just like when companies claim to have lost millions at a start of the year when they haven't actually lost any money at all. They just didn't earn as much money as they were predicting.

IA provides a vital service and we should be fighting to ensure it isn't lost.

[castlescrumblingdown]

Seconding all of the above -- Since the IA lost its case, I've noticed a number of books have rapidly become inaccessible for me. The negative impact this has had on my work can't be understated, as I've been left without a crucial resource for my research. I. don't believe there's a single article I've written that hasn't been impacted by this, with me often having to scrambling to get access to sources that are rare and/or our of print. I have the advantage of a well-stocked uni library that is good at ILLs, but this is a taste of what's going to come if this isn't resolved in the Archive's favor.

[themagentadragon]

I will choose Cat Grill Friend every. Single. Time.

[ruhua-langblr]

Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

[eluxcastar]

What in the LORD'S name have they done to my boys like. Urd is…decent, better than the others but less girly pop and I think Rígr stole his hair gel. but Rígr looks like he'd use the words "dating market" unironically and would tell me to buy crypto

I've genuinely never seen someone so ambiguously bullyable how are these the same person. He looks like what happens when men get too much plastic surgery and get dangerously close to the uncanny valley

Not you two tho you're still great honeys

POV you're the female guest on an alpha male podcast

[gureshinlover]

Same vibes

[eluxcastar]

Ngl I cackled I approve this revival

[animentality]

[vmpirevnom]

So my friend used AI writing in the beginning of her story (keeping it) to get ideas in creative writing club, I’m actually upset. She should know better that’s it’s not fucking okay. I can’t find any motivation and the fact that people put no effort into this shit and do it in 30 seconds is fucking disgusting.

[nessa007]

we make fun of and criticise tumblr staff a lot but seriously thank god we don’t have to put up with the shit that elon fucking musk does on twitter

[dragoncarrion]

Anytime i see a bunch of pride flags i have to restrain myself from saying "where mexico" bc i doubt anyone will know I'm referencing this

[mintyfreshtea]

Okay this is completely random but I just wrote like 15 pages for one of my WIPS and I feel so proud of myself ^_^

[orfeolookback]

If you're not from Argentina, please read this carefully

I have no words to describe the pain I feel. after 40 years of democracy, my country elected a party whose only goal is to be a colony once again, to sell the country to Elon Musk, to the USA and the UK, to have our sovereignty impugned and erased.

I remember the video of USAmerican congressists calling Argentina an "important asset for the United States". I remember when we told all of you to be vigilant because this was gonna turn into a genocide.

Tomorrow, the Mega DNU (Decree of Necessity and Urgency) is going to overrule most of our constitutional rights, and yesterday the Omnibus Law was presented to congress, including measures that make it illegal to gather in public without permission (state of siege), and make it so that protest is a crime. We will have to pay for the bullets that kill us, and cops will have absolute legal immunity to hunt us.

Word for word, a dictatorship. Fascism.

We've already gone through this many times, but I want to see worldwide protests about this. I want the UN to intervene. I want the world to make noise.

What worries me is this is not an isolated case. With many genocides going on worldwide, if the world fails Argentina, this will be the blueprint for all of the world.

Make no mistake, what happens here will happen everywhere there's natural resources and sovereignty. If not through overt genocide, through an extremely libertarian far right that wins elections by manipulating people, funded by Elon Musk. A second Operation Cóndor.

[orfeolookback]

i know this, you know this, we all know they don't care about us, but i wanna have hope!

[spideyladman]

Michael what is MatPat MPreg?

[sugar-grigri]

I love the reference to cooking in the last chapter, especially in a chapter that's all about suffering.

Why? Because it reminds me of the Falling Devil, who in order to mentally "fall" her opponents to the heights, exploited their traumas. Her whole arc is a formidable metaphor for the reaction we must have to our own suffering.

So when the spear weapon tells Denji to scare them, Denji asks him if he wants to be cooked and thus traumatized. If Denji has to scare, he'll do it just as meticulously.