NASA
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hello vonnie
Jules of Nature
Cosimo Galluzzi
Misplaced Lens Cap
dirt enthusiast
Stranger Things
noise dept.
wallacepolsom
izzy's playlists!
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h
ojovivo
trying on a metaphor
oozey mess
Three Goblin Art
we're not kids anymore.
Today's Document
seen from Lithuania
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seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from United States
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@onemerlin
"It's good to have an idea where this NPC's story is going. Which is apparently France."
I am in the car rn on the way to the airport so i can go to france and this is the first thing on my dash when i open tumblr
Ye, you are an NPC in my campaign of Mutuals and Misfits, sorry you had to find out this way.
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)
Keeping a list of Google alternatives just in case…
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
She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.
She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.
81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.
The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.
Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.
Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.
The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.
She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.
Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.
When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.
The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.
When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.
The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.
You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.
Edited down a long tweet. (x)
For all the many flaws of the tagging system on this hellsite, it is so perfect for Sending Home. A man's not dead while his name is still spoken, and what are the tags but the Overhead of tumblr? They aren't the posts themselves, but they are metacommentary on posts, notes to friends, info to be passed on. The message has been logged and is continuing to be sent on. GNU
Coming into a fandom late
Coming into a fandom early and watching it become an angry clusterfuck
Being in a dormant fandom that suddenly comes alive again after a new book/movie
Don’t forget about those who come in the midst of a fandom war.
Accuracy at its best
Being in a fandom and not even knowing there’s a war going on…
all of this shit…lol
When You’re Not In The Fandom But You’re Nosy AF
When you get into a fandom only to discover it’s dead
This gets better every time I see it.
@fuboos-mess
Being in a dead fandom…
Or being in such a tiny fandom that it feels like youre the only one
The accuracy hurts.
Being in a fandom that had a shit ending.
When you’ve been fangirling long enough, you’ve experienced all of the above.
Being in a fandom meant for kids.
This just gets better..
@mi-kleos
When you realize that joining the fandom has ruined you
Fandom hell in general
Yes.
This^^^ just… ALL OF THIS.
Being in so many fandoms that you don’t even know what’s going on
THIS IS THE SKULDUGGERY FUCKING PLEASANT FANDOM IN ONE POST!!
Trying to recruit people to your fandom
Annnnnnndddd it’s back
Being in a fandom which has so many antis
I’ve probably reblogged this before, but that was before these great additions.
Being in a fandom that actually works together
Why is this so true? All of it.
being in a fanbase but all your mutuals suddenly turn into Kpop blogs
I always enjoy it when a good post comes around again and has been improved by the reblogs like the years for a fine wine.
Being in a fandom when shit goes down and everyone has different opinions
When you are in a fandom and don’t care for others people opinion…..even if they are right…(believe me, I have met several of those)
Being in a fandom you never meant to join
I love this. and it’s gotten better
After abandoning a fandom you’re still a little bit emotionally invested in….
All of these are me. Lol
Being in a fandom on Tumblr
And it reached its epic conclusion
I CHOKED ON FUNDIP
HISTORY HAS BEEN ENGRAVED INTO THIS POST
Keep thinking about this Austin Walker post that now lives in my brain. It's a reply to people saying genAI can help creators 'develop concepts' and waste less time on research (x)
. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁ Fuck off and give me the ball . ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁
Is "Mary Sue" Still a Valid Criticism? (pt. 1)
To start off with: The recent backlash against calling characters "Mary Sue" is valid as hell — the term is often sexist, racist, and simply unfounded. However. I do think that there is still a baby somewhere in that bathwater, and that "this character is so perfect it becomes a major flaw in the story" can still be a meaningful criticism.
Argument 1: "Mary Sue" is a valid criticism to the extent that a character like that can create the problem of excessive match between the challenges of a plot and the strengths of a character. That story is always going to be completely lacking in tension and excitement. If Jim is the world's best wizard ever to wizard, and now there's an entire book about Jim using wizardry to solve wizard-related problems... Yaaaawn. No challenge for Jim means no uncertainty, no investment in the character.
Example of this problem*: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor. A very cool premise, that a human gets forcibly turned into a self-replicating android and sent to the edge of space to save humanity, became (for me) a fairly boring read. Because it becomes clear about 15% of the way in that Bob will more-or-less effortlessly solve every challenge that comes his way, using his superior intellect. I don't hate this book; it's a fun thought experiment. But it didn't exactly suck me in, because Bob gets set a series of tasks and then solves them in a fairly predictable fashion.
Counter-example: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Similar concept, that one lone super-genius gets sent to the stars under similar circumstances. BUT the challenges that Grace has to solve are almost all (the horror!) interpersonal communication. We don't know if he'll ever make it back to Earth, and we don't know if he'll get eaten (or impregnated) by aliens for 90% of the length of the story. Hence, this book's well-earned reputation as a page-turner.
Tl;dr: the "Mary Sue" character can be a serious problem for a story because a character extremely well-equipped to solve their own plot problems will pretty much never create tension or interest for the audience.
Pt. 2 | Pt. 3 | Pt. 4 | Pt. 5 | Pt. 6 | Pt. 7
*Going to constrain my examples to white male protagonists that someone else has called "Mary Sue", as part of my argument that it's not all sexism.
But training on "synthetic stories" that model good AI behavior can help.
Gee, maybe if they hadn't started out by STEALING all that dystopian SF to train their autocomplete machine, this wouldn't be happening... :/
I don't know how Terry managed it. There's just nothing on this earth like a Discworld book. I'll be listening to a book I've read countless times over and suddenly, a single line I've never even really noticed before will tear me open. They just reach right inside me and open my ribcage to expose my very heart.
Tonight, it was Hat Full of Sky and Granny Weatherwax saying, "The world is unfair. Be grateful you have friends." On their own, the words are unremarkable. But juxtaposed together, with the context they are operating in....they had tears flowing down my face before I knew what was happening. The world is unfair; sometimes, the wonderful happens when it shouldn't (and/or when you feel you deserve a divinely wrathful torment) because you have friends. The world is unfair. That doesn't just mean that the horrible happens when it shouldn't. It means that the beautiful does too. Be grateful you have friends. They are the hub on which that beauty spins, turning the theft into gold.
A lot of people I've introduced to these books haven't liked them — they find them too silly, or preachy, or nonsensical, or even puerile. I am never upset or really disappointed when they don't like them. To each their own. But I will never understand it. They are baked into my being in a way that few things are and I am better to myself, to other people, and to the world because of it.
Sir Terry, you were a gift nonpareil. Thank you for your words and for shaping my world.
Discworld Heritage Post
Thank you for writing this so much more clearly than I ever could. Terry Pratchett's books are a reflection on our own society but wrapped up in hilarious observational humour that means they don't feel preachy.
Few authors have made me laugh out loud so frequently and freely.
No, no it isn’t.
this gif is perfectly timed because it gives you enough time to read it, comprehend it, and still have this too-long-for-comfort moment of suspense before being punched square in the solar plexus
A scene from a Star Wars movie plays out, but with different captions.
The captions say, in order:
“I made this into a GIF”
“It’s the Rickroll right?
There are no captions in the third image.
“It’s the Rickroll, right?”
There is a pause, and then the image changes to show a scene from Monty Python and it is captioned
“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”
A scene from a Star
Wars movie plays out, but with
different captions.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
I often think about that post that was a fake dating profile for a cat that was all about chickens, like wanting someone with posable thumbs for opening chickens.
This is one my favourite things the internet has ever made.
!!!!!!
This remains one of the great art objects of modern times and nobody will convince me otherwise.
it's almost summer do you guys want my stupid hyperoptimized lemonade recipe that takes half a day to make and whips absolute ass
Fruited Lemonade That Makes You Reconsider It All
ingredience:
lemons/limes (this needs to make up the bulk of the fruit being used, like at least 80%)
whatever other fruits or fruit scraps you want, plus any herbs/other flavorings you want to try. by fruit scraps I mean things like cherry pits, apple peels, pineapple cores, strawberry ends, things like that.
granulated white sugar, the coarser the better, 50% by weight of total citrus rinds + 100% by weight of any additional fruit. you'll measure this after you prep the fruit.
water as needed
equipment:
a few nonmetallic mixing bowls
a mesh strainer
a chinoise, ricer or some cheesecloth
a kitchen scale
a citrus juicer or reamer (manual or electric)
a potato masher
juice the citrus through a strainer - saving all rinds - and refrigerate the juice for the time being. dice the rinds and other fruits if any, keeping the rinds separate. make note of weights, and measure your sugar.
Place sugar in a large nonmetallic bowl. If using non-citrus fruits and/or any other flavorings, mix them in with the sugar and mash with potato masher. add diced citrus rinds, mix thoroughly, and mash again. cover and let stand at room temperature for at least 4 hours. this allows the sugar to draw out flavors that would otherwise get discarded with the rinds, and the rinds' acids should be enough to dissolve the sugar into a syrup.
Afterward, mash one last time, then collect the syrup by pressing the macerated mixture through a strainer/chinoise or ricer, or squeeze it through cheesecloth. if you want, this can be saved as a standalone syrup at this point, for use in cocktails or desserts. if not, slowly pour the reserved juice through the solids to to help get the remaining syrup out, and squeeze/press again. do the same thing one more time with warm water (roughly the same amount of water as juice). discard solids (or try making sangria with them!).
taste the mixture and add more water if necessary. a stronger mix is totally fine if you anticipate serving over ice on a hot day, or adding booze, or if there was a lot of non-sour fruit. keep in mind that it will taste a bit less sweet once it's chilled. pour into a pitcher and refrigerate.
citrus oils will float to the top, so stir/shake before serving. love you. enjoy.
some tried and true flavor combos:
straight lemon or lime, or any combination of the two, is of course an untouchable classic
lemon & strawberries (that's pussy babe!)
lemon & orange with a hint of vanilla (creamsiclemonade...?)
lemon & apples or apple peels with cinnamon/ginger/allspice (for late summer)
some cocktail type combos, booze optional:
lemon or lime & berries with basil + gin
lime & mint + white rum
lime & ginger + dark rum
lime & cucumber + gin
lime & orange (berries optional) + tequila
lemon, orange & cherry + brandy, bourbon, or rye whiskey
holy gods
Sorry if it’s a little cramped- had to make this all fit in ten photos. Hope you guys like it….. and again…. sorry Andrew
Follow me on Webtoons
The window visual did me in I’m wheezing
I haven’t seen this in years and yet it is burned into my memory forever.
This is on the short list of Eternal Reblog because it’s fucking legendary.
An honourable candidate for the @hellsite-hall-of-fame
I absolutely fucking hate this. Gold star, no notes.
I cannot get this poem out of my head. It haunts me. Joyously, it haunts me.
This poem format is my favorite thing and this is the first time I’ve ever seen it’s origin story. I love it. Every time.
THE SACRED TEXTS!
I forgot the context! It’s beautiful!
Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say.
AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They’ve warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic’s AI training now threatens to “financially ruin” the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement.
well…darn
like to charge reblog to cast financial ruin of the AI industry 🔮
originally posted August 8th, 2025.
Authors have until March 30th, 2026 (That is just 9 days as of this reblog, which I am posting on March 21st, 2026) to file their claim against Anthropic to be reimbursed up to $3,000 per work found in the list.
Updated February 18, 2026 IMPORTANT: The Claims Deadline Is March 30 Background Bartz v. Anthropic is one of the major copyright lawsuits b
Please click the above link for all of the exact details of how to file a claim and to check for your works, and share this post as far and wide as you can before March 30th, 2026!
!!!SIGNAL BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOST!!!
