Favourite colours: I used to answer dark blue to this, but I've reached a point where I just like a lot of colours if I find them soothing or up-lifiting.
Watching: I've just finished the latest season of Lincoln Lawyer. I'm probably going to watch the new season of The Law According to Lidia Poet next.
Currently reading: More like reading a few pages here and there of The Nature of Middle Earth. I'm planning a re-read of LOTR soonish, too. The last book I finished was Apparently Sir Cameron Needs To Die by @pangur-and-grim (highly recommended!)
Current obsession: Elves (the Silmarillion ones)
Currently working on: nothing because this weekend I need to play catch-up with work since I was laid low by cramps and extra work stuff for the past four days.
Last search engine search: What do vocal cords look like (look, sometimes you just want to know something; also there were way too many illustrations and few actual pictures. hmm).
Favourite colours: No strong preference but I wear a lot of dark colours and I do like pink.
Watching: A Man on the Inside
Currently reading: Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher (physical book)
Bad Indians Bookclub by Patty Krawec (audiobook)
Shane Hollander is Dating a Nice Man from Montreal! by trickysnail (fanfiction)
All recommended so far!
Current obsession: Heated Rivalry
Currently working on: Latest chapter of my PhD. Also chapter two of my Dead Boy Detectives Regency Romance/Temeraire fic (I will finish it one day I swear!) and I'm toying with some ideas for Heated Rivalry fics.
Last search engine search: I searched the name of a fanfic I wanted to read, and just before that I looked up Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker so I could rec it to a friend. The last thing I looked up for my own information was Teeth (2007) since I saw it referenced in a post about women in horror movies last night.
Tagging @dearheartdont @rainbow-freckle @original-robin @shitpost-factory @tumblerislovetumblerislife plus anyone else who wants to join in
phones love to go "do you want to clear up .3 GB by deleting these cherished pictures that you havent looked at in more than 30 days?" while also installing random apps and AI bullshit you didnt ask for. and you cant even uninstall half the apps
periodic reminder that the queer liberation library is an awesome non-regional library you can add on libby to access hundreds of queer titles. NO LIBRARY CARD NEEDED. i just found an audiobook for a pretty new release on there with no waitlist. also everyone use libby for your local library too NOW
A few years ago, when I was living in the housing co-op and looking for a quick cookie recipe, I came across a blog post for something called “Norwegian Christmas butter squares.” I’d never found anything like it before: it created rich, buttery and chewy cookies, like a vastly superior version of the holiday sugar cookies I’d eaten growing up. About a year ago I went looking for the recipe again, and failed to find it. The blog had been taken down, and it sent me into momentary panic.
Luckily, I remembered enough to find it on the Wayback Machine, and quickly copied it into a file that I’ve saved ever since. I probably make these cookies about once a month, and they last about five days around my voracious husband - they’re fantastic with a cup of bitter coffee or tea. I’m skeptical that there is something distinctively Norwegian about these cookies, but they do seem like the perfect thing to eat on a cold day.
Norwegian Christmas Butter Squares
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 egg
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1 tsp vanilla
½ tsp salt
Turbinado/ Raw Sugar for dusting
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Chill a 9x13″ baking pan in the freezer. Do not grease the pan.
Using a mixer, blend the butter, egg, sugar, and salt together until it is creamy. Add the flour and vanilla and mix using your hands until the mixture holds together in large clumps. If it seems overly soft, add a little extra flour.
Using your hands, press the dough out onto the chilled and ungreased baking sheet until it is even and ¼ inch thick. Dust the top of the cookies evenly with raw sugar.
Bake at 400 degrees until the edges turn a golden brown, about 12-15 minutes. Remove from the oven. Let cool for about five minutes before cutting the cooked dough into squares. Remove the squares from the warm pan using a spatula.
It basically makes the platonic ideal of commercial sugar cookies, only in bar form. When I give them to people (which I do a lot, because this is one of those simple recipes where the results seem very impressive), I just tell them they’re sugar cookie bars.
The OP version of this has become my go-to cookie for basically all things and I have a whole cohort of friends and colleagues who would murder each other to get them. Haven’t tried any add ons yet, since the base recipe is SO GOOD.
I’ve reblogged this before and I’m reblogging it again because I’m about to make it again tomorrow and I wanted to add my own tale of just how amazingly delicious it. it was SO incredibly simple to bake and with an extra dusting of brown sugar on top and served warm and soft they gift you with the taste of the nectar of the gods when paired with a small glass of milk. this image is from when I first made them a couple years ago:
Needed to make a dessert in a hurry to bring to Thanksgiving, and this recipe worked excellently. I did not have the right kind of sugar for the topping, so instead I used a packet of lemonade powder, which gave it a nice citrusy zing.
Making these for myself as a reward for doing the no fun thing I’ve been putting off. Added half a lemon of lemon juice and a bit more flour. Let’s see how it turns out. >:3
Ok, mother of GOD that's a lot of responses and I am but one man with Excel. I'll update these ASAP but also some rules:
A Pokemon only counts for itself, not its evolution line.
A Pokemon with multiple forms (like Zygarde) will only be counted for the specified form. A Pokemon with multiple appearances (like Spinda, Vivillon, Sylvally, etc.) count for all their appearances.
I'm literally doing this as a testament to my own depression that not everyone is lovable, so add that to the weight of this post's meaning.
Google isn't the only search engine in the whole internet, there are others! And we need to diversify our search engine usage or we're gonna end up where we were a decade and change ago with the Internet Explorer issue. We can't let a single brand monopolize everything! This is why Google Search can afford to suck so hard: because people use it regardless! And there are alternatives.
A little bit about search engines, there are 3 types: crawlers, which work by scraping the web and developing their own indexes; metas, which get their results from the crawler-type search engines and therefore depend entirely upon them; and mixed, those which have their own (small) index but also pull results from the crawlers.
Right now, there are a couple of independant crawlers apart from Google, Bing (from Mycrosoft) and Yandex (the Russian one): this are Mojeek and Wiby.
Supporting independant crawlers is the easiest way to fight the shittyfication of the internet.
Mojeek.com is an independant british search engine with its own growing index commited to fighting internet censorship. It's small, and therefore it's usability isn't as good as that of the Big Three, but it doesn't censor, it's fairly respectful of people's privacy, and it doesn't drown you in adds. For those old enough to remember, it's a lot like early 2000s Google: you can find what you need, but if you write "dig shelter" instead of "dog shelter", that's what it's gonna search for. That said, please try to use it and support it as much as you can before we end up entirely dependant on Google, Bing and big corps adds. [click here to go to Mojeek]
Wiby.me is a new indie project that is literally dedicated to bringing back the old-school web. It's goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. So, for those of you who can't find any answers to technical questions beyond highschool level because Google buries them under a gazillion commercial sites and other meaningless shit, keep an eye on this project! It has a lot of potential. And, if you know of any personal websites that have great stuff but have been murdered by Google, you can go over to Wiby and submit it to their index. [click here to go to Wiby]
Aside from those, there are also meta search engines you can use to ween yourself off Google and search for random, day to day stuff.
Qwant.com is my go-to here—it has its own index and pulls from Bing, has relatively little censorship, and is fairly private. This is the one I use on my phone for everyday stuff. [click here to go to Qwant].
Historically, DuckDuckGo has always been a go-to for those who want a search engine that respects your privacy and doesn't censor. Personally, I've never been a fan, and there have been a LOT of scandals in recent years. It supposedly has its own index and pulls from Bing, much like Qwant, but I don't know. I just don't like it. Still, I've added it here for completeness' sake.
If you have Firefox Mobile browser, you can set any of these search engines as your default search engine and you can also add the others as secondary search engines and switch quicky from the navigation bar. If you don't have firefox mobile though, what are you doing with your life??? Go get it!! It is So. Much. Better. You can have add blockers and watch YouTube add free, for free! You can have reader mode and dark mode add-ons! You can have the world oh my goshhhh, drop Chrome!!
4get.ca is my last recommendation: 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 reaserch, 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. It's also very privacy conscious, so that's an other plus, and it has that late 90s / early 2000s vibe that I totally dig. [click here to go to 4get]
If you wanna learn more about the topic, you can over to the Search Engine Map [click here] which shows you a bunch of Search Engines and how they relate to each other. Or you can also go over to this one dude's personal website whose done A Lot of reaserch into the topic (way more than me) and seems to be pretty legit, if a little extra. [click here to go to digdeeper.neocities.org] Hope this infodump is useful to someone =D
PS: here's to hoping all the links work!
EDIT: eliminated the "read more". Figured there are enough mega long posts in tumblr, one more won't make no difference lol (tho the version w the read more has been reblogged already, in case you'd rather)
• eat dark chocolate and blueberries and walnuts and salmon and other foods high in antioxidants!!
• play little brain games on your phone; I like wordconenct! anything that makes you think!
• read books. It’s simple but necessary. Even better - join a book club, or read with a friend, so you can have discussions after. This will improve your reading comprehension.
• do puzzles - it doesnt have to be sudoku, I love playing Beat Saber on the Oculus Rift because it makes my brain have to match colorful patterns to physical movements very quickly!
• learn a new dance - even a tik tok trendy dance. Learning new dance moves are proven to strengthen synapses!!
• go bird watching, or foraging, or anything outdoors that requires you to explore pattern recognition and visual searching
• watch a movie with the intent of analysis - this is best done with a cinephile friend!! talk about tropes and symbolism and character growth
• cross stitch, or sew, or do anything that requires matching nimble hand movements to patterns
• play or learn an instrument!
• develop a consistent sleep schedule (or as close to consistent as you can get!)
• when eating, try to identify the ingredients and flavors you’re perceiving!
I like how this went from me feeling like “hm why is this attacking me 🤨” at first, but feeling grateful seeing an added guide on a genuine expansion on a “ how to” work out the brain. This genuinely helps a bunch. People find solace in doing activities that get them through life by doing said activities of phone/tv or if that’s all they’ve ever known in their life to get them through things + etc tho. However, this was very impt to point out. Slowly beginning incorporating things to work the brain in ones own time.
EDIT: THIS IS A CARRD NOW! it's updated and organized!!
use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.
use firefox or librewolf (open-source fork of firefox) instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).
use mega instead of google drive
get rid of bloatware
use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite
get free stuff with the help of r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH, r/piracy and r/roms
use trakt (for shows and movies), letterboxd (just movies), or TMB instead of IMDB (owned by amazon).
use storygraph instead of goodreads (owned by amazon).
use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions
use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp
make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge
use search for a cause, ecosia, or ocean hero to support the environment instead of google
use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)
use flashpoint to play archived online flash games
find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books
burn your music onto cds
use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe
use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, or tuta instead of gmail
remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X
remove bloatware on samsung X
use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta
use project gutenberg for free public domain books, and librivox for public domain books and audiobooks
use the seal app (android only) to download video and audio
use ellipsus instead of microsoft word or google docs
use mastodon instead of twitter
use peertube to create a network of small video hosting providers (disclaimer: not a 1:1 alternative to youtube)
use threema and signal for encrypted communication, on mobile and desktop
use qwant and startpage for secure internet browsers
use syncthing to securely transfer files between devices
learn how to jailbreak your kindle/ereader if you have one (wiki and video walkthrough)
use riseup’s email and VPN for secure communication (aimed towards activists)
use cryptpad and collabora instead of the microsoft office suite
use google takeout to export the data on your google account
use library extension to look for books on online stores and find them at your library
remove paywalls with removepaywalls
install the open-source adblocker ublock origin
install sponsorblock to skip sponsored segments on youtube videos
use bookfinder to look for the cheapest available listings of books, including textbooks
learn a language through mango (duolingo laid off some of its employees and now relies on AI translations) for free with a library card or through your school
edit photos with photopea
edit pdfs with foxit and sumatrapdf
download music with doubledouble
take notes offline and collaborate securely with obsidian
for android tv, use smarttube and cloudstream (ad-free, open-source)
change your OS to linux
changelog:
removed ground news (uses AI to summarize articles)
removed unroll.me (sells your data)
removed proton mail and drive (AI assistant feature, claims of CEO Andy Yen supporting Trump, please DM if you have proof I can add here)
removed NCH suite (only has very basic free features, puts watermark on anything saved)
notes:
this post blew up while I wasn’t looking (the end of my semester was hellish, and i recently came back from a 3-week family vacation). thanks so much for all the suggestions! <3
i included Ecosia because of their financial transparency. It’s physically impossible that they plant a tree for every search, but their profits still go towards projects including reforestation and solar energy. i view their actions as a net-positive
feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3
[a scene of a 1950s Public Service Announcement opens to a crowded bar, the camera view slowly focusing on one deeply miserable-looking man in an ill-fitting suit, nursing a drink and looking shaken up as if he'd just lost a fight]
[The man is startled as the loud voice of a narrator with a cheery voice and a trans-atlantic accent apparently speaks to him directly] "Well aren't you a sorry-looking lad!" [The man looks directly to the camera, eyes wide, silently pointing at himself, baffled to be addressed like this] "Why, you of course! Hard day at work? Boss chew you up all day?" [The man nods twice, still confused by this entity beyond the 4th wall, but oddly relieved to have someone aknowledge his misery]
"Oh no, don't you feel sorry for yourself, be a man! Doesn't that make you angry? Doesn't that make you want to take it out on somebody? Give someone else a good thrashing?" [The man nods along in agreement, gradually rising from his slouch and sitting more upright as his defeated expression shifts to anger]
"Oh yes, but who?" [The man halts, also understanding that he hadn't considered that] "What, your wife? What wrong has she hever done to you?" [The man shrinks back on his bar stool slightly, as if embarrassed to consider whether he had considered that] "Or perhaps those fellows over there?" [The camera view turns to a table nearby, where a group of large, sullen rough men - some of whom bear an extremely unfortunate likeness to racist caricatures of the era - are sitting with their pints. While of various backgrounds, they all look equally intimidating and give wary, glaring glances towards the man in the ill-fitting suit.]
[The man in the ill-fitting suit shivers visibly at the thought of what would happen if he crossed those men.] "Smart call, I sure would not antagonise them either!" [The man turns back to his own beer, sinking back into his sullen misery, looking up in surprise when the narrator voice addresses him again, now with enthusiasm] "Now but hold on! Well if that is not a kick from Lady Luck herself!" [The man frowns, curious to what the voice has to say.]
"Look back to those fellows. Don't they look familiar?" [The man nods slowly, still confused.] "They work at the same plant as you do, don't they?" [The man nods again, now more confident] "And if they work for the same establishment as you do, then surely they have the same boss as you do, right?" [The man's eyes slowly light up as he starts to grasp where this is going] "And if the boss works you like a dog, just imagine how mean he must be to them!" [The man straightens up from his slouch again, taking a sip of his beer.]
"Now how about you go over and introduce yourself. Make some friends and see if you can get your fellows with you to do a little midnight surprise visit to go beat the shit out of your boss!"
[The camera view silently follows as the man in the ill-fitting suit strides to the other table, buys the whole table another round, and though their words are inaudible, the men are all seen talking to each other with increasing enthusiasm as an upbeat tune starts playing, and an unsettlingly cheery child choir sings a jingle]
"It's your job, not your life, beat your boss, not your wife!"
READ THIS IF YOU PLAN TO BOYCOTT YOUTUBE LONG-TERM
get an invidious account. it is an alternative front-end to youtube, allowing you to make an account, subscribe to channels, make playlists, and all the other things you use youtube for; all without giving the company a single cent. swearing off youtube long-term is a tall ask, so you can use this to still follow the creators you want to keep up with while continuing the youtube boycott. it has a built-in adblock and anti-tracker, meaning that you can really keep fucking them over.
it doesnt interact with the API at all, it scrapes the metadata to make sure they get as little as possible.
Things you can watch/do instead of YouTube, For those who may have trouble finding things to do.
1. Internet Archive. Has plenty of videos to watch, plenty of games you can play that are emulated right on the website. You can also find entire collections of roms. For emulators, check out Emulation General Wiki to find the best emulator for the system you want to emulate.
2. r/piracy has a wiki full of safe places to read comics and manga, to watch anime and cartoons, and to watch movies.
3. Virtualbox, you can set up a Windows XP virtual box and get old PC games from Internet Archive. You can also check out CD Game World if you need a no-cd patch.
4. Saltybet. A Livestream of MUGEN with thousands of characters fighting against each other, sometimes things get hilarious. Runs 24/7.
5. The Cutting Room Floor, spend hours reading up on cut content from your favorite games.
6. Lost Media Wiki, read up on lost movie, books, animation, video games, etc.
7. Neocities, learn coding and make your own website!
8. WebDSR, explore shortband radio
9. Radio Garden, listen to radio stations from around the world
10. Every Noise At Once, explore the widest archive of music genres, with samples and Spotify playlists
11. My Retro TV, pick and era and watch popular television from that time period
cleaning with ADHD is a nightmare. it’s an endless cycle of finding a half-finished chore and stopping the one you were already working on, then remembering that something else needs to be done and getting started on that, then finding half-finished chore and
have you ever seen a junebug get to grips with a window screen? it’s remarkably persistent, but not very focused. all that matters is location.
how to junebug: choose the location you feel you can probably get some shit done on today. be specific. not ‘the bathroom’ but ‘the bathroom sink’. you are not choosing a range, you are choosing a center; you will move around, but your location is where you’ll keep coming back to. mentally stick a pin in it. consider yourself tethered to that spot by a long mental bungee cord.
go to your location. look at stuff. move stuff around. do a thing. get distracted. remember you’re junebugging the bathroom sink and go back there. look at it some more. do a different thing. get distracted. get a sandwich. remember you’re junebugging and go back to the bathroom sink.
nt’s will go crazy watching you, and if they demand to know When You Will Be Done you will probably have to roll them in a carpet and stuff them up the chimney. you’re done when you feel done, or you’re too bored to live, or it’s bedtime, or any number of other markers, you get to pick. but the thing is, by returning repeatedly to that one spot, you harness the ‘hyperactivity’ part instead of wasting all that energy battling with the ‘attention deficit’ part.
not only will the bathroom sink almost certainly be clean, and probably the mirror and soap dish too, you might’ve swapped in a fresh toothbrush, a new soap, you might’ve unclogged the drain – you will probably also have cleaned or fixed up several things in the near vicinity, or in the path between the sink and where you get the fresh toothbrush, or maybe you did your grocery shopping cuz you were out of soap, or maybe you couldn’t find a clean hand towel and ended up doing laundry.
this is good. you got shit done! it wasn’t necessarily Cleaned The Bathroom in the way nt’s think of it, but screw ‘em. things are better than they were.
plus you worked off enough energy to be able to sleep. which is not small potatoes when living the ADHD life. :D
romaincrisis
izzy806
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
dailybridgerton
2087
kianamaiart
