Hi

[theconcealedweapon]

[maarvarq]

Always bear in mind that there is absolutely no legitimate evidence that Luigi was actually the one who killed the insurance company guy.

[theconcealedweapon]

Of course he wasn't. He was at a party with me that day.

[tiny-space-whale]

No but like literally, actually. All bits aside.

He didn't do it.

The cops very clearly planted evidence on him because they had to make an arrest because all eyes were on them and whoever actually did the deed was making them look stupid.

Why would the real killer hero have kept the weapon on his person and traveled two states over while carrying it and a manifesto in his bag, conveniently turning the crime into a federal matter? The same guy whose bag they found in a park, filled with monopoly money? Why did the police turn off their bodycams, take Luigi's stuff, drive a block away, turn their bodycams back on, go back into the restaurant, and then arrest him?

From the moment of his arrest, even left-of-center media has been presuming his guilt without examining anything (e.g. calling him "the killer" instead of "alleged" or "accused") and then when I say he didn't do it, the nearest person chimes in with some quip that tells me they think he did do it but should go free anyway. Don't get me wrong, I would have the same attitude if he had done it. But he didn't. It makes me feel like the only sane person in the world, even among my staunchly leftist friends.

[psychronia]

No yeah. His arrest and subsequent prosecution has been so blatantly incompetent and corrupt that it's kinda hard to believe that he actually did do it. And, in fact, it's important that we don't.

It's just easy to get swept up in the hype for the good that the Claims Adjuster actually did do, like in anecdote above, that we're eager to praise the name associated with it.

It probably doesn't help that his name is super easy to remember. With his last name roughly meaning "big eater", which feels downright poetic.

He has not been found guilty yet, however. Which means he should be regarded as innocent.

[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

[l0s3r-g0r3-d3s7r0y4]

What if silence is in fact a sound, but because its a universal sound we just adapted to it and dont notice it anymore

[friends-of-magic]

I actually just wrote a paper on this!!

The short of it is, yes, that's exactly what happens. There's no such thing as pure silence outside of a vacuum (and inside a vacuum you'd be dead). So basically your ears are constantly adapting to the noise threshold of your surroundings and slowly ignoring it. If you were in a perfectly silent room (anechoic chambers are cool!) you would actually start to hear the sound of existing!

[aquilacalvitium]

[darkarfs]

Isn't there some room full of sound baffling foam or something that absorbs all ambient noise and most people go mad from the isolation because they start to hear things like their own circulatory system and their heartbeat pounding in their ears?

Ah, there it is. Orfield Labratories in Minnesota. They say the longest anyone's been able to stay inside was 45 minutes, as they could hear their lungs expanding and their digestive system working overtime.

[psychronia]

I'm not too familiar, but I vaguely remember hearing an anecdote that talked about how the sound of silence in a room called room tone is often recorded if scenes of extended silences are needed in filmmaking.

If the silence was actual silence, there's apparently some sense of dissonance, which some horror media also intentionally use.

[highlandkall]

as much as i get the sentiment behind "make more bad art" there's gotta be a better way of communicating "you don't have to be technically proficient or hold yourself to a specific standard of practice" that doesn't sound as backhanded lol

[halfhumanhalfasleep]

[highlandkall]

you can't just leave this in the tags 😭

[crowindisguise]

i think ive fallen for the 'reborn as the villainess' trope propaganda 💀

[psychronia]

Yes. Yeeeees. One of us. One of us.

No, but really, I adore the genre. Like isekai, there are some bland ones out there, but the ratio is much lower.

And I believe that's because, unlike standard isekai which is just a bundle of tropes that get ticked off like a checklist, villainess isekai have a pre-made plot that the author gets to mess with.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

A small, but delightful pleasure of my work is that I can force people who watch my videos to read whatever I post in my voice.

You're doing okay. You're going to be okay. A better world is possible for all of us.

[psychronia]

shaking fist Curse you, Skyen, you mastermind!

It's like you secretly installed a voice generator of yourself in everyone's brains, except it's completely 100% more ethical and flexible than the shitty AI kind.

[stillnaomi]

using violence to liberate people from sweatshops, unsafe mines, and grinding poverty isn't the same as using violence to impose those things on people. the idea that violence is morally repugnant regardless of context is a belief that every oppressor throughout history would love for the oppressed to hold

[soulren]

“Ghosts are real” I can see how you could believe that

“Ghosts aren’t real” it’s very fair and rational that you believe that

“Ghosts aren’t real anymore” I’m about to hear a poem or very sad story

“Ghosts aren’t real yet” the fuck are you going to do

[tbposting]

*seeing those match 3 mobile game ads* he's a fucking king, just let him die. vive la revolution, bitch

[psychronia]

So like

Kyptonians absorb sunlight, right? And get different sorts of power based on the type of sun?

What would happen if they got a Mario star? Most of them are yellow, but I think there are green and rainbow ones too.

Would Superman get extra invincible? Or perhaps absorb the entire power of a sun at once? Or maybe, his body can store it better and stretch out the effects for a much longer time?

[ohnoitstbskyen]

I had a silly idea, and then I had to draw it

[jtightpants]

[ralfmaximus]

Reblog to come play this stupid homemade board game we're all making.

[psychronia]

*flips over table and tosses a dart into the wall*

YATZEE.

[aceofpans]

”with shapes.inc you can talk to your ocs!!” Dumbass. I’m already talking to them. In my head. “B-bbut what about your favourite charac-“ skill issue. In my head as well. get fucked.

[psychronia]

*knocks my head* You can fit so many imaginary characters, headcanons, and entirely unspoken dialogues into this bad boy.

Don't ask about its executive function though.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Where’s the YA protagonist teen girl and her two boyfriends that are supposed to save us from this mess anyways

[what-even-is-thiss]

The dystopia books lied. The teen throuples aren’t coming to save us.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Save me teen dystopia love triangle

[what-even-is-thiss]

Teen dystopia love triangle save me

[harbinger-of-silly]

All gays will go to hellsite

[king-of-oreo]

What if in hellsite but not gay

[punky-beaver-offical]

[king-of-oreo]

NO!

[avhira]

[psychronia]

Okay, but what if only gay when on hellsite?

[totally-cis-offical]

I need a “humans are space orcs” thing where all sentient species are weird like that, but in their own unique ways

And a lot of them are aware of this (like we are when we make these “humans are space orcs” stories)

Maybe one species enjoys getting bit by something equivalent to mosquitoes. Maybe one actively avoids the hospitable places on their planet because it’s boring without a challenge. You get the gist.

I want to see a bunch of aliens (+humans) sitting around a table talking about how their own species is a bunch of freaks

Everyone is space orcs

[totally-cis-offical]

Best possible addition. This is a top-tier insight

@hotcheetohatred

[stephenleasheppard]

The thing about "humans are space orcs" is it was originally conceived of as a response to science fiction tropes in which every alien species had its own special thing except humans, whose special thing was either Most Generic, Most Adaptable, or Most Je Ne Sais Quoi. Like, in a lot of science fiction, Klingons are Honorable Warriors, Vulcans are Logical Scientists, Romulans are Cunning Strategists, and humans are all of the above in a way that leaves us slightly less good than any of them at their shtick but better overall and able to triumph because of our lack of specialization and the assumption that we are, somehow, just destined to be the best. See this scene from Enterprise for what I'm talking about. There's a similar scene in Mass Effect where Mordin talks about how humans are more variable and adaptable and less predictable than all the other races in that setting, which is super annoying if you know anything about how much our species is defined by the genetic bottleneck we suffered during the Ice Age -- the generic bottleneck that has left us all so genetically similar to each other that we can do crazy things like donate blood and organs to each other, things other species can't tolerate.

@prokopetz proposed that humans ought to get something special of our own that isn't just "We are the bestest and specialist in some generic way that feels like a vague and unsettling metaphor for American superiority and manifest destiny amidst all the other cultures of the world," and settled on space orcs because "Pursuit predators with freakish endurance" was the ecological niche we occupied during our own evolutionary history up until we started doing the civilization thing. The assumption from the start was that every other sci-fi or fantasy species would each be freaks in their own way, and the point of humans are space orcs was to let us be our own sort of freak, too.

People who expanded on the humans are space orcs stories immediately turned it into a reason to write little stories where humans are the biggest freaks or the only freaks and we are, in fact, the specialest most manifest destinyest je ne sais quoi-laden metaphors for the superiority of American culture over all the other cultures of the world. I hate it I hate it I hate it.

Which is to say you've reinvented the point of humans are space orcs from first principles. That's pretty cool.

[prokopetz]

I think my mistake was failing to appreciate just how readily "humans have exceptionally high cardiovascular endurance due to our real-world evolutionary history as specialised persistence predators" could be twisted around into "humans have superior Will to Power", which is the other problematic special niche humans have historically been assigned in popular science fiction.

[ospreyonthemoon]

I think the most odd thing humans can do is throw things, tbh. Its weird that we can throw things so good. Nobody else is throwing things. We have whole joints just to be good at throwing things. What sort of animal bites you from two postal districs away? Its weird.

[headspace-hotel]

I've always appreciated "humans are space orcs" because it re-thinks the assumption that humans would be the center of the Distribution of Traits for fantasy or scifi species.

So normally you'd have species that are long-lived, and species that are short-lived, and humans are in the middle. And you'd have species that are big and species that are small, and humans are in the middle. And you'd have species that are serene and peaceful, and species that are violent and aggressive, and humans are in the middle. And...you get the picture.

Spec fic is exploring new possibilities for how Being can be, but from a human-centric POV.

Therefore, it's fun to ask, "What if we are NOT in the middle?" What if, in a distant future where we've contacted a bunch of different aliens, we find out that we have some kind of characteristic that is waaaaaaaayyyy out to the left of what other sapient species have?

And we would have NO IDEA what characteristic that might be!

[psychronia]

I have a fondness for Humans are Space Orcs and even HFY.

Most of them are just humans being super special boys in some way, which can get dull or even problematic, but I read isekai and can still appreciate a good power fantasy.

The real good ones for me, though, are the wish fulfilment in a hopeful sort of way.

Just as we don't know what a hypothetical bizarre characteristic humans might have compared to a bunch of independently developed space age civilizations, it's often hard to nail down the thing that makes us "human".

And that sort of speculative science fiction opened up the opportunity for writers to go "hey, I think this is the thing that makes us the most human. This is the sort of thing we can do for it to be said we have humanity."

It can even be something humans objectively don't really do, like "are adverse to war because they know how bad it can get". Because maybe we still have a chance of growing and changing before we reach spacefaring status. Maybe the thing that makes humans special isn't something innate, but earned through deliberate effort.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

is there anything coming out this year that you’re really looking forward to?

Donald Trump's obituary.

Oh, and I'm kinda curious about the next Bloodstained game.

[psychronia]

Huh. I didn't know a new Bloodstained is coming out. I don't really have a history with Metroidvanias, but I've always appreciated their designs and atmosphere.

The video is unrelated.