Mad Muse Musings

Chelsea  24 years old  Lesbian Fangirl Houston, Texas Computer Science Major National Security Studies Minor Fandoms and Ships are current, but not exhaustive of my interests.

[queerdellini]

Eve, trying to figure out how lesbian sex works: i know it involves scissors but all i have is a knife ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[eldritchscholar]

So the other night during D&D, I had the sudden thoughts that:

1) Binary files are 1s and 0s

2) Knitting has knit stitches and purl stitches

You could represent binary data in knitting, as a pattern of knits and purls…

You can knit Doom.

However, after crunching some more numbers:

The compressed Doom installer binary is 2.93 MB. Assuming you are using sock weight yarn, with 7 stitches per inch, results in knitted doom being…

3322 square feet

Factoring it out…302 people, each knitting a relatively reasonable 11 square feet, could knit Doom.

[benegesserwitch]

Hi fun fact!!

The idea of a “binary code” was originally developed in the textile industry in pretty much this exact form. Remember punch cards? Probably not! They were a precursor to the floppy disc, and were used to store information in the same sort of binary code that we still use:

Here’s Mary Jackson (c.late 1950s) at a computer. If you look closely in the yellow box, you’ll see a stack of blank punch cards that she will use to store her calculations.

This is what a card might look like once punched. Note that the written numbers on the card are for human reference, and not understood by the computer. 

But what does it have to do with textiles? Almost exactly what OP suggested. Now even though machine knitting is old as balls, I feel that there are few people outside of the industry or craft communities who have ever seen a knitting machine. 

Here’s a flatbed knitting machine (as opposed to a round or tube machine), which honestly looks pretty damn similar to the ones that were first invented in the sixteenth century, and here’s a nice little diagram explaining how it works:

But what if you don’t just want a plain stocking stitch sweater? What if you want a multi-color design, or lace, or the like? You can quite easily add in another color and integrate it into your design, but for, say, a consistent intarsia (two-color repeating pattern), human error is too likely. Plus, it takes too long for a knitter in an industrial setting. This is where the binary comes in!

Here’s an intarsia swatch I made in my knitwear class last year. As you can see, the front of the swatch is the inverse of the back. When knitting this, I put a punch card in the reader,

and as you can see, the holes (or 0′s) told the machine not to knit the ground color (1′s) and the machine was set up in such a way that the second color would come through when the first color was told not to knit.

tl;dr the textiles industry is more important than people give it credit for, and I would suggest using a machine if you were going to try to knit almost 3 megabytes of information.

[darkersolstice]

@we-are-threadmage

[systlin]

Someone port Doom to a blanket

[rolypolywardrobe]

I really love tumblr for this 🙌

[isnerdy-deactivated20190101]

It goes beyond this.  Every computer out there has memory.  The kind of memory you might call RAM.  The earliest kind of memory was magnetic core memory.  It looked like this:

Wires going through magnets.  This is how all of the important early digital computers stored information temporarily.  Each magnetic core could store a single bit - a 0 or a 1.  Here’s a picture of a variation of this, called rope core memory, from one NASA’s Apollo guidance computers:

You may think this looks incredibly handmade, and that’s because it is.  But these are also extreme close-ups.  Here’s the scale of the individual cores:

The only people who had the skills necessary to thread all of these cores precisely enough were textile and garment workers.  Little old ladies would literally thread the wires by hand.

And thanks to them, we were able to land on the moon.  This is also why memory in early computers was so expensive.  It had to be hand-crafted, and took a lot of time.

[annnmoody]

Don’t underestimate the impact craft has had on our culture

[paininmyassachusetts]

@kompanie-mutter I feel like you might enjoy this

[kompanie-mutter-deactivated2021]

yesssss I posted about this earlier, it makes me want to figure out how to encrypt messages in knitting patterns

[empress-runner]

Hand crafted bespoke artisinal bits

[micromultiverse]

I’d like to get some more info on this, it’s very interesting. 

[raisel-the-riveter]

so I’ve been meaning to put this on tumblr and keep forgetting but, in the campaign I’m running my sister is playing an orc fighter, and one of the options you can pick for a fighter’s signature weapon is that it “glows in the presence of [fill in the blank].”

I was like, “oh, that’s funny because it’s a reference to that sword in The Hobbit that glows in the presence of orcs. Your weapon probably doesn’t glow in the presence of orcs.”

to which she responded, “FUCK YEAH it does.”

So now we have in the party an orc fighter with a club that glows in the presence of orcs. Or, as far as the character is concerned, a club that glows. It’s been in her family for generations since some ancestor won it in a battle, and it’s just always glowed. She has a sack to put it in when she’s trying to be stealthy.

[batneko]

#orcs in LotR don’t know that Sting doesn’t glow#that is crazy#they think elves and hobbits just carry glowing swords#for the Aesthetic#and if you know enough elves that probably makes sense to you!#sparkly drama queens would probably make their hair glow if they could

[thepioden]

I mean Galadriel did which is 100% in keeping with her character.

[garrettauthor]

I got real petty over on the Facebook page and IT WAS GLORIOUS.

[wintergrey]

This is me, going to check out Legendary Books now…

[thefingerfuckingfemalefury]

Publisher: We think that the way the fantasy genre treats women is problematic so we’re going to try and do better

A Fool: If you don’t like it why don’t you make your own!

Publisher: That

That is literally what we just said we are doing

[garrettauthor]

GUESS WHO’S BACK, BIGOTED FUCKWADS?

BOY it feels good to be back in this particular saddle!

[garrettauthor]

AHAHAHAHAHA we have a winner for today!

[spondee-soliloquy]

Seventeen things you have to learn for yourself as a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Pansexual or otherwise Queer youth by the time you are seventeen. One is that the first Pride was a riot I don’t mean that it was full of laughter, or that it was some grand party where everyone spiraled up to dance among the stars because the only glittering that night was broken glass on cobblestones. The first Pride was a riot on the backstreets of New York and they never tell us that night we won. The only protest in a decade full of turmoil where the cops had to hide out in the bar they raided and run from shouting rioters who fought to reclaim the only patch of ground they had ever claimed as theirs the first Pride was a riot, and two, around the same time it took place it was a debated topic in the gay community whether or not they should say that they weren’t mentally ill which, three, homosexuality was removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental illnesses in 1974 congratulations all it took was a vote to declare that, whoops, we were never mentally ill except, four, there are still teenagers being tortured today in what some dare blaspheme as “therapy” used to destroy their self-identity in the hopes of making them normal. except, four, the queer community still carries overwhelmingly high rates for poverty and homelessness and depression. Did you know that, five, over half the children forced into conversion therapy commit suicide? And six, that lesbians were regarded as “hangers-on” of the movement by much of the gay community before the AIDS crisis? Because it turns out, seven can wear a rainbow on your shirt and still be a bigot. There are people who stick rainbows in their ears or wear them on their fingers or slap them across their cheeks in badges of defiance and will still hate you for the color of your skin or the size of your thighs or your gender or the way you like to kiss two or more genders or none of the above. Don’t ask me why this happens it just does I think it might be that we’ve all been taught to hate ourselves for so damn long that we don’t understand what to do in a space with no hate. Or maybe it’s that the space seems too small, because eight, there are people who will tell you that you are not enough that you do not reach the magical benchmark of “gay enough” to pass through the gate even especially when you are some flavor of the rainbow other than straight-out gay. eight, this is bullshit eight, those people are bullshit. eight, you are enough. eight, there is always enough room. nine, there is no overarching “homosexual agenda” sorry we’re all kind of flailing along in here trying to figure out some way to make it work when most of us have nothing in common except that society looked at us in different ways and decided we didn’t fit so we could all go be misfits together under one big rainbow flag but just so you know, ten, there are plenty of other flags there is one for you, I promise and eleven, misfits may not all need the same things but we need to stick together, especially in a world where twelve—refer to point seven—there are lesbians who hate other lesbians for having the audacity to be born in a body that everyone looked at and saw “boy” which brings me to thirteen, there is so much to understand. fourteen, you need to understand because we need to stick together and to stick together we do not have to be the same but we do have to understand and it will be hard because you were probably thrown into this world with no warning because fifteen, being queer is not genetic and we are not unique among minorities in that we collect our heritage through broken bits of history and research in a world constantly working to make those misfit bits go away but we are unique in that when we try to prove our legacy we can be laughed down or re-erased or flat out ignored but I swear to you you have a history as old as Alexander the Great as beautiful as Sappho as dignified as Abraham Lincoln and as proud as Eleanor Roosevelt. But even with that behind us sixteen, they have always watched us die. because even though the bystander effect is bullshit, sixteen Kitty Genovese was a lesbian, sixteen Ronald Reagan is a mass murderer, sixteen our children, your brothers and sisters and  siblings of all stripes and all colors and sexualities and genders are being murdered through neglect and rejection and hate. Sixteen, there is an entire generation of gay and bisexual men missing from history because the government chose to do nothing when they were dying by the thousands. sixteen, we died from the disease and died from going back into the closet and died for staying there and died for coming out, sixteen, they laughed at us because they believed god was punishing us for daring to love, sixteen, ashes of your forerunners rest on the lawn of the White House because SIXTEEN, THEY HAVE ALWAYS WATCHED US DIE. SEVENTEEN you are allowed to be angry. You do not have to be one of the nice gays or one of the nice trans people or sweet or kind or educate the rest of the world in something less than a yell you are allowed to be so furious it scalds your bones at the way we are forgotten and passed over at the way, as soon as June becomes July we are expected to go back to dying in silence and mourning our dead and kissing all alone when no one can be offended at the sight of us. You are allowed to be angry and scream down the stars to shatter like broken glass at your feet because you know what? The first Pride was a riot.

October 11 (via spondee-soliloquy)

[sidereanuncia-blog-deactivated2]

Theory: Nobody who writes a physics textbook gives any fucks

Evidence:

[sidereanuncia-blog-deactivated2]

Update: Legolas’ pupils are about 3.5 cm wide each. Now drawing kawaii Legolas on physics assignment.

And they told you science was no fun.

[sidereanuncia-blog-deactivated2]

Science!

[sidereanuncia-blog-deactivated2]

I’m going to do it. I’m going to hand it in.

[glumshoe]

Legolas’s pupil size isn’t the problem here, though. 5 leagues is 17.262 miles. The curvature of the Earth means that for a person of average height, the visual horizon is less than three miles away. Even if your vision is telescopic and the atmosphere is perfectly clear, you can’t see around the planet. If they were standing on a hill, it would have to be at LEAST 198 feet above sea level in order to see the horizon at 17.2 miles away, with nothing tall in between. Which, knowing Rohan, isn’t impossible.

But consider: Elven satellite eyeballs.

[gemstone-gynoid]

you mean like

[ontologicalidiot-deactivated201]

@sidereanuncia it’s back, the post that I can only imagine haunts your nightmares 

[sidereanuncia-blog-deactivated2]

I shall never find peace.

Also, for what it’s worth, there’s absolutely no reason to believe that the curvature of Middle Earth is the same as that of Earth.

[sindri42]

There’s no evidence that Middle Earth curves.

[solwardenclyffe]

Yeah there is.  The Silmarillion states that the world was curved after the fall of Numenor (I believe), preventing access to Valinor.  But Elves (among others) can travel the straight path across it.

So middle earth is round, but not for Elves because magic.

[sindri42]

So wait, the reason he can see that far is because Elves just have the ability to ignore the curve of the earth? That’s awesome. It also means that no matter how good your optics got, you would always want elf eyes manning the spyglass because they can see arbitrarily far while everybody else is limited by this ‘horizon’ bullshit.

[lady-byleth]

Oh thank God, my poor elf prince has seen too much in this post

[saccharinesatchel]

Elves are flat-earthers

[cheattoe]

This post went from amusing to horrifying, to be brought back down to amusing, sprinkled in with some cannon explanation, and then you leave me here in fucking outrage

[yourownpetard]

This post really was a rollercoaster.

[odinoco-deactivated20190531]

for elves it was a straight line

[kvaskaesque]

@sansael

[wintersmitth]

I haven’t seen the Flat Earthers addition, holy shit

[nighthawkes]

Hades: *sitting outside a cafe, enjoying coffee and a newspaper*  Cerberus: *sitting at his feet people-watching*

*A thud against the other side of the window they’re sitting beside makes them both look up*

Persephone, inside the cafe with both palms flat against the window and her face too close to the glass: CAN I PET YOUR DOG? 

[leepacey]

I say, jolly good show, chaps. And did I panic? I think not.

[zombeesknees]

#the comic relief who is genuinely comic  #and who makes the ‘incompetent bufoon’ trope actually work as an endearing quality as originally intended  #well played movie - well played  #john hannah  #WHAT A FOX

[antivillain]

#but! BUT!!!#THE GREAT THING ABOUT JONATHAN#IS HE’S NOT INCOMPETENT#he can read ancient Egyptian albeit not as well as his baby sister#he clearly has an interest in archaeology if only for treasure-related reasons#he had to go through intensive schooling to get the sort of permit required#to even have digs of his own#WHICH HE CLEARLY DOES#on a dig down in Thebes#he says and Evie believes him#Jonathan reads from the Book of the Living and he’s an excellent shot with a rifle and is clearly a boxer#Jonathan is SO COMPETENT and SO IMPORTANT#while simultaneously being plucky comic relief without JUST being plucky comic relief#u get me?

[star-anise]

Jonathan, like Phryne Fisher, clearly hasn’t taken anything seriously since 1918.

[jkthinkythoughts]

And, I would suspect, for similar reasons.

[thebluemeany]

^^^This. Jonathan being in World War I makes total sense. It’s almost impossible for him not to have been. Given his age and background, he probably volunteered in 1914.  

Of course he’s going to not take anything seriously. Of course he can shoot. The drinking, the skittishness, the recklessness, the sense of ‘keeping your head down’, the scepticism about traditional heroism….

The one with more actual experience of death, carnage and fighting is Jonathan. Not Rick. Not Ardeth Bey. Jonathan.

When Rick says ‘I’ve had worse (situation/odds)’ and Jonathan replies “ Me too”. That’s probably true. 

Drop The Mummy into the real world context and that’s a character who’s going to have seen a lot of his school friends die, along with the myths and tales of heroism they were raised on. Sort of makes the line where Evie’s scolding him for drinking/messing about a lot darker…

Evie: Have you no respect for the dead? Jonathan: Of course I do, but sometimes I’d rather like to join them.

[gingersnapwolves]

I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS RIGHT NOW

[deadcatwithaflamethrower]

*record scratch*

Wait a minute. Why is it being assumed that Rick and Ardeth wouldn’t have fought in WWI, as well? Johnathan isn’t that much older than any of them–in fact, there is a good chance that he, Rick, and Ardeth are all of an age. Just because Johnathan’s hair is thinning doesn’t mean he’s a decade older.

It was a LOT easier to lie about your age back in the day. So much easier.

Johnathan is the soldier who fought in WWI and became disillusionsed with pretty much everything except wanting to live (most of the time) and live well–and where is the shame in that? He would have seen some of the darkest shit humanity has to offer, and he kept going. And the thing is, though, archaeological digs at that time were DANGEROUS. Not from curses (usually) but from assholes who would turn up with guns to try and steal anything you discovered. Johnathan never really STOPPED having to deal with dangerous pricks, it was just less dangerous than death raining down from the sky in bomb, bullet, and mustard gas form all the time.

Rick grew up in Egypt as an orphan. What paperwork? He joined the French Foreign Legion, which fought in World War I in some seriously critical battles on the Western Front in Europe. Rick is the soldier who quickly grew disillusioned with everything, but he didn’t know how to stop being a soldier. Johnathan had a career and schooling to fall back on. Rick had guns, the talent of not dying easily, and not much else. When the army finally left him behind because he was literally the only survivor of his last FFL battle, he literally didn’t know what to do. At all. “Looking for a good time” was code for “Please someone give me a fucking purpose.”

Ardeth grew up in the desert. He probably never enlisted…but if you think his people didn’t fight against invading forces during WWI, think again: that region of North Africa was swarming with soldiers on both sides, and they alll tried to claim everything they stumbled over even while in the midst of fighting each other. Ardeth spent his entire life fighting to protect what belonged to him, what belonged to his people, and trying to keep assholes from stealing things that didn’t belong to anyone (for good reason). By the time the war was over, Ardeth was disillisioned in everyone except his own people, and seriously fucking done with stupid idiots who stole in the name of archaeology. He is completely (justifiably) resigned to the worst when Rick the Magic Survivalist returns to Hamunaptra.

[serpentine-sorceror-deactivated]

This has been another episode of “Actual History adding context and depth to character behavior”

[tastefullyoffensive]

[prismatic-bell]

HERE’S THE THING THOUGH

I used to work for a call center and I was doing a political survey and I called this number that was randomly generated for me and the way our system worked was voice-activated so when the other person said hello you’d get connected to them, so I just launch right into my “Harvard University and NPR blah blah blah” thing and then there’s this long pause and I think the person’s hung up even though I didn’t hear a click

And then I hear “you shouldn’t be able to call this number.”

So I apologize and go into the preset spiel about because we aren’t selling anything, etc. etc. and the answer I get is

“No, I know that. What I mean is that it should be impossible for you to call this number, and I need to know how you got it.”

I explain that it’s randomly generated and I’m very sorry for bothering him, and go to hang up. And before I can click terminate, I hear:

“Ma’am, this is a matter of national security.”

I accidentally called the director of the FBI.

My job got investigated because a computer randomly spit out a number to the Pentagon.

[kuroba101]

This is my new favourite story.

[therobotmonster]

When I was in college I got a job working for a company that manages major air-travel data. It was a temp gig working their out of date system while they moved over to a new one, since my knowing MS Dos apparently made me qualified.

There was no MS Dos involved. Instead, there was a proprietary type-based OS and an actually-uses-transistors refrigerator-sized computer with switches I had to trip at certain times during the night as I watched the data flow from six pm to six AM on Fridays and weekends. If things got stuck, I reset the server. 

The company handled everything from low-end data (hotel and car reservations) to flight plans and tower information. I was weighed every time I came in to make sure it was me. Areas of the building had retina scanners on doors. 

During training. they took us through all the procedures. Including the procedures for the red phone. There was, literally, a red phone on the shelf above my desk. “This is a holdover from the cold war.” They said. “It isn’t going to come up, but here’s the deal. In case of nuclear war or other nation-wide disaster, the phone will ring. Pick up the phone, state your name and station, and await instructions. Do whatever you are told.”

So my third night there, it’s around 2am and there’s a ringing sound. 

I look up, slowly. The Red phone is ringing.

So I reach out, I pick up the phone. I give my name and station number. And I hear every station head in the building do the exact same. One after another, voices giving names and numbers. Then silence for the space of two breaths. Silence broken by…

“Uh… Is Shantavia there?”

It turns out that every toll free, 1-900 or priority number has a corresponding local number that it routs to at its actual destination. Some poor teenage girl was trying to dial a friend of hers, mixed up the numbers, and got the atomic attack alert line for a major air-travel corporation’s command center in the mid-west United States.

There’s another pause, and the guys over in the main data room are cracking up. The overnight site head is saying “I think you have the wrong number, ma’am.” and I’m standing there having faced the specter of nuclear annihilation before I was old enough to legally drink.

The red phone never rang again while I was there, so the people doing my training were only slightly wrong in their estimation of how often the doomsday phone would ring. 

[arctic-hands]

Every time I try to find this story, I end up having to search google with a variety of terms that I’m sure have gotten me flagged by some watchlist, so I’m reblogging it again where I swear I’ve reblogged it before.

[voroxpete]

But none of these stories even come close to the best one of them all; a wrong number is how the NORAD Santa Tracker got started.

Seriously, this is legit.

In December 1955, Sears decided to run a Santa hotline.  Here’s the ad they posted.

Only problem is, they misprinted the number.  And the number they printed?  It went straight through to fucking NORAD.  This was in the middle of the Cold War, when early warning radar was the only thing keeping nuclear annihilation at bay.  NORAD was the front line.

And it wasn’t just any number at NORAD.  Oh no no no.

Terri remembers her dad had two phones on his desk, including a red one. “Only a four-star general at the Pentagon and my dad had the number,” she says.

“This was the ‘50s, this was the Cold War, and he would have been the first one to know if there was an attack on the United States,” Rick says.

The red phone rang one day in December 1955, and Shoup answered it, Pam says. “And then there was a small voice that just asked, ‘Is this Santa Claus?’ ”

His children remember Shoup as straight-laced and disciplined, and he was annoyed and upset by the call and thought it was a joke — but then, Terri says, the little voice started crying.

“And Dad realized that it wasn’t a joke,” her sister says. “So he talked to him, ho-ho-ho’d and asked if he had been a good boy and, ‘May I talk to your mother?’ And the mother got on and said, ‘You haven’t seen the paper yet? There’s a phone number to call Santa. It’s in the Sears ad.’ Dad looked it up, and there it was, his red phone number. And they had children calling one after another, so he put a couple of airmen on the phones to act like Santa Claus.”

“It got to be a big joke at the command center. You know, ‘The old man’s really flipped his lid this time. We’re answering Santa calls,’ ” Terri says.

And then, it got better.

“The airmen had this big glass board with the United States on it and Canada, and when airplanes would come in they would track them,” Pam says.

“And Christmas Eve of 1955, when Dad walked in, there was a drawing of a sleigh with eight reindeer coming over the North Pole,” Rick says.

“Dad said, ‘What is that?’ They say, ‘Colonel, we’re sorry. We were just making a joke. Do you want us to take that down?’ Dad looked at it for a while, and next thing you know, Dad had called the radio station and had said, ‘This is the commander at the Combat Alert Center, and we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh.’ Well, the radio stations would call him like every hour and say, ‘Where’s Santa now?’ ” Terri says.

For real.

“And later in life he got letters from all over the world, people saying, ‘Thank you, Colonel,’ for having, you know, this sense of humor. And in his 90s, he would carry those letters around with him in a briefcase that had a lock on it like it was top-secret information,” she says. “You know, he was an important guy, but this is the thing he’s known for.”

“Yeah,” Rick [his son] says, “it’s probably the thing he was proudest of, too.”

So yeah.  I think that might be the best wrong number of all time.

Source:  http://www.npr.org/2014/12/19/371647099/norads-santa-tracker-began-with-a-typo-and-a-good-sport

[mystical-flute]

I LOVE THE NORAD STORY!!!!

[pom-seedss]

So that’s how the Santa tracker began and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better story.

[steff713]

June 8, 2018

Take my money. I’m so ready for these badass women.

[scarimor-deactivated20180521]

snerk

[hyrude]

for the record: i wrote 10k of indepth introspective character analysis turned personal projection fanfiction about francis from malcolm in the middle, never posted it anywhere, then changed all the names and submitted it for an lgbt essay scholarship as a dissertation on internalized homophobia’s psychological impact into adulthood and won $1000 so. first of all, follow your dreams, second of all, francis from malcolm in the middle is fucking gay

[rayleighn]

Tonight I joined Roller Derby...

And it was awesome, but I feel like I'm going to die. I may be a L1 a few times yet, but I think I found my sport.

[fairytale-villain]

A good thread on whether “queer” is a slur and if it should be used or not.

[rev-krissy]

Still here, STILL QUEER!!

[torikaze]

“If I am unashamed of being queer, you do not get to give that word BACK to the fuckwits who made it a slur.”

[gettzi]

“You can deny being the thing and agree with your accuser that being the thing is awful … or you can increase being the motherfucking thing” (And a MAC grad at that ❤️ bless these tweets)

[jenroses]

I might be in love. 

[xxbluandorangexx]

so I’ve got this headcanon that Guardians of the Galaxy is really the Avengers playing a table top roleplaying game, where Bucky’s the DM who suffers through heaps and loads of trolling 

Mostly from Steve

Especially from Steve

[obsessiforge]

Which means Natasha was the one who sat down and wrote out the long, comprehensive backstory for her kickass space assassin Gamora, that Bucky keeps trying to work into the campaign but they keep getting sidetracked by –

Tony who just created what he sees himself as – the suave, wise-cracking space vagabond.

Thor who needed a lot of help building his character and decided on a couple easy to remember traits (Strong, honor, doesn’t get metaphors)

and Bruce who’s actually too busy to pay full attention so any time Bucky asks what he wants to do he just says “I am Groot” and lets Steve decide

[foundloveinbudapest-blog]

Oh my god.

[sperari]

Headcanon accepted so hard

[iicarys]

why do so many “icarus and the sun” artworks and stories portray the sun as a woman? do y’all know who controlled the sun? apollo. icarus is gay as fuck, y’all.

[jadedsoggy]

Sometimes it was helios, not Apollo. Icarus was still gay as fuck

[cctinsleybaxter]

“Icarus we just escaped prison don’t ruin it by flying too close to the sun”

[Icarus already fucking launching himself across the sky for the sake of some godly dick]

[erinye]

woops

[chesnaughtlover]

Guy getting himself killed to get some godly dick is propably the most Greek thing to ever happen in mythology

[ghostflowerdreams]

Awesome Sites and Links for Writers

Just about every writer out there has several go-to websites that they use when it comes to their writing. Be it for creativity, writer’s block, to put you in the mood or general writing help. These are mine and I listed them in hopes that you’ll find something that you’ll like or will find something useful for you. I’ve also included some websites that sound interesting.

Spelling & Grammar

Grammar Girl — Grammar Girl’s famous Quick and Dirty Tips (delivered via blog or podcast) will help you keep your creative writing error free.

The Owl — is Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) it’s a great resource for grammar guides, style tips and other information that can help with your writing, especially academics.

Tip of My Tongue — have you ever had trouble of thinking of a specific word that you can’t remember what it is? Well, this site will help you narrow down your thoughts and find that word you’ve been looking for. It can be extremely frustrating when you have to stop writing because you get a stuck on a word, so this should help cut that down. 

Free Rice – is a great way to test your vocabulary knowledge. What’s even better about this site is that with every correct answer, they donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. So, please disable your adblock since they use the ads on the site to generate the money to buy the rice.

HyperGrammar — the University of Ottawa offers up a one-stop guide for proper spelling, structure, and punctuation on this site.

AutoCrit — the AutoCrit Editing Wizard can check writing for grammar errors, clichés and other no-no’s. It also provides a number of other writing resources as well.

Writer’s Digest — learn how to improve your writing, find an agent, and even get published with the help of the varied blogs on this site.

Syntaxis — it allows you to test your knowledge of grammar with a ten-question quiz. The questions change every time you take the quiz so users are sure to be challenged each time around. It definitely helps writers know if there’s something that they need to brush up on.

Word Frequency Counter — this counter allows you to count the frequency usage of each word in your text.

Tools

Copyscape — is a free service that you can use to learn if anyone has plagiarized your work. It’s pretty useful for those that want to check for fanfiction plagiarism.

Write or Die —  is an application for Windows, Mac and Linux which aims to eliminate writer’s block by providing consequences for procrastination.

Written? Kitten! — is just like Write of Die, but it’s a kinder version. They use positive reinforcement, so everytime you reach a goal they reward you with an adorable picture of a kitten.

Information & Data

RefDesk — it has an enormous collection of reference materials, searchable databases and other great resources that can’t be found anywhere else. It’s great to use when you need to find something and check your facts.

Bib Me — it makes it easy to create citations, build bibliographies and acknowledge other people’s work. This is definitely something that academics will love. It’s basically a bibliography generator that automatically fills in a works cited page in MLA, APA, Chicago or Turbian formats.

Internet Public Library — this online library is full of resources that are free for anyone to use, from newspaper and magazine articles to special collections.

The Library of Congress — if you’re looking for primary documents and information, the Library of Congress is a great place to start. It has millions of items in its archives, many of which are accessible right from the website.

Social Security Administration: Popular Baby Names — is the most accurate list of popular names from 1879 to the present. If your character is from America and you need a name for them, this gives you a accurate list of names, just pick the state or decade that your character is from.

WebMD — is a handy medical database loaded with information. It’s not a substitute for a doctor, but can give you a lot of good information on diseases, symptoms, treatments, etc.

Google Scholar - is an online, freely accessible search engine that lets users look for both physical and digital copies of articles. It searches a wide variety of sources, including academic publishers, universities, and preprint depositories and so on. While Google Scholar does search for print and online scholarly information, it is important to understand that the resource is not a database.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac — this classic almanac offers yearly information on astronomical events, weather conditions and forecasts, recipes, and gardening tips.

State Health Facts — Kaiser Family Foundation provides this database, full of health facts on a state-by-state basis that address everything from medicare to women’s health.

U.S. Census Bureau — Learn more about the trends and demographics of America with information drawn from the Census Bureau’s online site.

Wikipedia — this shouldn’t be used as your sole source, but it can be a great way to get basic information and find out where to look for additional references.

Finding Data on the Internet — a great site that list links that can tell you where you can find the inflation rate, crime statistics, and other data.

Word References

RhymeZone — whether you’re writing poetry, songs, or something else entirely, you can get help rhyming words with this site.

Acronym Finder — with more than 565,000 human-edited entries, Acronym Finder is the world’s largest and most comprehensive dictionary of acronyms, abbreviations, and initials.

Symbols.com — is a unique online encyclopedia that contains everything about symbols, signs, flags and glyphs arranged by categories such as culture, country, religion, and more. 

OneLook Reverse Dictionary — is a dictionary that lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word. 

The Alternative Dictionaries — is a site that you can look up slang words in all types of languages, including Egyptian Arabic, Cherokee, Cantonese, Norwegian and many, many others.

Online Etymology Dictionary — it gives you the history and derivation of any word. Etymologies are not definitions; they’re explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago.

MediLexicon — is a comprehensive dictionary of medical, pharmaceutical, biomedical, and health care abbreviations and acronyms.

Merriam Webster Online – the online version of the classic dictionary also provides a thesaurus and a medical dictionary.

Multilingual Dictionary – that translate whatever you need from 30 different languages with this easy-to-use site.

Writing Software

Open Office — why pay for Microsoft products when you can create free documents with Open Office? This open source software provides similar tools to the Microsoft Office Suite, including spreadsheets, a word processor, the ability to create multimedia presentations, and more.

LibreOffice — is a free and open source office suite. It was forked from OpenOffice.org in 2010, which was an open-sourced version of the earlier StarOffice. The LibreOffice suite comprises programs to do word processing, spreadsheets, slideshows, diagrams and drawings, maintain databases, and compose math formula.

Scrivener — is not a free program, but it’s certainly a very popular one. It’s great for organizing research, planning drafts, and writing novels, articles, short stories, and even screenplays.

OmmWriter — is a free simple text processor that gives you a distraction free environment. So you can focus only on your writing without being tempted or distracted by other programs on your computer.

Evernote — is a free app for your smartphone and computer that stores everything you could possibly imagine losing track of, like a boarding pass, receipt, article you want to read, to do list, or even a simple typed note. The app works brilliantly, keeping everything in sync between your computer, smartphone, or tablet. It’s definitely a useful app for writers when you have ideas on the go.

Storybook — this open source software can make it easier to manage your plotlines, characters, data, and other critical information while penning a novel.

Script Frenzy — scriptwriters will appreciate this software. It offers an easy layout that helps outline plots as well as providing storyboard features, index cards, and even sound and photo integration.

Creativity, Fun & Miscellaneous

National Novel Writing Month — is one of the most well-known writing challenges in the writing community, National Novel Writing Month pushes you to write 50,000 words in 30 days (for the whole month of November).

WritingFix — a fun site that creates writing prompts on the spot. The site currently has several options—prompts for right-brained people, for left-brained people, for kids—and is working to add prompts on classic literature, music and more.

Creative Writing Prompts — the site is exactly what it says. They have 100+ and more, of prompts that you can choose from.

My Fonts — is the world’s largest collection of fonts. You can even upload an image containing a font that you like, and this tells you what it is.

Story Starters — this website offers over one trillion randomly generated story starters for creative writers.

The Gutenberg Project — this site is perfect for those who like to read and/or have an ereader. There’s over 33,000 ebooks you can download for free. 

The Imagination Prompt Generator — Click through the prompts to generate different ideas in response to questions like “Is there a God?” and “If your tears could speak to you, what would they say?”

The Phrase Finder – this handy site helps you hunt down famous phrases, along with their origins. It also offers a phrase thesaurus that can help you create headlines, lyrics, and much more.

Storybird – this site allows you to write a picture book. They provided the gorgeous artwork and you create the story for it, or just read the stories that others have created.

Language Is a Virus — the automatic prompt generator on this site can provide writers with an endless number of creative writing prompts. Other resources include writing exercises and information on dozens of different authors.

Background Noise/Music

SimplyNoise — a free white noise sounds that you can use to drown out everything around you and help you focus on your writing.

Rainy Mood — from the same founders of Simply Noise, this website offers the pleasant sound of rain and thunderstorms. There’s a slide volume control, which you can increase the intensity of the noise (gentle shower to heavy storm), thunder mode (often, few, rare), oscillation button, and a sleep timer. 

Coffitivity — a site that provides three background noises: Morning Murmur (a gentle hum), Lunchtime Lounge (bustling chatter), and University Undertones (campus cafe). A pause button is provided whenever you need a bladder break, and a sliding volume control to give you the freedom to find the perfect level for your needs and moods. It’s also available as an android app, iOS app, and for Mac desktop.

Rainy Cafe — it provides background chatter in coffee shops (similar to Coffitivity) AND the sound of rain (similar to Simply Rain). There’s also individual volume and on/off control for each sound category.

8tracks — is an internet radio website and everyone can listen for free. Unlike other music oriented social network such as Pandora or Spotify, 8tracks does’t have commercial interruption. Users create free accounts and can either browse the site and listen to other user-created mixes, and/or they can create their own mixes. It’s a perfect place to listen to other writer’s playlist, share yours or find music for specific characters or moods.

[michigantrad-deactivated2017050]

Wow!

[the-real-commasplice]

Do not use WebMD. Use something like Medline Plus. 

Otherwise this is great!