Marginally-Deranged

They/Them, Purveyor of Garbage

[rohad93]

It occurs to me I’ve never put this here but I do have a Ko-fi, so if anyone wants to drop a few buck in a tired authors cup, I’d be grateful. 

https://ko-fi.com/rohad

[moonssnail]

In another life

(Closeups under the cut)

[maykitz]

the persecution of lefthandedness is insane to think about because it was so intense for so long, in some places still is, without any clear profit motivation. sheer love of the game. as late as the 70s at least they were smacking my stepdad's hands for it with a wooden ruler at school, to this day he's in weird ambidexterity situation where he's not great with either side and notably clumsy due to poor hand-eye coordination. just wtf

[seeingteacupsindragons]

It is fascinating to me that people also think of handedness as an example of bigotry that just...went away. As you note, it...hasn't in some places. I know people who grew up in the mid-late 90s who still had this problem.

But also, and this is really important to keep in mind regarding bigotry that still causes in many ways larger problems, that the structural problems are not actually fixed.

If you go to any computer lab or public library, the mice will be on the right side of the computer. Sometimes they can be moved. Sometimes they can't. Many computer mice are curved to only fit in right hands.

It is impossible to find lefthanded scissors without going to a specialty store, because most scissor makers don't even make them. And it's not just a matter of grip; the slicing side of the blades is obscured if you use righty scissors in your left hand, so your cut is off.

All those signing pads with the little chained styluses? Almost always on the right side, often not even long enough to stretch to the left. Makes signing for lefties extremely difficult.

I caused actual muscular problems in college having to twist around in order to write at right-handed desks in college when there weren't enough lefty desks--and there never were. Some classrooms didn't even have a single one.

I could go on.

But the point is, bigotry isn't just a mindset shift. People can't just decide they're not bothered by that particular difference anymore and everything's fine, because society is still structured and designed to cause problems for marginalized people. And they're never even going to notice all the little ways their life is bent to convenience them that inconveniences others.

[amorphousbl0b]

Stop making Harrowhark Nonagesimus goth in your modern AUs

Harrow dresses with an aesthetic we consider goth because her entire culture is aesthetically goth. While goth fashion in the real world is alternative and based on defiance of conventional beauty standards, Harrow is a perfect model of a woman of the Ninth House, always styling herself according to expectations and strictly adhering to the rules of her societal position. She is wealthy, religious, aggressively compliant with norms, demands similar compliance from those around her, and tries her best to live up to every desire set for her. She's the class president, the star student, the role model. She's basic. Goths reject tradition, Harrow relies on it

Harrow may look aesthetically goth, but she is spiritually the preppiest motherfucker to ever walk Pluto

[friedwizardwhispers]

Who wants to talk about the fact that it's not just Gideon doing the "cruelest thing someone could ever do" to Harrow to save her in Gideon the Ninth, Harrow is also doing "the cruelest thing someone could ever do" to Gideon to save her in Harrow the Ninth ?

I love them, they make me so sad.

[lizarddealer]

Just wanna take a moment of appreciation for what I saw at my local Barnes & Noble today

[onlymagpie]

they make me so unwell‼️

[antifainternational]

Sometimes anti-fascism looks like having tamales for lunch.

[leftbooblover]

Melted steel. Mingled blood. Harrowhark-and-Gideon. Gideon-and Harrowhark at last.

[nondelphic]

writing isn’t hard it’s just emotionally devastating and time-consuming and requires full body possession by an idea

[phuezo]

Whiterose Week Commission for @tumblingxelian Day 6: Cyberpunk Thank you again for your support :)

[dishrack-holygrail]

More repressed reverend AU! #stolitz but Stolas accidentally summoned an imp, and that imp would very much like to get his claws on that fan

More of that gay reverend AU!!!

[hellaversemerchcatalogue]

Alastor Demon Inside | Angel Dust Demon Inside | Blitz Demon Inside | M&M Demon Inside | Loona Demon Inside | Stolas Demon Inside | Verosika Demon Inside | Fizz/Ozz Demon Inside (Shirts, Sharkrobot, 2022)

[wingsandblades67]

MY FANDOMS ARE ALWAYS SO TALENTED

[tropiyas]

[whitepeopletwitter]

[commandtower-solring-go]

There are a lot of really dog shit things in the world of tech that can be solved with a bit of time, some stubborn googling and maybe some special hardware and piracy is only the tip of the iceberg. 

Printers are notorious for claiming they’re out of ink when they haven’t come close to the suggested number of prints, and their cartridges literally still have ink in them. So after a bit of googling I found out how to ‘reset’ a cartridges automatic stopping system (its literally 1 physical wheel on the cartridge that you gotta turn back). The only downside is that I don’t get a digital ink monitor, but since it told me it was empty when still half full, I don’t mind. 

Like, you can just jiggle with some shit and solve one of the biggest money making scams in the post-industrial world and I don’t think people realise its that easy. 

Or, like, repairing your own technology. A few months ago, I swapped out my sister’s laptop screen. Did it myself, I removed maybe 4 screws, no vital parts were exposed and it cost me $40. I even got a choice of matte or glossy. 

My point is, any walls that capitalist technology presents you with will be a false one. And one already broken by a dedicated community of interesting people working hard for free to break down that wall.

[buckskinblues]

kids these days will be all “be gay do crime” and dont even know how to watch a cartoon without paying for it smh

[thedreadvampy]

IN FAIRNESS

piracy was definitely leagues easier a decade or so ago when thepiratebay was functional, megaupload was still running, and YouTube and Google made only the most cursory attempts to block copyright content. like let’s not pretend that the internet hasn’t got a lot more corporatised in the past decade or so. piracy is still possible and you can and should do it but it’s a LOT harder to do safely and reliably than it was.

[thebroccoligoblin]

^thank u

[theoutcastrogue]

Sorry, this is all wrong.

1) ThePirateBay is still functional. (It’s not the same pirate bay that it was back in the day, but let’s not get into Theseus’ ship territory. It’s still here and it still works, that’s all that matters.) There are plenty of torrent sites around, more than there were 10 years ago – although overall traffic has plummeted. Now as then, it’s a whack-a-mole game.

2) Why was it “leagues easier” a decade ago? Some countries, not all (not north America, for example), now mandate ISP blocking of torrent sites, but this new complication can be bypassed with one (1) step: a google duckduckgo search for proxies. No government agency or ISP can possibly keep up with proxies, it’s yet another whack-a-mole game. So yes, it was technically easier before, but I don’t see “leagues” anywhere.

3) It was safer before? Are you shitting me? Have you lot forgotten that the legal departments of MPAA and RIAA sued torrent sharers (not even uploaders) and asked for millions of dollars for damages? AND GOT THEM? (By which I mean they didn’t actually get millions since the people they sued didn’t have any, but said people were convicted and ruined and that was the goal in the first place. It was a deeply amoral and cynical scare tactic.) Well they stopped doing that at some point, and focused on hunting P2P and torrent sites. Running a site is certainly less safe today. Using one, though? Depending on where you are, the ISP may be allowed to block you after repeated instances, and that’s it. You’re not getting in trouble with the law or into crippling debt. And either way there’s only a minuscule chance that any of this will come to pass, which becomes zero (0) with a VPN. (Safety of course depends on the country, and in some cases piracy is the least of your concerns. Let’s not get into that.)

4) Ten years ago there was no Sci-Hub, and Library Genesis was in its infancy. If today it’s harder to find PDFs on google, it is orders of magnitude easier and more reliable to find them elsewhere. People just have to unstick their minds from the notion that stuff is either on google or doesn’t exist at all. Geez.

5) P2P still exists. IRC (the sharing channels in particular, #bookz and the like) still exists. Torrenting functions like it always did. All these methods are exactly as easy to use as before, i.e. not necessarily a piece of cake, there’s a learning curve. But it’s the same learning curve it was 10 years ago.

6) So what have we lost? Only YouTube (meh, the film/tv quality was appalling anyway, and music is still there) and direct downloads (at least the permanent ones: there are plenty of them still around, but files expire and you need to keep track of what goes up when. So this goes beyond knowhow, it’s about internet communities. Let’s not get into that either, it’s a huge subject.) It’s a loss, sure, but I wouldn’t call it a terrible blow.

7) And in exchange for that loss, we got streaming sites. This is piracy, too, and it’s much much easier than torrents, and tons of people do it. Any “piracy has declined” narrative either implies that we’re excluding streaming from the discussion for some reason, or is flat out wrong. Ten years ago, grandpa couldn’t possibly torrent a film, and it’s debatable if he even knew how to open the file you helpfully sent him. Now, as long as someone has set up kodi or similar, grandpa can watch it on his tv and it just feels like cable.

8) On why torrents in particular have declined in recent years, see here. It’s a big subject and I didn’t cover all of it, but the main reason is that people had access to easier methods to get what they wanted (some legal and affordable, some illegal and free), so they didn’t need to learn how to torrent. Ergo, they never did. There’s more of course, and there’s definitely a cultural shift too, but that’s a very long story so let’s not get into it. The linked post also includes some thoughts on why torrents aren’t dead and doomed just yet, and ooh, I forgot a very important one: you can’t stream photoshop.

To summarise, internet piracy is NOT more difficult, unreliable, and unsafe today than it was 10 or 20 years ago. For reasons why people (young or otherwise) seem less versed in it, please look elsewhere. I have thoughts on that too, but this is already a very long post, so I’ll just leave you with the best kind of thought. I’ll leave you with a doubt:

ARE people less versed in piracy? Are they really? Or is it simply that 20 years ago, internet users were computer geeks by definition, whereas now everyone’s online? Perhaps the percentage of skilled pirates in the general population remains more or less the same, and the only thing that’s dropped is the percentage of skilled pirates to total internet users. I can’t be sure without statistical evidence, but it’s a possibility.

[pulchrabelle]

You can literally google “watch _____ free online” and find most movies but the third result just download Adblock or popup blocker and you’re golden it truly couldn’t be easier

[chickenmcnuggies]

I’ve been meaning to make a piracy masterpost for awhile and what better time than now?

Materpost: A curated Githup tutorial of links to more torrent sites, software, VPNs, uBlock origin filters, ect. Basically everything you could ever want starting out. Do be warned though it doesn’t appear to have been updated in awhile so a few of the links are dead.

GAMES:

Vimm’s Roms: NES era->ps3 era roms and emulators to play them. Has user ratings on games. Cons: slow download speeds.

NxBrew: Switch roms/game updates/dlc

nsw2u: More switch roms. Check here if nxbrew doesn’t have the game you’re looking for.

Hshop: 3ds games/updates/dlc. Very well organized and sorted by console region. Bonus ability to generate QR codes to scan with homebrew to begin download directly on your console.

Oldgamesdownload: Old 90’s-2000’s PC games and some gamecube games. Technically, all of the games here are abandon ware, meaning the original company/creator doesn’t sell nor make money from the games anymore period. If you’re into that.

Fitgirl repacks: Heavily compressed PC games, and other various consoles. Small downloads and faster speeds for the size of the games. Somewhat limited game selection.

Steam unlocked: Steam games with easy-to-use installers. Check here if fitgirl doesn’t have what you’re looking for.

Steam Underground: A user forum for piracy support, usually about installing cracked games. Does have some scattered PC game downloads.

Google doc of Skyrim SE creation club content.

Amiibo life: Amiibo bins, can be loaded with some homebrew to load in games without any external source, or, if you buy writable NFC cards, you can make your own free amiibos.

Books:

Library Genesis: a good all-in-one ebook finder. Has books, magazines, scientific papers, ect. Well organized and able to sort by Author, Genre, ect ect. Almost all books in .epub format

Calibre: Not piracy but a free software for reading said .epub files, and other ebook formats. Good for sorting your books.

Sci-Hub: Research papers, academic books, pdfs, ect. Helpful for collage students.

IT ebook: eBooks about learning programming languages.

audiobookbay: Audiobook downloads.

Booksonic: Audiobook streaming.

5e.tools: Dnd player’s manual, guide, ect.

Books on learning various languages.

Mangadex: Manga, Doujinshi.      

Headspace sleep audio.

Various books and manuals.

Streaming:

ustvgo: Free streaming of live tv, has most US cable tv channels.

tutturu: Spiritual successor to Rabbit, allows you to stream your screen with friends.

Yes movies: Movies

Kimcartoon: Cartoons/animated movies

aniwatcher: Anime

animedao: Anime

Computer software:

getintopc: Wide selection of pc (mostly windows) software of all sorts, and different versions. Can personally vouch for the site, I’ve gotten Photoshop, Maya, and Sony Vegas from here over the years.

Other:

the eye: An archive of old roms, OS systems, roms (non nintendo), comics, books, ect, ect. Cons: No search function and slightly hard to navigate.

1337x.to: Torrent site for movies, shows, games, comics, ect.

ThePirateBay: The classic.

Recorded broadway musicals. Verying quality.

[unyanizedcatboys]

Finally someone actually posted links instead of just bitching or saying “it’s easy”

[zoanzon]

Ok just want to plug the eye a bit more considering I lost a few hours in their yesterday.

the eye has been up since 2017 and in the last four years have accumulated 140TB of data (according to their own reports). Part of their growth is just their own work, part of it is absorbing other archives/open directories that were having issues: I know rpg.rem.uz used to be its own archive - gave way to The Trove, which is having its own issues right now unfortunately… - but now most-all of their content can also just be found on the eye. Same with a few dozen other archives.

And they have ‘old roms, OS systems, roms (non nintendo), comics, books, ect, ect’, but massively more than you might think just based off how this sounds. Like…

They have it all.

If you want to try and homebrew alcohol, go check their stuff. If you want to try and read books that are out of print or otherwise in public domain (and some that aren’t yet in public domain), go check their stuff. If you want to run a campaign and can’t pay for expensive print tabletop books, go check their stuff. If you want to fuck off into the woods to live off the land (or research how that would work for a writing project), go check their stuff. If you’re trying to learn shit about drugs - any drugs, almost - go check their stuff.

Hell, if you want to go read what looks like literally every research paper on coronaviruses from 1968 up to Feb 2020, you can do that too!

As chickenmcnuggies said its a mess and a half to navigate through their collections, partially with how large it is and the fact quite a few folders were once whole other archives since absorbed by the eye…

But goddamn you can lose an afternoon just going through all the stuff they have.

[kytsuine-blog]

Notable omissions on ebooks: Z-Library has a different collection than Libgen (and possibly larger? I tend to have more luck with weird stuff there); Anna’s Archive is a link aggregator with what seems to be a larger collection than either, albeit also a less easy to use one.

Notable omission on music: Firehawk52’s guide has plenty for learning how to download, but these days, I just use a cracked Spotify client.

[hellamews]

owls what?

[braindump-ster-fire]

stolas laughing is so precious my heart 🥹🥹❤️

[ruesttt]

more post-gideon the ninth reading sketches............