Nalledia @siren-pilot - Tumblr Blog

Got into a discussion about emergency response at a professional retreat recently and everyone was going on and on about agility, and I was like, "Okay but what about contingency?"

And they were like "What?"

And I was like, "Agility isn't the ultimate form of preparedness. Contingency is. Agility still requires you to flounder and figure out a solution in the moment, but if you have a contingency plan, all you have to do is implement it."

And they were like "But you can't make contingency plans for every situation!"

And I was like, "Yeah, you basically can if you just identify all of your basic dependencies and contingency plan around the loss of any dependency," and then I gave a few examples.

And they all stared at me like I'm an alien.

Anyway, that's how I figured out I'm Batman-coded and also learned how Batman must feel talking to supposedly professional superheroes who never bothered to run disaster scenarios until I pointed out that it's insane that they don't already have a plan for if Superman turns evil.

nestofstraightlines

There’s a phrase that really stuck in my head around this. It was from one of the British divers who enacted the Thai caving rescue, though I couldn’t tell you which one or which interview.

As he described to the interviewer a moment of panic and how he he overcame, the interviewer said, in one of those, summarise-last-answer-given-with-appropriate-levels-of-respect-in-order-to-proceed-to-next-question phrasing’s, “Wow, so you rose to the occasion -“

And the diver said, “No, actually people always get that exactly wrong. In an unexpected and urgent situation you don’t rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training.”

throckmortons-thrussy

teaboot

I’m not Christian, I don’t go to church anymore, and my pastor died, but when he was alive I’d sometimes go to his sermons and I remember one time he said “it feels good to hate, but we know that it isn’t allowed, so when we’re told that we’re allowed to hate someone we get so excited that we forget we’re supposed to love”, and if my humble atheist ass might borrow some church talk I’d like to perhaps submit that

teaboot

Anyhow sometimes on the day to day I feel disgust or revulsion and I have to ask myself “is this a danger to anyone at all or am I just looking for something I’m allowed to hate” and a solid 98/100 times it’s the latter so once again thank you pastor D

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

#search engines

mournfulroses

Lidia Yuknavitch, from Reading the Waves: A Memoir published in 2025

theradioghost

dead metaphors are really interesting honestly and specifically i’m interested in when they become malapropisms

like, the concept being, people are familiar with the phrase and what people use it to mean metaphorically, but it’s not common knowledge anymore what the metaphor was in literal reference to. people still say “toe the line” but don’t necessarily conjure up the image of people standing at the starting line of a race, forbidden from crossing over it. people still say “the cat is out of the bag” without necessarily knowing it’s a sailors’ expression referring to a whip being brought out for punishment. some metaphors are so dead we don’t even know where they come from; like, there are ideas about what “by hook or by crook” references, but no one is entirely sure. nobody knows what the whole nine yards are.

and then you throw in a malaprop or a mondegreen or two, where because people don’t know what the actual words of the expression refer to, they’re liable to replace them with similar sounding words (see “lack toast and tolerant”). so we can literally go from a phrase referencing a common, everyday part of life to a set of unfixed, contextless sounds with a completely different meaning. that’s fascinating. what an interesting piece of the way language and culture are living, changing, coevolving things.

maybe part of the reason we can’t figure out where some phrases come from is that over time the words themselves have changed! one of the theories about “the whole nine yards” is that it’s a variant of “the whole ball of wax,” which some people further theorize was originally “the whole bailiwick,” meaning just “the whole area”! the addition of “nine yards” might be related to “dressed to the nines,” which might reference the fucking Greek muses! language is so weird and cool! (and I only know any idioms in two languages!)

the point is. I just came across the words “nip it in the butt” in a piece of published, professional fiction, and now I can’t stop giggling.

whetstonefires

someone put ‘within a hare’s breath’ in an AO3 tag and it stopped me cold. because you’re leaving the general sense of the idiom and its physical phonemes almost intact, and yet replacing the actual words and metaphor with something completely unrelated.

a hare’s breath is small in a completely different way than a hair’s breadth and works very differently as a unit of distance.

and yet the general idea of ‘small, close, tiny gap, no barrier, a near thing, almost’ remains intact, and if you didn’t know what had happened there you would never figure it out.

elodieunderglass

My 3-year-old attends a nursery with a colony of miner bees that is extremely active in the garden in spring and autumn. Miner bees are so called because they make small industrious burrows in the ground, and make a big fuss of doing so. The miner bees are harmless but tremendously nosy and officious: they are constantly examining the children and trying to chase them away from the holes, with as much effectiveness as you can expect. They won’t sting - but they swarm and buzz around and it makes you flinch. The nursery owner refuses (quite rightly) to delete the colony, and children are instructed by staff to be aware of the bees, but to remain neutral.

I suddenly listened a bit closer and realised that the child calls them “minder bees.”

“Minder bees?”

“Yes - because you have to mind der bees.”

What a completely different framing. Suddenly you hear a small child growing up with instruction from people with West Country accents, and the vague idea they have of the British idiom of “minding:” there is “don’t mind the bees” (don’t be bothered by the bees) and “mind the bees” (be aware of the bees) and “childminders” (nursery staff who look after children.) here is a child who does not know about mining, apart from being clear on what is mine or yours. But the child knows that Minding is a kind of caring: simultaneously looking after, and being/not being annoyed by. Here is a child who is clearly instructed frequently to mind der bees.

And the bees on their part definitely mind. They are minding the children, but they don’t really mind the children being there. They are very minder bees.

If left to themselves and the children, perhaps, that’s what they would become.

orchidbreezefc

@whetstonefires the concept you’re touching on has a name: it’s called an eggcorn! it refers to a misreading of a word or phrase that still makes sense–eggcorn being a mishearing of acorn, whose bottom is shaped like an egg and whose top has texture sort of like corn!

nekoqueenalice

PSA: AO3 Bots Are Getting Worse (And Here's What You Need To Know)

Alright so if you're active on AO3, you've probably heard about the bot problem. It's been going on for years but it's gotten way worse lately, so here's a breakdown of what's happening and how to protect yourself.

What Are AO3 Bots?

Basically spam accounts that leave comments on fics. They're automated and they've been plaguing the site since like 2021, but they keep getting more sophisticated.

Types of Bots You Might See:

Praise Bots - These leave super generic compliments that could apply to literally any fic. Stuff like "This is pure genius, I'm in awe of your world-building" or "This deserves all recognition." The dead giveaway is when someone praises your "heartwarming" fic when everyone literally died and the earth shattered around them lmao.

Hateful/Cruel Bots - These are the really fucked up ones. They scrape REAL AO3 usernames and attach them to horrible, cruel comments. So innocent people get their names attached to hateful shit they never said. If you see a mean comment, check if the username is clickable - if it's not linked to an actual profile, it's a bot.

Kudos Bots - Some authors have woken up to like 30-60 fake kudos dumped on their fics all at once, with no corresponding increase in hit counts. This completely destroys the metric system especially in smaller fandoms.

AI Accusation Bots - These accuse authors of using ChatGPT or other AI tools, sometimes on fics that are literally older than the AI programs they're being accused of using. Some link to "AI detection tools" which are likely just trying to get you to feed more fics into AI training databases.

Misinformation Bots - A newer type that showed up in May 2025 claiming AO3 was removing works to "conserve server space" and telling authors to delete their own work or risk being banned. Complete bullshit - AO3 has never done this and never will.

Mary Sue Bots - Accuse your OCs of being Mary Sues, even when your fic only has canon characters and no self-inserts at all.

Art Commission Scam Bots - Leave praise then offer to make comic/art commissions of your fic. They get you off-site to Discord or Instagram, take your payment, then either send AI-generated garbage or ghost you completely.

How Do They Work?

The bots comment as unregistered guests and scrape real AO3 usernames to attach to their comments. The username shows up but isn't clickable and has no actual profile associated with it (unless you search for that name directly, which makes it look legit at first).

The newer ones are getting smarter too - they scrape your fic's tags and use them to make the generic praise seem more personalized. So if you tagged "angst" they'll specifically mention emotions and tension.

How To Spot Them:

Username isn't clickable/has no profile

Generic praise that could apply to any fic

Comments that make zero sense for what actually happened in your story

Multiple comments hitting your fics really fast (like 7 comments timestamped over 9 hours)

Sudden spike in kudos with no matching increase in hits

Anyone trying to get you off-site for commissions or services

The Emotional Impact:

This shit genuinely hurts authors. Some don't realize they're bots at first and think the hate comments or AI accusations are real criticism of their writing. There's also concerns from neurodivergent and ESL authors who worry their real comments will be mistaken for bots because their writing style might seem stilted.

And if your username gets stolen? You might have to track down authors and explain that hateful comment wasn't actually you.

What You Can Do:

As an author:

Delete bot comments as soon as you spot them

If it gets bad, lock your comments to registered users only (Settings → Privacy → "Only show your work to registered users")

Report the comments if you can

As a reader/commenter:

Don't panic if your username got stolen - reach out to the author and explain it wasn't you

Keep leaving real comments! Authors need to know there are real people who love their work

Maybe make your comments a bit more specific/personal so authors know you're real

Everyone:

Spread awareness so people know what to look for

Don't feed fics into "AI detection tools" that bots link to

Why Are They Doing This?

Honestly? Probably to keep AI brands in the "fandom news" cycle and create controversy. Some are straight-up scams. Either way, they suck.

Stay safe out there and keep supporting your favorite authors with real comments. We need that genuine engagement now more than ever. 💜

Tagging all my mutuals @ruinationz and @turbotasticnumberone and @cartoon-cat7241 and @cru5h-cascades and @seleyaaaa and @mono-squamblo and @strayfelinez and @strangelilangel and @yukihirop and @rivertheemoo and @meatmedallion and @drownedsilverforever and @senpaipaws and @cartoonlover999 and @byronicmoron and @resolutelymadvermin and @wanka-wanky and @looksmokin and @justwatchedsometv and @oakwoodvida and @human-n0-l0ng3r and @glooberousgoon and @goddess-of-lov3 and @lucifersdog-luci and @casethecreep and @aoihibiki247 and and @klyju and @fleshistic and @golshi-sweetheart and @femmesagemoon222 and @4ggravatez and @resonanthideoutruin and @saddmyths and @homestuckyaoi413 and @blueloky and @divine-vxnity and @ace-productions7 and @fiberopticemoweeb666 and @cryptedlullaby and @3veryth1ngstays and @blossomletters and @alpheiaa and @juniizhq and @sapphicavocado and @bloodybigirl and @yanderehiro and @dnplicoricenutttt and @russkiy-american-dreams and @2catnip4me and @miracle-winkel and @mickyx-x and @biblicallyunhingedtheo and @the-only-good-ai and @prettirei and @unhinged-pink-espresso and @patchofglass

curiouspupsicle

I'd also add, resist the AI bubble that companies are forcing on us. Don't use generative AI to make cute cat pictures. Actually click on a website written by humans, instead of relying on the AI summary at the top. Turn off AI features on apps you use. It's bigger than AO3. Tech companies are trying to convince us that we need shitty AI to do things it's not actually capable of doing. The AO3 scams are one part of an entire scammy infrastructure.

moonlupine

trying to tag the ppl who I remember write/have written

@rayshippouuchiha and @inexplicifics and @halfagone and @phoenixyfriend and @nohaijiachi and @faeriekit and @bloggerspam and @nerdpoe and @tourettesdog and @captain-krow-drozdov

#ao3 fanfic #ao3 #useful information #archive of our own #fanfiction #ao3 bots #writing

horsefigureoftheday

Please read Stinz

#centaur #centaurs #comic

my-random-fandoms

thetrekkiehasthephonebox

Verified: Microsoft 365 gets massive 45% price hike — and it's all to do with AI tools (Tom's Guide - January 17, 2025)

mothwizard

oopsie i tripped and spilled my link to archive dot org's downloadable copy of Microsoft office suite for 2007, which features no AI tools and is a powerful word processor that still holds up just fine on windows 10!

#good information #microsoft

pignk

#arcane #vander #silco #vander x silco #jinx #zaundads

akindplace

scribbellz

vaiyamagic

I did a thing.

I was having trouble with some of the Dalish Tattoos, and may have gone overboard trying to sort it all out. So, because I did some work, if this helps anyone out, I am sharing it.

Mythal has different colors because that tattoo is a fustercluck, and I needed to break down the pieces. Sylaise has different colors because there’s the solid color (red,) the middle color (green,) and the ‘no’ color (blue.)

#elvhen #dragon age #vallaslin #andruil #dirathmen #elgar'nan #falon'din #ghilan'nain #june

babymorte

I can’t decide which background to use and its doing my head in ㅠㅡㅠ

liefplus

if u weren’t aware of salvation army’s homophobia, its prety hardcore

michaelstipeofrembemyboyfriend-

a guy in a salvos truck yelled at me and my gf while we were kissing today so I was thinking of this

appropriately-inappropriate

Do you know, when I was in high-school I went to the mall near my house with my girlfriend to do some Christmas shopping.

We were there, sixteen year old me and seventeen year old her, holding hands and window-shopping, minding our own business.

This Salvation Army shitheel gets aggro about it in the middle of the mall and I’m there totally flabbergasted cause like, it’s christmas

Only, 16!Tabi had even less composure than 26!Tabi, so I lost my fucking mind on her.

Thing is: when I’m really angry, I don’t rage, I go all cold and apparently that freaks people out, because I could see my gf backing up and the lady getting tense and then I realized that anger doesn’t solve problems.

So instead, I started wailing.

Picture this: 5’4, tiny, blonde haired high school girl with her little violin on her back and pearls in her ears just as PTA-approved as could be, full on sobbing in the hallway.

Just, sobbing like my dog’s been shot.

Now my gf’s like, “oh fuck” and the lady’s like “oh fuuuuck!” and I’m here, head thrown back, tears down my cheeks and in that shrill, distressed, /loud/ voice, “WHY WOULD YOU B-b-be so MEAN?! It’s CHRISTMAS!”

And the lady’s like “please stop Oh fuck” because now we have a crowd, and this Molly Weasley of a woman putters over, “what’s the matter, dear?”

And mall security’s coming and this bell ringer is looking very uncomfortable so I just look at this matronly ellen-watching suburban housewife lady, eyes wide and wet and my lip wobbling.

“I was, she s-said, s-s-she said I was going to HELL!”

And I burst right back into tears.

Maaaaaaaan, they didn’t even stick around to ask why she’d said it. Soon as I said it, Mall po-po bounced her like a fucking pogo stick.

We get outside and my girlfriend’s like “that is the most Slytherin thing I have ever seen anyone do.”

It was four years before I saw the Army back in that mall.

bhuttu

that is beautiful

100slytherin

Holiday reminder: don’t let anyone get away with trying to make you feel bad about yourself.

shinosarna

They are also violently transphobic, and Salvation Army ran homeless shelter refused to let in Jennifer Gale because she was trans, leading to her freezing to death on the sidewalk right outside it!

So yeah, they’re not just ‘homophobic’, they’re bigoted fucking murderers.

(Wikipedia article on her death conveniently (for SA) omits Salvation Army connection, linking only to expired articles from local newspapers)

SA claims that they didn’t turn her away, and accept all homeless people, except, it’s not like Jennifer Gale was only trans woman refused shelter by Salvation Army, making this denial appear to be worth less than bullshit:

https://thinkprogress.org/salvation-army-refuses-housing-shelter-to-transgender-woman-2660c79b4cd4#.bo53qrxf9

http://www.msnbc.com/way-too-early/transgender-woman-claims-she-was-refused-housing

moldy-mac-n-cheese

and to think i was gonna help my aunt with this…

raivaryn

Annual reminder not to trust what our SA donations actually support.

There are plenty of other charities who help out the needy this time of year. Support a local food bank or community housing center.

pastelroswell

THIS IS SO IMPORTANT I’ve told ppl this but now I have sources

obaewankenope

Salvation Army are scum. Judgemental assholes.

gay-jesus-probably

And let’s all remember that one twitter thread from a homeless woman in a Salvation Army shelter SPECIFICALLY warning people that the SA is a piece of shit and nobody should donate to them

gayfeatherfiend

🎊Tis the season for reminders: Salvation Army is a horrifically conservative as well as plainly ineffective charity that runs more like a business. And actively spreading reasons not to support them helps them wither amd make room for more productive and hollistic charities.

Another great seasonal reminder: Slytherins are awesome 🐍🐍🐍