Art and Writing

Here to draw, write, and look at video game art. Call me Sky or Snow!    apex sidebblog - @skythenolife

[caimofnoceur]

17 free and helpful things, that everyone can take advantage of

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library They send an age appropriate book once a month if you have a child younger than 5.

Project Gutenberg Lots of free classic books.

Library Genesis A great place to look for and download college/university textbooks for free, as well as other books.

Scihub Endless Free college books. (and peer-reviewed scientific publications that are otherwise hidden behind a paywall)

Khan Academy Free knowledge that you can use to clep out of university courses, or to simply invest your time in a worthwhile topic.

Openlearn UK’s Open University - free courses for all levels of study, samples of university materials, study skills and tie-ins to BBC documentaries. Everything under Creative Commons licence so you can use it as you see fit.

Duolingo The Green Owl of Languages. There are a few hundred that it teaches and the mobile app makes it easy to do anywhere while waiting (!warning! only good for Spanish, German, French, Dutch, Esperanto, and English. with anything else it gets very low-quality and short.).

Codecademy An awesome site to learn how to use some programming languages. Doesn't get into the really advanced stuff, but it's good for a start.

Photopea Completely free Photoshop clone that has all the basic features of Photoshop, using basically the same interface.

Gimp Another free version of Photoshop.

Unsplash Stock of free photos of just about anything, provided by the photographers themselves, to do with what you like.

Futureme You can write letters to yourself (or other people) in the future! You can also make notifications and reminders of a +doctors appointments or anything else important.

Heavens Above You can look up all the satellites flying over your house tonight, including the ISS, Hubble Space Telescope, those pesky Starlink satellites, and whatever else your heart desires, complete with star maps and precise timing. And there is an Android app, but unfortunately no iOS one last I checked. (For iOS you can use “Sputnik!” which is free and tells, when ISS and Hubble passes overhead.)

Night Sky Other astronomy app for iOS. If you hold your phone to the sky the app tells you what you're looking at (or point it at the ground for a view from the other side of the planet). Zoom in with two fingers and tons of deep space stuff is revealed.

Freecycle its literally people giving away stuff they don't need/want any more that they can't/don't care enough to sell.

Nexus Mods Has thousands of video game mods (for 1,509 PC games), made by independent content creators, available to download at no cost.

Archive The Archive aka Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and so much more... For example a lot of DOS games (classics like Prince of Persia, Oregon Trail, DOOM, Monkey island, Rayman, Turtles), directly playable through the browser.

My earlier list

More things to do

[embodiedfutures]

Better Future Program’s Liberation Library offers over 3,000 free social justice, mental health, and academic resources including PDF novels, academic papers, studying resources, movies, community-recommended games, and more!

Please share so we can create equitable accessibility to activism and education for all.

[cisthoughtcrime]

[afeelgoodblog]

It made me smile, so maybe it’ll make you smile too!

[thetroublesofbeingtrans]

link to original tweet

[lacefuneral]

anyway shout out to transhet men and transhet people in general. you're amazing and you didn't "betray" anyone or "abandon" anyone or "become the enemy" - you deserve love, respect, and happiness

[georgeboleyn-againstovertime]

Trans men have been demonized completely by the very community that’s sposed to protect an love them.

[sevenbillionlunatics-deactivate]

It's unfortunate. I genuinely think they're joking and don't realise how much some people actually believe that shit and how it actually changes how trans folks view themselves.

[vaspider]

I actually don't really think they're joking. I think that a lot of people in the queer community don't realize how much the political lesbian/radfem simplistic view of "men bad" has infected the community as a whole.

You see it in the "my sexuality is every girl and precisely one man" which is hugely widespread in the way m-spec women discuss their sexualities. (Which is not to say that a lot of women don't feel that way, just that when I've pointed this out to my friends, and how shitty it made me and other transmascs/men feel, a bunch of them went 'oh shit, you're right.') You see it in how m-spec women are made to feel like they should apologize for being attracted to or involved with men/mascs, and how lesbian/sapphic/queer spaces eject -- sometimes violently -- m-spec women in "straight-passing" relationships. (This also happens to m-spec mascs/men, but not so loudly, and in a different way.)

You see it in the long and storied way that transmascs and trans men have been treated in our community. This isn't the first time that trans men have been told they are 'giving up womanhood' and how dare they. There's a scene in The L Word, a show that ended 12 years ago, which has a character literally saying that to a trans man, that he's 'giving up the most beautiful thing' by transitioning, and that thing is 'being a woman.'

This isn't a new message, that men are the enemy, and that anyone who voluntarily chooses masculinity or manhood (whatever form of masculinity or manhood they choose) is a gender traitor, "joining the enemy," deluded, attempting to "opt out" of misogyny, or any number of other loathsome ideas. This spills over into the idea that transmascs/men have "aligned interests" with TERFs, that we don't actually face societal transphobia, that we aren't targeted by institutional transphobia in any way, that we're 'collateral damage' of the "real" transphobia that transfems face, that we magically just gain male privilege the moment we start transitioning, that we're never targeted by misogyny, that we don't face physical violence, that we've "joined the oppressors" and are somehow capable as a class of being the oppressors of transfems rather than simply another oppressed class (which is its own topic that deserves like, a whole-ass essay, but whatever) that transmisandry isn't a "real" thing and transmascs don't face any sort of specific-to-us discrimination or issues... and all of those ideas damage our ability as a community to discuss and ameliorate these sometimes-fatal and always-damaging ideas.

Hell, to listen to people within the community talk, you wouldn't think that JK Rowling's horrible essay didn't spend a huge chunk of time misgendering and gaslighting transmascs, or that one of the big "bibles" of TERFery (Ab*gail Shrier's 'Irreversible Damage') wasn't targeted very specifically, fucking laser-focused, on transmascs, including non-binary transmascs. And this all spills out from the idea that we don't face any 'real' oppression because we've 'joined the majority/oppressors,' and "men are bad," which is such base-level 1970s retro radfem nonsense.

And honestly, at the end of the day? It doesn't matter if it's a joke, and I'm pretty displeased with "oh they don't understand that it's serious and they think it's just a joke." These sorts of "jokes", levied at transmasc people, aren't okay. Maybe if it's just you and your buds who have given each other permission to shit-talk each other, and you know each other and have personal context with one another, sure. But in this sort of open, parasocial context where you have people who don't know these two transhets, it is always damaging, and saying "gosh I think they just think it's a joke" does the opposite of excusing it.

This lateral aggression shit is terrible and damaging to lots of people -- I honestly think there's no segment of the queer community that this doesn't directly damage, and we should challenge it whenever we see it, not make excuses or permission for it in the slightest way.

[cipheramnesia]

We are way, way past "I was being an ironic bigot." The idea that can be a thing needs to be permanently buried.

[vaspider]

Yup.

[libraford]

It was kind of interesting to me that out of all the people in our training group, the ones that were the quickest to form social bonds were the people from way out in the country and the city people just kind of quietly kept to themselves.

But I was definitely accepted as one of the bumpkins.

[gallusrostromegalus]

Oh! This is actually an example of Rural vs Urban manners.

In rural/less densely populated areas, the polite thing is to offer people your time and social energy which is why country people will talk your ear off at the slightest acquaintence- it’s kind of lonely when you have to make an effort to see people, so you Make An Effort ™

In Urban/Densely populated areas, you’re meeting people whether you want to or not, because you are physically close to each other constantly. So the Polite Thing there is to kind of ignore other people and keep strictly to business, so you’re not imposing upon thier (probably already drained) soical spoons.

The city folks will warm right up to you once they get to know you well enough to know that talking to you won’t piss you off.

[longdogsinc]

I grew up rural and live in the SF Bay Area now, and this is exactly how it is.

Appropriate city behavior is about *efficiency*, creating the least friction possible in every interaction because everyone has somewhere to be and is trying to pretend they don’t have strangers in their personal bubble *all day long*.

In SF, chatting with the bank teller a second longer than necessary is rude AF because there are 10 people in line and the teller is running behind and you are inconviencing *everyone*. They will deal with 1000 customers today and they genuinely don’t have it in them to form a friendly relationship with you.

In the little forest where I grew up you could stop your car in the middle of a one lane street to chat up a friend on the sidewalk. Any other cars would just go around you. There wasn’t much traffic, it was fine. If you’re one of 50 people the bank teller is gonna see today and there’s no line, it’s actually nice to ask how their day has been and commiserate about the roadwork at the single downtown traffic light.

City & country folks are operating under very different pressures and both are “right”, but it can be hard for city people to remember how to just…shoot the shit with strangers.

[x-menunited]

[marxisforbros]

“There’s a cure?!” asked the girl that kills everything she touches.  “Hey shut up we’re perf” replied the girl that makes clouds. 

[theboylondon]

For real though. Storm has stopped an entire tsunami before. “Makes clouds my ass” she can conjure lightning and tornadoes and is revered as a god in her tribe. She literally changes atmospheric pressure and that’s how she flies. So fuck you. Storm is flawless.

[sun-spiral-deactivated20210109]

I think you missed the part where the GIRL WHO KILLS EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHES wants to NOT KILL EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHES and everyone dismisses her incredible misfortune just because the lady who is the AVATAR OF THE STORM won the fucking SUPERPOWER LOTTERY

[mangonetics]

“Finally, a cure for my chainsaw hands!” decreed Chainsaw-Hands Joe.

“There is no cure,” said Johnny Five-Dicks. “There’s nothing wrong with us.”

[holyromanhomo]

The last comment literally always cracks me up

[veronicaawakens]

The X-Men are an extremely good metaphor for oppressed minorities until they are suddenly an extremely terrible metaphor for oppressed minorities.

[davidmann95]

The scale on which the first reply misses the point literally never ceases to awe me.

[lyricwritesprose]

I gotta say, though, this is a place where the X-men are being a good metaphor for oppressed minorities.  Specifically, in this case, the disabled community.

“Yay, there’s a cure!” says the girl with depression.  “Cure for what, motherfucker, I’m not sick,” says the person with autism.

“Yay, there’s a cure!” I say, with my fibromyalgia and random bad pain days.  “Yes, because it’s easier to talk about eliminating us than talk about teaching sign language in school,” says the Deaf person.  “‘Cure’ is violent rhetoric.”

The problem is, of course, that a vast number of things have been aggregated under the label of “disability,” and many of them don’t even resemble each other.  Depression sucks in an objective fashion, whereas autism is just a way of being (which, like many ways of being, may suck at some times, and generally sucks worse when not accommodated).  Similar deal with chronic pain versus the Deaf community.  These things really should not be grouped together, but they are.  And since they are grouped so haphazardly, they will often be at cross-purposes.

It is ridiculous, in the X-men universe, to classify all “mutants” as one group.  You have ridiculously powerful people with little downside, you have powerful people with a major downside, you have people with very limited powers but few drawbacks, you have people with limited powers and massive drawbacks, and that’s not even getting into other divisions, like whether you look like a baseline human all the time, part of the time, or none of the time.  “Realistically,” if you can apply that word to a fantasy universe, Storm and Rogue belong to completely different minorities which should require completely different approaches.  But society has grouped them under one umbrella, or forced them to group themselves for self-protection, and thus you have conversations like the one above.

So it’s actually not a bad take.  Mind you, the X-men have had bad takes, and will do so again, and I’m skeptical about whether “powers” of any kind even work for a metaphor about minority representation—but this particular vignette has something useful to say.

[philosopherking1887]

Thank you, thank you, thank you. This is exactly what bothers me about purely social analyses of disability.

[tahthetrickster]

LOVE to watch an expert in their field explain to me a bunch of shit i didn’t know

[image description:

2 twitter posts in a thread, both from @tahthetrickster​ 

post 1: youtube recs have finally nailed my favorite brand of video and that brand is Expert In A Subject Drags Content Farm Videos About Their Subject

post 2: yes i DO want to see the soap lady be horrified. yes i DO want to watch the bookbinder shout at her screen. yes i DO want to watch this man who looks like a google search result of “plumber” debunk plumbing hacks. yes i DO want to watch ann reardon destroy her microwave again

end description]

[tahthetrickster]

for those who also love to see subject experts going absolutely apeshit about fake content farm video “hacks” please enjoy:

soap lady being horrified

bookbinder shouting at her screen

man who looks like a google image search result of the word “plumber” debunking plumbing hacks

ann reardon destroying her microwave in the name of debunking is a more vague one bc as a food scientist she destroys her microwave like once a month for these so heres just her entire playlist of debunking shenanigans

please join me in enjoying subject experts being incredulous at blossom, five-minute crafts, troom troom, and more

[tahthetrickster]

i have no idea what popular blog dug this up to make it explode in the past 48hrs but im glad to see that 1 we all appreciate dave’s willingness to Just Try Shit and 2 we’re all in agreement that roger wakefield does in fact look like the platonic ideal of a plumber

[tahthetrickster]

as an aside the people in the notes who keep recommending that i look up ann reardon from how to cook that owe me $5 and also a 3-page essay on the importance of reading comprehension due on my desk by wednesday

[falseinnocencereturns]

[gaycism]

op's redemption arc was nice though

[papapuffv2-deactivated20220628]

This was a nice progression of character development

[punk-jaskier]

"I don't talk like that in real life" stood out to me in this. Because I think a LOT of the people who get attacked for mean posts on the internet and are suddenly confused and defensive are probably pretty nice people irl. (Not everyone obviously, some people do truely suck but that's not the point I'm making)

The internet has fostered and developed a culture of "being needlessly mean is funny". No one is immune to it, even genuinely nice people. Unfortunately, the internet has also bred a culture of the "I was just trying to be funny!!!" defense instead of doing what this guy did and going "huh, maybe I was wrong if so many people are pissed".

Be like this guy, own up if/when you fall for the easy internet trap of "being mean for laughs" and try to see the world from someone else's perspective.

[aleshakills]

I don’t think you’re ready to have an adult conversation about politics until you’re able to admit that there are things you love and enjoy that would not and should not exist in a just world. $8 billion dollar budget movies every other month don’t exist in a just world. New 900 GB AAA video games every year don’t exist in a just world. Next day delivery doesn’t exist in a just world. 80 different soda brands don’t exist in a just world. 

All of those things come from exploitation on some level, and if you wouldn’t trade those for a world where everyone can eat and have a home no matter who they are or what they do, I don’t know what to tell you. 

[captain-acab]

Man, this post makes me feel conflicted, because on the one hand, of the things listed, next-day delivery is the only one that DOES actually exist in the world today. The others are exaggerations, and while I understand the point being made, they do detract from it.

I understand—and agree with—that sentiment of, “I want slower deliveries by drivers who are paid better,” as one recent tumblr post put it. I absolutely agree with the idea that we need to produce and consume less as a culture, and that an actual substantive conversation about politics should involve willingness to relinquish the many modern luxuries that are built on exploitation.

I don’t think these are good examples of those luxuries, though.

Large budget movies are possible because consumers (and investors) are willing to pay for them. A large budget is actually a necessary component in making sure workers are being adequately compensated; the fact that they currently are often exploited by studios is a result of deliberate misallocation of resources, not anything intrinsic to the size of the production. Same thing goes with high-quality video games. As for releasing a new film/game every month/year, that’s only unsustainable because there’s only a handful of monopolistic studios doing it. In a well-regulated industry that encourages growth and competition, we could see tens, if not hundreds of studios producing big-budget films and games. And, with a well-compensated and socially-supported citizenry, consumers would have enough disposable income to support it.

Similarly, the problem with soda isn’t that we have 80 brands; it’s that we have two. And those two brands each own 800 different labels. In a healthy economy, these monopolies would be dissolved, and we could support well over 80 moderately-sized independent beverage companies producing their own sodas.

Same-day delivery, again, could be easily supported with proper allocation of resources. Currently, we have huge centralized distributors like Amazon exploiting gig-workers with slave-wages to ferry cheap mass-produced crap to people, and that’s what makes it bad, not the speed at which they do it. If instead, we had something like a super-robust USPS, with well-compensated deliverypeople working reasonable hours within a decentralized network of independent-but-cooperative suppliers, there would be absolutely no reason why you couldn’t get something delivered to you from the distro ten miles down the road within a day.

When we critique capitalism, and they respond, “Yeah, well capitalism made the cell phone you’re using!” our response shouldn’t be, “Oh shit u right,” it should be, “No, capitalism made the cell phone I’m using break after a year so I’ll buy a new one, and they use slave labor to do it while they pocket the rest.”

There are luxuries, and there are artificially-valued, mass-produced, built-to-break trash that are marketed as luxuries. But we don’t solve the problems of fast-fashion by saying, “Welp I guess I shouldn’t wear clothes.”

[bisexualbaker]

Tips for baking with arthritis and other hand-related chronic pain

With some changes to techniques, a careful selection of kitchen tools, and tips from fellow bakers, the joy of baking can live on.

I luckily haven't had to deal with much chronic pain or hand pain yet, especially with regards to baking (crochet is another story). That said, these look like some pretty solid tips! There's also some in the comments section.

[bisexualbaker]

As this link nears five hundred notes, I'm just... very quietly touched at how many people are sharing it. Whether they need it themselves (or think they will someday), or know someone else who might need it, the fact that all of them are sharing the sentiment of "I want the people who love doing this thing to be able to keep doing the thing that they love" is... yeah. It makes me happy.

[butchcorgi]

when i say that talking to very offline gay people in real life is important what i mean is my workplace sponsored a seminar i attended today run by a local lgbtq+ advocacy organization and the speaker was an elderly gay man who mentioned how a lot of people his age are uncomfortable with the word “queer” because they’ve been hurt a lot by it but many younger folks identify with it so it’s always best to just ask someone how they feel about it before using it for them and i could only feel a profoundly tired sadness that this guy who understood the community through slightly dated terminology would get ripped apart for all that as if he doesn’t have a more empathetic regard for other people than like 90% of the bitches on this site

[butchcorgi]

i’ve seen enough long-winded posts that boil down to “only t//rfs say queer is a slur!” that i’ve begun to think of this as a case of cognitive dissonance. when people who have never had the term weaponized against them hear “queer is a slur”, what they hear is “no one should use this word for any reason, ever.” what i find, though, is that most people who recognize the word’s history as a slur aren’t arguing that at all. people’s assertion that the word should be recognized for what it is - a potent weapon in the wrong hands - often comes from bad personal experiences with it and a simple desire not to be called that.

when i say that queer is a slur, what gets lost on folks likes these is “my brother still regularly refers to me around friends as ‘my sister who’s a fuckin queer’ and i got tired of hearing that all the time, please don’t call me that” and they get so angry that i suspect that even if they knew my background, they wouldn’t care. they’re too busy doing all this grandstanding against an argument that isn’t really being made, but i’m not going to tell a couple of my students who don’t feel like defining their sexuality in clearer terms that they can’t call themselves that. when it comes to what people personally identify with, i really could not care less. what i generally hope for from people who don’t get upset by the word is enough of an understanding to just shrug and accept that i don’t like it for the same reasons i still flinch when i hear the word “retard”, but the phrase “your experiences are not universal” is one which continues to confound those who only talk about lgbt+ issues online.

[butchcorgi]

you guys can’t let posts like these breach containment because all it teaches me is just how many people here don’t know what a slur is or isn’t

[ampervadasz]

[shintox]

This man’s even wearing gloves so his sweetly hands don’t slow his swipes down..

[bazemayonnaise]

once went to a japanese arcade and a man watched me play the taiko (drumming) game, gave me a little applause, and then started his game, pulled out a set of custom drum sticks from a bag that held several different weights and then proceeded to play faster than the speed of light.

[goldenfuzface]

As someone who lives in Asia, where speed-break-your-wrists type of games are incredibly popular. Yeah. Thats just how it is. You walk in any arcade, up to any cabinet, claw game, DDR, anything. And %80 of the time there will be some dude with a bag of quarters, who watches you play a game or two, then happily nods, claps and smiles at you. Before they reveal they have the key to open a rift in time and space. They show you a glimpse at the answers of the universe while simultaneously showing you what you could have accomplished if you never accepted the rules and boundaries of the universe. Then, if your lucky, they might gift you a little plush you waisted $34 in won and about 2 hours trying to get it yourself. You will never see them again after this.

[exeggcute]

lol I am in such a stressed-out blind rage today from insurance bullshit that I wrote up a glossary of health insurance terms (things like deductibles, premiums, and copays) because all the free guides online are unnecessarily complicated and the only way you can squeeze a dime out of these bullshit companies is to understand their overly-complicated policies. give em hell

[dissociacrip]

ppl make jokes abt having noisy joints on here a lot and i hope most of u know that’s not a normal thing to experience esp. when it’s accompanied by pain and/or affecting ur ability to do “everyday” activities. some ppl in our lives might tell us everyone is hurting all the time or disregard our issues when we bring them up or w/e but u should not ignore ur body if it’s telling u something is amiss. at best u shouldn’t have to suffer through chronic pain/body issues even if it’s non-progressive and at worst it can sometimes lead to more impairing consequences later on in life if it’s ignored.

[padmedala]

i’d be really curious to know what percent of queerbaiting is 

a) an intentional marketing scheme to stir interest in the project and attract certain fanbases (lgbtq people and young women) vs. 

b) members of the creative team genuinely wanting to write queer characters but the corporate side of things force them to tone it down but they still leave little hints vs. 

c) they legitimately did not know how gay something would come across

[lafgl]

The answer: A is 100%. Because B and C are not queerbaiting. The literal meaning and definition of it is A.

[counterpunches]

#a) queerbaiting #b) queer coding #c) subtext

[iwatchforher]

bonus:

[vaspider]

After I had a doctor ruin my health, cost me years of my life, and nearly kill me by missing the diagnosis of a tumor which was compressing my spinal cord, I learned this script:

“I’m not here to talk about my weight; I’m here to talk about [problem]. I have a history of doctors focusing on my weight and ignoring problems like ‘a tumor in my spine,’ so I’m sure you’ll understand why I would prefer we did not ignore my stated complaint to focus on my weight instead.”

“I would like to focus on the complaint that brought me in today, which is [complaint], not my weight.”

“What tests or course of treatment would you recommend to a thin person presenting with my symptoms? Why are we not doing that? I would prefer to proceed with those tests and that course of treatment.”

“Please write in my chart that I asked you for these tests and course of treatment that you would give a thin patient with my symptoms, and you declined.”

“I’d like to request a copy of my visit notes from today,” [if the above don’t work and you don’t have MyChart, “what’s the correct email for my written request?”

It may be difficult to insist on a patient advocate to be in the room with you, but in many states you are legally entitled to one. I bring one of my partners bc I have medical-triggered PTSD. They know how to advocate for me or support me if a doctor tries to steamroll me..

If you are in a hospital situation and cannot get an official advocate in the room with you, ask for a chaplain. Chaplains are used to being in a room to comfort and help patients and in many circumstances, just having a witness in the room will change a doctor’s tune REALLY fast.

Medical fatphobia is a big problem, and it really heavily affects but is not restricted to people that doctors perceive to be women (whether or not those people are women). Don’t let yourself be bullied!

[bigfatscience]

Excellent scripts and advice!

Having a witness present is a truly excellent tip. Recently, someone I love was subjected to weight-based abuse by a doctor whose “pet project” was “helping” people lose weight by harassing them for most of the visit and recommending dangerous practices like fasting and fad diet websites. At a follow-up visit there was a nurse present, and the appointment got *real* professional *real* fast.

[autisticchangeling]

Shout out to disabled people who don't, can't, or shouldn't drive. You are not a burden, and even if you technically ""could"" drive you are not obligated to if it would be unsafe for you or others

Not being able to drive can be an inconvenience, but it is not a moral or personal failing. If anything, the failing is on behalf of society for not having better and more convenient public transportation for everyone