One day, many years from now, i will be free and traveling the world. I won't be bound to bed, I'll learn how to love all foods and remember all constellations resting in the night sky.
If you follow Selmers to the poetry society meeting in Night In The Woods, this is her poem.
I loved it and the themes of the game, and wanted to use it as practice to see if i can control the way readers ‘hear’ the words through images.
ive been trying to change my way of living but honestly, the past few months have mostly been stagnation. i got the knowledge about the things i want to change about myself and how to do it - the problem lies in the fact that i don't have enough will to actually, truly try.
this post is a promise - because if it's written somewhere, if someone sees it - it becomes real.
i will let myself change
i will welcome the feeling of being lost and confused while taking new roads and paths
i will let myself discover things anew and let go at the same time
Pinning this since I genuinely think Piracy is a great skill to have and I want to share it with anyone who'd like to see it
Okay so! You need to download something!
Be it a movie, a game, a software, a book. Where do you even start? You know people catch viruses or fines pirating, so how to do it, and do it safely? This is going to be a bit verbose, so coloured text has the most important info. THIS WILL BE LONG but you can just skim it! (P.S. there are some goodies for artists in the end so do take a peek there if you do art and would like courses or procreate brushes) By the end of this you should be able to download or stream almost anything.
(Disclaimer: I'm not super knowledgeable on the technical side of things, just a moderately seasoned pirate. Will explain stuff to the best of my abilities, but there will be wild semplifications. If there's any issue, or precisations you'd like to make, or just need a hand with something, feel free to reach out to me directly on here!)
Putting a cut here so I don't spam your dashes <3 - now, here we go:
First off: ADBLOCKERS. It's dangerous to go alone. Take this: a little browser add-on that will prevent you from seeing ads and popups ever again. Yeah, no more ads on Youtube either btw. Most malware you risk getting while pirating is the result of ads and pop-ups!
Important: Chromium based browsers will start dropping support for adblockers starting 2023. These include: Chrome, Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, Brave. (Brave has its built-in adblocker, but it's very controversial, has a huge focus on crypto, and tries to push its own crypto trading ads on you, among other things.)
This is simply happening because Google (who mantains Chromium) is in big parts an Ad Company, aka makes money from selling ads to you.
Mozilla Firefox is not affiliated or mantained in any way by Google, and will support Adblocking indefinitely. Just so you know.
The BEST Ad Blocker around is uBlock Origin, by Raymond Hill (gorhill). It's recommended that you use it at all times, as it will not slow down your browser but will improve your user experience drastically! Official add-on installs: Firefox, Chrome (until 2023)
How does it work?
There are two kinds of downloads: Direct Downloads and Torrents.
Direct Download Link (DDL): you click on the thing, the browser downloads it. Simple! It's an 1 on 1 communication between you and their servers. Pros: no hassle, super easy, nothing else to do, pretty safe. Cons: downloading big files is sloooow, and if your connection falters just a few seconds, you gotta start from the top again.
Torrenting: the good stuff. It's "Peer to Peer", or P2P. The way I understand it: you're put in a room (a "swarm") with a bunch of people. Some want the file (Peers and Leechers), some already have it and are giving it around (Seeders). You all share small pieces of the file around, and eventually everyone will get a complete file.
Seeders are the most important part: a torrent with zero seeders will not start (no one is giving out the file). A torrent with 200 seeders will be immensely faster than one with 3 seeders.
It's good etiquette to seed back what you download, in a 1:1.10 ratio: you upload what you downloaded (1:1) and then a little more. Sharing is caring!
Pros: fast, you can stop and resume whenever you want, you can find torrents of mostly anything, easy to download big files.
Cons: unsafe without a VPN (might get fined), a bit harder to understand, might take an hour or two to set everything up.
We will get more into Torrenting right now, as it will be the main way to pirate things.
How to Torrent files?
You will need: a Torrent Client, a VPN (optional, recommended), and either a .torrent file or a magnet link. Don't panic, this is easy!
Torrent Client: a little software that will actually manage the downloading. There is no reason to use anything else than qBittorrent: it's free, open source, frequently updated, has no ads, and has a neat little feature that we will see later. Download and install it and you're all set!
VPN: ok, so. You *can* download things without a VPN. I've done it a bunch. Please know, it's unsafe. VPNs are, like, the condoms of piracy. Depending on how strict your Internet Service Providers are about piracy, without them you might get a hefty fine, or simply a warning, or nothing at all. With torrenting, sadly, ISPs can kind of exactly see what you're downloading. VPNs fool your ISP. I'm not a fan of how much VPN services are fooling us in thinking we need them - but sadly us pirates DO need them.
I would personally not recommend free VPNs, they aren't too reliable in my experience. I also advice to use a VPN that allows "port forwarding" as that will make the downloads faster.
The most loved VPN service in the pirating community is Mullvad. It's VERY secure, actually cares about your privacy (unlike Nord, or even Proton sadly), has no yearly plans to rope you into nasty subscription models. It's so privacy oriented that you don't even need an email, they will simply give you an account number and you will use that. They do NOT want your data. Super neat!
Their service is 5€ a month, and I suggest paying only one month, downloading a shitton of stuff, and then just leaving it be until you need another month of downloading bonanza.
You will see they accept and encourage crypto payments. Please don't judge them too harshly for this. I hate crypto as much as the next tumblr user - but this is not for crypto bros, this is because they really would like to not have your data if possible. There's people who want to avoid leaving behind any sort of trail showing that they, personally, purchased a VPN, and this option serves them.
Torrent files, magnet links: a torrent file is an actual file you download and open in your client. You download "bee_move.torrent", open it in qBittorrent, and it will start downloading! A magnet link simply bypasses having an actual file. it's a link that you will directly open in your client and will tell it what it needs to know, and acts in place of a .torrent file. They're virtually the same. There are dedicated torrent sites that let you search for the torrent you want, and offer either a torrent file or magnet download. Let's see how to find them!
Where to find stuff?
r/piracy Megathread - there are links to pirate anything that could be pirated. Navigate to the section you need and follow the instructions! There are usually both Torrent sites and direct download links. The masterpost isn't being mantained anymore - as of 31/10/2022, I'm still having luck with it and finding it a great resource. There are other masterposts though. For example, the Awesome Piracy megathread and the r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH wiki. As of April 2023, it’s being rewritten!! Hell yeah!! Go check it out!
But some of the torrent sites listed on the masterposts are broken! :(
I hear ya, I hear ya! It's perfectly normal. For technical / legal reasons that I cannot comprehend, torrent sites need to change URLs often. This is where unblockit comes in. I'm not sure how it works, so I'm just going to say that it's magic. It gives you working links to all the best torrenting, streaming, DDL sites. From books to music to, uh, adult material. I usually refer to the masterpost to know which sites are the most trustworthy, and then use unblockit to access them. Generally, for example, you will want to avoid ThePirateBay, and prefer 1337x instead.
ALMOST DONE!!! There's one last important thing to set. This is a safety measure, for those who use a VPN service and want to make the most of it.
At times, the VPN connection you are using might falter for some seconds. These few seconds that it's not working, your torrent might still be downloading, exposing your IP address briefly and letting your ISP catch you. There is an easy and quick way to prevent this from happening. It's called binding the VPN network interface to your torrent client - it's a big name, but it means you tell your client (qBittorrent) to ONLY connect to the internet via the VPN. No VPN? No connection. No IP leakage. Linked guide above will take you a couple minutes at most.
This is the basic stuff! :D You should be able to download pretty much all you need just from this!
However, since I'm a nerd, here's some other useful things, or more niche sites.
There are tips to make torrenting with VPN faster - I gotta be honest man, I still don't understand *how* this "Port Forwarding" business works, and for some reason I cannot get it to work right now with Mullvad (previously I had North which doesn't support this feature at all). My internet is too slow for me to really mind, anyway. But you should look into it if you're using a VPN and getting slow download speeds on torrents with 20+ active seeders.
Now, this is for all the artists out there. Online-courses.club has, like, an INFINITY of art courses and tutorials, and even some software. It's INSANE, super helpful, some of these courses would otherwise cost SO much. I've been getting a lot of use out of it. They're mostly DDLs, too! I can't recommend it enough!!!
Now, time for brushes. I've had a lot of difficulty finding good brushes for Procreate that didn't cost too much. This telegram channel has a neverending quantity of Procreate brushes: t.me/free_brushes. Sometimes Photoshop brushes crop up too. For some popular brushes, they ask for "donations" to download them instead of giving the actual download, which is a big yikes honestly. Thankfully, it's rare. In there, if you scroll really far, there's also a link to another smaller group to download Max Ulichney's brushes.
My favourite way to pirate and share music is Soulseek, a neat little software that work as a Peer To Peer service, but between you and a single other person at a time. You share all your music folder, and others can download from it when you're online. In return, you can download other people's music from their shared folders. It's lovely, the quality of the files is GREAT, the community is actually really chill and honest, since it's just a bunch of peeps sharing mp3s and flacs.
There's also a LOT of telegram bots to download music or videos from several platforms. @MusicDownloaderRobot downloads from Spotify, @joeymusicbot from Deezer, @mediadownbot rips videos and music from stuff like reddit, tiktok, facebook, twitter etc, and t.me/BotsArchive has a vast collection of bots just like these. They can come in handy!
Lastly, since I am Italian, here's some resources to find italian material.
Those around my age or older might remember TNT Village as the n.1 source of italian torrents. It's closed down, but the magnet links for archived stuff are still out there. Only way to access them that I found rn is this Telegram bot: @tntvsearchbot. Source code here for those who understand this stuff.
There's also programmiedovetrovarli, great resource for famous software (Adobe, Office, etc) with instructions in italian. Needs adblocker to be deactivated on their site, but has no popup ads, just standard banners.
Well, this was a lot! Thank you for reading, I hope I was able to help in some way!
Please remember: illegal does not automatically mean unethical, or immoral. Everyone is free to choose what to do and think about piracy. Don't ruin this for those who choose to engage with it, and don't push this on those who'd rather steer clear. I am personally sharing this with you, because my personal opinion is that pirating is often moral, and avoiding giving money to certain corporations (Adobe and Disney come to mind) is always preferred when you can't or don't want to outright avoid and boycott their products altogether.
If you can afford to, always support small creators and artists.
If you cannot afford to, then consider that pirating and enjoying their creations, then spreading the word and talking about it online, is still beneficial to them!
(aka a resource masterlist/archive from an amateur librarian)
LAST UPDATED NOVEMBER 11, 2024
PART 1: THE SOUP (disc. February 28, 2023)
disclaimer: most of these will pull up my reblog, not the original link. this is in no way me trying to take credit, but it was just easier and more efficient to get the links this way, and makes the resource still partially accessible if a blog is deactivated.
just like part one!: if you see your post on here and would like it removed or credited in a certain way, send me a message. i’m more than happy to do that!
this will be continuously updated. click the original post to check if the date has changed.
you can also search “updated version” in my blog to pull up the most recent edit
not all of these are direct guides! a lot of this is inspiration for your own personal praxis
The Featured
some things that are particularly relevant right now or what I find most interesting
Self Managed Abortion
Managing War Anxiety
Testosterone is for Girls, Too! (zine for purchase)
Solarpunk in Different Parts of the World
Gardening + Gardening DIYs
Sharing the Fruits of Your Labor
Healthy Soil
Ani's Tomato and Pepper Harvest
Moostie's Guide to Carrot Tops
DIY [Non-Fibre]
Filtering Rainwater
Tech
Pirating Resources
uBlock Origin's Official Guide to Bypassing Youtube Anti-AdBlock
[Google] Drives
Cooking/Foraging
Scrap Soup
Random Tips for an Amateur Cook
Mending + Fibre Arts
Solar Dyeing
Making Yarn from Scratch
Inspo for Mending a Belt
Inspo for Decorating a Jacket
On Acrylic Yarn
Thought, Theory + Idea Lists
Ways to Live in Direct Opposition to Capitalism
Rural Solarpunk
Activism in the Winter Months
Social Workers, Not Cops
Importance of Trades
Solarpunk in Different Parts of the World
Boomer Positivity
Stories of Transfem Acceptance
Staying Critical of "Self-Sufficiency"
Shopping
Native Seeds Search
Volunteerism, Protesting + Community Activism
Community Fridges/Freedges
Free Little Library for MOVIES!
Nzambi Matee Recycles Plastic to Make Bricks that are Stronger than Concrete
Workplace Advocacy
A Legit Way to Fight the Climate Crisis from Where You're Sitting Right Now
Village Tackles Speeding by Planting Thousands of Flowers Because Drivers Slow Down as They Pass By
Emotional + Physical Health
First Aid for Seizures
Masterlists, Compilations
History of Specific Depopulated Palestinian Areas
UK-Specific Solarpunk Resources
Zines
Testosterone is for Girls, Too!
T-Girl Self Defense
The Shirt, (or How to Explain Revolution to an 8-year old)
a word on the soup and the stew:
hello world!
if you've made it all the way down here, hello! hi:3
welcome to a project I've been working on for many years. 3, to be exact! which may not seem that long to you, but for me, the soup started as a way for me to collect resources as an isolated, abused teenager and give me a source of hope. I think it gave me something to hoard, to call my own, even though it never really was. it was and always has been just my organization of a community's brilliance. and along the way, people seemed to like it. with this outpouring love and a community I could finally call myself apart of, I learned to let go of false ownership and instead grow a true love for archiving, for sharing.
now, I am a free, happy adult, and that time seems like forever ago. yet I continue collecting these resources and sharing our community's brilliance as an ode to that younger self, and because I still believe in the solarpunk community and it's message:
hope! keep hoping! endure! keep enduring! above all else, we must survive, we must dream, and we must LOVE!
I hope you reflect upon these with the same gentle, hopeful heart I always have. Praise the authors, love them, love yourself, and let our hope inspire you to create and act and be.
disclaimer: most of these will pull up my reblog, not the original link. this is in no way me trying to take credit, but it was just easier and more efficient to get the links this way.
if you see your post on here and would like it removed or credited in a certain way, send me a message. i’m more than happy to do that!
this will be continuously updated. click the original post to check if the date has changed.
you can also search “updated version” in my blog to pull up the most recent edit
The Featured
some things that are particularly relevant right now or what I find most interesting
Resource Doc for Supporting Black Lives
Preparing for an Ecologically Unstable Earth
Gardening for Climate Resilience
3DS & Wii Hacking Guides
Feeding Large Groups
Visible Mending
Accessibility and Mending
Self Managed Abortion
Gardening + Gardening DIYs
Urban Gardening 101: Heirloom Seeds
Guerrilla Gardening
Seed Saving
Vegetable Growing Cheat Sheet
How to create a bee-friendly backyard or garden
Harsh Winter Gardening (look in notes)
Gardening for Climate Resilience
Sustainable Lawns
Farming While Black
Free Seeds
App for Finding Florida Compatible Plants
Forest Gardening
Making a Dead Hedge
Gardening with Plastic Bottles
Acquiring Gardening Soil
Financially Accessible Gardening w/ Native Plants
Growing Mint in the Ground
DIY + Non-Fibre Activities
Book: Making Stuff and Doing Things
How to Make Paper
Feeding Birds
Recording Stuff with A Cassette Recorder
Moss graffiti
Tech and Google Drives
Wii Gay, U Crimes (nintendo hacking)
3DS & Wii Hacking Guides
Replacing Google & Internet Privacy
More Google Drives to Movies, TV Shows, and Books
PDF Textbooks
Accessing Banned Tumblr Posts through IOS
Cooking/[Finding] Food
Cooking for Dummies (made up title)
Feeding Large Groups
Where To Dumpster Dive
Frugal Eating Resources
Finding Communal Fruit Trees
Dumpster Diving Legalities
Urban Foraging Safety Advice
Testing Ways to Eat Acorns
Mending + Fibre Arts
Plarn (Plastic Yarn)
- Plarn Idea
Dying Fabric with Plants
Mending PDF Resources Drive
Free Sewing Patterns that Adjust to your Measurements
Mending Basics
Visible Mending
Cleaning Clothes Tips
Mending Silk
INDEX: Sewing, Mending and Crafts
How to Make a Scrap-Pieced Belt
Accessibility and Mending
Mending a Notebook
Adapting Clothes for Disabilities
Make Your Own Socks
Inspirational Posts
Little Free Boxes
Climate Change Checklist Example
Pallet Bench
Communal Ideas to Change Your Neighborhood
Giving Away Shop
Solarpunk Fashion Inspo
Cottagepunk/ecopunk activities
Shopping
Indigenous Shops Masterlist
More Indigenous Shops
Ultimate Guide to Buying a Bra
Thrifting Online Tips
Volunteerism, Protesting + Community Activism
Finding Community Organizations
Supporting Protestors
Mutual Aid App
TooGoodToGo
What Foodbanks Want
Resource Doc for Supporting Black Lives
Emotional + Physical Health
DBT Workbook
Self Managed Abortion
War Anxiety Self Help Resources
Get Your Vitamin D
An Anarchist Free Herbal
Living in An Abusive Situation Tips
Safety Planning
Coping With Extreme Heat
Preparing for a Job Interview
How to Prepare to Die
Masterlists, Compilations + Idea Lists
Solar Energy Stuff You Can Do Now
Youtube Videos on Life Skills
An Intermediate Guide To Solarpunk: Activism, Vision, and Sharing Ideals
Random Solarpunk Resources
Solarpunk Anti-Boredom Activities
Resources on Ecosocialism
Free Online Courses
Baby Punk Masterlist
Want to Learn Something New in 2022?
(Legal) Access to Books/EBooks
Small Ecopunk Things You Can Do to Make a Difference
idk man! going to the library just to hang out, work on a puzzle. wearing clothes people have given to me rather than clothes I've bought. jewelry my friends have made me. writing letters. cooking food from scratch. walking a LOT. taking public transportation. braiding my hair before bed. having a cup of tea on my porch. saying hi to my neighbors and participating in workplace contests and stopping at the farmers stands on the side of the road. going to local events. smashing entire handfuls of wild berries in my fingers just to KNOW what nature is like. complimenting strangers and chatting with cashiers and bus drivers and everyone. listening to local music. buying organic when I can. putting everything down and petting my cat or thinking about eating my apple when I do. savoring the taste. refusing to listen to anything but happy music before noon. slowing down and connecting with the world might save u. idk.
DIY notebook/junk journal tutorial for people on a budget
I found myself watching a lot of bookbinding videos recently & had the realization: I could probably do that at home, for free. And I was right. So before an influencer convinces you to drop 50 dollars on a book press and a fancy bonefolder, here's how:
STEP 0: MATERIALS
Cardstock - This can be any slightly thicker paper. I've been using postcards and blank greeting cards, because they're already around the size I want, but you can even use the cardboard from a cereal box if you want something sturdier.
Scissors/Xacto knife - You need at least the scissors, but the Xacto knife makes things a lot easier. If you have an actual paper cutter, use that instead.
Glue - your choice, I've been using modpodge but you can use a glue stick, etc instead.
Sturdy tape - duct tape, electrical tape, masking tape, etc. It needs to hold up to wear and tear; washi/scotch tape will not work.
Binder or Paper clips - binder clips are my preference but large paper clips work in a pinch
Ruler(s) - If you have them, I recommend using two rulers: one metal (if you're cutting paper with an xacto knife), one plastic or wood (this will be your bonefolder).
Pen or pencil
Paper scraps - These will be the pages of your notebook. You want them to be the same size or bigger than your covers. You can use literally anything; I've been using the last blank pages of old planners and notebooks, end pages of old books, and various scraps that would otherwise be thrown away.
Safety pin - Awl substitute
Needle and thread
ADDITIONALLY you should have a) a surface to glue on and b) a surface to cut on. A piece of scrap cardboard works well for both.
--
STEP 1: DECORATING THE COVER
Take the cardstock you want to use for your cover, cut it to size if you need to, and fold it in half, using the side of your wooden/plastic ruler to flatten the crease. If you want to decorate it, take a magazine clipping or paper scrap of your choice and glue it on one side ( shown below). Avoid gluing anything onto the crease.
Flip it over and trim the sides down. Cut off the corners, then glue and fold the sides over. Use the ruler on anything you need to crease.
Flip back over and repeat for the other side! Make sure to leave a gap at the 'spine'.
STEP 2: CREATING A SIGNATURE
A "signature" is a stack of folded papers, aka, your notebook's pages. Take the papers you wish to use, fold each of them in half, and nest them together. I've been using 10 sheets of paper for mine, which will become 40 pages total. It might be harder to fit more than this into a small-sized notebook. Also, I try to arrange the sheets so that the CLEAN EDGES line up at the BOTTOM of the stack, with the rough edges at the top. This way you'll only have to trim 2 sides instead of 3.
Line your cover up with the signature's bottom edge, making sure everything inside is aligned neatly. Then slap on a binder clip and trim off some of the excess material with scissors, if needed.
Use a ruler to mark where the edge of the cover is, then remove the cover to avoid damaging it (but keep the binder clip). Hold the ruler firmly in place slightly to the left of the line you just made. Carefully make repeated, even strokes with your xacto knife along the side of the ruler to cut straight through the layers of paper. Repeat with the top of the signature.
A metal ruler is recommended for this step because a sharp xacto knife WILL CUT THROUGH PLASTIC AND WOODEN RULERS. I learned this the hard way, but if you're careful it should be fine.
If you have access to an actual paper cutter, skip this step and use that instead!! it's way faster and safer!!
The finished signatures should be the same size as your cover now.
STEP 3: PUTTING IT TOGETHER
Stick your signature into the cover, align everything, then open to the center page. Clip the pages to the cover at the top or bottom, one on each side, in this 'open' position. Make a few marks along the center crease with even spacing.
Awl time. Using your marks as a guide, CAREFULLY push your safety pin through your signature and out through notebook's spine. You might want to use a thumbtack to make things easier on your fingers.
The next step is to sew the sheets together through the holes you made. Unfortunately this is not a sewing tutorial, so if you don't know how to thread a needle you might want to pause here and look that up. I'm using a simple saddle stitch, keeping the knots on the outside. There are many ways to do the actual book binding, including just stapling it, but this is how I do it.
You can remove the binder clips at this point. The only thing left to do is reinforce the spine. Trim the thread and fold your Sturdy Tape of choice over the spine, leaving some excess at both ends. The goal here is mainly to cover up the loose thread. Split the excess along the dotted lines shown below...
...Then stick it down on the insides of the front and back cover.
How do you do media archiving? Specifically from Netflix? I'm kind of afraid to google it.
Hey there sprout! 🌱
Downloading and saving everything ever!
Netflix, I couldn't tell ya. I've heard some ppl have managed it but personally I go through either my typical movie sites - which often have a download option
As seen here ^^
On wcostream Firefox and safari both allow you to right click and straight up save the video. Firefox also has some extentions that help you save videos in general.
Alternatively, either New Pipe or y2mate are places where you can download anything you find in YouTube, videos or music.
Once downloaded, while I'd suggest your own physical drive, a Google Drive will do if you don't have access. Once organized and secured, I'd also personally get it into a physical media. If you can swing it, a few places do sell USB connected DVD burners (I'm waiting for Yule for mine!) And then blank DVDs are super cheap I bought over 50 blank ones for 2.99 where I am.
A basic point of Solarpunk is it's focus on local communities. So, get to know your communities!
Local Politics
How does your local Govenment work? Who are the people involved in it?
What is the main political climate and view in your area?
What are the most active community organisations?
What are Grasrootmovements in your areas?
Are there known leftist organisations or communities?
Local Infrastrucure
Libraries and Archives
independent buisnesses like bakerys, bookstores etc
central community centres
Thrift stores
Nature preservation centres or organisations
Food kitchens
package-free and bulk stores
Local Newspapers
Bus lines and scedules
Bike repair shops
Queer Bars and Centres
Tailors and shoe repair shops
abandoned or empty buildings/ properites
Local History
How did people live in your area 50 Years ago? 100? 200? 500?
What are their trades, culture, how did they get their food?
What is the geological and ecological history of your area? The quality of the soil? The availability of water? Local Plants?
What are some major historical events your area went through? How did they shape the peoples point of view?
What are the oldest buildings in Town? Research the architecture and building materials, as they commonly are localy sourced and help with sustainable building in your area!
These are just some ideas so please feel free to add!
i am not joking we need to force teach cooking in schools. like. it is an essential thing for survival. do you know how easy it is to make things if you know even the bare bones shit about how cooking works. we need to teach teenagers how far you can take an onion and some other veggies it’’s sad that people grow up not knowing how to prepare literally anything. and i’m not talking about oh this home ed class taught me how to make chicken nuggets at home i’m talking about learning the balancing of sweetness and acidity and saltiness and bitterness and shit like that and techniques and oil temperatures and how meats cook. it needs to be taught because it’s literally not even that difficult and it matters so much
i truly believe that knowing how to cook is a basic survival concept and the fact that so many people can’t even make simple dishes is depressing as hell this is the sorta thing that should be taught at a young age. being able to take the ingredients you have around your home and turn them into a meal is like, essential and will make life so much better. you don’t need to be a high end chef you just need to understand some things that can be easily taught… but then again maybe the education system is playing a roll against this and ultimately they want you to grow up to rely on mcdonalds for dinner. i don’t know. please learn how to cook for yourself if you’re able. i’m not asking you to hunt for specific ingredients to make some expensive youtuber’s “best” recipe but if you know the basics of cooking you can do a lot with cheap canned ingredients. cooking can be affordable i promise you just need to learn how to make do with what you can get
using & storing vegetables with recipes in the description (this one has a bit of Sassiness directed at people who dont like vegetables but the content is solid)
food safety + a recipe to demonstrate
how to learn to cook (just a list of subtopics, no actual tips)
cooking techniques playlist
how to cut x
basics with babish s1 & 2, but particularly:
freezer meals,
weeknight meals,
kitchen tools (although the specific suggestions are pretty expensive even with the lower end scale items the basic categories are solid, and you can evaluate what items you will realistcially need - eg. if you dont need to read temp for steaks etc the temp reader will not be relevant) &
kitchen care (mid-high advanced home cooking)
basic knife skills
picking the right pan for each recipe
j. kenji lopez-alt’s tips and tricks playlist
egg recipes
a little more complicated, involved, and longer than any of the rest of these but good breakdown of flavor & how and why to use the basic seasoning/flavor profiles
and then recipe channels representing various cuisines:
j. kenji lopez-alt (various)
marion’s kitchen (southeast & east asian, western/asian fusion)
maangchi (korean)
future neighbor (mostly korean)
the western supermarket playlist of chinese cooking demystified (more recipes available but these are accessible if you dont have “specialty” ingredients)
family recipes playlist by made with lau (chinese)
not another cooking show (various)
cooking with boris (bear with me here i know he does it exaggeratedly humorously but a lot of them are actually solid and beginner cook friendly. mostly slavic/russian)
you suck at cooking (also falls into the intentionally humorous category but most of the recipes are pretty solid anyway)
how to cook that (baking, also does debunking videos of viral cooking hacks - breaks down the reasons the hacks dont work, pretty important to understand those basics imo)
internet shaquille (various)
babish culinary universe (various)
i REFUSE to recommended joshua weissman because he is fucking insufferable but if you want you can try if you can deal with it, the techniques/recipes seem fine for the most part
again definitely not a comprehensive list but it touches on most of the basics
Share, because I was one of them. Twenty years old and had no Idea how to made frozen spinache proberly. Still have to learn it know (and it’s hard, when your food had to feed five people and so had to be tasty).
and with a VCR you could do all of this AND have the visuals as well… but an audio cassette recorder is a good place to start, since they’re small and simple. I would not recommend a boombox, because those are large and nowadays all very, very bad quality.
Now you may be saying “how is any of this helpful, I want a digital file…” here’s the fucking magic. You go into Audacity (free program), and lie to it that the tape recorder is really a microphone. Then you hit record on Audacity, and hit play on the tape, and let it play at regular speed. Trim and export the digital file, and you’re doing gangbusters. You’re cooking with gas. You’re thinking with portals. You’ve won the internet.
Congratulations, you can “pirate”* anything you want, and literally no one can catch you, because you’re not downloading in the traditional sense. You’re streaming to an external device, and that device is recording what it receives. It’s exactly like taping a live tv show to a VHS. This is a very low-key and non-strenuous task for the computer, since your tape recorder does all the work.
*Is this piracy? No. Well- it’s time shifting. Sort of. Tell it to my Steely Dan albums. Tell it to my The Sims: Hot Date VG Soundtrack album.
Fun fact: this is called the analog loophole, and it’s completely impossible to close, even in principle. No matter how much copy protection you add to a piece of media, it will eventually have to be sent to a display and then turned into an audio/video output that humans can interpret, because… that’s the whole fucking point
So even if they find some way to encrypt the signal sent to the display so you can’t intercept it with a VCR or tape recorder (which would be exceedingly difficult if not impossible), at the end of the day you just can’t do anything about someone pointing a camera at the screen or a microphone at the speaker. Yo ho ho
(By the way, I’d love to see someone actually talk about the legal precedent of this wrt it being literally the same thing as recording a TV show on a VCR or recording a mixtape off of the radio, both of which I believe are absolutely unambiguously legal. OP may be right that this is literally, legally, not piracy, but I’m not a lawyer nor am I opposed to crimes so don’t ask me)
If you have a dual-ended 3.5mm audio cable, you can lie to your computer by downloading some software to tell it the headphone output is microphone input and skip a step entirely.
If you fan find an older computer with a dual 3.5mm output and input, it’s as easy as connecting a male-to-male 3.5mm audio cable into each end and booting up your favorite recording software of choice and trying not to bump the cable. The only annoying thing in my experience is waiting for it to be over so you can parse the audio file
if all you want is an audio file, you can do this with just software (no headphone jack required). virtual audio cable creates a linked pair of fake speaker/microphone devices on your computer. the exact same process of sending audio to Audacity through the cable works, just select the fake audio devices in the windows/application menus.
the free “lite” version (different from the trial of the paid one) lets you make one virtual cable, which is enough for just saving audio to a file. if you want to do something more complicated, the full version lets you make 256 cables (the license is $30, but I’m sure there’s other ways to get a copy if you look around).
As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse. It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms
As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable. As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.
Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.
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Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.
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.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.
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
