I'm Meg! A medical illustrator who once dreamed of being a comic artist/writer/character designer. (Apologies if you're following me hoping for more "Godlings".)
The first story trailer for Bellolandia Studio's 'Electro Andes,' its upcoming South American pilot.
Set in a dystopian future shaped by Andean mythology, the project will make its world premiere at Annecy next week.
Bellolandia calls its approach "Sudakuga," a portmanteau of Sudaca, the colloquial, often derogatory term for Latin Americans, and sakuga, the Japanese word for sequences of especially high-quality, expressive animation.
"We consider what we're doing an anomaly. You don't get to see much anime coming from South America."
Van Gogh-Roosegaarde bicycle path is made of thousands glowing stones inspired by ‘Starry Night’. The path charges at daytime and glows at night. Here innovation and cultural heritage are combined in the city of Nuenen NL, the place where Van Gogh lived in 1883.
A huge blocklist of manually curated sites that contain AI generated imagery for uBlock Origin & uBlacklist. - laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-A
Install this blocklist using the instructions on the GitHub page. For Firefox, you will need to install uBlockOrigin for this. Google Chrome no longer allows the uBlockOrigin extension, so I'm assuming you're at least primarily a Firefox user - or about to be (see browser alternatives below).
For Google Chrome or mobile browsers, this will work with uBlacklist. See the GitHub page for full details on compatibility.
Remove AI Widgets:
If you go to your uBlockOrigin Filter lists page, you can select to filter out AI Widgets - this should completely remove the 'AI Mode' widget/button from your Google search page, in addition to the work done by the Huge AI Blocklist.
Using the uBlockOrigin Huge AI Blocklist filter has made my Google searches look like they used to, and gives me genuine search results.
Look at this. It's beautiful. It's informative. It's not a heap of burning trash bloated with fake information made up by a hallucinating chat bot.
We can go even further: return to the old school search results.
Now, the above results are great and should be free of generative AI junk, but some people would rather not see any of the summary widgets or 'people also ask' box at all. Fear not! You can remove all that by using the 'Web' mode in the Google search bar. Click the 'More' drop down menu and select 'Web'.
Huzzah! Incredible. It's like a functional search engine again.
You can make this the default Google search mode in Google Chrome using Method 1 from this page (https://allthings.how/how-to-turn-off-ai-mode-in-google-chrome/). Unfortunately, I don't know if there's a way to do this in Firefox too. This is why for the most part I still use DuckDuckGo (see below) as my default search engine, and only use Google to supplement my searches on the rare occasion I'm just missing something.
Remember, if you clear your cookies, your search engine preferences will reset, including any settings you enabled/disabled to avoid AI. This applies to DuckDuckGo as well; check your settings every time you clear your browser!
Extra filters (optional):
I've also added four filters (their order doesn't matter) to the My Filters page. Full disclosure: I'm not sure they still work, or may only work on Chrome, but I'm keeping them anyway, just in case.
From https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1i7kg83/comment/m8lllwr/: see which solution in the list works for you, it seems to be different for everybody.
From https://allthings.how/how-to-turn-off-ai-mode-in-google-chrome/:
www.google.com##.Beswgc
www.google.com##.olrp5b
www.google.com##.hdzaWe
Make sure you hit the apply changes button when you add filters.
Browser alternatives: escaping Google Chrome.
If you haven't jumped ship from Chrome yet, I'd recommend doing so. Sometimes Chrome outperforms Firefox for niche purposes or because a website doesn't bother to fully support non-Chrome browsers, but the days of Chrome being the superior browser are long gone — by about 10 years. If you're trying to escape Chromium browsers, beware that a lot of the popular Chrome alternatives are just Chrome in a different hat.
Firefox has been the most popular non-Chromium browser for years, and for good reason. However, the company running Mozilla Firefox has annoyed their users, me included, by refusing to take an anti- generative-ai stance, and even included AI features in the Mozilla Firefox browser. Most Firefox users specifically use it because they hate Google's enshittification and want a privacy-focused, clean browser that doesn't hog their RAM and CPU for no reason. So, you can imagine that Mozilla's attitude has pissed us all off recently. You can turn off the AI features in Firefox with the built-in settings, but the company has recently steered straight into the burning garbage heap by saying they want to make the browser based on AI.
Waterfox and LibreWolf:
There are really good alternatives based on Firefox (open-source) which are not affiliated with Mozilla (the company), if you don't like how it operates. Waterfox and LibreWolf are even more trimmed down and privacy-focused than Mozilla's Firefox, and don't use AI. Anti-ai statements: Waterfox and LibreWolf.
From this page: https://programming.dev/post/42546774
In short: LibreWolf is for those who want a “locked-down” fortress out of the box, while Waterfox is for those who want a privacy-conscious browser that still feels like a normal, convenient daily driver.
Choose LibreWolf if: You want the highest level of privacy without having to manually edit config files, and you don’t mind occasionally “fixing” a broken website or re-logging into accounts.
Choose Waterfox if: You want a privacy-respecting browser that supports Firefox Sync, has an Android counterpart, and handles streaming sites/logins without any extra friction (it supports WideWine out of the box, which lets you stream DRM protected content (netflix, hulu, disney, etc).
— [email protected]
I've heard good things about both of these browsers and will investigate them further to decide whether to personally switch from Mozilla Firefox.
DuckDuckGo:
I would also recommend installing the DuckDuckGo extension to your browsers and setting it to be your default search engine.
I've had DuckDuckGo installed on my browsers, Chrome or Firefox, for like 10 years now. It is a good search engine, it's unobtrusive, and blocks trackers, cookies, and does not save any data about you. I've also used it as my default mobile browser for years, along with Firefox mobile, which you can add the AI Blocklist to (see again the GitHub page). I haven't tried the DuckDuckGo desktop browser yet, but I imagine it works just fine like the mobile version. I think DuckDuckGo's browser is also Chromium-based, at least indirectly. I use Firefox with the DuckDuckGo extension so I can have a widely-supported, non-Chromium browser, but include all of DuckDuckGo's anti-tracking features.
Note: DuckDuckGo has included AI in its browser product, however you can opt-out of all AI features with the built-in settings and they will not push it on you like Google does. I hope they remove AI features entirely in the future, but for now I am comfortable with the barriers in place to keep AI out of my face. Firefox also has AI features like Chrome does, which you can turn off with the built-in settings.
There's also noai.duckduckgo search, an alternative version of its normal search engine which removes AI-generated images and turns off AI results/assists by default. Even though DuckDuckGo's inclusion of any AI features annoys me, its policy to make these features 100% optional builds trust with this browser/extension/search engine.
You can always use Google search if you need to, but with uBlockOrigin and the AI Blocklist filter added on, at least you shouldn't have AI-altered search results or the AI overview anymore.
Other browsers exist, probably:
There are certainly more non-Chromium alternatives out there, but Firefox, Waterfox, and LibreWolf are the top three recommended to me. That link to alternatives, plus this ComputerCity page are the best lists I could find in a brief search. If you google "non-Chromium browsers" you'll get a lot of mixed results which require a bit of digging to realise they're not really recommending you what you looked for at all.
I've heard about Ecosia over the years, and while I like the idea of a search engine that plants a tree for each query, I don't think that's actually what happens — at least, that's what they used to be reputed to do, but I believe that's an unsustainable business model which has likely changed. In 2026, Ecosia says it uses 100% of its profits for the planet and runs its search engine off clean energy. That's cool! It's still Chromium-based. And it also uses generative AI for chat bots, so I don't trust its principles on environmentalism. I need to do more reading on this to form a stronger opinion about it.
I hope this post has helped at least some of you have a better experience browsing the web and googling your questions.
The Huge AI Blocklist really has been an amazing tool to keep my internet life free and clear of a lot of generative AI rubbish. I'm not a tech expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm savvy enough to understand what genAI is and does, and that the more I learn about it, it's even worse than I thought. I truly hate it, and I hate the enshittification of all our experiences, even those as simple and innocent as googling "snow leopard" or "how to cook pasta" or "what is a phascogale" (go ahead and test your freshly-cleaned search engines out with that one hehe).
OP: Why couldn’t traditional Chinese Yinpiao银票/silver drafts be forged if they were merely slips of paper? (cr大明宝钞，渐越)
Traditional Chinese yinpiao/silver drafts were paper vouchers issued by private banks starting from the Song Dynasty(960–1279). People could exchange these slips for physical silver at bank branches across the country.
Silver drafts were made in multiple copies with matching serrated seal edges. One copy went to the customer and others stayed at the bank. All edges had to fit perfectly together to withdraw silver. The unique split edge marks were almost impossible to copy.
This mechanism is known as qifeng骑缝 (split-joint seal) in China. It first originated in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046–771 BC). The Rites of Zhou records that contracts were written on bamboo or wooden slips in duplicate. Notches and marks were carved in the middle before splitting the slips, with each party keeping one half. The two halves would be matched by their notches for verification.
During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770–221 BC), this idea evolved into hufu虎符/tiger tally tokens. A military tally was split into two pieces with identical inscriptions carved along the split edge. Troops could only be deployed if the patterns and characters on both halves perfectly aligned, serving as a metal version of the split-joint anti-counterfeiting system.
The technology matured in the Tang Dynasty (618–907). Government documents and private contracts commonly used split-joint seals stamped across the dividing line. The Chinese character "hetong合同" (contract) was written across the middle before the paper was torn apart, so the complete characters would only appear when the two halves were put together. This split-coupon system was later adopted for Song Dynasty (960–1279) jiaozi paper money and yinpiao/silver drafts of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1912).
Official Song dynasty paper money (Jiaozi交子) was abolished in 1107. Private silver drafts issued by Qing-era piaohao票行 (ancient exchange banks) vanished completely in 1951, hit hard by modern banks and currency reforms. Nowadays silver drafts no longer circulate as currency. Their collectible value depends on their rarity and physical condition.
Split-joint seals (骑缝章qifengzhang)are still widely used on important paper documents in modern China, an anti-tampering technique passed down from ancient times. They are applied across the edge of multi-page contracts, bidding documents and official archives. If any page is removed or replaced, the broken seal pattern can prove the file has been altered.
OMG I got so excited about this because they used a really similar (though far less refined) version of this for contracts in the European medieval period!
First they were called "chirographs", but later the word "indenture" (in its earliest meaning as just a legal document of any kind between two people) came to be used, originating from the practice of a contract being written twice on a single piece of parchment and then cut in half with serrated edges (as in dent, "teeth" -> indents -> indenture) in order for each party to take one half, so they could later piece them together and verify that there had been no forgery -- same as the Chinese silver drafts!
(Charter of the Clerecía de Ledesma, 1252, showing the serrated indents at the top -- presumably they are cutting rather than tearing because they're using parchment, which I expect is much harder to tear than wood-pulp paper like the Chinese were using)
Delights me when human beings find similar ways to solve the same problem at two different ends of the world. <3
[id. A twitter post by @/Bennieeexyz
Jury duty letter came addressed to my cat.
Not a mistake. "Felix Martinez" - that's his full name according to his vet records.
My last name. His first name. Somehow he's a registered voter now.
Called the county clerk.
Me: My cat got summoned for jury duty.
Clerk: Is the name correct on the summons?
Me: Yes, but he's a cat.
Clerk: Is Felix Martinez a legal resident of this county?
Me: He's a legal cat.
Clerk: Sir, if the name matches our records, he needs to appear or file an exemption.
Me: He can't file anything. He has paws.
Clerk: You can file on his behalf.
Me: Under what exemption? There's no box for "is a cat."
Clerk: (pause) Check "unable to serve due to medical reasons."
Me: What's the medical reason?
Clerk: He's a cat.
Me: That's not a medical condition.
Clerk: It is if it prevents him from serving.
Sent in the form. Got rejected two weeks later.
"Insufficient documentation. Please provide medical professional's statement."
Took the letter to my vet.
Me: I need you to write that my cat can't do jury duty.
Vet: Why is your cat summoned for jury duty?
Me: Excellent question. No good answer.
Vet: This is the weirdest request I've gotten.
Me: Can you just write that he's medically unfit to serve?
Vet: On what grounds?
Me: He's a cat.
Vet: (started typing) "Patient is unable to serve due to species-related limitations including inability to speak, read, or comprehend legal proceedings."
Me: Perfect.
Sent it in. Got another rejection.
"Summons is mandatory. Failure to appear will result in contempt of court."
My roommate thought this was hilarious.
Roommate: Felix is going to jail.
Me: This is serious.
Roommate: Bring him to court. See what happens.
Decided that was actually the only option left.
Day of jury duty, put Felix in his carrier. Brought the entire paper trail of rejection letters.
Checked in at the courthouse.
Clerk: Name?
Me: Felix Martinez.
Clerk: (looked at the cat carrier) Is that Felix?
Me: Yes.
Clerk: (long stare) He's a cat.
Me: I've been saying that for six weeks.
Clerk: Why didn't you file an exemption?
Me: I filed three. All rejected.
Showed her the letters. She read through them, expression shifting from confusion to disbelief.
Clerk: Someone rejected the veterinary documentation?
Me: Twice.
Clerk: (called her supervisor over) You need to see this.
Supervisor read everything. Looked at Felix. Looked at me.
Supervisor: How did a cat get registered to vote?
Me: You tell me.
Supervisor: This is a data error.
Me: Took you six weeks to figure that out.
They dismissed Felix immediately. Apologized for the inconvenience.
Supervisor: We'll remove him from the voter registry.
Me: Appreciate it.
Supervisor: (pause) Out of curiosity, how would he have voted?
Me: Probably whatever party supports universal treats.
Got a formal apology letter a week later and a voter registration card.
For me this time. Apparently I wasn't registered, but my cat was.
Roommate: Felix committed voter fraud.
Me: Felix committed nothing. He's innocent.
Roommate: That's what they all say.
Felix is sleeping on the jury summons now.
Fitting end to his legal career.
end id]
Another update! Huzzah! Proof of life progress happening behind the scenes!
The ginormous issue 26, with all its beautiful backstory finally laid out, is complete! And we are in the home stretch! Only five issues left—I can hardly believe it!!
Megalodon fossil lost for decades confirms the monster’s terrifying size
A long-lost fossil once thought destroyed has resurfaced, confirming just how enormous megalodon may have been — and offering fresh clues about the giant shark’s life.
1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.
2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.
3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."
4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.
ok so, I approached my local library with a proposal to donate a mural as a way to A: build portfolio/gain practical experience and B: give back to a beloved public institution. The director was very enthusiastic about it and i've been working on it since the beginning of March. Come with me as I endeavor to paint what is in all honesty an excessive amount of birds
I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study
after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines
et voila
and that was a whole week on it's own so next comes the paintin' >:)
my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on
this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏
BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos
the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise
ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!
Also thank you everyone for your kind words and support throughout this whole process, it's been a genuine treat thinking there are potentially thousands of you out there cheering me on while I paint this 🥹
we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos
the 16th is looming in the distance so i'm trying to get thru these as quickly as i can so i can have as much time for the GBH as possible. i still need to do the names next to all of them so i've got about a week and a half to finish everything which is GREAT because i have adhd and nothing gets my ass in gear like a fuckin deadline, let me tell you
power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,
the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis
and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.
Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp
thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.
River & Ash, my soon-to-be-completed comic writing project, has just passed 25 issues! I have exactly 31 issues planned (33, if you go by page count) and I WILL be done with them this year.
I have not resumed posting the scripts as I write due to snags in the writing itself. (Recently solved!) Some of the thorny beats along the way have fought me, but I have the ending entirely mapped out, never fear! And I just want to take extra care to make these as strong as possible.
Not because I have any dreams of this series seeing success of any kind - heck, not even because I plan to draw any of it! No, this has been a pure passion project, a labor of love, and an exercise to prove to myself that I have what it takes to actually Finish Something Significant, in this case: a long-term writing project. A complete saga.
Later this year, I will be posting revised versions of this whole story, issue by issue. Not sure when, but since I WILL be finishing it come hell or high water (ha) I will absolutely be sharing it. And I know it's a long shot, but I'd love to have some readers when I do.
Every time a guy writes a song, he's a cowboy, a sailor
Playing with the world in his palm like the first pioneer.
Every time he opens his mouth, it's a loud movie trailer
Clipping every image and sound he thinks proves he was here.
A hand, a spike, a physical fight,
A flash of light, a curtain,
A toll, a tithe, the passage of time,
A height, a dive, a burden,
A girl, a night, a typical type,
A siren in the water,
A scroll, a nod, a message from God,
A son, a Holy Father.
Every time a guy writes a song, he's a sailor, a cowboy
Holding out the world in his palm like he made it himself.
Every time I open my mouth, I think, "Wow, what a loud noise!"
Still on the soapbox, just hoping I seem underwhelmed.
The hand, the pen, the writing again,
The Wind around the Willow,
The felt, the ice, the passage of time,
The melting down the window,
The ‘now’, the ‘then’, the thinking of "when",
The bottle in the ocean,
The strike, the pause, the message from -
God forbid she shows emotion.
This isn't rage, it's worth a mention.
This is a fake internal tension.
Sometimes, I spread out one opinion
And stand on its back to gauge attention.
This isn't rage, it's too specific.
I like to hate symbolic limits.
This is no statement, I'm complicit.
This is a dream, GOD put me in it.
A hand, a spike, a physical fight,
The Wind around the Willow,
A toll, a tithe, the passage of time,
The melting down the window,
The now, the then, the thinking of "when",
The siren in the water,
The strike, the pause, a message from God.
Does that make me His daughter?
A hand, a shove, a valley, a jump,
A score under the wire,
Just sweep me up, just sweep me up
And take me somewhere higher,
Just sweep me up, just sweep me up
And take me somewhere higher,
Just sweep me up, just sweep me up
And take me somewhere higher.
So many protagonists just get dragged around and thrown into dangerous situations with no warning while nobody tells them anything and expects them to act like they know things already and it stresses me out so much it’s like working at Walmart all over again
"This week I discovered the same pattern, executed by Google. Google Chrome is reaching into users' machines and writing a 4 GB on-device AI model file to disk without asking."
Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise t
