reach for the stars @therealdjpocky - Tumblr Blog

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tieflingkisser

lesbianslimefriend

here's where to find it on windows 10

the-tiny-dragons-tea-room

Ugh, it was in mine. It's off now.

the-tiny-dragons-tea-room

IT GETS WORSE

I had to turn this off, but it's something that allows Windows and anyone using your device to generate text/images.

LOBOTOMIZE YOUR MACHINES

longseasons

gwydionmisha

Bonus: If I buy a book I get to keep it! The publisher can't turn up at my house at random and confiscate all the books I bought.

crabussy

small tips for Enjoying Being Alive from someone who went from wanting to die to genuinely loving life. these won't fix your life but they'll make it a lot easier to want to live day by day. I promise.

tell yourself things you do not believe. it feels stupid at first but I've done this for years and now I believe it when I say "I'm good at this" or "I love myself" or "I deserve good shit!"

make a note of every mundane good thing that happens to you. mental or literal notes! could be as little as "the sky is a nice shade of grey, it's calming" or "I ate a piece of fruit today, I'm looking after myself" or "I talked to a friend". again, feels stupid at first, but I genuinely believe this is part of why I have so many "good days". trick your brain into storing things in your long-term memory that you wouldn't otherwise remember.

diet deficiencies can make you properly miserable. your physical health impacts your mental health more than you'd think. get some vitamins, some omega-3s and so on. whether from food or supplements. they can make quite a difference! your brain is responsible for a LOT of the way you feel, and giving it the fatty acids it needs to function at its best can go a long way.

crabussy

I know these all sound like stupid junk people who have never wanted to die tell you. I know they sound like dumb "self-help" tips written by people who have suffered mild anxiety at worst.

they're coming from someone who had multiple daily panic attacks for half a decade. someone who genuinely felt like he did not deserve to live. someone who hated himself so much he convinced himself he was irredeemably evil. someone who loves being alive these days, even though it's difficult sometimes.

you truly don't have to follow any of this advice. but just read through. store it in the back of your mind. come back to it when you want. best of luck. [:

nedzira

These are genuinely great! If I can add a small comment it would be to try to change scenery every now and then, take a different route home and go for walks. And make appointments to meet your friends!

crabussy

ABSOLUTELY. anytime I feel myself descending into a slump where everything feels wrong and bad and gross and hard, I go on a Weird Walk. I choose a familiar destination (the dairy, the beach, a specific hill) and intentionally choose a route I've never tried before. it's crazy but it makes me feel better almost instantly, even if the new walk is worse than my usual route. your brain CRAVES new stimulation! you are a member of a species with one of the most active brains in the animal kingdom. please try not to live like a hamster.

silurisanguine

Linktree will be feeding your images with DALL-E, Open AI from 5th July 2026.

Warning to anyone using Linktree.

From the 5th July, they'll be feeding all imagery you use on your landing page into DALL-E by OpenAI.

I deleted my account just now, because there was no way to turn this off or opt out.

prismaticfangz

FINALLY FINISHED HOLY-

did a redraw of my dtiys because i never liked the original, woohoo! This. Took. AGES!! And several redraws omg, (in other words plz dont let it flop ah) im so happy with it, i havent done a mixed media piece in FOREVER! And i missed doing tradional art :3

cilceon

Google’s removal of its search function is going great btw

(A reminder that if you have Firefox/ublock origin this won’t be a problem if you don’t wanna switch search engines to DuckDuckGo)

thevulturesquadron

text: [ “Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing an essay, writing a eulogy, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing for 5000 years.” ]

rudjedet

And they're absolutely specifically pushing it, make no mistake. It's not just a matter of "it's there, it's convenient, so people are going to take the path of the least resistance", it is a legitimate and concerted effort on the part of these companies to get people to outsource all these things to their models.

They're preying on insecurities to do it. Yes, you can write an essay - but can you write a good essay, they ask you. Do you not want to improve your output? Do you not want people to think of you as competent and very clever? Why go through the mortifying process of failing and failing and failing until you succeed if you can just skip the "learning" part of doing, and simply generate a ready-made product?

I'm preaching to the choir here obviously but it's a concerning thing to witness nonetheless. My kid is 6 next week and I've been teaching her that failing at things is morally neutral and in fact necessary even before the advent of AI, but it's becoming ever more important that we teach the kids that criticism and failure and discomfort aren't necessarily bad things, but just a part of the growth process.

AI companies are heavily invested in making themselves relevant. They want people to believe they can't do the things they have done unaided before and to make them become reliant on the AI models, so the AI models' existence is artificially justified.

special-lucky-chosen-one

I fucking hate it here

some-sort-of-ecologist

For those of you with android devices, you can use the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) standalone app control program to get rid of all the bloatware, data mining, and AI crap - no coding needed!

d-e-w-p

save

clatterbane

There are also Android-based alternatives like GrapheneOS and LineageOS, which are pretty easy to install. These are unfortunately available for a more limited range of devices (Graphene is ironically Pixel only, while Lineage supports more), but it's very worth checking out whether one of them might work for your phone.

GrapheneOS is a security and privacy focused mobile OS with Android app compatibility.

LineageOS Android Distribution

Typing this from Graphene now, in fact. But, both of those take the Android Open Source Project, without all the bloatware--and largely de-Google the whole thing. They give you much more control over privacy and what the apps you choose to install can do and access on your phone.

I know Graphene sandboxes everything, including the optionally installed Google Play Services which a lot of apps unfortunately require to run. (Lineage uses an alternative to Play Services instead.) So, you can install what would normally be unacceptably intrusive apps and just lock them away from pulling any funny shit with your data, or phoning home. Including the couple of Google things I do still keep around.

I also prefer running much more transparent, privacy-respecting open source apps where possible. Besides the transparency, I'd rather avoid the shitty tech corps entirely where I can. There are pretty good alternatives available for a lot of the usual suspects.

AlternativeTo lets you find apps and software for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android, Android Tablets, Web Apps, Online, Windows Tab

An alternative app store:

F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform. The client makes it easy

clatterbane

Also just going to leave this here.

Continuing the legacy of Vanced.

💊 Application to use ReVanced on Android . Contribute to ReVanced/revanced-manager development by creating an account on GitHub.

This lets you pretty easily patch some of the worst offender corporate apps to make them behave better.

powerbottombrucespringsteen

butimnotasexyrussian

Reading the replies is giving me anxiety. Listen to me, children, if you are in the US and your company offers a 401k or some other sort of retirement benefit, get in on that shit. I believe most companies will do some sort of match, so for example, if you put in 3% of your paycheck into the 401k, the company will also put in 3% on their end, which means you're getting 6% a year in your retirement fund (not including any stock market gains or losses, which historically has been an average of about +7% a year, even factoring in the years it crashed). Even my grocery store job (ily unions) and the shitty temp agency I worked for for 2 weeks without a college degree offered a 401k. However, if you do not work for a place that offers a 401k, you can sign up for an IRA (individual retirement account) or Roth IRA through a brokerage firm. Mine is through Fidelity.

I didn't think I'd make it past my 20s either, but you know what? Maybe one day you'll wake up and realize damn, I'm 30/40/50. It's easier to put away even $5 a month now and leave it alone to compound interest than it is to wake up one day realizing you're in your 60s and have saved nothing for the future. (Obviously if you can put away more, do.)

And if you do die young, you can name a beneficiary (family, friends, a nonprofit, etc.) for the money you've accumulated in that 401k. This is a good primer. (Shout out to investopedia, which saved my ass more times than I can count in college.)

I also recommend @bitchesgetriches, who are great at explaining financial advice in an easy to understand way.

It's not too late. Better late than never.

bitchesgetriches

Thanks for the shoutout, baby. You're absolutely right: it's never too late to start saving for the future. Even if you think that future is an apocalyptic nightmare landscape, I promise you'll still be better off going into that shitstorm with money. When bad stuff happens, it is always the poorest, most marginalized people who are hurt the most. So if nothing else, prepping for a wealthy future will put you in a position to help others. We talk about that more here:

Season 5, Episode 1: “Why Save for Retirement When the World Is on Fire?”

once-a-polecat

This was pretty much me in my 20s. I worked for a big company, and they would match me 1:1 up to 3% of my salary. Free money as long as I didn't touch it for 45 years. OK, sure. (I mean, they were also committing wage theft against me, but that was a different matter.) I changed jobs, took my 401k with me and every time I hit a job with a match I put away just enough money to get the match. There were some shitty jobs & temp jobs and such that didn't do retirement funds or didn't match or I wasn't there long enough to qualify so I just didn't put any money away unless they were giving me bonus money.

I'm over 50 now. My 401k has over $200,000 in it. That's not going to be enough for me to retire at 65 by any means (yet), because people in my family live a long time. But it means that when I got to the point where I was like "holy fuck I'm getting old, I should do something about that" I had an account with 6 figures rather than zero dollars.

simandy

Btw. If you're a teacher and you catch one of your students (kids, tweens, teens) using AI for the first time, please be gentle with them.

Last week i was looking into one of my teen's homework when I noticed she was writing words she "wasn't supposed to know" in english (like "furthermore", for example. They only know very intermediary english) I got a bit mad for a second. I wear an "anti-AI" button all the time, i even told them before why i was anti-AI, yet she didn't listen to me and thought she could get away with it... But i decided to keep it cool because i didn't know why she would do this, since she never did.

Okay, one week after, this Wednesday, it was time for their class again and, when she arrived, i told her to come to my desk and asked her: "what is furthermore?" She went pale when she noticed the paper in my hands. I asked again: "darling, what is furthermore?" Then, she shuttered: "I don't know, teacher. I'm sorry, I had to ask Gemini because I had no time..." then I sat her down, she was clearly upset (she is just 13) and I asked her what happened. "I didn't have any time left because of my exams and there were too many units to go through. So I asked my mom to help me and she told me to use ChatGPT but I asked google instead." Okay. So I looked into her eyes and told her it was okay, that she didn't need to be upset, but she would have to re-do that paper and bring it back to me by the next week. I told her she didn't need google or gpt to do her work, because she got a very high score at her english exam (both at school and at the course). She got right back on her feet and we started class as normal.

The only reason why I'm telling you this is because I hate AI. I hate it SO much. But, as a teacher now, I hate ANYTHING that takes the learning process away from kids. I hate the GLOSSARY in my kids' books as well for the same reason bc they don't want to figure the words out with me, they want to check the answer as fast as they can to get rid of that boring thing and I don't blame them for wanting to get rid of the boring task! But I blame ADULTS for allowing the kids to go the fast way, when they need the slow process to learn something! Her MOM told her to use ChatGPT to ace her homework. You know, the person PAYING the course bills so her daughter can learn english at an early age doesn't care about her learning process. But I do. I care. And you should care too. It's not my student's fault, it's about the learned helplessness, it's about wanting to be the fastest, it's about the knowledge scrapping, the way nobody cares anymore. And the kids are being affected by parents who don't care anymore. They're byproducts of this. So please, when teaching them why AI is bad, be gentle. It's not their fault the world around them is teaching them how to be dumb in a smart, sneaky way.

unamccormack

Fill yer boots, pals.

Make your own era-accurate Star Trek episode title cards in seconds. Boldly go!

unamccormack

stonedtrek

hot-soong-type-summer

rogue-ai-cat

The thing is, even if you were lucky and your parents taught you how to clean, they probably didn't teach you how to clean the stuff you clean stuff with, like brushes, mops, sponges, rags, and so on. Or how to clean your cleaning appliances, like a dish washer, clothes washing machine, and clothes dryer and its ducts (if you have a ducted dryer), or a carpet cleaner, vacuum, Or how to clean up clean messes, like spilled bleach or detergent.

My parents threw away all of these things (even the vacuum cleaners and the dryer) when they got too dirty to function, because no one even told them THAT they could be cleaned. Cost them thousands of dollars over the years.

All I'm saying is that cleaning is not intuitive, and not knowing how to clean is not a moral failing, but it is something you can learn.

I'm going to reblog this post with resources for learning how to clean things and how to clean cleaning things (I'm not at my desk at the moment). If you have any favorites, please feel free to add them in too!

rogue-ai-cat

I like this video because it does a great job of introducing the basic foundations of house cleaning (and because he doesn't use bleach, which is a common allergy in addition to being awful to inhale). He also talks a little about how to clean a vacuum. And why you shouldn't put grease from your pots and pans down the sink drain. I also love that he mentions that different houses and different people have different needs and different versions of what clean and cleaning looks like.

He doesn't mention though that the toilet seat comes off. I take my toilet seat off to clean under the hinges and clean the seat more thoroughly once a quarter.

rogue-ai-cat

This is another video from the same guy about cleaning and depression. This advice, especially at the beginning, can feel really really difficult and oppressive to hear. However, I find that it's generally pretty solid. But I'm autistic and so is he, so that gets a massive Your Mileage May Vary stamp on it.

I have a favorite part of this video. It's from 10:52 to 12:36. I think we could all use to hear that. There's a HEFTY pause after that one. I promise the narration does come back.

I'm also going to recommend KC Davis' book "How To Keep House While Drowning"

rogue-ai-cat

This is a pair of videos about how to correctly load and use a dish washer.

The first one is a quick 1 minute 30 second overview on loading. I can't find the exact video I'm looking for, so consider this a substitute for that. If I can find the one I'm looking for, I'll swap it in.

The second is a half hour deep dive on dishwashers and detergents. The short form of that is you shouldn't need to pre-rinse anything, detergent pods are overpriced and can cause problems, some dishwashers have a filter in the bottom that needs to be cleaned (but most don't), run your sink until the water is HOT before starting your dish washer, and put a little detergent in the pre-rinse dispenser when you're washing extra dirty dishes (or on the inside of the door if your dishwasher doesn't have a pre-rinse dispenser).

rogue-ai-cat

Favorite Scrub Brushes + How to Clean Them. The right tools for cleaning tasks make all the difference! Scrub brushes are great tools and it

Here's a blog post about scrubbing brushes and how to clean them.

And a video for all cleaning tools, including scrub brushes. This video does use bleach. I'll try to find some alternatives to that.

rogue-ai-cat

How to clean a front load washer (with bleach). This should be done monthly or every time you wash really soiled clothes.

With expert tips and tricks for all types of washers.

How to clean a top loader (without the removable agitator thing). This should be done every 1-3 months depending on you unit, or every time you wash really soiled clothes.

Regular cleaning of a top-load washing machine will prolong the life of the appliance and leave your laundry cleaner and brighter.

How to clean a top loader (with the removable agitator thing). This should be done every month, or every time you wash really soiled clothes.

rogue-ai-cat

This video is for pet owners.

These carpet brushes are a LIFE SAVER if you have dogs. This thing allows me to go from vacuuming about 4 square feet before my vacuum is full to vacuuming half the living room (I don't vacuum often enough. You should vacuum weekly, and I just can't.). I have to unclog the vacuum less often. It fluffs up some of the flat spots in the carpet. And I also use the brush to shampoo my rugs in the spring.

A spot cleaner (or a carpet cleaner with a spot cleaner attachment) is another life saver, ESPECIALLY if you can afford to splurge on a heated one. I see them at Goodwill or at yard sales occasionally, and they're worth picking up. The shark one in the video is great too.

This channel is gold. There's tutorials for cleaning EVERYTHING on there. Just go subscribe!

fivekoboldsinacoat

Gonna throw another potential resource at the end of this very long list, which may be potentially helpful for others like me who loathe videos. It's... the weirdest thing that has genuinely been helpful to me in housekeeping. Absolutely full of useful advice, and bizarrely still relevant in large part. (Though, caveat, research ANYTHING to do with chemicals or cleaning products more complicated than vinegar + lemon + water for modern information.)

It's America's Housekeeping Book (1941). Available for free download on the Internet Archive. (Large PDF file at the link here).

The LISTS y'all. The step by step lists. The emphasis on efficiency and arranging spaces for the least resistance possible. The basic concept of "take a tray or basket into a room when you are tidying up so you can put things that belong elsewhere on it and take them out LATER in ONE GO".

My ADHD-having ass could cry.

probablysomethingtm

Lmao we have to fucking destroy this company are you fucking kidding me with this shit

Google is transforming Search from a list of links into an AI-powered experience filled with conversational answers, autonomous agents, and

probablysomethingtm

Remember that xkcd about how Google searches are shit now? What if we made them even worse for no reason?

probablysomethingtm

I will vote for any candidate who promises to go scorched fucking earth on every tech company. Break every single one of them up into companies based around a single product and then split those in thirds. Weaponize existing antitrust laws to the hilt and pass the most draconian versions of them ever seen on this planet. Nationalize google search specifically. Pass consumer privacy protections strict enough to kill the data harvesting industry for good. Make all of these fuckers go bankrupt for this rent-seeking shit

probablysomethingtm

garbage-empress

I just think it's funny when search engines want to use AI "agents"(fancy name for chatbot) to gather information without links because even if they correctly summarized information (which they don't) you've completely disincentivized a reason for people to put information online in the first place. Why should a company put information about a product on a website if you're just going to scrape the data and remove the link?

muffinlance

...And a reminder that these models are wrong upwards of 30-40% of the time as an inbuilt feature. So having Google only feed you its scrapped, possibly hallucinated data is just. Literally asking tech companies to control your entire reality. Which is likely the point (along with getting you used to out sourcing your basic research skills so they can eventually sell them back to you as a subscription), since there's no other reason to actively sabotage their own money maker. If they're not going to make money on advertisements anymore, they're certainly planning to make it somewhere else...

In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect

Can we just. Create an AO3-style text search for the web? Pretty please? You know, like how Google used to literally function?

math-is-magic

"you've completely disincentivized a reason for people to put information online in the first place"

You know, I remember back when this was a major argument that google putting previews of song lyrics was stealing from the websites that collect and post that information. The sites lost their suit against google iirc. Feels now like that was the beginning of the end for the internet.

okayyoureacab

Hexagon Quilt

stahsm

Overlock Stitch by @clothes_reetzy

vinelark

hmm my former landlords are trying to deduct a frankly off the rails amount of money from our security deposit…my time has come once again

vinelark

i was chatting with a coworker about this whole saga today and someone nearby popped into the convo to be like “you know, you can use chatgpt to write a demand letter!” and i sort of blinked and went, “okay. i did it myself, though.” and she was like, “yeah but it can tell you what laws and stuff are relevant” and i was like, “i also did research myself.” and she was very well-meaning but she said “chatgpt” like six more times before she left and it was genuinely baffling to me, this insistence on it.

and in the one hand, did i enjoy spending hours researching housing regulations in my state? not especially. drafting this email was stressful. but on the other hand, did i learn a lot by doing that research? yeah, i did. i’m more prepared for my current and future leases. i used some of that info to make decisions about a new renter’s insurance policy. i already told three different people about things i learned that are relevant to their leases that they didn’t know yet. (pro tip: see if you’re supposed to be getting annual interest payments on your security deposit! also look up what specific appliances your landlords must legally provide as of 2026.) i also got to reconnect with my cousin for a bit because her job gave her specific insight on part of the situation, and i’d much rather do that than have a chatbot make shit up for me.

also, i drafted that email with the power of friendship (friends angry on our behalf) and spite (from landlords telling me not to do my research). chatgpt could never.

(we got the money back, by the way 💪)

chantylay

Please never use generative AI tools for any kind of legal dispute. It does not know what laws or court cases are. It will make up something that sounds favorable to you, and you will get crushed. There are free resources out there to learn this stuff. And sometimes attorneys will offer free consultations or volunteer at a free legal clinic. OP didn't just do it themselves to do extra work or some shit. This is really the only viable way to do things short of hiring a professional to do it for you.

ChatGPT is not easier or faster in matters like this. It is a shot to the foot.

renthony

I was 12 when the first of my siblings was born, so I have very vivid memories of the way my mother was excluded from a lot of spaces because people find children annoying.

If you think "children should not be allowed in this space," you HAVE TO reckon with the fact that you are now excluding parents (and very often women specifically) who don't have access to childcare. You are isolating people who are poor, or rural, or single parents, or any number of other factors that might prevent someone from having on-demand childcare. You are cutting them off from being able to exist in public. You are denying parents and children the ability to fully participate in society.

My mom spent several years only leaving the house to buy groceries or take me to school, and even then, people would still come up to her to complain TO HER FACE about how she shouldn't bring a crying toddler to Walmart. Entitled strangers would literally try and demand that my mom leave and come back without the kids.

"Why can't your husband watch them?" Because he was at work, usually working extreme amounts of overtime so we didn't get evicted, because landlords don't like it when you stop paying rent.

"Why can't you send them to daycare?" Because that costs money.

"Why can't your teenager stay home with them and babysit?" Because I also deserved to be able to leave the house for something other than school, and taking me to the grocery store was how my mom taught me to manage a household budget, shop sales, and meal plan.

"Don't bring your kid in public if you can't CONTROL them and make them stop crying!" Kids cry when they're upset, and being dragged around a store is upsetting! Don't be an asshole! Children are human beings who are still learning how the world works, and they don't have a lot of agency. You'd cry, too.

"Spank them until they learn to stop crying!" That's just straight-up child abuse, Jesus Christ.

What the fuck was our family supposed to do? Never go to the grocery store? Starve because strangers couldn't handle a toddler existing in public?

renthony

I am incredibly fucking disturbed at the way this post has brought people out of the woodwork who really want to tell me all about how hitting kids isn't actually abuse, how they think babies are the spawn of Satan, and how being confined to the home is an acceptable punishment for women who dare to have children. People have told me all about how they think children should be banned from airplanes, that I'm being inconsiderate to childfree people, that allowing crying babies in public is ableist against people with sensory issues (I have those, too, and so do many children, which is often WHY THEY ARE CRYING, jackass), and that people who have children are "irresponsible" and "selfish."

I have blocked multiple people who went on tirades about how I'm a "horrible breeder" who is "contributing to overpopulation" and how I and my "spawn" deserve to be trapped at home. (I am infertile and my foster kid is an adult now, so I don't know what breeding and spawn they think they're talking about.)

One person asked if I was posting ragebait for fun because "this isn't a real issue." Several have asked if this "really happens" and told me that my "experience isn't universal." (There are multiple parents in the comments who have agreed with me and talked about how hard it is to navigate the world with their kids.)

Children are an oppressed class who are treated like absolute vermin. Parents are given absolutely no support in caring for them. Good parents are set at a disadvantage even when they have all the best intentions, struggling parents aren't given resources to improve their situation or get community assistance, and blatantly abusive parents don't get caught because hitting and screaming and controlling are considered perfectly normal ways to treat a child. Communities would rather shut kids away where they can be ignored and forgotten and mistreated, all for the sin of "being annoying in public."

Youth liberation is vital, regardless of whether you, personally, like kids. You cannot ban children from public. You cannot shut children away in isolation and expect them to grow into happy, healthy, well-adjusted adults who can function in our society. You do not get to demand children be removed from every corner of public life all for your personal comfort.

Children are people.

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