beginningwithA

midnight is meaningless

[hagelwolke]

happy lesbian visibility day...

[argentsunshine]

still thinking about the time my bf asked about favourite dinosaurs and my brother said quetzalcoatlus (pterosaur (not a dinosaur)) and my bf said dimetrodon ((synapsid (stem mammal) (went extinct 50 million years before dinosaurs evolved)) and i said crows (bird (dinosaur)) and yet i was judged to be the incorrect one in this scenario

[thedreadvampy]

Everywhere I go I'm reminded how much the desire to punish homelessness and migration and other Undesirablenesses make society markedly worse for everyone

like why is the park locked after 5pm so I can't go and sit under a tree after work? to punish rough sleepers for the terrible crime of being homeless and alive

why do I have to buy a drink, beg for a code and fuck around with an awkward keypad for 5 minutes in order to take a piss? because fuck homeless people

why do I need to provide proof of address and photo ID to do everything? because we had to create a really hostile environment for migrants

why can't you sit anywhere? well because god forbid people sleep when they're pushed out of shelter. can't risk that.

every day governments, councils and businesses make your life worse as a side effect of making vulnerable people's lives WAY worse. if you're ok with that you're a fucking idiot and if you're in favour of it you're a vindictive cunt cause again literally the ONLY payoff for your life getting worse is other people's lives getting worser.

[red-eye-radio]

So I thought y'all would like this too This great white comes to the jersey shore every year and this year they named her and have been tracking her hella so this is Mary Lee and she decided to show herself under this rainbow for pride month A true gay icon

[victoryyodel]

#This is the representation I’ve been looking for

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Bank of England are letting you vote for what animals you want on their new bank notes: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/help-us-design-our-next-series-of-banknotes

Pine martens are an option!

PINE MARTENS??!?

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Oh my god, you can choose up to two from each category:

HOW CAN I NARROW THIS DOWN

[saganarojanaolt]

Ye Baiyi for @aoya

Thank you for doing this exchange !

[echo-bleu]

Day 2: Consort Jing

She doesn't even have a name but she's so awesome I love her.

Bonus: I accidentally skipped pages of my sketchbook before starting this yesterday so I did a couple teeny tiny sketches.

Teeny nerd Jingyu with xiao-Shu and Yanyan running after him + teeny sad Jingyan, because I'm still thinking about him finding out Mei Changsu identity in the book and falling off his horse and sitting in the middle of the street for half an hour

[yilinglaozu]

gif requests: most attractive male character — kang yohan      asked by @itsallaboutzayn

I would have done worse, if necessary. That’s how I do things. And that won’t change in the future. 

[oldbutchdanielmolloy]

i do appreciate the way that we tumblr users have evolved our language to discuss our feelings related to The Character/The Guy. you used to have to just say he was hot or he was making your ovaries explode or he was a precious cinnamon roll even if he looked bad or was just kind of standing there or whatever. now you can say things like “the creature” or “he looks so sopping wet here” or “i want to chain him to my radiator” like it’s just more inclusive and adaptable to the situation

[twobeesornottwobees]

as someone on the asexual spectrum, this shift in language genuinely made me feel more comfortable and happy in fandom spaces. i've never once wanted to lick a man's abs. i HAVE wanted to chain a man to my radiator. and that's beautiful.

[lizlemondyke]

it’s funny cuz it’s true

[khoesib]

Korean activists say Israeli captors physically and sexually assaulted flotilla activists

Doctors said that activists who were captured at sea while attempting to bring aid to Gaza were beaten to the point of severe muscle breakdo

Two Korean activists who were detained by Israeli forces after attempting to break the siege on Gaza and deliver aid recounted abusive treatment by their captors to local press on Thursday.

“After fully armed Israeli soldiers searched my body, I was dragged alone to a dark shipping container. The lights switched on, and whenever I looked at the light, they hit me in the face. Whenever my head was bowed, I was forced to look back up at the light,” said Kim A-hyun, 28, an anti-war activist who also goes by the name Haecho.

“[The Israeli soldiers] had tactical gloves on. After I was dealt a second blow to my cheek, I could hear a shrill sound in my ear. Following the third, I started to bleed from my nose and started to gag,” she said.

Kim Dong-hyeon, another activist who had participated in a humanitarian aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip, testified to similar conditions.

“My hands were tied, my body was searched, and I was continuously pummeled and kicked as I was being taken away. My wrists kept bleeding on account of having been bound so tightly, and I couldn’t feel my hands. My entire body, including my head and my legs, was in excruciating pain,” he said.

“When I started hyperventilating, I began to think that it was very likely that I might die,” he went on.

The two activists claim that they suffered serious health issues, including muscle damage and hearing loss, after being assaulted during their detention.

...

Kim A-hyun was diagnosed with a perforated eardrum as a result of the beatings she took to the face. Jonathan Victor “Seungjoon” Lee, a Korean American who was arrested alongside her, sustained a broken rib and other injuries after being tased.

“We are witnessing symptoms of rhabdomyolysis, which are usually apparent in victims of industrial accident cases involving crushes or those who have been severely injured in traffic accidents. The activists were released on Wednesday, but if that had been delayed by even a day and they had been subjected to more beatings, they would have suffered from severe harm,” said Dr. Lim Sang-hyuk, the director of Green Hospital.

The activists gave detailed testimonies of the abuse and torture they suffered during their arrest and aboard the prison boat.

“As soon as we boarded the boat, they pointed guns at us and subjected us to body searches. They hurled racist insults and curses at us the entire time. Male-passing people were tasered, while women and people perceived as female were subjected to sexual abuse,” said Kim A-hyun.

29/05/2026

[magicmooshka]

recently my friend's comics professor told her that it's acceptable to use gen AI for script-writing but not for art, since a machine can't generate meaningful artistic work. meanwhile, my sister's screenwriting professor said that they can use gen AI for concept art and visualization, but that it won't be able to generate a script that's any good. and at my job, it seems like each department says that AI can be useful in every field except the one that they know best.

It's only ever the jobs we're unfamiliar with that we assume can be replaced with automation. The more attuned we are with certain processes, crafts, and occupations, the more we realize that gen AI will never be able to provide a suitable replacement. The case for its existence lies on our ignorance of the work and skill required to do everything we don't.

[whatthefoucault]

I wish more people were familiar with Gell-Mann Amnesia. It was originally coined to refer to media reporting specifically, but I feel like it applies just as well to ai now.

The phenomenon is this: you see a piece of writing (or an ai approximation) of something in your area of expertise. You see all the mistakes, misrepresentations, inaccuracies. You can see that it's poorly produced, inaccurate trash. You see a piece of writing from the same outlet (or an ai approximation) of something in a field about which your personal experience is limited. It looks plausible enough to pass as probably all right to you, and you give it no further scrutiny, assuming it's correct and fine.

But like... did you forget about the fact that it was produced by the same thing that made an absolute fucking dog's breakfast of the thing you actually know about. Now, more than ever, we all need to hold the idea of this phenomenon in our mental back pocket. Like... please.

[guzhufuren]

Matz + text posts for @philologicalbat (pt. 11/50)

bonus:

[falko-yeeeew]

[chillyfeetsteak]

from this article, which is well worth the read, if only for the fun of seeing zuck get dunked on

[purplejabberwock]

My bestie's tags

[kawuli]

random PSA, I know a lot of people use duckduckgo as a Google alternative search engine, but it always kind of annoyed me when I was using it because it felt like No Name Brand Google

I have switched to using Startpage.com and vastly prefer it. for one thing, instead of displaying an "AI summary" at the top of the search results (unless you turn it off, yes I know), it displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, with link, whenever it finds one that's relevant.

also a waaayyyyy better sense of design than duckduckgo

also private, European based, least annoying search I've used lately (RIP old "don't be evil" Google)

[yomikoreadsbooks]

Keeping a list of Google alternatives just in case…

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

i have one of those, scraped from multiple different rec posts:

Search Engines

Infinity Search is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy

DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and are put off by the thought of their every query being tracked and logged. Uses bangs, ![site] for in-page search (sells your data to microsoft and draws from fucking bing)

WolframAlpha is a privately owned search engine that allows you to “compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.” A data search engine.

Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards. It allows you to search forums and then filter down results by date and language.

Based in France, Qwant is a privacy-based search engine that won’t record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses “&” as a bang search.

Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines. 

Offering unbiased results from several sources, SearX is a metasearch engine that aims to present a free, decentralized view of the internet. Can be self-hosted. 

Gibiru’s tagline is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy. 

Disconnect allows you to conduct anonymous searches through a search engine of your choice.

Swisscows provides fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. Built-in violence/porn filter cannot be overridden. 

MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” through its anonymised search. A plugin will allow it to be made a default.

Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers real-time information without tracking your data, keeping you hidden from marketers and spammers. Variety of filtration and refinement options for searching. 

Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the web. By not using any third-party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse. Has a Chrome extension to allow use in toolbar. 

https://search.marginalia.nu/ an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Use old-school searching rather than query-based for the best results. 

https://www.mojeek.com/ 

https://wiby.me/ - It’s goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. 

https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn’t have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it’s the best for research, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can.

https://www.searchenginemap.com/ for more on how search engines relate to each other.

https://yep.com/ is a crawler

https://www.etools.ch/ retrieves from Google, Mojeek, Bing, and Yandex, like Searx

https://www.dogpile.com/ 

https://searxng.org/ (next gen Searx)

https://luxxle.com/ - possibly conservative?

https://presearch.com/ - good for academic?

https://kagi.com/smallweb - free/randomised Kagi.

Other Searchers

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.https://cosine.club/ is an electronic music similarity search engine

[depsidase]