Hullo

Hufflepuff - Loyalty and Justice. Cancer - Emotion and family. ENFP - Emotion and bravery. Wampus - The body and warrior.

[galaxywarp]

once you realize you don’t actually need to sleep, you can really (stops talking abruptly and stares straight ahead for 4 minutes)

[forbiddenarchived]

These elements were used for the soft yellow moodboard uploaded in my post. Credit goes to the original owners.

[kiefbowl]

the most important virtues for the young woman are as follows: time theft, selfishness, orgasms, irreverence to authority, sacrilegious behavior, a questioning mind, and eating regular meals.

[seren-starlight]

Unoriginal sin. Derivative sin

[breelandwalker]

So, the Eternal Librarian in me has been looking at my witchcraft library and going, "Yeah, this feels good for the moment." I'm always looking for further education and new resources, that hasn't changed. I haven't gotten new witchy books in a while because I haven't seen anything new that's grabbed my attention, apart from some tome-sized academic texts, and the bookcase that contains that part of my personal reference library is FULL. As in, full-sized, top to book, stem to stern, NEEDED TO INSTALL REINFORCED SHELF HARDWARE full.

And yes, that's with weeding and turnover. Twenty years is a lot of time to amass books in.

Since that section feels good for the time being, I've turned my attention to some of the other practical research sections, in particular gardening and practical skills.

I've collected a fair amount of basic-level books on plants, field guides, herbal medicine, herb gardens, home gardening, home maintenance, traditional handicraft skills, and basic permaculture. It needs some weeding, no pun intended, and I'm now looking for good, informative, well-sourced books to build a new wing of my home reference library.

Needless to say, searching for terms like "homesteading" and "traditional skills" has done some regrettable things to my algorithms, but I've but able to find some decent-looking basic books on home repair, food preservation, year-round gardening, sewing, and mending. I'm still looking for more on these topics, as well as the following, and recommendations are appreciated!

Weaving (particularly finger-weaving, knotwork, nalbinding, rugmaking, and small loom)

Embroidery (basic skills, stitches, and patterns)

Making & Repairing Clothes (yes I have a sewing machine)

Candlemaking (the regular kind, not the witchy kind)

Foraging / Forest Farming (Southeastern US, Zone 7, swamp and deciduous forest biome)

Hydroponic Farming

Greenhouse Construction and Use (small to medium space)

Growing Fruit Tree and Bushes

Food Preservation (Canning, Jarring, Freeze-drying, etc)

Plant Propagation

Garden Pest/Disease Control

Plumbing and Related Repairs

Basic Home Repairs and Maintenance

Vehicle Repair and Maintenance

Part of this is an effort to teach myself useful skills and amass a physical reference library that doesn't require an internet connection to access. (YouTube University is all well and good, I just like having a non-electronic reference too.) And part of it is in anticipation of eventually moving to a farm-sized property that will require upkeep and maintenance, and will have space for year-round food production and maybe a small grove of fruit trees. (And yes, I'm well aware of the timelines associated with fruit production.)

I'm hoping that this move won't happen for at LEAST ten years, but I'm making a start on building my skills and knowledge now so that I'm prepared. (And yes, it is pretty much a certainty for reasons I won't go into here. Nothing bad or bunker-related, just personal. We're not going off the grid or anything, we'll just be a bit more dirt-road rural than we are now.)

So if anyone has recommendations, especially if you've tried or are skilled in these things yourself, please let me know! I'll be checking my local library for resources as well.

[over-emotional-robot]

For canning I recommend a recent edition of Putting Food By. It has research-informed directions and tested recipes, but the reason I rec it is for learning the concepts behind safe canning. Not just what to do, but why. If you ever get to a stage where you want to go off-book or try a recipe that's not tested by a reliable source, these concepts can help you judge what's definitely ok and what to steer clear of.

In the meantime, please only use recent canning recipes from places like the big canning companies and university extensions. Yes, people have been doing canning all sorts of ways for a long time. They've also been getting food poisoning and sometimes dying from it for just as long. We know better, please don't poison yourself and your loved ones because someone on Facebook said you could water bath can potatoes.

(Sorry, I'm incapable of talking about canning without turning it into a big PSA/lecture.)

[breelandwalker]

Listen, as someone who is also prone to pulling out a beautifully-painted soapbox for a good ramble, I appreciate a thorough explanation as much as a concise summation.

And I agree wholeheartedly that such thoroughness is required when it comes to things like medicine and food safety. There's way too much out there that's slipshod and poorly-informed to the point of being dangerous. Botulism is NOBODY'S friend and I won't have it in my house.

I've had the Ball canning and preserving guides recommended by another commenter, and I'll add Putting Food By to that portion of the list. Thanks!

[tashathestoryteller]

I feel 13 year old me, 18 year old me, and current me all together in one vessel, today. I won't tell you who has the aux.

#itsthe13y/o #herplaylistisfullofbangers

[misscrazyfangirl321]

Checkpoint

Are you having fun? Do you want to keep scrolling or are you just on autopilot?

Have you eaten today?

Have you consumed water today?

Do you need to go to the bathroom?

Have you slept recently?

Do you have any chores in process that you've forgotten about or are putting off? (Laundry that needs taken out of the machine, a dishwasher full of dishes that need put away, etc.)

Have you taken all your meds?

If the answer is "All good," feel free to keep scrolling!

But if any of these reminded you of something you need to do, please take care of yourself. 💕

[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

[koiagain]

I guess you could say he’s ve… he’s a very h…

[t4timekeeper]

i am a big fan of being in bed.

[t4timekeeper]

the bed fandom is dying. repost if youre a true sleepyhead

[supreme-leader-stoat]

I don't mean this in a dismissive "haha you've got daddy issues" way but I really am coming to suspect that most if not all people who view the opposite sex as like, fundamentally alien on a mental or emotional level really just do not have healthy family relationships. You see it with the weird Trad and Alpha Male guys who can't seem to conceive of women as fully-aware human beings instead of some sort of symbiotes who need men to guide them, you see it with the weird radfems who like to go on about men being incable of feeling real emotion and just being driven by instinct and needing to be ruled over like dogs. I just find it really difficult to imagine arriving at those worldviews if you ever had a mutually caring and respectful relationship with an opposite-sex parent or sibling.

[spacelazarwolf]

i’ve had radfems go off on me for talking about my relationship with my dad. things are more complicated now after i came out, but when i was a baby he stayed home with me and worked part time so my mom could work full time, he was never weird about my periods and didn’t use weird euphemisms (he would just say “are you cramping? do you need tylenol? need me to buy you some tampons?”), taught me the basics of sex ed since my conservative school wasn’t going to do that, was very understanding and supportive for the most part when i would talk to him about personal problems (when i left a shitty relationship at the end of high school he was the first person i told and i cried on his shoulder for like half an hour), when his best friend/my godfather died he didn’t hide his tears.

there were many things i wish he’d done differently, but there were many things he did right, and so many people get legitimately angry when i try to talk about it. people have even accused me of “trying to make excuses for shitty men” for just talking about the fact that not all fathers are emotionless assholes who never see their families. it really solidified in my mind that some people don’t want things to change. they just want to stay angry with the way they are currently because anger is cathartic and much less effort than actual systemic change.

[renthony]

I have a couple popular posts on tumblr that are funny or heartwarming stories about my dad, and all of them get regular comments that boil down to, "men suck and he's probably really shitty behind the scenes."

And it's like. He's a human person, of course he's not perfect. But if your response to seeing someone tell a nice story about their dad is to immediately dissect all the ways the dad in question must secretly be awful, that's...that's a problem. That's not an appropriate reaction to someone telling a happy story about a parent.

[sadclowncentral]

2023

1. COMMIT TO THE BIT

2. PARTAKE IN THE DIVINE ACT OF CREATION

3. LET THE SOFT ANIMAL THAT IS YOUR BODY LOVE WHAT IT LOVES

[theunfairfolk]

my little cousin confidently declared that mother nature had a counterpart named daddy electric and i feel like this concept needs to be explored

[chassdraws]

Daddy Electric and Mother Nature sounds like a cute 70s act

[mystrothedefender]

I love that queer can mean 'I don't know what I am'. I love that queer can mean 'it's none of your business what I am'. And i love that queer can mean 'I know exactly what I am, but it's a long list that I don't feel like reciting every time'.

[blackpyrefly]

[ruffboi-mags]

BIRDIE OMFG YOU CAN'T HIDE THIS IN THE TAGS

[nooshka-arts]

I love tumblr because it solves the one major issue almost all social media has for artists and that is searchable tags and solid archiving. I’ll have people dig up old fanart from 2015 and leave the kindest tags as if I’d drawn it yesterday at my current skill level. When you post crap on Twitter and insta it might (emphasis on MIGHT) have success for a few hours maybe even a day if you break 10k likes but then it’s just buried in the endless content stream

[the-overthinktank]

Western style dragons are profoundly mid to me, but i try to keep my trap shut about that because i don't want to be the no fun allowed guy for a very popular creature design. But i cannot contain my rage about spoon wings. I hate them so much. Nothing with a patagium looks like that or flies like that. It doesnt matter how many polygons your beast has, my immersion has been shattered by half of its flight surface being straight up gone

[the-overthinktank]

For the people wondering what spoon wings means. Flying animals with a patagium generally have a flight surface that goes down the side of their body to at LEAST the rear leg. This is to maximize surface area for lift and support the weight of the lower body during flight

whereas cgi dragons shooting for an aesthetic of realism are lucky to have a wing membrane that goes down past their ribcage, despite having much heavier legs and tails than the average flying vertebrate. Also there is a tendency to give them a disproportionately broad "hand" which is a wing ratio I've only seen in tiny insects.

I think the reason so many dragons are designed this way (besides cultural inertia) is because the people modeling and animating dragons find a longer patagium inconvenient, since it has a tendency to cover up parts of the animal outside of flight or get pulled around by body movement in ways that a spoon wing doesn't.

Anyways the point is I hate this design trope. I don't like to look at giant stupid wing hands on twiggy arms. I think it is uncooler than realistic wing ratios.