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[art-res]

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Art Book Recommendations

anatomy masterpost

perspective masterpost

Resources to help you master color theory & color theory primer

Beginner’s Guide to Digital Art

Beginner’s guide to traditional art

Ultimate guide to photography for beginners

How to find and develop artistic style

Surefire Ways to Defeat Artist’s Block and Writer’s Block

How to create a free portfolio and blog site

A Collection of Great iOS Apps for Artists

Fantastic free and open source software programs for artists

Learn Art Today with 25+ of the Most Helpful Art Youtubers

Community Tested Social Networking Tips for Artists

Artist Utilities - Idea Generator - Visual Reference Boards - Random Color Palettes - Free Habit Tracker Printable

✨New✨ Fair Pay Pricing Calculator

Note, I working to remove Amazon Affiliates and will not add new links to them until I see substantial change in the way big companies like them treat their workers.

Recent Posts** / More **Useful Links

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[teomodo]

art books on the internet archive for you

morpho books

figure drawing for all it's worth (+ creative illustration)

framed ink

will eisner comics and sequential art

will eisner graphic storytelling and visual narrative

understanding comics (+ making comics)

folder of various animation production art

burne hogarth drawing dynamic hands

perspective for comic book artists

michael mattesi force drawing

the animator's survival kit

color and light james gurney

be free

[zoesupreme]

[docjackal]

Hi, Zen browser is a fork of Firefox that doesn't have any of the AI crap on it (and what came with the code is disabled by default).

The ONLY LLM stuff they've considered adding is ENTIRELY OPT-IN stuff for tidying your browser, and you wouldn't see a whiff of it if you didn't want to. They haven't done it yet and may end up not doing it at all, but imo it doesn't sound nearly as intrusive and gross as what Firefox's been doing without asking, even though I'd likely never use it.

I've been working on migrating my data and extensions over to Zen, and everything seems to work about the same. The only thing that's really taking getting used to is the tab list is on the side of the window vertically rather than at the top of the window horizontally.

Beautifully designed, privacy-focused, and packed with features.

[bookshop]

Just boosting this. I tentatively started using Zen a year ago, and it took a bit of getting used to but it's SO powerful (especially if you use it with UBlock Origin and Privacy Badger). Chrome has rapidly become almost non-functional on many websites because of all the restrictions and gen AI bs it's added, so i've increasingly started using Zen as my main browser for almost everything. I really love it. It's beautiful, clean, minimalist, and perfect if you are someone who wants to customize/organize tabs and tab groups. Also every extension made for Firefox works on it.

I use it with startpage (which has built-in privacy features, draws from a stripped-down google API, and has an optional AI summary you can turn off) and mojeek (which searches blogs and websites and text-based resources, not video or social media platforms) as my primary search engines as well, and i really recommend it.

[digitaldiscipline]

unfuck google drive by shooting gemini

Hey folks! Google is fucking you via sneaky enshittification again!

Want the shit in your google drive to load instantly again, instead of taking for-fucking-ever?

Open your gdrive (web OR app) Settings > Manage Apps

Gemini was checked "use as default" (and i sure the fuck didn't set it that way, this was a silent push)

Nuke that, and suddenly, folders that took up to a minute to populate and sort do so in a fraction of a second.

[hamthezombie]

Do check this out people. I had manually switched all the gemini nonsense off months ago, but when I went and checked just now it was all switched back on.

[endlessnebula]

I beat google and Microsoft a while ago, and have no regrets.

No more Gmail, now I use Mailbox.org.

Outlook? (GOD I miss Outlook the least) Thunderbird, Firefox's lesser-known sibling.

YouTube? Piped.video. (least reliable of the bunch)

Google search? Ecosia.

Google photos? Ente.

iOS? Android? Graphene OS, a version of Android made by the community, not google.

Windows? Linux mint is Queen.

While I don't use them as much, I can also recommend the Proton suite, as well as filen.io

It is possible to move away from them without moving to the opt-out village

[shithowdy]

i thought my laptop was on its last leg because it was running at six billion degrees and using 100% disk space at all times and then i turned off shadows and some other windows effects and it was immediately cured. i just did the same to my roommate's computer and its performance issues were also immediately cured. okay. i guess.

so i guess if you have creaky freezy windows 10/11 try searching "advanced system settings", go to performance settings, and uncheck "show shadows under windows" and anything else you don't want. hope that helps someone else.

[shithowdy]

hey this is apparently helping a lot of people! adding that on top of this you can also go to settings > personalization > colors and turn off transparency to also boost performance. this wasn't the Big Fix for me but might as well do that too if you're trying to optimize.

[shithowdy]

past a certain note threshold on tumblr posts you unlock a bloodborne-esque insight and the strange lives of this site's users become visible to you

[flipocrite]

(x)

[theothin]

we fucking found them?

[prof-grace-aspen]

Ok I know we joke about this but I just went to the settings and first clicked "adjust for best performance" and then re-checked only 1 box:

"Smooth edges of screen fonts"

My computer was running hot before I turned everything off; the office I'm in is very warm, I could feel the heat of my CPU through the keyboard. The fans were going, not as loud as they usually get, but they were still blasting.

Y'all.

I can barely feel the warmth through the keyboard now. It's been like 2 minutes. The fan is nearly silent.

Click the Windows key and start typing "System settings", and "View Advanced system settings" will pop up. Then click "Settings" under Performance:

Then you'll see this:

TURN IT ALL OFF.

I turned "Show window contents while dragging" and then turned that off again. It's up to you.

[khashanakalashtar]

My computer is so quiet and reasonably-temperatured now and I barely notice a difference in utility, why is windows like this

maybe I can even play computer games again

[paintpencilink]

The second best thing you can do for a Win10 computer is turn off whatever unnecessary services it's decided it needs to run in the background always. Some services it does need, but others are useless. Here's an article that goes into step by steps.

10AppsManager lets you uninstall bloatware. Winaero Tweaker lets you disable crap like Cortana/Copilot, ads, telemetry, internet search results when you search from the taskbar, and all kinds of other stuff, plus it gives you lots of other little options that are just nice to have (like, it can restore the old MS Paint program in place of Paint 3D). Both are totally free.

Oh, and check your startup programs in the Task Manager tab to make sure your computer isn't automatically starting eight million programs every time it boots. But I think people mostly know about that. (Unless this is me going "they only know one or two feldspars... and quartz of course.")

The first best thing you can do for a Windows computer is install Linux Mint. But some of us do need a few pesky Windows-specific programs. Bleh. Still, if you're up for a project, you can have both (and it's awesome). Here's an article about setting up a dual boot Windows/Mint system.

[taigacryptid]

decentralize and clean up your life!!!

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega or proton drive instead of google drive.

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

use vetted sites on r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH for free movies, books, games, etc.

use trakt or letterboxd instead of imdb.

use storygraph instead of goodreads.

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use ground news to read unbiased news and find blind spots in news stories.

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause or ecosia to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use unroll.me to clean your email inboxes

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, tuta, or proton mail instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use NCH suite for free software like a file converter, image editor, video editors, pdf editor, etc.

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

last updated: march 18th 2025

[iheartallthethings]

If you ever use Facebook, get the free FBPurity extension to custom remove nearly everything that annoys you about Facebook from your feed. You can even force chronological order with this thing.

If you use Instagram, a few different Firefox extensions will turn off reels, explore, and even suggested posts: I've tried Control for Instagram and Boringstagram today.

Use FocusMe to help unfuck your relationship with your computer. It's a little bit of a learning curve to use, but it can do anything you want it to do-- blacklist or time-limit sites or apps that are time sucks, only whitelist sites/apps you strictly need, force you to get up every half hour, do Pomodoro blocks, entirely block your access to your computer, etc-- and you can set it up so that, if you cannot be trusted like me, it is very, very difficult to disable. It's subscription-only, which I do not like, but IMO the best on the market; alternatives with one-time-payment options that are also good but that toddler me did not like as well are Cold Turkey and Freedom.

Turn color off on your devices. Seriously just try it: it makes them significantly less addictive. That's easy to do on Windows (Adjust color filters) and IME way harder to do on mobile devices (on my Android device you have to go into developer options and simulate color space for monochromacy), but it being hard to do makes me less likely to undo it.

Try Kagi out: it's a paid search engine that relies partly on Google's API but actually lets you customize your results by blacklisting, pinning, upweighting, or downweighting sites in search, excluding AI-generated images, returning results that favor small sites and noncommercial domains, etc.

Re: the above list, Bandcamp is mid-enshittification: I have heard Ampwall is its spiritual successor but have never used it.

[pirozeku-deactivated20250723]

some neocities/spacehey resources i found ^^

✮⋆˙ emojicombos.com:

cute emojis and ascii art

✮⋆˙ glitter-graphics.com:

many old web styled graphics, rainbow text, animated text generator and many, many gifs

✮⋆˙ color-hex.com:

color IDs useful for css

✮⋆˙ w3schools.com:

great for studying css and html!

✮⋆˙ pixelsafari.neocities.org:

many graphics can be found here. baisically a list of blogs collecting stamps, blinkies and etc.

✮⋆˙ rentry.co/depressantbuttons:

buttons for blogs like myspace and spacehey

✮⋆˙ ezgif.com:

gif resizer

✮⋆˙ imgbb.com:

free image hosting (for example if you don't have the valid img url)

✮⋆˙ iloveimg.com:

all things image (remove background, watermark adder, photo editor, compresser, crop, upscale, etc.)

✮⋆˙ lingojam.com/AestheticFontsGenerator:

lots of cute fonts!! you just have to copy and paste the text you want to generate

✮⋆˙ ascii-art-generator.org:

generate ascii art from image in different sizes

[batman-lucy]

YALL SOME REMINDERS

DRINK FUCKING WATER

EAT FOOD (IT CAN BE SMALL, JUST EAT SOMETHING IF YOU HAVENT)

SLEEP AT LEAST 5 HOURS TONIGHT

DO AT LEAST ONE SELF CARE ITEM:

LIKE:

TRYING TO BRUSH YOUR TEETH

OR WASH YOUR FACE

BRUSH YOUR HAIR

CHANGE CLOTHES

SHOWER OR USE A BODY WIPE.

(BUT REMEMBER ITS SUPER FUCKIGN HARD TO DO THAT SO IF YOU CANT, THATS OK)

TRY TO LEAVE YOUR ROOM, AND WHEN YOU DO, TRY TO REMOVE AT LEAST ONE DISH OR PIECE OF GARBAGE WITH YOU

TAKE SOME DEEP BREATHS

ITS GONNA BE OK

IM PROUD OF YOU, NO MATTER WHAT YOU'RE ABLE TO DO

AND REMEMBER, ALL STEPS ARE SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF, EVEN IF IT FEELS LIKE NOTHING TO SOMEONE ELSE

YOU'RE DOING AMAZING

[ruerock]

im sure someone already made a post about it but i came across a ublock origin add-on that blacklists around 950 AI websites and disables AI overview ☝️ so u can be free from seeing AI in your search

[movietonight]

Was anyone going to tell me Peter Capaldi made an Oscar winning short film called "Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life" or was I supposed to find that out while reading a book about Kafka translations and adaptions

[movietonight]

Richard E Grant plays a depressed Kafka trying to write the Metamorphosis. He has a mental breakdown over killing a cockroach and then all his neighbours gift him bugs they found around their apartments and they sing "hark the herald angels sing" together :) wholesome :)

I think we need "Frank Capra's The Metamorphosis" next

[thelocalmuffin]

Hey everyone, I know it's going to be a busy day for a lot of people, but Google enrolled everyone over 18 into their AI program automatically.

If you have a google account, first go to gemini.google.com/extensions and turn everything off.

Then you need to go to myactivity.google.com/product/gemini and turn off all Gemini activity tracking. You do have to do them in that order to make sure it works.

Honestly, I'm not sure how long this will last, but this should keep Gemini off your projects for a bit.

I saw this over on bluesky and figured it would be good to spread on here. It only takes a few minutes to do.

[yeahwrite]

Writers: It's asking to read your Google Docs and be able to 'summarize' things from them and such things. I just turned all mine off.

[s-n-arly]

Skip Google for Research

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.

⁂

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

[lunavenger]

Reminder that libraries are literally foe this purpose. If you go to a public library with a research question you will make their day.

[apricitystudies]

what i read in 2024: best of, part two

(previous editions) bold = favourite

class, race, gender, & sexuality

the crash of the hammer (usa)

my own personal hell: thoughts on hazbin hotel

the devil went down to georgia (usa)

'we spoke english to set ourselves apart': how i rediscovered my mother tongue (nigeria)

the shapes of silence

laws once prevented aubrey lynch from entering kalgoorlie's town centre. he believes truth-telling is the way forward (australia)

politics & current affairs

the road to 1948 (palestine, interactive)

'for me, there was no other choice’: inside the global illegal organ trade

the cement company that paid millions to isis: was lafarge complicit in crimes against humanity? (france)

how 3m executives convinced a scientist the forever chemicals she found in human blood were safe

'machines set loose to slaughter': the dangerous rise of military ai

other

'look, they're getting skin!': are we right to strive to save the world’s tiniest babies?

spreadsheet superstars (interactive)

the great abandonment: what happens to the natural world when people disappear? (bulgaria)

my family and other nazis

inside snapchat's teen opoid crisis

[fixyourwritinghabits]

It is with the deepest frustrations that I must report Microsoft has pushed out Copilot onto Microsoft Word no matter what your previous settings were. If you have Office because you paid for it/are on a family plan/have a work/school account, you can disable it by going to Options -> click on Copilot -> uncheck 'Enable Copilot'.

(Note, you may not see this option if you haven't updated lately, but Copilot will still pop up. Updating should give you this option. I will kill Microsoft with my bare hands.)

In addition, Google has forced a roll-out of it's Gemini AI on all American accounts of users over 18 (these settings are turned off by default for EU, Japan, Switzerland, and UK, but it doesn't hurt to check).

To remove this garbage, you must go to Manage Workspace smart feature settings for all your Gmail/Drive/Chat and turn them off. Go to Settings -> See all settings -> find under "Genera" the "Google Workspace smart features" -> turn smart feature setting off for both Google Workspace and all other Google products and hit save. (If you turned off the smart settings in your Gmail, it never hurts to open Drive and double-check that they're set to off there too.)

Quick Edit: I found the easiest way to get to the Smart Feature settings following the instructions above was to do it through Drive. Try that route first.

Now is the time to consider switching to Libre Office if you haven't already.

[fixyourwritinghabits]

Okay, all other Microsoft settings addition: If your Microsoft 365 apps don't yet have the Enable Copilot checkbox, you can turn off Copilot by changing your account privacy settings. This worked when I tried it, but it's a fucking pain.

In your app (for example, PowerPoint), go to File > Account > Account Privacy > Manage Settings.

Under Connected experiences, clear the Turn on experiences that analyze your content checkbox.

Select OK, and then close and restart the app.

Here's the Microsoft page for removing Copilot.

[lets-steal-an-archive]

Twin Peaks on Pluto TV

Twin Peaks on Pluto TV | Pilot | 2hr | The small northwest town of Twin Peaks, Washington is shaken up when the body of the Homecoming Queen

Also, it's only available for a limited time so don't miss out.

[tierras]

by enigmatriz