I’m queer and I know that ace/aro, trans, non-binary, bi, pan, and intersex people are all part of the queer community.
Queer is a term that has been reclaimed by our community for decades now. It’s a term that is used academically as well. More generally, queer allows space for people (and there are a lot of us) who do not fit neatly into any category. This is a good thing.
Your personal discomfort with the term does not mean you can take it away from the rest of us or try to stop us from using it.
Every term for non-cis/non-hetero people has been/is used as a slur by someone somewhere. Stop siding with our oppressors by agreeing with them.
I will block transphobes and exclusionists.
ETA: If you follow me from an empty blog I will automatically block you. If you have only one generic post, I will block you.
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I've recently learned that escaping enshitification is actually really easy. When I was younger I would use FOSS (free and open source software) because I usually couldn't afford anything else. Back then the paid options were usually significantly better than the unpaid options so when I finally got money I started using the paid stuff and completely forgot that Foss existed.
If you don't know why Foss is awesome its not just that its free. Open source software has a huge set of advantages. Most software is proprietary meaning that its code cannot be viewed by other people. Open source softwares code can be viewed by everyone and people can contribute their own code to make it better. Open source is often more secure than proprietary because more people have more eyes on it and more people have contributed to it's security. Its also easy to know how much privacy you have with every software because you can read the code. No more "trust me bro I'm not harvesting and selling your data" you know if they are collecting and selling because the code is publicly available.
In the last two months I have been switching almost completely to Foss. I was worried at first because when I stopped using Foss over 10 years ago the average Foss software was genuinely worse than the paid proprietary alternative. Thankfully things have really come full circle. 90℅ of the software I have tried in the last 2 months works better than the proprietary alternative and is 100℅ less obnoxious.
So here is a list of every Foss software I have tried and recommend. There is way more than this available. This list is just what I have used and like personally. Anyone can feel free to add and we can turn it into a master list. Please just take these as a place to start and do your own research to see if these softwares will work for your use case before you fully ditch your proprietary software.
Operating systems
Graphene os: android alt. Security and privacy focused. The most secure and private smartphone currently available.
Linux mint: easy to use linux, 100℅ better than windows.
Pop!: The Linux distro you should use if you have nividia hardware and want to play games using said hardware. Very intuitive and easy to use.
Kubuntu: Ubuntu Linux with KDE desktop. This is the linux distro one I am currently using and I don't have any plans to jump ship again. Better than windows and better than Mac. The companion app for your phone makes life soooo easy. Its pretty and easy to customize to a ridiculously granular level. No fucking notes.
Kindle jailbreak- ko reader: use jailbreak to free your kindle from the tyranny of the bezos. It will download ko reader which is a Foss OS that has every fucking feature you always wished kindle had and let's you read whatever the fuck you want, and have whatever the screensaver you want (no more ads!). Soooo fuck amazon and use this. I genuinely cannot recommend it enough.
Linux FOSS: (some available on windows and android as well)
Calibre: Foss desktop eBook library. Packed with features. You will want to use this with koreader to make managing your kindle easy.
Manuscript: skrivner alt. Does absolutely everything I need.
Bitwarden: password manager (use a keepass fork if you want self hosted)
Next cloud: private google drive and cloud alternative that you can self host if you want but it's not required. App available
Proton VPN: to the best of my knowledge it is the only Foss no log VPN you can get. You can pay for higher speeds. App available
Quad9dns: free encrypted DNS provider. App available.
News software:
Use any Foss RSS reader and for the love of god stop getting news from social media. Take control of your feed!
Apps (I only know for android)
Fdroid: great app store to find Foss android apps and download them.
Antennapod: you can get all of your podcasts fetched to one feature rich app via RSS feed. No need to rely on spotify or music steaming services.
Openreads: it's good reads but private and 100℅ stored locally. No amazon, no social media aspect, it just tracks your reading, you can import your good reads but if you want to import from storygraph you have to make a good reads burner account, import to good reads, then import to openreads. The menus Navigation on this one is a bit cumbersome but honestly good reads app is worse.
Newpipe: YouTube frontend that let's you have YouTube subscriptions, watch YouTube in the background, and blocks all ads, without logging in to YouTube. You will want to use this one with a VPN set to Canada (or any other country) so YouTube doesn't keep blocking it in order to force you to sign in. But even with that extra step its worth it for the privacy and the lack of ads.
Proton mail: one of 2 more private gmail alts. But you should note that email cannot be 100℅ anonymous or private.
I think that's it. There are still a lot software varieties I am slowly finding.
I know people get mad at the name, and I understand why, but straight-up I've been using GIMP for 15 years and it's a good solid art program made under the GNU program. It's worth a look.
Blender is an amazing FOSS suite for 3D modeling and animation, as well as digital sculpting and motion tracking. Pros use it. It’s a staple in game development. It’s what the Academy Award winning film “Flow” was made on. It’s not the bland name alternative to an industry standard; it is an industry standard.
Krita is a fantastic FOSS application for digital painting. Everyone I’ve ever talked to who uses it has loved it to death.
OBS is the absolute go-to choice for screen recording and live streaming. You can use it to record your entire desktop or a specific window, capture audio from multiple sources, and even add overlays, webcam feeds, or transitions to your videos.
VLC Media Player is the best media player, hands down. It’s lightweight, it’s reliable, it supports virtually every audio and video format known to man, and it has built in media conversion and even basic editing. I truly can’t imagine why anyone would use a media player that isn’t this one. It’s just the best there is, easily, no contest.
Audacity is a fantastic multi-track audio editor and recorder. It’s free and it’s good, and podcasters love it for a reason.
And believe it or not, Thunderbird is a really good email client now. I’m not even joking. If you used it back in the day and hated it, please give it another chance, because the glow up is unreal.
Ok saw today's bad SVSSS take today and like. Nope. Not arguing with it directly.
But I have thoughts.
But here is the gyst: anyone with the same trauma would totally have abused and murdered kids in Shen Jiu's place, including Shen Yuan. Not phrased as such; phrased that the idea Shen Yuan wouldn't be like him if he went through the same trauma is ridiculous.
I disagree strongly in the tiredest way possible.
I uh, just want to point out that many people go through horrific child abuse and awful lives and do not come out trying to murder children for havinf loving mothers. That's uh. The default, actually. And yes he did try and murder the kid read the extra it's his pov and everything 👍 (never mind i;m including it further in)
And i need to point out that Shen Jiu doesn't exist to be 'what Shen Yuan might have been'. He exists to be an imperfect victim. A man who did awful things. But was far more complex than 'just evil'. He isn't an everyman where anyone would have done the same any more than yue qi was. That isn't his narrative purpose in SVSSS.
Other comments afded to this take include:
"[Shen Yuan] was an internet troll who harassed an author" - leaving mean chapter comments isn't harassment. We have no evidence he ever said anything cruel to the author directly outside of the comments on the chapters.
"[Sheb Yuan] campaigned to have a chatacter's dick chopped off" - yeah a character. A fake person. My cats all these people are not people they're narrative devices and he was talking about a narrative device in a revenge fantasy. He knows these people aren't real.
Which brings us to: Shen Yuan doesn't try to save rhe kids at the alliance conference. This one is legit, but it ain't Shen Jiu shit. It;a not a thing Shen Jiu did.
See, an important part of SVSSS is SQQ figuring out that this world is REAL. He hasn't, at this point. He perceives everyone as characters in a narrative - just like he did before he arrived. *EVEN HIMSELF*. His journey to recognizing the personhood of everyone around him including himself and how it changes things is actually kind FUNDAMENTAL to his behavior in the book and his famous levels of denial.
He did not think he had the kind of agency that could change anything and he doesn't emotionally accept those kids aren't NPCs yet.
That's. That's kinda part of the point. Realizing he could have done different things doesn't come until FAR too late. Years down the line.
Guys this is very bad media literacy but also very bad understanding of human nature. Different abuse victims do, in fact, respond differently and "murdering children" is in fact FAIRLY RARE.
From "Chapter 24: Yue Qingyuan and Shen Qingqiu" (book 4, seven seas translation)
"Luo Binghe was using the incorrect cultivation manual that Shen Qingqiu had handed him; he should have long since died bleeding from the seven apertures, his body rupturing down to his bones, skin, meridians, tendons, and flesh. But not only had this failed to come to pass, Luo Binghe’s cultivation was steadily improving.
Furthermore, Shen Qingqiu had told Ning Yingying thousands of times to stay far away from Luo Binghe and that she wasn’t allowed to get involved with him. So why did he see them every day, whispering together before his eyes?"
The idea that *anyone* could become like that - literally murdering a kid and we are told elsewhere it ain't the first time - if they eent through the same abuse is ridiculous.
Also thinking that "this is what shen yuan would have been like in different circumstances" denies the idea that *different people will change the story in different ways* which is part of the book. All you need to do to see that that IS a theme is look as Shang Qinghua - out there, getting his man. He had EXACTLY THE SAME LIFE as *his* origonal, but was a different person. Shen Yuan would never be Shen Jiu. Shen Jiu is his own fantastic mess of a man who made his own choices and is his own character in the narrative with his own narrative role. You really couldn't just shoehorn anyone in to his life early enough and get the same result. He's god's special little punching bag of hate. Sure he;s likely intended to play a pidw cycles of abuse role; and those are real, people do learn to hate each other and perpetrate cruelty.
But uh. Generally they don't get abused and then start murdering kids. Cannot sufficiently stress how special our evil little wet cat is on this one.
You can like a character who did bad things that others wouldn't have. It is ok to do that. You don't have to try and be like "well shen yuan would ahve done it too," shen yuan is his own mess of a character who yes also doesn't recognize his own agency but suffers from his own litiny of character traits. He wouldn't have acted like that because it is a story and that isn't the purpose of his character. But also real people don't work like that either. Just because someone's an internet troll who likes to do media analysis on the side on novel forums or whatever doesn't mean they'd kill kids out of paranoia and hate if you abused them in the same way as someone else who did that. C'mmon. Let Shen Jiu be his own character with his own fuckups rather than undermining real human abuse victims eh? Many people come out of abusive situations in to their lives and change. Going through the same abuse seldom leads to identical results.
To be fair, my mother often said anyone who went through all the abuse she did would be like her. It's not true but she did say it. Lots of people who do terrible things say that. And sometimes people believe them.
It isn't true. Different people react differently to the same situation. And no one is doomed to perpetrate the cycle of abuse.
And i cannot sufficiently stress how much Shen Yuan and Shen Jiu are not real people. But that doesn't Shen Yuan as a character would then abuse and murder children our of paranoia and jealousy. It uh. Just doesn't. Also doesn't mean he would be rhe same kind of person. We could argue all day about how the character would or should change but the idea it would be the same is not applicable. Makes no sense narratively in this context. Or for real people.
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I love helping everyone rediscover the fact that the opening passage of My Immortal is a parody of the opening passage of The Vampire Lestat and not just a generic exaggeration of the typical fanfic Mary Sue introduction. One of the many delightful goth kid Easter eggs the author planted for the audience.
Anne Rice COULD write and she made excellent use of narrative voice. Lestat is egotistical, less intelligent than he believes himself to be and above all, deeply unhinged. This is absolutely what his internal monologue would sound like and you have to read her other works to contextualize that. I think it is the same for the author of My Immortal and the fact that they’ve never (actually) come forward to claim ownership makes me think they enjoy the ambiguity.
The blurb said the shot was taken in Granada, Spain, by Agneta Fondén. No other info, so I have no idea how old, etc. There's a game (from 1988) that uses a similar pattern on one of its pieces, but this could predate it by at least a thousand years — or not. But the pattern intrigued me, so I made a texture map and used Blender's geometry nodes (no generative AI) to set up a hexagon grid with random rotations for the tiles:
That's all done with a single design:
You'd think this would have a name, right? (For its historical use as an architectural / decor tile — although I've found out more about its use in games, that's not what I'm looking for.) Like the Penroses do (and no, it's not one of those). But I've had no luck finding it, or any other info. Any (human only, please) help?
Saw a solarpunk creator spreading the news of scientists in China (if I remember correctly) experimenting with making plants bioluminescent to light cities instead of using as much artificial street lighting.
The conclusion was "this must be solarpunk" and I cannot emphasize how incorrect that is.
Whether or not this particular experimentation leads to less harmful man-made lighting, it isn't solarpunk.
Solarpunk is technology and infrastructure engineered to work in harmony with nature and community.
Changing nature to better fit human wants is NOT solarpunk.
Changing nature to better fit human wants and needs is fundamentally human.
Every vegetable you've ever eaten is the product of humans changing nature to better fit human wants.
I don't know that bioluminescent plants are a function solution to anything and I'm sure there are a number if very valid reasons that utmost caution should be taken with their potential implementation, but there is nothing 'not in harmony with nature' about messing with plant genetics.
Thank paleoindigeous genetic engineers from mezo/South America for the existence or corn, for example:
I also want to note: I think the research OP is talking about is actually from Europe, because I am aware of both a French and a Swedish research project on this topic. And admittedly, when that Swedish one released (that was in 2018, I think) I was also not fully sold, because it felt fairly gimmicky. But in the test areas where they implemented it a bunch of things happened over the test period. Distress in wild animals went down, air quality got better, and a bunch of other stuff. And now there is a project in France testing something similar since... 2023, I think?
And, yes. The general goal of those projects is basically to say: "Here is a thing where humans are negatively influencing nature. We cannot change that we are in those areas, but we can lessen the negative influence we have. Let's try this way."
Solarpunk is not about like... going back to the neolithic. It is about developing technology in a way that we can better live with nature. And this is doing that.
I do not even get OP's issue here. Like, having poles filled with water and bioluminiscent algae or fungi is not negatively impact the algae, bacteria, or fungi. Because algae, bacteria, and fungi, for the lack of a nervous system, quite literally do not care whether they grew in the ocean or in a bioluminiscent pole. But we know that this light is less disturbing to wild animals. We have shown that. Because light pollution is right now as much of an issue in some areas as other forms of pollution. So finding ways to reduce light pollution is very important.
And it should be noted: this idea about bioluminiscence as a form to light cities has been around in Solarpunk as a genre since 2014 and then of course has been a core idea that went into Lunarpunk. So while I do not know if those scientists were inspired by it or just came to the idea independently, it definitely connects to solarpunk.
Given that plants' main method of reproduction is tricking more mobile beings into tracking their seeds around the globe; getting installed in a lamppost was probably the algae's idea
half joking here, but think of coffee and cocoa and opium poppies and cannabis and tobacco, as well as all the food crops - any plant that makes itself useful to humans (or persuades human to make it more useful to them over time) then gets grown everywhere forever
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anyways remember when toni morrison said "sometimes you don't survive whole, you just survive in part. but the grandeur of life is that attempt. it's not about that solution. it is about being as fearless as one can, and behaving as beautifully as one can, under completely impossible circumstances."
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A step-by-step guide to drawing mice, from a 1913 book entitled What to Draw and How to Draw it. More drawing instruction from this book, plus a 1935 follow-up by the same author, here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/what-to-draw-and-how-to-draw-it-1913
