tuuliviiri

academia is presented as this space where intellect and progressive thought is welcome and encouraged, which it certainly is, but only in the "correct" manner, by the "correct people," etc.

at the end of the day, there's still a professor insulting me for daring to correct him on his antisemitic terminology in class. there is still a classroom where me and my friend are the only two non-christians present in a discussion about whether or not christianization was violent.

there are so many people who face these situations and worse. (i'm privileged as an able-bodied white jewish woman in the academic sphere!)

there is an entire world of academia beyond the aesthetic and it's hostile. there are so many institutional and social barriers preventing people from accessing academia. and there are so many instances of cloistered departments that are at least 15 years behind in progress and thought.

You can't just throw the "punk" descriptor onto whatever you like and call it an aesthetic

Punk is not an aesthetic

Punk is a mindset, it's a philosophy-- it's a rebellion against societal systems

When I say bibliopunk, I don't mean sweater vests and old library photos and quotes from classics.

Bibliopunk, to me, a punk librarian, is about freedom of information. It's about making sure everyone and anyone can have the resources they need to learn, whatever that means for them. It's no late fees and fighting against censorship. It's defunding the police and funding community resource centers that specialize in making sure there's a place where people can go to ask for help, to read books on any subject they can think of, to connect with events and organizations that exist to help THEM. It's about making zines and learning how to bookbind, because fuck the idea that traditional publishing and Amazon are the only people that can make something a book.

Punk academia, which is used colloquially here, is related to this-- it's saying fuck the academic systems that keep out the poor, the people of color, and the disabled. Fuck your Ivy Leagues, education is whatever the hell you make it. College should be free, classes should be accessible WITHOUT being forced to give up all of your personal financial and health information, curriculums need to include as many varying perspectives as they can because fuck the idea that a cishet abled white man is the authority on any given topic.

Bibliopunk, punk academia, and any other Tumblr "aesthetic" with the punk descriptor is not just a moodboard of photos you stole from Pinterest.

"Paradise Lost", John Milton

"Divine Comedy", Dante Alighieri

FREE downloadable guide to nonbinary language in Spanish - spread the word! 💛🤍💜🖤

How do we take a traditionally gendered language like Spanish and adapt it to be more gender inclusive?

Language is a powerful tool - this new EduGuide is amplifying non-binary voices, dismantling stigmas, and teaching us how to take a traditionally gendered language and adapt it to be more inclusive.

Our pals at It Gets Better Mexico collaborated with Homosensual to address this crucial issue within the language — download their guide for FREE and share it around to friends, family, your school, and your community: itgetsbetter.org/blog/spanish-eduguide-for-the-inclusion-of-nonbinary-people

Education like this helps create a space where every identity is seen and celebrated!

---------

El lenguaje es una herramienta poderosa - esta nueva EduGuide amplifica las voces no binaries, desmantela los estigmas y nos enseña cómo tomar un lenguaje tradicionalmente basado en género y adaptarlo para que sea más inclusivo.

Nuestres amigis de It Gets Better México colaboraron con Homosensual para abordar este tema crucial dentro del idioma — descarga tú guía GRATIS y compártala con amigues, familiares, tú escuela y tú comunidad para participar en estas importantes conversations: itgetsbetter.org/blog/spanish-eduguide-for-the-inclusion-of-nonbinary-people

¡Una educación como esta ayuda a crear un espacio donde se ve y se celebra cada identidad!

I was able to carry over my data, passwords, bookmakers, history, all that shit

I'm still gonna use Gmail, and Google photos, cause Firefox don't got one of those yet

But I'm doing decent it seems

What was the addon for getting past paywall/sign up walls on sites?

Google Chrome -> Firefox

If you’re on tumblr, you’ve probably already been told this a thousand times. But FireFox is an open-source browser which is safe, fast and secure. Basically all other browsers are Chrome reskins. Try Firefox Profilemaker, Arkenfox and Librewolf! Alternatively, vanilla Firefox is alright, but get Ublock Origin, turn off pocket, and get Tabliss.

Google Search -> DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo very rarely tracks or stores your browsing data (though they have only been known to sell this info to Microsoft). Don’t use their browser; only their search engine. Domain visits in their browser get shared. Alternatively, you can also use Ecosia, which is a safe search engine that uses its income to plant trees! 🌲

Google Reverse Image Search -> Tineye

Tineye uses image identification tech rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks to find you the source of your image!

Gmail -> ProtonMail

All data stored on ProtonMail is encrypted, and it boasts self-destructing emails, text search, and a commitment to user privacy. Tutanota is also a good alternative!

Google Docs -> LibreOffice

LibreOffice is free and open-source software, which includes functions like writing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, formula editing and more.

Google Translate -> DeepL

DeepL is notable for its accuracy of translation, and is much better that Google Translate in this regard. It does cost money for unlimited usage, but it will let you translate 500,000 characters per month for free. If this is a dealbreaker, consider checking out the iTranslate app.

Google Forms -> ClickUp

ClickUp comes with a built-in form view, and also has a documents feature, which could make it a good option to take out two birds with one stone.

Google Drive -> Mega

Mega offers a better encryption method than Google Drive, which means it’s more secure.

YouTube -> PeerTube

YouTube is the most difficult to account for, because it has a functional monopoly on long-form video-sharing. That being said, PeerTube is open-source and decentralized. The Internet Archive also has a video section!

However, if you still want access to YouTube’s library, check out NewPipe and LibreTube! NewPipe scrapes YouTube’s API so you can watch YouTube videos without Google collecting your info. LibreTube does the same thing, but instead of using YouTube servers, it uses piped servers, so Google doesn’t even get your IP address. Both of these are free, don’t require sign-ins, and are open source!

On your phone, go to Settings> Security and Privacy> Privacy> Other Privacy Settings> Ads> Delete Advertising ID

Then go back to Other Privacy Settings> Google location history> Turn off Location History &/or Turn-on Auto-Delete (you can set a time period of how long to keep it)

Then, staying on Other Privacy Settings, go to '+ See all activity controls'> Web & App activity> Turn off (you can also turn-on Auto-Delete for here too)

Then Scroll down to Personalized ads> My Ad Center> Turn Off Personalized Ads.

Google has no business knowing/storing everything you do online, and knowing/storing where you go everyday. Turn it off.

don't use any of these browsers, they're also chrome

Here are my favorite firefox plugins for security/anti-tracking/anti-ad that I recommend you get

As part of the masters programme at the University of Antwerp, my friends and I did a study of the novel Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. We did a stylometric analysis, which is mainly used for authorship attribution. Methods like this were for instance used to detect J.K. Rowling's style in the Cuckoo's Calling which was written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. We apply this technique on Good Omens to detect the styles of Pratchett and Gaiman in order to get an idea of who wrote what. We then visualise this in graphs that show for each part whose style is closer to that passage.

How do we do this? We train a model on lots of training data, i.e. by presenting it with novels of which we know who wrote them. The model then tries to learn the writing style of both authors. The author's style seems hard to define, but in stylometry we basically look at a certain number of most frequent words, which will always be small functional words such as 'the', 'of', 'you' ... . They are the best indicators of someone's writing style, because they occur in every text (and therefore transgress genre or time periods) and we are not really conscious of of them. For instance, most people will have ignored the second 'of' in the previous sentence because we've learned not to pay too much attention to these filler words. The same is true when writing a text. We are hardly aware of how we use function words and they are very difficult to forge, they are kind of like the fingerprints of language. So we use these seemingly insignificant words to determine the writing style of Gaiman on the one hand and Pratchett on the other. The model was trained on six novels by Neil Gaiman and six novels by Terry Pratchett.

After the model has learned this, we present it with a new, ambiguous text (in this case Good Omens). We chop the novel up in smaller pieces (specifically chunks of 5000 words) and ask the model for each chunk okay, does this segment of the novel resemble Gaiman or Pratchett's style more closely. The model will then classify it as it either Pratchett (P) or Gaiman (G) and it will also say how sure it is of its decision. The graph below illustrates this: on the x-axis you'll find the words of Good Omens (just over 1 000 000 words). The colour that is below the horizontal line gets the vote (so if green is below the line, the model says that segment was written by Pratchett). Anything above the line shows how sure it is of its choice. If there is some red above the line it basically means this segment is probably written by Pratchett, but Gaiman's style is also detected so it might be him as well.

The graph shows that Pratchett's style is overwhelmingly dominant throughout the novel. However there are some pieces where Gaiman shows up. These are (nearly) all passages involving the Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse. Gaiman said in the appendix of Good Omens that he wrote most of those passages, and since this also shows up in the model, which inspires confidence that it seems to work.

But we weren't happy yet! We have the unbelievable advantage that we have another version of the story, which was only written by one of the two authors, the screenplay of the TV-show (2019). Since we know this was only written by Gaiman, the model should attribute this in it's entirety to him, which it kind of does!

Without making too many claims, the results are very interesting to us because of Pratchett's overwhelming presence in the novel. Even in the screenplay, which we know he had nothing to do with, picks up his writing style. We are quite happy with the results, especially since they were reproducible in other methods.

This study was peer-reviewed and presented at the Computational Humanities Research Conference (CHR) on December 14th 2022. You can read the full article via the link below!

~ Learning resources ~

# Apps #

Duolingo, a classic, it teaches you vocabulary and basic sentence structure

Drops, a great app to learn vocabulary, and it’s organized by subjects

Clozemaster, makes you fill sentences, slightly advanced

Memrise, good to learn vocabulary, includes textbooks vocabulary too

Mondly, teaches vocabulary and basic sentence structure

WordDive, seems like a comprehensive course (I haven’t tested this one)

# Textbooks #

Suomen Mestari, the book most Finnish classes use, is in Finnish only

Oma Suomi, a book for self-learning English speakers

# Websites #

The Finnish Teacher, easily approachable grammar lessons

Verbix, to find verb conjugations

Sanakirja, very complete dictionary and translator

Urbaani sanakirja, Finnish equivalent to Urban dictionnary

Uusi kielemme, a good vocabulary list divided by themes and levels

Finnish swear words on Wikipedia, essential!

# Video & audio lessons #

Finnish Pod, numerous audio and video lessons

Supisuomea-videot by Yle, videos with simple Finnish and subtitles

FSI courses, recordings of conversational Finnish

# Complete beginner resources #

A Taste of Finnish, reading, listening and grammar points

Kielet by Yle, lessons in Finnish with videos

Venla, for vocabulary, structures and grammar

Digital Dialects, games to learn Finnish

~ Listening resources ~

# Podcasts #

Opi Suomea!, a podcast in simple Finnish

Yle uutiset selkosuomeksi, a news podcast in easy Finnish

Auta Antti!, a podcast where the host answers listeners questions

# Music & Radio #

Radio Suomi Pop, only Finnish songs & Finnish speakers

Tunein, to access more Finnish radios

#vainsuomihitit, Spotify playlist with all the new Finnish hits

Suomen musiikki, my Finnish spotify playlist

Mirka Karoliina, Disney songs with Finnish subtitles and translations

# Movies & TV shows #

My Finnish movies masterlist (needs to be updated)

Yle Arena, legal streaming of Finnish shows & others with Finnish subtitles

Some American streaming services (Netflix, Disney+ etc) have things dubbed in Finnish (mostly cartoons and kid’s shows), but most of those are only available if you’re in Finland (or use a VPN)

# Youtubers #

Papananaama

KAKSI ÄITIÄ

maiju

~ Reading & Writing resources ~

# Reading #

Yle uutiset selkosuomeksi, news articles in easy Finnish

Oppiminen by Yle, various articles in easy Finnish

Free Finnish books, for advanced level

# Writing #

LangCorrect, write diary entries and get corrected by native Finnish speakers

~ Communities ~

# Finnblrs #

Tags on Tumblr: Finnish / Finnish langblr / Finnblr / Finnish language

This is Finnish

Suomen Kieli

Fennophile

Tealingual

Finn in training (mine)

# Others #

LearnFinnish on Reddit