Writing, mostly

AO3 tag: *stuff you could not pay me to read*

Hey everyone, it looks like there's some hinky stuff going on with LiveJournal in a way where it might be shutting down relatively soon -- and if not, who knows what will happen to it?

Obviously most of us aren't active users there right now, but a lot of us were active users there at some point, so... if you want to save your blog, this thread includes a few ways on how to do it, as well as a lot more detail on exactly what's going on.

(We also suggest screengrabbing or saving the page of any fics that you care about that are based there, as well as anything else you might have bookmarked.)

Just in general, as a reminder, despite what the old adage is: the internet is not forever. So back up anything you care about!

Note: edited to add screengrabs below the cut in case anyone doesn't want to click on the link.

About Backups:

If you still have control of your own journal, the best way to save it is to bring it to Dreamwidth. But for everything else...

The best tool to backup LJ right now (in my opinion) is the LJ Archivr. It's $20, only runs on PC, and it was a massive labor of love from its creator, who's been working overtime recently to get it updated so that people can reliably use it.

It's a bit confusing to set up (especially if you're not the kind of nerd who's elbow deep in this shit) and it does require you to have an activated version of Microsoft Office. If you need help setting it up, or want help installing and activating Microsoft Office in an uhhhh...let's say affordable way, please message me and I'll be happy to help!

The best practice is to run the LJ Archivr, and then take the HTMLs it gives you, put them through Prince PDF conversion, and then keep both sets of files. The Archivr on its own doesn't save images, but Prince PDF can kinda save them, though it doesn't embed gifs properly. If there are images you'd like saved in their original format, esp gif icons, fanart, etc, then go right-click-save those directly.

And most importantly: If you only need a few journals/communities backed up and don't think it's worth it to mess with this program, or if you otherwise don't have the money/technical ability/whatever to run the LJ Archivr, I will back them up for you.

I'm not kidding. DM me, and I'll add your stuff to my queue. It might take a bit, and I can't promise it'll be perfect, but I'm all in with backing up whatever I can.

The creator of the LJ Archivr tool is also offering to do this, and his thread about the program is here:

Take a knife or two to complete any tasks you need to finish soon. Reblog to give your mutuals a knife for any group projects you may be working on

The big 30!!!

It's fine. This is a readily comprehensible human illogic. Exactly the kind of thing he expected from moving to Earth.

And he decides he’s honored by it, in a humanly illogical way.

The humans are asking him to do what is after all his job, and specifically requesting him for the joy his name brings them on top of an already agreeable and satisfying task. He has no objection to engendering positive emotions in others. Harm hastens the heat-death of the universe, Surak teaches, so happiness must logically slow it down. 

Plus, Vulcans of his generation love puns. There were two decades of punning competitions in colleges across the planet. So when he realizes that he is a walking zero-effort pun, and that the humans also love the pun, he is all for it. He is the Joe Cool of the entire Vulcan population in his city. 

And via this pun, the humans are including him in a cherished and traditional myth, by casting him as the literal bringer of life and the expander of families. 

(The best of this post and its reblogs, but with links that work)

Here is a website where you can scroll down to all the different levels of the ocean 

Here is a website where you can see the future of the universe

Here is a website where you can press a ‘make everything okay’ button, over and over, until things really are okay

Here is a website that you can read if you feel like a burden

Here is a website where you can look at strobe illusions (TW strobe/flashing)

Here is a website where you can cut stuff up (TW blood/sh)

Here and here are websites where you can play with sand

Here is a website where you can draw with macaroni and other fun foods

Here is a website where you can paint someone’s nails

Here is a website where you can grow a garden with emojis

Here is a website with hundreds of videos of people hugging you (rightfully dubbed ‘the nicest place on the internet’ because it really is, y’all, it made me cry)

Here is a website that will take you to other useless websites

Here is a website where you can make a tiny cat play bongo drums (and other instruments!)

Here is a website to help give you gentle reminders <3

Here is a website where you can grow a tiny farm

Here is a website where you can take a bunch of scientific personality tests

Here is a website of calm rain noise

nate: no one is better than him at disarming large numbers of enemies without going down

nate: he can identify weaponry by sound and organizations by fighting style, hair cut, and shoes

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.

It just stops Tumblr’s built in filter (see under settings) from working which many of us have in place to protect ourselves.

This has happened to me multiple times this week, and as someone currently struggling with suicidal ideation, has not been great.

This is from 2022 but it's still vital Tumblr etiquette. Please don't self censor the way TikTok has taught you to. You can say kill, fuck, sex, murder, suicide, rape etc etc

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been exposed to major triggers recently because people are tagging rape as “grape.”