stop following me

arts of unlocking • 75,160 words • complete

“Laurent,” Auguste says, “why are we in Akielos? And what is he doing here?” Ten years after the battle of Marlas, Auguste wakes up.

Featuring the inherent messiness of unifying two kingdoms, Auguste's terrible horrible no good very bad day, Laurent's seven-week crashout, and Damen on the verge of inventing the get along shirt.

images & fonts credited under the cut

if you've made replies on posts there is now a tab on your blog showing every post youve replied to and your reply.

if this is not what you want, either go to your blog and click comments and disable it from there or just go to your individual blogs setting pages. just change it from blue to grey if you dont want everyone to see your replies AND the post you're replying to

PLEASE BE ADVISED that it is set to disabled for blogs that have not made any replies but it will turn ON if you reply with that blog in the future.! i just tested it with my main, which was greyed out but it turned on the moment i left a test reply

so couple of clarifications. comments are disabled as default for primary blogs that have their likes disabled. they are seemingly enabled for all other blogs that have replied to posts

- yes, explicitly in canon

- yes, implied in canon

- yes, in my headcanons

- no

-nuance ™️

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

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.

back then i made a bunch of these but by now i lost the pic and dont know how to find the original post anymore

so anyway here is the diagram for anyone else who is interested!!

this requires pretty big carboard pieces, if you have a really big box or something you can make it from one piece, but if you don't, you can also just make each of the pieces individually and then tape them together

and then in the end you put it together like this!!

and then when you make a bunch you can put them all next to each other and stack your books like crazy

1. Drill yourself on hiragana and katakana. These are the phonetic building blocks of Japanese, think of them as equivalent to english letters. This site is a good resource in general. Once you have a solid grasp on this, DO NOT LINGER HERE; move to step 2. You will master kana later.

2. Download Anki. This is a flashcard service. They have a paid app if you’re willing to invest for it, but if not, they have a mobile website (create an account and sync it with your computer).

This is the deck you’re going to download. Import it to Anki and do this every day. I have learned the hard way (twice) that skipping this is bad. If you become overwhelmed, you can change the number of new cards and reviews by clicking the cog next to the name of the deck!

3. Cure Dolly (Youtube, grammar) + transcript. She has kind of a posh accent, you might want to turn subtitles on. Watch a few videos when you feel like it but most importantly set up 4 and 5 as soon as possible

4. Yomitan (must have) is a browser extension that functions as a pop-up dictionary. you need to install dictionaries for it to work. here are some dictionaries you can use with yomitan and explanations of what they do

5. READ. DO NOT LET YOURSELF GET STUCK BEFORE THIS STEP. JUST READ!!!! Most people who fail to learn Japanese do so because they are afraid of not being ready to move on, which is counterproductive. Just read. When you were a child did you spend years on vocab and grammar before reading? No I bet you did not. Pick something to read and learn what you don’t already know by reading in Japanese.

Jiten.moe has a list of novels and visual novels that you can read on your computer sorted by difficulty. So does jpdb. There’s also this document. There’s also this document. Hey look this website is cool too

For visual novels: download LunaHook. It “hooks” to your VN and allows you to use Yomitan on words you don’t know. Turn off the translation feature, it does nothing to help you learn

For literary texts: ttsu e-reader supports epub and htmlz files.

You can also learn Japanese by watching anime, but it’s a little more convoluted and requires a lot more patience.

For manga, utilize Mangatan, but I don’t recommend this right out the gate because when you’re first learning sentence structure you’ll want something with complete sentences.

Set your computer up for mining vocab before you start reading. Once you finish your kaishi deck, you can drill your mining cards (I didn’t do mine until after finishing kaishi because it was too much).

Most importantly: reading is going to be hard at first. It is going to piss you off. You need to muscle through with this because this is where the bulk of your learning will happen. After a while you will just feel like reading because you love reading! Try not to pick something too hard for your first read, but if you’re interested in the story you might be able to muscle through something a little tougher.

Hey everyone, I’m aware that I’m very privileged to live in a country where the government are like, regular level shit instead of Trumpian, so I wanted to help out people living in the so-called USA however I could. Here’s my advice for what it’s worth - I don’t have experience living under an authoritarian state but I have studied history and been paying attention to what everyone has been saying in the past few weeks, so I thought I’d offer some of my suggestions for how to keep yourselves and your neighbours safe going forward. It’s hard to know what to go so far as to suggest, since it’s just so unpredictable what might happen over the next few years. But in the interests of predicting every eventuality, I hope you’ll overlook any particularly outlandish suggestions. Hopefully it won’t get as far as some of these actions imply, but it’s always better to be prepared than blindsided. You don’t have to do all these things. Just do what you can, and remember you aren’t alone

-Join a labour union, go to meetings, and be prepared to strike

-Attend protests even if you think they won’t do anything. But bear in mind you will increasingly risk arrest and police brutality. Dress unremarkably, don’t take photos at protests and DEFINITELY don’t share them online

-Call your senators, congresspeople, governors, state legislators, mayors and city councillors. Continually bother them and kick up a fuss about even the smallest thing you disagree with. It’s important to keep government busy so implementing evil legislation is harder

-Set up or volunteer with a community fridge/kitchen or homeless shelter

-Knock on your neighbours’ doors and start getting to know them. If they are safe people, build relationships of reciprocity and care with them

-Read. Expose yourself to as many ideas as you can, but especially political theory, queer storylines and other subversive texts. Some recommendations:

Hope in The Dark by Rebecca Solnit

The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin

How to Stand Up to a Dictator by Maria Ressa

Anything by Marx, Kropotkin, Chomsky, Gelderloos, Freire, Fanon, Foucault, Harvey, Graeber, etc

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell

Pirate Care by Marcell Mars, Valeria Graziano and Tomislav Medak

No Ordinary Men by Elisabeth Sifton and Fritz Stern

Conspiracy of Decency by Emmy E. Werner

-Try to set up or join a local group in your community that discusses political or philosophical ideas, does consciousness-raising, builds connections between neighbours, provides stopgap services to desperate people, teaches people their legal rights, or some equivalent act of mutual aid or resistance

-Key in to existing activist networks for climate, racial, migrant or gender justice - attend their events, fund them, give your time

-Consider whether at some point you’d be willing to do things the government will tell you are forbidden, risking arrest, imprisonment and possibly more severe consequences further down the line. You will have to answer to your own conscience but it’s also important to try and keep safe. If you’re willing to hide people from ICE or the police, source ‘illegal’ HRT and other essential medication, lose or falsify records, help someone get reproductive care, spread forbidden ideas, graffiti or poster government buildings, hold sit-ins, occupations or encampments, key certain people’s cars, let people in or out at borders who you aren’t ‘supposed’ to, sabotage fossil fuel or military infrastructure, disrupt party conventions, withhold tax, film or take photos in places where it’s banned, conscientiously object should a draft come in, or other similar behaviours, do them quietly and carefully. Involve as few other people as possible and DO NOT in the coming days broadcast your willingness to do so. Also for legal reasons I’m joking 😉

-Pick a behaviour from the government which, if enacted, would result in you immediately leaving the country. Once they do this, get OUT. Don’t make it too small, but don’t wait until they’re rounding up journalists in the street, holding public executions or imposing military curfews either. (I’m not saying any of these things will happen, I’m just saying pick your line.) If you’re trans, this event might have already happened, in which case start the process of seeking work or asylum abroad. Do your due diligence - make sure the place you choose will be safe for people like you, and bear in mind that asylum seeking is a big step that will expose you to dehumanising bureaucracies and local hostility even in the most liberal countries

-Put together a go-bag

-Donate any money you can spare either to these advocacy groups or to people in need directly

-Be radically, aggressively kind and compassionate to everyone you meet

-If you have children or are responsible for them, talk to them about what is happening. Strike a balance between explaining to them that it’s important to stay true to our principles and making sure they know to be careful

-Take time to be with loved ones and experience moments of joy, whether this is group meals, days out, shared catharsis, birthdays, religious celebrations, making music, movie nights, whatever replenishes you and reminds you what the fight is for

-Pick an hour each day in which to engage with and respond to the news (broadcast channels, papers, social media). The rest of the time focus on your well-being, that of your family, friends and neighbours, on your job, on being kind, on your volunteering, on resisting in countless tiny ways. Unless something big and emergent is happening in which case respond and react in real time

-Seek out good news stories from your own country and the world. They are out there, I promise

-If you see an arrest or immigration raid, get your phone out and start filming. You have a right to record it

-Donate to bail and strike funds

-Spend time in nature, and learn the names of local trees, flowers, birds, mammals, fish and reptiles. Educate yourself about the natural history and ecology of your local area so you can replenish your mental health, defend your environment and remember that there is life beyond the fascist state’s delusions of total control

-Learn about and engage with your local indigenous tribes. Study their history, attend any events they put on that are open to the settler public, donate money and any supplies they might need, agitate for their rights, see if you have any land you could transfer to their stewardship, and learn some of their languages if they think that’s appropriate

-Make an effort to research and understand things that are happening abroad. The US empire thrives on isolationism, ignorance and poor education. Learn foreign languages, follow other countries’ politics, study their history, watch their films, expose yourself to their cultures and teach yourself to point them out on a map. The more you feel affinity with people across the globe, the more you are a citizen of the world and able to keep your heart safe from narratives of exceptionalism - because you’d best believe the propaganda will be targeting you too. You’re not immune to it. You have to work at resisting. Foreign news services can also help you keep a handle on what’s real if your national ones are lying to you

-Run for school board, union rep, a welfare or campaigning role on your college campus or in your place of worship, or some other small-scale local post where you can make a difference

-If you’re in a position to do so, see if you can help marginalised people receive cheaper services through your job, volunteering or advocacy (for instance offering discounted rates if you run your own business)

-Learn first aid, cooking, and basic clothing repair, and teach these skills to others. Use them to help people with relevant needs

-Pick your battles. Sometimes you might have to let smaller things slide in order to make a bigger difference later. Other times, the small things will be the thin end of the wedge and you’ll want or need to take a stand

-Wear a mask and try to keep up to date with your vaccinations

-Be ready to mobilise your community to protect vulnerable people or places from vigilante attacks, especially if there’s a mosque, immigration centre, lgbt venue or abortion clinic in your neighbourhood

-Download the Signal app and Element software. Get a VPN. Turn off ‘learn from this app’ in your phone’s Siri settings for every app. Leave your phone at home if you’re protesting or doing anything else spiky. Put it in the fridge or at the other end of the house if discussing things you don’t want overheard. Assume you are under surveillance most of the time

-Carry narcan

-Get a library card and take out as many books and DVDs there as you can, use the internet there, stay warm there, really make use of the public service. You can even offer to volunteer there if you have time

-See if you can access academic and scientific papers somehow, and make an effort to read at least one over a semi-regular period of time. This will help with the education mentioned above, as well as keeping you in touch with the truths which your government is so eager to suppress. Lots of downloads also helps an academic in their career, which will be very valuable now that so much of their funding has been cut

-Pick up your neighbours’ groceries or prescriptions for them, drop them off at/pick them up from medical appointments, watch their kids, bail them out and cook for them

-Quit twitter. Use BlueSky instead if you want but don’t assume you are unobserved there. Consider quitting Facebook and Instagram too if you can - Supernova offers a vaguely similar user interface to insta if you want to keep up with friends and continue sharing pictures

-It might help your sanity to start keeping a diary or journal, detailing your emotions and experiences and keeping an eyewitness record of your government’s behaviour. If you do this, though, consider keeping it in a secure hiding place or writing it in code. Perhaps send a copy securely to someone outside the country, but only if you can do so safely, and be ready to destroy it if you think you’re in danger from its discovery

-See if you can get involved with or start a movement for community green energy in your local area

-If you have any garden space, try to plant and grow a bit of your own fruit and veg

-Get trained in non-violent direct action and in self-defence

-Save as much money as you can. You never know when you or someone else might need it

-If it’s accessible to you, consider getting a therapist to talk through the difficult experiences and painful emotions that are going to come up in the next few years. But be careful - make sure you trust the professional you use and that your conversations are as private as possible. Even if both of these are the case, be considered as to how you phrase things

-Walk, cycle, or take public transit whenever possible

-Make art! Paint, draw, sing, play instruments, write stories or poetry or lyrics or plays, act, dance, collage, sculpt, whatever frees your heart and keeps it your own

-Donate individually or through orgs to sex workers, domestic violence survivors, Romani and Traveller individuals, and other people at risk of precarious housing and/or income

-Educate yourself about Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Paganism, Indigenous Spiritualities and other non-Christian religions

-Carry a spare scarf to offer to a hijabi whose hijab might be torn off by vigilantes

-Offer court support to friends and neighbours

-While you still can, source and distribute as many binders, packers, breast forms and pairs of tucking underwear as possible

-As much as possible shop with small local independent businesses, and follow consumer boycotts

-Consider eating less meat. Ignoring the environmental and ethical implications of the meat industry, deregulation is likely and this means many food safety standards will be scrapped

-If you can afford it, get an air filter for your house and a water filter for your tap

-See if you can file lawsuits against government bodies or big companies for violating various laws and rights

-Make sure the disabled people in your community can access spaces, services and transit, that they have enough money for necessities and for disability aids, and that there’s an evacuation plan for them in the event of flooding/fires/a tornado/vigilante violence/government violence

Another manga that has really popped off on twt lately that is a super fun read is Idolatry by Shin Ootaka (artist Homare). It follows Junna Harumi, a die hard stan of the idol Tsukishiro Fuwari. After her oshi's group disbands and she deduces her fave will be part of an upcoming idol audition show (whose top 5 will get to debut), she goes through absurd lengths of net stalking to be able to boost Fuwari's odds of winning.

I want to be clear, Junna is def a bit of a creep (really just shy of a yandere since she's not very physically violent or in direct contact with her obsession) and the series doesn't shy away from that; she's ready to do just about anything if it means her fave gets the limelight she thinks she deserves. There's a lot of gap moe in her being cute and so utterly+earnestly love struck by Fuwari then turning around and blackmailing someone to get an inside guy for production.

In a competition with 99 other girls and skills of someone who's way too online (def NOT an idol), it's really interesting seeing Junna line up all the dominoes and knock it down for a big payoff. There's no doubt she's going to come up with some wildly convoluted plans during each stage of tryouts and more to get what she wants, it's only a matter of how far the author wants to push it.

That said, she's not the only crazy girl in the series. More idols get introduced once filming begins and the nonchalant #1 is quickly established as a very active menace in her plans.

Also it must be said but I love how Lisa's eyes are drawn. I'm pretty sure it's a stylistic choice and not representing smth like heterochromia but as a big fan of asymmetric character design I LOVE it. All our main idol characters have different designed pupils but her's just really stick to me--more is more is better imo so a quirky choice like this for the main rival is great!

If the actions of the mc put you off then I wouldn't pick it up hoping for immediate yuri (like with many mega idol fans, Junna mostly wants to see her fave succeed rather than get in a personal relationship for now). That said, if you want to see some ridiculous overplanning and micromanaging just to create the most opportunity for Fuwari to shine brightest, then this is def a great read.

context: grew up in an abusive, controlling home, escaped to uni, had a prolonged mental breakdown, became a teacher and worked in a dysfunctional school with amazing kids and nightmare management for years. I did not realise I have adhd and autism for a long time. (You might even be able to scroll back through this blog to find the time around which I did realise lol.)

ANYWAY, things that have helped me because my body can no longer handle any kind of stress without flaring up:

If you’re doing anything that requires you to do a lot of prep before you begin the actual thing (e.g. cooking, deep cleaning a room, moving house), mise en place. That’s a fancy french way of saying get everything ready before you begin. So if I’m cooking idk spaghetti carbonara, that means fry and chop the bacon, separate the egg yolks from the whites, put water in the kettle, put dry spaghetti into a pan. Once everything’s ready, it reduces the mental load and means I can focus on the actual cooking and any clean up that I can do along the way. H/t to @ms-demeanor for this, you changed my life!

the Might As Well rule. This one works really well for me but you gotta be careful otherwise you’ll get sucked into the Vortex. Basically, let’s imagine you’re in the bathroom, brushing your teeth. You notice that the extra roll of toilet paper has been used. instead of thinking, “I’ll get to that later”, and then forgetting about it until you sit down on the bog (no judgement, we’ve all been there), you think “Might As Well put an extra roll while I’m here!” This tends to help with the little tasks that build up over time. This Does Not Work for big tasks.

Leading on from no.2, Do It Immediately/ASAP really helps me too. My current boss will email me on a Friday and say, ‘don’t reply to this now! Leave it til monday!’ But she and i both know that if i leave it til monday, I will forget and get stressed and this will make me Very Ill. So, instead, the moment i receive the email, I’ll either schedule in replying to it as soon as I’m done with my current thing, OR I’ll reply to it immediately.

Anything that can’t be actioned immediately, i mark as Unread. Anything Unread in my inbox is a future action, and i check those Unread emails/texts/whatevers Every. Day. To make sure whether today is the day i have the info to action it. (This also means i have to stay on top of my inbox. I read all my emails and then mark them accordingly. I’m also brutal with unsubscribing)

The House Always Wins. Both in a literal sense, because i am in a constant battle with keeping my house clean, and i know now that I’ll never get it as clean as i want it. It’s impossible, i no longer have the energy or stamina to vacuum and scrub everything. But also just in a life sense. I’m never going to achieve things to perfection, and perfect is the opposite of done. And getting things done is that much more important when you have limited energy and strength. Accept that you often have to half-arse life in order to Full-Arse the few things that really matter to you.

Have multiples of everything, everywhere. I wear support gloves, so i need to have handcream at every sink and everywhere i sit down in the house. I try to keep it unobtrusive, but it means i don’t have to trek upstairs just to moisturise my hands. Gum, phone chargers, pens and pencils, water bottles, hand sanitizer, whatever you need.

Work with people, even if it’s online. Body doubling actually works. Also I’ve found that if I’m working on assignments, taking myself to a library or study area that isn’t my bedroom helps so much.

Show off! Tell people on here or elsewhere in your life about the fact that you’ve just written 100 words! Or that you’ve cleaned the fridge and that’s a really big deal for you. Celebrate your wins, no matter how small.

Basically, you’re aiming to reduce the mental load as much as possible. Wear the same types of clothes all the time to minimise the amount of laundry. Eat the same three lunches so decision fatigue doesn’t take over.

For anybody looking for resources from someone dealing with actual ADHD, I have an incomplete but ever growing list of ADHD tips, tools, and suggestions on my website.

A lot of the pages on that site are adapted from my tumblr posts, for instance I'm adapting this post about car repair projects with ADHD into a guide on project management and completion with ADHD.

She should get to do this every show, it’s what Barb deserves <3

It's a mega pack of over 1,000 photos, neatly sorted for your convenience. Every photo I've ever done for fatphotoref is here in one download!

✨pay what you want (suggestion of $25)! ✨