in earnest.

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Excellent basic crochet video series

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Another drawing character faces video

Literally my favorite art pose hack

Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??

Introduction to flying small aircrafts

French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Introduction to college physics (free textbook)

Introduction to accounting (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Ancient Greek

Latin

Spanish

German

Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)

French

Cooking with flavor bootcamp (used what I learned in this a LOT this year)

Beekeeping 101

Learn Interior Design from the British Academy of Interior Design (free to audit course - just choose the free option when you register)

Video on learning to read music that actually helped me??

How to use and sew with a sewing machine

How to ride a bike (listen. some of us never learned, and that's okay.)

How to cornrow-braid hair (I have it on good authority that this video is a godsend for doing your baby niece's black hair)

Making mead at home (I actually did this last summer and it was SO good)

How to garden

Basics of snowboarding (proceed with caution)

How to draw for people who (think they) suck at art (I know this website looks like a 2003 monstrosity, but the tutorials are excellent)

Pixel art for beginners so you can make the next great indie game

Go (back) to school

Introduction to Astronomy (high school course - free textbook w/ practice problems)

Principals of Economics (high school course - free textbook w/ practice problems)

Introduction to philosophy (free college course)

Computer science basics (full-semester Harvard course free online)

Learn a language

Japanese for Dummies (link fix from 2022)

Ukrainian

Portuguese (Brazil)

American Sign Language (as somebody who works with Deaf people professionally, I also strongly advise you to read up on Deaf/HoH culture and history!)

Chinese (Mandarin, Simplified)

Beginner-oriented video on how to sail

This guy has so many videos on baking different types of bread. SO very many.

Coding in Python - one of the most flexible and adaptable high-level programming languages out there - explained through projects making video games

Learn to swim! (for adult learners. I don’t care if you live in Kansas or Mali or wherever. LEARN TO SWIM.)

Learn how quantum mechanics works. Then read some more about it

[Learn about quantum mechanics again, but in a more advanced engineering/mathematics class. Then read more about the math and physics of it]

Poetry Handbook, by Mary Oliver

Something I learned this year: how to sew a quilt (Here’s a very easy beginning pattern that looks amazing and can be done with pre-cut fabric!)

How to hit the ball in softball

Tutorial video on what is under the hood of most (gas) cars + weird engine sounds and what they mean

Full beginner mechanics technical training, if you want to go more in depth

Playlist on how car engine physics work if you want to go ultra in depth

Lecture series on architecture design through study of buildings

How (American income) taxes & tax law work (choose “audit course” at checkout for free class)

Pickleball for beginners (so you can finally join your neighbor/friend/distant cousin who is always insisting you join their team)

+ Para-Pickleball for beginners (for mobility aid users!)

School is so much more fun when there’s no tests:

American Law - Contracts

Shakespeare’s Life and Plays

Fairy Tales: Meanings, Messages, and Morals

Modern Poetry

World History [Part 1, Part 2]

Learn a language:

Arabic + Resource Guide compiled from Reddit (includes info on different dialects)

Chinese (Cantonese) (audio)

Urdu (frequently recommended course on Reddit) + Resource Guide

Figure out what tools you need - video by bitter melon bindery

But also, you can definitely bookbind with a lot of stuff you have on hand and on a budget - post by starblight bindery

Learn how to bind a square-back bradel bind - videos by DASbookbinding

Impose your own typesets - Renegade Community Imposer, maintained and coded by Renegade members

Some free resources put together by Renegade Bookbinding Guild

Oh shit. Sally Field kinda went off here. “The garment you knit for yourself as a child.” Might have to read her memoir now.

enjoying the view 🌼

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

uBlock Origin blocks trackers and almost every ad on almost every site (Facebook is the only exception I can think of). It blocks YouTube ads too. It also has a "zapper" mode that lets you get rid of elements on the page, like annoying sidebar videos (it's not AI btw. it's just a little bit of developer tools CSS magic).

uBlacklist lets you block results on search engine pages. You can block them manually or by using lists such as the Huge AI Blocklist. (If you're interested in blocking AI sites specifically I also maintain a list of sites that are partnered with OpenAI. You can add it as a subscription with the raw text URL.)

Indie Wiki Buddy redirects you to either a non-Fandom wiki for a piece of media or serves you a version of the Fandom wiki that is just the content with no ads.

For PDF readers:

Firefox has a built-in pdf reader! It's good for filling in PDF fields, but for more complex edits, pdf24 looks a lot more powerful.

On Windows I used SumatraPDF.

On Linux Mint Cinnamon, I use qpdfview (also available in Software Manager) because it doesn't reset the zoom level when jumping between sections using the navigation. Just be aware it handles copying text a little differently than other readers (though it works great!).

For ebooks:

Project Gutenberg has public domain books in multiple languages and formats.

Anna's Archive is similar to the Internet Archive - a lifesaver for books that are hard to get your hands on, like the books I've used for my historical research.

For art (all of these are available on Windows, Mac, and Linux):

Photopea is an in-browser recreation of Photoshop.

Krita and FireAlpaca are drawing tools - I prefer Krita but FireAlpaca is more similar to Clip Studio Paint. You do have to pay for the enhanced version of FA to get darkmode though.

LibreSprite is a pixel sprite software.

For email addresses, I use both Tuta and Proton Mail, and I like them both. I pay for Tuta to get unlimited tags and calendars, and I use Tuta Calendar as my primary calendar. The two features I miss over Google Calendar are not being able to import public calendars and not being able to type a time in the event name and have the calendar parse that into the event time. Otherwise it's been great and I appreciate being able to easily assign custom hex colors to each calendar. One thing to note about having multiple addresses in one Tuta account is that they all go into the same inbox, which might be a dealbreaker for some folks. I'm not sure if it works the same way for Proton because I don't pay for Proton.