Claire Keane
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
blake kathryn
shark vs the universe
noise dept.
Monterey Bay Aquarium
🩵 avery cochrane 🩵
#extradirty
Sweet Seals For You, Always
taylor price
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
Product Placement
izzy's playlists!
trying on a metaphor
Kiana Khansmith
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
Show & Tell
Andulka
seen from Iraq
seen from South Africa
seen from Canada
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Bolivia
seen from Türkiye
seen from Spain
seen from United States
seen from India
seen from United States
seen from Venezuela
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from T1
seen from United States
@the-rainy-daze
Anyone else with chronic pain ever get really absorbed in a project and dissociate from your body while you're working but then you finish and you come back to your body and you're just like AAAAAAAHHH! WHAT'S WRONG?? oh yeah. The horrors. Never mind
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Attackers explain how an anti-spam defense became an AI weapon.
love that energy
GenAI v. not GenAI round up.
So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.
Pro GenAI websites/Programs:
X/Twitter (Remember, Grok gives people cancer)
Threads
Pro Writing Aid
Grammarly
Duolingo
Google Docs
Microsoft Word/all Microsoft products Takes from and will feed their machine.
Youtube (taking advantage of people who are hearing impaired. ==;;)
Adobe Products. All of them. If you HAVE to use them (Some businesses require it), save offline because there is a film of at least some privacy protections there, so if you have to sue, you can say it violates US privacy law. Remember, contracts do not circumvent US law.
Corel won't feed the machines, but still uses AI stolen from other artists. Which sucks since Corel Draw is the second best overall for vector programs. (Plus I love Painter, but I bought the offline version to avoid AI). (Canadian company)
Canva Takes and feeds their machine.
Deviant Art Not only supports AI, but put a tool in and said they are going to steal your work if you like it or not for their machine.
Sketchup went Pro-GenAI. The thing is that you can do the same thing in Blender these days with precise measurements.
Autodesk has stated they are Pro-Gen AI here. It is not clear if they will use your models to feed their machine. But be on guard. They make Maya and 3Dmax. You can replace it with Blender.
Neutral ground:
Tumblr (there is a way to opt out [Link] and they don't have an active AI machine.) https://www.tumblr.com/dookins/743519550598987776/heres-how-to-disable-third-parties-like-ai
Etsy allows GenAI, but still has some (minor) restrictions. I'd still be cautious. (Also be cautious of drop shippers). Complaints about too much AI and AI images+patterns made by Ai still exist on the website. They lean slightly more pro-AI, but still won't let it run completely amok, say like Facebook. They won't feed your work into a machine, but also don't ban it through robots.txt.
Bluesky They don't use an AI algorithm except for in the "Discover" section of their website, but while they are anti-GenAI strongly, they don't seem to block the Gen AI bots from entry, so you'd still have to use Nightshade or Glaze (links below). There is no opt-out because they don't need an opt out. (Leaning towards strong position on AI, but I wish they would block GenAI bots).
Searxng- If you super want to screw over Google, in general, and have some tech savvy, you can set up your own search engine through searxng. It's easier on Windows and Linux than it is on a Mac. (Mac you need Docker), but if you're determined on privacy, Searxng adds a layer of privacy. Some of it sometimes uses bits of AI, but most of it doesn't and you can fuss with the settings so it doesn't spit out AI results. At sheer minimum Google will stop spitting out weird videos on Youtube at you because in your private browsing, you searched for the origin of ball bearings while not logged in for a book and Google likes to break privacy laws.
Strong positions against AI:
Scrivener (Creator vowed against AI) Writing program. There is an active forum, and versions for Mac, Linux and PC. It is paid, but at ~60 USD, it's cheaper than most programs. There is usually a holiday sale around Christmas. It has a learning curve, but with an active forum with the programmer of it there to ask obscure questions it's not a dead zone. They often take suggestions and implement them over time. (Especially if you rank the importance, applications, etc) US company.
LibreOffice Open source and free Spreadsheet and Word processor program that can replace Microsoft Word. Some people might have seen older versions where it was called Neo Office (now extinct) and Open Office. LibreOffice is still populated, plus the forums are super helpful if you get stuck. The UX is pretty intuitive if you've used Microsoft Word. Scrivener, BTW, supports exporting to odt (the native file) as well as .doc, and this can open both. The slight thing is that sometimes it doesn't export to .doc smoothly. And I DO wish more magazines, and agent (big clue here) supported .odt files since it is free. Part of the reason .odt isn't as supported is because Microsoft and Adobe have a deal with the devil with each other, so Adobe's Book formatting program InDesign doesn't support ODT. (BTW, if you have a good open source replacement for InDesign that supports ODT, let me know.)
Dabble (as suggested by SF stories, see reblog) is a writing program. Similar to Scrivener. Has vowed against AI and to resist it. 108 dollars a year for Basic. It is almost twice the price of Scrivener who lets you update for fairly cheap. 29 dollars a month, v. 59 dollars for the whole program (Scrivener) for the same features of Premium. You choose.
yWriter is a free Writing program and like Scrivener, and has vowed against AI Last I looked it had some UX issues, but some people swear by it. The learning curve is higher than Scrivener which is saying something.
Ellipsus is an online writing program and vowed against AI. The main feature I like (which Scrivener doesn't have) is the ability to change spellcheck based on region/language. It is a requested feature of Scrivener, but lower priority. So if you have a Brit, you can get the spelling for the character. They are a British-based company.
Cara.app (The creator of the website sued GenAI there is no chance they'll convert) is an artist website. Cara is trying to institute an auto Glaze/Nightshade into the website if given enough funds. People see it as a soft replacement for deviant art. (which went fully AI) If you believe in human art, please donate if you can. Zhang Jingna, the Creator,is Chinese-Singporean. She lives in Singapore.
Clip Studio Paint added AI, but saw the light and decided to protect artists instead because of protest and removed it. There are tutorials and a good forum if you get super stuck. Based in Japan, so the UI and UX is really clean.
Davinci Resolve Pro is a film editing software that's super good. There is a free version and a paid version. The forums are responsive. The programmers aren't always present. There is a healthy group of tutorials. US company. Clean UX. It does take a little bit of time to remember the shortcuts.
Tahoma2D is anti-AI and open source animation program. Takes a little getting used to, but is good for animations and doesn't crash as often as Animate. Programmers are in the forums and some bugs are fixed within hours. The forums are super responsive and helpful.
Krita open source and free, no AI. I'd rank it secondary to Clip Studio Paint (which is paid) I haven't tried the forums, but it's pretty intuitive and can stand for a lower level replacement for Painter, and do a lot of the basics of Photoshop. It's usually ranked higher than the equally open source Gimp.
Writer P AKA Writer+ (app for when you're on the go) is a simple word processor app for your phone that doesn't use AI. The original programmer stopped updating, so Writer+ person took over and isn't out to make a profit since it's free in the spirit of the original app. It has subfolders you can use. Since it was programmed before GenAI it doesn't have AI. Intuitive, easy to use. Fairly easy to upload the files through three dots->share. The files can save to your card or phone with some settings fussing. Simple word processor.
Inkscape is a free vector program and no AI. It is harder to use than illustrator and has less features. But if you're doing smaller vectors for one-offs with less complexity, it'll do you after some learning curve. Best of the lot. I hate Affinity Designer which is the same thing, only paid. (Neither Affinity program was worth the money paid)
Affinity (Designer, etc) swore to be AI-free and does Vector and Photos. The UX is messy, I dislike the program and regret paying for it. Inkscape and Krita are better UX and do the same thing. The forums aren't as friendly since there has been an onslaught of people seeing it's supposed to be a replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator, but the programmers aren't present. The people on the forums are often on edge about this assertion. And the capabilities of the program don't outshine basically Krita or Inkscape capabilities (both free). What is usually intuitive is not. UK company. If you're going to pay for a program, go for Clip Studio Paint which rivals Corel Painter.
Blender is a 3D art program and does not use GenAI. It can do 2D animation, but Tahoma is easier to use in this regard. It's open source and free. Plus there are plenty of tutorials. The forums can be touch and go sometimes, but there are plenty of sub Blender communities that might be responsive. It can also do animation.
Handmade vowed against AI and promised to never sell itself for stock prices to prevent AI (as a replacement for Etsy.)
Discover a world of creativity and craftsmanship through Handmade, an innovative platform connecting passionate artisans with discerning buy
Proton (to replace Google Suite) as suggested by SF Stories (see reblog) Vowed against AI. They are missing a spreadsheet, but have online and offline capabilities, plus a built-in VPN.
But you need a pro website...
Look up robots.txt and AI bots: https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/block-openai-bard-bing-ai-crawler-bots-using-robots-txt-file/
Use cloudflare:
Use Nightshade:
https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html
which will poison the algorithm
Use Glaze:
Take Away:
The thing is you think you doing it alone will do nothing, but the more AI feeds on itself, AI images, the worse they become, and the less detailed so, denying it the images, adding poison or not being able to read the human text is eventually going to lead to an AI collapse.
Analysis shows that indiscriminately training generative artificial intelligence on real and generated content, usually done by scrapi
And why not help that along?
I don't want to give cancer to poor people [Link] or make the planet burn faster [Link]. So GenAI collapse is everything I dream of. GenAI apocalypse is not.
You can add Procreate to the anti AI list. They have vowed time and time again when people ask that they will not use AI in their software.
We are not adding generative AI to our apps. Here's why.
Will also add that elllipsus has options for sharing work with Betas and getting comments in-line wjth the text, a lot like google docs does.
I know a lot of writers stick to gdocs for thaf specific feature but you dont have to!
Dear Men Writers
Lesser known facts when writing women:
High heeled shoes don’t become flats if you break the heels off.
The posts of earrings aren’t sharp.
Nail polish takes a long time to dry and smudges when wet.
You can’t hold in a period like pee.
Inserting a tampon is not arousing or sexual in any way, ever.
Feel free to add your own.
- Bras leave red marks on the skin under and around boobs and it is a magical experience when taken off.
- Make up can take anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes depending on how skilled you are.
- Taking hair out of a ponytail after wearing it for hours does not make it perfectly straight when it comes down.
- Hair when wet sticks to the skin it no longer flows, idiot.
-When women with long hair kiss, turn around, do anything, their hair falls in the way.
- Stockings are itchy and tear like wet paper bags.
- Pantyhose, tights, leggings, and stockings are each different. - Waxing hurts and leaves red skin for a while afterwards while shaving leaves stubble - Most can’t run in heels unless they have been VERY worn - Insecurity in appearance doesn’t mean “buy me a drink” - EVERYONE HAS DIFFERENT TASTES IN EVERYTHING
-Having large breasts sucks. It sucks beyond belief. If a garment happens to fit your large chest, odds are it won’t fit the rest of you. Underboob sweat is real and terrible. Bending over for extended periods of time will tweak your back out. Running can be painful due to boob turbulence. Bras are hella expensive. Big breasts are not fun.
Putting a tampon in isnt a quick bend-poke-done kinda deal. It involves cubicle yoga, messy hands, numerous curse words as you realise it isnt in correctly and have to take it out and start again with a new one.
Yes to all of this. But also:
If her hair is in an updo, one does not simply remove a hairpin to send her hair cascading down her back. No. If her hair is an updo, it will take at least an hour and an extra set of hands to remove the 137 bobby pins that are holding her hair in place. Furthermore, there’s probably a can’s worth of hairspray in there, intended to withstand category 2 hurricane winds. There’s no cascading happening here - the best you can hope for is a misshapen nest of hair to clump and poof unattractively in the back while it still remains flat against her scalp.
This is one of the funniest posts I’ve seen in a while (especially if you read all the comments), but also really depressing because at 42 I still judge myself as having failed for not matching up to all these mythical stereotypes despite knowing they’re impossible
^^^This though
The odds of a woman having smoothly shaved legs and armpits are directly proportional to the amount of skin her clothing bares and/or the amount of fucks she gives at that particular moment.
GLASSES ARE NOT COSMETIC. If we whip them off, we do not become gorgeous fashion models. We become squinty.
-most women wear bras. Yes, even when they are trying to dress sexy. Because bras make boobs look perkier and rounder, which is something men apparently find sexy, so being a seductress or femme fatale is not an automatic reason for a female character to not be wearing a bra.
-a good bra will hide headlights, or at the very least drastically reduce their noticeability. A women with enough pointy nipple issues will opt for a padded or molded bra to hide them.
-women’s nipples do not automatically become hard pyramids visible through any and all layers of clothing the second they become even slightly aroused. They are not the female equivalent of boners. And even if their nipples do get hard, the bras they are almost certainly wearing (because even a goddamn succubus with big, honkin’ knockers for seducing men is gonna have those painful puppies in some kind of boob sling) should keep those pointy nipples from being visible to every other character in the scene, JIM BUTCHER. YES, EVEN LARA RAITH WOULD WEAR A BRA ONCE IN A GODDAMN WHILE.
if you’re being tied up and tortured in a freezing underground dungeon, then you probably have more important things to pay attention to than how hard somebody’s nipples are, jim butcher
- Wearing a bra that doesn’t fit HURTS. It’s not sexy to wear a bra that’s “two sizes too small”, it’d make your clothes hang oddly and you’d have a weird, uncomfortable “quad-boob” effect and your back would hurt, BEN AARONOVITCH.
Also, after removing a too small bra, there’s gonne be angry red lines on the boobs and ribs and the lady is not going to want them to be touched by anyone for a good long while
-Not all women wear heels. Those things hurt and are hard to balance in. They can also mess up your feet and back pretty bad.
-Lips aren’t just naturally red “as if she’d been drinking wine but they were just like that without makeup cause she’s so perfect,” my dear little Kvothe from ‘Name of the Wind’. Also, girls do not naturally smell like fruit or flowers, it’s either perfume or something she’d been eating recently.
I’ve been appreciating this post but now it’s back very specifically calling out my problematic faves and I don’t think those male authors realize how much it totally takes me out of the story for a moment when they commit these errors. It does nothing useful for the plot and is annoying for half of the audience
Is it weird that I’m female and wasn’t aware of a solid third of these?
I mean, all writes take note. I basically live in man land when it comes to protagonists so I don’t know half these things despite being a woman
(Most) Women do not look at themselves in the mirror and compare their breasts to fruit. Any sort of fruit. Especially melons. Please save us from the melons.
Also we are not aware of our breasts at all times. I do not walk down a flight of stairs and think “oh golly my breasts are bouncing so much right now”. They are as much as natural part of our bodies as arms. Do you constantly think about how your arms are moving? Sure you may be aware of them, but paying full attention? Doubtful.
Also: women working out are almost never sexy. They’re not glowing or glistening or (kill me) *sparkling*. They are red and sweaty and gross just like all the dudebros doing their time with the dumbbells. Stop ogling fictional women at the gym, TOM WOLFE.
I love this post.
I never understood why men feel the need to address all this telltale “feminine” awareness when writing women. Like once in grad school one of my male colleagues wrote from a female character’s POV and was like sure to notice how her feet felt in high heels and all the women’s lifestyle magazines on the coffee table and also that like, her breasts were “heavy” or some shit. I write male characters all the time. Not once have I ever stopped to make sure they notice the weight of their own balls or been hyper aware of their chest hair or some bullshit like that. ????? why????????
Love this. I’ve been cackling to myself for good 20 mins reading all the comments as well but the last reblog had me dying like can you imagine!!
“Chad was late. He had an important meeting to get to and was mad at himself for oversleeping.
He quickly washed and brushed his teeth and then ran downstairs, his balls bouncing playfully in his pants.
Do I have time to make a coffee? he thought. He decided he did so went into the kitchen and switched the kettle on. As he was waiting, he noticed his thick, curly chest hair was poking through the button gaps of his shirt. He giggled to himself and tucked his manly fuzz back in, hoping it wouldn’t happen during the meeting.”
Men, do you see how jarring and stupid this is!?
The World War II-era "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" is full of steps that office workers can take to resist leadership.
A declassified World War II-era government guide to “simple sabotage” is currently one of the most popular open source books on the internet. The book, called “Simple Sabotage Field Manual,” was declassified in 2008 by the CIA and “describes ways to train normal people to be purposefully annoying telephone operators, dysfunctional train conductors, befuddling middle managers, blundering factory workers, unruly movie theater patrons, and so on. In other words, teaching people to do their jobs badly.” Over the last week, the guide has surged to become the 5th-most-accessed book on Project Gutenberg, an open source repository of free and public domain ebooks. It is also the fifth most popular ebook on the site over the last 30 days, having been accessed nearly 60,000 times over the last month (just behind Romeo and Juliet).
Link to the Guide at Project Gutenberg can be found here
A Wikisource entry can be found here.
Mirrors can be found here, here, here, here and here.
Gosh it would be a shame if this got even MORE visibility.
Whoops my cursor slipped.
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The cop dismissed the case after she shared the bodycam footage
so don't get too comfortable.
high resolution free to download [ here ]
ALL ICE MELTS
interpret this as you wish
free to use/distribute/whatever
it's that time again
Time for the 2025 Miss Universe National Costume competition! I hope you like sexy birds, rhinestones, and drag for extremely fancy cis women.
Let's get started!
Miss Albania is a sexy bird inspired by the Albanian flag, which is as close to generic as this competition ever gets. Points for construction and ease of wear, though.
listen I ended up regretting saying anything about this on my old blog because people will interpret literally any and every statement maliciously on this hellsite but I want to start like. a helpline for people who are like “hey I pretty much only read YA but I’m like 22 now and don’t relate to teenagers as much, it’s such a shame that there are no fun books written for adults :(” because boy HOWDY are there some fun books for adults
maybe I’ll start a big google doc or something one day but for now *deep breath*
The Beautiful Ones (Silvia Moreno-Garcia) - absolutely BUCKWILD romance with a dash of telekinesis; nonstop high society drama and misunderstanding from start to finish, happy ending guaranteed. STRONGLY recommend if you, like me, are a basic bitch who enjoys a bit of Pride and Prejudice.
Binti (Nnedi Okorafor) - a math prodigy runs away from Earth to become the first of her people to attend a prestigious university in space, but shit gets real when a crew of hostile jellyfish aliens attack her ship.
Chilling Effect (Valerie Valdes) - a spaceship captain and her crew take on a series of convoluted missions in order to rescue the captain’s sister, who’s been frozen and held for ransom.
The City of Brass (S.A. Chakraborty) - an 18th century conwoman and a mysterious djinn team up to go looking for a legendary hidden city.
The City We Became (N.K. Jemisin) - a scrappy bunch of Chosen Ones have to band together to defend New York City (which is very much alive) from a huge ass monster.
The Empress of Forever (Max Gladstone) - a lady supervillain gets blasted into space and meets an even bigger, planet-destroying evil space empress. literally WHAT is not to like?
The Empress of Salt and Fortune (Nghi Vo) - high fantasy royal drama about a woman making her way to power in the wake of a political marriage that left without friends or allies.
Escaping Exodus (Nicky Drayden) - a space-faring clan are creating their latest spaceship from the insides of a giant monster when absolutely everything goes to shit (as things are wont to do in science fiction stories).
Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars (Kai Cheng Thom) - a trans girl runs away to the big city, where she uses her martial arts skills to team up with other trans woman and form a vigilante gang to defend their own when police look the other way. a fascinating blend of poetry and prose and magical realism.
Finna (Nino Cipri) - two exes working at an IKEA have to team up to save a customer who disappeared through one of those interdimensional portals that all IKEAs have laying around. you know how it is.
Gideon the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir) - come on, you’ve heard about this one. it’s the one with the lesbian space necromancers? yeah, that’s the one. you got it.
In the Vanishers’ Palace (Aliette de Bodard) - a Beauty and the Beast retelling based in science fiction and Vietnamese fantasy, featuring a young woman falling in love with a “beast” who’s actually a motherly dragon after becoming a tutor to the dragon’s two powerful children.
Jade City (Fonda Lee) - urban fantasy gang wars, pitting one magically enhanced family against rivals and a new drug that lets anyone mimic their abilities.
The Library of the Unwritten (A.J. Hackwith) - hell’s librarian gets sent on a quest to find a runaway soul.
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Becky Chambers) - aka one of my favorite books ever, essentially slice of life science fiction following an interspecies crew of deep space truckers making the longest and most complicated delivery of their lives. very warm and fuzzy.
Mort (Terry Pratchett) - one of many MANY Discworld books, but a very good one to start with, following the adventures of a boy named Mort after he’s taken on as Death’s apprentice. you know, like the Grim Reaper? that Death.
River of Teeth (Sarah Gailey) - historical AU in which the United States imported and domesticated hippos in the Mississippi River; follows a crew of hippo-riding crooks and hooligans as they plan one heck of a caper.
Space Opera (Catherynne Valente) - a washed up rock star and his old bandmate get roped into performing in an intergalactic singing competition that will determine the fate of the entire planet Earth. full of aliens, attempted assassination, art, and emotional turmoil.
This Is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone) - time-travelling assassins from rival factions fall in love in a poetic and breathless story that spans centuries and reality.
Under the Pendulum Sun (Jeannette Ng) - fairyland is real, and Victorian England is sending missionaries. a woman and her brother attempt to bring the good word to the fair folk, but start to suspect the queen might just be screwing with their heads. PEAK gothic horror with a creepy fairy twist.
Witchmark (C.L. Polk) - a doctor and former soldier with magical powers of healing is trying to live a quiet life and avoid his controlling, aristocratic family’s plans for him, only to get tangled up in a massive political conspiracy when one of his patients mysterious dies. accompanying him in his investigation is a mysterious and gorgeous faerie man. romance ensues.
The First Sister by Linden A Lewis. Three protagonists and all of them queer, a fun space opera. It’s not out yet, but I can tell you it’s really, really good. I highly recommend
Gods of Jade and Shadow another Silvia Moreno-Garcia book. It takes place in 1920s Mexico and has Mayan gods. A fun breezy book.
Kill the Queen by Jennifer Estep. If you like YA fantasy but want a little more swearing, violence and sex then this novel is for you.
The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle Jensen. This one I really enjoyed. If you like the winner’s curse then you’ll like this book.
Books I haven’t read but I’ve heard good things about
Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson. This one isn’t out it but I believe it’s got a black protagonist.
Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri. An Indian inspired fantasy novel. I haven’t read this one but I’ve heard good things about it.
Rage of Dragons by Evan Winters. A black fantasy novel.
The Unspoken Name by AK Larkwood. I haven’t read it but I know it’s got a lesbian protagonist.
Song of Blood and Stone by L. Penelope. Just started this book but I believe it’s for adults.
Tiger’s Daughter by K Arsenault Rivera. Lesbian protagonists and it’s still on my tbr.
A great way to get back into the habit of reading and discover new authors is to pick up an anthology of shorter works. You can find them in any genre, on all kinds of specific themes, by diverse authors, and if one story isn’t your jam you can move on. A couple of my favorites are:
Biketopia: Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction in Extreme Futures;
Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World
A People’s Future of the United States
Sisters of the Revolution: A feminist speculative fiction anthology
plus a few more full length books i like:
Singing the Dogstar Blues by Alison Goodman - space college punk with a harmonica what time travel crimes will she commit, queerplatonic human/alien relationships, very fun all around
Becky Chambers has several excellent books in the same setting as Long Way to a Small Angry Planet!
Nnedi Okorafor also has a bunch of great ones including sequels to Binti and other scifi/Afrofuturist works do NOT sleep on her
The Last Girl Scout by Natalie Ironside - if u like trans lesbians fighting zombies and nazis and vampires in the Appalachian nuclear wasteland I CANNOT recommend it enough.
i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.
there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.
anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.
A Better World - create an alternate history timeline
Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game
Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet
Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games
Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones
Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy
ZenGM - simulate sports
Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi
IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)
Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface
The Cafe & Diner - mystery game
The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game
Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions
Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game
Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game
Miniconomy - player driven economy game
Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes
BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators
Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil
Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.
if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.
since this post blew up, i've been wanting to do an addition with all of the recommendations from the comments and tags. but there's a lot of them. some people might be crazy enough to sit down and seriously put them all in one post with descriptions. those people are honestly sick in the head.
anyway, here's all of the recommendations from the reblogs. not all of them are text-based, but it's a great mixture of styles. also don't forget the links in the second paragraph of the OP which will take you to FMHY where there are a bunch more games listed.
Games
A Dark Room - text-based science fiction role-playing game.
corru.observer - science fiction adventure web game.
Improbable Island - old-school text adventure game.
Candy Box 2 - incremental clicker game that evolves into RPG.
Arcanum - open source wizard clicker game.
sandspiel, Powder Game, Powder Game 2, The Powder Toy - more sand physics games.
Orb.Farm - fishtank simulator.
Façade - experimental game with a real-time interactive narrative where you try to fix a failing marriage.
The Catacombs of Solaris - trippy art game.
Yume Nikki Online - online version of the surreal classic plus fangames.
The Barncle Goose Experiment - combine element/alchemy game based on antique theories of abiogenesis.
Fallen London - free-to-play text-based open world RPG.
Nested - very unique text-based universe expanding game. described as possibly @orteil42's favorite thing he's ever made.
The Process of Elimination - interactive web novel (by @hypertextdog)
Discworld MUD - multiplayer, text-based, online game (a MUD, or text MMORPG) based on the Discworld books.
Horse Master - surreal text game about training a horse.
EYEZMAZE - flash (RIP) or HTML5-based puzzle games.
You Are Jeff Bezos - text game. spend Jeff Bezos' fortune.
The Password Game - challenging puzzle game where you have to meet password requirements (by neal)
Universal Paperclips - incremental paperclip making game.
Half-Earth - planetary disaster planning game where you try to save the world using socialism.
ChooseYourStory - community-driven website centered on CYOA style story games.
PhD Simulator - random event based text game. make your choice each month and see if you can graduate on time.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup - open source roguelike.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - turn-based survival roguelike set in the modern day.
Nethack - open source roguelike originally released in 1987.
FarmRPG - simple, mobile-friendly, text-based farming RPG.
Kingdom of Loathing - browser-based community MMORPG.
PokeRogue - browser-based Pokemon roguelike
Tools
Text Game Builder - works in your browser, with just a little bit of Python (by @grumpygandalf)
Twine - great (free!) tool for making text-based games quickly.
Ink - scripting language for interactive fiction (also free)
Flashpoint Archive - a community effort to preserve games and animations from the web.
PICO-8 - fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs.
Non-Games
Library of Babel - interactive illustration which attempts to simulate what it might be like to browse The Library of Babel.
Superbad - technically not a game, sprawling website full of secrets.
17776 - serialized speculative fiction multimedia narrative about football in the far-future. beautiful, creative, legendary. created by Jon Bois, a legend and one of my favorite writers of all time.
Choice of Games - text-based, choose-your-own-adventure games (interactive fiction). some free-to-play, others can be bought like an ebook.
The Deep Sea - scroll to the bottom of the ocean. encounter the humble squid and his friends (by neal)
Space Elevator - like The Deep Sea, but up instead of down. you can equip your avatar with a scarf (by neal)
Internet Artifacts - an interactive history of the early internet (by neal)
If The Moon Were Only One Pixel - scroll through an accurately scaled model of the universe.
r/incremental_games - reddit community for incremental games.
r/WebGames - reddit community for web games in general.
thank you to everyone who contributed and the creators. please be sure to show them some love where possible.
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Hey has tumblr heard about the Chase “Infinite Money glitch” debacle from tiktok yet because
I cannot believe
I cannot believe that people actually tried this
And even less can I believe that they’re going full Karen to Chase customer service workers. Like you did check fraud. You did a crime. You don’t get to complain about the consequences.
Wait like some people don’t know
So there was a glitch in Chase’s check deposit system. Usually when you cash a check, only a fraction of the full amount is available to you immediately until the check clears. The glitch made it so you could cash a checks full amount right away no matter how big.
So. People were writing themselves massive checks and immediately withdrawing cash they technically didn’t have and then closing their bank account. They were calling it an “infinite money glitch” like it’s the Sims or something.
But it’s not like a cheat code that was suddenly discovered. It’s just check fraud. It’s just straight up a felony. And a good chunk of them filmed themselves doing it.
So people are waking up finding they’re in the negative however many thousands of dollars they pulled.
What BAFFLES me is that people are calling Chase demanding their accounts be reopened, demanding their money back. Work from home Chase agents have shared the calls they’ve been getting from people angry they’re in the red. Like it’s not your money anymore, love, you STOLE it and they took whatever you had originally to try to pay the balance back!! That’s not yours anymore!
People are being SNIPPY on tiktok when people tell them that they did a CRIME. This one lady was like “you don’t know the law, my lawyer knows the law” and it’s like honey! Your lawyer is going to do his fuckin best but you did a crime and then you FILMED YOURSELF. You’re going to jail! Now is the time to start practicing what my therapist calls radical acceptance!
So that’s the tea on the money glitch. Most banks are giving them 30 days to pay the amount back but some people I’ve heard are already being arrested.
monoculture forests are deeply unsettling in a way that is hard to explain to people who do not spend a lot of time looking at forests
this thing is alive in an undead hivemind kind of way and it wants to fucking kill me
Y'all this is a tree farm. You harvest trees from a place like this so that actual forests get left alone. This is the far side of some redneck's lot, not wilderness. It's not supposed to look natural. There's no need to be scared.
There ARE monoculture forests, they are in England and were the first attempt to re-forest a decimated area in the 19th century(!). They are trying! They are people trying to restore the environment! You gotta do it badly before you learn how to do it well.
Ok, I'm gonna try to be nice about this, but "tree farms" are not neutral entities exempt from criticism and they certainly don't exist so that "actual forests get left alone." Maybe in some parts of the world that's true, but I'm actually looking into this (and already did to a certain extent for my Master's thesis) and it's so incredibly, incredibly insidiously incorrect. It's like saying 'this palm oil plantation is a good thing actually because look, they're also trees!' or 'this 1000-acre plot where we exclusively grow corn is fine because corn is a plant!'
Let's start with the basic principle of an ecological system: diversity = resilience = a healthy system. This is as true in a desert or Boreal forest as it is in a tropical rainforest or coral reef. Plantations, by definition, are devoid of diversity. They are monocultures - in the case of tree plantations, sometimes duo- or tricultures - and that's where the diversity ends. The basic reason why a palm oil plantation or a corn monoculture is bad is because they convert healthy, diverse (social-)ecological systems into ecological dead zones. Tree plantations - even the ones with two or three tree species - do this too. Animals don't live in these plantations. A few, maybe - the tough ones. Same goes for the fungi that have symbiotic relationships with species not selected for the plantation. Same goes for soil microbes that need a rich diversity of plant and animal matter to thrive.
I'm going to tell you an anecdote, because this is what really drove the point home for me.
In February of 2021, I was riding in a truck with a Sámi reindeer herder and activist. It was around 8 AM on my second day of fieldwork for my Master's degree (in sustainability), and we were heading up the hill to go feed the reindeer. At that time of year, the roads are paved with ice and all of the trees bowed under the weight of a good meter of snow. As we made our way up the logging access road (the only roads in the region are owned and maintained by the state logging company), I asked him a question. I don't remember specifically what the question was, but I used the word "forest."
"I'm gonna stop you there," he said. "These aren't forests. This is just... trees. There's nothing here that makes it a forest. Nothing for the reindeer."
I asked if he could elaborate. Bear in mind - we're out west of fucking nowhere south of the Arctic Circle. The closest grocery store was an hour and a half drive away, the closest train station twice that. It's the sort of place you can easily romanticize - a kind of reindeer wonderland, where humans and nature still share a bond.
So he elaborated. He told me about the logging industry in Sweden - how all of the trees are Scots pine (a very profitable timber tree) interspersed with a species of spruce. That's more or less it. In the entire country. How in the early 20th century, colonists started planting lodgepole pine - a fast-growing North American variety unsuited to the climate but very profitable for the pulp and paper industry - and planted so densely that it's deadly to anything with antlers and much-loved by predators for that same reason.
And he told me how in Sweden, there is no old-growth or primary forest left - or so little that it's barely worth mentioning. How it's all artificial - replanted since the 1920s or so strictly managed that nothing but Scots pine, spruce, and the occasional birch is allowed to grow, because anything else would cut into profit margins. How the trees are not allowed to mature, because they're cut down as soon as they reach 70-80 years old (when they could live for centuries if left alone). How the reindeer suffer, because young woodland can't produce the lichen reindeer need to survive the winter - so the reindeer herders (all of whom are Indigenous Sámi) spend hundreds of thousands of SEK each year (equivalent to tens of thousands of Euros) on grain to keep them alive. How entire ecosystems - from mycelial networks and soil microbes all the way to moose and bears - have been degraded and hollowed out by the inability of diversity to take hold. How the relationship between the Sámi and their whole social-ecological community suffers as a result.
This is the whole of Sweden, as much as the logging industry likes to paint itself as "green." These ecological dead zones aren't separate from "actual forest" - they are what the country has instead.
And that's just Sweden. While details are different - exact proportions of planted and primary forest, forestry methods, etc. - the story is the same in most of Europe. France and Germany are some of the worst culprits, but Switzerland doesn't get a pass. Go into any woodland in Europe and marvel at the unnatural stillness - the lack of biodiversity that comes from cutting down all the trees every human lifetime or so. And consider that the reason why these woodlands have the ecological integrity of a haphazardly maintained lawn is because they are all maintained like a lawn.
And that's just Europe.
So next time you want to fantasize about how tree planting is some sort of morally neutral endeavor meant to protect "real" forest and that ecological integrity isn't necessary in these plantations, consider what would happen if this was the only type of forest that existed. And sit with that knot in your stomach when you remember that in some places, that's the apocalyptic reality.
Rebloggin for EXCELLENT rant. I love when people have an inforant locked and loaded. Best way to learn something.
Driving through unlogged protected forests in Tasmania into replanted logging coupes was horrendous. The unlogged protected areas had complex physical structure and huge biodiversity - ferns, mosses, shrubs, trees in all sizes, and were alive with birdsong. The replanted areas had a single species of fast growing eucalypt, a carpet of invasive blackberries, and were silent.
The logging industry claims to be environmentally friendly and sustainable because they replant trees, and freely cut down native forests in Australia to turn them into woodchip mulch.
what is your LEAST favorite stitch?
I don't like counted work at fucking all. So: the cross stitch.
reading this as someone who does cross stitch but is scared of the other kinds of embroidery is like overhearing an incredibly tall and buff person say they have beef with Mr. Tom, the kitten that chills at the bookstore
FUCK Mr. Tom and his stupid little fluffy tail ok. And his little charted designs.
Okay, but this neglects the true villain of embroidery stitches: the French knot
Don't you dare malign my girl again
Ok the french knot is very useful but it is a BITCH to do it consistently
We talk about how this website’s hate mail game is insane, but this might just be a new level
"skill issue" made entirely from French knots is a next level roast. no coming back from that one. damn
What??
No. It isn't.
TinEye is your friend. There are 26 pages of results for this picture going back 8 years, long before the theft machines started running.
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