Cool Beans

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox or librewolf (open-source fork of 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 instead of google drive

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

get free stuff with the help of r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH, r/piracy and r/roms

use trakt (for shows and movies), letterboxd (just movies), or TMB instead of IMDB (owned by amazon).

use storygraph instead of goodreads (owned by amazon).

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

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, ecosia, or ocean hero 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 thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, or tuta 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 project gutenberg for free public domain books, and librivox for public domain books and audiobooks

use the seal app (android only) to download video and audio

use ellipsus instead of microsoft word or google docs

use mastodon instead of twitter

use peertube to create a network of small video hosting providers (disclaimer: not a 1:1 alternative to youtube)

use threema and signal for encrypted communication, on mobile and desktop

use qwant and startpage for secure internet browsers

use syncthing to securely transfer files between devices

learn how to jailbreak your kindle/ereader if you have one (wiki and video walkthrough)

use riseup’s email and VPN for secure communication (aimed towards activists)

use cryptpad and collabora instead of the microsoft office suite

use google takeout to export the data on your google account

use library extension to look for books on online stores and find them at your library

remove paywalls with removepaywalls

install the open-source adblocker ublock origin

install sponsorblock to skip sponsored segments on youtube videos

use bookfinder to look for the cheapest available listings of books, including textbooks

learn a language through mango (duolingo laid off some of its employees and now relies on AI translations) for free with a library card or through your school

edit photos with photopea

edit pdfs with foxit and sumatrapdf

download music with doubledouble

take notes offline and collaborate securely with obsidian

for android tv, use smarttube and cloudstream (ad-free, open-source)

change your OS to linux

either way, she always has at least three kids, sometimes more. you don't want to ask when she had them, but she had to have them young because her youngest had to have been born when she was at least seventeen based on how time works. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

she's smiling but there's something missing in her eyes - a spark that should be there. there's no passion, there's just the movements of the day. sometimes she'll give an interview where she says she barely feels like getting out of bed, and other times she says nothing. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

her world isn't real - it's neat kitchens and made from scratch cheese. she tells you how she doesn't need feminism because she likes this life, she likes wearing pretty dresses, don't you dare pity her. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

you scroll up to an ex tradewife in her forties talking about how her husband divorced her and left her for a younger girl, leaving her destitute and penniless and twenty years out of the workforce. you scroll again to a pretty young girl saying she doesn't need a job, her husband will take care of her. you scroll again. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

another woman, this time in her early thirties, talking about how she just managed to leave her abusive husband and has nothing and he took the kids, warning and pleading young girls to not fall for tradwife lies. you scroll again to a young tradwife girl saying that would never happen to her, and you're just jealous of her. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

you scroll again. a teen girl tells you that she'll just track her period, she doesn't NEED a toxic chemical like birth control. you scroll again to an obgyn pleading with young girls to understand birth control is just hormonal, and that period tracking isn't effective. you just watch happen. you can't save her.

you scroll again, and it's jd vance saying how women belong in the homes and shouldn't be allowed to vote. that their husbands should decide how they should vote. you scroll again to a domestic abuse counselor telling women their vote is private and they can lie to their husbands. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

journalist gets real yakuza members to play yakuza 3 and asks for their opinions on its authenticity

“What’s with all the fucking gaijin in this area?” “Dude, don’t say that, use gaikokujin, it’s nicer.” “Oh, shit, right. What’s with all the fucking gaikokujin in this area?”

“The breaded pork cutlet bento box is like mega power. More than ramen. That’s accurate.”

all of them start dragging kiryu for his shitty cheap shirt for five minutes

“Shooting people sends a message.” “So does shooting anything.”

this guy was often one of the first people on the scene following a suspected arson, once emergency services had done what they needed to do. at times, there were also civilians on the periphery. often, they were freaking out, and understandably so; their home or workplace had just, quite literally, gone up in smoke

this investigator wouldn’t try to calm them down. he wouldn’t comfort them or be a shoulder to cry on.

instead, he’d walk up to the person most visibly losing their shit, hand them a fire extinguisher, and say “hey, can you keep an eye out for any other fires, and if you see one, can you put it out with this?”

of course, there was no actual risk of another fire. he wouldn’t be on the scene investigating if there was even a chance that the fire wasn’t completely put out. but the bystander didn’t need to know that

because that person, without fail, would immediately pull it together, take the fire extinguisher, and stand guard. they were, at least temporarily, calm enough for this investigator to do this job

Deep waters, i'm drowning in deep waters, slowly drowning me deeper

Florence is hilarious. 🤣

Pansey is one of the flowers Ophelia gives out after the death of her father symbolising grief and remembrance. Also in Midsummers Night's Dream the the love potion given to the fairy Queen is said to have heartease or "love in idleness" as Obaron describes it. I believe heartsease is the same type of pansey Florence featured in pictures hinting at "Everbody Scream" announcement. Some of the postcards sent out to fan also had different colors panseies on them like the one for "And Love."

Helga's gathering up the village's runaway chickens

*

The local Malagasy people are dealing with extreme poverty and food insecurity, with nearly half of children under five years old suffering from chronic malnutrition. The local people have always subsisted on hunting wildlife for food, and as Madagascar’s wildlife population declines, the people who rely on so-called bushmeat to survive are struggling more and more. People are literally starving.

Our conservation team thought about this a lot. They had initially intended to focus efforts on education but came to understand that this is not an issue arising from a lack of knowledge. For these people it is a question of survival. It doesn’t matter how many times a foreigner tells you not to eat an animal you’ve hunted your entire life, if your child is starving you are going to do everything in your power to keep your family alive.

So the vets changed course. Rather than focus efforts on simply teaching people about lemurs, they decided to try and use veterinary medicine to reduce the underlying issue of food insecurity. They supposed that if a reliable protein source could be introduced for the people who needed it, the dependence on meat from wildlife would greatly decrease. So they got to work establishing new flocks of chickens in the most at-risk communities, and also initiated an aggressive vaccination program for Newcastle disease (an infectious illness of poultry that is of particular concern in this area). They worked with over 600 households to ensure appropriate husbandry and vaccination for every flock, and soon found these communities were being transformed by the introduction of a steady protein source. Families with a healthy flock of chickens were far less likely to hunt wild animals like lemurs, and fewer kids went hungry. Thats what we call a win-win situation.

This chicken vaccine program became just one small part of an amazing conservation outreach initiative in Madagascar that puts local people at the center of everything they do. Helping these vulnerable communities of people helps similarly vulnerable wildlife, always. If we go into a country guns-blazing with that fire for conservation in our hearts and a plan to save native animals, we simply cannot ignore the humans who live around them. Doing so is counterintuitive to creating an effective plan because whether we recognize it or not, humans and animals are inextricably linked in many ways. A true conservation success story is one that doesn’t leave needy humans in its wake, and that is why I think this particular story has stuck with me for so long.

(Source 1)

(Source 2- cool video exploring this initiative from some folks involved)

But on top of that, you know who the most ardent conservationists are once security has been achieved? The people who had once been forced to poach or slash-and-burn to survive. You know who’s great at tracking down gorilla poachers? Ex-poachers. Who’s good at understanding and advocating for people forced to do these things to survive? Ex-poachers. Who can convince others to take a chance on finding a better way to survive? Same answer.

The former illegal fishers are now sought-after experts, because they know how to spot the arapaima and tell juveniles apart from adults. They get to keep practicing the fishing skills that were passed down to them. The actual process of fishing is easier because they can work together and don't have to sneak around. The profits are higher because they can sell the fish openly to restaurants and to the public. The fishing organization members make sure that other people in their communities don't fish illegally. And the numbers of arapaima keep going up and up, so there's plenty to go around even as more people join the fishing organizations.

If you click all the way through to the report from the conservation org that started the fishing organizations project, there are quotes from fishing organization members:

"We built a second house and I'm putting my oldest two kids through college on the money we get from fishing."

"Nowadays you have young people walking around with pockets full of cash saying "I got 6,000 from fishing this year!" It used to be you wouldn't even get 50 reais of pocket money."