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I've recently learned that escaping enshitification is actually really easy. When I was younger I would use FOSS (free and open source software) because I usually couldn't afford anything else. Back then the paid options were usually significantly better than the unpaid options so when I finally got money I started using the paid stuff and completely forgot that Foss existed.
If you don't know why Foss is awesome its not just that its free. Open source software has a huge set of advantages. Most software is proprietary meaning that its code cannot be viewed by other people. Open source softwares code can be viewed by everyone and people can contribute their own code to make it better. Open source is often more secure than proprietary because more people have more eyes on it and more people have contributed to it's security. Its also easy to know how much privacy you have with every software because you can read the code. No more "trust me bro I'm not harvesting and selling your data" you know if they are collecting and selling because the code is publicly available.
In the last two months I have been switching almost completely to Foss. I was worried at first because when I stopped using Foss over 10 years ago the average Foss software was genuinely worse than the paid proprietary alternative. Thankfully things have really come full circle. 90℅ of the software I have tried in the last 2 months works better than the proprietary alternative and is 100℅ less obnoxious.
So here is a list of every Foss software I have tried and recommend. There is way more than this available. This list is just what I have used and like personally. Anyone can feel free to add and we can turn it into a master list. Please just take these as a place to start and do your own research to see if these softwares will work for your use case before you fully ditch your proprietary software.
Operating systems
Graphene os: android alt. Security and privacy focused. The most secure and private smartphone currently available.
Linux mint: easy to use linux, 100℅ better than windows.
Pop!: The Linux distro you should use if you have nividia hardware and want to play games using said hardware. Very intuitive and easy to use.
Kubuntu: Ubuntu Linux with KDE desktop. This is the linux distro one I am currently using and I don't have any plans to jump ship again. Better than windows and better than Mac. The companion app for your phone makes life soooo easy. Its pretty and easy to customize to a ridiculously granular level. No fucking notes.
Kindle jailbreak- ko reader: use jailbreak to free your kindle from the tyranny of the bezos. It will download ko reader which is a Foss OS that has every fucking feature you always wished kindle had and let's you read whatever the fuck you want, and have whatever the screensaver you want (no more ads!). Soooo fuck amazon and use this. I genuinely cannot recommend it enough.
Linux FOSS: (some available on windows and android as well)
Calibre: Foss desktop eBook library. Packed with features. You will want to use this with koreader to make managing your kindle easy.
Manuscript: skrivner alt. Does absolutely everything I need.
Bitwarden: password manager (use a keepass fork if you want self hosted)
Next cloud: private google drive and cloud alternative that you can self host if you want but it's not required. App available
Proton VPN: to the best of my knowledge it is the only Foss no log VPN you can get. You can pay for higher speeds. App available
Quad9dns: free encrypted DNS provider. App available.
News software:
Use any Foss RSS reader and for the love of god stop getting news from social media. Take control of your feed!
Apps (I only know for android)
Fdroid: great app store to find Foss android apps and download them.
Antennapod: you can get all of your podcasts fetched to one feature rich app via RSS feed. No need to rely on spotify or music steaming services.
Openreads: it's good reads but private and 100℅ stored locally. No amazon, no social media aspect, it just tracks your reading, you can import your good reads but if you want to import from storygraph you have to make a good reads burner account, import to good reads, then import to openreads. The menus Navigation on this one is a bit cumbersome but honestly good reads app is worse.
Newpipe: YouTube frontend that let's you have YouTube subscriptions, watch YouTube in the background, and blocks all ads, without logging in to YouTube. You will want to use this one with a VPN set to Canada (or any other country) so YouTube doesn't keep blocking it in order to force you to sign in. But even with that extra step its worth it for the privacy and the lack of ads.
Proton mail: one of 2 more private gmail alts. But you should note that email cannot be 100℅ anonymous or private.
I think that's it. There are still a lot software varieties I am slowly finding.
I know people get mad at the name, and I understand why, but straight-up I've been using GIMP for 15 years and it's a good solid art program made under the GNU program. It's worth a look.
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
Compiled some basic information I know about drawing fat characters for beginners since I've been seeing more talk about absence of really basic traits in a lot of art lately.
Morpho Fat and Skin Folds on Archive.org (for free!)
Hey y’all I have an announcement! My web app that I’ve been working on, Afro Index, is now live! It’s a visual reference library of Black hairstyles, for artist, animators, writers, and anyone who wants to learn more about them!
Check it out at afroindex.org! 💛✨
A reference library for Black hairstyles with accurate naming,
structured filtering, and curated reference images.
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pet peeve is when you look up fashion references from a specific era and you keep getting modern day '[era]-inspired' fashion like NO i want authenticity damn it. i can see your 2020 photo quality and your 2020 hair and your 2020 makeup. youre not fooling me.
hello i'm a historical fashion researcher and i have a lot of experience looking up things! this is a very widely experienced irritation and you're definitely not alone in this, but i am here to share everything i know!
so, ways to get around this:
turn off AI results. they're literally nonsense to us
don't use pinterest because the sources/provenance is often hard to trace
a standard internet search can be okay, but museum collections are the top tier (list of collections below this list)
instead of broad terms like victorian, regency, tudor, renaissance etc. try using the decade you're looking for. if you're not sure of what decade it is but have a vague image in your head, look on the fashion history timeline and just jump around until you find it. but even changing to e.g. 19th century will give better results than victorian
including terms like womenswear/menswear, daywear, formal wear, evening wear, court dress should increase the value of your search too
including "fashion plates" in your search can give you a nice impression of the intended silhouettes of the era. some of these might be a little stylised but will show you what was considered in vogue
for pre-fashion plate eras or things like makeup and styling, you'll have to look at portraiture or manuscripts. these are harder to actually find what you're looking for, but searching museum collections and limiting results to specific date ranges will be your friend
when looking at art, do bear in mind sometimes artists would paint fabric extra flow-y to show off their skills. it might not have been exactly like that in terms of fabric weight or drape. so, a pinch of salt required!
if you find something on image search where the provenance is dubious, reverse image search and you might find a source! i've been able to trace random pinterest images to real sources, but this does take a lot of time and effort and is often not worth the headache
some online resources and museum collections:
fashion history timeline is an invaluable resource if you're trying to get a feel for everything and should be your first port of call. it'll also link to good examples
the met has a vast number of extant examples of clothing, as well as fashion plates
costume institute fashion plates is a subcollection of the met for fashion plates (1800s-1922)
v&a also has many extant garments, fashion plates, and incredible articles on clothing and aesthetics. read the details of the objects because they'll often reveal a lot about the piece
lacma is good for C19th-20th pieces
nypl digital collection for photographs
national portrait gallery or similar for portraiture, or literally any museum in your country that has historical art
national museums scotland can be useful situationally but might be oddly specific
stout style history is a great collection for finding image references for fat people wearing historical clothes. survival bias of a lot of museum pieces tends towards smaller clothing that couldn't be repurposed, but this aims to counter that. it's not sortable, but is still a really nice resource
wikimedia commons is surprisingly handy! and the images, if you should need to link/repost them, are public domain
auction websites sound like a funny one to recommend. some won't have mannequins and some will. just look up historical garment auctions and you'll find some!
anyway, i hope this has been a good place to start for anyone interested! there are probably some i've missed because there are so many museums across the world and i don't know about all of them or can't remember them. but these are the ones i've used the most! (my specialisation/jobs i've had to research for have only really been in western fashion, so my resources reflect that)
Wikipedia has a list of fashion museums. Unfortunately, the page itself is only available in German, but the introductory paragraph is very short and after that, it's organised by country, and then it's a simple list. If you click on a museum's article, the website is usually linked in the overview table.
since i’ve been using csp a lot more now i thought i’d make a post of the assets i use the most for ppl looking for good stuff!
general brushes:
Pen + Caspar Pen (かしペン＋カスレかしペン) (my fav pen for sure)
Erase Along Edge (YOU NEEED THIS ERASER YOU NEED IT!!!)
Freehand Style Brush Set (フリーハンド風ブラシセット) (cant recommend this one highly enough, i use it for all my backgrounds)
Bong pen
OBONGBONG’S PEN
Halftones (スルスル塗れる5線刻みトーンブラシ)
A non-shin pen (しんでないペン)
SU-Cream Pencil
Noisy Ink Brush v2
Simple Retro Halftone Brushes
Smeared Paintbrush (べっとり絵筆)
A breather pen (一息ペン)
Aj’s Pencil Set
Watercolor set (수채화 세트)
T-marker Wind Brush Set (Tマーカー風ブラシセット)
Watercolor marker ▲ ■ and texture set (水彩マーカー●▲■とテクスチャーセット)
special effect and decorative brushes:
Tights Pen (タイツペン)
Glitch Brushes 2
(彩塵ブラシ(Prism Dust)
Hand-painted effect set No. 2 (手描き効果セットNo.2)
Oriental Emblem 11-20 (동양 문양 11-20) (this creator has so many amazing assets ive downloaded them all)
Ribon brushes (りぼんブラシ)
Lace Set レース セット
Ornate lace
Bramble
(rose-玫瑰叢)
Loose hand-painted sprinkle brush (ゆるゆる手描きのふりかけブラシ)
Bush pen (수풀 펜)
Fantasy Papers
Pearl Brush (真珠ブラシ)
gradient maps:
Gradient map set for hologram (홀로그램용 그라데이션 맵 세트)
Yunywave★ Gradient Set
cb gradients 3
ONG SET
3D:
The Only Perspective Grid You Need!
3d sketch head
Movable horse 1.8 A (可動のお馬 1.8a)
Sitting poses collection (便利かもしれない座りポーズ集)
misc:
Raiku RGB Shift
Hand-drawn Rags tool Set (手描きのボロ線ツールセット)
VHS action set
How to Make Your Own Binder that Fits Well and Looks Good
A while back I was in need of some new binders and thought hey, I bet I can make one way cheaper than buying it from somewhere (especially cus some of the ones I’ve bought in the past didn’t really fit right). Except when I started looking for a binder patterns online, I was very surprised that I really… couldn’t find many that looked very nice lol. Most of them had really wrinkled necklines, or didn't bind well, or just overall looked weird. A lot of the patterns also required a serger, which I don't have.
So I just said fuck it and made my own pattern! And it ended up being relatively easy! And the binders fit REALLY WELL and are comfortable to wear, even for long periods. The neckline doesn't show under shirts with loose collars, and the bottom hem doesn't gap or stick out. Here's me wearing one:
(plus I was able to make myself 5 of them for a total of like ~$50.)
So I figured I could throw together a guide to help out anyone else who wanted to make their own binder but was dissatisfied with the patterns available!
Disclaimer: This tutorial is going to assume a baseline level of sewing experience, and also will require access to a sewing machine. It is not a complicated pattern, but it will most likely require some tweaking and adjustments after you make the first one. Don’t be afraid to make alterations to make it fit better!
This tutorial is for a gc2b-style half-tank binder. It could be altered to be a full-tank binder, but all instructions will be for the half-tank design.
Materials needed:
Stretchy fabric, probably listed as 'athletic fabric' (I use this kind from Joann’s. Most athletic stretch fabrics should work, look for around 80% nylon/20% spandex blends)
Stiff fabric (I use this shirting cotton because I like how lightweight it is. If you want something a little stiffer with more structure, you can use a cotton or cotton/poly blend twill like this. gc2b binders use twill for theirs.)
Lightweight fusible interfacing (I use this kind) (get FUSIBLE not sew-in)
Fusible webbing like Pellon Wonder-Web (this is technically optional but it WILL make your life easier when you’re sewing - just make sure to get the kind with the paper backing!!!)
“But kiwisoap thats 4 whole kinds of materials, surely I don’t need that many!” Ok sure, you can probably get by without the fusible web and interfacing, but consider: they are both dirt cheap (im talking like $1-2/yard), they will make it much easier to sew the final product, and will give you an overall better-looking result. This tutorial is written with the assumption that you’ll use them.
"How much fabric will I need?" Measure the circumference of your chest below your armpits. Add 6 inches just to be safe. This is the yardage of stretch fabric you’ll need, and should give you enough material to make at least 3 binders without much excess left over. You will need around half as much stiff fabric.
Other supplies:
Big Paper (for drawing the pattern)
Flexible measuring tape
Sewing machine
Iron
Pins
Step 1: Measuring
You will need 4 main measurements for this pattern.
A) Measure the circumference of your chest just below your armpits, then divide the number in half. This will be the widest part of the pattern.
B) Measure from the top of your shoulder down to where you want the binder to end. For most folks, this will usually be around the natural waist (narrowest part of the torso), about 3-6 inches above the belly button. This will be the overall height of the pattern.
C) Measure the distance from below your armpit to where you want the binder to end. This will determine where the arm hole starts.
D) Measure the circumference of your waist where you want the binder to end, then divide the number in half.
So for example, after dividing A and D in half, my measurements are 17", 15", 7", and 14.5".
Next:
Subtract one inch from measurement A - This will help provide some compression. You might need to take it in even further depending on how it fits, but one inch is a safe starting point. I take mine in around 1.5 inches.
Subtract half an inch from measurement D. This will help prevent the bottom edge of the binder from gapping. Again, you may need to take it in more or less, depending on your own body.
Add 1.5 inches to measurement B and one inch to measurement C. This is to account for the hems and armhole placement.
This makes my final measurements
A = 16"
B = 16.5"
C = 8"
D = 13.5"
From here on out, we are only going to be working with the measurements that we have added/subtracted to, NOT the ones we initially took.
Step 2: Drawing the Pattern
You will need a piece of paper large enough to accommodate the entire pattern. This may involve taping multiple pieces together, or using a piece of newsprint, etc.
I recommend folding the paper in half to ensure that you get a symmetrical pattern. However, this means you will need to divide measurements A and D in half again, or else you’ll end up with a pattern that’s twice as wide as it should be!
Also note: the pattern is drawn with the seam allowance built in! You don’t need to add any seam allowance.
To draw the pattern:
Begin with your folded paper. Measure and mark B and C on the paper, and draw a line extending across the paper. These will be your guidelines.
Measure and mark A and D along the middle and bottom guidelines, respectively. Remember, the paper is folded, so you only use half of the measurement for A and D.
Draw a loose curve connecting the endpoints of A and D. If needed, you can also just draw a straight line between the two.
Mark the opening for the neck hole. Depending on your size, it will measure around 6-8 inches across at the top (remember to divide this in half for the folded paper) and about 5-6.5 inches deep. (mine is 6.5" across and 5.5" deep) Draw a curve to connect the two points. This part will take some tweaking and adjusting to get it to look right lol.
Measure the width of the strap - this should be somewhere between 2.5 - 4 inches wide. They will end up about 1/2” to 3/4” narrower once you sew them. Draw the line at a slight angle, as shown.
Connect the endpoint of the strap to the endpoint of line A with a curve like in the diagram.
This will be the pattern for the front piece.
To make the back piece, trace the front pattern, but make a very shallow curve for the neckline instead of a steep one, as shown:
The last piece is the stiff front panel. This is what provides the flattening effect of the binder. To make the pattern, trace the front pattern again. Trim 3/8” in on the sleeves and neckline, and 3/4” to 1” along the bottom. This gives a flatter hem. Then trim the straps shorter by a few inches. This helps the binder lay flatter along the shoulders.
When you're done, you should have 3 pattern pieces that look approximately like this (stiff panel shown overlaid on the stretch fabric to show how it fits together).
NOTE: If you want more compression or just want to make it a bit sturdier, you can add a second panel of stretch fabric to the back piece. Just use the bottom half of the back pattern (from the widest part down to the bottom hem) to cut out another piece of stretch fabric. Attach it to the back piece with a strip of fusible webbing and a zig-zag stitch along the top.
Step 3: Putting It All Together
Once you’ve made the patterns and cut out the pieces of fabric, you should have something that looks like this:
The next step is adding interfacing and fusible webbing. Use your pattern to cut out 3/8" strips to fit on the top of the straps for both pieces, and to the neckline, sleeves, and bottom hem of the back piece, as shown:
If you want to add it to the bottom hem of the front piece, it will help keep that hem flat when sewing it down later, but it's not essential.
If you choose to also use fusible webbing (WHICH I RECOMMEND), you will apply it to the stiff front panel similarly to how the interfacing was applied, ~3/8” strips along the neckline, sleeves, and top of the straps. Cut out two strips for the neckline and sleeves, because we'll use those later too.
Iron the strips onto the front panel as shown:
Once it's on, just peel off the paper, position it webbing-side down on the stretch fabric, and iron it to fuse the two pieces together so everything stays in place while you sew. THIS MAKES IT WAY EASIER TO SEW.
After the stiff front panel is fused to the stretch fabric, you’ll sew the straps of the front and back pieces together, then join the pieces along the sides. Pin the hell out of it to keep everything in place -this type of material is VERY prone to puckering.
When sewing, USE A ZIGZAG STITCH. A straight stitch will NOT WORK for stretch fabric. I adjust mine to 1.3mm long and 3.5mm wide which has worked well. If your machine doesn’t let you adjust stitch length or width, well. That sucks, I don’t really have any advice.
After you sew the front and back pieces together, you can add more fusible webbing to the front panel to help hold the hem down flat and prevent it from puckering while you sew it. Just add the strip, peel the paper off, then fold the hem over and iron it down. This part isn’t really necessary, but it does make the hems look nicer. If nothing else, I would recommend adding it to the neckline.
After that, you just fold & pin all the hems and sew them up with a zigzag stitch, then go over the raw edge at the top of the stiff panel (where we cut the straps shorter).
And that’s it! You’re done! And now you can make your own binders whenever you want!
And hey! If you used this tutorial and wanna throw me a dollar or two on ko-fi, I wouldn't complain.
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Hey someone suggested I use ChatGPT to figure out adulting today, and as I was going through the mental list of places I'd rather look, I realized "beloved strangers on Tumblr dot net" was on that list.
So if you have an aspect of adulting that you're really good at-taxes, budgeting, cooking, insurance, credit, time management, house upkeep, anything-please feel free to reblog with any tips.
That's us! Professional internet adults, specializing in financial stuff! We recommend starting with our Grand List of All Articles, or one of our Masterposts:
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need To Know About Taxes
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about How to Increase Your Income
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Retirement and How to Retire
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Credit and Credit Cards
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Investing for Beginners
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about How to Pay off Debt
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need To Know About Living Independently for the First Time
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Repairing Our Busted-Ass World
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Self-Care
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Getting a Job, Raise, or Promotion
MASTERPOST: Everything You Need to Know about Saving Money and Being Frugal
My Fridge Food – No idea what to make? Tell this site what ingredients you have on hand and it will give you recipes to cook.
Project Gutenberg – Always ends up on these type of lists and for very good reason. All works that are copyright free in one place.
Ninite – New PC? Install all of your programs in one go with no bloat or unnecessary crap.
Unchecky – Tired of software trying to install additional unwanted programs? This will stop it completely by unchecking the necessary boxes when you install.
Sci-Hub – Research papers galore! Check here before shelling out money. And if it’s not here, try the next link in our list.
LibGen – Lots of free PDFs relate primarily to the sciences.
Zotero – A free and easy to use program to collect, organize, cite and share research.
Car Complaints – Buying a used car? Check out what other owners of the same model have to say about it first.
CamelCamelCamel – Check the historical prices of items on Amazon and set alerts for when prices drop.
Have I Been Pawned – Still the king when it comes to checking if your online accounts have been released in a data breach. Also able to sign up for email alerts if you’ve ever a victim of a breach.
Radio Garden – Think Google Earth but wherever you zoom, you get the radio station of that place.
Just The Recipe – Paste in the url and get just the recipe as a result. No life story or adverts.
Tineye – An Amazing reverse image search tool.
My 90s TV – Simulates 90’s TV using YouTube videos. Also has My80sTV, My70sTV, My60sTV and for the younger ones out there, My00sTV. Lose yourself in nostalgia.
Foto Forensics – Free image analysis tools.
Old Games Download – A repository of games from the 90’s and early 2000’s. Get your fix of nostalgia here.
Online OCR – Convert pictures of text into actual text and output it in the format you need.
Remove Background – An amazingly quick and accurate way to remove backgrounds from your pictures.
Twoseven – Allows you to sync videos from providers such as Netflix, Youtube, Disney+ etc and watch them with your friends. Ad free and also has the ability to do real time video and text chat.
Terms of Service, Didn’t Read – Get a quick summary of Terms of service plus a privacy rating.
Coolors – Struggling to get a good combination of colors? This site will generate color palettes for you.
This To That – Need to glue two things together? This’ll help.
Photopea – A free online alternative to Adobe Photoshop. Does everything in your browser.
BitWarden – Free open source password manager.
Atlas Obscura – Travelling to a new place? Find out the hidden treasures you should go to with Atlas Obscura.
ID Ransomware – Ever get ransomware on your computer? Use this to see if the virus infecting your pc has been cracked yet or not. Potentially saving you money. You can also sign up for email notifications if your particular problem hasn’t been cracked yet.
Way Back Machine – The Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites and loads more.
Rome2Rio – Directions from anywhere to anywhere by bus, train, plane, car and ferry.
Splitter – Seperate different audio tracks audio. Allowing you to split out music from the words for example.
myNoise – Gives you beautiful noises to match your mood. Increase your productivity, calm down and need help sleeping? All here for you.
DeepL – Best language translation tool on the web.
Forvo – Alternatively, if you need to hear a local speaking a word, this is the site for you.
“We will be focused on removing old, unused, and inactive content that is not tied to a user account from our platform as well as nudity, pornography, & sexually explicit content,” the page reads. “Most notably, this would include explicit/pornographic content.” Imgur notes that it will “employ automated detection software” alongside human moderators to identify explicit content.
If you need a place for fanart:
Free image hosting from squidge.org
Squidge is free, and has a TOS that’s about the same as AO3’s.
Squidge.org has recently registered as a nonprofit, like the OTW.
(I’m on the board.) (This is very new and very tiny.) https://www.squidgeworld.org/ is the first/only AO3 clone on the internet right now.
And there are agreements in place - if something disastrous happens to the owner, the OTW takes it over. (The OTW may not be able to do much with the image side of things. But they’ll be able to keep it stable.)
Squidge has been around over 20 years. It’s as stable as fan-run sites get. And he’s aware that it needs more stability than “I’ll keep the servers up,” so he’s recently made changes that allow for long-term viability.
Also: Like the OTW, he owns the servers. He’s not beholden to Amazon or Google’s TOS for content permissions.
Mozilla, in its finite wisdom, embedded LLM bots into recent versions of Firefox for the vitally-important purpose of… naming tab groups. Now, some users are noticing CPU and power usage spikes caused by a background process called Inference.
Ugh. Reminder again for Firefox users to visit your about:config page, search for the browser.ml.chat.enabled key, and set that to false:
If yours says true then double-click it until it reads false.
Doing that turns off the AI chatbot features in Firefox, but also the stupid new LLM tab-naming feature that's rolling out.
While you're at it, disable browser.ml.enable and extensions.ml.enabled as well in addition to the option above, which will hopefully take care of most machine-learning ("AI") features.
So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.
Pro GenAI websites/Programs:
Facebook
Instagram
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.
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I think all houseplant care guides (including the little stakes they put in the soil when you buy one) should also include the expected lifespan of the plant. Not its flowers, the plant.
I feel like I’m left wondering if I killed the plant or if it was just its time way too often.
Also, it’d just be nice to know if the plant I’m buying will live for two more years or two more weeks
TOMATO ADVICE BLOG'S TROUBLESHOOTING GUIDE TO "DID I KILL THIS HOUSEPLANT?" BASED ON MY TIME AS A RETAIL GREENHOUSE WORKER:
1. Look up if it's an annual, biannual or perennial first. Most houseplants are (supposed to be) perennials, but there are a few annuals/bianuals that get sold as houseplants. Amaryllis can survive for many years if properly potted and you have the mandate of heaven on your side, but they are annuals. That said, even an annual should live at least 5-6 months at minimum.
2. If it died very suddenly (like "looked kinda sad one day, worse the next and wholly deceased on day 3") a couple weeks after you got it? Not your fault. It was already infected with a greenhouse fungus when you got it, and there was nothing you could do for it.
Greenhouse fungi are extremely common and effect the majority of retail plants sold in the US: they spread virulently through greenhouses AND can infect any plants transported with them, and plants transported in the same truck afterwards. Outdoor plants have more resilience against them because other microrhyzal fungal colonies in their outdoor pots or garden beds will protect the plants, but houseplants are kind of screwed.
You can take a swing at mitigating this by immediately repotting any houseplants you receive with dirt from a pot/garden bed/part of the yard that has other plants actively growing in it (remove.other plants before putting that dirt in with your houseplant), and putting your houseplants outside when the weather is warm, but it's often a lot cause by the time you receive the plant.
Greenhouse fungi infections are the #1 killer of retail houseplants in my experience.
3. If your plant dies EXTREMELY suddenly, like "fine last night and dead this morning" something in the building it's kept in poisoned it.
Likely culprits: cats peeing in the dirt, small children pouring soda in there (sugar aggravates any infection it might have), shitty coworkers pouring coffee in there, and accidentally hitting it with a cleaning spray while you were sanitizing the kitchen counters.
4. If it dies very slowly over the course of a couple of weeks within a year of you getting it, I'm afraid you probably killed it. The two main ways people kill houseplants are
A) Over Watering. How to fix it: keep your plant pots in a large, high-sided, no- drainage container like a large Tupperware or boot tray. Once a week (twice when AND ONLY WHEN it gets to be +80 farenheit in the room where the plant lives) fill the container with an inch or two of water, and let the plants absorb it through the bottoms of their pots, AND DO NOT DEVIATE FROM THIS SCHEDULE. If you must deviate, err on the side of under-watering them, that's a lot easier for a plant to recover from.
B) Not Enough Light. Most houseplants are tropical understory plants because those are the only ones that will tolerate the "Total Shade" level of ambient light in most houses. Succulents, cacti and most woody houseplants are not understory plants. They need 8-12 hours full spectrum light, and most glass that windows are made of block a large part of the spectrum they need. Get some grow lights. You can use the purple ones as fun night lights for your house that won't mess up your vision or sleep cycle when you get up in the middle of the night!
C) Not "common" but often enough: over-feeding. Potting soil does not need that much amending, and adding plant food to fresh potting soil will scorch the roots. Don't.
5. If your perennial plant that was thriving suddenly dies after three years, ESPECIALLY if it was an orchid: not your fault! The way that many greenhouse plants are grown is FUCKED.
Orchids in particular are doomed: orchids are heavily specialized and extremely dependent on microrhyzal fungi to stay alive. Like, parasitically dependent. As in, orchids make literally millions of microscopic seeds in hopes that one will land somewhere that has the extremely specific species of tropical fungus that orchid can hack to stay alive. Because the orchid's fungal needs are so key and so specific, greenhouse orchids are grown in a way that dooms them to tragically brief lifespans.
Greenhouse orchids are grown in sterile conditions by placing the seeds in agar and pumping them full of growth hormones and food tailored to that species exact needs (that's why there's only a couple dozen commercially sold orchids of the tens of thousands of species in the family), and continue pumping them full of their specific super food until they're large enough to be sold, and they're usually sold with Orchid Food.
Imagine growing a baby in a test tube, but the baby's immune system comes from bacteria it would be exposed to in uetero, so your lab baby has no immune system, so you feed it shitloads of vitamins to prop it up against infections. How long do you think that baby would survive outside of the lab, even if it's keeper kept up the vitamin regimen?
In the case of most orchids, about three years.
You CAN make an attempt to save your doomed bubble baby. You can go outside, find SEVERAL places full of vigorous and lively plants, pull up one of those plants (preferably one that doesn't regerminate from severed roots, like thistles) knock the handful of dirt that comes up with it into your collection of Very Alive Plant Dirts, and repot your orchid in a well-drained pot with that mixture and some orchid soil. IF YOU ARE EXTREMELY LUCKY, there will be a microrhyzal fungus in your wild dirt samples that is close enough to your orchid's host species that it will be able to accept it as it's new immune system. This is literally a one-in-a-million shot, but I *have* seen it work, and the rescued orchids live for DECADES.
Bought my uncle a burger and milkshake in exchange for letting me disrupt the holiest day of the week, NFL Sunday Football, so I could install a Pi-hole and free the household of ads...the thing abt the specific boomers I live with is they told me not to trust people on the Internet but they do not understand the algorithm or online advertising and think that Facebook has their best interests at heart. And every time I have tried to explain to them that no, blorbo from my dashboard is not selling my kidneys on the dark web but Google from your capitalism is definitely selling your web searches to every advertising company on the planet, they think I am paranoid. How could their personal friend Mark Zuckerberg want anything bad to happen to them etc. I am fighting battles I did not know existed!!!
Update I have had Pi-Hole successfully installed for two (2) hours and have since learned that 40% of the web traffic in this household went to advertisements. FORTY FUCKING PERCENT. We live in hell. This is the greatest gift I have ever given my family that they will not understand or acknowledge or feel any gratitude for.
Update #2: it was rising all night but the number it finally settled on was...60%. 60% of the web traffic in this household went to advertisements. I can't tell if this high number is bc I live in Silicon Valley and probably am subject to the Algorithmic Internet in ways people outside of Silicon Valley are not or it is normal to have 2/3rds of your web traffic be ads, but it did make me set up a recurring donation of the EFF lmfao.
Okay I have had multiple people ask, so here are the useful websites that me and Beryl used to muddle our way through:
Using Pi-hole and Raspberry Pi (on the Raspberry Pi website, really good overview of what Pi-hole does)
Tumblr-archived Twitter thread about one household's experience with Pi-hole (this is what sold me on it. Also the tweets were published in 2022 and Pi-hole is actively being developed, so I think some of the teething problems he mentioned might have cleared up or are at least being addressed.)
Pi-hole website (gives broad strokes of the software and imho is not actually that helpful, however this proves that I am not making shit up)
Pi-hole documentation (read prerequisites carefully, you do NOT need the newest model of Raspberry Pi to run this thing!! You don't even need a Raspberry Pi at all, you can run it on a bunch of Linux systems however I'm very stupid when it comes to Linux and when my options are install and learn a whole ass new OS or spend $$ on a Raspberry Pi and hook it up to my TV with a wired mouse and keyboard I will unfortunately be spending money)
Privacy International's guide to setting up Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi (bro this one saved our asses)
You guys can ask me questions if you want but I guarantee I will not know the answers bc I don't know shit about fuck, I just followed the directions and reaped the rewards. It did take us 2 hours to set up bc I'm bad at following directions (and it's kind of complicated if you've been out of the software game for a while like I have), and you do have to be sososo brave about fucking around with your internet provider's configuration. So make sure you eat before you do it!! However it has been so worth it for me so far, given that now all my devices at home are running faster and I'm not seeing any ads while web browsing. We will see what complaints my family comes up with, but I love it so far.
Also!! if you've never heard of Raspberry Pi, which I realize are not all of my followers are lost in the Silicon Valley sauce so you might not have, here's is their website and their page for using Raspberry Pi at home.
(And here is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that fights for digital privacy, free speech, and innovation, if you, like me, were presented with cold hard data about your personal internet usage and suddenly realized that our internet is fully a dystopia. haha.)
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