The Untitled and the Descriptions

You're a biological computer piloting a mechsuit made out of meat and bone, filled with fire and ocean, make it yours.

We also didn't have a Gay Straight Alliance chapter yet. Virtually every support group you could find, even in navy blue states, was a local chapter of the GSA. You were much more likely to find that acronym than LGBTQ+.

Our school decided we wanted one, but we wanted to be inclusive, because we knew there were other letters. We called our group "Spectrum", because it would cover everyone, including allies.

It took three meetings in front of the school's board of directors to get permission for the club to exist. Again, this was a private school, in a mid-Atlantic state that has been navy blue and "progressive" for decades (even at that point).

Other than the one (1) kid who was out? Every single other member said we were Allies.

Nearly 20 years later, almost every single one of us is out as some flavor of queer.

A lot of us knew we were huge supporters of queer rights, we just didn't quite know all the reasons why yet. Asexuality wasn't discussed the way it is now, neither was any type of gender nonconformity. Hell, bisexuality was barely acknowledged, and even then it was mostly only given a nod as "girls who turn guys on by kissing girls" (biphobia was strong, and unfortunately still is).

Making sure allies have a space at our table ensures that people have the space to explore their own identity, to question if one of our labels might work for them too.

It also allows people who may have some baked-in prejudices realize that those prejudices are wrong. That we're not evil and hateful, that we are actually pretty nice and friendly.

One time, some friends and I were at a pretty famous local gay bar, and this guy walked in looking like he was ripped out of the pages of Redneck Magazine. He looked super uncomfortable, but he was polite to the hostess and she sat him alone, near us. A lot of people were tense, and watching him out of the corner of our eyes, because we all knew what happened at Pulse.

But one of my friends is the person who knows absolutely everyone and goes out of their way to make new friends. He's also a cis straight guy. He leans over, compliments the guy's Carhartt jacket, and asks if he's ever been to the place before.

The guy, who is still kind of tense, says his name is Johnny and no, he's never been to no queer bar before, but his sister just came out to the family. Their parents were awful about it, and while he "didn't understand it", he didn't think his sister should be disowned and hated the thought of seeing her cry, so he wanted to try and understand.

I remembered the story that's made the rounds here- about the guy named Earl who went to a drag show and everyone made him feel welcome because they knew he needed to have a good time to prove we queer folks were safe.

So I invited Johnny to sit with us. "It's more fun than sitting alone. Here, have some of my fries, I'm probably not going to finish them anyway."

He sat at our table, and when he found out that my friend was also a cis straight guy, he visibly relaxed. So did a lot of other patrons, once they realized he wasn't there to cause violence.

Over the next few hours, he ate great food, had a couple beers, clapped and smiled at the drag shows, and asked a LOT of questions. At first, he was using language we might call "un-PC" (the kind that would get you cancelled on this webbed site). But he realized we were using different words, and asked. He asked why the old words were wrong, why the newer ones were right, and how not to be offensive.

The staff found out what was going on, and eventually a card got passed around the whole joint and everyone wrote supportive messages for Johnny's sister Lila. This big tough man felt safe enough to cry a little in front of us queer strangers, because we instantly accepted his sister as one of our own, as family, even though we'd never met her.

I'd later found out from the staff that Johnny had returned, more than once. A couple times with Lila herself, and a couple times with his friends... who were gruff and suspicious at first, but won over by the end of the night.

We need to be a safe space for allies. For people who may not use all the Correct And Accepted Special Words but genuinely want to understand and accept us. As someone who is both asexual and nonbinary, I felt way safer with Johnny (despite him using outdated terminology for a while) than I do with a lot of people on THIS QUEER ASS WEBSITE.

Allies are sometimes members of the family that don't even know they're in the closet yet, because they don't know the closer includes people like them.

Allies are sometimes people who don't know the right words or behaviors, but still want to support someone they love.

Esraa @ssave-baby-life is frightened at the prospect of something happening to her baby Qais, who needs specialised treatment, and she has had to contend with this agony every single day as a mother in Gaza. The doctors have said she could lose him in less than 12 hours and hospital administration has warned of expulsion as Esraa has been struggling to cover the medical costs even with fundraising. Donations have completely stopped.

The constant fear of losing your child is not something anyone should have to experience. Any money you send will help Esraa keep Qais on the life machines that he needs to survive.

Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.

Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.

You're right that the internet is smaller than it used to be, but there's still some cool stuff left in the corners. I'd recommend checking checking out Neocities if you haven't--it's an independent web hosting platform like Geocities of the old web, and there are hundreds of interesting and active pages discoverable both through their search function and through web buttons (links attached to small pictures with the title of a website) within the websites themselves. Here are three examples of web buttons you may find in link pages:

Most Neocities websites have link pages or button collections with anywhere from tens to hundreds of these. Don't be afraid to explore!

If you're looking for something more like a search engine, I can point you towards Marginalia. It's not a particularly smart engine, but it's perfectly usable if you've ever been taught to use search engines back when they were mostly run through keywords instead of full sentence comprehension. There's also an "about" and "tips" section on the front page with more information. The algorithm of Marginalia can be filtered by the user to allow, disallow, or require JavaScript depending on your needs, plus there are filters designed specifically to prioritize web 1.0 sites or mostly text-based ones. It is possible to search for modern websites with it, but it can return websites from just about any decade (since the invention of the web, obviously) so long as they contain the information you're looking for. For example, here are some random interesting sites I've found using Marginalia:

Native Languages of the Americas: Native American Cultures

BASIC HTML COMPETENCY IS THE NEW PUNK FOLK EXPLOSION!

Earthbound Text Labs by Bill Eager

The possibilities for discovery are truly endless.

Now you might want to know about directories. These make browsing for websites easier, but require you to read through and judge which ones to visit, as there aren't algorithms ranking the sites besides the whim of whoever coded the directory. Some of them have themes, others don't. Here are two that I've used:

Yesterlinks Directory

Ichigo Directory

Directories can be harder to come by just by surfing the net, but they aren't impossible to find. Many personal websites have their own directories of interesting sites hidden within them.

Webrings are similar to directories, but are actually more community-based. You have to register your website to be a part of a webring, usually by sending an email to whoever runs it and meeting some kind of entry criteria. For example, my personal website used to be a part of a webring called Sweet Dreams, which was for websites that heavily utilize color palettes and images of cute things, particularly sweets. Webrings will give you access to a widget upon entry that allow visitors and other members to browse between the registered websites in a massive ring, ergo, where the term gets its name. Webrings can have any theme or criteria for entry. If you can make a website about it, you can find a webring for it.

Now, you might be wondering about social media alternatives. I can't offer much, but I can nudge you towards the idea of forums. Here's one I found that could really use some traffic. I also browse a bit on MelonLand forum, which is actually closed right now--it's currently closed on Mondays--but on any other day of the week, you can find a fun community there dedicated to web revival. You can find it through MelonLand's main page. I'd also recommend checking out SpaceHey, which is a MySpace clone that's customizable and easy to use.

envisioning the gameplay as divided in stages, the first one being just 'get rid of all the cancer cells before the patient dies', where you have to balance aggressive expansion to improve your capabilties with not throwing the patient's vitals too out of whack, researching better 'weapons' that kill cancer cells faster or with fewer deleterious health effects, etc,

then a 'solidifying' phase where the cancer is gone, but the patient might be in poor health and you start building systems to catch opportunistic infections, automated systems that respond when something about the patient is off (fever, low blood pressure, broken arm, whatever), and some rudimentary communications capability. not enough of whatever mineral in your resources? you could communicate with the little wearable medical device the patient has on their wrist to tell them to change their diet! or, y'know, you could give them a craving for a specific kind of food. either works

and then in the third stage, you really go deep into host manipulation and host cooperation mechanics. you can make your host superhuman, get messages from them about what changes they want to their body and implement them, and in return they do things for you. change their diet, buy a better communications interface, tell all their friends that medical nanonbots are great. or you can effectively turn them into a zombie, just a vessel for the bots. or split the difference, and make the patient want specific things that the swarm can easily provide to build 'trust'.

PP--V--kofi--$C--gfm