I can't stress enough how much I miss StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon once sent me to a supercut of Lion King, Lion King 1 1/2, and Lion King II, the main edit being that the scenes of Lion King and Lion King 1 1/2 were interspersed so that they happened in the order they actually happened.

stumbleupon not existing anymore can be directly traced to a dramatic decline in my mental health, I could do a thesis on it.

bestie stumbleupon very much still exists its just called cloudhiker now. i use it all the time.

mini compilation of suggestions from the replies:

The Bored Button - "Press the Bored Button and be bored no more."

The Useless Web

Cloudhiker - "Discover the most interesting, weird and awesome websites of the Internet" (not really a rebrand, it's a different person running it but they have the same intention in mind)

Astronaut.io - "These videos come from YouTube. They were uploaded in the last week and have titles like DSC 1234 and IMG 4321. They have almost zero previous views. They are unnamed, unedited, and unseen (by anyone but you)."

Marginalia - "This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed."

ANTI-CAPITALIST AFFIRMATIONS

🎮 HEY I WANNA MAKE A GAME! 🎮

Yeah I getcha. I was once like you. Pure and naive. Great news. I AM STILL PURE AND NAIVE, GAME DEV IS FUN! But where to start?

To start, here are a couple of entry level softwares you can use! source: I just made a game called In Stars and Time and people are asking me how to start making vidy gaems. Now, without further ado:

SOFTWARES AND ENGINES FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO CODE!!!

Ren'py (and also a link to it if you click here do it): THE visual novel software. Comic artists, look no further ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It has great documentation! It has a bunch of plugins and UI stuff and assets for you to buy! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) You can also port your game to a BUNCH of consoles! ✨Cons: None really <3 Some games to look at: Doki Doki Literature Club, Bad End Theater, Butterfly Soup

Twine: Great for text-based games! GREAT FOR WRITERS WHO DONT WANNA DRAW!!!!!!!!! (but you can draw if you want) ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's versatile! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) ✨Cons: You can add pictures, but it's a pain. Some games to look at: The Uncle Who Works For Nintendo, Queers In love At The End of The World, Escape Velocity

Bitsy: Little topdown games! ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's (somewhat) intuitive! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! You can make everything in it, from text to sprites to code! Those games sure are small! ✨Cons: Those games sure are small. This is to make THE simplest game. Barely any animation for your sprites, can barely fit a line of text in there. But honestly, the restrictions are refreshing! Some games to look at: honestly I haven't played that many bitsy games because i am a fake gamer. The picture above is from Under A Star Called Sun though and that looks so pretty

RPGMaker: To make RPGs! LIKE ME!!!!! NOTE: I recommend getting the latest version if you can, but all have their pros and cons. You can get a better idea by looking at this post. ✨Pros: Literally everything you need to make an RPG. Has a tutorial inside the software itself that will teach you the basics. Pretty simple to understand, even if you have no coding experience! Also I made a post helping you out with RPGMaker right here! ✨Cons: Some stuff can be hard to figure out. Also, the latest version is expensive. Get it on sale! Some games to look at: Ib, Hylics, In Stars and Time (hehe. I made it)

engine.lol: collage worlds! it is relatively new so I don't know much about it, but it seems fascinating. picture is from Garden! NOTE: There's a bunch of smaller engines to find out there. Just yesterday I found out there's an Idle Game Maker made by the Cookie Clicker creator. Isn't life wonderful?

✨more advice under the cut. this is Long ok✨

Seriously cannot recommend GBStudio enough for beginners, it makes making a gb/gbc game pretty simple, it's also FOSS (free, open source software) and the devs in my experience are very responsive as is the community

Worth noting that ren'py and gb studio will happily let you add whatever ridiculous code you want on top of their frameworks. GB Studio will straight up dump the entire engine as a CMake project if you want to work in assembler or C, so if you don't like the way something works you can change it.

A while ago, I made a doc filled with pretty much evwry cheap and free resource I could find for game dev, and Im still working on it. Highly reccommend checking it out.

I made a Room Building tutorial! Lemme know if it helps! 🧡

Tip me here| Commission info here!

Getahun Assefa Balcha (Ethiopian, 1967), Women Fishing, 2019. Acrylic on canvas, 199 x 100 cm.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Ladder to the Moon

1958

“Perhaps you have forgotten. That’s one of the great problems of our modern world, you know. Forgetting. The victim never forgets. Ask an Irishman what the English did to him in 1920 and he’ll tell you the day of the month and the time and the name of every man they killed. Ask an Iranian what the English did to him in 1953 and he’ll tell you. His child will tell you. His grandchild will tell you. And when he has one, his great-grandchild will tell you too. But ask an Englishman—” He flung up his hands in mock ignorance. “If he ever knew, he has forgotten. ‘Move on!’ you tell us. ‘Move on! Forget what we’ve done to you. Tomorrow’s another day!’ But it isn’t, Mr. Brue.” He still had Brue’s hand. “Tomorrow was created yesterday, you see. That is the point I was making to you. And by the day before yesterday, too. To ignore history is to ignore the wolf at the door.” - A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré

reading in bed. painting by marta astrain.

There were a lot of freshwater mussels on the 2021 US extinction list. They didn’t leave us with haunting recordings of them calling out for a mate they’d never meet, there were no drawings in vivid color. They were extremely important nevertheless and their loss is frustrating too. That’s why stream ecology and mollusks have always fascinated me. They were silent, stalwart little heroes and entire species were lost to pollution.

Yeah, I am bothered by extinct animals. Even this guy. They can’t all be thylacines.

There are so many extinct mussels in just the southeast USA that the Center for Biological Diversity made a poster. It's outdated by at least 13 mussels that I know of but probably more by now. All of them mattered in unique ways we can no longer appreciate.

Guys freshwater mussels are fascinating. They can't move as adults, so they use this crazy method to spread their young. Baby mussels are called 'glochidia', and they live as parasites on a freshwater fish. However, glochidia cannot swim to a fish, the fish needs to come to them. To get close enough to the fish, the mother mussel (which has already incubated her eggs and hatched them) grows a lure, which comes in diverse shapes and often looks amazingly like an insect or a small minnow.

Lure^

Some species use a mucus 'fishing line' with the lure at the end, or 'lay' a lure on its own that looks like an insect larva, or forsake the lure and use a 'net' of mucus, or even just grab a fish that gets too close!

When a fish tries to eat the lure, it gets a mouthful of baby mussels for its trouble! The tiny glochidia live on the fish for a while, then drop off and metamorphose into an adult mussel.

Please care about freshwater mussels. These adaptations are super cool, and worth protecting! Every species is unique! Also they are vital filter feeders (water cleaners) in freshwater ecosystems! Also they were historically important sources of freshwater pearls.

Recently theres been a ton of projects and research into freshwater mussel reintroduction and conservation, and one of the big issues is there aren't enough actual specimen shells to train professionals and volunteers on how to identify freshwater mussels (which is notoriously hard without practice)

So the solution? Release a HUGE library of free to download 3D models of freshwater mussel species! These can either be used to train people virtually or 3D printed and painted for in person training sessions. I've personally gone through the models they've uploaded so far and they're really well done! They use photogrammetry to create the models. The models aren't released yet for download but you can look at them on sketchfab here.

VIRGIL FINLAY - DREAMER

bigger version if anyone wanted to zoom :]

me when i get my student loan

this is the money cat. reblog in 30 seconds and you will find yourself with more wealth

#this is the only money cat i will reblog because it’s actually doing the manekineko pose151,646 notes (via lolwhutninja)

OMG YOU’RE RIGHT

and it has its right paw up! the correct paw for this. and from the markings on its ears, it looks like it might be a calico cat. which is the luckiest kind!

extremely lucky cat

I don’t even care if it actually works, I’m mostly reblogging because it’s freaking adorable.

cute cat and need money, good post, 10/10

in case anyones interested in the other versions

http://www.namaii.com/manekineko/maneki-neko-types.html

Y’know I reblogged this a bit ago and was saved from financial probation and getting kicked out of school because of it, just mere months from graduation. Got a call from the financial aid advisor telling me that they made a mistake with filing my account (or some other sort of clerical error) and said that, basically, they owe me money. Welp.

Last time I reblogged the money cat, I won two $100 gift cards at work.

Damn.

KITTY. YOU CAME BACK. AGAIN. YAYY.

Welcome to the library, young man. Don’t tell me. You’re here for a special book. 

The Pagemaster (1994) dir. Pixote Hunt & Joe Johnston

“feeling like a person again” collection

In case anyone wondered my opinion on AI art

Two Women Racing On Fish, illustration By Brynolf Wennerberg, 1914