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Internet Tourist

@narcisseledecadent

Just passing through and smelling virtual roses
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jojaydoodles

I've been spending some quality time on the Discworld lately. And upon re-reading some of the books about The Watch, I had to draw me some Lady Ramkin. No offence to the official illustrators, they're great artists and all, but I could never see what I see when I read when I look at any of the artwork out there. So I made my own.

1. Sybil Ramkin wearing a black dress & black wig, and some family diamonds, looking like the night sky. And winking at Vimes.

2. "It's my bloody dragon!"

3. Almost certain that there won't be any scale growth. Almost.

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ms-demeanor

I was avoiding my homework earlier so I ended up searching a bunch of info about ADHD and

Are the neurotypicals okay?

Anyway, large bastard and I have fully drift compatible ADHD and after that search I had to go and find him and tell him how glad I am that's we're a disaster together. Then I raced through my homework and went to turn it in and found out that the professor pushed the due date back by three days.

Girl help the radfem swiftie is getting gender essentialism on my post about how it's shitty to blame relationship problems on your partner in lieu of communicating.

Ma'am. Ma'am. I feel like you might not actually be exhibiting any empathy in your statements here.

I shouldn't have to make this explicit but if you think that half of the population of the planet is irresponsible and untrustworthy and stupid and entitled because of their gender you are an asshole and you should reconsider the things you read and people you interact with that led you to you holding such bigoted, harmful, and unkind opinions.

Also this is, like, very clearly buying into the ableism presented in the screenshots by taking it as read that the ADHD partners in these scenarios are being "shitty" or "toxic" or "bored" or "unfaithful."

ADHD causes some very clear, very well known interpersonal issues in people of all genders and it is possible to recognize that

  • "People with ADHD experience relationship difficulties as a result of executive dysfunction" and
  • "People with ADHD are often infantalized, demonized, ridiculed, and dismissed by neurotypical partners"

Can both be true statements.

And that's *aside* from the fact that neurodivergent people generally, and neurodivergent women especially, are more likely to be victims of IPV than neurotypicals are, and that many neurodivergent people who are abused or treated poorly by their partners are DARVO'd specifically on the basis of their neurodivergence.

Just. Like. Way to miss the point in every direction.

Jesus. Is that account satire? The combination of Dworkin quotes and Swiftie drivel makes it really hard to parse.

Ah yes, men with ADHD, those entitled monsters who are (checks notes) *significantly* more likely than neurotypical men to end up incarcerated, have an elevated risk of early mortality, are less likely to have completed college, and are more likely to be chronically underemployed.

That's who we should watch out for, those are the master manipulators of there trying to entrap noble honest sweet kind women into relationships so they can treat them badly.

AND "your ADHD is fake, you're the problem."

Really, really impressively wretched opinions on display in under a hundred words. You used to have to go to Twitter to find this level of radioactive take in such a short format.

Btw it wasn't the ADHD that made me rude and disrespectful. I practiced hard to get to this level of assholery.

Also, question by question:

  • Does ADHD make you rude and disrespectful? No, but behaviors that many people consider rude and disrespectful are fairly common in people with ADHD; this can be addressed by assessing the social norms of the people you'll be interacting with and clearly communicating when you find a particular behavior to be intolerably rude and finding a workaround. If you hate being interrupted it's probably going to be difficult for you to have a relationship with someone with ADHD. However you might want to consider that your ADHD partner isn't interrupting you because they don't care about what you're saying, but because they're so engaged in the conversation that they want to participate before they forget their point. "Rudeness" is constructed and it's worthwhile to interrogate.
  • Do adults with ADHD say inappropriate things? Sometimes. Sometimes adults without ADHD say inappropriate things. People with ADHD may struggle with impulse control and their mouths may get ahead of their brains sometimes; if your partner is saying inappropriate things frequently and it is upsetting you, that is something to bring up with your partner.
  • Does ADHD cause inappropriate behavior? That's going to depend on a lot of definitions, and see above for impulse control. ADHD doesn't cause people to, for instance, start conversations with strangers about their sex lives, but it might cause people to lose focus in meetings or daydream instead of getting work done. All of those things are "inappropriate" in certain contexts.
  • What are manipulative behaviors of ADHD? Fuck you? Manipulative behaviors are manipulative behaviors; are you asking why your kid is trying to wriggle out of doing homework (perhaps it's boring) or are you asking whether your partner is 'gaslighting' you when they forget to do the dishes? Many people with ADHD deal with a certain level of conflict avoidance or RSD as a result of a lifelong history of criticism; is your partner actually manipulating you or are they trying not to get yelled at? This is probably worthwhile to investigate before going off in search of a list of red flags.
  • ADHD Relationships in Adults. Man, good luck finding advice that isn't belittling or infantalizing.
  • ADHD Relationship Boredom. This is a thing that happens in neurotypical relationships too. Try looking up the phrase "honeymoon phase."
  • ADHD Relationship Book. Good luck. I'm actually not a fan of most ADHD relationship writing, shockingly.
  • ADHD Spouse Burnout. Burnout is a thing that happens in all kinds of relationships; yours isn't special just because your partner has ADHD. The recourse for *any* relationship burnout is communication. I'm sorry you're tired but this needed to be a conversation about how many dishes in the sink upsets you before it turned into an ultimatum and a reddit ventpost. "We've had a million conversations about this" well clearly they didn't take so either the conversations weren't productive and you needed to find a different way to communicate or you're dating a shithead and the ADHD has less to do with your burnout than the shit-headery. Also for the love of fuck don't just decide you're going to do everything because your partner is helpless - that's going to make you resentful and make your partner feel like they're dead weight so they might as well not try. Fuckin. Talk to each other for fuck's sake.
  • What to expect when dating a man with ADHD. Lots of stuff. He's probably a whole unique individual human under all that ADHD why don't you fucking ask him about what he's like as a roommate and a partner isn't that the fucking point of dating is getting to know people? You're going to have to ask the man you're dating what he's like.
  • Why ADHD Partners are hard to love? Fuck you? They aren't? Like maybe if you're going into this with the idea that your partner is going to be difficult to love you should do them a favor and try to find someone else to love? Because it sounds like the ADHD is absolutely not the problem in your relationship.
  • What men with ADHD need from a partner? That is an entire adult man try fucking asking him if he can't talk to you about his needs then he's not going to be a good partner and that would be true whether or not he had ADHD. You're going to have to ask the person you're dealing with what they need in a partner.
  • Does ADHD lack empathy? ADHD often results in emotional dysregulation, which can lead to people who struggle with expressing or experiencing empathy both in that they might experience less empathy and in that they might experience more. You're going to have to ask the person you're dealing with how they relate to other people.
  • Do people with ADHD like to be touched? You're going to have to ask the person you're dealing with whether they like to be touched.
  • Does ADHD cause emotional detachment? Theoretically it could. You're going to have to ask the person you're dealing with about their attachment style and way of relating emotionally to the people around them.
  • How do you keep a man with ADHD interested in? You're going to have to talk to the man you're dealing with about what he's interested in.
  • Can ADHD cause narcissism? Is there a link between ADHD and narcissism? ADHD can make it harder to focus on people outside of yourself, and people with ADHD are frequently labeled as thoughtless, selfish, self-centered, and narcissistic. Personally I think that's unfair and a misinterpretation of behaviors people are exhibiting. The behaviors that seem "narcissistic" (forgetting events that are important to other people; forgetting to do tasks that were requested, difficulty listening to other people's concerns, starting projects on their own with no input from the group) are often manifestations of issues with executive dysfunction that would need to be individually addressed, not labeled as "bad person mental disorder for mean assholes," which is what most questions about 'narcissism' seem to be asking. (And shoutout to the NPD crew, I'm sorry people treat you like shit and have made the challenges you are dealing with into 'villain syndrome.') Anyway, my response to both of these questions is better summed up as:
  • Do people with ADHD have a sixth sense? Yes, but that sense is "time" and the only information it reports is incorrect.

Anyway, the reason this list of questions irritated me so much is that it looks like an attempt to pin genuine relationship issues on a diagnosis that may have nothing to do with the issues at hand and which has symptoms that are going to vary wildly from one person to the next. ADHD causes emotional detachment except in the people for whom it causes overattachment. People with ADHD like to be touched except for the ones who don't. What your ADHD man needs is to be treated like a human being with autonomy, not a puzzle box you're trying to beat with a youtube video.

People with ADHD *do* search for this kind of information about themselves (after all, I got here because I searched "i have adhd and i don't want to do my homework") but a lot of questions here are clearly from people trying to figure out how their partners tick without just having a fucking conversation about it. This list reads like it should return a PetCo Care Sheet that recommends a one gallon tank and pumice substrate.

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windows 10 is garbage so every time i boot up the computer i have to run command prompt and enter

net.exe stop “Windows Search”

so that the shitty goddamned search/cortana feature that i never fucking use stops running in the background taking up all my fucking disk space

what the fuck is that seriously what the fuck is making my computer be a fucking piece of shit

@baristaboy try this out dude

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amis-amai

y’all didn’t even add a tutorial of how to do this so imma put one right here 1. type in cmd.exe into your windows search and right click on Command Promt search result and select “Run as Administator”. 2. Type/Copypase in  net.exe stop “Windows Search” and make sure Windows Search is in quotations. It should then respond saying “The Windows Search service is stopping” and then tell you it’s stopped. This is only a temp fix though, if you want it switched off permanently then do THIS: 1.  Press the Windows key + R at the same time and type in services.msc. 2.  Scroll until you find Windows Search and double click it to enter its Properties window. 3.  Change the Startup type to Disabled. Apply this change and you can exit out. VOILA, NO MORE TAKEN UP DISK SPACE

Reblog to save a fucking life, FUCK CORTANA.

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Humanity has finally reached the stars and found out why no one had contacted us. The universe is in a sad state. As such, Doctors without Borders, Red Cross, and many othe charities go intergalactic.

The thing the recruiters don’t tell you about space battles is that you die slowly.

Ships don’t blow up cleanly in flashes and sparks.  Oh, if you’re in the engine room, you’ll probably die instantly, but away from that?  In the computer core, or the communications hub?  You just lose power.  And have to sit, air going stale and room slowly cooling, while you wait to find out if the battle is won or lost.

If it’s lost, nobody comes for you.

It had been about half a day (that’s a Raithar day, probably a bit shorter than yours) and Kvala and I were pretty sure we had lost.  Kvala was injured, Traav and I were dehydrated and exhausted, and Louv was dead, hit by shrapnel when the conduits blew.

Most fleets give you something, of course.  For Raithari, it’s essence of windgrass.  I looked at the vial.

“It’s too soon,” Traav said.

Kvala gestured negation, shakily.  She had been burned when conduits blew, and her feathers were charred, and her leftmost eye was bubbly and blind now.  Even if we were rescued, she probably wouldn’t survive.  “You know we’re losing the war.”

They couldn’t deny that.  “It doesn’t mean we lost the battle.”

“Doesn’t it?  The Chreee have better technology.  Better resources.  And they have their warrior code.  They don’t care if they die.”

“We can’t give up!” Traav protested.  They were young, a young and reckless thar who had listened to a recruiting officer and still believed scraps of what they had been told.  “Any heartbeat now—”

There was a clunk.  Something had docked with our fragment of the ship.

“You see?!” Traav crowed triumphantly.

Kvala exchanged glances with me.  The Chreee never bothered to hunt down survivors.  What was the point, after all?

The Aushkune did.

There weren’t supposed to be Aushkune here.  They were supposed to hide in nebulas.

But if there were—

If there were, we were too late.  The windgrass couldn’t possibly destroy our nervous systems in time to stop the corpse-reviving implants, and once you were implanted, it was over—or it would never be over, depending on how you looked at it and whether Aushkune drones were aware of anything—

Footsteps.

Bipedal.  The Aushkune were supposed to be bipedal.

And then the blast door opened, and a figure stood in it.  My first thought was, robot?  That’s almost worse than Aushkune . . .  But no, it was a being in some sort of suit.

Who wore suits?

“Friendly contact,” the suit’s sound system blared, as the being moved over to Kvala.  “Urgent treatment.  Evacuation.”

“Who are you?”  Kvala struggled upright.

Despite the primitive suit, the blocky being was using up-to-date medical scanners.  “Low frequency right angle shape,” it explained—or maybe didn’t explain.  Two more figures came into the room and put Kvala firmly onto a stretcher.

“You’re with the Chreee, aren’t you?”  Kvala was not at all happy to be on a stretcher.

“Not Chreee,” the sound system said.  “You Man.  Soil Starship Nichols.”  The being hesitated.  “Rescue Chreee as well.  On ship.  Will separate.”

“You what?” I said faintly.  Who would do that?

“Oath,” the being explained.

“What kind of oath?  To what deity?”

The shoulders of the being moved up and down.  “Several different.  Also none.  For me, none.  Just—oath.”

I exchanged glances with Traav, who looked as unsettled as I was.  I had never, ever heard of groups cooperating when they couldn’t even swear to or by the same power.

The being scanned me.  “Have water,” it said.  “Recommend.”

Raithari have fast metabolisms.  I could—would—die of thirst quickly, and painfully.

“Where will you take us,” Traav asked, “after you give us water?”

“Raithari to Raithar.  Chreee to Chreeeholm.”

“Chreeeholm would kill them for failing,” Traav remarked.

The being hesitated, and then said, “War news sometimes bad.  Sometimes lie.”

We had learned long ago not to believe the recruiting officers, but what did that have to do with anything?

“And you—what?” I asked.  “Just fly around looking for battles and rescuing victims?”

The being seemed to consider this.  “Best invention of soil,” it said finally.

Most of what it was saying didn’t make any sense.  Did it worship soil?  But it had said that it had sworn to no deity . . .

Madness.

On the other hand—war was a deliberate, rational act by deliberate, rational people, and I wanted no more of it.  So why not embrace madness and see what happened?

“Soil Starship—Rrikkol?” I asked, stumbling over the word.

“Yes.  Soil Starship Nichols.”

I followed the being in the suit.

Took me well over a minute to realize "low frequency right angle shape" was Red Cross.

I love how this shows the weirdness both of language and of culture. Excellent writing!

"Soil Starship Nichols"

This is what took me a moment.

Earth Starship [Nichelle] Nichols

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Fascism sells a synthetic nostalgia.

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theshampyon

As good a time as any to remind folks of the 14 properties of "ur-fascism" (described by Umberto Eco, who grew up in Italy under Mussolini, in his 1995 essay Ur-Fascism). Not all need be present for single regime to be fascist, but a Venn diagram of all fascist regimes will cover them all.

  1. CULT OF TRADITION. The old ways are best. The New is not worthwhile.
  2. REJECT MODERNISM The development of Western philosophy post-Enlightenment is seen as a descent into depravity. See also : Reject post-modernism, which is seen as an even greater descent into irrationality.
  3. ACTION FOR ACTION'S SAKE. Action is to be taken without reflection or introspection - that's for weaklings and degenerates. Often seen in a derision of "intellectual elites".
  4. DISAGREEMENT IS TREASON. Analytical criticism cannot be allowed. A pantomime of discourse may be allowed, but only within the accepted framework and only if reaching the foregone conclusion.
  5. FEAR OF DIFFERENCE. Outsiders are your enemy. Those who are different are evil and want to corrupt you and destroy all you hold dear.
  6. APPEAL TO A FRUSTRATED MIDDLE CLASS Capitalising on genuine frustrations by pointing them toward convenient scapegoats. Real concerns used a recruiting tools.
  7. OBSESSION WITH A PLOT. There is a conspiracy run by THEM. You are besieged by THEM. THEY are behind all your ills. THEY are working in the shadows to enslave and destroy you.
  8. THE ENEMY IS BOTH STRONG AND WEAK. When rhetorically convenient, THEY are all-powerful. When rhetorically convenient, THEY are feeble, stupid, weak. The rhetorical focus shifts regardless of self-contradiction, because all that matters is positioning the enemy where the speaker's goal requires them to be at any given moment.
  9. PACIFISM IS THE ENEMY. LIFE IS ETERNAL WAR. There must always be an enemy to fight. When that enemy is defeated, another must be found. When they cannot be found, they must be created, even from within. There is always the promise of a Final Solution bringing Ultimate Triumph, but it can never be achieved.
  10. CONTEMPT FOR THE WEAK. Elitism disguised as populism. Everyone of US is superior to THEM, cockroaches and drains on society that they are. But people are sheep who require strong leaders, who are by their nature superior to others.
  11. EVERYONE IS TAUGHT TO BE THE HERO. A CULT OF DEATH. Where in myth the hero is exceptional, in fascism everyone must be the hero. They crave heroic death, the reward for heroic life. In seeking it, they send others to die. (See also: Militarism).
  12. MACHISMO. Disdain for women and femininity. Intolerance of non-standard sexuality and gender expression.
  13. SELECTIVE POPULISM. The People are viewed as a monolith with a single will, as interpreted (in reality, determined) by the leaders. Democratic institutions are viewed as illegitimate because they run counter to the narrative of the existence of a single Voice Of The People.
  14. NEWSPEAK. Vocabulary cannot expand. If anything, it must shrink. Variation and nuance in dialogue means variation and nuance in thought. This cannot be allowed. Therefore categories must be binary. Definitions are simple and limited. If it cannot be boiled down into snappy catchphrase it does not exist.
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mclennonyaoi

reading this deposition that just got dropped where someone sued musk and ohhhh my god it is this funniest thing ever . i can see why his lawyer tried to keep this confidential . they’re both maybe the biggest idiots . this is like ace attorney

bankston is my HERO he’s tearing these people apart

HE LEFT

oh my god

KILL HIM

he is DONE.

HELP ME .

wow. ok.

genuinely first two pages he says that he thinks ben’s lawyer is the one who is actually suing him and admits he has no clue what the lawsuit is about .

doing a reread now this is so cunty

goddamn .

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cryptotheism

fun fact: the Mr. Bankston here is Mark Bankston, the same lawyer who absolutely ruined Alex Jones during the Sandy Hook trial.

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exeggcute

had a minor crisis when 12ft.io went down yesterday and thankfully it's back now but this seems like a good opportunity to compile a list of similar paywall-evading tools in case 12ft ever gets canned for real:

  • 12ft.io: the legend himself. definitely my favorite of the bunch by virtue of being the easiest to use (and the easiest url to remember), but it's configured to disable paywall evasion for a handful of popular sites like the new york times, so you'll have to go elsewhere for those.
  • printfriendly: works great; never had any issues with removing paywalls, even on domains that don't work with 12ft.io. since this site is literally designed to make sites print-friendly, it might simplify the overall formatting of the page you're trying to access, which can be a good or bad thing. my only real issue is that the "element zapper" (which lets you remove content blocks from the print-friendly preview) is a little sensitive if you're browsing on a touchscreen device, which means you might accidentally delete a paragraph when you're just trying to scroll. but if that happens you can reload the page and it'll revert everything back to its original state.
  • fifteen feet: basically a 12ft clone, minus 12ft's restrictions. haven't used it much since I only discovered it yesterday in the wake of 12ft's 451 error but it seems to do the trick.
  • archive.today: an archival tool very similar to the wayback machine, but it also works as a de facto paywall removal tool. (the wayback machine seems to remove paywalls as well, but archive.today has better UX imo and is way faster to use.)
  • and an honorable mention for sci-hub: only works for scientific/academic journals, not random news articles, but the other sites listed above only work for random news articles and not academic publications so you gotta have this one in your toolbelt for full coverage. pubmed is your oyster.
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Thinking about Mat’s first meeting with Olver. Just this twenty year old who’s so frustrated with responsibility that despite hating fighting goes into this situation looking for an excuse to hit someone. Then he sees that a kids involved, and he tries to diffuse the situation, he’s tired and just wants to solve this quickly so he can go back to the inn and get some sleep- then this full grown man threatens to kill a child, for the crime of roughing his horse. And Mat, Mat KNOWS what it’s like to be that kid, too curious for his own good and getting into trouble, but never NEVER has anyone threatened to hurt him over it. And Mat without any thought for potential repercussions breaks a dudes wrist and hits the other right between the legs. And then he threatens to have the lot of them run out of town by the Band because they had the audacity to say that Olver was “just a peasant child” as of that changed the situation for Mat, a horse traders son in fancy clothes. Because to Mat that’s all he is, a peasant in nice clothes. Then he’s trying to figure out what to do with Olver, since his parents are no where to he found, and Olver tells him not to talk about him like he isn’t there. And Mat ACKNOWLEDGES that, he apologizes and kneels down so they can be eye level. He doesn’t talk down to Olver, because he knows what it’s like to have other people make decisions for him. He is so keenly aware of his Olver feels, the frustration and rebelliousness that comes from being a child because he isn’t that far removed from it. Just three years ago he was still just a kid, older and a bit more mature than Olver perhaps, but still just a kid and one who hadn’t seen the horrors that ten year old Olver had seen. He acknowledges Olver’s feelings and talks to him like he’s anyone else, and redirects Olver’s stubbornness so skillfully. He’s just so good with kids in a way that not even just having two younger sisters can account for. He Gets It, the parts of him that others consider immature are what make him so good at communicating with Olver.

Then think about this from Olver’s perspective. He’s been alone for who knows how long, forced to flee his home, to bury his mother, and now all alone in some strange place. He was likely sleeping in the stables, and that was how he ended up trying to make friends with the Hunter of the Horns horse. Then this Hunter drags him out to the middle of the street, threatening to Jill him. Olver was brave about it but it must’ve been terrifying. Especially upon realizing that none of the other refugees would help. Then suddenly a man in nobles clothes, a strange hat and the coolest looking spear he’s probably ever seen intercedes on his behalf. A man Olver has never seen before, a foreigner no less, but here he is coming to rescue Olver like some gleemans hero. Then Olver sees Mat fight, while to Mat this was hardly even a struggle, a few cracks with the blunt of his spear and the ‘fight’ is over, but to Olver, Mat probably looked like a warder with how easily he handled two armed men presumably trained in using those swords they carry. We as an audience see Mat mainly through the eyes of people who don’t take him seriously, Mat himself included, so it’s easy to overlook just how badass Mat must seem to anyone else looking from the outside, especially a young angry boy who wants to fight the aiel who killed his father. We don’t know how Olver found out, or when, but imagine being Olver and hearing the most certainly exaggerated story of Mat “dueling” Couladin. Is it any wonder that Olver hero worships Mat? That inspite of what Olver perceived as Mat being hypocritical and foolish(or as Mat sees it trying to properly care for a child and be a good influence) he still considers Mat to be someone to emulate. Whether Olver sees Mat as more a mentor, brother or father figure he very clearly idolizes him. He wants to be like Mat, he wants Mat’s attention and praise because despite Mat being “no bloody hero” to this little boy he IS a hero, one worthy of any gleemans story

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hacvek

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

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dragonpyre

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

Mordor.

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!

So what is a rain shadow?

Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.

Oh yeah nothing is more annoying than fantasy maps that can't get mountains, rivers and rain shadows right.

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mindfulwrath

May I recommend my new favorite tool: Mapgen4. You start with a random seed and then add mountains, valleys, shallow water, or oceans as you like. You can adjust the wind direction to make wind shadows off the mountains fall where you want. You can adjust overall raininess to make the rivers larger or smaller, or have more or fewer tributaries. It works best for small, isolated landmasses (think islands more than continents) but as there’s no scale bar and it’s all slightly abstracted anyway you can do whatever you want with it. I’ve only just started playing with it but it’s SO FUN.

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jeanjauthor

I do think this could be useful for writers! ...Caveat, if you're going to use this for making a map for anything published (digital or paper, even if it's only in a fanfic archive or whatever), please, please credit the creator and their program as how you made that map! The more ways information like this gets out there, the more useful it'll be to other writers, roleplaying game DMs/GMs, creators, etc.

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oh-opossum

One of my favourites for mapping plates, biomes, etc is Tectonics.js. If you're familiar with how tectonics shape a planet, you can guess where the features go by toggling plates, crust thickness, etc. Between Mapgen4 and Tectonics.js, we've got some pretty sweet tools at our disposal.

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brehaaorgana

More stuff!:

Also I would recommend looking into Landscape Archaeology as well! That's because Landscape archeology is basically adding the social/cultural layer on top of all that geology and geography. Environments change when communities live in them, and communities likewise adapt to various environments.

This is a short free introduction to the concept: "Notes on Landscape Archaeology." To summarize, Landscape archaeology sort of like...studies the relation of people to places/spaces (that is, landscapes) in time.

Also this paper [An Archeology of Landscapes] breaks down/introduces the key concepts that I learned which is first that you can form the "construct paradigm" of a landscape from settlement ecology, ritual landscapes, and ethnic landscapes.

And then the highlights of their summary of what constitutes defining a landscape:

  1. Landscapes are not synonymous with natural environments. Landscapes are synthetic (Jackson, 1984, p. 156), with cultural systems structuring and organizing peoples’ interactions with their natural environments ...
  2. Landscapes are worlds of cultural product ... Through their daily activities, beliefs, and values, communities transform physical spaces into meaningful places. ...
  3. Landscapes are the arena for all of a community’s activities. Thus landscapes not only are constructs of human populations but they also are the milieu in which those populations survive and sustain themselves. A landscape’s domain involves patterning in both within-place and between-place contexts ...
  4. Landscapes are dynamic constructions, with each community and each generation imposing its own cognitive map on an anthropogenic world of interconnected morphology, arrangement, and coherent meaning ...

Basically a "landscape" is made by a community living in an environment. Once you have a geological environment that makes sense, landscape archaeology is like... Basically how I feel confident knowing where trade routes would be on a map, where there are areas of continual high conflict, what kinds of agriculture exists where, etc. once the geological stuff is hammered out, it's like...I know how that would influence the local cultures and vice versa. At that point, it's easy to start marking the natural borders, settlements, trade/port cities, and even strategic fortresses. If you have properly put rivers on a map, then marking your port cities is effortless, basically.

Also:

If you are like me and find it helpful to have video reference for a process/activity in addition to a written guide, Artifexian is a YouTube channel that does a LOT of world building stuff and specifically he's in the process of creating a world following a lot of Worldbuilding Pasta's methodology!

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lastoneout

People don’t like to admit it bcs cringe or w/e but Homestuck really did revolutionize the webcomic as a storytelling medium and I am endlessly frustrated that before webcomic artists could really stretch our legs fucking webtoonz swooped in, set a new, more restrictive standard, and then monetized and monopolized the ever living fuck out of the concept of The Webcomic until it drove away anyone who couldn’t be a professional quality manga artist for free, and now the only webcomics that actually feel like spiritual successors to Homestuck are so obscure they’re basically cult classics that you have to beg people to read.

Like it’s just so wild to be in high school and see Homestuck be like “we’re using like fifteen different artistic mediums to tell this story bcs we can” and be really fucking inspired by that, only to grow up and see basically every webcomic ever have to conform to One Single Standard or fucking perish.

Actually, I realized my real point here: we all need to make our art weirder. Please make weird art. I want more stuff like Prequel Adventure and 17776 and MyHouse.wad and I want it now. Capitalism thrives on conformity. We must be weird at all costs.

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byelacey

it’s depressing to see people eulogizing webcomics in the notes because amazing and cool and weird webcomics still exist on the internet, you just have to Visit Web Sites and i don’t have any sources to cite to back myself up here but i feel that younger folks experiencing The Internet through phones & tablets rather than PCs forces them to live on apps, like webtoon, so that’s where they’re going to go to read webcomics

as webcomic creators, we kind of have to go where the audience is. god i know a lot of comic folks right now with amazing comics on websites starting to mirror their comics to webtoon/tapas because audiences *expect* you to be there anyway. stop saying webcomics are dead. go to websites & look at them. thank u

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feathernotes

But *where do I find them* you ask? I’ve got some neat answers for you. ->Comic Fury Is a great place to find webcomics(and host your comic there with a lot of custom options) ->Spider Forest is a collective of webcomics- which means members were accepted to be in a group that support each other! They’ve been around since 2003, how cool! -> Hiveworks comics are curated comics who were accepted into their collection as well. The hub links to many cool and unique webcomics -> Topwebcomics is a place to find comics to read and vote for your faves -> The Webcomic Library is a place dedicated to tagging webcomics, so you can browse and select a comic that suits your fancy with the organisation all done for ya! -> Comic Rocket is a good tool to use if you’d like to bookmark your readthrough and search for new comics to read as well (feel free to add to the list for more webcomic places too!) There are SO MANY incredible webcomics out there and I would LOVE for folks to explore the net and find them again. This is the best way to keep ideas unique, weird, and most of all, loved. So go check out some comics!

All these sites are great resources! I have found some absolute gems by just scrolling through Topwebcomics & clicking anything that seemed remotely interesting (it also has a movies-style rating system on each entry if that’s something you’d find useful)

Once you find some you like, look at the sidebars or about pages; a lot of people -especially the old school comics people- link their other comics, their friends’ comics, or comics they just like there; it’s a great sort of ‘if you liked this, you might like that’ resource!

Also, try scrolling @haveyoureadthiswebcomic They have links to the comics on the polls

————-

If you’d like some specific comics recs to get you started, here’s some of my favorites (under a cut because my curated list of faves is 20+ entries long):

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When I am emperor, I will make everyone who refers to women’s leg hair removal as “basic hygiene” fight to the death in my coliseum.

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eilooxara

finally it will be understood that I am doing it not for hygiene but for slut reasons

sluts are welcome in my empire, be they hairy or smooth

Confused, but cautiously willing to welcome these slippery people into my empire so long as I can put down some plastic drop clothes over the couches before they sit down, and provided they do not become evangelical or moralizing about their thigh slime. (Why stop at thighs? Why not emulate the valiant eel and opt for a full mucusoid coat?)

This probably refers to people whose thighs touch and chafe when they’re wearing shorts or skirts

Aww, and here I was planning an imperial holiday called Slime Fest, with mandatory public slimings.

Very well, anti-chafing measures are permissible. I want my subjects to be comfortable (when they are not fighting to the death obviously).

your highness can we still have slime fest?

*imperial majesty thx

Imperial majesty, can we still have the slime fest?

hmmmmmm

no I’m too sad that the eel people don’t exist and I shall declare an Imperial Day of Sulking instead

all are welcome

The imperial Majesty Sulking

for three hours each day we will open the doors of the palace to the public so that my subjects may view their emperor sulking about the eel people from the royal observation chamber

there will be hors d'oeuvre

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cryptidize

Fuck It, Internet Guide

Hey there! As social media becomes more and more inhospitible for the local user, I wanted to post some useful/fun links to just about anything I can think of! Enjoy! Also, if you'd like an invite to the P!rated Games discord, lmk! ^_^

I AM CURRENTLY STILL UPDATING THIS POST AND I WILL REBLOG IT WHEN I ADD TO IT! Feel free to comment things I've missed, I'm sure there's way more than this came from!

WEB CENTRIC

CURLIE: THE COLLECTOR OF URLs (Curlie strives to be the largest human-edited directory of the Web. You can save sites and create your own mini webring!)

Internet Archive (A collection of over 818 Billion websites, books, movies, music, and more. Hosts the Wayback Machine, which can be used to access a multitude of sites, given they were indexed in time.)

Wiby (Human submission search engine for older webrings, as well as a how-to guide on how to develop your own search engine)

Unicode Text Converter (Easy way to make your text illegible to Google but be warned, it will make screen readers malfuction)

Embed Responsively (Easily convert links and embeds to work responsively within your site - perfect for neocities!)

Generator Land (Generate a list or prompt for just about anything!)

GifCities (Part of the Internet Archive, a special project done as part of the 20th anniversary in an effort to save data from GeoCities. Find a gif for just about anything!)

Animated Images (Another gif repository, though this one is easier to search and includes small animations.)

Gifs-Paradise (Another gif repository. I swear I collect these. Searchable and categorized.)

ASCII Art Archive (Database of ASCII Art, also known as text art)

Christopher Johnson's ASCII Art Collection (Another, arguably larger, ASCII Art database)

MelonLand (A web project and online arts community that celebrates homepages, virtual worlds, the world-wide-web and the digital lives that all netizins share, here at the dawn of the digital age. See their thoughts and the WEB REVIVAL they're starting.)

Sadgrl Webrings (Webrings brought to us by Sadgrl.Online - 60+ different ones to be exact) and Sadgrl Links (70+ links just like the ones in this post)

Districts at Neocities (Remember neighborhoods on Geocities? Imagine that but for Neocities!)

Neocities Banners (Banners from all across neocities. Blinkies, banners and more leading all over the web. Mostly 88x31, though there are bigger ones too. Technically counts as a webring.)

Blinkies.cafe (Site for blinkies where you can even make your own! I get most of my blinkies here and off DeviantArt.)

88x31 Collection (Possibly the largest collection I've seen for 88x31 buttons)

90's Cursor Effects (Want a funky cursor for your blog or website? Wanna be able to realtime preview what cursors would look like? Come get some code!)

The Malware Museum (Interact with malware and viruses from the 80s and 90s through emulation! No nasty virus interactions needed :D )

KNOWLEDGE BASES

Library Genesis - LIBGEN (Scientific journals - dedicated to archiving every science journal and their articles in existence.)

Information Mesh (A web platform celebrating the 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web that explores social, technical, cultural and legal facts throughout different interactive timelines.)

Web Design Museum (Over 2,000 sorted websites showing web design trends from '96 to '06.)

The History of the Web (A twice monthly newsletter about web history, and the incredible people that built it. Goes from 1989 to present.)

Field Guide to Web Accessibility (Principles and applications to every day web scenarios in order to make the web a more friendly place!)

CARI - Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute (an online community and collective association of researchers and designers dedicated to carrying on the important work of categorizing "consumer aesthetics" from the late midcentury, when work on the subject somewhat trailed off, through today.)

The Eye (Archive consisting of 140TB of books, websites, games, software, or anything else you can really think of.)

The Uncensored Library (A project from Reporters without Borders, where they use a loophole using Minecraft to distribute information.)

National Gallery of Art Public Domain (The National Gallery of Art has an open access policy for images of works of art in their permanent collection which the Gallery believes to be in the public domain. Images of these works are available for download free of charge for any use, whether commercial or non-commercial.)

Library of Congress Public Domain (Features items from the Library's digital collections that are free to use and reuse. The Library believes that this content is either in the public domain, has no known copyright, or has been cleared by the copyright owner for public use.)

Public Domain Review (an online journal and not-for-profit project dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas.)

New York Public Library Public Domain (Our digitized collections are available as machine-readable data: over one million records for you to search, crawl and compute.)

Official articles from NASA (PubSpace is NASA's designated public access repository. It is a collection of NASA-funded scholarly publications within the STI Repository, aiming to increase access to federally funded research in accordance with NASA Public Access Policy.)

Universal Hint System (Wanna get some vague help for an older video game without getting spoiled? Check out these awesome hints!)

Smithsonian Open Access (Download, share, and reuse millions of 2D and 3D digital items from their 21 museums, 9 research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.)

Instructables (Wanna know how to make just about anything? Check here!)

QZAP Zine Archive (Archive of LGBT+ Zines, began in 2003 with zines dating back all the way to the 1970s. NSFW AT TIMES, BROWSE AT YOUR OWN RISK.)

P!racy Masterpost (Tumblr-based masterpost of game piracy, last updated 2021. A bit old but some of the stuff there is still good. If this link breaks, please contact me.)

P!rated Games Megathread (masterpost created by r/P!ratedGames includes required components as well as anything else you need. NOTE: PLEASE HAVE SOME SORT OF PROTECTION WHEN NAVIGATING THIS SITE)

Geocities Gallery (A website hosting a working archive for many abandoned Geocities Sites.)

Snipplr (Code Snippet repository. Great for coding issues.)

GeoCities (Archived) (Great for searching ancient webrings for gifs and website ideas. Not so great for downloads.)

Freeware Guide (Archived) (The Freeware-Guide died sometime in 2021 [we think March] but it's still full of VERY valuable information. Links are broken pretty much all the way through, but the names of software as well as what they do can be useful in finding them elsewhere thru some google searching)

Peelopaalu (Where I got a good handful of these links - AND THERE'S MORE!!!)

The Simple Site (More links to so much more cool stuff!)

ART TOOLS

Untitled - Paint (An in-browser version of classic Microsoft Paint!)

KidPix (In-browser version of classic KidPix for the public domain!)

Pixel Logic - A Guide to Pixel Art (Comprehensive guide to making cool art for $10 USD, updated semi-frequently and you get all new versions for free)

SAI - Bootlegged (A version of SAI with a multitude of brushes and textures pre-installed. Quite literally the only thing I use to draw aside from Clip Studio Paint.)

Stripe Generator (Need some easy stripes for an art piece? Can't be bothered to try and space stripes evenly? This is for you!)

Photopea (Free online photo editor supporting files for Adobe Photoshop, XCF, Sketch App, Adobe XD, and CorelDRAW, as well as many more!)

blender (A FOREVER free and Open Source software for 3D Modeling, full of tutorials and assets. I feel like most people don't know it's completely free to play with)

Vertex Meadow (A web-browser tool that renders 2D images as explorable 3D terrain. With it you can create detailed and unusual 3D environments to explore using a 2D paint-program-like interface.)

OpenGameArt (Need art for your game but you're not an artist? Consider checking here first [or just hire a real artist looking for work on here!])

MUSIC TOOLS AND DISCOVERY

BandLab (Social music platform that enables creators to make music and share their creative process with musicians and fans. Completely free with an option to set up stripe where you get 100% OF PROFITS. Available for apple/android/desktop)

JummBox (Free online beat-maker with a very simple interface that runs on your browser)

Mydora (Mydora is a continuous streaming player that gives you a deep dive into the lost archives of Myspace Music, based on some recovered data called the Dragon Hoard, with some additional metadata (most notably the locations and genres) from a different scan of Myspace conducted back in 2009. Contains 490,000+ songs, only a fraction of what was wiped out.)

Radiooooo (A place where people are able to play hit songs from the decade of their choosing from whatever country they wish.)

WFMU (Independent freeform radio broadcasting. Currently ongoing.)

Gnoosic (A sort-of music search engine that finds you songs/bands based off of your music taste.)

Khinsider (3.1 TB worth of video game soundtracks)

Radio.garden (Listen to thousands of radio stations all around the world.)

FUN STUFF

FrogLand (The purpose of Frogland is to show that the Internet can indeed provide a wealth of useful information and still be fun. Mainly, this site is dedicated to the many teachers out there who are finding new uses for the Internet as a tool for educating youngsters. Hopefully, it will inspire some young minds to find new interest in herpetology, biology, and environmental issues...not to mention providing some inspiration for young future computer "wizzes"! No longer active but still useful.)

Windows 98 icon Viewer (Want clear jpgs of all the Windows 98 symbols and icons? They're all here!)

GifyPet (Create your own embeded pet that people can play with and feed when they visit your page! See my version HERE [only works on desktop tho])

Ultimate Mushroom (Like the idea of picking mushrooms in your area but no idea what to look for? Check out this info hub!)

Gif Gallery (Another gif repositiory, only sorted by being numbered 1-100,000. Fun and silly, not so much useful unless you're looking for random gifs. Part of the MelonLand Webring)

Interesting DOS Programs (A host of DOS programming, guides and links.)

Internet Archive: MS-DOS Games (8,000 games right in your web browser! Your browser can play DOOM!)

Tiled Backgrounds (Need some small jpegs for easy website bg tiling? Browse this collection sorted by color.)

cOOl & EMO tEXt cOnVERTer xXX (Flashing warning. Wanna type like you're in the 2000s? Need a funny Green Day lyric as a caption? This is probably the best place for you.)

0x40 (Flashing Warning. Anime images synced with music. Fun for parties, lol)

WebGL Fluid Simulation (In browser fluid simulator, great for art backgrounds and desktop wallpapers.)

Flashpoint (The biggest collection of preserved Flash Games and Animations)

NCase (Free games and open source projects from Nicky [THESE ARE REALLY COOL AND FUN, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND])

Your World of Text (A huge interactive text doc that anyone can add to anonymously.)

Text To Speech (TTS in more than 30 languages and over 180 voices.)

ASCII Art Generator (Make ASCII Art from any image.)

Petit Tube (Random Youtube videos with less than 10 views)

Noclip Website (Noclip around various video game maps in your browser!)

Monster Mash (Create and animate some monsters in browser! You can also download their files.)

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Writing smut only story like

*staring at screen, talking as if there's actors in front of me* yes yes yes they are going to have sex but what is their motivation? What is their emotions? How do they feel about each other? Are they soul mates? Or is this a one time fling? What happens after the sex? What happened before sex? How did we get here? And where will they go after?

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