Hi, here's some stuff.

[Hi, here's some stuff.]

[sepulchritude]

Firefix ios is currently ad blocking on all sites seemingly without any ad blocker and idk if it’s something I did but I’m saying it real quiet in case that interests anyone 👀

[eggpla]

i genuinely didn't notice for the longest time but did notice that the world wide web was suddenly a much brighter and more beautiful place <3

[sepulchritude]

I noticed it when fandom wiki loaded at a reasonable speed and didn’t immediately piss me off to look at. I was like no this is proof. There is an ad blocker going on here

[sepulchritude]

Clarifying that I specifically mean firefox mobile for iOS, which strictly speaking cannot support add-ons and shouldn’t be capable of blocking ads even if the user wanted to. And yet here we are

Originally posted by frazzled-bi

Switch to firefox on your phone! It’s easy and free!

[spyglassrealms]

This is a side effect of setting Enhanced Tracking Protection to Strict. It's not an actual ad blocker, but the way that ads are structured on most sites results in them being blocked by the tracking protection filters. Very handy imo.

[sepulchritude]

Answers at last! Thank you!!

[Hi, here's some stuff.]

[paxamericana]

you’re hearing it more and more

[kyrare]

Spotify Premium ad: “Imagine playing music without interruptions!
Infinite skipping! Replay the song you want! And even do it offline? No ads! Whatever songs you want! For a small monthly payme-”
Me: *nods, turns off Spotify and turns on my MP3 player and does all the things they offer, but for free and with songs they don’t even have*

[jimtheviking]

For those of you who might not know how to do any of this:

• To convert CD audio into mp3s, you just follow the steps here
• To play mp3 files, you download an mp3 player like Winamp here and away you go
• On mobile? There are plenty of free mp3 players for your phone available, too, so check them out

You don’t need to be tethered to an online streaming service for your music. Be free.

[eroticcannibal]

You can also rip audio files from youtube and find files all over the internet. It is far easier to come across great and lesser known music if you dont limit yourself to spotify.

[n7punk]

Here’s a tutorial on how to get the music and playlists you like with unlimited listening/downloads. This is a free way to do it that I believe is a balance between cost, time, and pros & cons:

If you have the CDs, it will be easier to rip them. Most music managers include this feature and you will have all the track information loaded into the file. There are also pirate websites where you can download entire albums with their metadata attached, but there could be risks associated (I would worry more about viruses than lawsuits these days, though). Deciding a method for acquiring music is a balance of the required time, the alternative costs, and other pros/cons like supporting the artist or taking the risk of pirating sites.

1. Find the song on Youtube. YT has pretty much every song at this point, usually in comparable quality to what you would get on a streaming service.

This is great if you already listen to music on Youtube, but there might be a better method for going direct from Spotify, though this will work either way. The main downside to this method is that official music (and even lyric) videos sometimes have non-music portions so you might have to listen to the whole thing to be sure. SponsorBlock will highlight non-music sections for most artists, so if you have it installed you can tell at a glance if this is the case.

2. Download the audio from YT. There are many ways to download YT videos completely for free. It’s probably against the YT terms of service, but you’re not going to get sued.

I like y2mate for downloading YT videos (or their audio in mp3s) because it’s a simple, ad-free website. You just paste in the URL for the video you want to download. Sometimes it’s laggy and you have to come back later, but usually after a few moments the video loads, you select your download quality (the highest), and then save it. For easy file management, download everything in folders for the Artist, and then sub folders for the Album, and name the MP3 file the “song name”.mp3.

3. Upload to your music player/manager of choice. The file will currently be lacking metadata (Artist, Album, track number, etc) and will be added to the library as a song with its title set as the file name minus its .mp3 extension. Various music players/managers have different ways to add metadata (usually accessed by right-clicking the song) with varying ease.

iTunes is free and and logical if you have an iPhone, but limited in its capabilities. I do all my management/listening in MusicBee (free for Windows) because of its playlist and management features, as well as having a very customizable interface. You can set it to scan the folders you download music to so it will automatically load things into your library, or do so manually. Once loaded into MusicBee, you can batch edit an entire album’s metadata at once easily with Auto-Tagging. Auto-Tag can fetch the details from the internet and fill in artist, tracks, album artwork, etc and save that information to the mp3 file. You can edit this manually if needed too. Drag and drop the edited songs to any other player you may want to add them to so it can find the files.

4. Now you can use the player of your choice to listen endlessly, form playlists, etc. Some free music managers also have music discovery/recommendation features for expanding your collection.

MusicBee allows you to create playlists with folders, subfolders, and dynamic features. You can export these playlists for cross-platform play on other computers with MusicBee installed. I think the playlist features on MusicBee are better than what is on streaming services. You can create an auto-playlist of your recently-added music so you can easily find the ones that are new and might need need editing, adding to other playlists, etc. I have custom tags for music by LGBT artists, sapphic love songs, and more. I also drag-and-drop these playlists directly into iTunes so I have them on my phone too (you can do this to make a new playlist or just edit/add songs to a current one).

There are many music managers/players, including cross-platform ones with streaming, though they usually have fees for that feature. Because you aren’t streaming the music and rather storing it, you’ll need space on each device you want to play the music on, but memory is cheap these days.

You can buy a 2TB external harddrive for less than Spotify or Youtube Premium costs for six months, so having to store the songs isn’t much of a downside. Plus, the song will never “leave the service”, you can listen to it offline, etc.

I do encourage people to pay for art, especially from small, independent artists. You have to pay for art if you want to keep it alive, but there is debate over if streaming services are really “paying the artist”. Alternatives include buying and ripping CDs, purchasing merch or tour tickets (where artists make a lot of their money), etc to support them with something other than streaming views.

[night-dark-woods]

ID. a tweet from Don Hughes @/getfiscal dated Feb 18 21. it reads, “Started imagining paying for Spotify for the next thirty or so years and got a bit dizzy, cancelled a bunch of subscriptions, installed Linux on my computer and then pulled out my old CDs to rip. Going caveman.” End ID.

[uberguber89]

Originally posted by something-a-kin-to

[ryttu3k]

Seconding MusicBee! Also, you can use a library subscription to access Freegal, which allows (depending on your library system) up to five free downloads a week. Completely free, actually legal, yours to keep, no DRM or any crap like that.

For indie producers, always check if they have something like Bandcamp! Bandcamp lets you download as well, and has significantly higher royalties going to the actual artists (Spotify pays them… very little).

[fluffmugger]

Jsyk, winamp rips cds natively.  You can set whatever bitrate you like.  Been doing *that* since last century. 

[audacityinblack]

It’s that time again:

GitHub - Igglybuff/awesome-piracy: A curated list of awesome warez and piracy links

A curated list of awesome warez and piracy links. Contribute to Igglybuff/awesome-piracy development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

[wikdsushi-v2]

Don’t forget that you can borrow CD’s from your local library! Borrow, rip, repeat ad infinitum!

[jughead-is-canonically-aroace]

for playing mp3s on android - musicolet, very customizable, bajillions of options, and you can edit the metadata in-app including album art and lyric files

on firefox - there’s a youtube video downloader add-on that lets you do it from page, though only as video - but most video players have an export-as-audio option

[benevolentwanderer]

If you have installation privileges, I would strongly suggest Mediahuman’s audio downloader which, in addition to scraping youtube audio can also capture from a variety of other sites, is highly configurable, does not rely on a website provider choosing not to become malware, AND downloads/converts the audio in around the amount of time it would take that video to load?

[Hi, here's some stuff.]

[keuhkopussirotta]

Have you ever considered how fucking astonishing babies crying is?

The young of other animals don’t make noise, or if they do, barely any at all. Baby birds only start chirping when their parents come back with the food, kittens meow to their mothers because cat communication is extremely subtle and drawing your caretaker’s attention may require a sound when you have eight siblings. At this point, they can already see and walk.

 But human babies? Crying is essentially the first willful action that they learn. Months before being able to move on your own, or even hold your own fucking head up, or being able to choose when and where you defecate. Before anything else, a skill more valuable than anything else, is a distress call.

 A distress call specifically intended to be impossible to ignore.

 Before object permanence or theory of mind, without even an understanding of what help they need, who could provide it, and whether they choose to do so, a human being is capable of expressing that there is something wrong in the state they are in, that they are powerless to correct on their own.

 This is what was evolutionarily selected above silent babies that did not attract predators. This is what was selected instead of young who could instantly walk. This is what was selected as the ideal offspring for the human race. Not one that runs. Not one that hides. Not one that can fend for itself. A creature that can communicate, if only the simplest, most inherent message:

I need help.

[Hi, here's some stuff.]

[memewhore]

[Hi, here's some stuff.]

[secularbakedgoods]

Amazon fucks everyone over again

some of you may recall Neil Clarke's blog post on the deluge of AI-generated spam that has hit Clarkesworld Magazine's submissions queue.

well, Clarkesworld and other short fiction magazines like it are about to get another swift kick in the dick: Amazon is discontinuing their magazine subscription service (and replacing it with a new service that pays creators much, much less). of the very little money made in the short fiction market, most of it was coming from Amazon.

as Clarke points out in his editorial on the subject, "While there are plenty of people happily reading, listening to, and writing short fiction, a very disappointingly small percentage of those same people are actively paying for it."

short fiction is not dead. the existence of subreddits like r/NoSleep and blogs like @writing-prompt-s proves that. if you value these stories and you want to help writers get paid for their work, please consider checking out (and subscribing to) some of the following publications:

• Analog Science Fiction and Fact
• Apex Magazine
• Asimov's Science Fiction
• Clarkesworld Magazine
• Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
• Fantasy & Science Fiction
• Fantasy Magazine
• Nightmare Magazine

many of these publications charge less than $5 USD per month for subscriptions, so if you've just dropped Netflix and have an extra $10/month lying around, you can instead support two fiction magazines full of interesting, original, well-written stories.

(feel free to reblog with your own favorite publications!)

[anonymousalchemist]

hi im short fictions number one weirdgirl (lie, this title goes to probably like idk kelly link or cat valente or something, im short fiction's number 152 weirdgirl) and heres A GUIDE FOR WHICH MAGAZINE U MIGHT LIKE (based on what i read):

Analog and Asimovs: These are PRINT MAGAZINES! you can BUY THEM IN STORES! They go more Scifi scifi, regular ass scifi (appreciative). the Big Boys

F&SF: Also a print magazine!! as the name suggests - fantasy and science fiction! one of the Big Boys.

Clarkesworld: mostly science fiction, literary/experimentalist bent, lots of stories you read and go "well i suppose it is time to think about that forever now!" (think kij johnson, cat valente, sam j. miller, peter watts) - updates monthly, with podcasts, AND pays authors the most out of all the mags rn.

Apex: sf&f with kind of a gothy (appreciative) vibe, reminiscent of neil gaiman maybe? its good i prommy - also has podcasts!!!

Lightspeed: sf&f with a ??? bent - not particularly married to a style other than Weird and Interesting and Very Quality - lots of stuff that makes you go huh?? If you're a fan of the weirder sort of fanfic (you know what im talking about, the one weird fic in the fandom that you cant stop thinking about) this is for you. I like it lots. also podcasts!!

Fantasy: Lightspeed's sister magazine - just fantasy! not a ton to say here other than generally really enjoyable shit. (The EICs are so nice also)

Nightmare: HORROR! oops all horror! I don't read this regularly but one of Lightspeed's sister magazines. (and if you end up liking Nightmare - the Dark is also a good magazine)

Uncanny: mostly fantasy, some scifi (in my experience). Lots of big names in this one, so the work is usually very quality. believe they also do podcasts.

Escape Artists (Podcastle, Escape Pod, Pseudopod): this is a PODCAST NETWORK! If ur like audio THESE R FOR U. if you liked the magnus archives, fuckin peter lukas (aka: his va) DOES run these, fun fact. As name suggests - these are split into genres (fantasy, sf, horror).

and more specifically:

if you like DEATH, check out THE DEADLANDS !

if you want to support diaspora fiction, read KHOREO!

anyway not to be tumblr about this but rly, think about it like sending ur favorite fic writer a kofi, or donating to ao3.

all the magazines run on shoestring budgets but also produce some of the most interesting experimental shit on a tighter timeline than the novel publishing industry - and there's a side benefit that if you support these magazines, you're supporting essentially a sff incubator. a lot of the people writing short fiction at point x end up writing a crazy novel at point y. (taz muir is a good example of this)

[Hi, here's some stuff.]

[worldsbeyondpod]

Hi again from the WBN social media manager! I'm excited to share with you all my next creation for the WBN Unofficial Cookbook Club.

I had to make Suvi's favorite bone marrow sandwich from Ep. 16; the description of its taste and textures sounded unlike anything I had ever tried before. Learning on the Ep. 16 Fireside Chat that Aabria basically invented this sandwich during a holiday trip made it extra special.

I bought the beef bones at my local supermarket, drizzled a little oil and a light sprinkling of salt on the surface of the bones, and then roasted them in the oven at 450°F / 232°C for about 20 minutes. Once the tops of the bones were browned, I took them out of the oven, scooped out the marrow as best as I could into a smaller bowl, and seasoned the marrow with a dash of savory salt, some cracked black pepper, and a dash of crushed red chile flakes.

Melon can be hit or miss for me, so I opted to sub in some fuyu persimmons instead. It's currently persimmon season, so I had a bunch on my counter ready for use. If you want to try this at home for yourself, make sure you get fuyu persimmons instead of hachiya! They have vastly different ripening processes and textures. I peeled and sliced the fuyu persimmons lengthwise, both so that I could see the gorgeous sand-dollar-like pattern on the inside of the fruit, and because the surface area of the slice would fit better on the area of the bread.

To assemble the sandwich, I sliced a store-bought baguette open and spread the seasoned bone marrow onto the top and bottom of the baguette. I considered toasting the baguette, but I enjoyed the softer texture of the bread as it was. I layered the persimmon slices across the marrow spread, and then loosely folded some store-bought prosciutto on top of the persimmon. Closed the sandwich, cut it in half, took a bite, and immediately understood everything Aabria was raving about. Dang.

A reminder that everyone and anyone is welcome to try their hand at the foods of Umora! Tag us or use the #WorldsBeyondNumber hashtag to show us your interpretations of this world’s delectable delights (either irl or artistic renderings!).

[Hi, here's some stuff.]

drcuriousvii asked:

"Ad blockers violate YouTube's Terms of Service. It looks like you may be using an ad blocker. Video playback is blocked unless YouTube is allowlisted or the ad blocker is disabled. Ads allow YouTube to be used by billions worldwide.You can go ad-free with YouTube Premium, and creators can still get paid from your subscription."

postanagramgenerator answered:

“ad blockers violate youtube’s terms of service. it looks like you may be using an ad blocker. video playback is blocked unless youtube is allowlisted or the ad blocker is disabled. ads allow youtube to be used by billions worldwide. you can go ad-free with youtube premium, and creators can still get paid from your subscription.”

->

“well do a headstand and gargle my ample balls. it almost looks like you value free use of your time or something. aww. you sweet predictable bluebird. you absolute skibidi dick-boss. buddy you were created by lord revenue to boost our stocks, so listen to five insurance ads back to back or i’ll publicly boil your bicuspids in acid”

[sixamese-simblr]

[Hi, here's some stuff.]

[ororomunroedontpullout]

IOF soldiers killed three Israeli hostages even though they were waving a white flag. Israel took responsibility and said it violated their “rules of engagement” but also justified it by saying the terrorists wear street clothes so it’s hard to know and it’s like…your soldiers saw a universal sign of surrender and helplessness and were like “they might be Palestinian so shoot to kill” and we know this is used to target civilians and not Hamas because so many civilians have reported being shot at, killed, or targeted despite clear surrender. And further collaborates hostage reports of the IOF just not showing any restraint and shooting indiscriminately.

Do you see this shit????

[Hi, here's some stuff.]

Anonymous asked:

Tell us more about Moby Dick!! :D

plaguedocboi answered:

Ishmael is a fascinating little specimen let me tell you. He has a reputation for being a “boring narrator” but that’s complete bullshit. Right out the gate he’s like “hello this is my (fake) name, I’m poor, I’m depressed, but luckily when I can tell I’m about to kill myself I hop my ass on a boat because the water can cure whatever’s wrong with you, also we are all being controlled by the puppet strings of the divine and free will is an illusion. It is now Page Three.”

The entire first part of the book is his story of meeting, falling in love with, and marrying a hot tattooed Polynesian man in what may be the first recorded case of the “there was only one bed” trope and it only gets wilder from there. This really caught be off guard tbh, I had no idea that there was so much gay stuff in this book.

I honestly cannot even pick my favorite Ishmael moment. Could it be him being adamantly on the wrong side of the “are whales fish or mammals” debate? That he suggests narwhal’s horns would be good for turning the pages of small books? When he hides behind the mast and eats some spermaceti because he just has to know what it tastes like? When he tattooed himself with measurements of a beached whale but rounded all the numbers because he also needed room for the poem he was writing on his arm? The gay sperm squeezing chapter? When he made his drunk listeners fetch him a priest and a Bible so he could swear he was telling the truth? And then lied????

Ishmael’s musings range from beautiful, lyrical prose that makes you stop and reread the section because damn, and chapters about How Rope Works and encyclopedic writing about the whaling industry. There are lofty theological debates and accusations about the reader being a fish. You spend much of this book wildly seasick because Ishmael’s voice is manic, hilarious, and disorienting. Once you’ve finished this story, you, too, will feel like you’ve spent three years aboard a whaling ship.

Although the unhinged tangents are often amusing, many people complain because they probably account for 90% of the book with only the remaining 10% devoted to the plot. Surely if we just got rid of Ishmael’s Nonsense it would be better, correct? No. This is Ishmael’s memoir. He knows how it ends. These plot-delaying anecdotes are purposeful; he does not want to reach the end because it is The End. The death of his friends and his husband. The inevitable, unforgiving blade of fate that slices the lives of of the Pequod’s crew short and leaves him alone and adrift at sea. Enjoy his journey, because it may seem long now but it ends all too soon.

[Hi, here's some stuff.]

[death-to-usa]

[Hi, here's some stuff.]

[herpsandbirds]

Chestnut-headed Tesia (Cettia castaneocoronata), family Cettiidae, order Passeriformes, Kedarnath, India

photograph by Sunny Singh

[Hi, here's some stuff.]

[tiktoks-for-tired-tots]

[tiktoks-for-tired-tots]

you're all correct

[Hi, here's some stuff.]

[Hi, here's some stuff.]

[thoughtportal]

hip stretches

[Hi, here's some stuff.]

[epilepticsaints]

[electricpentacle]

Bear in mind that this is a technique that anyone can use on anyone about anything.

For example, you probably want to be suspicious when megacorporations start rebranding themselves as "diverse" and "sustainable".