2020 Linkspam

If you enjoy any of these links, please leave a comment at the original post and we can talk about it! Don't worry if it's years old, I'm hapy to chat anyway. Most Twitter links are probably broken in some way, idk how to fix them.

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/93752.html

I just realized that I haven't posted a proper linkspam post since, idk, August? So here's some links I've been storing up for a while:

How the Blog Broke the Web:

Suddenly, instead of building their own system, they were working inside one.

A system someone else built.

Oh, sure, you could customize your Movable Type site. All you had to do was program the templates. It was more difficult than HTML, but not hugely so for someone who already maintained their own site. And if you couldn’t program yourself, well, you could copy and paste snippets. It seemed like the whole (tiny blogosphere was sharing their favorites. Calendar sidebars for everyone!

There was just one problem…

It was a trap.

I actually think the blog was one of the best things that happened to the internet, but it's interesting to see how the internet community changed after blogs developed more structure.

Atkinson Hyperlegibleis a newly developed font that “focuses on letterform distinction to increase character recognition, ultimately improving readability.” And it's free!

This Spot the Troll quiz asks you to examine real pieces of social media to determine if it's from a real person or a troll– and it's not as easy as you'd think. It also explains the different ways to spot trolls/disinformation, and what to do when you find it.

BobaBoard is a mostly-anonymous fandom space that's currently in development. It looks really neat!

If we want our spaces to be freely weird, we need to carve them outside of the corporate web and rethink our approach to fandom away from the mainstream. But rethinking it doesn't simply mean being blindly nostalgic for the golden days—ask any fan of color, and they'll tell you those days never existed. We need to engage in dialogue with those who share valid concerns over our spaces, to listen and help dismantle the power structures that have always been in place.

Here's a list of riot grrrl/post-riot grrrl bands, etc.

How to make a DIY Lisa Frank tarot card deck(Major Arcana only using some fanart and a POD publisher. I'm seriously tempted to just DIY a bunch of tarot decks now.

And here's a list of Black tarot readers, psychics, and astrologers put together by author Lilith Dorsey.

Privacy Fix: How to Find Old Online Accountsand close them. Or at least change their passwords so you're not easily hacked.

The Science of Superspreading: Why preventing hot spots of transmission is key to stopping the COVID-19 pandemic. With very effective illustrations.

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/84123.html

A selection of videos to while away the day! I've been spending maybe TOO MUCH time watching McElroy Brothers-inspired animations and cute Korean ASMR videos, so uh. There's some of that here.

There's at least two channels I've found with DIY props and they're both so adorable?? With English subtitles, too!

I've had this saved in my “to share” list for so long I've forgotten what it's about:

I love everything Louie Zong does:

But particularly this one:

A video inspired by Eupholie (and borrowing her art):

Eupholie is also on Youtube now!

A post isn't complete without some Animal Crossing memes:

Something to spin you back to the early 2000s:

I'm not super nostalgic for old phones, but I dig the style.

And one more fun video to close out the post:

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/82767.html

There are a lot of “witchcraft” schools online, and almost all of them look sketchy and expensive to boot. However, The Raven Academy of Mystical Arts is FREE, seems pretty organized and modern-looking, and has several “houses”* with different focuses and (diverse faculty* who actually give homework and/or tests. Pretty sure it just opened up this year. Dowsing for Divinity is doing an 8 week course on Pagan leadership which is how I found out about the school. The next trimester starts in October; if you want to enroll, the deadline is August 24th. I'm going to try it!

A website with reviews for items that are supposed to "last a lifetime" (or at least longer than a few years. User discussion/reviews on individual pages, and not super obvious referral links– though my adblock might be, uh, blocking that. Still pretty new, so there's not a lot of content yet.

What the Heck Is Crab Rangoon Anyway? Besides delicious.

The fascinating reason why clowns paint their faces on eggs is basically copyright protection.

A little old news by now, but still pretty exciting: New Adventures with Princess Tiana Coming to Disneyland Park and Magic Kingdom Park:

Today we are thrilled to share a first glimpse of a project Imagineers have been working on since last year. Splash Mountain – at both Disneyland park in California and Magic Kingdom park in Florida – will soon be completely reimagined. The theme is inspired by an all-time favorite animated Disney film, “The Princess and the Frog.” We pick up this story after the final kiss, and join Princess Tiana and Louis on a musical adventure – featuring some of the powerful music from the film – as they prepare for their first-ever Mardi Gras performance.

A list of black magical girls by black creators!

Everyone in the comments of this ASMR video are convinced that Mr. Bear and Mr. Rabbit are married:

*Four of them, just like Hogwarts (with one bonus house for people who are undecided), and like Hogwarts they each have different theme colors. It's really hard to get away from the Harry Potter associations already inherent in a witchcraft school, so why the theme colors? idk. *Although overall very YOUNG faculty. Some of the deans are in their early 20s.

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/79668.html

A list of cozy mystery books by black authors, and the same site has more diverse mystery book lists as well!

George R.R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun, or: The 2020 Hugo Awards Ceremony (RageBlog Edition):

The proper role of an awards show host is to keep the audience entertained between awards and get the fuck out of the way of the people being honored. Martin did neither.

These were decisions that were made. Made by George R.R. Martin, made by Bob Silverberg, and made by the producers of the awards ceremony. The producers could have edited the pre-recorded statements for length. They could have demanded that Martin re-record all the segments where he mispronounced people’s names (people were asked how their names were pronounced, there is literally no excuse) and if he wouldn’t, they could have found someone with a modicum of respect for other people to present those segments of the productions.

Jessamyn West on how to add citations to Wikipedia, for librarians who miss doing research or are just bored at home.

I saw the commercial for these convertible shoes that go from heels to flats, and it was utterly fascinating. I definitely want to know how comfortable they actually are, though, since it looks like the soles are still pretty curved and that doesn't seem good for long-term walking. Maybe they're just meant to get you from the club to your home, though.

The curse of the Honeycrisp apple, including a history of the fruit which has really only existed since the late 1970s, at the earliest. If you're not in the business or a super fan of hybrid fruit, I suppose it's very easy to forget (or just not know) that many fruit varieties are created specifically for particular traits, and don't just randomly show up in a jungle waiting to be discovered. My favorite apple is Pink Lady, which apparently is a brand name for the Australian Cripps Pink and is a hybrid of Lady Williams and Golden Delicious.

And now I'm getting sucked into a Wikipedia wander of apple names. Western Dawn (Enchanted)! Grimes Golden! King of the Pippins!

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/78111.html

Rediscovering the Small Web: “My aim is not to convince you that everything was better in the past; it wasn't. You had trojans, malware, endless pop-ups, terrible security practices, browser incompatibility, slow Java applets. No, technically, the modern web is more secure and more usable.

This essay is my attempt to show you what the small and independent web can look like, why it’s different from the the sites that dominate web traffic today, why it's worth exploring and how easy it is for anyone to be a part of it.”

This is some real spy vs spy stuff: Burner Phones in the age of Coronavirus and Mandatory Contact Tracing Apps.

Teen Vogue on How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct.

The formatting is a little messed up (as least on my Firefox), but here's a bibliography of girls' series books published 1840-1991 from the University of Minnesota.

Use your outside voice, Richie Tozier! is a fix-it fan game for It Chapter Two– I am utterly fascinated by the concept of a a fan game and b a FIX-IT fan game to boot, e.g. a fanfic trope turned into a video game! And it's free. I'm planning on playing it today!

Feel a burning urge to predict your ACNH island's weather patterns? Here's MeteoNook, a tool to do just that. Useful for predicting exact times for meteor showers, rainbows, and the aurora borealis. Data is crowd-sourced and then run through a thingy that calculates your particular island's weather based on a weather “seed.” Also, it's open source!

I actually went through some screenshots I took last month and input what data I had, and I found 6 potential weather seeds. I'm going to keep tracking my weather this week and see if I can match it up to predict meteor showers; at the very least, it'll mean I won't have to stand around waiting for shooting stars that will never appear.

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/76857.html

We’re Going to Run Out of TVbecause production isn't able to start up again while we're in a pandemic, obviously.

Two sources for Japanese-style emojis (kaomoji, which are adorable: Jemoticons which has them sorted by keyword, and this massive list of 10,000+ emojis which has a lot of cat ones in particular.

(ↀДↀ)⁼³₌₃

Here is a website all about classic typewriters. I actually had a typewriter as a teen– to use for writing zines– and then I got a computer and realized how much easier it was to write when you can delete words without having to do this over them: XXXXX

A reading list of black Pagan authors, and another one for GLBTQ+ Pagan authors and books. There's also a new Black-owned publishing company which started up last month: Conjure South Publications. Really cool covers!

Sailor Moon reimagined as a Kemet girl aka ancient Egyptian Usagi!

From snakahiraa (twitter): a comic on how to transform K-pop stan activism into radical action.

Sundown towns are still a thing and it's highly fucked up. Link is a database of past and current sundown towns, or potential sundown towns, or just racist as fuck towns, gathered through census data and personal comments/knowledge.

Apparently Disney (and maybe other streaming sites? are altering scenes in some movies to be more "family-friendly", such as poorly CGI-omg over a naked butt in Splash.

If you've seen those activist photos of mysterious-looking witches at protests, they're probably from W.I.T.C.H. Boston or a sister group.

Here's a song that's been stuck in my head for a few days (warning for a large crashing sound at the end:

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/75724.html

Clearing out some more old Pinboard links, this time the travel-related ones that aren't very timely at the moment…

Everything You Need to Know About Solo Female Travelfrom Be My Travel Muse, mostly links to other informative posts on her site. Covers mindset, planning, money, packing, etc. Very comprehensive.

How to Plan a Trip: The Ultimate Practical Travel Planning Guide from Practical Wanderlust, another highly comprehensive how-to article for people who REALLY like to plan things down to the hour. I don't think I'm actually that much of a planner– like, I'll figure out where to go, where I'm staying, and maybe 1 or 2 things I want to do, but then I'll just figure the rest out when I'm there. I think that's because mostly I travel to specific events and not necessarily destinations, so I just have to fill in the blanks.

Coworking Spaces in Japan: Nomad Cafes and Places Get Work Done from ToFuGu, a collection of posts highlighting coworking spaces which may not exist in a post-pandemic world…these do look fun, though.

HERmail is “an international directory of women travellers” aka a mailing list? Email pals group? It looks VERY old school and some pages have the word “cyberspace” on them, so make of that what you will. Also, not sure if it's trans or non-binary friendly. Still, might be a good resource to find new friends in other countries if you don't like Facebook and don't mind email pen-pals?

How to Travel for Less Than $5,000 a Year from 43 Blue Doors is an older post from 2017, but the concepts are still the same. The biggest travel expenses tend to be lodging and transportation, so if you can get cheaper accommodation (by using coupons/discounts or house-sitting and move between locations using public transportation, trains, or anything but airplanes, you'll be able to save a lot. Also, visiting “cheaper” countries, of course…

West Africa: An Unconventional Solo Female Travel Destination from Alissa Bell for Bootsnall.

Sidenote: Bootsnall used to be my favorite travel forum, but something happened in 2011 (site update? and the forum totally died. And now Lonely Planet's killed THEIR travel forum! Such a bummer.

Last Minute Antarctica Cruises – Everything You Need To Know from Zen Travellers covers all the different types of Antarctica cruises, costs, when to book, etc. and how to travel their responsibly. This is on my bucket list!

Kayak.com's Travel Restrictions by Country page is being updated daily. Obviously I'm not going to travel anywhere any time soon, even if the borders are open, but it's interesting to see the map.

And a video from Backpacking Bananas on visiting Colombia:

Sidenote: she's one of the only Youtube backpackers I've found who actually brings non-technical clothing with her! Everyone else goes immediately to black merino wool outfits and barefoot sandals, which I suppose makes it easy to get dressed but looks super boring.

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/73950.html

satsuma has links to relevant discussion on racism in fandom.

ArchiveBox is a open source, self-hosted web archive program that can save copies of just about anything. Perhaps a good alternative to downloading copies of off-AO3 fic and fanart? Fandom discussions on Twitter? etc.

The new QVC is livestreamers:

Nowhere is the potential of livestreaming more apparent than China, where the boom suggests livestream shopping can become a deeply embedded habit for consumers and an important tool for retailers. Western technology isn’t quite there yet, with its bramble of offline stores, online markets, social media recommendations, payment processors and third-party portals. Alibaba’s technology, on the other hand, allows the audience to watch a live stream, chat with other viewers, and select and pay for a product—all at the same time. There’s no friction between entertainment and buying, which is the whole point.

All technology is political, even if it isn't obvious at first.

accio (tumblr) posts about how separating the art from the artist is not actually possible, specifically re:Rowling.

A Twitter thread from SFRuminations about cover artists Diane and Leo Dilon's science fiction art. I definitely recognize a lot of these covers, and they're some of my favorites!

Speaking of science fiction, NASA has provided a list of sci-fi space technology terms and definitions for people to use!

How to ditch Facebook, with an “ease into it” kind of approach instead (which might work better for older family members who spend all their time on it…: [https://medium.com/anti-social/how-to-ditch-facebook-a-guide-part-1-hit-them-in-the-wallet-f8a505c0485a[|part 1]] and part 2.

And how to delete your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. from Wired:

If you’ve ever deactivated your account, you may have noticed that everything goes back to normal the next time you log in, as if nothing has happened. That’s because deactivating your Facebook account is not the same as deleting it. When you deactivate your account, you are just hiding your information from searches and your Facebook friends. Although nothing is visible on the site, your account information remains intact on Facebook’s servers, eagerly awaiting your return.

I hadn't realized how much Nintendo changes their start-up chimes with each console!

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/70907.html

I have a whole stash of videos to share with you all today!

Why Americans use “like” in the middle of sentences:

Why ugly book characters get made more beautiful for visual mediums, and what that changes about our perception of them:

A profile of a 1970s hacker kid:

I'm obsessed with TAZ animations on Youtube; this one has particularly good colors:

A short animation about, really, mishearing words or phrases:

A grandma who really enjoys Animal Crossing: New Leaf:

She has since gotten New Horizons!

A sleepy cat enjoying his human's piano playing (featuring a nice Ghibli/Joe Hisashi song):

I want a whole TV series about these two characters, ASAP:

How to alter a vintage book and turn it into an art journal, from Australian artist Jane Davenport:

I have a few of her inks and stamps, they're really nice! She does a lot of handwriting/mermaid/watercolor things.

Music made from vegetables:

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/70351.html

A collection of free illustrations of black people for digital projects, for both commercial and personal use.

This tweet of an apartment tour by an unhappy tenant is very funny.

Head's up, Grubhub is probably still charging restaurants a fee when you use their info to call, even if you don't use their app to order.

A little history of late 90s/early 00 websites and how they were much more general than most websites are today. Instead of focusing on one specific thing, early websites were a hodge podge of topics– probably because we weren't as concerned with SEO, didn't need to market ourselves as a brand, etc.

Favorite author KJ Charles writes about consent in romance books sex scenes: “People are allowed to enjoy or dislike whatever in their reading. But IMO consent is one of the most versatile and interesting things in the author’s sex-scene toolkit, and treating it as a Condom Crinkle–a box to be ticked that then permits all future sexual activity without discussion–is missing a huge opportunity to develop character.”

Found another background noise website! This one mimics the ambient noises of a cafe!

A historical marker database to use on your next road trip, if you're bored of the standard tourist trap stuff. It's based on user submissions, so if you know of one that isn't in the database or have updated info on a local marker, submit something!

Some awesome news: Costa Rica becomes the first Central American county to legalize same sex marriage!

Can't find old sites any more? Might be because Google is forgetting the old web:

Unless we’re all missing something here, it seems more correct to say that Google forgets stuff that is more than 10 years old. If this is the case, Google will remember and index a smaller part of the web every year. Google may do so simply because it would be impossible to do more, for economical and/or technological constraints, which sooner or later would also hit its competitors. But this only makes bigger the problem of what to remember, what to forget and above all who and how should remember and forget.

See also: Finding the old internet, a resource post.

Animal Crossing players with visual impairment: this custom pattern might help when you interact with other players. It asks players to stand next to the user before chatting, so the text box pops up in the middle of the screen instead of to one side.

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/68178.html

The Ecological Impact of Browser Diversity sounds like the most boring article ever, BUT it's about a the history of web-browsers in the last 10-ish years and b the importance of not just relying on one single browser engine for research/development of internet things.

Yes, it’s easier to develop and test in only one browser. I’m sure IT professionals would have loved to only support one kind of machine. But variety creates opportunity for us as developers in the long run. Microsoft saving Apple lead to apps which challenged the Web which gave us Chrome and the myriad of APIs Google is charging ahead with. If at any point in this chain of events someone had said, “Meh, it’s so much easier if we all use the same thing,” we wouldn’t have the careers—or the world—that we have now.

Why ‘Contact’ Is the Most Important Space Movie Ever Made: “It’s not just that Ellie is a woman, but the fact that she represents a person so many of us see inside ourselves. I take great comfort knowing that there are so many women actively seeking answers to questions about space and humanity in part because of a film they watched two decades ago.”

I (probably unwisely switch between being a morning person and being a night owl; I think the night owl part is more natural (my mother and brother are also night owls and apparently I am doing myself harm by trying to be a morning person which is a GREAT excuse the next time I get grief for staying in bed until 10:00 am.

Love this, wish more cities would do it: Seattle will permanently close 20 miles of residential streets to most vehicle traffic. Especially for all these little SoCal towns with historic walking districts– they need to be more walkable ASAP.

This is a new(?) blog for librarians and library staff: Choose Privacy Every Day, with resources for protecting patron privacy. Here's a post about protecting privacy in a pandemic, for instance.

Recreating the 90s website font style is harder than you'd think. Actually SEEING the results has rocketed me back in time to my childhood, wow.

The Blogess has a huge button collection and it's amazing.

And finally, some Goblin Emperor memes via hermitknut (tumblr).

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/66421.html

Digging deep into my Pinboard and finding links I saved months ago for reasons now unknown: a collection of music, comics, and random junk.

I barely do any website coding, and what I do I just steal from other people, but if you're interested in learning more HTML/CSS stuff you might want to check this out: “What are some good introductions to current HTML and CSS for people?”

tinariwen is a group of Tuareg musicians from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali; here is a documentary about them:

via vivienvalentino (Tumblr): some sites for when you're bored and looking for new music.

From NipahDUBS (Twitter), an Animal Crossing design tip sheet. Explains how to make pixels look like folds and creases!

From heyshanmurphy (twitter), a love letter to the Enya MIDI on your neopets page (comic).

From hkasof (tumblr), a collection of positive horror posters which are also very cute!

A shop I found with art that's kinda like vaporware but 1980s Japanese anime style? Love it!

breadpunk.club is a club for people who love to make bread.

Similarly, tilde.club: “tilde.club is not a social network it is one tiny totally standard unix computer that people respectfully use together in their shared quest to build awesome web pages.” Here is the story behind its making. And here's how to ~tilde for people who want to join in.

Find your Korean birth flower and then go gloat on TikTok because that's how I found this page in the first place. (Mine's Musk Rose!

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/62741.html

And older article, but a good one: Why You Hate Contemporary Architecture:

The fact is, contemporary architecture gives most regular humans the heebie-jeebies. Try telling that to architects and their acolytes, though, and you’ll get an earful about why your feeling is misguided, the product of some embarrassing misconception about architectural principles. One defense, typically, is that these eyesores are, in reality, incredible feats of engineering. After all, “blobitecture“—which, we regret to say, is a real school of contemporary architecture—is created using complicated computer-driven algorithms! You may think the ensuing blob-structure looks like a tentacled turd, or a crumpled kleenex, but that’s because you don’t have an architect’s trained eye.

A Whistlegraph is a doodle drawn in conjunction with a lyrical melody. I found the artist on TikTok and it looks really fun!

The Hall & Oates Hotline is a real thing and still works even 9 years after this article was written; I know because I called it and listened to a song, and it was lovely.

I don't live in the South anymore, but if you do: the Southern Fandom Resource Guide might be something to check out. It lists all the fan conventions and events in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Maryland, and portions of Texas and Missouri. They've been keeping up with COVID-19 closures and delays as well!

When Broadway Became Broadway, with bonus “why is Broadway so out of touch with modern music and why don't more people like it.”

How a Thirteen-Year-Old Girl Smashed the Gender Divide in American High Schools: “Fifty years ago this month, at a time when America was divided on questions of war, race, and gender, Alice de Rivera decided that she was fed up with her lousy high school in New York.”

I don't know why I have this saved in my links collection, but I figured I'd share it in case it helps someone who didn't know they needed it:

Pitches, Scripts & Samples from Javier Grillo-Marxuach. Says he: “I believe very strongly that it is difficult enough to make television and films without having access to formats and examples of work that may be helpful in organizing your own work and polishing your craft. This sort of knowledge should not be exclusive. I also believe that the tools to succeed should be provided free of charge so that the art of television writing can flourish, and so that professionals, amateurs and interested fans can approach either their vocation, or entertainment, with a better understanding of the artistic process.”

The 100 Day Project officially started 20 days ago, but you can join whenever you want, really.

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/60476.html

Here's How Bird Laid Off 406 People in Two Minutes aka the one of the most tone-deaf decisions I've heard of this month.

BreadScheduler, a scheduling website to help you make good sourdough!

YALLWEST, a young adult book conference for librarians and such, will be happening online later this month.

A list of free musical theater shows and stage plays available online, some just for a limited amount of time.

Animal Crossing

Some favorite user-created designs: Spellcaster collection (looks kinda like Harry Potter but a little more fashionable!; Aziraphale and Crowley w/QR download codes; a zen garden; cute starfish and shells for the beach; this memento mori art panel; this mori boy coat.

Custom Crossing, where users can upload designs.

A Google spreadsheet to track fish/bugs by month and time, as well as fossils and hybrid flowers. Useful to keep track of what you already have!

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/59408.html

DisneyPrincess on Facebook posted some Disney backgrounds to use during Zoom meetings.

Andrew Lloyd Webber will be streaming productions of his musicals every week on Youtube, starting today, April 3rd at 7:0 pm GMT. The first show is the 2000 adaptation of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and will be available for 48 hours after it initially airs. ~~No idea of if there's country restrictions.~~ Available in the UK and US, at least!

Amazon will be providing free streaming access to SXSW films that were canceled when the event itself got cut. No specific dates yet, but “sometime later this month.” You don't need a Prime account to watch them, but you'll need an Amazon account.

Fellow children's librarians might be interested in Middle Grade Magic 2020, a virtual conference hosted by School Library Journal. It's free, runs all day on April 8th, and will be archived/available online for three months afterward. I can't get the registration page to work, but it sounds really fun.

Disroot.org put together a COVID-19 toolkit for folks who prefer using FOSS and more privacy-friendly companies to host meetings, work online, collaborate, etc.

Workamper News put together an RV community resource page for full-timers who may be stuck or stranded somewhere after their RV parks/state parks closed.

FannibalFest Toronto is hosting a live streaming webinar event for Hannibal fans TODAY starting at 1:00 pm PST.

Here's some Animal Crossing clothing design tips for people who (like me struggle with figuring out how to add tiny details in pixel art.

Audie finally got New Horizons!! ;_;

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/57420.html

The National Theatre will stream shows on their Youtube channel starting April 2. Shows will be available for a week afterwards; no ideas if it'll be region-locked. (h/t @bookish_nea (Twitter))

(cw covid-19/food scarcity)

This is not my first rodeo (real talk about getting through this):

You are going to cowboy the heck up. You are going to look this in the face and know that you are stronger than it. You might not have the luxuries of modern life for a while. You might not have a predictable schedule. You might get sick, have to nurse sick family members, or change everything to quarantine the most at-risk. People do this every day – you can too.

The Hannibal fandom Red Dragon Consolation Fest is going on now. Check the post for fic prompts and links to the Discord.

Do you like filk? Here's a whole website about finding livestreaming filk concerts. Looks like a Harry Potter filk fest is going on today!

Imagineering in a Box is a “free online program that brings together the diverse talents of Disney Imagineers around the world for a one-of-a-kind learning experience and is part of Disney’s commitment to helping today’s youth create the future they imagine.”

I never could really get into text-based games, but I appreciate people who are enthusiastic about them. Here's an article about the origins and history of MUDs and MUSHes, plus how to play them.

Safe to say that @UARKLaw Professor @grantalexnunn, “Criminal Procedure–Class 16,” is an early favorite for Best Recorded Lecture 2020. Check out the trailer (i.e., the first two mins) of the lecture to see why. pic.twitter.com/fWvUer1oGO

from Alex Carroll (@alexchcarroll) March 17, 2020 on Twitter

People on Reddit (or one person, anyway) have created their own written script, and it's called **Vianaic**. It looks really cool, kinda fantasy-ish.

Smartphones Aren’t the Problem — Capitalism Is:

But we should be wary of explanations that blame individuals for an issue that an entire society struggles with. As more and more people become suspicious of the technology, institutions, and relationships embodied in their phones, they are taking a closer look at the companies that control them. Our fears express a growing awareness of our vulnerability vis-à-vis the tech giants — a growing sense that life itself is somehow being shaped around the needs of profit-making.

Classic iPods continue to grow in popularity with people who feel nostalgic about tech; also apparently music nuts who care about audio quality.

Vivcore's Dolly Daydream has one of the BEST collection of pastel/fairy kei/rococo style outfits for Animal Crossing that I've found (so far. I particularly love everything in the Mermaid Fashions section.

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/54190.html

Five videos to watch while NOT obsessively looking at everything covid-19 related, because we all need a little break:

Electronic composer Wendy Carlos explaining how she makes music:

She composed scores for movies like TRON, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, etc. I happen to have digital copies of two long out-of-print compilations of her work, and you can download them if you'd like: Rediscovering Lost Scores Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.

Here's a video on how Disney uses language in its songs:

Just rewatched Lilo & Stitch and Moana because of this video, tbh.

I might've shared this before, but here's a video about building an urban home that works with the local environment. Water harvesting, growing food, reusing stuff, etc. etc. It's almost 1 hour long, but totally worth watching.

Here is my favorite bee-removal guy, JP the Beeman, moving bees into a bee box:

And finally, here's a Youtuber exploring the contents of an unlabeled VHS tape:

kudos, sponsored content, laundry soap (2020 March 12)

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/50624.html

Found another resource for opensource illustrations. This one has people, objects, and people + objects! Good for making your site look like a 2010 start-up, maybe.

AO3 has some changes coming to the way their database handles kudos. It doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but some people in the comments are VERY UPSET.

SponsorBlock is “a crowdsourced browser extension to skip sponsor segments in YouTube videos. Users submit when a sponsor happens from the extension, and the extension automatically skips sponsors it knows about. It also features an upvote/downvote system with a weighted random based distribution.” I'm gonna test it out this weekend– I feel a little weird about skipping through sponsored content (because I want to support small content creators), but I never buy anything because a Youtuber had a sponsor and they've already gotten paid for it, so…it should be fine?

Here is a handbook on working remotely, for both workers and companies. I have downloaded it but not yet read it. You don't need to sign up for anything to get it, which is awesome.

One good reason for going back to simplified web design is it's easier for people who use screen readers. I suppose that's ignoring all the thousands of blinking gifs that early web designers also loved to add.

Archive.org has a curated collection for Marley Dias' #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign, many of which can be checked out for free. Note that they're mostly not children's books.

I've been buying bars of soap precisely for this reason, but still need a soap-only blender or chopper or something.

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/50048.html

The SETI@home project is going into hibernation on March 31. Note the main SETI project will still be going.

A neat tabletop game: A Singular Quest

As the main player you are a questing hero⁞ine in the tradition of fairy tales and grand fantasy literature. You will need to recruit one or more friends (although three or more will probably get unwieldy) to provide you with obstacles and quandaries on your way. Your single move is used to determine how well you deal with those situations.

Another tabletop game which uses tarot cards, coins, and a journal: PRINCESS WITH A CURSED SWORD. I bought this one and plan to play it when I go on vacation in two weeks.

Romance Writers of America continues to implode. This Twitter thread covers most of the issues in a succinct way.

For artsy folks, or for those who like making personalized images: OPEN PEEPS, a hand-drawn illustration library with customizable people, 100% free and available for personal and commercial use.

An example: <img width="300" src="https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/file/24216.png" />

Youtube apparently has (non-pirated) movies available to viewing now? Including WarGames, which made me think of a video I'd found a few months ago: a 1978 interview with phone phreak Captain Crunch.

Original post: https://tozka.dreamwidth.org/48751.html

Reading List is an open source app for tracking your reading. It's basically like Goodreads, but with no community aspect? And you can use it offline, which is handy. There are no ads or fees, but it only works on iOS. Data is pulled from Google Books.

The Inside Story of How ‘Wild Wild West’ Spun Out of Control— the 1990s movie, not the 1960s TV show. Basically: a dumbass producer.

Guerrilla Gardening has resources, news, and instructions on turning unloved and neglected public spaces into flowering gardens. See also: Guerrilla Grafters, who “graft fruit bearing branches onto non-fruit bearing, ornamental fruit trees.”

Myst (or, The Drawbacks to Success):

Myst's admirers are numerous enough to have made it the best-selling single adventure game in history, as well as the best-selling 1990s computer game of any type in terms of physical units shifted at retail: over 6 million boxed copies sold between its release in 1993 and the dawn of the new millennium. In the years immediately after its release, it was trumpeted at every level of the mainstream press as the herald of a new, dawning age of maturity and aesthetic sophistication in games. Then, by the end of the decade, it was lamented as a symbol of what games might have become, if only the culture of gaming had chosen it rather than the near-simultaneously-released Doom as its model for the future.

2020 Linkspam

fonts, trolls, bobaboard (2020 December 2)

asmr, mbmbam, bees go bonk (2020 August 26)

crab rangoon, clowns, creative asmr (2020 August 22)

cozy mysteries, citations, apple cultivars (2020 August 15)

acnh, fan games, girls series (2020 August 2)

kaomoji, sailor moon, pagan reading lists (2020 July 15)

travel planning, coworking, antarctica (2020 July 4)

fandom, science fiction, deleting facebook (2020 June 19)

sweet potatos, piano cats, 1970s hackers (2020 June 5)

the old web, grubhub, road trip (2020 June 4)

browsers, night owl, library privacy (2020 May 24)

music, bread punk, birth flowers (2020 May 15)

architecture, hall & oates, script samples (2020 April 27)

bread, musicals, animal crossing (2020 April 12)

musicals, zoom alternatives, animal crossing grandma (2020 April 3)

stage plays, MUDs, ipods (2020 March 28)

five videos for a saturday afternoon (2020 March 21)

kudos, sponsored content, laundry soap (2020 March 12)

aliens, tabletop games, peeps (2020 March 9)

myst, movies, secret tree-planting (2020 February 25)

queens, fediverse culture, cottagecore (2020 January 30)