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decentralize and clean up your life!!!

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega or proton drive instead of google drive.

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

use vetted sites on r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH for free movies, books, games, etc.

use trakt or letterboxd instead of imdb.

use storygraph instead of goodreads.

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use ground news to read unbiased news and find blind spots in news stories.

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause or ecosia to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use unroll.me to clean your email inboxes

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, tuta, or proton mail instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use NCH suite for free software like a file converter, image editor, video editors, pdf editor, etc.

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

last updated: march 18th 2025

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happy fourth of july to the philippines ONLY

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One of my probably controversial Disco Elysium opinions is that I don't think Harry actually had anything sexual or romantic for Klaasje.

He feels drawn to her and projects something onto her because she is a drug addict like him, and she already saw/heard him at his probably lowest moment and didn't find it off-putting or even especially remarkable. She is probably the only person there who is never going to judge him if he starts following every impulse he has. And even if he doesn't particularly want to do these things again, it lifts some weight off his shoulders when he's around her.

But his actual "type" are people who seem more out of his reach, who would require changing and chasing.

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europe and canadian wildfire smoke

hey folks living in central europe (particularly southern france, northern italy, switzerland, western austria, and southern germany): smoke from the wildfires in central canada has crossed the atlantic ocean and is currently over europe. this smoke is not good for you, especially if you have other preexisting health conditions. on 10 june lyon was the second lowest air quality in the world.

i've not seen many people talking about this, and not seen it on the news much except as a "oh look, it's not sahara dust!" thing, which is unfortunate because PM2.5 is not a good kind of particulate for you to be inhaling. it can do a lot of damage.

please keep an eye on your local air quality (IQAir, WAQI, and websites like these track air quality around the world) and take precautions. if you can, stay indoors. if you can't, avoid extensive time spent outside. keep your windows closed if you can, run air filters if you can't. if you have to be outside i would strongly recommend wearing a good quality filtration mask (KN95, N95, or equivalents). i went without my mask on my 5min walk from the tram stop to my apartment yesterday, and i was ill for most of the afternoon.

the forecast currently says this should clear out by early next week, but in the meantime be aware and be careful! tell people you know about how to stay safe! keep track of how you're feeling and avoid overexposure to smoke if you can.

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So this is definitely a case of "we did not expect Harvard to fight back and we forgot they have billions of dollars and the best lawyers"

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:screams:

me: I don't believe in systemic misandry. The patriarchy is real and cis men have systemic gender-based power over cis women and all trans people. Cis women do have systemic, gender-based power over trans men though. And they can and do abuse cis men, on individual levels, because literally anyone can be an abuser. When women have power over a cis man with a different axis of oppression to them - i.e., a disabled man - the fact that the person they have power over is a man can absolutely play into their resentment and abuse of him. He is seen as a target, because he is disabled, but also a 'justified' target because he is a man. Therefore, misandry is best understood on a case-by-case basis. It's not an axis of discrimination or a power structure akin to racism or ableism, but it can still be a real component of abuse, especially when it is used to validate that abuse.

this absolute doofus in my notes: so you believe in systemic misandry??? :////

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« Whenever a land hermit crab is lucky enough to come across an empty shell (sometimes because a behavioural ecologist put it there) and if no one else is around, it will stop, take a closer look and probably try on the new shell for size. If it likes what it finds it will keep the new home and continue on its way. However, if the shell is too big the crab won’t pass on by, but will sit quietly next to it, sometimes for as long as 24 hours. In that time other crabs will probably amble past and wonder what’s going on. Then a spontaneous hermit party breaks out. Don’t get too excited, though, because the main thing that happens when hermit crabs get together is they start forming queues.

A gaggle of hermit crabs clustered around a big empty shell will sort themselves out into a size-ordered line with the biggest at one end, leading to the smallest at the other. This orderly formation is called a vacancy chain, and people form them too, of jobs and houses. The crabs work out who goes where by clambering around and feeling up each other’s shells. Sometimes, if there are lots of hermits in the area, several queues will form around a single, large vacant shell and then things get a bit more interesting: a tug-of- war ensues. The biggest crabs will wrestle over the coveted empty shell while the little ones further down the line will shift queues like supermarket shoppers speculating on which checkout will move fastest.

Eventually, one queue will win control of the empty shell and, in a flurry of claws, everybody in the successful line moves house. Each crab slips out of its old shell and into the newly abandoned shell of the crab one place ahead of it in the queue. They all get a new shell, one size bigger, and quickly scuttle off, once again going their separate ways. Behavioural ecologists have worked out that forming vacancy chains provides benefits for all the crabs involved; adding just one new shell can efficiently provide new homes, of just the right sizes, for a whole gang of hermits. »

— Helen Scales, Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells

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people better STOP tryna race me on the road for fucks sake. some hoodie kid in a fuckin mitsubishi outlander w legit real life fuckin fuzzy dice on the rear view was straight up flooring it and giving me the nasty lil i dare you type side eye at the red light like cmon dude im not gonna make you wreck your shit into the side of an emergency hospital. get ur shit together. ur bass is rattling my tints off. not every car w a spoiler is gonna take ur teenager ass bait. get a life. im on my way to the usps im not gonna fuckin race u. my dick already huge

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so many very specific posts about a person or thing but i, uninitiated, find them delightfully absurdist

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harry dubois would end death note in one episode. he'd be unkillable bc he has no fucking idea what his name is and then he'd go drink driving and accidentally run light over and the killings would mysteriously stop

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WE DID IT????

The last days of the petition against conversion therapy are FASCINATING to watch. I have been following it pretty closely for almost a year now, and the progress was, above all, steady. There was this jump when some algorithm in Finland picked it up, but even that was local.

And now, everyone is panicking.

Which really shows.

These past three or four days, multiple countries have reached the threshold. Even more notably, the number of signatures in total, the ones that we need to get one million of, are growing rapidly. There are only 400'000 signatures missing. Two days ago, it was closer to 600'000.

You can see the progress here:

Consider joining the fun by making everyone around you sign it!

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The last days of the petition against conversion therapy are FASCINATING to watch. I have been following it pretty closely for almost a year now, and the progress was, above all, steady. There was this jump when some algorithm in Finland picked it up, but even that was local.

And now, everyone is panicking.

Which really shows.

These past three or four days, multiple countries have reached the threshold. Even more notably, the number of signatures in total, the ones that we need to get one million of, are growing rapidly. There are only 400'000 signatures missing. Two days ago, it was closer to 600'000.

You can see the progress here:

Consider joining the fun by making everyone around you sign it!

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If you’re european and can vote please sign!

In any case, share as much as you can

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If we wanted to engage in nuance (lol, lmao) on the "are audiobooks reading" debate, we really do need to bring literacy, and especially blind literacy, into the conversation.

Because, yes, listening to a story and reading a story use mostly the same parts of the brain. Yes, listening to the audiobook counts as "having read" a book. Yes, oral storytelling has a long, glorious tradition and many cultures maintained their histories through oral history or oral + art history, having never developed a true written language, and their oral stories and histories are just as valid and rich as written literature.

We still can't call listening in the absence of reading "literacy."

The term literacy needs to stay restricted to the written word, to the ability to access and engage with written texts, because we need to be able to talk about illiteracy. We need to be able to identify when a society is failing to teach children to read, and if we start saying that listening to stories is literacy, we lose the ability to describe those systemic failures.

Blind folks have been knee-deep in this debate for a long time. Schools struggle to provide resources to teach students Braille and enforcing the teaching of Braille to low-vision and blind children is a constant uphill battle. A school tried to argue that one girl didn't need to learn Braille because she could read 96-point font. Go check what that is. The new prevalence of audiobooks and TTS is a huge threat to Braille literacy because it provides institutions with another excuse to not provide Braille education or Braille texts.

That matters. Braille-literate blind and low-vision people have a 90% employment rate. For those who don't know Braille, it's 30%. Braille literacy is linked to higher academic success in all fields.

Moving outside the world of Braille, literacy of any kind matters. Being able to read text has a massive impact on a person's ability to access information, education, and employment. Being able to talk about the inability to read text matters, because that's how we're able to hold systems accountable.

So, yes, audiobooks should count as reading. But, no, they should not count as literacy.