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The BBC is releasing over 16,000 sound effects for free download

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Marbled Monday

Flosculi Sententiarum was published in 1967 by the Gehenna Press. The Gehenna Press was founded by American sculptor, printmaker, and publisher Leonard Baskin in 1942 in Northampton, MA. A fine art press, The Gehenna Press published many well-known poets and became one of the most significant publishers of fine press books in the United States. Flosculi Sententiarum (or Thoughtful Flowers) features aphorisms or phrases surrounded by ornaments arranged by Leonard Baskin himself from a collection of ornaments collected by American typographer Bruce Rogers, who also designed Centaur, the typeface used in the book. I couldn't help but highlight my favorite phrase of those featured in the book—it simply says "Shut up, he explained."

The marbled covers look a bit like woodgrain and the color reminiscent of mushrooms, full of grey and cream and brown. The pattern is loose and free, with asymmetrical swirling throughout that would have been done using a stylus or other similar tool.

View more Marbled Monday posts.

View more posts on books featuring work by Leonard Baskin.

-- Alice, Special Collections Department Manager

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how to build a digital music collection and stuff

spotify sucks aaaass. so start downloading shit!!

file format glossary

.wav is highest quality and biggest

.mp3 is very small, but uses lossy compression which means it's lower quality

.flac is smaller than .wav, but uses lossless compression so it's high quality

.m4a is an audio file format that apple uses. that's all i really know

downloading the music

doubledouble.top is a life saver. you can download from a variety of services including but not limited to apple music, spotify, soundcloud, tidal, deezer, etc.

i'd recommend ripping your music from tidal or apple music since they're the best quality (i think apple music gives you lossless audio anyway. .m4a can be both lossy and lossless, but from the text on doubledouble i assume they're ripping HQ files off apple music)

i also love love love cobalt.tools for ripping audio/video from youtube (they support a lot of other platforms too!)

of course, many artists have their music on bandcamp — purchase or download directly from them if you can. bandcamp offers a variety of file formats for download

file conversion

if you're downloading from apple music with doubledouble, it spits out an .m4a file.

.m4a is ok for some people but if you prefer .flac, you may wanna convert it. ffmpeg is a CLI (terminal) tool to help with media conversion

if you're on linux or macOS, you can use parameter expansion to batch convert all files in a folder. put the files in one place first, then with your terminal, cd into the directory and run:

for i in *.m4a; do ffmpeg -i "$i" "${i%.*}.flac"; done

this converts from .m4a to .flac — change the file extensions if needed.

soulseek

another way to get music is through soulseek. soulseek is a peer-to-peer file sharing network which is mainly used for music. nicotine+ is a pretty intuitive (and open-source) client if you don't like the official one.

you can probably find a better tutorial on soulseek somewhere else. just wanted to make this option known

it's bad etiquette to download from people without sharing files of your own, so make sure you've got something shared. also try to avoid queuing up more than 1-2 albums from one person in a row

tagging & organizing your music

tagging: adding metadata to a music file (eg. song name, artist name, album) that music players can recognize and display

if you've ripped music from a streaming platform, chances are it's already tagged. i've gotten files with slightly incorrect tags from doubledouble though, so if you care about that then you might wanna look into it

i use musicbrainz picard for my tagging. they've got pretty extensive documentation, which will probably be more useful than me

basically, you can look up album data from an online database into the program, and then match each track with its file. the program will tag each file correctly for you (there's also options for renaming the file according to a certain structure if you're into that!)

there's also beets, which is a CLI tool for... a lot of music collection management stuff. i haven't really used it myself, but if you feel up to it then they've got extensive documentation too. for most people, though, it's not really a necessity

how you wanna organize your music is completely up to you. my preferred filestructure is:

artist > album > track # track

using a music player

the options for this are pretty expansive. commonly used players i see include VLC, foobar2000, clementine (or a fork of it called strawberry), and cmus (for the terminal)

you can also totally use iTunes or something. i don't know what audio players other systems come with

i personally use dopamine. it's a little bit slow, but it's got a nice UI and is themeable plus has last.fm support (!!!)

don't let the github page fool you, you don't have to build from source. you can find the releases here

click the "assets" dropdown on the most recent release, and download whichever one is compatible with your OS

syncing

if you're fine with your files just being on one device (perhaps your computer, but perhaps also an USB drive or an mp3 player), you don't have to do this

you can sync with something like google drive, but i hate google more than i hate spotify

you can get a free nextcloud account from one of their providers with 2GB of free storage. you can use webDAV to access your files from an app on your phone or other device (documents by readdle has webDAV support, which is what i use)

disroot and blahaj.land are a couple providers i know that offer other services as well as nextcloud (so you get more with your account), but accounts are manually approved. do give them a look though!!

if you're tech-savvy and have an unused machine lying around, look into self-hosting your own nextcloud, or better yet, your own media server. i've heard that navidrome is a pretty good audio server. i unfortunately don't have experience with self-hosting at the moment so i have like zero advice to give here. yunohost seems to be a really easy way to manage a server

afterword

i don't know if any of this is helpful, but i just wanted to consolidate my personal advice in one place. fuck big tech. own your media, they could take it away from you at any moment

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Design by Stella Weatherall.

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Marbled Monday

Flosculi Sententiarum was published in 1967 by the Gehenna Press. The Gehenna Press was founded by American sculptor, printmaker, and publisher Leonard Baskin in 1942 in Northampton, MA. A fine art press, The Gehenna Press published many well-known poets and became one of the most significant publishers of fine press books in the United States. Flosculi Sententiarum (or Thoughtful Flowers) features aphorisms or phrases surrounded by ornaments arranged by Leonard Baskin himself from a collection of ornaments collected by American typographer Bruce Rogers, who also designed Centaur, the typeface used in the book. I couldn't help but highlight my favorite phrase of those featured in the book—it simply says "Shut up, he explained."

The marbled covers look a bit like woodgrain and the color reminiscent of mushrooms, full of grey and cream and brown. The pattern is loose and free, with asymmetrical swirling throughout that would have been done using a stylus or other similar tool.

View more Marbled Monday posts.

View more posts on books featuring work by Leonard Baskin.

-- Alice, Special Collections Department Manager

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During some research earlier, I was reading a letter (from circa. 1760s/maybe 70s, I believe) from a young English wife to her husband, who had been away from her for a week or so, and she added a postscript to the bottom of the letter that said ‘I did not sleep until late last night due to the want of my usual method of falling asleep. What do you think?’

She’s talking about sex. She’s saying, in the most explicit terms she can use as a genteel young woman in 18th century England, ‘I couldn’t sleep because you weren’t there to give me an orgasm.’ And then she asks him to write back something in the same vein.

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hi i just created an excel sheet where i can pick a meal and have it autopopulate the ingredients i'll need as a shopping list

i have never felt so smart

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does anyone know if i can like block sites from appearing in my google images searches??? i keep getting those awful ai generated things with a hand coming out of a man's neck and just straight up not what i was looking for, because this was in a search for "curly hair in medieval paintings". it happens every time i search for anything vaguely art-reference-like and it's so fucking annoying and it clutters my search results so much. i don't wanna add specific commands to the query every time too, what i need is like a browser extension or something

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TED Talks for the New Year

Here are TED Talks that will give you a guide to a successful year

How to learn anything

Power food for the brain

Secret to self-control

Don't be a jerk to yourself

Building your identity capital

Improving your body language

What your future self wants

Saying Yes

Habits of original thinkers

Become the person you can't imagine

Designing the life you want

Be your own life coach

How to talk so that people listen

Curiosity over ambition

Life is your biggest project

How to achieve your most ambitious goals

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As lunar new year approaches, I'd like to share my mom's Chinese new year cake recipe. It's probably more like a pudding, as definition, but we call it a cake. This makes the perfect "not too sweet" nian gao. And it also doesn't stick to your teeth like a lot of nian gao. Edit: Recipe has been edited to include metric measurements as well as provide some dietary notes such as being gluten free.

2024 blaze edit: my mom had a massive stroke last March and it left her barely able to walk. She was an incredible cook and her head is full of the most wonderful recipes. I just felt this year, it was more important than ever to share some of those recipes so that even though she isn't able to cook for others herself, she can be cheered by the knowledge her recipes are still making ppl happy.

Full recipe text under cut. Download recipe pdf here.

Mom’s Chinese New Year Cake (Nian Gao)

Yield: 3 cakes in 7” aluminum pans

Ingredients:

1 cup (250 ml) brown sugar

1 cup (250 ml) milk (cow milk can also be substituted for a plant-based milk if you prefer)

1 cup (250 ml) coconut milk

½ cup (125 ml) oil

3 eggs

1 bag glutinous rice flour (400 g)

1 tsp (5 ml) baking powder

Directions:

Grease three 7” pans and set aside. Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C).

Mix together sugar, milk, coconut milk, oil, and eggs. Then stir in dry ingredients and blend until smooth. You don’t have to worry about overworking the batter as it is made with glutinous rice flour, not wheat flour.

Divide it evenly amongst three greased pans.

Bake @ 375°F (190°C) for 40-50 minutes. All three can be baked at the same time in the oven. Just rotate where they are in the oven halfway for even browning.

Notes:

Cake should have nice brown crust on top and glutinous squishy sticky core.

Tastes better the next day and once fully cool.

If you don’t want a bunch of leftover coconut milk from the can, use the entire can of coconut milk and then add enough milk to get up to a full 2 cups (500 ml) of liquid.

Don’t skimp on the coconut milk. The recipe is simple enough that you will taste the difference.

This recipe is gluten free. Glutinous rice flour isn’t related to gluten.

If you try it, let me know how it goes! I'd love to see.

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NO ONE knows how to use thou/thee/thy/thine and i need to see that change if ur going to keep making “talking like a medieval peasant” jokes. /lh

They play the same roles as I/me/my/mine. In modern english, we use “you” for both the subject and the direct object/object of preposition/etc, so it’s difficult to compare “thou” to “you”.

So the trick is this: if you are trying to turn something Olde, first turn every “you” into first-person and then replace it like so:

“I” →  “thou”

“Me” →  “thee”

“My” →  “thy”

“Mine” →  “thine”

Let’s suppose we had the sentences “You have a cow. He gave it to you. It is your cow. The cow is yours”.

We could first imagine it in the first person-

“I have a cow. He gave it to me. It is my cow. The cow is mine”.

And then replace it-

“Thou hast a cow. He gave it to thee. It is thy cow. The cow is thine.”

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Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and all endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

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i hate that every time i look for color studies and tips to improve my art and make it more dynamic and interesting all that comes up are rudimentary explanations of the color wheel that explain it to me like im in 1st grade and just now discovering my primary colors

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tweet

Something like this would be so colossally helpful. I'm sick and tired of trying to research specific clothing from any given culture and being met with either racist stereotypical costumes worn by yt people or ai generated garbage nonsense, and trying to be hyper specific with searches yields fuck all. Like I generally just cannot trust the legitimacy of most search results at this point. It's extremely frustrating. If there are good resources for this then they're buried deep under all the other bullshit, and idk where to start looking.

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i think that, if youre usamerican and any time someone calls out your lack of knowledge on global geography you start talking about how bad the usa education is and how its actually not your fault that you dont know what continent nigeria is on because you cant look at the google maps bc donald trump will personally shoot you, youre very annoying

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Unlearning How White People Ask Personal Questions

http://www.samefacts.com/2014/05/culture-and-civil-society/unlearning-how-white-people-ask-personal-questions/