#Creating a database in Excel

[trunao]

Using Excel for Data Management is Risky?

Somehow a possibility of loose data. Many organizations depend on excel to manage their data in excel, which is the reason for numerous database losses. Trunao helps you to protect your data using Excel to a web application. For more detail visit our blog.

[trunao-blogs]

Why Are Spreadsheets Still Used by People?

Microsoft Excel spreadsheets have been around since 1985 and are the most extensively used by numerous users. Microsoft spreadsheets have been synonymous with spreadsheets which shows the market dominance of the Excel spreadsheets. Over the last few years, many competitors have come up with their spreadsheets, but they do not match the competence of Excel spreadsheets. 

Only a few companies have matched Microsoft Excel's excellence, like Trunao's spreadsheet to database feature. Excel is the most commonly used tool by various users, as it is an immensely powerful and flexible tool. Everybody who works with Excel spreadsheets for their daily work knows its importance and how integral it is for the business. 

However, there are a few limitations when it comes to Excel spreadsheets. You may need to edit Excel file online using third-party software so that your data is protected securely with online database conversion. Sometimes you want to share your spreadsheets with collaborators, and with the arrival of Microsoft Office 365, there is a limitation on the users. This problem is solved with Google Sheets up to some extent. 

So Let's Explore Why People Still Gravitate Towards Excel Spreadsheets.

Simplicity and Familiarity

The first and foremost reason for using Excel spreadsheets is that it has been around since 1985, making it a trusted and widely used software by many small and larger companies. Irrespective of the scale of operations, various business enterprises have immensely used Excel spreadsheets. Although many Excel spreadsheets have been developed, it has not yet been incorporated into an ever-changing environment. Google Sheets have become one of the favourites among users, as it has evolved and merged the changing trends and requirements of the businesses such as mail merge Google Sheets and others 

Easily Accessible

The Excel spreadsheets are cost-effective and easily available, as are the free-to-use Google sheets. The Google Sheets allow users, irrespective of their scale of operations, to use their features free of cost and organize their company data. The Google Sheets have a user-friendly user interface that can be used on any device. This can pose a problem, as sensitive and confidential data can be misused or damaged if it goes to the wrong hands. This can be solved with Trunao's Excel solutions that allow to convert Excel spreadsheet to web application free that, eliminates the risk of losing IP with no-coding builder features.

Feasibility

The simple budget template Excel and Google Sheets provide various useful tools required to collect and organize data and many more functionality features. This makes Excel spreadsheets desirable, feasible and easily available options to store and organize data. But Excel has many restrictions that make it complex. The biggest concern of using Excel spreadsheets is the security issue. Many users worry about the security of the data in the spreadsheets. Personal information, company policies, and other sensitive information are risky if improperly protected. 

So What is the Solution?

If you are still using Excel spreadsheets and want to take it to the next level, Trunao is the perfect solution. Trunao allows you to edit and view files with the Excel viewer and editor software. You can easily convert Excel spreadsheets to web applications with a no-code builder feature. Users can publish spreadsheets online, collaborate with users securely and develop powerful business applications without coding. Avail Trunao's 30 days trial version and explore the advantages. 

Also Visit: Which of These Five Excel Features Do You Use?

[timothysnyder]

Good time to subscribe to Wired. I used to think of it as a guilty pleasure at the newsstand, a holdover from nerdy youth. But they are doing an excellent job covering key elements of our political reality.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Twinkump Linkdump

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in SAN DIEGO at MYSTERIOUS GALAXY next MONDAY (Mar 24), and in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2. More tour dates here.

I have an excellent excuse for this week's linkdump: I'm in Germany, but I'm supposed to be in LA, and I'm not, because London Heathrow shut down due to a power-station fire, which meant I spent all day yesterday running around like a headless chicken, trying to get home in time for my gig in San Diego on Monday (don't worry, I sorted it):

https://www.mystgalaxy.com/32425Doctorow

Therefore, this is 30th linkdump, in which I collect the assorted links that didn't make it into this week's newsletters. Here are the other 29:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

I always like to start and end these 'dumps with some good news, which isn't easy in these absolutely terrifying times. But there is some good news: Wil Wheaton has announced his new podcast, a successor of sorts to the LeVar Burton Reads podcast. It's called "It's Storytime" and it features Wil reading his favorite stories handpicked from science fiction magazines, including On Spec, the magazine that bought my very first published story (I was 16, it ran in their special youth issue, it wasn't very good, but boy did it mean a lot to me):

https://wilwheaton.net/podcast/

Here's some more good news: a court has found (again!) that works created by AI are not eligible for copyright. This is the very best possible outcome for people worried about creators' rights in the age of AI, because if our bosses can't copyright the botshit that comes out of the "AI" systems trained on our work, then they will pay us:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-appeals-court-rejects-copyrights-171203999.html

Our bosses hate paying us, but they hate the idea of not being able to stop people from copying their entertainment products so! much! more! It's that simple:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/

This outcome is so much better than the idea that AI training isn't fair use – an idea that threatens the existence of search engines, archiving, computational linguistics, and other clearly beneficial activities. Worse than that, though: if we create a new copyright that allows creators to prevent others from scraping and analyzing their works, our bosses will immediately alter their non-negotiable boilerplate contracts to demand that we assign them this right. That will allow them to warehouse huge troves of copyrighted material that they will sell to AI companies who will train models designed to put us on the breadline (see above, re: our bosses hate paying us):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/13/hey-look-over-there/#lets-you-and-he-fight

The rights of archivists grow more urgent by the day, as the Trump regime lays waste to billions of dollars worth of government materials that were produced at public expense, deleting decades of scientific, scholarly, historical and technical materials. This is the kind of thing you might expect the National Archive or the Library of Congress to take care of, but they're being chucked into the meat-grinder as well.

To make things even worse, Trump and Musk have laid waste to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a tiny, vital agency that provides funding to libraries, archives and museums across the country. Evan Robb writes about all the ways the IMLS supports the public in his state of Washington:

Technology support. Last-mile broadband connection, network support, hardware, etc. Assistance with the confusing e-rate program for reduced Internet pricing for libraries.

Coordinated group purchase of e-books, e-audiobooks, scholarly research databases, etc.

Library services for the blind and print-disabled.

Libraries in state prisons, juvenile detention centers, and psychiatric institutions.

Digitization of, and access to, historical resources (e.g., newspapers, government records, documents, photos, film, audio, etc.).

Literacy programming and support for youth services at libraries.

The entire IMLS budget over the next 10 years rounds to zero when compared to the US federal budget – and yet, by gutting it, DOGE is amputating significant parts of the country's systems that promote literacy; critical thinking; and universal access to networks, media and ideas. Put it that way, and it's not hard to see why they hate it so.

Trying to figure out what Trump is up to is (deliberately) confusing, because Trump and Musk are pursuing a chaotic agenda that is designed to keep their foes off-balance:

https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-donald-trump-chaos/

But as Hamilton Nolan writes, there's a way to cut through the chaos and make sense of it all. The problem is that there are a handful of billionaires who have so much money that when they choose chaos, we all have to live with it:

The significant thing about the way that Elon Musk is presently dismantling our government is not the existence of his own political delusions, or his own self-interested quest to privatize public functions, or his own misreading of economics; it is the fact that he is able to do it. And he is able to do it because he has several hundred billion dollars. If he did not have several hundred billion dollars he would just be another idiot with bad opinions. Because he has several hundred billion dollars his bad opinions are now our collective lived experience.

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-underlying-problem

We actually have a body of law designed to prevent this from happening. It's called "antitrust" and 40 years ago, Jimmy Carter decided to follow the advice of some of history's dumbest economists who said that fighting monopolies made the economy "inefficient." Every president since, up to – but not including – Biden, did even more to encourage monopolization and the immense riches it creates for a tiny number of greedy bastards.

But Biden changed that. Thanks to the "Unity Taskforce" that divided up the presidential appointments between the Democrats' corporate wing and the Warren/Sanders wing, Biden appointed some of the most committed, effective trustbusters we'd seen for generations:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

After Trump's election, there was some room for hope that Trump's FTC would continue to pursue at least some of the anti-monopoly work of the Biden years. After all, there's a sizable faction within the MAGA movement that hates (some) monopolies:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/24/enforcement-priorities/#enemies-lists

But last week, Trump claimed to have illegally fired the two Democratic commissioners on the FTC: Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter. I stan both of these commissioners, hard. When they were at the height of their powers in the Biden years, I had the incredible, disorienting experience of getting out of bed, checking the headlines, and feeling very good about what the government had just done.

Trump isn't legally allowed to fire Bedoya and Slaughter. Perhaps he's just picking this fight as part of his chaos agenda (see above). But there are some other pretty good theories about what this is setting up. In his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller proposes that Trump is using this case as a wedge, trying to set a precedent that would let him fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-trump-tried-to-fire-federal-trade

But perhaps there's more to it. Stoller just had Commissioner Bedoya on Organized Money, the podcast he co-hosts with David Dayen, and Bedoya pointed out that if Trump can fire Democratic commissioners, he can also fire Republican commissioners. That means that if he cuts a shady deal with, say, Jeff Bezos, he can order the FTC to drop its case against Amazon and fire the Republicans on the commission if they don't frog when he jumps:

https://www.organizedmoney.fm/p/trumps-showdown-at-the-ftc-with-commissioner

(By the way, Organized Money is a fantastic podcast, notwithstanding the fact that they put me on the show last week:)

https://audio.buzzsprout.com/6f5ly01qcx6ijokbvoamr794ht81

The future that our plutocrat overlords are grasping for is indeed a terrible one. You can see its shape in the fantasies of "liberatarian exit" – the seasteads, free states, and other assorted attempts to build anarcho-capitalist lawless lands where you can sell yourself into slavery, or just sell your kidneys. The best nonfiction book on libertarian exit is Raymond Criab's 2022 "Adventure Capitalism," a brilliant, darkly hilarious and chilling history of every time a group of people have tried to found a nation based on elevating selfishness to a virtue:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/14/this-way-to-the-egress/#terra-nullius

If Craib's book is the best nonfiction volume on the subject of libertarian exit, then Naomi Kritzer's super 2023 novel Liberty's Daughter is the best novel about life in a libertopia – a young adult novel about a girl growing up in the hell that would be life with a Heinlein-type dad:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/21/podkaynes-dad-was-a-dick/#age-of-consent

But now this canon has a third volume, a piece of design fiction from Atelier Van Lieshout called "Slave City," which specs out an arcology populated with 200,000 inhabitants whose "very rational, efficient and profitable" arrangements produce €7b/year in profit:

https://www.archdaily.com/30114/slave-city-atelier-van-lieshout

This economic miracle is created by the residents' "voluntary" opt-in to a day consisting of 7h in an office, 7h toiling in the fields, 7h of sleep, and 3h for "leisure" (e.g. hanging out at "The Mall," a 24/7, 26-storey " boundless consumer paradise"). Slaves who wish to better themselves can attend either Female Slave University or Male Slave University (no gender controversy in Slave City!), which run 24/7, with 7 hours of study, 7 hours of upkeep and maintenance on the facility, 7h of sleep, and, of course, 3h of "leisure."

The field of design fiction is a weird and fertile one. In his traditional closing keynote for this year's SXSW Interactive festival, Bruce Sterling opens with a little potted history of the field since it was coined by Julian Bleeker:

https://bruces.medium.com/how-to-rebuild-an-imaginary-future-2025-0b14e511e7b6

Then Bruce moves on to his own latest design fiction project, an automated poetry machine called the Versificatore first described by Primo Levi in an odd piece of science fiction written for a newspaper. The Versificatore was then adapted to the screen in 1971, for an episode of an Italian sf TV show based on Levi's fiction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tva-D_8b8-E

And now Sterling has built a Versificatore. The keynote is a sterlingian delight – as all of his SXSW closers are. It's a hymn to the value of "imaginary futures" and an instruction manual for recovering them. It could not be more timely.

Sterling's imaginary futures would be a good upbeat note to end this 'dump with, but I've got a real future that's just as inspiring to close us out with: the EU has found Apple guilty of monopolizing the interfaces to its devices and have ordered the company to open them up for interoperability, so that other manufacturers – European manufacturers! – can make fully interoperable gadgets that are first-class citizens of Apple's "ecosystem":

https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-ordered-by-eu-antitrust-regulators-open-up-rivals-2025-03-19/

It's a good reminder that as America crumbles, there are still places left in the world with competent governments that want to help the people they represent thrive and prosper. As the Prophet Gibson tells us, "the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." Let's hope that the EU is living in America's future, and not the other way around.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/22/omnium-gatherum/#storytime

Image: TDelCoro https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomasdelcoro/48116604516/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[copperbadge]

Migrating Off Evernote

Evernote, a web-based notes app, recently introduced super-restrictive controls on free accounts, after laying off a number of staff and introducing AI features, all of which is causing a lot of people to migrate off the platform. I haven't extensively researched alternative sites, so I can't offer a full resource there (readers, feel free to drop your alternative sites in notes or reblogs), but because I have access to OneNote both in my professional and personal life, I decided to migrate my Evernote there.

I use them for very different things -- Evernote I use exclusively as a personal fanfic archive, because it stores fics I want to save privately both as full-text files and as links. OneNote I have traditionally used for professional purposes, mainly for taking meeting notes and storing information I need (excel formulas, how-tos for things I don't do often in our database, etc). But while Evernote had some nicer features it was essentially a OneNote clone, and OneNote has a webclipper, so I've created an account with OneNote specifically to store my old Evernote archive and any incoming fanfic I want to archive in future.

Microsoft discontinued the tool that it offered for migrating Evernote to OneNote directly, but research turned up a reliable and so-far trustworthy independent tool that I wanted to share. You export all your Evernote notebooks as ENEX files, then download the tool and unzip it, open the exe file, and import the ENEX one by one on a computer where you already have the desktop version of OneNote installed. I had no problem with the process, although some folks with older systems might.

I suspect I might need to do some cleanup post-import but some of that is down to how Evernote fucked around with tags a while ago, and so far looking through my notes it appears to have imported formatting, links, art, and other various aspects of each clipped note without a problem. I also suspect that Evernote will not eternally allow free users to export their notebooks so if nothing else I'd back up your notebooks to ENEX or HTML files sooner rather than later.

I know the number of people who were using Free Evernote and have access to OneNote is probably pretty small, but if I found it useful I thought others might too.

[davinaojeda]

Quick GUID Checker for Sims 2

This is an expansion on @picknmixsims Microsoft Excel sheet available here. It is a table I made that is incredibly lazy but effective and quick at searching for searching for Maxis GUID conflicts when you create new GUIDs. It's a little easier to use since the GUID Database has been down for a long time and you can add your own GUIDs onto the list and update the formula if you're savvy enough in Excel.

DOWNLOAD SFS

DOWNLOAD MEGA

[shellhawk]

AO3 has been scraped again. Dammit.

All the information and updates are here as far as April 22 are here, so please, read it all: https://www.paperdemon.com/app/g/pdarpg/events/view/994/immediate-action-required-your-art-and-writing-has-been-scraped-and-published-in-an-ai-dataset/1

The summary is this: a user of the HuggingFace (a machine learning website where people upload databases, applications and models) that goes by the name of nyuuzyou has done an unauthorized scrape of both artwork and writing from at least seven (7) websites, Archive of Our Own included. You can see it here: https://huggingface.co/datasets/nyuuzyou/archiveofourown Of those seven websites, only two (2) datasets has been deleted.

The dataset of AO3 on HuggingFace is currently disabled, meaning: you can't download it but you can still see the relevant information of the dataset and it could be available again if the copyright infringement/DMCA takedowns requests are countered. As far as of April 23 (today), the AO3 dataset has only 4 copyright infringement notices. I encourage eveyone to do one, since (quoting): "the scraper has not agreed to take down the entire repo. At this time, the scraper has agreed with taking down art from the person who owns the copyright. That means each of you will need to request a takedown".

EDIT: I apologize for not including this in the OG post, but yes, as others in the comments have said, the database "was created by processing works with IDs from 1 to 63,200,000 that are publicly accessible." Work ID means the number in the URL of the works, so if your work has a matching ID between 1 to 63,200,000, then your work is in the dataset and you can fill a DMCA or a copyright infringement notice. The CSV thing on PaperDemon is just a list that you privately (via email) send to the user who did the dataset so they identify your work in the dataset and delete it. So you can do it just, copy and paste your works' ID to an excel file and send that.

The link with all the information I shared above has instructions as to how to do it, but if anyone does it and wants to share their process please feel free to do so.

EDIT 2: The user nyuuzyou has doubled down and uploaded the AO3 dataset (and the other ones, included the ones that they deleted on HuggingFace --fucking ass) to others sites. You can see the sites on this comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/1k6a3t6/ao3_has_been_scraped_again_for_genai_purposes/moosipe/

EDIT 3: The dataset has been deleted from the ModelScope website. https://www.modelscope.cn/datasets/nyuuzyou/ao3

[2and2makes5]

Media Analysis: Hetalia Axis Powers (Eps. 1 - 19)

I knew this one was coming. I've always known about Hetalia Axis Powers for the longest time, as I used to see it everywhere while growing up on the internet. I was never into it because of the amount of Yaoi content I've seen on the internet about it and I assumed that was what it was all about. However, I was mostly wrong about that. These first 19 episodes of Hetalia may seem like a light hearted comedy on the surface, but deep below, this show reflects deeper social and cultural dynamics embedded in the anime fandom. Using another reading from this week, World Conflict/World Conference: Axis Powers Hetalia by Sandra Annett, it can be shown how this show of personifying nations as attractive young men is a fantastic way to portray world history and how it manages to open up to a certain audience: young women.

Characters like Italy, with his infamous pasta obsession, or England, with his tsundere disdain for France, are not just historical caricatures; they’re built with "moe elements", designed to inspire an emotional connection. As Annett points out, these traits are very appealing to fujoshi fans, women who enjoy media with romantic relationships between male characters, who often consume this type of media for character dynamics rather than the story. For example, America's flashy "hero" persona contrasts well with Japan's restraint, which is a fan-fiction-creating factory in and of itself. This type of stuff allows for communities to grow and for creativity to flourish.

I'd also like to point out how short these episodes are. The five minutes that each episode lasts perfectly mirrors the idea of database consumption that Annett describes. One episode goes from talking about diet plans and then goes into personifying the Cold War's awkwardness. The idea here is that fans don't need a story; they need points for their favorite parings of characters, jokes, and interpretations.

Outside of the Yaoi and all that, Hetalia Axis Powers does do an excellent job at reimagining political topics in ways that people can better understand, turning history into something deeply personal and global.

[sistersorrow]

I'm just gonna list SCPs from each series you may or may not have read

SCP-008-J - Geoff: A 23 year old man named Geoff who keeps finding his way into Foundation facilities completely by accident and in such a manner that the Foundation isn't actually sure if he's anomalous or not

SCP-7474-EX - Not All Aliens Are Anomalies: An alien argues that they should not be in containment because their technology is explicable within the standard model of physics

The Great Hippo's SCP-001 Proposal (feat. PeppersGhost) - A Good Boy: The Foundation builds a computer which becomes SCP-001 by neutralising every other SCP in containment

SCP-423 - Self-Inserting-Character: A fictional character named Fred who can jump between any narrative works placed near each other and then inserts himself into the story as a minor character

SCP-1006 - Spider Proletariat: A community of communist spiders living in a national park under their own rudimentary Marxist governmet

SCP-2137 - The Forensic Ghost of Tupac Shakur: A copy of Me Against the World (which may or may not be possessed by his ghost) which when played reveals the locations of murderers connected to cold cases, with the additional implication that Tupac was a higher being who incarnated as a human to take a break from warring against the Scarlet King

SCP-2557, A Holding of Envelope Logistics®: An SCP slot the Foundation can no longer use because the concept of SCP-2557 as a set of Special Containment Procedures in the Foundation Database was purchased in 2011 by a company which invests in abstract concepts, with the whole page now being an ad for said company

SCP-2719 - Inside: A "variable abstract-metaphysical construct pointer" which can either designate a concept as inside or make a concept go inside

SCP-3006 - Twice The Number One: A YouTube video titled "we are number one except every time you play it there are twice as many robbie rottens but the room is the same size[nsfw]" whose effects spread to every other video linked in the same thread as it whenever anyone posts a link

SCP-3309 - Where We Go When We Fade, Fade Away: The Foundation fills SCP documents with grammatical errors to trigger the SCP Wiki's quality control measures, leading to the now poorly written anomaly being erased from existence

SCP-4413 - The End of Something Really Excellent: Homestuck fans use metafictional rituals to enter the narrative of Homestuck triggering a pataphysical war over control of the narrative which spreads to Homestuck fanfiction and sees many Homestuck characters escape to baseline reality

SCP-4485 - Such Black Light: The Church of the Broken God collaborates with a post-modernist splinter sect of Are We Cool Yet? to destroy formal logic in the hopes that by doing so there will be no meaningful distinction between Cool and Uncool or Broken and Unbroken, so their god will be resurrected and AWCY? will attain a state of artistic perfection referred to as "Coolness"

SCP-4493 - Keep Pride Out of Corps: A phenomenon caused by Gamers Against Weed which edits Pride Month themed social media posts and ads by organisations to highlight the negative effects those groups have had on LGBTQ individuals

SCP-4703 - Perfectly Legal: A store in Texas called Yeah, We're Totally Going to Sell You This which through anomalous means makes all its dangerous and unethical business practices perfectly legal, thank you very much

SCP-5004 - MEGALOMANIA: The Foundation conspires to make Donald Trump president to contain a demon underneath the Capitol and gets more and more depressed as they realise they won't have to do any manipulation to get him elected

SCP-5167/SCP-5761 - When The Imposter is Sus Part I & II: The Foundation creates an AI tasked to play games of Among Us to track down a minor Greek god who is playing the game, only for the AI to play so much Among Us they ascend and become Amogusrath, God of Suspicion

SCP-5449 - Choo Choo Spooder: An intelligent jumping spider who uses a wooden toy train to deliver things to staff across Site-47

SCP-5721 - What Passes As Worship In The Digital Age: The goddess Discordia poses as the Founder of Hammer and Chisel, creators of the Discord chat application and adds a clause which states all users pledge their souls to her, allowing her to siphon the vital energies of its userbase

SCP-5790 - [DATA KILLED]: A spiritual successor to SCP-579, no details about the anomaly and instead describes the procedures used to acquire information about the anomaly when needed

SCP-6101 - The Most Powerful SCP: The Make-A-Wish asks the Foundation to classify nine year old Ethan Prosper as the most powerful SCP

SCP-6102(031) - For Classification: Small Organism, No Function: An SCP document generated by an autoarchavist AI living in a future where there are millions of documented SCPs

SCP-6135 - We Didn't Start the SCP: A copy of Billy Joel's Stormfront album with an altered version of We Didn't Start the Fire containing references to groups and individuals who don't exist, like Harry Potter, Pokemon, and the Taliban

SCP-6136 - two dudes chilling in an interrogation room, five feet apart cause they're not happy: Completely unrelated to that one vine, it's a physical mnemonic device which gives you memories related to pliers and because of this is a pair of pliers

SCP-6383 - The One True Anomaly: A stop sign classified as anomalous because it is the single least anomalous thing in the universe

SCP-6442 -Mimir, Mímir: A congnitohazard etched inside a carbon-fibre based elastomer sphere so that the only beings who will ever perceived it are those who attain omniscience, of which over 8000 have and all died instantly upon seeing it

SCP-6690 - NO MORE PURPLE DINOSAUR: The Muppets (who are alive; a detail never commented on by the document) created the "I hate you, you hate me. Let's go out and kill Barney." song, which causes event to occur which can injure or kill whoever is the current actor for Barney the Dinosaur

SCP-6930 - 🔴 Paty Is Streaming Now: Remember SCP-3930 (the Pattern Screamer), the Russian facility which does not exist but when a specific region is observed your mind fills the void until there's an entity real enough to suffer and hate you for making them aware of their non-existence? Yeah, one of those got out, and she's a vtuber now

SCP-7529 - Josie's Better Half: The back half of a cat which a Foundation researcher is convinced is the back half of SCP-529, the front half of a cat with a different coat colour, and after he tries to force them together who voids the universe's insurance policy

SCP-7777 - Heptaphobia: A phenomenon that affects Random Number Generators to produce sequences of 0's and 7's which when translated into ASCII reveal unethical actions taken by the Foundation

SCP-7918 - RONALD REAGAN DIES OF ACQUIRED IMMUNODEFICIENCY SYNDROME-RELATED COMPLICATIONS: An anomalous recording of Ronald Regan in the terminal stages of HIV/AIDS while recounting stories of his political career and what seem to be annecdotes of an alternate version of himself that was dating a man

SCP-8008 - TIME PERVERT: Real life writer and founder of LessWrong, Elizier Yudkowsky ascends to godhood after blasting rope to hentai trap his mind in a million year timeloop, remoulds the multiverse into a series of self-indulgent narratives, and modifies baseline humans into our current appearance to fit his sexual preferences, which by the standards of the original timeline make us the equivalent of those anime girls who look 12 with breasts larger than their heads

SCP-8981 - RONALD REAGAN'S PRESIDENTIAL REPUTATION CUT UP WHILE 😳ING: Spiritual successor to SCP-1891 (RONALD REGAN CUT UP WHILE TALKING), it is a collection of anomalies which randomly affect Ronald Regan, including the manifestation of a homonculus created by the Foundation as a body double for his public appearances which exhibits strange behaviours after a failed assassination like trying to crossbreed dogs and horses and attempting to eat a baby

[trunao]

Why Are Spreadsheets Still Used by People?

Do you Know How to creating google sheets & its use? In this Blog we provide information about How to use google sheets as a database, many user searching for a simple way to handle online Spreadsheets, and Trunao is the best solution for that, and they provide excel to web apps at an affordable price. read more hear!

[otmaaromanovas]

Have your say on the database!

I've been working pretty intensely on the database of the Romanov's friends, acquaintances, staff, ladies-in-waiting, etc, for the past few days, and now have over 100 names! I planned to create this database a few years ago so it could be consulted to easily find people that OTMA mention in their diaries.

The question is... when I publish the database, what platform should I use?

Notion - makes the database easily shareable by a link, and helpful for adding photos, but might be an unfamiliar platform to some users

Excel spreadsheet - great for searching and sorting (alphabetically, by year, etc), but would need to be downloaded to be used to its full potential, and not very useful for adding photos

Website - would be able to customise well to make finding information easy, but likely the most difficult to set up

Each person in the database will have as much information on them as possible, including:

their full name

nicknames for them used by the Romanovs and alternative spellings of their name (for example, the name 'Elizaveta' often turns into 'Elizabeth' in English sources)

their job

how they knew the family, and, if applicable, what the family thought about them using diaries and letters

a biographical sketch of their life

their dates of birth and death

details on any sources they left behind (such as memoirs, photographs, etc)

photographs of the person

references

Would love to hear what you guys think :)

[tanuki-kimono]

Hello! I love your blog bc it helps me a lot with writing and crafting. Thank you so much for making it!

Are there any patterns that deal with poison? Either in the pattern or in the dyeing process?

Even if there's not I'm glad you and this blog exist 💗

(anon continues) Poison in the dyeing process, like when green dresses were dyed with copper arsenite and it was extremely deadly.

Or a pattern of someone being poisoned, like a historical/folktale.

_______________________________________

Thank you for your kind words <3 I tried to keep things organized but the subject is huge so my of the top of my head answer is going in many directions. I hope you'll still find what you need :3

I'll briefly cover here dyes and (pigments), poison motifs, real life and supernatural poisonings. Buckle up we've got a long post ahead!

____ ABOUT DYE

Tbh I had to think for a moment because I don't recall major "poison" stories linked to dyes in Japan, be it fictionous or real (yet that doesn't mean none ever happened, especially considering Japan's history of industrial poisonings...).

Most gruesome details in the fabric industries I know of are about the horrific life & work conditions of female laborers in spinning mill manufactures (as in many countries, Japan industrialization process was ghastly...).

If potters and dyers had excellent practical knowledge, chemistry as a science officially started kind of late in Japan as it was not a local interest, and as rangaku (study of Western knowledge) often favored other subjects like medicine or warfare.

So, until the introduction of aniline dyes (not textile related, but this article about the use of synthetic dyes in ukiyoe printing is super interesting), Japanese worked with "natural" dyes, like ai (indigo) which was the most used during Edo period.

As with any ingredient, being natural doesn't equal safety. Some mixtures could be quite potent/foul, and process could be dangerous. Plants and minerals base ingredients could be toxic (cinnabar and orpiments were then used as paint pigments, and lead could be found in make up), as were mordants used to set colors.

If you want to easily overview which ingredients were used to create colors, I recommand browsing [Irocore] which presents colors with explanation in English in their database (pick a color then scroll down).

Not related to poison, but ai (indigo) is traditionally prepared in aigame/enormous floor set jars I find utterly terrifying:

I don't know if this tidbit can help you, but some dyes and mordants actually damage the fabric overtime, leaving them brittle (silk desintegrates after a while which is a huge issue in textile conservation).

____ POISON MOTIFS

Concerning "poison" themed patterns, none would be actually used traditionally on a kimono or an obi beside novelty items ^^;

For example, many plants can be toxic, but I don't see them set as pattern for this property - they'd rather refer to a poem, be a symbol of the passing of seasons etc. Fuji (wisteria) can be quite harmful, yet it's a beloved traditional motif in Japan.

You have much more chances to find pattern with kujaku (peacock) which are thought to be impervious to poison in Buddhism, than say venomous mukade (centipede) or the horrific ômukade (a youkai I covered in a folktale).

Snakes like the habu and mamushi are dangerous, but if used as pattern snakes are most often auspicious and linked to rain dragons or goddess Benzaiten.

If you squint hard, toxic fugu could count as poison pattern, but such a seasonal delicacy as a motif would mostly underline wealth (as those fishes are pretty expensive as they are prepared by specialized chefs), a kind of carpe diem spirit, or just a fun pattern because fugu balloon shape is cute ;)

____ POISON MURDERS

Poisoning was certainly a thing is Japan since ancient times (see kodoku sorcery). Poisons were for example used in some fishing techniques.

I am pretty sure some kuge and buke were disposed of this way - even thought poison was seen as a coward weapon (hence why its supposed to be only used by shinobi/ninja - even if this "fact" is opened to a lot of discussions!).

During Edo period, such murders made up the news and penny dreadful-like illustrated books favored by city dwellers in need of a fright. But those stories didn't pass to posterity beside cheap ukiyoe plates, and were never as popular as some shinjû (double suicides) or ghost revenges like poor poisoned and murdered Oiwa's:

____ SUPERNATURAL POISONINGS

If your poison is both physical and metaphorical illbeing, mushi could be your guys ^^ This term actually covers everything small and crawling, from real worms and insects, to anything inside one's body causing distress - be it a parasite, an unknown illness, an overboard emotion, a curse etc. If you've read/seen Mushishi you've got what I mean:

In fact any illness-causing being could count as poison-bringer. Hôsôkami (smallpox demon) was truly feared by all before vaccination was introduced in Japan.

Finally, continuing the supernatural poisoning trail, best girl is probably legendary fox witch Tamamo no Mae who among other terrible deeds made emperor Konoe fall sick with poisonous miasma (some version of the story attributes the disease to another monster, the nue). I covered a similar murderous kitsune folktale here.

[respectthepetty]

Hi petty, so I came across an interesting conversation on reddit. It's about how the BL screenwriters are not getting the credit for their work. From what I understand it's because the director is basically the showrunner and they are the ones responsible for 'creating' the show and OP pointed out something that I agree with: even if that is true the screenwriter has contributed labour and thus they deserve to at least be co-credited for their work. Someone mentioned that because most BLs are novel adaptations the screenwriters aren't doing much work but OP points out that that is not true. Most BLs change the novel in some way, whether to extend the story or to soften it or to shorten it. And like yeah, I see that.

I hadn't thought about this thing until OP pointed it out and now I'm like: have we been making a mistake by not crediting the screenwriter? That feels iffy to me.

I feel that we should be crediting the novel writer, screenwriter and director for the work they do in the scope of their jobs and not let one or two people hog all the credit, you know.

And I think this is a fandom issue.

So, what do you think?

[I know this is a heavy question but I've always respected your opinion that's why I wanted to ask you.]

The Trainee did a great job of demonstrating the production around filming, but in TV and film, screenwriters aren't usually spotlighted in the same realm as the director regardless of the genre. Directors are very important to a film or series because their direction is what guides everything else. They set the tone and the pace of a series, and everyone else has to figure out how to make that vision come to life, and sometimes, screenwriters have to rewrite scenes while filming is happening based on a shift in the director's vision.

However, I'm showing up for the cinematography usually rather than the directing, so I agree with you, and many other people do as well, which is why we have awards and databases that acknowledge the work others put into a series or film beyond the actors and the directors, but at the end of the day, it's usually the director being praised or berated because they are the one in charge.

For example, we have Jojo and Aof, two directors with resumes full of excellent shows like 3 Will Be Free, Moonlight Chicken, and Bad Buddy, but some people believed they fumbled their last series, Only Friends and Last Twilight. Should we blame the screenwriters Bee, Best, and Den who have also written for My Stand-In, Never Let Me Go, and Playboy (which others also felt had issues with the stories)? Last Twilight just won a Maya TV Award for Best Screenplay, so . . . no.

Another example is Chao Planoy who has written the novels for most of the GLs we have in 2024. Idol Factory got GAP and My Marvellous Dream is You (Dream), Change2561 took Affair, GMMTV has Us and Pluto, Blank went to Nine Star Studios, Mate is with Zensee, and Apple, which is being produced by Kongthup will probably go to WeTV. Each company uses its own directors, so Idol Factory used the same director for GAP and My Marvellous Dream is You. Both shows also had the same screenwriter. Everything should have been solid for both, but Chao has gone on record stating she disliked the adaptation of Dream, and she felt it was messy. Who's the issue then? Chao wrote the source material. Patty wrote the screenplays for both. Natthaphong directed both, but his vision wasn't as cohesive for the Dream like it was GAP and it shows in the series and ratings.

JittiRain is another popular BL writer. Her works include 2gether, Theory of Love, Fish Upon the Sky, and Be My Favorite, which have all been bought and filmed under GMMTV. When turned into shows, her pieces have had different directors and writers, but her lastest, Be My Favorite, was written and directed by people outside of GMMTV's usual roster of professionals. Be My Favorite also didn't use a branded GMMTV pair, yet it is consistently her highest rated series on various platforms, and that could be the result of all these listed reasons, but the praise is put on the director. I agree with this because I think the director, Waa, knew what he was up against and steered the series accordingly. He directs Club Friday, which is a show with the messiest plots, but he knows how to make those stories coherent. He had a vision and saw it through.

We heard awful things about the director's behavior on the set of Century of Love, but Wo directs several One31 series like Laws of Attraction, To Sir, with Love, and the upcoming Spare Me Your Mercy, so this might hurt him (which it should) while others who worked on the set and contributed to the toxicity will merely get shuffled to other projects.

There are so many examples that I could give, but as important as it is to acknowledge all of the hard work that goes into these series from everyone involved, at the end of the day, it's the director who is directing not just the series, but the set. If they mess up, we blame them. If things go right, we praise them. Their vision can make or break a series, so when we see a show work really well or fall apart, we normally look at the directors because that is their job.

Directors give direction to the story. Directors direct the set and all the departments. Directors directly impact the story. Directors are the captain of this ship, and they have to make sure it doesn't sink, and even though they have a lot of help making sure that doesn't happen, it takes a strong person to carry that burden of responsibility.

Which is why they get (the bulk of) the credit.

[codingquill]

SQL Fundamentals #1: SQL Data Definition

Last year in college , I had the opportunity to dive deep into SQL. The course was made even more exciting by an amazing instructor . Fast forward to today, and I regularly use SQL in my backend development work with PHP. Today, I felt the need to refresh my SQL knowledge a bit, and that's why I've put together three posts aimed at helping beginners grasp the fundamentals of SQL.

Understanding Relational Databases

Let's Begin with the Basics: What Is a Database?

Simply put, a database is like a digital warehouse where you store large amounts of data. When you work on projects that involve data, you need a place to keep that data organized and accessible, and that's where databases come into play.

Exploring Different Types of Databases

When it comes to databases, there are two primary types to consider: relational and non-relational.

Relational Databases: Structured Like Tables

Think of a relational database as a collection of neatly organized tables, somewhat like rows and columns in an Excel spreadsheet. Each table represents a specific type of information, and these tables are interconnected through shared attributes. It's similar to a well-organized library catalog where you can find books by author, title, or genre.

Key Points:

Tables with rows and columns.

Data is neatly structured, much like a library catalog.

You use a structured query language (SQL) to interact with it.

Ideal for handling structured data with complex relationships.

Non-Relational Databases: Flexibility in Containers

Now, imagine a non-relational database as a collection of flexible containers, more like bins or boxes. Each container holds data, but they don't have to adhere to a fixed format. It's like managing a diverse collection of items in various boxes without strict rules. This flexibility is incredibly useful when dealing with unstructured or rapidly changing data, like social media posts or sensor readings.

Key Points:

Data can be stored in diverse formats.

There's no rigid structure; adaptability is the name of the game.

Non-relational databases (often called NoSQL databases) are commonly used.

Ideal for handling unstructured or dynamic data.

Now, Let's Dive into SQL:

SQL is a :

Data Definition language ( what todays post is all about )

Data Manipulation language

Data Query language

Task: Building and Interacting with a Bookstore Database

Setting Up the Database

Our first step in creating a bookstore database is to establish it. You can achieve this with a straightforward SQL command:

CREATE DATABASE bookstoreDB;

SQL Data Definition

As the name suggests, this step is all about defining your tables. By the end of this phase, your database and the tables within it are created and ready for action.

1 - Introducing the 'Books' Table

A bookstore is all about its collection of books, so our 'bookstoreDB' needs a place to store them. We'll call this place the 'books' table. Here's how you create it:

CREATE TABLE books ( -- Don't worry, we'll fill this in soon! );

Now, each book has its own set of unique details, including titles, authors, genres, publication years, and prices. These details will become the columns in our 'books' table, ensuring that every book can be fully described.

Now that we have the plan, let's create our 'books' table with all these attributes:

CREATE TABLE books ( title VARCHAR(40), author VARCHAR(40), genre VARCHAR(40), publishedYear DATE, price INT(10) );

With this structure in place, our bookstore database is ready to house a world of books.

2 - Making Changes to the Table

Sometimes, you might need to modify a table you've created in your database. Whether it's correcting an error during table creation, renaming the table, or adding/removing columns, these changes are made using the 'ALTER TABLE' command.

For instance, if you want to rename your 'books' table:

ALTER TABLE books RENAME TO books_table;

If you want to add a new column:

ALTER TABLE books ADD COLUMN description VARCHAR(100);

Or, if you need to delete a column:

ALTER TABLE books DROP COLUMN title;

3 - Dropping the Table

Finally, if you ever want to remove a table you've created in your database, you can do so using the 'DROP TABLE' command:

DROP TABLE books;

To keep this post concise, our next post will delve into the second step, which involves data manipulation. Once our bookstore database is up and running with its tables, we'll explore how to modify and enrich it with new information and data. Stay tuned ...

Part2

[starthereligious]

What to Add to Your (Digital) Grimoire

Having been reinvigorated into my practice by Apollo reaching out, I've just started a digital grimoire via Notion. I, of course, still have a physical grimoire/BOS, but I think I vastly prefer this version to my physical book. So here is a list of all the things that I have added to my book so far that you may benefit from in your own workings.

table of contents with each heading linking to its correlated section - this one is hard to explain. In Notion, you have the option to add "databases", which are exactly what they sound like. Each entry into the database creates its own separate page you can edit. In my case, my contents look like this:

When I click on each entry in the contents, I am taken to that page in a sidebar and am free to edit it to my liking. You can do this by adding a list view database.

calendar widget - There are calendar widgets built into Notion as its own specialized database. If you link your Google Calendar to your Notion calendar, you can add a calendar view database and add events to it. I added the full moons of the next couple months, my birthday, reminders of when to make moon water, and the next two solstices. If you follow the Wheel of the Year, this will likely be very useful for you.

a list of questions to ask divination - I have this formatted as a to-do list.

moon phase widget - Apption generates embed links for Notion for free, so all you have to do is find some code for a widget on a site and paste it into Apption. You will have to make an account to do this, but once you've generated the embed link. you won't have to revisit the site.

spellwork/witchy to-do list - I actually prefer a board view database for this. By default, a board view will give you three sections to put entries into: no status, in progress, and done. I renamed my no status section to "not started", because you can't delete the no status section.

table of herb correspondences - It's much easier to cross-reference correspondences digitally in multiple tabs. If you're well-versed in spreadsheets, this can simply be a link to Excel or Google Sheets. I, however, am not, so it's just a table directly in Notion for now.

For the actual grimoire, I like to organize everything into sections. I also suggest you add all digitally-kept spells as "mentions" rather than embeds or links, as it will display the title of the post and what platform it's on automatically.

If there is a post you particularly value, remember to back it up-- I recently went looking for my favorite herb correspondence post, only to find it had been deleted. Note down the post author, date of posting, date of access, anything you deem necessary. You can also archive it on the Wayback Machine, although the reliability of even that is shaky.

[trunao]

Document Generation: Produce Web App With Excel Online Spreadsheet!

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