#fancy APIs

[bettingsolutions]

Looking for the best ready-made fancy APIs provider in India? Look no further! Our expert team at bettingsolutions offers top-notch APIs that can elevate your online gaming experience. With seamless integration and robust features, our APIs are perfect for developers and businesses looking to enhance their platforms.

[ratcandy]

guess who got stung by a bee for the first time todayyyy

[kitkatt0430]

Welp, I've been using external methods of auto-backing up my tumblr but it seems like it doesn't do static pages, only posts.

So I guess I'll have some manual backing up to do later

Still, it's better than nothing and I'm using the official tumblr backup process for my smaller blogs so hopefully that'll net the static pages and direct messages too. But. My main - starstruckpurpledragon - 'backed up' officially but was undownloadable; either it failed or it'd download a broken, unusable, 'empty' zip. So *shrugs* I'm sure I'm not the only one who is trying to back up everything at once. Wouldn't be shocked if the rest of the backups are borked too when I try to download their zips.

There are two diff ways I've been externally backing up my tumblr.

TumblThree - This one is relatively straight forward in that you can download it and start backing up immediately. It's not pretty, but it gets the job done. Does not get static pages or your direct message conversations, but your posts, gifs, jpegs, etc are all there. You can back up more than just your own blog(s) if you want to as well.

That said, it dumps all your posts into one of three text files which makes them hard to find. That's why I say it's 'not pretty'. It does have a lot of options in there that are useful for tweaking your download experience and it's not bad for if you're unfamiliar with command line solutions and don't have an interest in learning them. (Which is fair, command line can be annoying if you're not used to it.) There are options for converting the output into nicer html files for each post but I haven't tried them and I suspect they require command line anyway.

I got my blogs backed up using this method as of yesterday but wasn't thrilled with the output. Decided that hey, I'm a software engineer, command line doesn't scare me, I'll try this back up thing another way. Leading to today's successful adventures with:

TumblrUtils - This one does take more work to set up but once it's working it'll back up all your posts in pretty html files by default. It does take some additional doing for video/audio but so does TumblThree so I'll probably look into it more later.

First, you have to download and install python. I promise, the code snake isn't dangerous, it's an incredibly useful scripting language. If you have an interest in learning computer languages, it's not a bad one to know. Installing python should go pretty fast and when it's completed, you'll now be able to run python scripts from the command line/terminal.

Next, you'll want to actually download the TumblrUtils zip file and unzip that somewhere. I stuck mine on an external drive, but basically put it where you've got space and can access it easily.

You'll want to open up the tumblr_backup.py file with a text editor and find line 105, which should look like: ''' API_KEY = '' '''

So here's the hard part. Getting a key to stick in there. Go to the tumblr apps page to 'register' an application - which is the fancy way of saying request an API. Hit the register an application button and, oh joy. A form. With required fields. *sigh* All the url fields can be the same url. It just needs to be a valid one. Ostensibly something that interfaces with tumblr fairly nicely. I have an old wordpress blog, so I used it. The rest of the fields should be pretty self explanatory. Only fill in the required ones. It should be approved instantly if everything is filled in right.

And maybe I'll start figuring out wordpress integration if tumblr doesn't die this year, that'd be interesting. *shrug* I've got too many projects to start a new one now, but I like learning things for the sake of learning them sometimes. So it's on my maybe to do list now.

Anywho, all goes well, you should now have an 'OAuth Consumer Key' which is the API key you want. Copy that, put in between the empty single quotes in the python script, and hit save.

Command line time!

It's fairly simple to do. Open your command line (or terminal), navigate to where the script lives, and then run: ''' tumblr_backup.py <blog_name_here> '''

You can also include options before the blog name but after the script filename if you want to get fancy about things. But just let it sit there running until it backs the whole blog up. It can also handle multiple blogs at once if you want. Big blogs will take hours, small blogs will take a few minutes. Which is about on par with TumblThree too, tbh.

The final result is pretty. Individual html files for every post (backdated to the original post date) and anything you reblogged, theme information, a shiny index file organizing everything. It's really quite nice to dig through. Much like TumbleThree, it does not seem to grab direct message conversations or static pages (non-posts) but again it's better than nothing.

And you can back up other blogs too, so if there are fandom blogs you follow and don't want to lose or friends whose blogs you'd like to hang on to for your own re-reading purposes, that's doable with either of these backup options.

I've backed up basically everything all over again today using this method (my main is still backing up, slow going) and it does appear to take less memory than official backups do. So that's a plus.

Anyway, this was me tossing my hat into the 'how to back up your tumblr' ring. Hope it's useful. :D

[wip]

Hi!

Are there any plans to improve how users can prune a reblog chain before reblogging it themselves?

Right now, we either have to remove all the additional posts, or find a reblog from before a particular part was added. That's tricky, and being able to just snip the rest of the chain off at more points would make life a lot easier.

Answer: Hey, @tartrazeen!

Good news! This is already supported in the API via the “exclude_trail_items” parameter when creating or editing a reblog. However, it only really works for posts stored in our Neue Post Format (NPF), which excludes all posts made before 2016 and many posts on web before August 2023. For that reason, we don’t expect this will ever be made a “real” feature that you can access in our official clients. It wouldn’t be too wise of us to design, build, and ship an interface for something we know won’t even work on the majority of posts.

If you don’t fancy doing this via the API yourself, there are other solutions to leverage this feature—namely, third-party browser extensions. For example, XKit Rewritten has something called “Trim Reblogs,” which allows you to do exactly what you ask… though with all the caveats about availability mentioned above.

Thanks for your question. We hope this helps!

[heihellothere]

Ramadan: Si Sahabat Lama

Ada satu sahabat yang selalu datang tiap tahun. Namanya Ramadan.

Dulu, waktu kecil, kehadirannya disambut meriah banget. Sahur heboh karena tetangga pada giliran ngebangunin sambil teriak-teriak dari pagar rumah. Adzan subuh? Gas ke masjid bareng temen dilanjutkan dengan asmara subuh. Ngabuburitnya nggak fancy, cukup sepedaan sampe azan maghrib. Tarawih? Berangkat full team sama temen se-komplek, pulangnya main kembang api di depan rumah. Pokoknya Ramadan masa kecil tuh vibes-nya 11:12 deh sama acara 17-an. ✨

Tapi makin gede, sambutannya mulai beda. Ada yang udah nyiapin target ibadah dari Rajab, ada yang baru sadar Ramadan besok pas lihat iklan sirup. Ada yang buka lembaran Al-Qur’an, ada yang buka promo bukber di Instagram. Kita tumbuh, kita berubah, dan cara kita menyapa Ramadan pun ikut berubah.

Sekarang, Ramadan suka berasa tamu dadakan. Dia ketok pintu, kita masih pake daster buluk sambil scroll TikTok. Ibadah? Kadang full semangat, kadang seadanya. Tarawih awal rame, tengah-tengah mulai menghilang misterius. Tadarrus gaspol di hari pertama, hari keempat udah mulai diskon ayat. 🥲

Tapi lucunya, meski sambutannya suka amburadul, Ramadan tetep datang bawa cinta. Dia kayak sahabat lama yang tahu semua kekurangan kita, tapi tetep mau datang setiap tahun. Ramadan tuh reminder bahwa hidup kita sebentar, dan kesempatan ngobrol sama Allah itu mahal. ♥️

Tahun ini, semoga kita bisa beneran menyambut Ramadan kayak tamu agung. Nggak harus mewah, cukup dengan hati yang siap dan niat yang beneran bulat. Karena Ramadan bukan soal seberapa padat acara, tapi seberapa hangat obrolan kita sama Allah di tiap jeda.

Siapin hati, siapin doa, dan siapin stok gorengan secukupnya, yhaa~ 🍟

:: 3 Ramadan 1446H

[echoweaver]

So, I played the Riffins for the first time since I dunno. The first serious time on the new computer, definitely.

I have a bunch posts worth of screenshot backlog for all of my saves, I think, so in theory I could start posting again now. It's really just a matter of doing it.

What follows is some geeking that may interest nobody, but this is just how I roll.

The first silly thing is that I now have screenshots in 16:10 aspect ratio. On my old computer, I ran Windows at a low resolution partly for performance and partly because I could keep the 4:3 aspect ratio, i.e. a much narrower display for the same height. My reasoning is that when you post pics, either on Wordpress or here, the width of the image determines the size you see. A wider aspect ratio gets sized down to the width of the dashboard you're looking at, and everything is smaller. In my current setup. I pretty much have to run at a higher screen resolution, and it looks awfully nice honestly. Sims 3 doesn't have any 4:3 aspect ratio options for modern computer resolutions. I may see if I can hack it in the options file. If I can't, it'll be reeeealy obvious when I move on to the new gameplay 🤷‍♀️.

For technical nerds, if in fact there are any reading this, I'm experimenting with playing the game on Codeweavers Crossover, a distribution of wine, which in turn is an implementation of Windows API for Mac users. I have traditionally played the game on a Windows virtual machine in Parallels. Running an entire second operating system in order to play one game is a bit much, but you do what you can do. I have messed around in Mac 64-bit, and it does really super smoothly for a new game, but it doesn't support core mods (no ErrorTrap or UntranslatedKey), and existing saves (at least modded ones) have not for me without crashing.

I tried Sims with Crossover on my old Intel Mac (man that thing was so top-of-the-line six years ago), and it ran delightfully fast and crashed within 10 minutes. Crossover has done a lot of updates to its 32-bit support since then, but only for the newer Mac architecture. Now that I have one of these fancy Apple Silicon doohickies, I tried again. The play was not as dizzyingly fast as it was on Intel, with the advantage that it played smoothly with all mods for an entire session of about 1.5 hours. Sooooo.... maybe this will work? I don't want to jinx it. I do have Parallels+Windows to run some other stuff if this doesn't cut it.

I'm not even going to try Reshade. It's too exciting that this no-Windows approach might actually work at all. Plus with the higher resolution and the lack of Windows, the game just looks better to me anyway.

I haven't tried to play the Samples yet with all their weird skintones and custom everything. The decades history challenge might even be worse in that regard. The Riffins at least run in an EA world. We. Shall. See.

[watagashiiiii]

🧠 stardew valley

　　　mod list ③ 🧠

⚙️Modding Tools

🧠Alternative Textures

🧠SpaceCore

🧠Custom Companions

🧠Content Patcher

🧠Json Assets

🧠SMAPI - Stardew Modding API

🧠Anti-Social NPCs

🧠Fashion Sense

🧠Dynamic Game Assets

🧠Generic Mod Config Menu

🧸New Characters

🧠Hat Mouse Lacey

🧠Fievel Goes East Scarp - Hat Mouse NPC

🧠Ancient History - A Museum Expansion mod

🧠The Fishmonger - Custom NPC

🧠Never Ending Adventure - NPC Mateo

🧠Alecto the Witch (new NPC)

🧠Jorts and Jean the Helper Cats - New Custom NPCs

🧠Traveling Dreamer

🧠Lavril - East Scarp NPC (King's Raid)

🧠Creative Differences - NPC Rodney (East Scarp)

🧠Professor Jasper Thomas

🧠Mister Ginger (cat NPC)

🧠Juliet and Jessie the Joja Clerks

🐈Pets / Horses

🧠Pet Hats

🧠Rabbit Mount

🧠Otter's Horse Mod 2.0 -Alternative Textures-

🧠BlueWind95 Cat Sphynx Replacer

🖥️User Interface

🧠Event Lookup

🧠Jolly Rainbow Interface

🧠Better Shop Menu

🧠Lookup Anything

🧠Shipping Collection Sorted By Mods

🧠NPC Map Locations

🧠Custom Menu Background

🧠Gift Taste Helper

🧠Ridgeside Village Better Artisan Good Icons

🧠Better Artisan Good Icons Fix

🧠Better Artisan Good Icons

🧠Chests Anywhere

🌼Visuals and Graphics

🧠Seasonal Special Order Board Retexture

🧠(AT) Cute Pink and White Craftables for Alternative Textures

🧠Some Pastel Craftables for Alternative Textures

🧠Missy's Walls and Floors for Alternative Textures

🧠Skell's Flowery Weapons

🧠Skell's Flowery Tools

🧠Pastel Foliage

🧠IdaIda's Seasonal Flooring and Paths (for CP and AT)

🧠Rainbow Fairy Mushroom Trees for Alternative Textures

🧠Fancy Crops and Forage Retexture

🧠Fancy Trash and Resources Retexture

🧠Lumisteria More Flowery Grass - Eemie Palette

🧠Sharp Gemstones

🧠Fancy Artisan Goods Icons Retexture

🧠Fancy Artisan Goods Icons BAGI Pack

🧠Food on table for Alternative Textures

🧠Wildflour's Better Artisan Goods Icon Pack

🧠Cuter Mines (Content Patcher)

🧠Pam Bus - Content Patcher

🧠(AT)Garden Decoration lightning rod

🧠(CP) RoseDryad's Plant Sprinklers

🧠Garden Village Retexture

🧠Label your fridges with Alternative Textures

🧠(CP) Victorian Craftables

🧠NPCs as Chests

🧠Wildflower Grass Field

🧠More Grass

🧠Visible Fish - see catchable fish in the water

[arachnixe]

Ugh. Getting those fancy fonts working on my site is going to be more of a hassle than it should be. I refuse to use Google's font API since that would let them collect data on my visitors (intolerable). Hosting the fonts on my site is the other option, but my hosting provider's caching headers are hardcoded to only 10 minutes.

The consequence to the inappropriate caching is that page loads would go from basically instantaneous all the time to now having like a 100ms delay before fonts load on the first page transition every 10 minutes. That feels like an unacceptable degradation in experience to me.

[vanillaxoshi]

So today is White day and I written a count as a continuation of the Valentine day fic I write before .

So ......enjoy !

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

White Day is celebrated annually on March 14, one month after Valentine's Day, when people give reciprocal gifts to those who gave them gifts on Valentine's Day. It began in Japan in 1978; its observance has spread to several other Asian nations and countries worldwide .

...... In short , it's a day to return gifts to the person who gives you gifts on the Valentine's Day.

It's not that hard ! ....... Right? .

.

.

.

.

.

.

A day before white day

"......"

"Cahaya?  "

" What are you doing ?"

" Ah !- would you knock frist Angin?!?!  "

Angin watch Cahaya hide the papers under his arms on his table .

" Well, the others are looking for you . How long have you been inside the bed room ? "

"Not your business. "

" Wow touchy-"

"......."

".......Don't you dare-"

" To late ! "

Angin snatch one of the paper from Cahaya.

"Hey !! Give that back- "

" And don't you dare read it ! "

"Nope !! I want to see what kind of research is this- wait? What? "

Angin give the paper a quick look while Cahaya bury his face groaning in embarrassment.

"  'The best way to give a gift on white day ' , ' The best gift that I can think of ' , 'How to give out the gift . '      "

" Angin, please don't read it out ! It's embarrassing! And give back my paper now! "

" ......Did someone give you a gift on the Valentine's Day last month? "

" Well,  yes !  It's wasn't only you guys have resive gifts on that day! "

"......"

" Angin? "

" Wait I know that look. Angin don't you dare! - "

Angin rush out the room before Cahaya could stop him.

" Guys ! Cahaya is planning to give someone a gift on the White day!!!!!!!! " (＃°Д°)0

All the siblings appears near the bed room .

" Wait what ?!?!? "  w(ﾟДﾟ)w

" ANGIN!!! STOP !!! ヽ( ≧Д≦)ノ 💢 "

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

" Aww I didn't know your have receive a gift on Valentine's Day day before ! That's cute !!!! "

" So you have a admirer now ,eh ?

" How come you didn't told us before ? "

" ......"

" Pipe down everyone , you guys can see how uncomfortable Cahaya is . Give him some space ."

" ......So you want to pick a gift for that person am I right ? "

Now all the siblings are surrounding Cahaya discussing while Cahaya glare at Angin with the look " You're so dead later ."

" Sorry , Haya ."   ...( - _ -||| )

" Alright , you guys leave me alone ! I want to do it myself ! Don't butt in ! "

" But Haya , you obviously struggling on what kind of gift that you want to chose ."

" You even write a bunch of analyzing essay for what kind of gift is the best ! "

" Tomorrow is white day already ! And you still didn't make up your mind yet ! "

" ......Then what are you guys going to suggest ? "

" Oh! Oh ! Me first ! You can give them flowers that have hidden message in it ! Yellow tulips and pink roses for an example ! It's mean thank you and gratitude ! "

" Or you could write a letter for them ! Since you sucks at saying directly , write it all down it will be more easy ! "

" Api that's kinda mean . "

"But it's true that Haya have a hard time on that , form me I'll advice you just give white chocolate to them , nothing fancy ."

" Or maybe handmade cookies ! It's better than giving packed food ! "

" I'll advice a plushy ."

" Well , form me . I'll just give something what the person need or wanted in that moment , although I will pack it nicely as a gift ."

" So what do you think Haya ,can those advice help you ?"

" I'll take those as a reference and I want you guys give me some space now . "

" Alright we'll leave you alone for that ."

" That make me curious- Haya who give you-"

" ALL RIGHT EVERYONE YOUR ADIK NEED SOME SPACE NOW SO PLEASE GET OUT THE ROOM NOW "

Cahaya push all his Abang out of the room and shut the door . 

"......."(。_。)

"......"(⊙ˍ⊙)

"......"(⊙_⊙)？

"......'OwO

"......"( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

"......."( ͡°( ͡° ͜ʖ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)ʖ ͡°) ͡°)

" So- "

" No "

" GIve him have some privacy ."

"But- Don't you guys curious ? "

"......."

All Abangs are curious about the person who's going to receive Cahaya's gift .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

"This is agent Api ,Cahaya is still remain unmoved , no sign of taking action ." 

" Copy that Agent Api , no sign of anyone that could be Cahaya's receiver ."

" Copy that Agent Daun , Agent Api keep-"

" What are you guys doing ? "

" AHHH ! "

" Tanah you scared me ! Don't just pop out of nowhere ! "

Angin pout at Tanah who just come in the classroom .

" I heard that , three of you let Cahaya be . It's part of his life we don't want to mess with that ."

Tanah points at Angin's watch voice calling .

" Isn't this Gopal 's and Yaya's number ?"

" Are you two using their watch ?"

" I don't know why I even agreed to help ." (-__- )

" Same here Gopal ." (- _ - ||| )

" But Petir don't you curious ??? The lucky girl that Cahaya spend time to pick gift to might have a chance become our sister-in-law ? "

" I also want to see what kind of person are she that make Cahaya have to make analyzing essay for ! "

" Psss !! Agent Angin!!! Cahaya is heading to the libary now and he is preparing the 'things that seems like a gift ' out of his bag now ! " (≧∇≦)ﾉ

" Really ? I'm heading there now ! "

" Oh ! Oh ! I see flowers ! It's look like Purple hibiscus ? " ˋ( ° ▽、° ) 

" Yeah that's purple hibiscus , Daun ."

" I'm coming now ! "

" Wait Angin-"

" I'm coming with you guys ."

" Wait Pertir ?" (⊙ˍ⊙)

" I'm also curious , Tanah ."

"......Fine , Just don't let Cahaya notice us ." ¬_¬

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

" Hey move over a bit Gopal ! Don't you say you don't want to drag inside this ? "

" I change my mind now , there's so very good black mail stuff ."

" Gopal don't you dare ! "

" Shhhh ! Pipe down ! "

The ori trio , Daun , Api and Gopal and Ying hiding behind the book self .

" Cahaya have been sitting there for a while now , who's he waiting ? "

" I don't know but too bad Air didn't-"

" Hi guys ."

" Air-"

" Don't talk , I'm also want to see who is it ."

" Wait , Cahaya is hiding the gifts now . It must be hiding from the- wait is that Fang ????????"

Everyone look at Cahaya who is hiding the gifts behind him while Fang is walking closer to Cahaya's table .

" Wait so the one that Cahaya spend time on that essay- "

" Is Fang ??????? "

" Wait maybe it wasn't him it someone else-"

" But there's no one that come in the library besides Fang- Wait they are talking now ! "

"What are they saying I can't hear it !"

"AVFFDGYGABKL HAYA IS GIVING THE GIFTS TO HIM !!!! "

" It's carrot cookies and donut with a letter with purple hibiscus !!! "

" Why I hear buzzing sounds- OMG ! Petir clam down ! "

".......I want to talk with him ."

" Tanah not you too ! "（0 □ 0|||) ﾉﾉ

.

.

.

.

" So happy white day , Fang ."

" Oh ? Thanks ? "

" Incase you didn't know White day is a day for the people that have- "

" No I know , I just didn't expect that you have prepare something for me ."

" Well it was my first time receive something on Valentine's day so I want you to take it ."

" Thanks I'll cherish it- Hm- ?"

" Haya do you smell something is burning ? "

*sniff *sniff 

" I do , strange- "

"Oh it's Pertir and Tanah-

" Wait why Petir taking out the lightning- "

" OH SHOOT ! RUN FANG !!! "

" HMMM ?????"

Cahaya drag Fang out runs out the library.

" Come back here ! "

" We just want to talk~ "

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Hours later .......

Tok Aba is scolding Tanah and Petir being mean toward Fang while Fang is hiding at the corner looking a bit traumatize and Cahaya is comforting him along with the others .

Petir. tanah. Leave them alone >:(

Sibs and their curiosity, u'll never stop them

Yall better stop with that protectiveness, imma pounce at you for eavesdropping and shiz!!

Yeah this reply aint on white day but overall another cute story😊 really indulging more the solfang relationship arent'cha??

[the-awakened-insomnis]

My favorite thing about character design is the fashion. I played too many dress-up game as a kid and that bleeds through, I also like symbolism via clothes.

[-] In order right->left

. Based off her Cybotronian form, would be the default fit plus the holoform in the regular au, under eyeliner revealing her actual faceplate

. Color-scheme inspired by the Bee she's based of off, The Giant Cliff Honeybee AKA Apis Laboriosa. Wanted a sporty look.

. A cute little fit for the Winter, green & white because it resembles a tree covered in snow. She already has earthy colors but on the warm side and the green and white are good contrast. Earth is her true home after all

. "Queen Bee" worn to fancy occasions, she matches Bees' golden look and it makes her feel pretty. That dress has caused problems but that's not her fault.

. Beach episode, Pink is a color that has several meanings for Riosa, blood, her venom, and loved ones. The flower in her hair is also tied into her origin. But it such pretty color right?

. Kinda fantasy, was more inspired by POTC. She would live by the cliff side, deep in a forest she protects and calls home. She dances at night and has beautiful parties, yet she always wakes up with the only heartbeat.

. Her truth in the worst way, made up of the 3 who made her. Everything they feared, hoped for, and wished dead in 1 body.

[bananonbinary]

Bee person dropping in to divulge some of the Secret Lore - there's about 20000 bee species, most of which (~85%) are solitary, meaning they live their entire life on their own. Most of these species are far less aggressive and territorial since it doesn't pay off for them to die in defense of their nest if they can just make a new one instead and still have at least a couple offspring. They're also much more vulnerable to the negative effects of climate change, pesticides, and loss of floral resources and habitats than a lot of social bees because they don't have a bunch of siblings to do teamwork with, so if the going gets tough for them, they have to go it alone - so they're especially dependent on us getting our shit together.

On a less depressing note, for anyone who wants to see some cool pictures of non-honeybee-looking bees, look up orchid bees, blood bees, carpenter bees, mason bees, mining bees, leafcutter bees, fairy bees, masked bees, sweat bees, digger bees, ... Not all of these are solitary, but they're all rad as hell. (The males often have quite fancy facial hair/markings too!)

In terms of that bumblebee, it depends - bumblebee colonies are quite small compared to what people will expect given the usual reference of comparatively giant honeybee hives (most bumblebee colonies don't tend to go above ~300 members) and their life histories are also quite different, as bumblebee colonies aren't perennial - young queens emerge from their winter diapause (a type of hibernation) in early spring, found their nests and rear the first workers, who then take over many of the tasks in the colony (such as foraging and brood care) until late summer, when they switch from rearing workers to new queens and males, who then get out and mate. The males and workers eventually die in fall, while the newly mated young queens find a cozy spot to while away the winter (usually underground, but pretty close to the surface, so don't clean up your green spaces too much and be gentle) to start the cycle again the next year. While isolation can have some negative effects on social bees like bumblebees, the severity of these effects depends on a lot of factors. Bumblebees, in my experience, are pretty tough though - for example, they can cope very well with randomly being dropped into an entirely new colony, which I know I certainly couldn't (I can barely handle phone calls on a good day). So long as they're given ample access to sugar water, they can live pretty long lives (for bees, anyway). If you find a flightless one, taking care of it is definitely the better alternative though. Keep them in a clean box (you can put a tissue on the bottom for easy cleaning/changing) in the shade for most of the day, at consistent room temperatures, give them sugar water and occasionally some flowers and they'll be fine. Just be careful as they can (and will) still sting in self-defense.

However, there actually are also stingless bees (Meliponini - more then 500 species worldwide) - they're another really cool group to look up. Like bumblebees and honeybees they are also social bess, and (like bumblebees) they build crazy cool nests. They're also the only group of bees that can produce honey outside of the honeybess (genus Apis - only 9 species worldwide) and can be found all over the world (the Americas, Australia, Africa, ...). They've been used for traditional honey production for centuries in a lot of South American countries, for example (off the top of my head I know of Mexico and Brazil). Their honey is also quite different to Apis honey in terms of chemical composition (and, speaking as a completely objective third party observer with absolutely no personal interest in the matter, is much tastier).

I'll stop now because otherwise I never will, but if there's anyone I haven't scared off yet, feel free to drop by and send me a message and I'll happily answer any and all bee-related questions you may have! I also really recommend the nonhoneybees (.) com blog, which is run by a wild bee researcher - they have really cute bee cartoons and lots of interesting facts about bees (and don't post at an overwhelming rate).

:o

🐝

[galaxy-brain-rasslin]

I assume it's at least partially the fact that I can curate what I see on here more precisely than other places (somewhat inadvertently) but tbh this is one of the only tolerable places I frequent in terms of wrestling content.

I haven't been to Reddit since their API nonsense, but I'm part of a Discord server from one of the main pro wrestling subreddits. The server is great. I've been told the subreddit has just steadily gone to shit-- and it was becoming unpleasant to deal with the overbearing negativity in a lot of posts.

Twitter is, well, Twitter. I haven't been there in a while either, but there were only a few accounts I really cared about. But largely it's people just shouting about how one company or another is garbage and how Wrestler X should go to Promotion Y.

Instagram is The Worst and I can completely understand why Eddie Kingston turned off commenting on his posts. Everything is fake clickbait posts, drama mongering, and other garbage.

Here? If I want to look for people talking about how cool Swerve is, or how Julia's hats are awesome, it's all right there. If I wanna see someone be unnecessarily (but harmlessly) horny over violence, it's also here. If I want to see people just gush about some aspect of wrestling they love, I can see that.

Is this place perfect? God, no lmao. It's Tumblr. I've been around this site off and on for well over a decade. I'm sure the types of people I hate seeing everywhere else are here too. But they're so much easier to ignore on here. I can just sit here and asexually enjoy beefy dudes in fancy underwear slapping and grappling each other in front of hundreds or thousands of strangers under the pretense of it being combat.

[guzscode]

Dislate DevLog 2: Refactoring, and Premature Optimization

Daily Blogs 288 - Aug 19th, 12.024

It has been a while since I made a dev log of this project, personal life got in the way and somehow in the meantime of the last one, I actually was hired to my first ever job. This project is being somewhat hard to me, it has been a while since I've done a Discord bot, the API changed a lot, and now I'm using discordgo instead of discord.js.

Being totally honest, I'm kinda stuck on it, making some refactors in the last commits. However, while preparing to write this log, I may have found why: I'm making optimizations and thinking too much about a project that is just a Minimal Viable Product, again. Premature Optimization is something that I struggle a lot, maybe because of anxiety, but probably more because of the lack of experience to know when I'm optimizing too prematurely, which makes me find myself becoming stuck into a problem because I want to make it "perfect" instead of "good enough" in the first draft. In this project specifically, it's even dumber since the only one who will use it is myself on my own internal Discord server, and most of the commands are admin tools that just me will have access to. Even though I want to in the future make this bot something for everyone to use, it's not the focus, and should have been something that would take just some weeks or so to make.

So yeah, I should probably stop overthinking and trying to be fancy. Write the feature first, make it work, and then you consider refactoring.

Today's artists & creative things Music: UNDO UNDO - by Rolobi

© 2024 Gustavo "Guz" L. de Mello. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

[bogspotting]

The Bog Gets a Checkup

Drum roll, please...

Water chemistry!

Lake health!

Startling the neighbors by taking a turkey baster and going nuts on the Bog!

This week had it all and I'm here to report that, despite the neighbors threatening to call the police on me (note: they do not own the Bog. i wasn't anywhere near their property. They're just like this.), I put together a preliminary health check on the bog!

I will preface this in big red letters: I am not a biochemist. I’m not even a biologist. I’m just some guy with a few fancy test kits they use on their fish tank to check water quality. I followed the outline of the EPA’s National Lakes Assessment (found here: https://nationallakesassessment.epa.gov/webreport/) and a few other resources. Note that I am not entirely sure what the bog qualifies as, and I don’t have the tools to measure the depth of the bog in most spots, but it seems to fit the bill for this survey. I also, for the sake of ease, did my best to translate these findings into a 1-10 scale, with 1 being “this water is dead” and 10 being “call Gwyneth Paltrow, she can bottle and sell this water as a magical health supplement”. 

TL;DR: the bog is being smothered by garbage and dying organic matter.

Here’s what I put together: 

The most obvious measure of lake health is anthropogenic disturbance—basically, how much people have messed with the bog. The answer here is a lot. There is always trash floating in the water, stuck to the vegetation on the shores, half-buried in the muck… Which doesn’t lead to a very healthy lake. I give the Bog a 4/10 on the anthropogenic disturbance scale. It isn’t toxic sludge, but it could be kept cleaner. 

Then comes something known as Secchi Depth, which is a measure of how clear the water is. It’s a really neat little tool that you lower into the water and mark when it vanishes. 

Reports vary, but, in general, you want to aim for a 2-meter (or 6 feet) Secchi depth to be really healthy—the Bog scored at 2 feet. Not amazing. 3/10. 

Another physical aspect of lake health is water color. I pulled up a jar of the Bog and it’s the color of ginger ale. My research suggest that it’s a mix of algae and tannins—which is to be expected, considering how much plant matter is decaying in the bog. 

Look at this. Ick. 

7/10. 

Onto the chemistry! I am not a chemist, but I am a fish keeper and I do this kind of thing a lot. I pulled out my API freshwater testing kit to see what the Bog was like, and here’s what I came away with: 

pH: 7.4 

Square within the average range for lakes and streams, but considered a little basic for fish eggs and fry. We’ll call that a 8/10. 

Ammonia: .75ppm 

Not amazing. Ammonia is highly toxic, it comes from the breakdown of waste. There is a way to tell just how toxic, based on the pH and temperature, but it was a little too much math for me to manage on my own… Anyways, 5/10. 

Nitrite: 0ppm 

Nitrites are toxic too, so this is great. You get nitrites when ammonia is broken down by nitrifying bacteria, so if you have too much ammonia, you’ll usually have too many nitrites. 10/10. 

Nitrates: 2.5ppm 

The pretty older sister of Nitrites, when nitrites are broken down they turn into nitrates, which are less harmful. This is all part of the nitrogen cycle, which is something every aquarium owner both respects and fears. Lakes tend to do it on their own, however. 9/10

What does this all tell us? 

It tells us that the Bog is low on ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) but is doing alright on nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB). I’m not entirely certain why that’s the case, but the Bog produces (or is supplied with) more ammonia than the AOB can consume. The reason the nitrites are there is likely due to the lack of submerged plantlife. Did I mention that there aren’t any plants in the Bog? Around it, sure, but in it? I haven’t seen anything. The entire bottom is covered in a thick layer of mulm (a mud-like substance made from decaying organic matter), which I assume has choked out the plants. Lack of plants means there’s nothing to eat up all those nitrates. 

Anyhow. 

Phosphates. 

Phosphates are an interesting measure of lake health. Essentially, phosphates are nutrients and having too many of them can lead to fluctuations in algae (the Bog has incredible algae blooms every fall—and it reeks) and even the development of blue-green algae, which creates cyanobacteria, which is very, very deadly. 

So I tested for both phosphates and blue-green algae. 

And there were 0 phosphates. 

No blue-green algae either, which is nice, but no phosphates is unusual. It explains the lack of plant growth, since phosphates are required for plants to exist, but it doesn’t explain the insane algae blooms we get every year. 

I can speculate that those blooms could coincide with people using fertilizer on their lawns to prep for winter, the runoff from which might cause a spike that encourages the algae, but I can’t test that. It could also be a cumulative effect from the runoff throughout the summer. I don’t know. It was unusual. The test, which should have turned a nice seafoam green, was essentially clear. Weird days. 

But! Good news! No blue-green algae, which means no cyanobacteria! The test for that was, in short, terrifying. You put water in a tube and then the tube explodes. It’s only BARELY mentioned that this will happen. It gets lava hot, spews boiling water everywhere, and smells like demons. But no cyanotoxins! Hooray! 10/10 for that! 5/10 for the phosphates. 

Let’s talk about the big boy now. The heavy hitter. The measurement that is first on the list of lake health measurements: dissolved oxygen. 

According to the USGS, “The oxygen content of surface waters of normal salinity in the summer is typically more than 8 milligrams per liter (8 mg/L); when oxygen concentrations are less than 2 mg/L, the water is defined as hypoxic (CENR, 2000). The hypoxia kills many organisms that cannot escape, and thus the hypoxic zone is informally known as the “dead zone.”” 

The lake is sitting at a 6 mg/l DO. Which is low. Why? Probably the lack of plants. This explains the algal blooms, at least, and why the lake smells like death on very hot days, when dissolved oxygen would be at its lowest. It could also suggest an excess of bacteria. 

4/10. 

65/100. A failing grade, but it could be worse! You can definitely pull that up by doing some extra credit! The EPA scale would likely call it "fair". I was able to use this nifty tool to look at some of my measurements and compare them to other lakes in my area: https://owshiny.epa.gov/nla-lake-context-tool/. This is what popped up for Secchi depth:

I was also able to reference some other data in terms of percentiles using this: https://nationallakesassessment.epa.gov/dashboard/?&view=indicator&studypop=al&subpop=epa+region+3&label=pe&condition=good&diff=2v3 If you're looking to check the health of your local body of water (assuming it hasn't already been done! You can check for that too!), I highly recommend poking around the EPA's resources.

If the Bog were one of my tanks, it'd be getting a thorough cleaning, an airstone, and a bunch of live plants.

[the-sleepy-archivist]

Favorite iOS Safari Extensions

On iOS (iPhones and iPads), Safari is the undisputed leader of the browsers, primarily because Apple puts very tight restrictions on other browser apps that makes it very difficult for them to offer the same features that Safari does.

Thankfully, you can install extensions to tweak Safari's behavior and customize websites, as long as your device is running iOS 15 or higher. Here are the Safari Extensions I use on a daily basis. Many are free (or at least have a free version), and all work on both iPhones and iPads.

For desktop computers and Android phones, you can also check out my recommendations for Firefox addons)

Last updated March 2025 (fixed broken Bypass Paywalls Clean links, added StopTheMadness)

Index:

AdGuard

Noir

uBlacklist

Userscripts

Sink It for Reddit

UnTrap

Vinegar

StopTheMadness

AdGuard

This addon is free if you just want to use the built in adblocking lists. For a small yearly fee, you can pay for "Pro" features, which allows you to add any custom adblocking list to the app, as well as providing DNS-based system-level adblocking that can block ads and trackers inside any app on your phone. Note that it gives you two options for the system-level blocking, local VPN and native DNS; using the VPN option can drain your battery faster than normal in my experience, so I recommend using the native DNS instead. Between AdGuard and the two YouTube-customizing extensions below, I haven’t seen an ad on YouTube in Safari in months.

Recommended custom filter lists (in addition to the built-in default lists):

Bypass Paywalls Clean (you’ll also need to install this userscript using the Userscripts Safari extension mentioned later in this list for maximum paywall blocking)

Huge AI Blocklist (if you don’t want AI art or AI images of nonexistent chimera animals cluttering up your search results)

Fuck FuckAdblock

Noir

Adds a dark mode to any website. It's using heuristics (fancy guessing) to figure out which website colors need to be changed so that it's darkened, so sometimes it can make mistakes. In that case, it has a built in way to send a bug report to the developer, who is pretty responsive in my experience; he updates the app around once a month in my experience. You can also turn off darkening for specific sites right from inside Safari.

uBlacklist

This addon hides search engine results from specific domains. Example: you can hide images results from AI generator sites, OR if you search for tech support advice and one of those stupid auto-generated sites filled with SEO garbage but no actual information keeps popping up, you can use this addon to hide everything from that website, right from the Google/DuckDuckGo/other search results.

Recommended filter subscriptions:

Huge AI Blocklist

Userscripts

Allows you to install userscripts and stylesheets that customize website behavior or appearance. The addon can check for updates of your userscripts and uses iCloud to synchronize them across devices too, which is really nice. The userscripts I use are:

Bypass Paywalls Clean (removes news website paywalls)

Amazon Sponsored Products Removal (self-explanatory)

Redirect Fandom to BreezeWiki (bypasses ad-filled fandom.com domains for indie wikis or an ad-free proxy site. The link documents 2 userscripts with slightly different behavior; use whichever you prefer).

Sink It for Reddit

I switched to only using Reddit in the browser after the whole API/third party apps fiasco. AdGuard blocks the ads in the web interface, but there were still a lot of annoyances because Reddit constantly bombarded you with prompts/popups trying to get you to switch to their app so they could track you and sell you ads. Sink It for Reddit removes all of those popups and lets you customize the behavior of the Reddit website too (tapping a post can open it in a new tab, back to top buttons for long posts, and video downloads, among other things). Constantly being updated too, which is nice to see.

UnTrap (USD $1.99)

This extension cleans up the YouTube interface in the browser. You can hide Shorts, Explore, Trending, and multiple flavors of Suggestions (videos, playlists, etc.). It also stops autoplaying videos, and has a content filter you can use to ensure you never see certain channels or even specific videos by ID, username, or keyword/regex. There are over 50 options you can tweak for the video playback page alone, so if you’re looking to remove an annoyance from YouTube in Safari on iOS, this is the addon for you. Note however that this is the first extension I’ve recommended that does NOT have a free version.

Vinegar and Baking Soda (USD $1.99)

This extension replaces YouTube’s custom video player with a standard HTML5 one. This means that YT videos will play back using the standard iOS video player interface, including all of the accompanying benefits: better interface, Picture in Picture/popout videos work, videos continue playing in the background even if you leave Safari, etc.. I was even able to start a YouTube video in Safari, lock my phone, and then continue playing the video and hear the audio over my car’s speakers via CarPlay. These are all normally locked features reserved for YouTube Premium subscribers. You can also set a default quality that it will use so YouTube won’t use “auto” and set you to 360p just because you’re using a phone.

StopTheMadness Pro (USD $14.99)

This app is really only for techies who use mobile websites a LOT; for me the very high price tag is worth it primarily to stop the following web annoyances:

Stops websites from disabling features like copy and paste, pinch to zoom, context menus, or text replacement/autofill

Adds a warning when you’re exceeding the length of a password field (too many poorly coded websites just chopping off the extra characters without telling me and then the password I recorded is wrong)

Stops autoplaying video (looking at you, YouTube and news websites)

I’ll be honest, this app has a LOT of features and the number of options can be overwhelming. It has dozens of things I did not mention, and some of them even overlap with other items in this list. For example, if you have this you probably don’t need Baking Soda or Vinegar because this app has options for enabling native Safari controls on all videos, setting default YouTube quality and subtitles, etc.

[blazehedgehog]

My take on the Twitch "brand guidelines" situation, which I've been believing more and more over the last 24 hours:

StreamElements is a popular site that hooks in to the Twitch API and lets you create custom alerts (those fancy animated graphics that pop up on stream) for when people subscribe/cheer/follow/donate. Tons of streamers use them! I use them!

Very recently, like within the last three months, StreamElements has launched a new Sponsorship tab. If you use StreamElements, it's impossible to miss, because they've been sending me 7-10 emails a week about each new sponsor offer I have.

Generally they'll tell me how I could make "up to $900" by doing a sponsored stream with a list of requirements and goals I'd have to meet in order to earn my payout. There's a lot more to it than that, but we'll get to it.

The thing is, this StreamElements Sponsor system is an almost direct clone of a system Twitch already has: the Twitch Bounty Board. But there's a twist: The Twitch Bounty Board is only available to the upper-crust of streamers who hit consistent and moderately good viewership numbers. And the higher numbers you pull in, the bigger bounties you get with bigger payouts.

StreamElements Sponsorships aren't anywhere near as high profile. A Bounty might have a streamer order food from Dominos, comp them the price of the meal, and have them eat and talk about it on camera. A typical StreamElements Sponsor is a gacha mobile game you probably haven't even heard of.

And that "up to $900" claim on StreamElements is just the hook. Once you actually read the terms, you'll learn that the minimum payout is $15, with $900 being the maximum possible earnings. And usually, just to earn that measly $15 minimum, you have to stream for multiple hours, across multiple days, with special overlays, a special chat bot, while also requiring several viewers to use your offer code and also play for multiple hours.

It creates a discrepancy where Twitch Bounties have a higher barrier of entry but a much higher success rate, and the StreamElements sponsors have a much lower barrier of entry and probably a much smaller trickle of money.

The thing is? Twitch likely gets a cut of the bounty payout, but StreamElements doesn't have to pay Twitch anything for a sponsor. And even if the StreamElements sponsor program has lower payouts and more difficult/nebulous requirements, slots still fill up quickly. That's a lot of money changing hands on Twitch that is not necessarily feeding back in to Twitch itself. And it is through a system seemingly designed to devalue something Twitch is already doing.

Twitch slapping down all these rules about "burned-in advertising" were undoubtedly about pulling people out of StreamElements. After all, the new guidelines said it was fine to link things around the video, like in the description/bio below the stream. Since Twitch literally owns the website, in theory it probably wouldn't have been too hard for them to reskin a streamer's entire page for a bounty integration. There are already plugins and things to generate widgets that aren't burned in to the video and hover over the player's HTML.

It's not hard to imagine a scenario where you accept a Twitch bounty for Mountain Dew and it adds a special Mountain Dew Widget over your stream that's part of the video player code itself, something StreamElements would probably never be allowed to do.

Further evidence for this comes from the fact that, just a few weeks ago, Twitch added a feature to let you generate stream alerts from the Twitch dashboard itself. StreamElements literally started their entire business on robust and highly customizable stream alerts, and once StreamElements started pushing their own bounty board clone with Sponsorships, suddenly Twitch starts testing its own in-house alerts generator.

Twitch was obviously trying to head this off at the pass and provide users as little reason to use StreamElements as humanly possible, but they obviously didn't get there fast enough and were more than a little overzealous.