brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
I was too tired to do this last week, so here is a longer three-week post.


Comments on my own posts:

Another mind-blowing these-songs-are-by-the-same-person fact:

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Comments on other people's posts:

(This is from March 4th, but I overlooked it while making the previous roundups.) [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] archosaur-automaton) The adorable cover of this textbook is harder to appreciate when you've actually taken the course it's used for.

[mild cw: food, apocalypse] (This is from April 8th, but I overlooked it while making the previous roundups.) [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] 1rakus) A quiz with weird question weightings, and a digression on emergency power generation.

[arguably cw: aging] (This is from April 24th, but I overlooked it while making the previous roundup.) [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] thejogging) The many meanings of a half-broken key.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] sigmaleph) A short puzzle game about meeting password construction requirements.

[cw: amnesia] [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] staff) Tumblr is ramping up its censorship, under the guise of "keeping hate speech in check".

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] wolffyluna) Fun with Project Gutenberg.

[cw: food] [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] rustingbridges) Preference ranking of starches.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] wolffyluna) Space-efficient email apps.

[cw: nsfw text, (mild) discourse] [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] tototavros; also in response to [tumblr.com profile] shieldfoss and [tumblr.com profile] eightyonekilograms) Today in people getting separated by a common language (and not always geographically): how to distinguish between different types of plug. [three comments]

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] lavenderfables) I like Rincewind *because* of his cowardice, not in spite of it.

[cw: Pyrebound spoilers] [WordPress part 1; WordPress part 2; WordPress part 3; Wayback part 1; Wayback part 2; Wayback part 3] (OP by theredsheep) Pyrebound reactionblogging. (It's amazing! If you're okay with stories getting pretty dark sometimes, go read it!) [four comments]

(I noticed while archiving those that each section had exactly one previous crawl, manually requested, starting in July 2019 but continuing for the post written afterward. It's good to see that someone has taken the story under their wing.)

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Links:

[none suitable for this section]



There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

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brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
Comments on my own posts:

[cw: nsfw text, gender dysphoria] The one about the distinction between wanting to fuck someone and wanting to be them

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: amnesia, death] [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] i-run-a-trash-blog) Canon-compliant backstory for a hypothetical Doctor Who spinoff.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] moonlit-tulip) The effects of being half-awake on dreams.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] fatpinocchio; in response to [tumblr.com profile] jadagul) Browser-autocomplete wrangling.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] sigmaleph) Are we good at computers? Depends on your standard of comparison.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] sigmaleph) A taste of the wonders of Firefox extensions.

[cw: poverty, (arguably) discourse] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] feotakahari) On giving advice that some people desperately need and other people are thoroughly sick of.

[mild cw: embarrassment squick] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] contrarianarchon) With great archiving power comes great archiving responsibility. (Update: writing this comment inspired me to go researching web-scraper programs to see if anyone has one without the "must download each useless page and *then* delete it" problem, and it turns out our old friends ArchiveTeam do. I'm testing it out right now, and after the first couple hours of troubleshooting things seem to be going well.)

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] sigmaleph) In which I offer a bunch of book recs.

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Links:

[none suitable for this section]



There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

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brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
Comments on my own posts:

[cw: amnesia, poverty, anxiety, probably venting] The one about coping mechanisms [one comment, not counting the postscript]

[mild cw: death] I saw Spot click [two comments]

The one about changes to Flight Rising alchemy

Lifelogging

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] itsbenedict) Alexander Wales has written even more great stuff than previously believed! Over a million words more, in fact!

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] yvannairie) That feel when you check on someone you ghosted a while back, and they have not improved at all.

[cw: amnesia] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] contrarianarchon) The characteristics of different types of Tumblr linkrot.

[cw: illness] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] contrarianarchon) Adapting to both the pathogens and shops of a new home.

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Links:

(Tumblr *still* hasn't fixed the backwards post ordering.) [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] pedantricks, but read the whole thread; h/t [tumblr.com profile] fermatas-theorem) *Somebody* couldn't wait until 2021 and started doing earth-pod memes already.

(Ditto, although this thread doesn't actually lose much if you read it in reverse order.) [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] swordsdance, but read the whole thread; h/t [tumblr.com profile] itsbenedict) Birds wearing bells as hats.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (by [tumblr.com profile] evenstarsinthesky; h/t [tumblr.com profile] consumptive-sphinx) Creative [reusable shopping containers].
brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
Comments on my own posts:

[none this time]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] mindstalk) Coping with pollen allergies.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] yvannairie) Siikr is a very useful tool.

[Blogspot; Wayback] (OP by Michael Mock) I finally listened to Beneath the Skin! Maybe someday I'll even get around to those 300 other songs! [four comments, two of which are new, two of which are old enough to pre-date my practice of comment roundups]

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] yvannairie) The hassle (or not) of moving between phones.

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Links:

[cw: nsfw text] [Tumblr; Wayback] (by [tumblr.com profile] unpretty) An *extremely* relatable series of posts about how hard it is to find good porn without other, turn-off fetishes snuck into it.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (by [tumblr.com profile] lewisandquark; h/t [tumblr.com profile] itsbenedict) The first lines of nonexistent novels, written by GPT-2. I want to read so many of these.

Laugh rule:
[cw: drugs] [Rock Paper Shotgun; Wayback] (by Nate Crowley) Deadliest Catch: The Game.
and queued up a spotify playlist that was just different covers of “Wanted Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi on repeat.
brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
[cw: what it says on the tin (no pictures)]

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brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
Had to postpone last week's backups because my laptop had enough on its plate, so here is a somewhat larger roundup.


Comments on my own posts:

[none this time]

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Comments on other people's posts:

(Note: this post is subject to a formatting glitch. The last post is still last, but all *other* posts in the thread are in reversed order.) [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] icarian-arts) Today in "memes that came to people in visions": accidental tips on phone customisation.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] femmenietzsche) The social acceptability of the word "bitch".

[Dreamwidth; Wayback crawling forbidden OP apparently later turned crawlability on] (OP by [personal profile] yvannairie) The complicatedness of musical taste. [three comments]

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] yvannairie) Pokemon Go identity logistics.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] thisismycursed3rdblog; addressing [tumblr.com profile] itsmaledict (Halloween alt of [tumblr.com profile] itsbenedict)) Just how many twists can we put into enemies-to-friends-to-lovers?

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Links:

[FiveThirtyEight; Wayback] (by Ben Casselman; h/t Scott Alexander) As a 25-year-old part-time student in a certificate program at a school that prides itself on its *high* acceptance rate and who has never lived on-campus, I really feel this article.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (by [tumblr.com profile] doctorbeth) Adorable stuffed-animal clothing.

[mild cw: war] [Tumblr; Wayback] (by [tumblr.com profile] the-battle-lesbian; h/t [tumblr.com profile] consumptive-sphinx) Shaun Keenan does some excellent art of dinosaurs in (relatively) modern contexts.

[BBC News; Wayback] (can't find a byline; h/t Matt Levine) The best roundabouts in the United Kingdom.

[cw: abuse] [The Outline; Wayback] (by Joanna Mang; h/t Scott Alexander) I remember Shakesville, though I was never a regular reader: it was too intense for even 2011!me to handle. (And I say this as someone who was once among the top 5 most prolific commenters on Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.) I disagree with Scott's assessment, though: to the extent that Shakesville strikes me as less terrifying than it did before, it is only because I have since met people whose goodwill is not conditional on staying in the good graces of Shakesville's ilk.

[Raph's Website; Wayback] (by Raph Koster) A postmortem of the MMO Star Wars: Galaxies. I never played it and am not sure I've even heard of it before, but the series is interesting nonetheless.

(although why one would deliberately create a world in which everything decays I do not know; decay is the worst part of the real world and I for one would rather not have it in my escapism, especially not in such a...well, *inescapable* manner)

Laugh rule:
[Sputnikmusic; Wayback] (by SowingSeason)
traits not necessarily suitable for a band that regularly references animals and shouts hey! an average of nine time per song.

(I finally got around to listening to this 2015 album recently. Very solid album, only a couple of duds. (Whereas with My Head Is an Animal I only liked about the first half.) My favourite was "We Sink", because I am predictable and also it is pretty.)


Bonus: a few selections from my recent bookmark-tidying.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (by [personal profile] deird1) The Vegemite Effect. (A memory: "This food tastes of lies," I say, waving around a piece of food from the Chinese buffet when I'd been *told* we were going to a steakhouse.)

[Tumblr; Wayback] (by [tumblr.com profile] thatsnotwatyourmomsaid) Hello, you must have found my camera!

[WordPress; Wayback] (by Chris Witham) Welcoming new zombies to the collective.

[K.B. Owen Mysteries; Wayback] (by James Thurber) Viewing Macbeth through the lens of murder mysteries.

Laugh rule:
[Bandcamp; Wayback (while for *best* results you'll need the audio, Wayback *will* at least get you the lyrics)] (by Brooke Abbey) Let me tell you the story, as sad as it's true...
brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
Comments on my own posts:

[cw: discourse, ableism, racism] The one about name pronunciation [four comments, three of which are new]

[cw: poverty] On Universal Basic Income [two comments]

Interesting Fact Meme [four comments]

[cw: amnesia] The one about 1984 and measurement systems

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] sigmaleph) The intricacies of currency exchange. [two comments]

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] wingedcatgirl) Vibrant areas of social media, and making currently dormant areas more vibrant.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] paxamericana; in response to Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal) Subscription audits and self-awareness.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] contrarianarchon) Cultural osmosis; finding new things to read.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] contrarianarchon) Books we were not ready for, and possibly will never be ready for.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] staff) Automattic (the WordPress people) are taking Tumblr off of Oath's hands, which ties the fates of Tumblr and WordPress a little closer together than I'd like.

[cw: food] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] wolffyluna) Having lots of freezer space is good.

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Links:

[Uncanny Magazine; Wayback] (by Sarah Pinsker, which is apparently *not* a pseudonymic conceit but the author's longstanding name; I only just realised this now) I'd been hearing praise for "that Hugo nominee where there's a murder at a convention of alternate-universe selves" and was a bit curious, but hadn't realised it was freely available. For those of you in the same boat, here it is. (I read it and enjoyed it.)

[TASTE; Wayback] (by Mari Uyehara) Different brands of kosher salt have significantly different densities: exercise caution when following recipes that don't specify which brand of kosher salt they were normed on. (I wonder what Windsor's density is: this article is aimed at Americans and doesn't say. *googles* Well, here's a chart from Windsor comparing the density of its kosher salt to that of table salt, from which the density relative to other kosher salts can presumably be deduced.)
brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
Comments on my own posts:

Postscript to phone post

[cw: discourse, ableism, racism] The one about name pronunciation

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] mindstalk) History blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry is amazing, go read it.

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Links:

[The Verge; Wayback] (by Josh Dzieza; h/t Matt Levine) Nomads who travel the United States looking for clearance products to resell on Amazon Marketplace.

[The Recipes Project; Wayback] (by Jack B. Bouchard) The history of freeze-dried cod (aka "stockfish", for its resemblance to stocks of wood).
brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
Comments on my own posts:

[cw: spoilers for Star Trek DS9 season 6, Christian fundamentalism] The postscript to the one about Admiral Ross's handling of the Prophets

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] wingedcatgirl) Ask memes and their transferability to Dreamwidth.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] contrarianarchon) How to get rid of individual browser autocompletes.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] little-brisk) David Tennant is, inexplicably, not playing Aziraphale.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] harrysgucciteam) Which stove burner is your favourite?

[cw: puberty, aging, (fairly mild) amnesia] [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] overlordtulip; partly in response to [tumblr.com profile] rustingbridges) Having a pre-teen girl body forever really wouldn't be that bad, especially when you consider how small the difference in physical form is between "12-year-old girl" and "18-year-old woman". [two comments]

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] contrarianarchon) Going to a coffeeshop for nine years to hang out with the staff: who cares if it's now a mattress store?

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] thedarlingone) Video-game serial monogamy.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] rustingbridges) Peasant-tier opinions on New York pizza.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] contrarianarchon) Morphological-freedom memes; browser extensions for backing up comment/post drafts. (In general I won't include meme prompts in these roundups, but this has other conversation.) [two comments]

[cw: violence] [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] rustingbridges) Anger-fueled property damage in fiction, and its level of realism.

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Links:

[alice maz; Wayback] (by Alice Maz) This post was going around Tumblr a while back, and now that I'm shifting back towards Flight Rising I've been thinking about it again. I'm less ruthless than Alice--in part out of another form of self-interest--but I still find some of the stunts she pulled as a player merchant on a Minecraft server inspiring and/or relatable, and all of them are impressive and fascinating.

Laugh rule:
[Decoder Ring Theatre; Wayback (although Wayback won't do you *much* good, as it's mostly audio)] (by Gregg Taylor)
You're familiar with commentary tracks, you've seen DVDs, you've seen television, where someone, you know, plays an episode and then talks all over it and ruins it forever? That's what I'm going to do now!

Also:
Ooh, *that's* how I'm gonna pass some time. With a musical cue! And some snoring! Oh, the artistry!

(no but seriously, the Red Panda Adventures are amazing and while I have not had a chance to try much of Gregg Taylor's other works they are probably also great; highly recommended)
brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
Comments on my own posts:

[cw: poverty, first-world problems, government bullshit] The one about the burden of U.S. citizenship [three comments]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] cryptovexillologist) Children keeping unimportant secrets as practice.

[cw: amnesia] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] thedarlingone) Current (lack of) fannish blogging platforms. [three comments]

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] thedarlingone) Dreamwidth writing styles. [two comments]

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] contrarianarchon) Inspiring videos from space agencies. [two comments]

[cw: illness, food]
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Links:

Laugh rule:
[New York Times; Wayback] (by Caity Weaver; h/t Matt Levine)

I investigated the possibility of purchasing Dunkaroos on the Dark Web, and discovered to my horror that three people in Australia had recently been charged with running a syndicate that moved roughly $12 million worth of drugs “disguised as candy” across the country. I envisioned myself ripping the foil from a pack of hard-won Dunkaroos and finding only LSD tabs inside. I couldn’t handle that kind of letdown.


The link roundup I got this from quoted the line “I transformed my iPhone into a landline by disabling notifications for every application except calls, and leaving it plugged into a wall outlet in my kitchen.”, and I would like to point out that if you need a landline-like thing for any reason, leaving a cell phone plugged into a spot in your house is in many cases cheaper than an actual landline. (assuming you choose your phone plan right, of course) Use a flip phone, though, unless you were going to have a spare iPhone lying around anyway.

If you want, you can get a gateway that allows you to connect the phone to your house's landline infrastructure: that way you can have multiple receivers in various parts of the house. We have this one, although it was cheaper at the time we bought it and might not still be the best option.

(We used to leave a flip phone plugged into a living-room outlet, but when Dad started needing a cell plan we gave the number to him. While it does mean he has to relay messages received while out and about (it still connects to the gateway when he's home), it beats needing to buy a separate plan.)
brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
reincarnation-verse fic while looking for porn.

(apparently the title character limit is too short)

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"before they convinced you life is war", by [archiveofourown.org profile] EclipseWing. Harry Potter characters reincarnated into a more-or-less X-Men universe: if you had magic in the old world, you get a mutant power in this one. Amoral read-write empath Tom Riddle and (initially) reluctant mind-controller Harry Potter must team up to escape the re-education facility they're trapped in and survive in a mutant-hating world, despite remembering enough of their respective past lives to be well aware of their status as mortal enemies.

It's a little unpolished, but mostly just in a "probably didn't have a beta" way, and the plot is intriguing.
brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
Comments on my own posts:

[cw: what it says on the tin, plus arguably incest] Orgasms are a memetic hazard [two comments]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[AO3; Wayback] (OP by [archiveofourown.org profile] unicornsandfibonacci) The Semi-Weekly Mandatory Gathering of Long-Suffering Fictional Policepersons and Associated Archetypes.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] sigmaleph) Thinking in third person.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] itsbenedict) Floating Point is both good and still available.

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Links:

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] thattallnerdybean; h/t [tumblr.com profile] sophus-b) On today's episode of the Vantablack Saga: "The Colouriest Colouring Book", by Stuart Semple.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] deadmutati0n; h/t [tumblr.com profile] drethelin) The thin red line between graffiti and renovation markers.

Laugh rule:
[Slate Star Codex; Wayback] (by Scott Alexander)



(I'm guessing somebody's already gone and worked out how modern Harvard tuition compares to the modern price of buying beef by the side? *checks* More or less.)
brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
Comments on my own posts:

The first part of the Runescape liveblogging [three comments]

The one about Ed Sheeran

The one about accumulating software prerequisites

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] tilthat; in response to [tumblr.com profile] sophus-b) The Pope Rap continues to be great.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] inu-fiction; in response to [tumblr.com profile] maryellencarter) Consider Wordpress for image hosting. (Though since my new DW images are sharing storage space with my Tumblr backup, I *am* worried I'm going to run out of media-storage space on my account, after 7+ years of Tumbling. I've mentioned in Tumblr tags a couple times that I'm a lot more reluctant to reblog posts with images now, proportionately to how many images and how many frames they have: I have to think about whether it's worth the space.)

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] rustingbridges) Did you know they make shaker bottles of finely ground salt, the better to stick to popcorn kernels?

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] gasmaskaesthetic) Have you ever set yourself on fire for fun? (No.)

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] sophus) I inspired somebody else to start making sure the Internet Archive had copies of all their links! (And Sophus uses the laugh rule, too, so that's *two* blogging practices they got from me! I love being a positive influence.)

(For those of you who don't know, I invented the laugh rule. (Quite possibly other people in other places have invented it independently, but from the timeline of events† I strongly suspect that every laugh-rule-using rationalist can trace it back to me.) It's been very gratifying to see other people picking it up, to see the positive impact I've had on the community, to know I've inspired people to make the world a bit more joyful.)

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] ilzolende; in response to [personal profile] contrarianarchon) Approaches to browser tab management. [three comments]

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] nuclearspaceheater; in response to [tumblr.com profile] rustingbridges) Left vs right shift keys, long-ago typos, and different approaches social-media websites can take. [three comments, two of which are new]

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] redbeardace; in response to [tumblr.com profile] rustingbridges) The first-degree-ask bug remains unfixed and poorly documented; also, reblogs without commentary don't use up the bugginess. [two comments, one of which is new]

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] feotakahari; in response to [tumblr.com profile] archonofquandaries) There is a time and a place for reading hot political takes, and it is *not* while looking for porn. [two comments, one of which is new]

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] contrarianarchon) Dreamwidth and angle brackets, it turns out, do not mix.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] contrarianarchon) Bloxp is glitchy, but sometimes useful (at least in theory). [two comments]

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] moral-autism; in response to [tumblr.com profile] serinemolecule and [tumblr.com profile] theopjones) The relative usefulness of laptops and smartphones in different situations. [five comments, four of which are new]

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] voxette-vk) How to operate a doorknob with no hands.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (in response to [tumblr.com profile] agapi42) Lying about your age for fun and profit. (If by profit, you mean chocolate.)

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] contrarianarchon) Wife-husband team Ursula Vernon and Kevin Sonney make some very nice podcasts.

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Links:

[Uncanny Magazine; Wayback] (by Vina Jie-Min Prasad; h/t [profile] flakesesomlys) A mostly-fluffy short story about a sapient robot getting into fandom.

[Atlantic; Wayback] (by Ed Yong) Appetite suppressants originally intended for humans might also work on Aedes aegypti?

Highlighted comment:
[personal profile] sophus uses music jargon to explain why Ed Sheeran sounds so different in different songs.

Laugh rule:
[personal profile] youzicha shares a Reddit thread about people who may or may not be Eliezer Yudkowsky.

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†Back when I was the only person I knew of who did it, multiple rationalists cited it as a thing they particularly liked about my blog.
brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
We begin our story in 2012, when a game known as Find the Airport swept Tumblr.

There was (technically, still is) a website called MapCrunch. If you went to MapCrunch, it would display a random spot on Google Street View. You could interact with it in the normal Street View ways: move around, zoom in and out. You could, optionally, have MapCrunch not tell you where the spot was.

In Find the Airport, you set MapCrunch to anonymised-map mode, got your random spot, and attempted to navigate to an airport. (The idea being that you had awoken in an unknown location and had to make your way home.)

While Find the Airport had its good aspects and *was* possible to win (I won once, finding an airport in southern France), the mid-late game was often a long, frustrating slog. While there was always the possibility of finding a neat thing to take a screenshot of and post on your blog (and many did), the fun parts were almost all at the beginning, in which you attempted to figure out from contextual clues where MapCrunch had put you.

---

Enter the successor† to Find the Airport: GeoGuessr. In GeoGuessr, you're plunked down in an anonymised bit of Google Street View, and the explicit, site-supported goal is to figure out where you are from contextual clues. When you are ready to guess, you can place a pin on a zoomable world map. The site will then give you a point score based on your pin's crow-flight distance from the actual location.

It's still up to you how much assistance you're willing to allow yourself. Personally, I find it most fun to play by a rule of "I can use everything except other Google Maps tabs". Each round is a hunt for clues, often in seemingly-innocuous things, that I can stick into a search engine or look up on Wikipedia. Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a certain gratification in finding that you already know everything you need to know to deduce your location, but playing with assistance is part of how you learn those things you need to know.

There are a bunch of modes, competing against other players or on certain restricted maps, but I haven't tried them myself: I just stick to the classic one-player all-maps mode.

It's a fun puzzle, and a nice way to learn some neat bits of geography and explore places you might never have thought to look at otherwise. And if, like me, you enjoy the puzzle aspect of stalking people but refrain for ethical reasons, you might find this fills a similar mental niche. Bits of Google Map, after all, don't mind if you doxx them. :)

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This post brought to you by playing a game of GeoGuessr and getting within a few kilometres on all five rounds. Take that, rural Australia!

(it also helps that I'm American enough to recognise an outline of Ohio on a state-highway road sign)

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†Although I'm not sure if it was *intended* as a successor, or if it was a convergent-evolution thing.
brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
I have been variously busy and sick, so here is a longer linkspam to catch up.

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Comments on my own posts:

[none this time]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] buckykingofmemes; response is to [personal profile] sigmaleph) Zeugma; Tumblr silently fails to display certain formatting under even more circumstances than previously believed.

[cw: cannibalism, fantasy racism] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] oligopsony) Thought of another thing to say about the ghoul worldbuilding.

[cw: poverty] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] theopjones) In which I continue to have feels about Vimes Boot Theory.

[Wordpress; Wayback] (OP by Ozy Brennan; response is to Aapje) Canada can't make up its collective mind about which date format to use.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] ms-demeanor; response is to [tumblr.com profile] rustingbridges) Apparently the business-laptop market became very weird about two years ago, which suggests I have about three to five years before the laptop market I interact with becomes very weird. We'll see. (Maybe the businesspeople on the front lines will take the brunt of it?)

(Also, apparently there are people who *don't* get their personal laptops from the used business-laptop market? There are laptops that are specifically *made* to be personal laptops? Like, I guess I was vaguely aware that this was a thing, but this post--though mostly about business computers--brings it home a little more.)

[cw: discussion of infohazards (but without saying what they are)] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] somnulencelogencia) When someone tells you you're better off not knowing something because it will scar you for life, they're usually right. (To help you make an informed decision about whether to read *this* post: OP specifies which story the infohazard they're talking about is found in (no link, but enough to easily google it), while I do not; I have read the story OP refers to, and the infohazard there canonically *cannot* break the fourth wall.)

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] sigmaleph) Podcasts and video-game grinding go great together. Podcasts and sufficiently-simple archiving tasks go fairly well together too.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] thedarlingone) Various responses to the responses to some ask memes I sent; the longest bit is about the relationship between temperature and type of clothing worn (and how this relationship seems to often be a lot weaker in other people than it is in me).

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by [tumblr.com profile] prosopanonymous; response is to [tumblr.com profile] rustingbridges) The evolutionary origins of prosopagnosia. Addendum here.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by [personal profile] thedarlingone) In which I help track down a link to a translation/joke-explainer. (Some pretty good fic recs in here too.)

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Links:

[Atlantic; Wayback] (by Ed Yong) Fetal nurse sharks swim around within their mother's wombs (yes, there are multiple wombs), and have even been known to poke their heads out.

[Financial Times; Wayback] (by David Smith; h/t Matt Levine) The life of a professional yacht deliverer.

[cw: amnesia] [TextFiles; Wayback] (by Jason Scott) Happy 10th birthday to the Archive Team! (Note: this is the 10-year-old post proposing its creation.)

[Wordpress; Wayback] (by Martin Gregory) Professional trash-picker comes across a collection of photographs from the mid 19th to early 20th centuries, showcases them on his blog. Some neat glimpses into the past here.
brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
[cw: amnesia, Maze Runner spoilers]

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(This post brought to you by watching the CinemaSins sporkings of the Maze Runner movies. I've been finding that CinemaSins are pretty good for jogging, because they come with subtitles so you don't have to be able to clearly hear what he's saying over the sound of the treadmill. I do wish, though, that he'd consistently subtitle what the characters are saying and not just what he's saying: occasionally he does, but mostly he doesn't. Fairly often he reacts to something and I didn't catch the thing he's reacting to.)
brin_bellway: forget-me-not flowers (Default)
[cw: arguably nsfw text, definitely nsfw links]

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