Writing Prompt: Dialogue
“Love is a poison that kills you slowly.”
barbie official: we’re gonna put all our movies on youtube for free!
youtube, still selling their movies: huh? what’d they say they were going to do?
and a working link
This link is the official channel, where while there is no playlist, it should hopefully be easy for enough to navigate and it works as of April 14th, 2024
Prison guards: Iroh? Escape? Ha! That weak, senile old man couldn’t escape if we rolled a red carpet to the door!
Iroh alone in his cell:
I saw the video and thought "that guy looks like Jack Black", then I scrolled down to read that. Yup, sure was Jack Black. Also yes, the above is actually true, his mother Judith Love Cohen did indeed help create the abort-guidance system that rescued the Apollo 13 astronauts.
Wait does this mean people are unfamiliar with this iconic post
Guys, it's time to drop Google.
Google isn't the only search engine in the whole internet, there are others! And we need to diversify our search engine usage or we're gonna end up where we were a decade and change ago with the Internet Explorer issue. We can't let a single brand monopolize everything! This is why Google Search can afford to suck so hard: because people use it regardless! And there are alternatives.
A little bit about search engines, there are 3 types: crawlers, which work by scraping the web and developing their own indexes; metas, which get their results from the crawler-type search engines and therefore depend entirely upon them; and mixed, those which have their own (small) index but also pull results from the crawlers.
Right now, there are a couple of independant crawlers apart from Google, Bing (from Mycrosoft) and Yandex (the Russian one): this are Mojeek and Wiby.
Supporting independant crawlers is the easiest way to fight the shittyfication of the internet.
Mojeek.com is an independant british search engine with its own growing index commited to fighting internet censorship. It's small, and therefore it's usability isn't as good as that of the Big Three, but it doesn't censor, it's fairly respectful of people's privacy, and it doesn't drown you in adds. For those old enough to remember, it's a lot like early 2000s Google: you can find what you need, but if you write "dig shelter" instead of "dog shelter", that's what it's gonna search for. That said, please try to use it and support it as much as you can before we end up entirely dependant on Google, Bing and big corps adds. [click here to go to Mojeek]
Wiby.me is a new indie project that is literally dedicated to bringing back the old-school web. It's goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. So, for those of you who can't find any answers to technical questions beyond highschool level because Google buries them under a gazillion commercial sites and other meaningless shit, keep an eye on this project! It has a lot of potential. And, if you know of any personal websites that have great stuff but have been murdered by Google, you can go over to Wiby and submit it to their index. [click here to go to Wiby]
Aside from those, there are also meta search engines you can use to ween yourself off Google and search for random, day to day stuff.
Qwant.com is my go-to here—it has its own index and pulls from Bing, has relatively little censorship, and is fairly private. This is the one I use on my phone for everyday stuff. [click here to go to Qwant].
Historically, DuckDuckGo has always been a go-to for those who want a search engine that respects your privacy and doesn't censor. Personally, I've never been a fan, and there have been a LOT of scandals in recent years. It supposedly has its own index and pulls from Bing, much like Qwant, but I don't know. I just don't like it. Still, I've added it here for completeness' sake.
If you have Firefox Mobile browser, you can set any of these search engines as your default search engine and you can also add the others as secondary search engines and switch quicky from the navigation bar. If you don't have firefox mobile though, what are you doing with your life??? Go get it!! It is So. Much. Better. You can have add blockers and watch YouTube add free, for free! You can have reader mode and dark mode add-ons! You can have the world oh my goshhhh, drop Chrome!!
4get.ca is my last recommendation: it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn't have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it's the best for reaserch, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can. It's also very privacy conscious, so that's an other plus, and it has that late 90s / early 2000s vibe that I totally dig. [click here to go to 4get]
If you wanna learn more about the topic, you can over to the Search Engine Map [click here] which shows you a bunch of Search Engines and how they relate to each other. Or you can also go over to this one dude's personal website whose done A Lot of reaserch into the topic (way more than me) and seems to be pretty legit, if a little extra. [click here to go to digdeeper.neocities.org] Hope this infodump is useful to someone =D
PS: here's to hoping all the links work!
EDIT: eliminated the "read more". Figured there are enough mega long posts in tumblr, one more won't make no difference lol (tho the version w the read more has been reblogged already, in case you'd rather)
abandonware should be public domain. force companies to actively support and provide products if they don't wanna lose the rights to them
Game companies hate emulation, but none of them seem to understand that a lot of us would just buy ROMs from them directly if we could. I don't want a fifth remake of Final Fantasy IV, I want to pay five bucks for the 3MB file you already made bank with thirty years ago. Nobody who wants to play something for the purpose of retro gaming is going to consider a $40 remake as the alternative option, and we're certainly not going to let the original dissappear. They're crying about opportunity cost for a product they're not even selling.
op i know you're probably talking about like, video games, etc, but this is also critical for research science - my lab has so much abandonware, either because the company's out of business, or the company decided to not maintain it, and it's a fucking nightmare. we have two windows 95 computers that are CRITICAL for performing experiments/data analysis because the software needed is abandonware. one of the main roles for a guy in my lab is to maintain these little dinosaurs because if they go out, we lose access to ~20 years of raw data for research. part of why is that these companies also make their own file types, and make it difficult-to-impossible to convert those file types without their specific software. by habit, i convert all research files to more generic versions (txt, pdf, tif, etc) so that i minimize risk of losing my shit, but some stuff can't be converted.
for example, we have a microscope that is perfectly functional, good microscope, but its software is abandonware because the company refused to maintain it. the company is still in business, still makes essentially the exact same software, but they made all of the old tech incompatible with new software to force people to buy the new microscope tech. it would cost a quarter million dollars to replace this microscope. this perfectly good microscope.
so like, i know a lot of people look at the original post here and go "well op just wants old video games to play" (which is valid! games companies should not be able to push shit to abandonware and then close it off) but also this is critical for like. biomedical research. if y'all had any idea how much basic infrastructure built on science relies on shit that is technically abandonware, you would probably be horrified.
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, to listen to doctors and get my flu vaccine and any shots i could because they remembered Before.
then they started fighting Covid precautions.
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that the ozone was disappearing and the earth was dying and we needed to recycle and save the planet.
now my parents think climate change is a myth.
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that racism was a plague, that we had to love and accept everyone, that we should never judge before walking a mile in their shoes.
then they told me that protesting for my Black siblings was wrong.
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that we needed to give to the poor. working at soup kitchens. making quilts. collecting food and money and supplies. building houses. because it was the christian and just plain right thing to do.
now they look at me, on food stamps with their grandchildren, and lament the "welfare state".
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and that any rich man, especially an immoral one, should never run our country.
you can guess who they voted for.
i remember adults telling me, as a kid, so very much.
when did they forget?
Time to bring this back. Again.
Apparently this is evergreen. Dammit.
I remember adults telling me, as a kid that girls can be equal to boys in all fields including athletics. Now, they consider girls to be delicate flowers who could never hope to compete against boys.
This might suck to hear, but if you're a people pleaser that is motivated by praise and avoids disagreements, you are easy to manipulate.
When I was in therapy after surviving years of domestic violence, my therapist had to tell me that my personality was primed for abuse and we needed to work on that so I would be better equipped to see the red flags and respond appropriately in the future.
I'm still working on this, and it's been 8 years. If you tell someone how you want to be treated, what behaviors you don't tolerate in your life, what you're looking for in that relationship, and they react negatively, don't compromise yourself. Just move on.
This one's for all the praise-kink girlies: differentiate, self-actualize, stay sexy
This resonated with more people than I thought, so here are some phrases to practice when you would normally default to people pleasing:
- I'm not comfortable with that.
- I'd rather not, but thank you for the offer!
- You're welcome to disagree, but that's not something I'm okay with.
- No.
- It's personal, and I'd prefer to keep it private.
- That doesn't work for me. How about x
- I respect your opinion, but I'd rather do it my way.
- That is behavior that I don't tolerate.
- To each their own.
- I'm not looking for feedback right now, but if I'm looking for input later, I'll let you know.
- Oh, I'm not sure I agree; I thought x
- When you did/said x, I wasn't okay with that.
- I don't accept your apology.
- I can accept your apology once you've addressed the problem.
- Hey, could you help me with x?
- I need to stop.
- I need some time to myself.
Just remember, your thoughts, feelings, and opinions are what make you unique, and you can change your mind later, so don't be afraid to say them out loud. Work through things. Don't dodge them.
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