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tetedurfarm · 1 day ago

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get started in meat rabbits masterpost!

yesterday i accidentally hijacked a friend's post and got way more engagement than i expected, which is both amazing and exhausting. so today i present to you: a big post full of resources and answers to the most common questions i've been getting! please refer to this now before dming me with questions <3

information below the cut!

why rabbits?

because they're one of (and in my opinion, THE,) best small-scale meat animal out there. they are relatively small, extremely quiet, can live in cages and therefore do not take up much space, and have a higher feed conversion rate (meaning they make more meat per lb of feed) than chickens, and their poop is AMAZING for gardening! in the footprint of a washer and dryer you can have a trio of breeding animals and space for growing out their litters if you use stacking cages. you just can't beat that.

what do they taste like?

like chicken or turkey. domestic rabbit meat is a very mild, white meat, and can be substituted for chicken in almost every meal. most of my rabbit i grind into mince and use it in place of ground beef. my rabbits, at least, get enough fat to make it unnecessary to cut the mince with pork or beef fat, so even the burgers are really juicy!

how much do they cost?

this depends heavily on where you live, though imo they have a fairly low upfront cost relative to other livestock. your biggest upfront expensive will be cages, though you can find good deals on cages and other equipment at livestock auctions/swaps and craiglist/kijiji/similar. the rabbits themselves can be anywhere from free to $100+, though i personally would not pay more than $30-$35 USD for a meat animal (but again, your average prices may vary.) after that, it's all in the price of feed.

feed costs vary from area to area and brand to brand - generally a locally milled feed will be a bit more cost-effective but they can also be lower quality so do your research. depending on your area, you can also feed rabbits partially or even completely on forage or pasture, just make sure you keep an eye on your parasite loads and weights to ensure they are eating enough.

this is a good site that discusses rabbit safe forage: https://riseandshinerabbitry.com/2012/02/26/safe-food-list-for-rabbits/

and this is a good site discussing hay: https://hoppyharlequinsrabbitry.weebly.com/hay-chart.html

this page is focused on other larger livestock but is a decent basic rundown on reading a feed lablel: https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/2070/2023/03/FS138E_Reading-a-Feed-Tag.pdf

and a basic overview of rabbit nutrition: https://www.merckvetmanual.com/exotic-and-laboratory-animals/rabbits/nutrition-of-rabbits#Pelleted-Diets_v54343534

i do not personally believe that feeding hay is necessary for rabbits to be healthy, which is contrary to what most of you may have heard from online sources. we'll talk about that in a minute. all commercially-available pelleted rabbit feets are made with hay, and the 'long-stem' thing you read about is based on studies in ruminant animals that DO need a 'grass mat' to digest properly...but rabbits are not ruminants. they chew up their hay into fine dust, which is basically what pellets are anyway.

what other equipment do i need?

obviously, your first step should be cages. i prefer cages that are either 24x24 or 30x30 inches depending on the size of the rabbit. you generally want a cage big enough for the animal to lay flat on its belly with its legs out and not touch at least one of the sides (i prefer them to be able to touch none,) and tall enough that they can sit up comfortably. i like to err on the side of larger for breeding does, since their nestbox will take up floor space for a few weeks, and the kits need room to run around and grow before they are weaned. weaned kits need a larger cage or hutch to grow out in until they are eating size.

these cages can be wire bottomed or solid bottomed, just be aware of the hygiene differences between these styles of cages. wire cages are not evil, and will not harm a rabbit's feet provided it has proper density of fur. you can avoid foot problems by buying and breeding rabbits with well-furred feet.

other necessary equipment includes: feeders (j-feefers or pro-b feeders are my favourites), some way to provide water such as bottles, crocks, or an automatic watering system, a hay rack if you want to provide hay, grooming tools such as combs and brushes (if applicable; most rabbits will not need much grooming,) nail clippers, a first-aid kit containing things such as scissors, vet wrap, antibiotic gels and drops, saline solution, fenbendazole (brand name panacur, a dewormer,) gas medications such as simethicone/gas-x, critical care (a specially formulated powdered feed that you can mix into a gruel and syringe feed rabbits that won't eat on their own,) probiotic powder, electrolyte powder, and of course, toys!

make sure any provided toys are edible (so avoid plastic,) and will not get turned into mush and cause dirty mats in the cage when peed on. toilet paper and paper towel tubes are great, as are just chunks of untreated lumber offcuts, wooden baby blocks, or soda boxes. if you have some splurging money, bird toy websites like abirdtoy.com have amazing selections of things that rabbits love destroying. i recommend the refillable skewers!

what about vet care?

this is a fairly divisive topic. most vets do not know much about rabbits, and those that do are typically operating on outdated or simply untrue information, with research funded by animal rights groups. therefore, a lot of meat and show breeders do not trust or use vets unless the situations are dire or there is disease testing to be done, and then generally we'll go to our state's ag exstension or college lab. i don't want to come off as anti-vet, i am far from it. but i and most people i know have not had good experiences with vets treating rabbits.

in general, exotic animal vet care (and yes, rabbits are considered exotic pets,) is extremely cost-prohibitive in general, much less when you have multiple animals. like most farmers, rabbit breeders typically handle basic medical situations ourselves.

medirabbit is a great resource for rabbit medical information including illnesses and medication dosages: https://www.medirabbit.com/

how many rabbits do i need?

the average litter size is between 5 and 8 kits, and rabbits can breed montly (though i recommend giving the girls breaks between litters depending on how they kept condition.) a trio of one buck and two does can produce a very good amount of meat for a one or two person household. my spouse and i lived on five or six litters a year for a very long time, using rabbit as our primary meat source!

do they need friends?

no. despite what house rabbit circles tell you, rabbits do NOT need companions and in fact having cagemates can stress them out unnecessarily. rabbits live in warrens in the wild, yes, but that is a survival tactic and the warrens are usually very violent and only work because they can run away when they need to. in capitivity, rabbits that are cohabitated can and commonly will KILL one another. it is much safer and less stressful to keep rabbits in their own spaces. i promise they won't mind.

rabbit colonies, where they are raised together in more 'natural' systems, are becoming very popular with homesteading circles but you should not jump into colonies as your first way to keep rabbits. they require just as much if not even more time and effort to manage than your typical cage setup. plus, you have to have the space to do that, which not everyone has.

can you help me find rabbits?

maybe! if you live in the united states and are comfortable sharing your local craigslist, i can take a look and link you to any rabbits or equipment i think would be worth your time. if you are local to me in western washington's i-5 corridor counties, i may have rabbits i can sell you for the price of feed and gas, but that depends on availability. if you are on the olympic peninsula in kitsam, jefferson, or clallam counties, hit up my buddy ren @buttonbuckfarm for similar services.

arent't they really fragile?

yes and no. rabbits are prey animals with an extremely specialised digestive system. if you are familiar with horses...same deal. if a rabbit stops eating, it will die, and they love bloating/colicking just like horses. there are also a few diseases that are common in rabbits that you should keep an eye out for, especially if you pasture or forage raise.

that being said, rabbits are not made of glass. you can flip them, you can poke them, prod them, put them in a car, drive them across the country, and squish them into weird shapes on a show table. as long as you take precautions during stressful situations and desensitise them to things like handling and transport early, they're shockingly physically hardy despite their sensitive guts.

i'm scared to kill them...what if i mess up?

it's perfectly understandable to fear the end of the process of raising rabbits. and accidents do happen. slaughter is a skill that must be practiced, and maybe you can take solace in knowing that we have all messed one up at some point or another. when this happens, the only thing you can do is try again as quickly as you can until you can confirm the animal is dead. and then take a minute to decompress.

it comes easy to me, but i know that is not true for everyone. but i am a firm believer that if you are going to eat meat, you should know where it comes from and how it gets to your plate. the best thing we can do for our food is to give it a wonderful life, kill as kindly as we can, and use as much of it as we are able.

here is the AVMA's list of approved humane slaughter methods: https://www.avma.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/Guidelines-on-Euthanasia-2020.pdf

and you can find pretty good videos of the various methods demonstrated on rabbits specifically on youtube:

broomstick, choke chain, bunny ballista, hopper popper

please be aware that the above videos show animals being killed. though if you are reading this i imagine you are prepared to see that.

how do i process them once they're dead?

this is another one you can find pretty good videos of online. visiting a local rabbit show may get you in contact with someone willing to teach you in person, as well!

i am working on a big project website that is basically all i think you should know about raising rabbits, which will include detailed slaughter, skinning, and butchering videos, though as of now these are not available. i plan to have this project at least usably done by the end of the year!

ok so what's the thing with pet owners vs breeders

you may have noticed that i've been doing some 'as you may have heard' debunking in this post. that's because there is a very huge divide between the beliefs and practices of pet rabbit owners versus show and meat breeders and owners. why? well, that's complicated, but the big bad evil guy that is the first place to point at is the House Rabbit Society, or HRS.

the house rabbit society is basically rabbit PETA. i am not joking. here is a big masterpost on all their bullshittery: https://www.tumblr.com/o-i-have-too/185596917579/a-masterpost-of-house-rabbit-society-bullshit

i know this comes off as me having an agenda, and i guess i can't say that i don't, but i believe that the HRS' rules and rhetoric are not just wrong they are actively dangerous to follow. i have owned rabbits for nearly a decade and have produced more somewhere in the 1,500 range of animals in that time. i have owned a LOT of rabbits and have experienced all the different ways they can thrive and die and have done a lot of experimenting to find what works. just about everything the HRS says about caring for rabbits is blatantly false according to my experience. proper wire cage floors do not destroy feet. rabbits do not need hay if they eat a good pelleted diet. pellets are not evil or 'fattening' or the main cause of stasis. rabbits do not need leafy greens or veggies. rabbits do not need to be bonded. they are perfectly happy living alone, in cages. flipping a rabbit is not torture and is in fact sometimes necessary for many reasons. meat and show breeders are generally not contributing to the 'overpopulation' problem - if we don't want an animal most of us just eat them. breeding for meat is not evil if it's done appropriately and they are killed humanely.

unfortunately the HRS won the google SEO game and so their website and the sites of others that believe their rhetoric are the only thing that comes up on the first pages of search results. i'm not saying you have to blindly trust me, but i have the experience, and the combined experience of many of my peers both online and offline, that says that basically everything they believe in and preach is just...not true.

anyway that's it, hope this answers most of your questions! i may add to this in the future depending on what other questions i may get. stay tuned for updates on my website project and in general more farm content, rabbit and otherwise :)

#homesteading #rabbits #meat rabbits #animal death /#farming #time to go outside and enjoy the sun...been sitting here too long writing this haha

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timdoubleyou · 11 months ago

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i found jay’s black jacket (an ID guide)

This black jacket is worn by Jay about 9 times throughout Marble Hornets, including his final appearance. And after some weeks of on-and-off research, I think I know the exact make and model.

This post will detail exactly how I found it, and serve as a guide for anyone that wants to find the jacket, whether that's for cosplay purposes, or if you're just keen on collecting items related to MH.

Main post under the cut

Intro

The first step to identifying the jacket was to gather as many references as possible.

I went back to the web series and took screenshots from any entries the jacket makes an appearance. (shoutout to mg549′s very comprehensive MH wardrobe guide, without it this would’ve been much more of a pain)

Jay's jacket is, for the most part, very plain. It's a solid color, full-zip jacket, without any particularly eye-catching logos or other details. I had to look for moments where even the slightest distinction appeared clear on camera, at least as distinct as it can be. Even if it was just close-ups to get the shape of a zipper, or how many buttons are on a sleeve, it was the best I got. While I did manage to find a decent amount of these, there was just one crucial detail that would've made finding it near-impossible; the brand is never shown. Thankfully, I had another resource.

In 2018 Troy Sold a Lot of Stuff

In early 2018, Troy officially announced that MH would be continued in a comic series. To fund the first issue, he held a number of auctions for production items used during the web series on Ebay.

These included items such as Jay’s camera, Brian’s hoodie, A Masky mask, and Jay’s black jacket.

Lo and behold, the jacket listing includes a picture with the brand in clear view. It's from Gap.

Ebay does not archive sold listings older than 90 days. However, Worthpoint, a website for valuing and pricing collectibles, does. Using Worthpoint I was able to find all of these items, (and a lot more, which can be found in this doc I submitted to Archive Hornets)

Identification

With the picture from the listing and the series screencaps, I had a complete ID list.

(Top image is from the Ebay listing, with the contrast adjusted a little for easier viewing. The bottom two images are from Entry #79)

The Gap logo (This specific logo dates the jacket being made anywhere between 1986 and 2009, when it first appears).

Front Zipper (Note the shape)

The two front pockets

The two buttons and pointed cuffs on each sleeve (Second one is a little hard to see but it's jusstt peeping out at the side)

The blue piping in the inner lining

The zipper in the right side inner lining

The gray mesh inner lining

With these in mind, I could now go to the next and longest step-

Finding the Jacket

I combed three resell sites; Ebay, Depop, and Poshmark. My main goal wasn't to actually purchase the jacket, (although, I would like to at some point) but to find a jacket listing that had every identifier, and have a more definite baseline for finding others. I needed to be sure what I had was enough to properly ID the jacket. The references I had stitched together were decent enough, but I wanted to see if there was something better out there.

After tons of page scrolling and tab-switching and comparing and contrasting, I finally got lucky.

(first two images are from crashthecloset's listing on poshmark, last six are from shannfo-76 on ebay)

I haven't bought one myself as of posting, but I feel pretty confident this is it. The jackets were already sold, but every marker seemed to be accounted for. It also revealed new ones, like the reflective pattern and pockets on the inner lining, (zipper on the right side pocket, button on the left pocket) and the materials tag.

With that, here's some final notes that may be helpful if you try looking for the jacket yourself:

Online sellers often describe it as a light jacket, a windbreaker, a 2-in-1, or 3-in-1.

"Gap Mens Black Jacket" is the search phrase I used the most since it yielded a (very) broad result pool.

Most of the jackets I found came from Poshmark or Ebay.

The exact size of Jay’s jacket is unclear. My best guesses are either a US Men’s S or M, since Jay was pretty skinny and of average height. I’ve only been able to find maybe 2 jackets that are a size M, one of which is the first pic in the photoset above.

Gap has sold other black jackets that look remarkably similar to Jay’s, and they do pop up on resell sites. One of these was so similar, the only discernible difference was the style of the logo. I highly recommend making sure it matches the exact one Jay had before purchasing. (It's also more than fine to ask/msg me if you have any doubts!) As long as you know what to look for, you shouldn’t have a problem finding at least one.

One detail that confounded me was this sleeve poking out of Jay's jacket. At first I thought he was wearing a long sleeve underneath, making this shot a continuity error since he appeared to Only be wearing the green short sleeve under the jacket.

@hivemite pointed out that this might be a two-in-one jacket, which has multiple layers for different types of weather. While I have not been able to see the sleeve outside of two shots in entry #79 and #80, one listing I found did describe it as a 3-in-1.

that's about it! hope this helps :)

#marble hornets #jay merrick #ref #over and out #long post #happy entry 80 day. heres some extra tidbits just for the tags #at least two listings called this y2k which is really funny.#it is also strangely difficult to find these in sizes smaller than large #another thing kinda related. worthpoint is a shitty site unfortunately #as you can see with the jacket description. in which it apparently ‘‘works and comes with a charging cable’’#<- i mean that Couldve been an error on the original ebay listing #however that is. impossible to verify now unless someone somewhere had a screenshot #but each mh item from this particular auction there had consistently bad errors that inclines me to say that wasnt the case #ok this went too long for a few extra tidbits but can you tell i lost my mind

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so-i-did-this-thing · 8 months ago

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Where do you find all your neat little trinkets and such? Is it just accumulated over the years, or do you use marketplace, or antique malls, commissioning stuff? I want to add more to my home, but I don't really know where to look outside of hyper specific ebay searches.

I guess, more succinctly, how do you Find Things?

Heya! Finding cool stuff is a lot about doing just enough research. I'll show you how my mind works.

Let's say I saw this cute cat in the wild. I want to buy it, maybe see if it's something fun to collect.

If I use Google lens on the photo, I get some promising results - this is something that was mass-produced!

Let's click on a result.

I've learned something! This ceramic is called "redware" and the figure is from the 1950s. So, off to another web search.

Oh! A maker name! "Shafford." This will make future searches easier. And look - there are other related cats - it looks like as various household items! (If you further researched the original cat, you'd also learn it is a tape measure and was made in Japan.)

Now, let's say you don't have a photo to start with, or just a vague idea of something you might want. Let's hop to Facebook marketplace and see if anyone is selling cute ceramic black cats.

All of these results could go down their own research paths, but again, I'm using the example of the Shafford cats.

Armed with some knowledge, it takes just a few searches to find an impressive haul. Honestly, if that wasn't 5 hrs away from me, I'd buy that lot in a heartbeat, selling/gifting what I don't want.

For future searches, you now have two paths:

Search for things using basic terminology to find sellers who aren't super knowledgeable. So, something like "vintage kitchen cabinet". You might luck out and find a seller who just wants the thing gone, they don't know its value, and it might be a steal for you!

Search again using the specific terms you have picked up from your research. So, "jelly cabinet." This will get you in front of listing from experts, where you are likely to find a better quality item at the current market price.

That is how I found this for my kitchen, btw.

Learn the common synonyms and mispellings. Bookcase, bookshelf. Captain's desk, secretary desk.

Click on seller stores and profiles to see related items. As you research, you will start to stumble across other items and figure out your sense of taste. You will find cool shit you never knew existed. You will learn new search terms as you pick up bits of history. You will also start stumbling across online speciality sites, or local resources, like antique shops and vintage fairs. You might learn what estate sales are, or about auctions open to the public. You start developing a habit of scouting out shops and sales when you're in a new town. You put big fairs and small swap meets on your calendar. You build relationships with contemporary artists who make things you like.

My sense of style is something I've actively been refining for decades now, and it isn't just vintage tchotchkes. I do this for clothing, for the crafting I'm into, etc. Curiosity and style go hand in hand and the best part is that your eye and research chops will only improve, even if you're just window shopping.

I hope this helps!

#chit chat #anon #tutorial #how to

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horsefigureoftheday · 6 months ago

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i have NO idea if you'd be able to do this one for me, but i hope you can! my grandparents have these horses, but i've never been able to read the plaques & my grandparents don't know where they got them from other than they're antiques.

sorry for the wizard guy covering one of the horses, this was the best picture we could get.

it's no worries if you can't (since i don't know if you do ceramics lol), but either way. some horses for you to look at.

Sure! They're Impulse Giftware reproductions of real life carousel horses :D

By John Zalar, from the Philadelphia Toboggan Co.

By Gustav Dentzel, from Knotts Berry Farm

By Stein & Goldstein. Can't find the original one, but I found a similar horse, also by S&G, from Forest Lake Amusement Park.

By Charles Carmel. I can't find the original, but I did find a similar horse by Carmel on an auction site, with no details about its history.

By Charles I. D. Looff. I think the leaflet is lying - if Looff ever designed a stander with a closed mouth, there are no photos of it online. But I did find another Looff stander to compare it to.

EDIT: I'm sleep deprived and didn't realize I used the wrong photos for the Dentzel and S&G figures, just pretend those are the detailed Impulse Giftware figures with plaques, and not the smaller cheaper versions 😭

#not horse of the day #horse identification

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bulbagarden · 1 year ago

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guess what??? bulbapedia had its 50,000th wiki article created a bit ago, and to celebrate we made a news article celebrating bulbapedia! i'm actually in it, soo... take a look if you'd like!! (this was written by our twitter admin and my overlord wyndoncalling)

Celebrating 50k Bulbapedia articles with our favourite wiki pages!

As one of the world's largest media franchises, Pokémon is monolithic to say the least. Documenting every facet of this gargantuan IP is a task perhaps only the most dedicated and/or foolhardy would embark on, yet that's exactly what our Bulbapedia team and thousands of selfless contributors have done over eighteen long years! With Pokémon now encompassing nine generations of main series games along with dozens of spin-offs, mobile games, movies, anime and manga series, merchandise and much more, the wiki itself has grown in tandem - we recently hit a whopping 50,000 articles!

To celebrate, we've compiled a list from across the Bulbagarden team of our favourite wiki articles. For our non-wiki team members, these might simply be pages that they enjoy reading and help inform their work in other aspects of the site. For wiki Staff, these could instead be pages that they've sunk many productive hours into. Read on for an eclectic collection of articles detailing some of the most obscure corners of the Pokémon franchise!

Credits to Staff artist Sirius for the awesome header image!

WyndonCalling (Social Media) - Tall grass

On the one hand, I think it's faintly hilarious that anyone would go into such detail for a mundane and omnipresent mechanic of the main series games; the tall grass that awaits the player on every starting route just feels so self-explanatory in function. On the other hand, I think it speaks volumes about the commitment and mentality of the Bulbapedia team and contributors that no scrap of information is left undocumented - on the tall grass page you'll find the basic details about how it works, but also variations such as tall grass and seaweed, animations of the Cut mechanic, in-battle effects, and more. Who knew that simple grass could be so fascinating in a world with flame-throwing dragons and electric mice?

Runner-up - List of Pokémon by base stats

As the Admin of the Bulbagarden Twitter account, I'm always on the hunt for interesting trivia to share; having the base stats of all Pokémon in one, sortable place makes it so much easier to make fun comparisons between species (did you know that Krabby has more Attack than Eternatus?).

Maverick Nate - Bulbapedia - Coin (TCG) (and its three subpages: Gens 1-4, Gens 5-6, and Gens 7-8)

This page is what I consider my best accomplishment during my 10 years as Bulbapedia's TCG Leader. There is an incredible amount of research, time, (and personal financial investment) baked into the article, and it always gives me a swell of pride when I update it with fresh images of newly acquired coins. There are over 700 different coins documented here, and I still fondly remember the long-night research sessions I would have with my best friend when we would do things like watch countless YouTube openings to figure out release information, check out endless eBay and Yahoo Auctions listings for never-before-seen coins, hold up physical coins to a spotlight trying to determine the Holofoil pattern. Our other friends would poke fun at us for researching in the field, (which was just our excuse to go shopping for newly released TCG products with new coins or hitting up garage sales and card shops on the off chance they had old ones). All of those years of effort produced what is now considered the definitive list of all coins in existence for coin enthusiasts. Whenever I see people online referencing it and using it for their own collections, I just have to smile, knowing that my favorite article is helping people all around the globe.

Wowy (Bulbapedia) - Red (Masters)

This page is just an example for all the character pages for Pokémon Masters. As one of the main editors covering Pokémon Masters when the game was first released, I feel very content to see many other editors who have taken the mantle to make Bulbapedia's coverage of the game quite comprehensive! I also enjoy the gallery section at the bottom because there are some sweet artwork pieces that come out of the game / the PMEX Twitter.

Runner Up - Face board

An article that was initially written for fun ended up being moved from the userpage to the main Bulbapedia page. Like the tall grass page, it's a niche page that showcases how much we like to document every minor and obscure detail in the franchise (albeit there is still so much to cover)!

Lisia (Social Media) (omg HIIII that's me!!!!) (姉ちゃん見て見て、あたしテレビだ。。) - Pokémon world in relation to the real world

This is a very extensive page, and it's very useful for a lot of different things! I use it for worldbuilding for fanfiction and roleplay stuff usually, but it's fun to look at just in general as well! I remember looking at the page first like... years ago, and it blew my mind to see that the Pokémon world was actually based off of real locations! It's something that I'd call a huge resource for anyone who creates Pokémon fanworks, especially written ones!

Runner Up - Lisia (i had to LOL)

Maybe it's a little... self-serving? But I really like this article of my personal namesake; she's my favorite character after all! She's a relatively minor character within the whole of Pokémon so there's not a whole lot of information about her, so I like reading all the stuff there is about her! It makes me happy that people have put work into articles about everyone, because well... in a way I wouldn't be me without it. I should probably contribute to it sometime!

Orchid (Forums) - Pokémon food

I picked this article because it is astoundingly comprehensive on its topic, and offers a lot of really interesting insight into the Pokémon universe as a whole. From Poffins, to prey, to parasites, to Slowpoke Tails... it's all here! It's amazing how having all this information in one place puts into perspective just how much there is to cover on what, at a glance, might seem like such a simple subject. I find myself coming back here every now and then just out of curiosity (or perhaps to settle a debate about what an Aerodactyl really eats).

Runner-up - Twerp

This page is silly and I love it. I've even shown this one to friends and family who are fellow Pokémon fans, and they've gotten just as much of a kick out of it as I have! But as amusing of a read as it may be, what I love most about this page is the fact that even a short and lighthearted bit of terminology like this is documented thoroughly here, just like anything else would be. All across Bulbapedia, you can find so much care and detail put into the littlest of things, and that does bring a smile to my face

DapperCody (Multimedia) - Ash Ketchum

Like many people, I grew up watching the Pokémon anime as a youngster. I enjoy Ash's article because it is comprehensive account of the quarter century that he has graced our screens - looking it over is very nostalgic. The history section with photos is fantastic, and I love being able to see all the Pokémon he has ever owned or used and their current status. It also has an extensive trivia section like all my favorite articles do. I've fallen down the anime rabbit hole on Bulbapedia numerous times, and Ash's page is a great place to start.

Runner Up - Ash's Noctowl

See all of the above, but from a different perspective. Pages for individual Pokémon from the anime are fantastic to get a glimpse into all the highlights from their time in the spotlight, and what better example of this than my personal favorite, Noctowl? The move history is really neat, especially the fact that it designates the moves recently used (and the illegal ones when applicable). Did you know Noctowl was the first Shiny Pokémon in the anime?

bthrussellUK (Bulbapedia) - Pokémon Battle Chess

I really love this article because I think it’s an example of what Bulbapedia is great at; taking obscure Pokémon topics (especially outside of Japan) and saving them from being lost to the sands of time. The original Pokémon Battle Chess website has been taken offline, so without articles like this one, the game would be forgotten. Instead, because it’s here, I decided to find and buy a copy of both Pokémon Battle Chess BW Version and Pokémon Battle Chess and use them to help expand the gameplay section of the article. They're actually pretty fun games! Now I just need a copy of Pokémon Battle Chess W…

Runner Up - Pokémon games

It looks like it's just a really long list... and it is! But for me it's a really great reminder of how massive Pokémon is, how many games have been released in the last 26 years, and how many different platforms Pokémon games have released on. Ever heard of the Advanced Pico Beena or the iQue Player?

Whether they're popular or niche, wide-ranging or obscure, we hope you've enjoyed our short tour of our favourite Bulbapedia articles! Do you have your own? Are you tickled by the trivia on a given page? You can let us know on our forums or Discord server - or even start editing yourself!

The wiki can never have too many contributors, and if your love of Pokémon is as deep as ours we'd be delighted to have you with us for the next 50,000 articles!

(lisia note: thank you for reading!!!!!!!!!! hopefully you enjoyed it!)

#bulbanews #bulbagarden #bulbalisia #pokemon #pokemon news #bulbapedia

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autolenaphilia · 6 months ago

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I kinda cursed myself by getting into Diablo, which I've written about before. Because Activision-Blizzard is a terrible company. They are horrible towards their employees first and foremost, and have been for decades. Especially their women workers, who have made credible allegations of a culture of misogyny. They have had a massive lawsuit about this in the 2020s but even Diablo II was made using horrible crunch back in the late 1990s.

Their treatment of their customers is of course a far lesser evil, they have just been assholes to them. Still just looking at the Diablo series, there are examples of pretty much all the bad practices triple-a game studios towards customers have made in the last 20 years.

Diablo III is infamously one of the first notable examples of always-online DRM, despite the game having a single-player campaign. Now the game servers have stayed up a remarkably long time for Diablo III, because it was widely succesful (the fourth best-selling pc game of all time according to wikipedia with 20 million copies sold). But requiring a central server to play will mean the game will eventually die when the server is shut down. And not “die” in the sense that you can’t buy it anymore or can’t play multiplayer, it will die in the sense that you can’t ever play it at all anymore. This is despite the game having a substantial single-player campaign. This is a terrible practice for game preservation and I encourage you to join this campaign against it.

And Diablo III also had a foretaste of the predatory monetization to come, with the infamous real money auction house, that was so bad that it got shut down by Blizzard after a few years. But it was just a prologue to what would come with the next major installment: Diablo Immortal.

Immortal is a mobile game that became a meme right from its announcement. That was because the announcement that it would be mobile-only was greeted with boos at Blizzcon. And we should keep in mind that Blizzcon is a convention just for Blizzard games that cost 199 dollars to attend at the time (now it costs 299 dollars), so a very receptive audience to Blizzard’s bullshit, and Blizzard still got deservedly booed.

And then the actual game released, and it had such predatory monetization that it got nicknamed Diablo Immoral. I use the site macrotransactions.org, which grades games according to the presence of predatory monetization and they gave Diablo: Immortal a well-deserved F.

And this trend has only continued with the recent Diablo IV, which is again always-online and has predatory microtransactions.

Not that Diablo II is free from Blizzard bullshit. Both the original and remastered versions of Diablo II can only be bought from Blizzard’s own website, which I wouldn’t begrudge them if they didn’t also have DRM.

The installer for the original Diablo II only requires a key code you either got from the CD or e-mailed to you when you purchased it digitally. So not so bad. The original Diablo II however kinda shows its age and has always been a janky game, despite patches it still has serious bugs like the lying character screen. And the game shows its ages otherwise, despite the excellent art design, the game is also resolution locked to 800 x 600, and that’s only after you install the expansion. And the base game plus expansion still costs 20 dollars, despite being more than 20 years old and not properly patched.

It’s the kind of game that deserves a remaster. And Blizzard thought the same and released a remastered version in 2021, Diablo II: Resurrected that attempts to fix these issues. But the catch is that it also upped the DRM, this time the game requires you to “check in” online at least every 30 days, so the remastered game is just as doomed as III and IV when the servers shut down.

You just can’t win with Activision-Blizzard. The only Diablo game that actually feels worth getting legitimately is the first Diablo, which you can buy drm-free on GOG, and reasonably cheap too when there is a sale.

And it’s not that the games are bad either. They have very talented programmers, writers and artists working for them (which they treat horribly). Diablo II despite the jankyness is a great game, a very good sequel to the excellent first game that massively expands the scope of the series in interesting ways while remaining true to the first game.

I recently watched Noah Caldwell-Gervais’s excellent franchise retrospective video on the series, and he has played all the games, and finds much to praise about even the most reviled entries of the series. Even Diablo: Immortal, despite being a mobile game with predatory monetization, is a full-fledged entry into the series, a proper meaty action RPG with lots of story content. We will actually lose something valuable when the servers are shutdown.

The problem with Blizzard is not that they make bad games. It’s just that they are an evil company, which mistreats its workers (especially the women), ruthlessly monetizes their artistic efforts, and DRMs so badly that it will eventually destroy the games entirely once they are no longer profitable.

At this rate I can at best recommend getting Diablo I from GOG when it’s cheap in a sale, anything else is too heavy with Blizzard’s nonsense to really recommend. And "gamer boycotts" are kinda worthless, so I won't call for one, but I'll admit supporting that kind of company is worth questioning.

And frankly if you want to get into action rpgs, I would recommend playing Torchlight 1 and 2 instead of getting into Diablo.The Torchlight games are very much “Diablo-clones”, spiritual successors to the older series and clearly modeled on Diablo 1 and 2. But the gameplay is so polished, with many added quality-of-life features and way less bugs than Diablo II, that they improve the player experience enough to fully justify being so derivative. And they are not made or published by Activision-Blizzard, so you can buy both of them on GOG without DRM. Torchlight deserves its own post, and there are other worthy diablo-clones out there (i’ve played a bit of Dungeon Siege and enjoyed it). The positive legacy of Diablo lives on, despite Blizzard’s best attempts to pollute it.

#my writings #diablo #activision-blizzard

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silvermoon424 · 1 year ago

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Where do you buy your artbooks for your archival work?

I bought the official artbooks of Hiroo Isono, and I'd love to be able to buy similar artbooks for Mutsumi Inomata and Naoko Takeuchi! But even for Isono, it took a lot of googling Japanese and hoping for the best. Even ignoring the proxy process, it was still frustrating at times.

Hi there!

The sites I use by far the most for artbooks/manga are:

Yahoo Auctions Japan

Surugaya

Amazon Japan (especially great for new releases, as Amazon Japan has an international shipping program for many products/countries and they'll ship it directly to you)

Mercari Japan

These sites are amazing resources and have a huge array of products. If something's not listed on one of these four sites, I honestly doubt it's available anywhere online- or at the very least, easily available.

As for proxies, I recommend Buyee for Yahoo Auctions Japan and Japan Rabbit for everything else! Those are just the proxies I have the most experience with.

EDIT: I totally forgot to mention Mandarake as an option to buy manga and books from! I don't use it as often, but it's great because it has an English-language site (click "Earth" on the home screen) and they ship directly to many countries. Mandarake is especially great for buying figures, plushies, and other merch.

#buying from japan #where to buy

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eauctionbharat · 3 months ago

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reallyuniversallyexpert · 1 year ago

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brandedsurplus · 2 years ago

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udhhyog2 · 21 days ago

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DRP GI Flange Table E: Finding the Best Deals

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pollenallergie · 1 year ago

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Tom Grant was definitely one of those pokémon-obsessed kids in primary school. He used to bring his case of cards to school in his backpack so that he could show them off to his mates and to whatever bird he was trying to impress that week. The girls were seldom impressed by his collection, but his mates always were. Even back then, pokémon cards were pretty costly (especially when you’re eight and have no real source of income), so Tom used to do housework and yard work for the elderly people in his neighbourhood: mowing the grass in their gardens, watering and tending to any plants that they might’ve had, dusting the hard-to-reach places in their homes, greasing up any squeaky door hinges, hanging up picture frames for them, etc. He made it fun for himself by thinking of it like a game: mow Mr. Redding’s garden for 100XP, carry in Mrs. Harold’s groceries for her for 50XP, then use your XP to level up your arsenal (buy more pokémon cards).

He had some of the best pokémon, so you know he was almost always the winner of playground card battles. That is until one of the posh kids came along with all the amazing cards their daddies’ money had bought them and stupid smug grins to match… Tom usually did his best to stay away from those pricks. He preferred battling his mates anyway; it was more fun that way as there was better sportsmanship and comradely involved when you battled against your mates.

As an adult, older!Tom Grant still has his whole collection of pokémon cards, and, of course, most of them are in pristine condition. Tom’s always been very good about taking care of the things he finds important, even as a kid. He always kept his cards neatly packed away until it was time for afternoon-break card trading, and, even then, he was always incredibly careful with how he handled his cards in the heat of battle.

Once in a while, he’ll buy a new pack of pokémon cards to add to his collection, but, for the most part, his collection is made up of cards he got before ‘07. Well, cards he got before ‘07 and some vintage cards that he’s gotten from online auctions. Online pokémon card auctions are a secret vice of his; it’s the closest he gets to gambling, other than betting against his mates on the outcomes of upcoming rugby matches and on whether or not they can chug a pint in less than three seconds (they can’t). He hasn’t spent too much money there, at least not compared to the millions of dollars that some collectors shell out on those things, but he has blown more of his income on those than he’d like to admit.

Tom doesn’t need to be taken care of or looked after much when he’s sloshed; he’s a big boy, he can take care of himself. However, your one task when he’s drunk is to keep him off those online auction sites. The only time you ever look through his phone is to make sure he hadn’t sneaked onto one of them while you weren’t looking the night before when he was drunk… Luckily, you’re really good at your unofficial job, so, usually, the only sites he’s sneaking onto when he’s plastered are 1) youtube to watch people blow shit up and fuck around with their engineering knowledge (he’s a simple man, he likes e’splosions and fucking around… but absolutely not finding out because fuck consequences), 2) your mum’s Facebook page so that he can go through her photos and look at all the ones of you (he doesn’t have any social media accounts of his own, and most of yours are private, so he has to resort to stalking your mum’s Facebook page to look at pictures of you… or, at least, to look at pictures of you that he doesn’t already have on his phone), and 3) fucking around with the ‘Special:Random’ feature on Wikipedia (he enjoys reading niche Wikipedia articles… but only the ones that involve fucky shit, like a famous politician getting a shoe thrown at them or the war against emus or Europe’s history of defenestration or famous historical sex cults).

Other websites that Tom is not allowed to get on whilst he’s drunk and why: 1) any pet supplies website because he will spend too much money on unnecessary purchases for The Lads, 2) the official Lego online store because he will spend too much money on new and exclusive sets, and 3) any website/app where you can order food online to be delivered because he will, spontaneously, order enough food to feed a small village if given the opportunity (he’s a foodie), and while he won’t waste all the food, he will eat himself sick and you will have to listen to his pitiful moans and groans (and retching) for the rest of the night.

#tom grant #older!tom grant #older!tom #tom grant x reader

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