#alternatives of Chinese apps

[kirbyfigure]

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[ruhua-langblr]

Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

[crazydiscostu]

Tozo Tonal Fits Earbuds

Finding the perfect fit for Earbuds can often feel like searching for a needle in a haystack, especially if you have freakish ears. (We’re here for you, you freakish monster) With a plethora of options flooding the market, it’s essential to sift through the noise to discover a gem that not only fits snugly but also delivers on performance and functionality. One of these gems is the new TOZO Tonal…

[starcrossed-sky]

Hey Twitter(/Reddit) alternative seekers

Okay, fandom. Everyone's all worked all the time about this or that new alternative to Twitter and how it's either awesome or it sucks. I'm here to tell you about an OLD alternative: Plurk.

(Note that this was originally formatted for Twitter so forgive the jank thread paragraphing)

Disclaimer: This information is specifically aimed at people who use Twitter for fandom purposes; it is not intended to cover the exhaustive list of things that people use Twitter for (professional networking, art/photography promotion world news, etc). It's friend-centric rather than follow-centric, at least as the existing site culture goes.

So what is Plurk? It's a threaded microblogging platform dating back to 2008 that has only ever seen extremely niche use in English-language use. (Its primary userbase is Chinese-speaking.) It has a purely chronological timeline and a lot of privacy features that you haven't seen since the LJ era (assuming you're old enough to remember that).

Plurk functions through an exclusively-chronological timeline on your homepage (desktop) or in the app. Algorithmically sourced content? We ain't got it! (There is a different page for viewing top content but you have to go there specifically.) Instead, your timeline shows your own content and the content of other plurkers you friend or follow, and the occasional ad (MUCH more occasional than Twitter).

Each top-level plurk can be replied to, and this creates a chain of replies that can be used for conversation. Unlike Twitter and Reddit, replies don't form branching threads; each plurk is only one stream of conversation. Plurks with unread replies will be lit up as unread; however, they can be "muted" to stop them from giving you notifications.

(Two small caveats: You cannot mute your own plurks, and there is actually a cap of around 200 muted plurks. Mutes will fall off from the oldest, so you'll sometimes see an ancient plurk pop back up on your timeline if someone comes back to it. You can just mute it again.)

Your plurk timeline has a global privacy control. If your timeline is set to private, only people you have friended can see what you say on there. If your timeline is public, then anyone who comes to you page can see what you've posted, AND logged-in users can share your post on their own timeline with the "replurk" function (works just like a normal retweet), as well as reply to it.

There is also an "anonymous" option, which anonymizes you and also the names of everyone who replies (it randomly generates names like "lemon354" and "libra262" for repliers to differentiate them). Anonymous plurks will stay within your timeline if your plurk is set to private, but can be replurked if it's public.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE, because individual plurks can also be given specific privacy levels: -> Friends only (if your timeline is public but you don't want this one getting around) -> Private to "cliques," which are Twitter circles but you can have more than one -> Individual users (including those not on your friends list - this is plurk's equivalent of DMs)

Your own plurk homepage is also insanely customizable, if you want to break out the CSS or even just have a custom background. You can also alter your display name (though the character cap is VERY short), and your display name color, as well as the standard avatar change. Usernames cannot be changed as a free user, but can be changed by paid users (more on paid options in a second).

Plurk also has its own image hosting, and a pastebin-alike plaintext called Plurk Paste that has no character limit. (The character limit for top-level plurks is longer than Twitter's.)

It also has CUSTOM EMOTES in addition to its (somewhat wild) default selection. They're similar to Discord's customs, except that you can use GIFs from the get go; what's restricted is the number of slots you have as a free user. (And size is capped at 48x48 px.)

Plurk has ads, but they're mostly unobtrusive (and can be clocked entirely with ad blockers, but I didn't say that). Plurk keeps the lights on through a subscription model called Plurk Coin, which is very cheap (under $2.50 USD/month) and can be gifted to other users. Coin gives you a number of benefits including the "Except" privacy option, more username colors, response editing, and a bunch more custom emote slots.

Concerned about harassment? Plurk has one of the most robust blocking systems in social media that I've ever seen. You block someone, and they can't see you (even by going to your profile) and you can't see them. That's it, done. Full no-contact.

NSFW/18+ content is allowed. There's a specific flag for it when you first post a plurk. Plurk does expect you to use that tag when appropriate, but is otherwise very forgiving of NSFW content, at least in my experience. (Again, though, English plurk is a very small community ATM).

The thing to remember about Plurk is that it is very much a remnant of an older internet, from the days before algorithms. Like Tumblr, it's a social media where you won't see anything if you don't reach out to follow and friend people. It predates "going viral" as a goal of internet usage. The goal is to talk to people.

As an aside: Since I originally wrote this up, I've seen rumors about Japanese fanartists moving to plurk and even seen one or two mentions of it in the wild on my Twitter timeline as people talk about following those artists. Fantastic! If that's you, then I hope you find this slightly more in-depth guide to features helpful.

If this sounds up your alley, I've made a public plurk specifically for Twitter refugees to come meet people and get more information on how plurk works! You can find it here.

Twitter version: [link]

Please replurk to spread this information about!

EDIT Sept 7 2024: You can mute your own plurks now, whoo!

[al-the-remix]

TikTok Chef!Buck AU: several sentences sunday (or something like that)

I'm close to finishing the fic I've been working on so I finally felt like I could write a little something based off this headcannon without feeling too guilty about it, lol. 2k of mostly crack, please enjoy.

It all starts when Tommy’s stuck on his couch for a week with a sprained knee. He wishes he could claim it happened doing something heroic–or at the very least badass–but in truth it was the result of letting his ego get the best of him at the squat rack. 

Lucy stops by a few times to keep him company, which really means letting herself in unannounced with her spare key, eating all the leftovers in his fridge, and offering an unsolicited running critique of whatever show he’s watching. Today it was Below Deck reruns. 

“If I ever decide to take a vacation on a boat, tackle me, this shit does not look worth it.”

“You really don’t have to be here you know,” Tommy says, leaning over to grab some chips from the near-empty bag she was cradling before they were all gone. He’d been looking forward to eating those for dinner and feeling sorry for himself. 

Lucy just snorts. “Please, if I wasn’t here you’d already be up to something ill advised. I caught you looking up deck chair patterns earlier, power tools don’t go well with injuries, Tommy, even if it’s only carpentry.”

Well, she had him there. 

At least she had the decency to order them Chinese take out for dinner so he wouldn’t have to Instacart a can of soup or something equally pathetic. 

Before she left she made a grabby hand at him. “Give me your phone.”

“Why?” Tommy asks, already suspicious. 

She met his suspicion with boredom. “Don’t ask stupid questions, just do it.”

Rolling his eyes, he hands it over, giving into her whim, and maybe he should find it a little more unsettling that she already seems to know his password off by heart. 

She clicks around for long enough that Tommy starts getting nervous: what was the last text message he sent? Was it embarrassing? Were all his nudes still in that locked folder? Did she know the password for that too? Just when he was going to start asking questions she tosses his phone back. “Here, this should keep you entertained for a while,” she explains as he scrambles to catch it. “My niece wastes hours of her life on this crap.”

“Such ringing endorsement,” Tomy grumbles, she’s downloaded some kind of video app onto his phone. TikTok. Perfect. He’d heard of that one, apparently it was single handedly ruining a whole generation’s attention span and the Chinese government was using it to spy on the inner lives of teenagers with stupid haircuts and a critical lack of social skills. 

“Are you sure you didn’t just give me some kind of virus?” Tommy asks, clicking around the home page arbitrarily, the UI didn’t make a lick of sense. 

“Har, har. You were always good at picking up new skills, I’m sure you’ll figure this out in no time. I have faith in you,” she says, clapping him hard enough on the shoulder to make him wince. 

He finds his profile page by total mistake. His username reads: benchedcockwrangler.

“How do I change this?” he asks, waving his phone at her as she makes for the door. 

“You don’t,” she says, without looking back. “Don’t stay up on that thing all night, it will ruin your sleep schedule!”

Tommy winces as the front door slams and sighs. He’ll figure out how to change it later. After all, beggars can’t be choosers and three days into his mandatory medical leave he’s already so bored he’s ready to stab his eyes out with hot pokers just to mix it up a bit. 

He scrolls through the app, and based on most of what he sees he finds himself unable to justify its existence in the first place. It feels like every video he watches drags him into a deeper alternate universe where everyone’s wholeheartedly competing for the top of the podium at the Darwin Awards. 

There’s a woman digging tunnels under her apartment that Tommy is positive are not up to code (that’s a call just waiting to happen); and two young ladies mixing cocktails of a concerning hue and variety at random local establishments (not necessarily anything that would warrant a trip to the ER but potentially a health code violation); and what seems like an ungodly number of men hosting podcasts (Tommy is pretty sure that even during his darkest days rotting in the closet he had a better batting average picking up women than any of these bozos.)

Tommy’s eyes start to glaze over as he scrolls past comedians, and political commentators, and people reviewing romance novels, and–how has it already been forty minutes?

He’s about ready to give up and throw his phone across the room and leave it there until Lucy shows up tomorrow and he can make her delete it off his phone, when catchy music, an arm roped with muscle, and a criminally tight shirt sleeve catches his attention. 

It’s some kind of cooking video and his first impression is: how is anyone supposed to understand what’s going on with edits that fast? His second impression is: hot man. Man hot.

Soon his brain is catching up with his eyes, kickstarting like a toddler being exposed to sugar for the first time. 

Cooking might be a generous description for what’s going on here. The man is obviously skilled, but the main focus of the video seems to be how hot he looks in an apron (very) and whether it’s possible to bring half a peach to completion by finger blasting the pit out of it (not like, whether or not you should pre-bake your tart crust to achieve an ideal texture). 

Tommy has to watch it twice just to fully absorb everything that’s going on. He’s making some kind of deconstructed peach crumble topped with an obscene amount of whipped cream and steak with fries that looks fancier than anything Tommy’s ever eaten at a restaurant. 

Half way through the video the man wipes down the worktop shirtless with a cloth sudsy enough to make Tommy’s mouth go instantly dry then suddenly wet enough he’s forced to swallow. 

He clicks through to ChefFirehose’s profile just to, you know, get a better sample size. Tommy’s not above letting himself be manipulated by a man with biceps like melons and a cute smile. 

His profile description reads: LA resident, self-taught, putting out fires and saving lives in my spare time. Just here to give the food the appreciation it deserves. Let me show off for you 😉.

Tommy thinks this guy must be new to town, because living nearly a decade even in a city as sprawling and overcrowded as LA, he doesn’t know how he could miss running into this guy on the job. There was no way he wouldn’t remember a guy this hot even through turnouts, a helmet, and smeared in a thick layer of soot.

He starts working his way back through ChefFirehose’s videos, and some are admittedly a little less chaotic than the rest, but all of them are just tongue-and-cheek enough that Tommy feels confident he’s just one in close to a million people in on a joke and not enabling someone’s very real personality disorder. 

He’s stuck somewhere between disbelief and admiration. He definitely wouldn't have the balls to post this on the internet for everyone to see and so obviously thirst over. He braves the comment section on a few of the videos and it’s just a litany of horned-up men and women trying their best to make ChefFirehose laugh, or get in his pants, or both. He replies to almost all of his comments with either a smirking emoji or acting deliberately oblivious when someone tries to bait him into giving up the bit. Tommy finds him funny and maybe a little more endearing than he should after ten videos. 

Tommy can’t really blame them for trying to shoot their shot so shamelessly. ChefFirehose’s wardrobe consists of polos plastered so tight to his skin that Tommy was mildly concerned about restricted blood circulation, dress shirts buttoned dangerously low, and slacks that wrap snugly around miles of long, toned leg. 

Those weren’t Tommy’s favorite looks though. No, every so often a video would start and he’s be dressed down in soft looking sweatpants, a baseball cap pushed on backwards plastering his auburn curls to his forehead, and a white tank top–or if Tommy was really lucky, no shirt at all (sometimes not even the apron which Tommy had mixed feelings about...), his muscled arms and shoulders on full display. He’s got tattoos decorating his forearms that Tommy can’t quite make out, a collection of fine lines on pale skin like thin ribbons of chocolate drizzled over a crape. 

Those videos are most often breakfast related and ChefFirehose is barefoot in his kitchen, the warm sunlight casting his face in gold. He paints such an enticing tableau it’s all too easy for Tommy’s brain to plop himself right down in that scene, imagination running wild. He can so easily picture what it would be like: in that kitchen, feeling the warm cast of sun on his face and getting to watch built, handsome man make him breakfast with that flirty confidence of his. 

Tommy bookmarks a video of him making an omelet, the way he handles the eggs making Tommy blush like he’s a schoolgirl and not a man pushing forty. He feels less guilty about getting hard over it on the sofa surrounded by takeout containers than he probably should.  

The screen goes suddenly black and Tommy’s faced with his own reflection in the finger smudged screen, chin rolls and all. Fuck. He reaches for his charger. God, his life was depressing at the moment, and apparently he really needs to get laid.

So yeah, by the time his two weeks of recovery are up he’s feeling a little stir crazy in an entirely different way than before. He’s never been more glad to get back to work, put some of this weirdness behind him and get some much needed distance from his phone.

That’s only part of the reason why he doesn’t even think twice when Howie calls him for a favor. A big favor. And that was only the first of many surprises the universe had in store for him, apparently.

Even fully clothed in his LFD uniform Tommy recognises him. Evan. Evan, Evan, Evan, (Tommy repeats over and over in his head until it drowns out every other name Tommy’s assigned him the past few weeks: slutty egg guy, ChefBigDick, totally off limits boyfriend material–just to name a few).

“So you’re the guy who’s gonna fly us into a hurricane.” Evan sounds a little breathless, like maybe he jogged all the way here, and Tommy chalks it up to the high that accompanies stealing government property. “Chim said you were the best pilot he knows and good in a pinch, but I still thought there was no way anyone that good would agree to something this crazy.”

Tommy’s definitely starting to feel a little crazy. Evan’s still shaking his hand. His grip is solid, his fingers long and nimble, surprisingly soft against this palm (he must really lather on the hand lotion) and Tommy can’t stop thinking about all the talented things he knows they can do. 

 “That’s me. Though I’m pretty sure I’m just the only pilot Howie knows who's in town at the moment.” 

“You look good to me–capable, I mean.” Evan gives him a solid smack on the shoulder with his free hand. His mouth does something funny like he's trying to hold back the sheer force of his excitement by his teeth. “Solid.”

His eyes are even bigger and brighter in person, smile softer, even taller than Tommy presumed. Howie’s giving them a weird look from over Evan’s shoulder. The other man with them, Eddie, isn’t paying them any attention, checking out the other helicopters parked on the apron instead, and Tommy forces himself to pull his hand out of Evan’s warm grip. 

Tommy clears his throat. “Good to know. I’ll show you guys the bird we’ll be taking. I've got her all gassed up and ready to go.”

He just met his (internet) celebrity crush and the man of his dreams, and now Tommy was going to get him killed in one of the most spectacular ways imaginable. It seems like they’re all headed for the Darwin Awards this time.

[unforth]

A note on the Bilibili comics situation lest my optimisim gave anyone hope:

nope, it increasingly sounds like the announcement DOES include the app, it's just worded badly and for whatever crappy reason they decided not to tell people who exclusive use the app (my guess, the reason is money: people won't top up coins if they know the app is going away).

Reasons I say this:

The official Bilibili Discord has announced that the app is closing.

I found out someone I know through fandom does translation for the international app, and while I don't have permission to give disclosures of what they said (they did NOT say the app is closing, to be clear), what they told me also supports the conclusion that the entire thing is going away.

My hopefulness and careful reading has not been rewarded; sounds like they're just very bad at giving announcements. Why am I not surprised?

Anyway, definitely is time to read up on anything you were hoping to finish and save your faves. Here's my read/reading list. Some of these I'll DEFINITELY be looking for alternate sources for, and I may pay to finish Kiss the Abyss before the app shuts down at the end of February.

...or it's time to suck it up and start just reading stuff in Chinese. I'm not really good enough yet but when else am I gonna learn?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

We should ban TikTok('s surveillance)

With the RESTRICT Act, Congress is proposing to continue Trump’s war on Tiktok, enacting a US ban on the Chinese-owned service. How will they do this? Congress isn’t clear. In practice, banning stuff on the internet is hard, especially if you don’t have a national firewall:

https://doctorow.medium.com/theyre-still-trying-to-ban-cryptography-33aa668dc602

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/30/tik-tok-tow/#good-politics-for-electoral-victories

My guess is that they’re thinking of ordering the mobile duopoly of Google and Apple to nuke the Tiktok app from their app stores. That’s how they do it in China, after all: when China wanted to ban VPNs and other privacy tools, they just ordered Apple to remove them from the App Store, and Apple rolled over:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/11/foreseeable-consequences/#airdropped

That’s the completely foreseeable consequence of arrogating the power to decide which software every mobile user on earth is entitled to use — as Google and Apple have done. Once you put that gun on the mantelpiece in Act I, you damn betcha that some strong-man backed by a powerful state is going to come along and shoot it by Act III.

The same goes for commercial surveillance: once you collect massive, nonconsensual dossiers on every technology user alive, you don’t get to act surprised when cops and spies show up and order your company to serve as deputies for a massive, off-the-books warrantless surveillance project.

Hell, a cynic might even say that commercial surveillance companies are betting on this. The surveillance public-private partnership is a vicious cycle: corporations let cops and spies plunder our data; then the cops and spies lobby against privacy laws that would prevent these corporations from spying on us:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/25/nationalize-moderna/#hun-sen

Which makes the RESTRICT Act an especially foolish project. If the Chinese state wants to procure data on Americans, it need not convince us to install Tiktok. It can simply plunk down a credit card with any of the many unregulated data-brokers who feed the American tech giants the dossiers that the NSA and local cops rely on.

Every American tech giant is at least as bad for privacy as Tiktok is — yes, even Apple. Sure, Apple lets its users block Facebook spying with a single tap — but even if you opt out of “tracking,” Apple still secretly gathers exactly the same kinds of data as Facebook, and uses it to power its own ad product:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

There is no such thing as a privacy-respecting tech giant. Long before Apple plastered our cities with lying billboards proclaiming its reverence for privacy, Microsoft positioned itself as the non-spying alternative to Google, which would be great, except Microsoft spies on hundreds of millions of people and sells the data:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

Tech’s surveillance addiction means that Tiktok’s own alternative to the RESTRICT Act is also unbelievably stupid. The company has proposed to put itself under Oracle’s supervision, letting Oracle host its data and audit its code. You know, Oracle, the company that built the Great Firewall of China 1.0:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/selling-china-surveillance

We should not trust Tiktok any more than we trust Apple, Facebook, Google or Microsoft. Tiktok lied about whether it was sending data to China before:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-tapes-us-user-data-china-bytedance-access

And even if it keeps its promise not to send user data to China, that promise is meaningless — it can still send the vectors and models it creates with that data to China — these being far more useful for things like disinformation campaigns and population-scale inferences than the mere logs from your Tiktok sessions.

There are so many potentially harmful ways to process commercial surveillance data that trying to enumerate all the things that a corporation is allowed to do with the data it extracts from us is a fool’s errand. Instead, we should ban companies from spying on us, whether they are Chinese or American.

Corporations are remorseless, paperclip-maximizing colony organisms that perceive us as inconvenient gut-flora, and they lack any executive function (as do their “executives”), and they cannot self-regulate. To keep corporations from harming us, we must make it illegal for them to enact harm, and punish them when they break the law:

https://doctorow.medium.com/small-government-fd5870a9462e

After all, the problem with Tiktok isn’t the delightful videos or the fact that it’s teaching a generation of children to be expert sound- and video-editors. The problem with Tiktok is that it spies on us. Just like the problem with Facebook isn’t that it lets us communicate with our friends, and the problem with Google isn’t that it operates a search engine.

Now, these companies will tell you that the two can’t be separated, that a bearded prophet came down off a mountain with two stone tablets, intoning, “Larry, Sergey, thou shalt stop rotating thine logfiles and, lo, thou wilt data-mine them for actionable market intelligence.” But it’s nonsense. Google ran for years without surveillance. Facebook billed itself as the privacy-forward alternative to Myspace and promised never to spy on us:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3247362

The inevitabilist narrative that says that corporations must violate our rights in order to make the products we love is unadulterated Mr Gotcha nonsense: “Yet you participate in society. Curious. I am very intelligent”:

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

Of course, corporations push this narrative all the time, which is why American Big Tech has been quietly supporting a ban on Tiktok, which (coincidentally) has managed to gain a foothold in the otherwise impregnable, decaying, enshittified oligarchy that US companies have created.

They have conspicuously failed to call for any kind of working solution, like a federal privacy law that would ban commercial surveillance, and extend a “private right of action,” so people could sue tech giants and data-brokers who violated the law, without having to convince a regulator, DA or Attorney General to bestir themselves:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/you-should-have-right-sue-companies-violate-your-privacy

Instead, the tech giants have the incredible gall to characterize themselves as the defenders of our privacy — at least, so long as the Chinese government is the adversary, and so long as its privacy violations come via an app, and not buy handing a credit card to the data-brokers that are the soil bacteria that keeps Big Tech’s ecosystem circulating. In the upside-down land of Big Tech lobbying, privacy is a benefit of monopoly — not something we have to smash monopolies to attain:

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

Not everyone in Congress is onboard with the RESTRICT Act. AOC has come out for a federal privacy law that applies to all companies, rather than a ban on an app that tens of millions of young Americans love:

https://www.businessinsider.com/aoc-first-tiktok-congress-ban-without-being-clued-in-2023-3

You know who agrees with AOC? Rand Paul. Yes, that absolute piece of shit. Paul told his caucusmates in the GOP that banning an app that millions of young American voters love is bad electoral politics. This fact is so obvious that even Rand fucking Paul can understand it:

https://gizmodo.com/rand-paul-opposes-tiktok-ban-warns-republicans-1850278167

Paul is absolutely right to call a Tiktok ban a “national strategy to permanently lose elections for a generation.” The Democrats should listen to him, because the GOP won’t. As between the two parties, the GOP is far more in thrall to the Chamber of Commerce and the rest of the business lobby. They are never going to back a policy that’s as good for the people and as bad for big business as a federal privacy law.

The Democrats have the opportunity to position themselves as “the party that wants to keep Tiktok but force it to stop being creepy, along with all the other tech companies,” while the GOP positions itself as “the party of angry technophobes who want to make sure that any fun you have is closely monitored by Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pinchai and Tim Cook and their pale imitations of the things you love about Tiktok.”

That’s not just good electoral politics — it’s good policy. Young voters aren’t going to turn out to the polls for performative Cold War 2.0 nonsense, but they will be pissed as hell at whoever takes away their Tiktok.

And if you do care about Cold War 2.0, then you should be banning surveillance, not Tiktok; the Chinese government has plenty of US dollars at its disposal to spend in America’s freewheeling, unregulated data markets — as do criminals, petty and organized, and every other nation-state adversary of the USA.

The RESTRICT Act is a garbage law straight out of the Clinton era, a kind of King Canute decree that goes so far as to potentially prohibit the use of VPNs to circumvent its provisions. America doesn’t need a Great Firewall to keep itself safe from tech spying — it needs a privacy law.

Have you ever wanted to say thank you for these posts? Here’s how you can: I’m kickstarting the audiobook for my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon’s Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they’re DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: A modified vintage editorial cartoon. Uncle Sam peeks out over a 'frowning battlement' whose cannon-slots are filled with telescopes from which peer the red glaring eyes of HAL 9000 from '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Topping the battlements in a row are Uncle Sam and three business-suited figures with dollar-sign-bags for heads. The three dollar-bag men have corporate logos on their breasts: Facebook, Google, Apple. Standing on the strand below the battlements, peering up, is a forlorn figure with a Tiktok logo for a head. The fortress wall bears the words 'RESTRICT Act.']

[argumate]

China is all-in on HarmonyOS as the nation pursues indigenous alternatives to Western tech. In recent weeks Chinese media and government agencies have noted the growing proliferation of native HarmonyOS apps, trumpeting that developer enthusiasm for the platform means local buyers now have a more patriotic alternative.

[starsworldd]

☀️readings☀️

i am not a professional astrologer, but i have been studying astrology for roughly 4 years now and still am!

status: closed

natal chart reading - $30 -> £23.54 -> 44.87 AUD

-> 213.32 Chinese Yuan

solar return reading - $20 -> £15.70 -> 23.58 AUD

-> 143.43 Chinese Yuan

lunar return reading - $20 -> £15.70 -> 23.58 AUD

-> 143.43 Chinese Yuan

planet/angle* persona chart reading - $20 -> £15.70 -> 29.87 AUD -> 143.43 Chinese Yuan

planetary return reading - $20 -> £15.70 -> 29.87 AUD -> 143.43 Chinese Yuan

Chiron/Juno/Groom/Bride persona chart reading - $20 -> £15.70 -> 29.87 AUD -> 143.43 Chinese Yuan

* - angle meaning asc/dsc/ic/mc points

just an important note i interpret all charts using whole signs and traditional rulership

how to request a reading: dm me! and then i’ll give you my cash app preferably, or another alternate payment option if that doesn’t work, (tip button can also be used as alternate payment method)

format of reading: pdf example here

reviews: 1 2 3 4 5

time?: no longer than a week

please email me with questions and/or suggestions! (starsworldastro@gmail.com)

if you liked your reading feel free to give feedback via email or dms!

❤️masterlist <3❤️

GIVE VISIBLE CREDITS (not posted at the very bottom of a caption) IF YOU REWORD/POST SOMETHING OF MINE

submission box reminder: do NOT ask for more than 3 aspects of a chart (clarification below if needed):

valid: asking me for my thoughts on your big 3 or 3 planets in any chart (either signs or house placements not both) or asking me about three aspects (each between 2 planets) in a chart and other requests that fall within these general guidelines.

NOT valid: big 6 opinions, asking for sign and house of big 3 or asking me to study a chart configuration other than grand trine, sending me entire charts to analyze for indicators/obsetvations/notes, etc…, other requests that go outside of what is explained in the valid portion above.

DO NOT DM ME FOR PERSONAL CHART QUESTIONS! wait in my submissions box line like everybody else has to. DMs for booking readings ONLY.

i have a lot of submissions (and counting) so it may take awhile to get to your request! but i am slowly working my way through each request so please be patient🥰

go listen to domino 1 and 2 by iamsagsssssss (out on all platforms)

[fallloverfic]

ENNEAD volume 4 English physical release up for pre-order! Release date 12 November 2024!

ENNEAD by Mojito, the boys love manhwa set in ancient Egypt, volume 4 in English physical release, is up for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and hardcover! It should be available on more sites (particularly international ones) soon! Volume 4 doesn't have a cover yet (which is pretty normal, since volume 3 only got one recently), but since it's following the Korean release, it should be Horus (which is the one here).

Why the paperback and hardcover versions of the English physical release have different age ranges: "Seven Seas will release two versions of the series, which were originally drawn for different audiences: a paperback version rated Older Teen, and a deluxe hardcover version rated Mature. (Each version is standalone but has alternate depictions of some adult material.)"

This mimics the modifications of the censored and uncensored release available on webcomic platforms like Tappytoon, Witchcomics, Ridibooks, etc. Below is a list of episodes with differences between the versions.

Season 1: Episodes 28-32, 42-44

Season 2: Episodes 19, 45-47, 71

Due to the episode allocation of the volumes, volume 3 should be the first with actual panel differences. Volume 4 should also have panel differences.

Currently, you can order volume 1 and pre-order volumes 2-3 as well. Given they are seemingly just making an English version of the Korean + Taiwanese physical release (down to cover + interior design), there will likely be 6 volumes of season 1. Season 2 is not out in physical anywhere yet. If you're outside the US and want more options, try calling your local bookstore if you have one, and asking if they have it or can order it. If you'd like a visual rundown of the comparison between paperback and hardcover, Seven Seas made a video here.

The manhwa online is currently on S02E82 in Korean, and on S02E79 in English on Tappytoon (and various other points in Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Thai). If you'd like to read one of those, here's a guide. The physical English release is not just a physical release of the Tappytoon translation. While the text is similar because it's translating the same Korean text, there are a number of differences, mostly involving punctuation, but sometimes with more heavily modified sentences, and there have even been some corrections for errors in the Tappytoon text.

In case you missed it, other stuff in the fandom recently:

The Japanese physical release of ENNEAD will begin with the simultaneous release of volumes 1-2 on 24 April 2024, with various order bonuses depending on where you order.

The Italian translation of ENNEAD volume 1 has been released and volume 2 has also released.

There's a pre-order page for ENNEAD volume 1 in German, also releasing 19 March 2024.

ACO's audio drama adaptation of season 1 is fully available to purchase digitally episode by episode. You need to buy the whole thing to get the soundtrack.

In a BNOW x ENNEAD collaboration, BNOW released an alternate reality card collection! There is a physical set of cards that can be purchased for international sale, and you can download the Korean BNOW app and use the cards you have to generate 3D models of the characters!

[starlitangels]

“Fight it. Starlight, please! … Let them go! … No! … You can’t have them!”

The Red String of Fate concept from Chinese folklore slaps and we all know I love Avior and Starlight I mean y’all might have noticed how many times I’ve drawn them compared to literally any other Redacted couple

And the thing I was reading said in the original myth it went from ankle to ankle, and then in Japanese culture the string goes from pinky to thumb not pinky to pinky but modern depictions in both cultures usually show pinky-to-pinky and if I read an inaccurate thing, oops. I liked the framing of pinky to thumb better

Give me no credit for the hands though they were assets in my app that I traced over for the right line art color and then colored in because I continue to be absolute trash at drawing decent hands

Fun fact: the stars on Avior’s wrist are the top of the Carina constellation with the largest visible star being Avior (Epsilon Carinae)

Second fun fact: Starlight’s cuff ring is based on (but not accurate to) a ring I own

Alternative version without the glitter:

[bloodstonegoth]

Quick Guide on how to avoid getting scammed on Tumblr.com

Very often on my dash I see posts that look like this - an image of a gothic or alternative fashion, coupled with a link to a website.

The website in question sells these shoes for $42.50. But there's something fishy going on - the name of the product is just a list of keywords, and the image is of a particular... style.

That's because the product is actually a Chinese knock-off. Not only that, this is a resell. You can buy these products from China for fraction of the price - just look them up on AliExpress. If the keywords don't get you exactly what you're looking for, their app even has a "search by image" function. That's right, they're so aware of the issue that it's prominently featured next to the search button.

And so, one upload later, we find the shoes. The prices are in ZŁ, but the first seller lists them for around $25. That's nearly half the price. And my shipping is free!

There is a growing trend of resellers that run "brands" that buy Chinese stuff in bulk (so they're actually paying even less than you would), and then marking them up 100%, sometimes even more. ALWAYS check if what you're buying is actually original- and if not, buy it from the source, not some scummy reseller.

[sunriseverse]

@glasscoffingirlfriend replied to your post “duolingo emailing me like pwease come back and use...”:

wait what happened ive been thinking of using duo even tho i know its not ideal for actual language becuz its free and i figure its an ok place to start

​okay this is going to be long but there's a number of reasons i have umbrage with duolingo. i should start off by saying that duolingo is where i started learning languages in 2016, and it got me past the initial awkward phase with german. in the past, i viewed duolingo as a useful app, if not something that can actually teach you a language to a proficient level by itself.

however, over the years, my opinion has changed on this. it started with two things in specific: duolingo removed its forums, a place for users to interact with each other, ask questions about language learning, grammar, and so forth, and talk to native speakers of their target language (this went into effect in 2022, as this duolingo forum announcement explains), and the grammar/guidebook section that used to be available was phased out (first with the app, then on the website; i can't find a post by duolingo officially explaining when/why they removed it, but reddit posts i've dug up say this happened in 2022/2023), initially only accessible through specific links before being entirely removed and rendered inaccesible. these two things are, in my opinion, incredibly key functions, and draws to duolingo over other programmes/apps, which allowed people to study on a more extensive level, which have now been entirely removed without explanation or alternative.

secondly, duolingo sunsetted its volunteer contributor programme in 2021, and in 2023, announced it would put its welsh course on pause to "plan[s] to focus on languages in higher demand including spanish, french, and german". while the welsh course will remain available, no further work will be done on it—and, while only welsh is specified, i personally think this doesn't bode well for its other, "lower demand" language courses. as for the volunteer contributor programme being sunsetted, this means that duolingo no longer works with others to create new courses—a number of "lower demand" courses were created with the volunteer contributor programme, and wouldn't exist without it. the volunteer contributor programme allowed native speakers to contribute to and improve existing courses, and develop new courses (there used to be petitions for languages to be added, and if these calls were loud enough, there was a good chance that that language would be worked on, first as a beta course, then as an official course).

finally, more and more, duolingo is pushing monetisation. while i understand that duolingo is a business, that doesn't change my disappointment at it going from an entirely free, fairly useful resource (if not one that should be relied on alone), to an increasingly simplified, superficial platform riddled with ads, constantly trying to convince you to buy a subscription in order to access functions that used to be entirely free (anyone else remember when you weren't limited in hearts?).

i've tried not to let my subjective opinions colour this response too much, and keep it objective, linking sources into it, but yeah, overall, my opinion is that duolingo has started to suck a lot, and i wouldn't recommend it, especially when there's usually more extensive, more useful resources to be found. if you have a specific language you want to learn, and don't know where to start, and don't want to pay for a programme, you can send me an ask and i'll do my best to put together resources for you, or at least point you towards blogs that might have a better answer for you.

(also, the chinese course sucks. i cannot imagine trying to learn it from scratch—the lack of explanations of tone and grammar would probably make it a nightmare.)

[demifiendrsa]

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 - Expanded Marvel's New York

Digital Deluxe Trailer 

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will launch for PlayStation 5 on October 20, 2023.

Latest details

Expanded Marvel’s New York

In the video, Creative Director Bryan Intihar provides a deep dive into our expanded Marvel’s New York, including the ways we’ve evolved the game since we last masked up and played as our Spider-Men. New locations, updated exploration, exhilarating traversal, near-instant switching between heroes, a rogue’s gallery of villains, new abilities and gadgets, and brand-new Suit Styles are just some of the ways we’re upping the game this time around.

So, what’s new?

In Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, we’re nearly doubling the size of Marvel’s New York. Expanding beyond the East River, you’ll swing and soar over iconic landmarks across Queens and Brooklyn—complete with story missions, side quests, and city activities! This expansion also means even faster traversal options such as the Web Wings, which can be combined with traditional web swinging to move at exhilarating speeds.

Players will also be able to switch between Peter Parker and Miles Morales in the open world, near-instantly thanks to the power of the PlayStation 5. Both Spider Heroes are important characters to the grand story we’re telling in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and each will have their own separate side stories to uncover throughout the city. Help students at Brooklyn Visions as Miles Morales or accept new requests for aid as Peter Parker via the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man app—you can even choose to tackle certain activities as either Spider-Man!

Kraven the Hunter and the monstrous Venom join our roster of villains and will strain our heroes, their relationships, and the place they call home. However, they’re not the only two villains causing trouble in the city. We won’t spoil it for you—but our Spideys will need to, ahem, #BeGreaterTogether, to stop them using many new skills, gadgets, and abilities!

In Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, we’ve layered on a new set of abilities and skills for our heroes: Pete’s new Symbiote powers and Spider-Arms are aggressive and relentless; meanwhile, Miles brings an electrifying and thunderous quality to his bioelectric venom power, as well as Evolved venom abilities. Mix, match, and deploy these abilities with ease using a streamlined control scheme and combo them in fights in all-new Spidey style!

Speaking of style, let’s talk suits! Featuring 65 suits, which include new original designs and fan favorites from films and comics, players will have an expansive wardrobe of costumes to equip in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. We’re also delighted to announce Suit Styles, an all-new feature that unlocks alternate color shaders for some suits, which provide over 200 ways for you to outfit your Spider-hero!

The Digital Deluxe Edition

In May, we also revealed the Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Digital Deluxe Edition featuring 10 exclusive Spidey suits, additional Photo Mode items, and 2 Skill Points. To bring these 10 suits to life, we partnered with several artists across comics, games, and films! We spoke with these artists to give us a little insight into their designs. We’ll be sharing deeper dives into these suits on Insomniac Games’ official social media accounts, so stay tuned!

Apunkalyptic Suit – Designed by Jerad Marantz: Make the best out of any situation with the Apunkalyptic Suit, featuring a low-tech design that shows what Peter Parker can do with limited resources and a strong will.

Stone Monkey Suit – Designed by Victoria Ying: Heavily inspired by Chinese legends, this suit brings an acrobatic and uniquely mischievous design to the world of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. The suit is practical and stylish!

Tactical Suit – Designed by Bend Studios: From Bend’s concept artists Joel Mandish and Darren Quach, the Tactical Suit is inspired by Japanese media and the vast universe of comics. It’s a futuristic and lighter design that stands out in our roster of Digital Deluxe Edition suits.

Aurantia Suit – Designed by Raf Grassetti: The Aurantia Suit is an evolution of traditional Spider-Man designs that incorporates slick and practical spider motifs! Highlights include antennas infused into the mask elements, giving it a stealthy appearance made for Peter Parker!

25th Century Suit – Designed by Anthony Francisco: Featuring an ultramodern design, this suit incorporates a unique fishbowl-like helmet and an array of lights. This futuristic suit sports bulky yet fashionable boots and a sleek design all around.

The EnC0ded Suit – Designed by Kris Anka: The EnC0ded Suit brings a cyberpunk flare to Miles Morales’ wardrobe! If you look closely at the suit, you may spot a few interesting details such as abstract lettering reminiscent of popular phrases from Spider-Man lore!

Biomechanical Suit – Designed by Jerad Marantz: The merger between organics and mechanics, the Biomechanical Suit is inspired by popular anime creature designs, pushing an “otherworldly” style in its use of materials and themes.

Red Spectre Suit – Designed by Sweeney Boo: Let’s paint the town red! The Red Spectre Suit spotlights the young and adventurous nature of Miles Morales. It merges Spidey’s heroic motifs with stylish fashion!

Tokusatsu Suit – Designed by Julia Blattman: This design takes heavy inspiration from the world of insects and live-action Japanese media known as Tokusatsu. The design keeps Miles Morales’ iconic red and black color palette and incorporates a grand sense of Tokusatsu-like heroism!

Agimat Suit – Designed by Anthony Francisco: Inspired by the indigenous tribes of the Philippines, the Agimat Suit is a playful and colorful design suited for Miles Morales. The suit gives off a hint of royalty with its high contrast purple and gold color palette!

On top of all the exciting news today, we’re thrilled to announce a special collaboration with EARTHGANG (feat. Benji) to bring you “Swing,” a new music track featured in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Listen to it first in our Digital Deluxe Edition trailer! For “Swing” and other music from Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, you can listen to the full soundtrack showcasing a score from award-winning composer John Paesano on your favorite music streaming platform starting October 20th.

[brehaaorgana]

I think I remember that a few months ago, when DuoLingo started using AI translation, you reblogged a post that listed a whole bunch of alternative language-learning apps. But tumblr search sucks and I can’t find it on your blog. Any chance you remember more specifically when you posted it, or whether it was tagged?

i suuuuuck at tagging sorry.

BUT:

+ i just reblogged 2 similar posts i may have also reblogged

[longeyelashedtragedy]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

i was faux-tagged by @prosopopeya ! it was fun reading your answers!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

147...damn

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

434,625

3. What fandoms do you write for?

right now i only write "Men's Football RPF," but occasionally i have the desire to write in my previous fandom, and then never do.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

these are all a song of ice and fire/game of thrones fics from way back in the day

drabbles of ice and fire (does what it says on the tin)

captivated (arya/jaqen AU)

ends and beginnings (arya/jaqen university AU)

egg baby (arya/jaqen, au)

arya saves the day (arya/jaqen, the same university AU)

...as you might have guessed, i was THEE arya/jaqen BNF back then, lol. (if you have familiarity with the characters please note these are all AUs because arya is aged up in order to ship her)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i try, i really do! comments just get my executive function so snarled up and i wind up forgetting.

6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

that's most of them. how am i meant to choose? it's hard for me to get through the end of "i tore off the golden branch" without crying even to this day. "like a song on repeat, nothing has to end" has some nice sad transfer window angst, and as i've said, the ending to "visited upon the sons" really slaps. is it cheating to say mare liberum?--that ending only exists on my notes app, and it's more "tragic" than angsty i guess.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

oh, hmmm. i wanna say... "5.VII." poor dejan, always fearing he'll somehow be alone and unwanted, not good enough, and in that moment at the end of the fic those worries leave him.

“So...that means...these things...These things we do together...” Dejan waits impatiently.  No, he’ll be honest with himself.  He’s waiting nervously.  “We’re just going to have to keep doing them forever, right, brate?”  Dejan lets go of the breath he’s been holding and as he does, he feels those wings again, stretching out from his shoulder blades and shaking themselves out and giving him an incredible lightness. He could float away right now with Šime in his arms. They could float away together.   “Yes. I guess we will.”

8. Do you get hate on fics?

not really, i think they're so poorly written or strange that they just don't get much notice. i did see some "piquira" people back in the day talk about how my fic "soy loca con mi tigre," where shakira pegs piqué (RIP) with sergio watching them on video chat, was "weird." god, it must be painful to be that boring

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

unfortunately yes. i think it's usually pretty straightforward, but maybe not blunt enough to be grimy-hot. i don't like anything flowery. i wish i could write some m/f from time to time, but i have too many gender issues to feel comfortable writing about an AFAB body in a sexual sense most of the time. i am trying to channel this discomfort into writing a fic where jamie jamie jamie takes franko out clubbing to drown his sorrows and they pick up some Girls it is what it is!

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

i used to with my ex, we had an amazing AU where we crossed over a million different punk/metal/alternative musicians with some other rpf type people. oh, and not to forget--my first ever footyfics were crossovers, lol.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

i sure have! it was shameless as fuck. however, justice was served because my version got more kudos and comments, so i didn't even bother to start shit. as they say, she thought she ate!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes, into russian, chinese, and persian. i have enough fics translated into russian on ficbook to have my own Author Page on there--a point of pride, because i love ficbook :)

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

yes, many with said ex! i would love to do a collab again--anyone? hit me up

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

idk? rakidrić, šejan, movren, xhakarteta RIP, JAVEY from AFI, cersei/jaime, aged up!arya/jaqen. am i missing anything?

15. What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

maybe my really long 'ivan rakitić coming of age' fic, where the running plot is "what is he doing to keep himself at barça even tho he's out of favor?" as you can see, it would be very outdated, plus it was never intended for a wide audience

16. What are your writing strengths?

not sure :/ characters' emotions, good use of repetition and parallelism (i like to think !) and good use of rhythm. i also think i write a good ending. my bff said "the way you describe love and loss is unlike anyone else" which i thought was nice!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

plot, pacing. good porn, being unfiltered (like--my writing feels too repressed lol)

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

it has to make sense so it doesn't feel like tokenization or fetishization and can't be cheesy. the only time i think i was going to include actual multiple lines of dialogue in anther language (spanish), i then changed it so the fic didn't have it.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

the first like, true established fandom i wrote for was a song of ice and fire/game of thrones. before that i wrote a lot of bandfic, but mostly for bands and artists who didn't really have any fic or canons. like, 98% of it was private for just me and my ex, but a few of the pieces still exist online here and there.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

i cannot pick favorites. there's so many reasons why something would be a favorite. and i have 147 fics on ao3! plus many things that aren't. plus my unpublished bandfic was some of my best writing. i don't know!

i almost wonder if it's "his return: a story of ghosts" which...i initially wrote as a fic but then changed it up. it was a "magical realism" au based on my undergrad senior thesis, lol. (the most common remark about it in my advanced creative writing seminar was "uh, it sounds like you know what you're talking about.") it's so imperfect, but writing it was SO much fun, and i had a whole soundtrack i listened to as i wrote, and then a few years ago i did a massive edit of it which was even more fun and it's still very imperfect and can't figure out why. i also don't like daniel's name but i named him after 2 ppl i knew at the time and now i can't change it, lol.

OH AND ALSO: granit's first flashback chapter in dangerous AU!

if you write fic, you are tagged, but i definitely tag: @new-berry @protect-daniel-james @fanficburner @purefractals @colorsofmyseason @bsaka7 @arsenalgbt AND ANYONE ELSE I FORGOT please do it if you see it!!!