#found it on reddit and i searched but i can't find the source but this is too good I have to preserve it

[screwdriver-and-souffle]

What confusion! Must be because I love you

[wes-breaks-your-kneecaps]

How I learned to read in my target languages (Part 2)

I will mention multiple others sources I used to improve my reading. Basically I would read for as long as I need to get 15 or 20 words daily.

I can't recommend WordSwing as much as I recommend DuChinese, but it's still worth using if you want to read more.

I don't remember using DuHanZi, but apparently I finished all free stories on it, there probably weren't a lot of them.

Once I had enough vocab and I was bored of DuChinese, I used a website, that I found on Reddit — www.mylingua.world.

It forms your recommendations on what news you can understand, based on your vocab knowledge. Once you see a word you've learned, you just mark it as learned. Gradually after marking more and more words, you see how much progress you've made and it's really motivating.

Would I recommend reading news to improve your vocab? Unless it's an article on your interests, I would say no. There's no need to force yourself to consume what you're not interested in to improve your language skills.

Another useful feature from this website is being able to add your own texts in chinese. Which significantly improved my reading skills in just a few months of reading fanfiction.

The main con of this resource is inaccuracy. While in most cases you won't notice it, some words on there have innaccurate translation. But don't worry, just use Pleco or an online dicitionary.

I have a dictionary I want to recommend to those of you who know Russian, it's name is PocketChinese. The app may be a bit laggy, but in a lot of cases where Pleco failed to explain a word or a phrase to me, PocketChinese succeeded. So as long as you switch between these two and mylingua.world, you'll probably be fine.

A few months ago they've set a limit on how many articles you can fully read weekly and on how many you can upload. But i assure you that even with the limit you still have a lot of possibilities to learn.

Just remember to bookmark articles you've found interesting, since finding them later is hard.

When I played games in chinese and had difficulties with writing down words to search for them I would use Deepl. It has a scan feature that allowes you to make photos of chinese texts. It automatically translates that, but you can also copy it and work with it.

My top resource is mylingua.world. Genuinely simplifies my life so much when I want to figure out new vocab in a new text.

[gabrielied]

Happy Holidays, everyone! 🕯 Another December means another Nutcracker AU piece. Hopefully it's obvious what the reference was for this picture, but if not, it's the "Anne Hathaway from the Twelfth Night Picture", minor tangent in the Read More below.

Anyway, stay warm and see you in the new year!

[Support The Search for Henry Jekyll on Patreon]

ComicFury | Tapas | Webtoons

So ok, most of you have probably seen the original picture this is based on, I wanted to find the original source of the image for people to link back to but I CAN'T find it. Most immediate sources lead to a reddit or twitter post that showed it with no info on the source and I didn't want that to be the link. One reddit version linked this article from the LA Times but this version features none of the original images from the Culture Monster Blog post it comes from, nor does the achieved version in the way back website. I also tried to find the source of the image and here's the initial data I found on it and the source info on the first available version of it. 

Finally I found this article about a photographer and included in her work is a photo that has to be from the same photoshoot as the image I'm trying to source so I'm CERTAIN that's she's the photographer of it. So, to summarize this frustrating deep dive, I believe the photographer of the Twelfth Night Bisexual Kiss picture that became a meme is Brigitte Lacombe.

[babylaptop]

setting up an ipod is harder than you fucking think

just spent the last life four+ hours setting up this ipod classic 4th gen. here's a summary of all the problems i ran into:

(1) ipod had files in it. they appeared as gray and un-editable on itunes, so i thought reseting the ipod to factory would be the fastest and easiest solution.

turns out the last step of the process is connecting ipod to a wall power source. i do this. nothing happens for at least an hour. ipod is stuck in "connect to the wall" icon screen no matter what i do. the internet says it needs to connect with an actual apple firewire wall connector, which i do not have. tried using my ipad's charger with a usb-to-usb-c adapter that i own. didn't work. eventually figured it out the problem had to do with the amps it needs to get defibrillated. i remember that i own a pretty hefty power bank with a 5v/2.1a output. it works. ipod is reset. i have a nice fun time adding the 6 or so songs i have downloaded on my computer (:

(2) i had downloaded soulseek a while ago and gotten frustrated with it but decided to give it another spin since piracy experts on reddit sing it many praises. it seems to have a heavy culture of egalitarianism: a pop up window informs you that a lot of people's download's are restricted only to other people sharing files.

__(2.1) it prompts me to enter my account and password but i don't have one. there isn't an immediatly visible 'create account' link. i google this. eventually i find this soulseek forum where a ton of normies are asking questions pretty regularly. excellent. i search my problems and someone else has already made a post and had the question answered. thank you normies. also: google groups is still a thing???????

the inability to create an account is a weird bug. someone's answer tells me how to circumvent it.

__(2.2) i still can't search for anything. there are no files in this wasteland. i turn on my vpn. put my humble six songs in a folder and share it. voila!!!!!!!

soulseek is actually VERY cool. you can browse other people's music folders, which opens an incredible secret world of possibilities re: finding new music similar to your tastes. EXTREMELY exciting. feels like i'm in a cool secret club of the internet. feels like the old internet.

i download one (1) lana del rey song that's stuck in my head. choose .flac (a lossless audio file) because i want to be fancy.

(3) ...........itunes doesn't read .flac files

__(3.1) searches: what files does itunes read? > which of these files is best for lossless audio? > how do i convert .flac files to itunes-compatible file types? > download foobar2000 > click around till i figure out how to convert .flac files to .wav files.

__(3.2) it works! (: the songs are now in itunes! (:

............but the metadata (album cover, genres, artist, album, etc) doesn't transfer. i don't want to manually input it again. searches: how to keep metadata when converting files? tutorial is slightly different from the version of foobar i have, but i eventually find the setting to keep the metadata.

(4) it works! (:

.............but it won't transfer to my ipod ): i get the message: your ipod can't read this file <- paraphrasing.

okay. searches: what kind of files can an ipod classic 4th gen read? (perhaps they are different from the files itunes can read. this is, after all, the last version of itunes ever released, many years and itunes versions after the ipod classic 4th gen.)

this information isn't in the wikipedia page. this isn't in the ipod wiki. can't even find this model in the official apple pages. it's mentioned in several reviews but it's the wrong model. christ almighty. ok. here it is. found it. allegedly it should be able to read it. ok. why isn't it.

read through forum threads. some people say older ipods get fussy with high bitrates. (search: what is a bitrate? oh ok. higher bitrate > higher audio quality. got it.)

bitrates reccomended by foobar: 180-300something. lossless file bitrate: 2000 and change. hm. surely that's a huge difference.

i convert the .flac file to .mp3 instead.

__(4.1) it works! (: the files are in my ipod! (:

.....but goddamnit, i'm stubborn, and this goddamn ipod is supposed to be able to read apple lossless files (basically a .flac file, but designed to be used with apple products. lol.) i don't want a lameass mp3, i want lossless goddamn quality! even if this brick of an ipod won't be able to play it! it's the principle of the thing!

______(4.1.1) okay. try to fuck around with bitrates in the settings of the apple lossless conversion on foobar. foobar is like "you don't have the right encoder pack, bitch" <- paraphrasing.

oooh. surely, this is the problem. i download encoder pack.

______(4.1.2) foobar is like: "you don't have the right encoder pack, bitch" <- paraphrasing.

me: [crying] but i did.

foobar: bitch.

______(4.1.3) search: why is foobar calling me a bitch? > reddit thread: look closely at the sphynx's riddles three: it doesn't say "you haven't downloaded the encoder pack." it says: you haven't installed the encoder pack. (<- NOT A JOKE.)

go to C: > program files > foobar > find the encoder pack i downloaded > click on all the .exe files. powershell windows appear and dissappear. basically: stuff happened. i'm certian.

_____________(3.4.3.1) i'm STILL getting the riddles three message, but the same reddit thread says: if you know you solved th riddles three, you can just ignore it (: so i do.

__(4.2) .flac files seem to have been successfully converted to apple lossless files !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

....but i am back to "your ipod can't read this shit!!!!!!!!!"

do some more searches > turns out it's a weird itunes glitch. the thing is just moody. try turning it on and off. try disconnecting and re-connecting. try resetting your ipod again.

try uninstalling and installing again.

(5) "iTunes Library.itl cannot be read because it was created by a newer version of iTunes"

.......................to be continued. if i don't kill mysuelf first.

[angelsaxis]

i revisited this article that states this:

Text:

"Different Name, Same Dynamic

What Nicole describes is a classic pattern of domestic abuse, one that is often associated with a male abuser and his female victim. But intimate partner violence (IPV) happens in same-sex relationships, too, and — like in heterosexual relationships — the abuse is categorized by a pattern of behavior in which one partner seeks to gain power and control over the other. A 2013 report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) found that lesbian women are more likely to experience physical violence from a partner — and they accounted for 19% of IPV homicide victims. (This is a staggering proportion considering that only 1.5% of women in the U.S. self-identify as lesbian and 0.9% as bisexual.)"

And bases the entire article, which talks about IPV in wlw relationships, off this source. The articles main point is to talk about how women are can and do abuse other women in relationships.

And maybe I'm misreading something but this cited source does not actually talk about lesbians or queer women in general as perpetrators of either IPV or IPV resulting in homicide...like at all. "Lesbian women are more likely to experience physical violence from a partner" does not mean "Lesbian women are more likely to abuse their (presumably women) partners". You can't make that kind of logical leap. Why?

Because closeted lesbians date men. And those men abuse them. Bisexual women date men. And those men abuse them. Queer women date men, and those men abuse them.

I searched the study the article cites to see where this particular statistic could be. I found:

Hate violence survivor and victim demographics. Lesbians make up 19% of hate violence survivors and victims. This says nothing about being perpetrators, yet the entire article is about women as abusers.

There's another section in the study that does talk about perpetrators/offenders demographics, and these are the categories it covers: gender identity, racial and ethnic ID, age, total number of offenders, relationships (as in, landlords, family, coworker or employer, etc), and site. Not sexuality (which I was honestly surprised at).

People often say lesbians are the biggest abusers of the LGBT+ community, and then they use that to justify being lesbophobic and misogynistic, but that 19% statistic doesn't remotely support this claim.

I did some Googling and can't seem to find anything supporting the claim that lesbians are perpetrators of IPV more than any other gender + sexuality combo. This isn't to say lesbians never abuse or are never abused, but....there's just no numbers to support the claim. The one thing I can find is that according to the CDC, about two thirds of lesbians surveyed reported only having female perpetrators against them. Note that "female" does not denote a sexuality. Also note that the overwhelming majority of bisexual women are victims of IPV from male partners.

Reading this reddit thread also brings to light some other issues with the idea that lesbians are the biggest perpetrators of abuse in their relationships. They cite a CDC survey, I believe.

I'm just endlessly frustrated by this idea that lesbians are uniquely violent in the LGBT+ community. I'm too tired to get into why this belief sucks, or why people are even willing to believe such an unfounded stat in the first place. It's obvious.

[hanavesinauttija]

Thinking about tumblr etiquette and the lack of resources for figuring out what is and isn't appropriate. On discord and reddit, when people find art that they think others will like, they just share them. There are servers with meme channels full of funny art and subreddits dedicated for just that.

I found a couple images I'd saved on my phone a year or more back, thought my mutuals would like them, and posted them. Three separate people told me to kill myself for not crediting the artists.

Idk about you, but this doesn't seem particularly motivating a method to get me to do homework whenever I see a meme I think my mutuals will like. I've tried searching for some of the images but for many of them I can't find the original source. Doesn't stop people from telling me to kill myself, though.

Also, how do I reverse image search videos? What if there's a caption added on top of the piece of art? Do I credit both? Should I credit screenshots? What about photographs? I don't want to be a pedant, there just aren't any instructions beyond trying different options out and seeing which ones gain you death threats and which don't.

[gyllenhaalstories]

What do you think David Loki’s zodiac sign is? Do you think he genuinely believes in horoscopes or not?

hi, anon!!! this is a really interesting question! unfortunately, i must be the most unqualified person on this planet to answer such a question because i truly know nothing about astrology. i think my whole birth chart is a made up lie because nothing fits (and what fits can be very easily explained by my anxiety), so yeah, i never dug too deep into the topic. but... let's give it a try together, shall we?

I checked this website that says David is most likely an Aquarius. They write this: "As an Aquarius zodiac sign, Detective Loki is intellectual and cerebral. Aquarians often finds themselves lost in thought while analyzing something or brainstorming solutions to problems. With a thirst for knowledge, Detective Loki is highly intelligent and has a strong desire to learn about all kinds of topics." This page on the Allure website (going strong with the serious sources, I know!) specify a few things about Aquarius that fit with the first description. They point out that Aquarius signs are known to be stubborn and go about things in their own way. The Aquarius personality, based off what the astrologer said in the Allure text, contradicts what Jake said about David with the whole 'works alone and is too eccentric to respect authority figures' (which... I mean, yeah, we see David confront the Captain). But Jake said, in this interview (but I'm going off this page), that David has been searching for an institution, for a found family. Jake pushes the idea of institution further by precising that "Loki represents an institution".

I found two Reddit posts (one, two) that discuss Detective Loki and someone pointed out the tattoos on his right knuckles: the zodiac signs for Leo, Scorpio, Aries and Virgo. I think this could be an interesting indicator. Are these his big four? Are these the signs of people in his life, from his past? Perhaps parents, guardians, figures he trusted or friends from the boys home? Maybe. If we go with the possibility that the tattoo represents his own birth chart, then I'm going back to the Allure website. Leo (loyal, consistent, magnetic, proud), Scorpio (intuitive, calculated, determined, passionate), Aries (impulsive, motivated, explosive, bold) and Virgo (systematic, destructive, resourceful, meticulous) all share characteristics that match Detective Loki.

Out of all the Jake characters, Det Loki seems to me like the one guy who would believe in this the most. I'm not saying he'd base his entire life around it, but he might seek answers in astrology and in people's signs. Loved ones, friends or partners, he would probably like to figure out their birth charts and he would try to understand them better as a person depending on the placements and planets and all that jazz. It'd be cute to read the horoscope in the newspapers, at home or at the restaurant perhaps, and discuss the vague warnings and descriptions it gives. It's safe to say Loki is a man of symbols and the meaning he gives to these symbols (astrology, the masonic ring, religion, his other tattoos) is a big part of the mystery that surrounds him. We know he, although playfully, inquires the waitress about hers and her boss' Chinese Zodiac sign. He reads the description for rooster and nods in agreement. I think there's a certain interest and fascination for astrology in Loki that is hard to find in other characters. I doubt that he would see astrology as factual, but I think he'd entertain the idea that some elements are not just coincidental.

i've always associated detective loki with winter so i want to support anything that validates my claim but i'm not too convinced about aquarius. i'd be more inclined to see him as a scorpio (i saw @/gyllenflower's answer and dan suggested scorpio as well so that's nice!). loki is very november vibes. although i can't lie, i do see a lot of virgo in david. his virgo attributes can easily be explained by just being good at his job but... what if? what if loki is the virgo character i've been searching for? my virgo self would be very happy. also yes i have spent three hours researching and reading about fictional people's fake and unconfirmed zodiac signs. my laptop hates me for having about 20 open tabs. i'm not sure that trying to go factual and trying to cross reference random posts and websites is the right way to approach a question about astrology but it is the way i chose to approach this question. i think i put more effort in answering this than in writing any final essays i have submitted in my awfully long student life. thank you so much for giving me an excuse to forget about the world and just think about detective loki for a while!

[my-hobby-is-finding-the-source]

hi! sorry to bother you but I was wondering, have you ever found the source for images working only with descriptions? there's a fanart I like that I can't find anywhere and I couldn't save it before I lost it... it was a drawing of MF Doom with a lizard on his back, he looks happy and susprised! there's 1 fanart like that on reddit but it isn't that one, the one I look for was on twitter :( I understand if its completely lost, ty for reading this anyway! love your blog!

Hi, thank you very much, no bother at all!

I can't say I have, personally. The closest to that I think I've done is looking for images by searching the tags that the image could have on places like Danbooru, and then sorting through all the results.

But in those cases I'll either have a reference image to go by, or a very clear memory of the thing I'm looking for. And even then, my success will entirely depend on whether or not someone has uploaded that particular piece there. That is, if there even is a "booru" for the type of image you are looking for...

I mean, there's this one drawing I'm looking for that I remember exactly and could describe to a tee, but am also completely sure nobody has uploaded it anywhere else.

[consistantly-changing]

[Image descriptions in order: a twitter thread by @DapperDomo "Domo" which says "The reason yall be having all these technical degrees and making 300k but keep falling for conspiracy theories is because you thought English classes were stupid in college and now you don't know what a logical fallacy is.]

["The reason you can't get a date is because all you read are self help books and you have nothing interesting to talk to about so you end up mansplaining investment crypto (which is a scam) to a a girl who could give less of a fuck then ghosts you after an expensive dinner.

"Somebody, prolly your dumb uncle or older brother, told you that women like men with money so you thought that your investment banker salary and Patagonia vest would fine you love. Now you rage about feminism on Reddit because you gotta pay for escorts. Loser.]

["Moral of the story. Acquire knowledge and information outside of your technical specialty and maybe just maybe you'll be a well rounded human who can interact with society at large.

"Conspiracy theory Twitter has found this so let me say this:

The American government has done enough horrible things that are public record that you do not need conspiracy theories about the moon landing being fake to validate your distrust. Cointelpro isnt a theory."]

[A response to the thread by @JKShort "Heck's Corner" which says "High school English class: "This is known as an ‘unreliable narrator"

STEM genius: “When will THAT be applicable in real life?""]

[An infographic titled "Should I use this resource?" The information says:

Very Few Resources Are 100% Good or 100% Bad. Most are somewhere in between.

Research question: "How can I make sure I use quality information if so many resources have a weakness or two?"

Research Solutions for Evaluation Weaknesses:

Weakness: Source Isn't Very Current. Solution: Make sure the other resources you use are current.

Weakness: Author Isn't an Expert. Solution: Back up your facts with other sources written by experts.

Weakness: The Resource is Biased. Solution: Find biased resources from various perspectives so that you examine ALL sides of the issue.

Important point! While most resources will have a weakness, consider your sources collectively. With all of your sources combined, you want to have Yeses in each category on your checklist.

Research question: "What if I have trouble finding answers to some of the PAUSE questions?"

Evaluation Tips & Tricks:

Is the Source Current? If no date is listed for the source, Check the dates listed for the sources in the bibliography (if provided) or dates of statistics mentioned in the text.

If a source doesn't provide the author's credentials, Google them! You can learn a lot about an author by simply searching for them online.

If a source was published by an organization you're unfamiliar with, Google it! Most organization websites have an About section which provides details about their work AND any biases they might have.

Final notes:

Evaluating resources is not an exact science. It requires judgment and gets easier with practice.

Evaluation takes time. Give yourself enough time to find the best resources.

If you need help; ask! Librarians & your professor are available for assistance.]

[Another infographic, which says: how to spot fake news:

Consider the source: Click away from the story to investigate the site, its mission and its contact info.

Read beyond: Headlines can be outrageous in an effort to get clicks. What's the whole story?

Check the author: Do a quick search on the author. Are they credible? Are they real?

Supporting sources? Click on those links. Determine if the info given actually supports the story.

Check the date: Reposting old news stories doesn't mean they're relevant to current events.

Is it a joke? If it is too outlandish, it might be satire. Research the site and author to be sure.

Check your biases: Consider if your own beliefs could affect your judgement.

Ask the experts: Ask a librarian, or consult a fact-checking site.

End ID]

[godshounds]

the vintage metal rat purse is haunting me

i wanted to know the year or era it was made in, which wasn't in the OP. then wanted to know if the information that was in the OP was accurate (no disrespect to xanaxfarts), so i google & the artist claimed by the OP (paul frey) i couldnt find much about because there's some other unrelated guy named paul frey who is more well known. i did find paul frey when i looked up the jeweler (lacloche feres) -- they list his makers mark and there's this blurb that says he "created art-nouveau animal-themed gold handbags" for the jeweler around the 1890s. i also found a very similar-looking piece (a piggy handbag) attributed to him that sold at sotheby's. the pieces look very, very similar; i would presume they were made by the same artist

but then the photo itself is actually really odd. observe the piggy purse, from sotheby's website:

obviously that's from a very famous very fancy auction website intended to showcase the piece for potential buyers. very legit. but then observe the rat purse:

like it isn't a terrible picture or anything but it looks like someone just laid it on a counter. and if you look close, over one of the back feet on the rat there is what i'm pretty sure is a watermark. that, or it's a scan of a physical photograph with some damage. if it is a watermark, i can't really make it out enough to research it.

also, the post i reblogged says it's made of "brass and a small ruby." the eye also looks really... flat? to me? in that picture, it doesn't look like a gemstone to my untrained eye, but maybe that's a trick of the light. for context i have a history degree, but no special training or exposure to the nuances of animal-themed metal handbags from the late 1800s. that said, i also noticed the construction of the pieces is different (clasp on the rat, chain on the pig). also, the level of detail is different -- the pig has so much fine detail, if you zoom you can see all this beautiful etching and the eye is so finely sculpted. then you look at the whiskers on the rat, and it's like.... is this the same guy?

i've reverse image searched the rat purse picture, and all i see are social media posts. the oldest i see is a screenshot from 2024 of a tweet from an archeology account (which doesn't seem to be affiliated with any particular institution or archeologist), then it makes the rounds on reddit and tumblr and facebook. apparently a lot of folks on reddit claimed it was their granny's or something as clickbait. but like, nothing on wikipedia or encyclopedia brittanica or the jeweler's website or anything that says paul frey definitely made that rat purse. i've been looking for two days and i can't find a legitimate source that says this particular artist made this particular piece

except, of course, a medium article with a promising headline ("the newest attention bait: the rat that is published everywhere" which is locked behind a paywall.

to be clear i'm not trying to start a rat purse conspiracy. the pieces look similar, maybe the attribution is correct, but there's enough difference that i have my doubts. that's not what's actually making me insane though.

zooming out, thinking big picture, i'm struck and startled and upset that THIS is how hard it is to verify information on the internet. this is very, very low-stakes information, and i've put a few hours of my life into finding a provably correct answer to my question. it's turned up zilch. even if you try really hard, and even if you have some training in research, even if you're careful and use all the little tricks... it's still like that picture came out of the damn void. because it first shows up online in 2024, i'm not even sure it's a real fucking picture.

so, yeah. i don't know. if anyone smarter than me can figure out who the hell made the rat purse, please DM me. until then i'll just scream

[gayarograce]

Just went down an information rabbit hole which, while resulting in basically a net zero information gain, I still found quite interesting. There are some clicky links throughout this post so you can see all the web pages I talk about here.

Our story begins with the Quebecois swear tabarnak.

I was doing a quick bit of research, simply because Quebecois swearing is a Trip™️, when I stumbled across the word's Wiktionary entry. And in it, I spot this line:

Now, as someone who has been learning Spanish for a hot minute now and likes to pick up odd words whenever I see them, this piqued my interest. Naturally, I go to look up some more information on the word tabarnaco.

I don't find much. Naturally, when looking into the meanings of Spanish words, my first idea was to search in the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE, from Real Academia Española). The RAE does not contain any entries for the word tabarnaco. I do find an entry on Urban Dictionary, but I don't really hold it as a super reputable source, I don't think? And that's it.

Before I continue recounting my trip further down the rabbit hole, let me take a moment to explain a bit about the relevant linguistics at play here.

A lot of swears in Quebecois French come from French words pertaining to Christianity in one way or another for reasons I didn't pursue in this quest for knowledge. (I was after something else, as you could see.) The Quebecois swear tabarnak is a respelling of the French tabernacle, which translates into English as tabernacle and into Spanish as tabernáculo.

Back to the story. Like anyone else might do when potential online sources for something have dried up, I turned to Reddit. I made a post asking if the word tabarnaco is used in Mexico to refer to the Quebecois. Unfortunately, the post and all responses are in Spanish. If you can't read Spanish, an online translator will probably do the job just fine. I haven't tested it. Anyway, while I didn't get a ton of responses, the ones I did get converge pretty soundly onto one answer: no.

Now the question in my mind was "What gives?" Sure, Wikipedia and its sister sites are wrong sometimes, that's just a given, but why was it wrong in this case? This seems like a pretty silly thing to mess up. Was it a simple mistake? Was it vandalism, for some reason?

First things first: who added the line I screenshotted above? A quick dig back through the page's edit history reveals that it was added by the Wiktionary user Urhixidur. A look at their page shows that their native language is French, the have a professional understanding of English, and they have next to no understanding of Spanish. This is a bit of a red flag, but whatever, I guess.

Another thing: you can't tell from the screenshot because I highlighted the relevant line, but the link for tabarnacos is red, indicating that there is no English Wiktionary link for the word. This page also does not exist in Spanish Wiktionary. However, it does exist in French Wiktionary. By going to the French Wiktionary page for the singular form, tabarnaco, you can see an example usage.

Finally, I might have started to get somewhere.

The given example is the title of a collection of poems by Paul-Marie Lapointe, titled Le sacre : Libro libre para Tabarnacos libres, published in 1998. This is stranger than it might appear at first glance. Paul-Marie Lapointe was born in and died in Quebec. The title is partially in French and partially in Spanish. While I do not have easy access to a copy of these poems, they are, to the best of my knowledge, entirely in French. I was able to track down the names of the poems, of which there are ten, and, in order, the first letter of each of their titles spells out T-A-B-A-R-N-A-C-O-S.

And this, dear reader, is where I have decided this story ends, at least from my perspective. I have given up on trying to locate further any sort of origin for this maybe-word-maybe-not-word. Maybe Lapointe, from the great Mexican state of Quebec, was the first. Maybe it was used earlier than him. I don't know, and I've run out of both the energy and the means to keep looking.

This has been what has been consuming a lot of my time last night and all throughout today. I decided to write this out to try and finally put it to rest in my mind. This was an interesting journey, trying to find more information on this word, which probably does not actually exist in any major way in Mexican varieties of Spanish. I don't know if anyone has read this far, honestly. I don't normally write posts this long. If you have actually read this far, then, uh, thank you, I guess. You really didn't have to, lol. Maybe you found it interesting. I certainly did. If you didn't then, ostie de crisse de tabarnak, why did you read this far?

OK, that's it. That's the end. I'm done now.

[cellarspider]

Thanks to the previous reply for digging up the real image.

This why linking to sources is important. This is why going to sources is important, to verify something is a photograph of a real event.

If you can't find a source for an image, check two things:

1 . Go to Google Image Search. Click the "Search by Image" option on the right of the search bar. Search for the image URL, then click "Find Image Source" above the main result. You will get a list of results that includes the date. If you only see social media results or clickbait websites, consider it deeply suspicious.

2. Go to TinEye, do the same process. TinEye and Google Reverse Image Search work slightly differently, and TinEye lets you sort results by when they were posted online. Neither are comprehensive, but between them, you have a good chance of finding the original source.

I'm going to break down what I found when I did this under the fold. TL;DR, It took me 15 seconds to gather enough information to determine the top image was fake, but 30 minutes to identify the original point of spread on the English-language internet.

I don't blame people who get suckered by this stuff. We want to trust each other. When others have already been circulating an image and have provided a story for it, it makes it seem more real.

If you don't know the facts, and especially if you're viewing an AI-generated image on a phone, where potential giveaways are harder to spot, it can be easy to believe it.

This is a pretty harmless example of something that can be far more dangerous, when it's applied to more sensitive topics.

Be safe out there, everyone.

So, here's how my search for the image's source went.

TinEye's first identification of the top image comes from Imgur, 25th February, 2023.

The comments were a mix of credulity and people pointing out that the image cannot be real, by the laws of optics. While the title doesn't claim that it's real, the "photography" tag is a lie.

The next day, it was already being circulated elsewhere on the internet with further misinformation.

This was apparently the second time this had been posted there, and was removed for not being a photo. However, it continued to spread on Twitter, with more misinformation. We see the first invention of a supposed photographer, to give it more authenticity. I don't know if this is the first guy who came up with it, but this was within the first day of circulating the image.

This other twitter account includes a link, but it's to a clickbait website, not any sort of original source.

Later, this was scraped up by more legitimate-looking clickbait news sites.

Note that this story is complete bullshit. They've not cited any sources. They've not linked to the original image, because they don't have one. They haven't directly quoted the photographer, because he doesn't exist.

As a note: This sort of thing can happen on any news website that doesn't do its own in-depth reporting, or legitimate publications that have an "affiliate" program, or a social media division. These are of variable quality, and often do not seek to cite anything other source than "Twitter".

It took fifteen seconds to verify that the image was likely fake using TinEye. It took half an hour to find a reddit post that linked to fact-checking website that identified the first time the images were spotted on the English-speaking internet, in a tranche of AI art posted on Facebook on February 5th.

This is as far as I can follow the trail, lacking the facility in navigating the Chinese-speaking internet to go any further. But you can see how quickly this developed into a hoax, through a combination of reasonable-sounding lies, the addition of more and more detail to the story as it passed along, and credulous spread of the image.

Full circle rainbow was captured over Cottesloe Beach near Perth, Australia in 2013 by Colin Leonhardt of Birdseye View

[nichescraper]

Want to know exactly how I went from $0 to $25k a month dropshipping?

I started back in January, didn't know what I was doing and lost money. Now I'm making almost $25k a month in revenue with 40% profits. In this post I've attached a screenshot of my earnings every single month since the beginning and will give a brief outline of what I did each month to grow. Hope this helps!

January - $643: I had no idea what I was doing. I heard about dropshipping on Reddit and decided

to try it. Initially I did a free + shipping offer on a baseball cap and I got some decent sales but lost money because of ad spend.

Was using Facebook

ads only at the time. February -$3,000: After running the free + shipping offer, people started buying other things on my store. It became clear to me what items people wanted, so I ran single image ads to them and this greatly boosted sales. I also began doing work on SEO this month. That included writing small blog articles, rewriting product descriptions, etc.

March-$6,900: My SEO from the prior work started to pick up so I began getting free traffic from Google searches which increased sales. I also started and Instagram page to build an audience related to my niche that I occasionally promote products to.

April - $13,200: I was able to double my revenue during this month. My previous job was working as a programmer, so I wrote a complex web crawler that search the web to find me winning products. Saved me tons of time and allowed me to test a lot more products. I found some new winners this way which increased sales.

The web crawler is now publicly available here: https://bit.ly/NicheScrapercom

I also began running re-targeting facebook campaigns at this point and learning more about effective advertising.

May - $18,400: I added an upsell app to my store which increased my average order value from $20 to $45. I also discovered a new "sub-niche" for my store when browsing results from my web scraper bot. This allowed me to target a whole new audience and product more sales.

June - $15,800: Sales decreased a little bit this month. This was largely because I had recently moved and didn't have a ton of free time to work on the business. Things like being slow to answer customers, not optimizing ads, etc. can all add up to a revenue loss! Totally my fault.

July - $25,000: My best month yet! After a loss of revenue in June, I decided to crack down. I scaled all my Facebook ads up a ton and it didn't end up hurting my conversion cost. I also found another "sub-niche" that contained multiple winning products. I think my lesson here was that I was previously too scared to mess with my winning ads, which included scaling. It obviously worked out in my favor when I decided to get out of my comfort zone!

Key Takeaways:

1. Focus on multiple sources of revenue. I have alot of sales coming from places like Pinterest, Google searches, my Instagram account, etc. Try not to get caught up in only doing Facebook ads.

2. If you have a skill, use it. Anything you can do that others can't will get you ahead of everyone else who's doing the same thing. In my case, I'm a programmer and was able to create the product finding bot.

3. Find winning products. 80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your products! This means you need to find that handful of best sellers that you can rely on to bring you sustainable income. Test, test and test some more. Browse other successful stores to see what they sell. 4. Don't be lazy. It takes hard work and thinking outside of the box! You saw what happened in June when I slacked off. Keep pushing forward and the results will be endless.

I could easily

maintain the business spending 15 minutes a day on it, but it took a lot of hours to get there.

I hope this helps!

If you want to try out the web scraper, I made it available publicly here:

https://bit.ly/NicheScrapercom

[fluffyamphibian]

How to find book you can't remember the title to

I've literally been trying to find this book I started to read in middle school for years. (Okay not consistently for years but it's been bugging me for years)

I didn't know the title but I remembered some stuff about the book. Like there's these kids trapped on an island with no adults. The adults were sick and left the island (and presumably all died) but the kids were somehow immune to the sickness. The kids couldn't leave the chainlink fence surrounding their camp because of the hostile island. Like one kid left the camp but he died because of this lamprey monster thing got him. Two more kids left for some reason(can't remember) but there was a girl that went to the raptor kingdom/ was possibly kidnapped. The boy that left the camp met another "kid" that looked like a rat. So the boy named the "kid" rat. I remember some other stuff but thats toward the end and I'm not trying to spoil it for people who want to read it.

How I found it

1. I went to the Google books search engine (I just found out it existed today)

2. Searched a phrase that I thought was unique to my book ( I searched raptor kingdom)

On the second page of the results there was a book called "The Raptor King" I thought that was it.

3. You can click on a result and it will give you either a preview or summary

In my case I clicked on " The Raptor King" but saw it wasn't it. BUT there was a quote from Tal, the King of Raptors and I remembered that the book I was looking for also had a King raptor sounding similar to Tal (King Talon)

- I searched up "raptor kingdom king talon" and the book i wanted came up!

I recognized the cover. The result was for page 282 of the book were it mentioned King Talon.

4. Read excerpt/summary to confirm you found your book!

Other sites to look up book you can't remember the title to

Tumblr of course!

Reddit forums. "Tip of My Tongue", "What's That Book", "Books" and "PrintSF"

Goodreads What's the Name of That Book

LibraryThings Name That Book

Source: "How to Find a Book When You Don't Know the Title or Author" by Sarah Mecham, Book Cave

For those who want to read it the book is called "The Rule of Claw"

[eclecticbasementenemy]

I've been wanting to get a little companion pet for a long time but I couldn't figure out one that would work. I LOVE cats but I'm allergic to them. I'm not allergic to dogs but I can't stand them. Guinea pigs and rabbits were both technically viable options but I've had both and we didn't really vibe because, well, sorry guinea pig and rabbit lovers but they're kinda dumb and skittish. Also I'd want to be able to have an outdoor run for them and that's just not possible.

Anyways, then I was reading a post about keeping rats and I realized they would make the PERFECT pets for me. Social, loving, but not overly needy like dogs are. Don't need a ton of space. (And by not a ton of space I mean I'm getting them a massive cage but I wouldn't feel bad about keeping them in a studio like I might with a dog or cat). Intelligent and easy to train, etc.

But ofc I wanna do this right so I've been researching rat keeping and I found out how incredibly important it is to get your rats from a good breeder that makes sure their animals are healthy and disease free.

Many many Google searches later, I found out there is one (1) actually good breeder in my state currently breeding rats. I assume this is because you can only sell baby rats for like $8-20 a pop so it has to be a purely passion project.

It's also actually difficult to find accurate information on rat keeping. Or it was until I caved and started putting "reddit" at the end of all my searches. Then I did find a wealth of carefully sourced and linked information. Guess it's good for something after all.

This one breeder, because it is a passion project (rightly) has an application for people to fill out. I, with fear and trepidation, because I am after all a former gifted kid and tests still give me heart palpitations, carefully filled it in with the info gleaned from Reddit about planned cages, food, handling, etc. (Which to be clear I am absolutely going to follow to the letter. I wasn't BSing to get some rats I am actually very committed to giving these little creatures the best goddamn lives rats have ever fucking had)

The breeder responded back that my application looked fantastic and they'd likely have some rats I could buy in February.

So there you go, I'm going to get a good grade in rat keeping, something that is both healthy to want and possible to achieve.

They're gonna send me some info on how to hand make fleece liners for their bedding and I've been compiling research on how to acclimate them to me and to the environment, litter training, shoulder training, when to start getting them used to walking on a leash, etc. So ig I'm a rat person now. Pretty excited ngl

[consistantly-changing]

[Image descriptions in order: a comment by thesuperfeyneednoshoes which says "Check for it straight away. There's no need to wait."]

[A search for carbon monoxide poisoning, a result being: The most common symptoms of CO poisoning are headache, dizziness, weakness, upset stomach, vomiting, chest pain, and confusion. CO symptoms are often described as "flu- like." If you breathe in a lot of CO it can make you pass out or kill you.]

[Three tweets by @How2Drink "Greg" which say "When I was a teenager, a young Gothman, I thought I could read peoples auras, see into other planes of reality, astral project, and commune with spirits. Turns out I *was* seeing auras, seizure auras, I'm epileptic. I wasn't astral projecting, I had vertigo and brain lightning.

"Anyway, based on my own life, I'd bet temporal lobe epilepsy has got to be one of the most under-diagnosed conditions out there. Consider getting checked if you've been diagnosed type-2 bipolar, or if you get migraines.

"And if, like me, when you were 10 years old you'd lay down to go to bed at night and then your bed would feel like it was spinning like a county fair Gravitron sideways through outer space for an hour, absolutely definitely go see a neurologist."]

[A Reddit post on legaladvice by RBradbury1920, titled "[MA] Post-it notes left in apartment." The post says "On the 15th of April I found a yellow post-it note in a handwriting that wasn't mine on my desk reminding me of some errands I had to do, but told literally nobody about. While odd, I chalked it up to something I did in my sleep, thinking maybe in my half-awake state I scrawled it so it didn't appear to be my handwriting. I threw it out and thought little of it.

On the 19th, I found another post it note on the back of my desk chair, in the same handwriting as the previous note, telling me to make sure I "saved my documents". I was freaked out, but there were no other signs of a break-in, so I set up a web-cam in my house aimed at my desk and used a security-cam app for it to record after detecting movement.

On the 28th, I woke up to find another post-it note, this one saying, "Our landlord isn't letting me talk to you, but it's important we do." I immediately checked the webcam's folder on my computer and found nothing from the night before, but my computer's recycling bin had been emptied, which I am certain I did not do recently, indicating someone had noticed the webcam and deleted the files. (They were just saved straight to a folder on my desktop called "Webcam".

Today, on the 1st of May, I found another post it note, this time on the outside of my door, with nothing written on it- and there also appeared to be post-its on many other doors in my apartment complex, all blank, in varying colors.

Do I have any legal recourse here? I have no proof except for the post-its, but those are written by my pen and on my post-it notes, so conceivably I could have faked them. Would contacting the police get me into any trouble, if they can't determine an outside source for this? I just want to make sure I'm not wasting anyone's time.

Should I consult my landlord? Those also living in the complex?

EDIT: I pulled up a letter I received from my landlord back when I moved in, and the handwriting is identical. Could this count as evidence?"]

[A comment by u/Kakkerlak which says "You seem sincere and this doesn't appear to be the plot of a Ray Bradbury short story.

It's possible that your landlord is leaving notes inside your apartment, but they don't make any sense in the context you're describing them.

It's likely that you are writing the notes yourself, but you are forgetting. Do you use post-it notes as reminders in any other parts of your life or job?

Yes, this might be a mental health issue. You might be experiencing some sort of dissociative disorder.

Or it might be a physical problem. You mentioned that you have a very unusual narrow bedroom with no windows; is there a chance that you are not getting enough ventilation when you sleep, or that there is a carbon monoxide leak in the building? A cheap CO detector (which you should have anyway) is a fast way to find out. You'll also have really bad headaches.

You know your own medical and mental history and your other experiences. If you think these incidents might be you, writing notes to yourself, there's no shame in getting somebody qualified to give you an opinion."]

[An update post, titled "[UPDATE!] [MA] Post-it notes left in apartment." The post reads "Thanks to everyone who sent suggestions and gave advice on how to proceeded- especially to those who recommended a CO detector... because when I plugged one in in the bedroom, it read at 100ppm.

TL;DR: I had CO poisoning and thought my landlord was stalking me."

Below is a comment by u/bonez656 which says "Sounds like you owe /u/Kakkerlak big time. He may have just saved your life.

Glad you figured it out."]

I'm saying this from a place of genuine care: if you are seeing ghosts or shadows or having nightmares... and sageing, eggshells, Crystal's, and psychics arent cutting it..

Please.. please... check for things like gas leaks, water damage, vermin. I'm not saying your house isnt haunted, I'm just saying that carbon monoxide poisoning looks a LOT like being haunted.