#online resource

[thegalleonsnest]

OK since I haven't seen too many people talk about this since twitter news usually strikes pretty fast over here whenever e'usk does anything ever, let me give ya'll the run down on two things that will go live on NOVEMBER 15TH and why people are mass migrating to Blue Sky once more; and provide resources to help protect your art and make the transition to Blue Sky easier if you so choose:

The Block function no longer blocks people as intended. It now basically acts as a glorified Mute button. Even when you block someone, they can still see your posts, but they can't engage in them. If your account is a Public one and not a Private one, people you blocked will see your posts.

They say because people can easily "share and hide harmful or private information about those they've blocked," they changed it this way for "greater transparency." When in reality, this is an extremely dangerous change, as the whole point of blocking is to cease interaction with people entirely for a plethora of reasons, i.e. stalking, harassment, spam, endangerment, or just plainly annoying and not wanting to see said tweets/accounts. or you know, for 18+ accounts who do not want minors interacting with them or their material at all (There is speculation saying these changes are specifically for Elon himself so he can do his own kind of stalking, and honestly, with the private likes change, it lowkey checks out in my opinion)

Also, this straight up goes against and may violate Apple and Google's app store policies and also is straight up illegal in Canada and probably other countries as well.

If this ACTUALLY goes through, twitter will only be available in select countries, probably exclusively in the US, which would collapse the site with the lost of users and stock, and probably be the last push it needs to kill the site. And if not, will be a very sad and exclusive platform made for specific kinds of people who line up with musk's line of thinking.

2. New policies regarding Grok AI and basically removing the option to opt out of Grok's information gathering to improve their software.

And anything you upload/post on the site is considered "fair game" with "royalty-free licenses" and they can do whatever they please with it. Primarily using any and all posts on twitter to train their Grok AI. A few months ago, there was a setting you can opt out of so they couldn't take anything you post to "improve" Grok, but I guess because so many people were opting out, they decided to make it mandatory as part of the policy change (This is mainly speculation from what I hear).

So this is considered the final straw for a LOT of people, especially artists who have been gripping on to twitter for as long as they can, but the AI nonsense is too much for people now, including myself. Lot's of people are moving to Blue Sky for good reason, and from personal experience, it is literally 10x better than twitter ever was, even before elon took over. There is no algorithm on there, and you can save "feeds" to your timeline to have a catered timelines to hop between if your looking for something specific like furry art or game dev stuff. It's taken them a bit to get off the ground and add much needed features, but it's genuinely so much better now

RESOURCES

Project Glaze & Cara

If you're an artist who's still on twitter or trying to ride it out for as long as you can for whatever reason you have, do yourself a favor and Glaze and/or Nightshade your work. Project Glaze is a free program designed to protect your art work from getting scrapped by AI machines. Glazing basically makes it harder to adapt and copy artwork that AI programs try to scan, while Nightshade basically "poisons" works to make AI libraries much more unstable and generate images completely off the mark. (These are layman's terms I'm using here, but follow the link to get more information)

The only problem with these programs is that they can be resource intensive for computers, and not every pc can run glaze. It's basically like rendering a frame/animation, you gotta let your pc sit there to get it glazed/nightshade, and depending on the intensity and power of your pc, this may take minutes to hours depending on how much you wanna protect your work.

HOWEVER, there are two alternatives, WebGlaze and Cara

WebGlaze is an in browser version of the program, so your pc doesn't have to do the heavy lifting. You do need to have an account with Glaze and be invited to use the program (I have not done so personally so I don't know much about the process.)

Cara is an artist focused site that doubles as both a portfolio site and a general social media platform. They've partnered with Glaze and have their own browser glazing called "Cara Glaze," and highly encourage users to post their work Glazed and are extremely anti-ai. You do get limited uses per day to glaze your work, so if you plan on doing a huge backlog uploading of your art, it may take awhile if your using just Cara Glaze.

Some twitter users have suggested glazing your art, cropping it, and overlaying it with a frame telling people to follow them elsewhere like on Bluesky. Here's a template someone provided if you wanna use this one or make your own.

Blue Sky Resources and Tips

So if your a twitter user and your about to realize the hellish task of refollowing a massive chunk of people you follow, have no fear, there's an extension called Sky Follower Bridge (Firefox & Chrome links). This is a very basic extension that makes it really easy to find people on Bluesky

It sorts them out by trying to find matching usernames, usernames in descriptions, or by screen name. It's not 100% perfect, there's a couple people I already follow on Blue Sky but the extension could not find them on twitter correctly, but I still found a huge chunk of people. Also if your worried that this extension is "iffy," they do have a github open with the source publicly available and the Blue Sky Team themselves have promoted the extension in their recent posts while welcoming new users to the platform.

FEEDS and LABELS

OK SO THE COOLEST PART ABOUT BLUESKY IS THE FEEDS SYSTEM. Basically if you've made a twitter list before, it's like that, but way more customizable and caters to specific types of posts/topics. Consolidating them into a timeline/feed that exclusively filled about those particular topics, or just people in general. There's thousands to pick and choose from!

Here's a couple of mine that I have saved and ready (down below). Some feeds I have saved so I can jump to seeing what my friends and mutuals are up to, and see their posts specifically so it doesn't get lost in reposts or other accounts, and also specialized feeds for browsing artists within the furry community.

The Furry Community feeds I have here were created by people who've built an algorithm to place any #furry or #furryart or other special tags like #Furrystreamer or #furrydev. They even have one for commissions, and yes you can say commissions on a post and not have it destroyed or shadow banned. You are safe.

If you want, and I highly recommend it to get visibility and check out a neat community, follow furryli.st to get added to their list and feeds. Once your on the list, even without a hashtag, you'll still pop up in their specialized feeds as just a member of the community there. There are plenty of other feeds out there besides this one, but I feel like a lot of people could use one like this. They even got ones for OC specific too I remember seeing somewhere.

And in terms of labels, they can be either ways to help label yourself with specific things or have user created accessibility settings to help better control your experience on Blue Sky.

And my personal favorite: Ai Imagery Labeler. Removes any AI stuff or hides it to the best of it's abilities, and it does a pretty good job, I have not seen anything AI related since subscribing to it.

Finally, HASHTAGS WORK & No need to censor yourself!

This is NOT like twitter or any other big named social media site AT ALL, so you don't have to work around words to get your stuff out there and be seen. There are literally feeds built around having commissions getting and art seen! Some people worry about bots and that has been a recent issue since a lot of people are migrating to Blue Sky, but it comes with any social media territory.

ALSO COOL PART,

you can search a hashtag on someone's profile and search exclusively on that profile as well! You can even put the hashtag in bio for easy access if you have a specialize tag like here on tumblr. OR EVEN BUILD YOUR OWN ART FEED FOR YOUR STUFF SPECIFICALLY!

So yeah, there's your quick run down about twitter's current burning building, how to protect your art, and what to do when you move to Blue Sky! Have fun!

[ashs-nerd-den]

Grammar time

This was my mams when she was in school and she gave it to me. It has everything from how to congugate regular verbs and every irregular verb, how to put things into questions, how to reply in the affirmative/the negative, useful question words, prepositions, all of the essentials. It's okay if you don't understand all of it, I didn't at first, but now I love this cheat sheet

[jadenvargen]

free online james baldwin stories, essays, videos, and other resources

**edit

James baldwin online archive with his articles and photo archives.

---NOVELS---

Giovanni's room"When David meets the sensual Giovanni in a bohemian bar, he is swept into a passionate love affair. But his girlfriend's return to Paris destroys everything. Unable to admit to the truth, David pretends the liaison never happened - while Giovanni's life descends into tragedy. This book introduces love's fascinating possibilities and extremities."

Go Tell It On The Mountain"(...)Baldwin's first major work, a semi-autobiographical novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves."

+bonus: film adaptation on youtube. (if you’re a giancarlo esposito fan, you’ll be delighted to see him in an early preacher role)

Another Country and Going to Meet the Man Another country: "James Baldwin's masterly story of desire, hatred and violence opens with the unforgettable character of Rufus Scott, a scavenging Harlem jazz musician adrift in New York. Self-destructive, bad and brilliant, he draws us into a Bohemian underworld pulsing with heat, music and sex, where desperate and dangerous characters betray, love and test each other to the limit." Going to meet the Man: " collection of eight short stories by American writer James Baldwin. The book, dedicated "for Beauford Delaney", covers many topics related to anti-Black racism in American society, as well as African-American–Jewish relations, childhood, the creative process, criminal justice, drug addiction, family relationships, jazz, lynching, sexuality, and white supremacy."

Just Above My Head"Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the homosexual passion of Giovanni's Room, and to the political fire that enflames his nonfiction work. Here, too, the story of gospel singer Arthur Hall and his family becomes both a journey into another country of the soul and senses--and a living contemporary history of black struggle in this land."

If Beale Street Could Talk"Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions-affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche."

also has a film adaptation by moonlight's barry jenkins

Tell Me How Long the Train's been gone At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo's loyalty. 

---ESSAYS---

Baldwin essay collection. Including most famously: notes of a native son, nobody knows my name, the fire next time, no name in the street, the devil finds work- baldwin on film

--DOCUMENTARIES--

Take this hammer, a tour of san Francisco.

Meeting the man

--DEBATES:--

Debate with Malcolm x, 1963 ( on integration, the nation of islam, and other topics. )

Debate with William Buckley, 1965. ( historic debate in america. )

Heavily moderated debate with Malcolm x, Charles Eric Lincoln, and Samuel Schyle 1961. (Primarily Malcolm X's debate on behalf of the nation of islam, with Baldwin giving occassional inputs.)

----

apart from themes obvious in the book's descriptions, a general heads up for themes of incest and sexual assault throughout his works.

[teachingrounds]

If you're impacted by long COVID, check out this patient-centered, integrated, adaptive research network.

[hellyeahscarleteen]

We could use your help!

If you support the groundbreaking, inclusive, affirming, feminist, comprehensive, young-people-centered, queer sex ed for all we've provided for 25+ years to over 90 million people, please help us raise the $15K we need to pay our bills in 2024, or become one of 250 new donors we need for 2025! You can do that at Scarleteen.com/contribute or by heading to our site and clicking ‘Pitch-In ’. 🎉 If you’re already donating (thank you!) please consider increasing your monthly amount, if you can, even a little bit. We’ll count any increases we get towards our two goals! You can do that by clicking 'Manage Your Donation' in your latest donation receipt. If you can’t donate yourself, can you tell your friends, family and followers who we are, why you value our work and ask them if they’d be willing to donate? You can share this post and the link above, but using your own words is the most effective! Despite leading the way in SRE online from the 1990s on, and always making sure young people have access to good information even when it is suppressed elsewhere in their lives, we remain underfunded, including funding to pay our staff a fair, living wage. We need to meet this $15K goal to fund our most basic needs and our tightest budget. If you can help us do that, we can focus on providing awesome SRE, growing, improving and kicking-ass, and finding more funding for 2025. Thank you! ❤️

- The Scarleteam

[q-kanbas]

If you are a voter in Georgia, please check your registration consistently as the election approaches.

The Secretary of State has launched a program that allows people to cancel registrations. Including other people's registrations. They can do so with only your name, date of birth, and county.

In Georgia, you have until 29 days before the election to register or re-register if you were purged.

[serial-unaliver]

I can't stop thinking about that video of cobalt miners in the congo with little to no protective gear struggling to pull other miners out of a collapsing mine

The fact that they're working to death LITERALLY for billion dollar corporations ran by CEOs who get to relax in mansions and on yachts makes my blood boil

This is violence of capitalism and colonialism

[girlboyburger]

i was extremely sleep deprived yesterday when i discovered the dragon survival mod which was LIFE CHANGING when you're on three hours of sleep so of course i made a whole custom forest dragon texture in one day about it. and. just for fun, some concept art i made for it:

[stinkybrowndogs]

Mutts

[ashs-nerd-den]

Please vote in this, if you are technologically *challenged* like me and not sure of how to vote, the wonderful OP very kindly included an explanation in the comments.

Vote for Irish on Toucan

I used to use Toucan while learning Korean. I remembered the extension recently and wondered if they offered Gaeilge. They currently don't, but it is set to be available in the future. They're taking votes for which languages to add to the extension site, so cast your vote for Gaeilge to be added sooner than later! Irish currently has 500+ votes

[ashs-nerd-den]

Daoine ar Instagram le leanúint chun an Ghaeilge a fhoghlaim

People on Instagram to follow for learning Irish

gaeilge.gachla

Posts a new vocab word each day

the_gaeilge_coach

Secondary school Irish teacher, is a bit of craic, posts reels about learning Irish in a way that is fun and captures your attention. Her work is aimed at exams, so it is great for anyone doing state exams or applying to the Hibernia, because we are the target audience. She has a free pre-recorded masterclass for Higher level leaving cert (Ardleibhéal do na hArdteist) which comes with an online booklet with an exam lay out and so many more free resources for everyone, exam students or not on her website, which shows a lot more of the great stuff that she does, because I haven't even tried half of her amazing resources, I'm still making my way through them because of how wonderful they are!!!

Gaeilge_bheo

Irish teacher in Australia, has a word of the day inniative for vocab, makes videos just chatting away about different odd things as Gaeilge, so she is great for whether you want to get your couple or words (do cúpla focail) or if you want some immersion content. She also teaches you how to tell people to feck off in Irish which is always useful as well as being a down to earth, funny, normal human being

gaeilge_i_mo_chroi

Posts videos on pronunciation for each dialect and common mistakes as well as covering content form the basics to the tuiseal ginideach and she has recently published a books (leabhair) so if you are interested in giving a bit of monetary support to some of the wonderful women providing us with such great resources, why not get yourself a nice book out of it. Bonus: She has a YouTube channel where she gives more in depth explanations of harder topics.

maire_nichurraoin

Is Gaeilgeoir í le Gaeilge connemara (She is a native Irish speaker with Connemara Irish) She has such a happy bubbly personality, which puts a smile on your face in seconds. She posts everything speaking in Irish (*IMMERSION!!!*) but don't worry, she has English captions included in the video. Even if I wasn't leaning Irish, I would still follow her for how happy I always feel after watching one of her reels. Agus is amhránaí í freisin!!! (She's a singer too!!!)

[graphic--horde]

hiiii !! i just wanted to ask if you maybe had any computer/internet themed graphics ??

also i LOVE YOUR BLOG !!!

Found a ton it's crazy !!

Also thank you so much !!?? I'm so glad u like my stuff omg :))

Ty for asking 🦖

[lilybug-02]

Okay a lot more ppl here have or have suspected ADHD on here than I thought.

And ADHD is hella misrepresented in media and just in the general public conciseness. So here' s some ADHD MEMES if ur struggling and need to hear your not alone, from someone who also has it ❤️❤️❤️

Love you guys. You are very strong.

[dreamdolldeveloper]

back to basics

mostly free resources to help you learn the basics that i've gathered for myself so far that i think are cool

everyday

gcfglobal - about the internet, online safety and for kids, life skills like applying for jobs, career planning, resume writing, online learning, today's skills like 3d printing, photoshop, smartphone basics, microsoft office apps, and mac friendly. they have core skills like reading, math, science, language learning - some topics are sparse so hopefully they keep adding things on. great site to start off on learning.

handsonbanking - learn about finances. after highschool, credit, banking, investing, money management, debt, goal setting, loans, cars, small businesses, military, insurance, retirement, etc.

bbc - learning for all ages. primary to adult. arts, history, science, math, reading, english, french, all the way to functional and vocational skills for adults as well, great site!

education.ket - workplace essential skills

general education

mathsgenie - GCSE revision, grade 1-9, math stages 1-14, provides more resources! completely free.

khan academy - pre-k to college, life skills, test prep (sats, mcat, etc), get ready courses, AP, partner courses like NASA, etc. so much more!

aleks - k-12 + higher ed learning program. adapts to each student.

biology4kids - learn biology

cosmos4kids - learn astronomy basics

chem4kids - learn chemistry

physics4kids - learn physics

numbernut - math basics (arithmetic, fractions and decimals, roots and exponents, prealgebra)

education.ket - primary to adult. includes highschool equivalent test prep, the core skills. they have a free resource library and they sell workbooks. they have one on work-life essentials (high demand career sectors + soft skills)

youtube channels

the organic chemistry tutor

khanacademy

crashcourse

tabletclassmath

2minmaths

kevinmathscience

professor leonard

greenemath

mathantics

3blue1brown

literacy

readworks - reading comprehension, build background knowledge, grow your vocabulary, strengthen strategic reading

chompchomp - grammar knowledge

tutors

not the "free resource" part of this post but sometimes we forget we can be tutored especially as an adult. just because we don't have formal education does not mean we can't get 1:1 teaching! please do you research and don't be afraid to try out different tutors. and remember you're not dumb just because someone's teaching style doesn't match up with your learning style.

cambridge coaching - medical school, mba and business, law school, graduate, college academics, high school and college process, middle school and high school admissions

preply - language tutoring. affordable!

revolutionprep - math, science, english, history, computer science (ap, html/css, java, python c++), foreign languages (german, korean, french, italian, spanish, japanese, chinese, esl)

varsity tutors - k-5 subjects, ap, test prep, languages, math, science & engineering, coding, homeschool, college essays, essay editing, etc

chegg - biology, business, engineering/computer science, math, homework help, textbook support, rent and buying books

learn to be - k-12 subjects

for languages

lingq - app. created by steve kaufmann, a polygot (fluent in 20+ languages) an amazing language learning platform that compiles content in 20+ languages like podcasts, graded readers, story times, vlogs, radio, books, the feature to put in your own books! immersion, comprehensible input.

flexiclasses - option to study abroad, resources to learn, mandarin, cantonese, japanese, vietnamese, korean, italian, russian, taiwanese hokkien, shanghainese.

fluentin3months - bootcamp, consultation available, languages: spanish, french, korean, german, chinese, japanese, russian, italian.

fluenz - spanish immersion both online and in person - intensive.

pimsleur - not tutoring** online learning using apps and their method. up to 50 languages, free trial available.

incase time has passed since i last posted this, check on the original post (not the reblogs) to see if i updated link or added new resources. i think i want to add laguage resources at some point too but until then, happy learning!!

[hellyeahscarleteen]

Funding update: We're still short

Co-director Jacob here, with an update on our current fundraising efforts. We sure appreciate your understanding this interruption to the award-winning sex and relationships education programming we’d much rather be spending our time providing for you! Just over 200 wonderful folks have made a donation or become a recurring donor since we started, but we are still short of our goal! We’re still 171 new recurring donors and 5K short of 15K we need to pay our most basic bills through the end of 2024 to help us avoid cuts to our staffing and services in 2025. We'll need just around as many people as have already pitched in to close the economic gaps we're up against, and help from people who value what we do to close them. You know the drill! If you can pitch in financially, and especially as a recurring donor, we’d love and appreciate your help at any level. If you can’t, or you already have and want to help some more, making your own posts about us, why you value us, and directing your circles to our work and where to donate to support it can go such a long way. Thank you for keeping us trucking, especially to those of you who have donated now or in the past, and those of you loudly banging this drum for us out here! Here's the link to donate for yourself or to direct others to:

[mewsmagic]

Here's a lil comic strip about how you can protect your art before sharing it to the public!!!

Against AI and against art theft too!

Click on 'read more' to see the extra tip I mentioned at the end!

Geez been working on this since the Meta AI things blew up but I only finished just now!!

Here's the extra tip I mentioned at the end:

you can use http://haveibeentrained.com to search for your images and find out if your work has been used for AI.

In there, you can choose to opt out, but AI companies are not obligated to respect it so it isn't too much of a protection unfortunately 😭

Also be aware that they are associated with AI and they did try to badmouth glaze so artists wouldn't protect themselves; which's very bad for a company that allegedly are on the side of the artists.

Also!!! There's a new type of AI that I was just made aware of last week, Copainter.

It completes unfinished work, which can be used for 'stealing and claiming it theirs', so put a cat picture in the next wips you post as well!

Funny protective measure I know LOLLLL but here's the tests for yall cynical people:

Perhaps I'll complete this comic with this info one day, but just these 10 slides took a looot of work so probably not happening anytime soon 😭

Thank you for reading everything though, I really appreciate it and hope this will help 🫶 be careful out there, privacy issues have been crazy recently!!!