#ungoogled

[procrastiel]

Ok, now that you wiped away your tears of laughter, here’s how you can change your web browser and search engine:

- download one of the browsers that put privacy and security first. Here’s a great list. Examples include: Brave, Mozilla Firefox, and for more advanced users: Tor, Ungoogled

- use a VPN. There’s free and paid options.

- change your default search engine to something other than Google. Your online traffic matters. Which websites you load matters. Think of your time and clicks as online currency. Ecosia is a great Bing/Microsoft based search engine that also plants trees with every search! And it gives great results. Another one is DuckDuckGo. Here’s a list of alternative search engines.

Hot tip: the operating systems also collect data whenever you use an online keyboard (and suggested text). Don’t want them to know what you’re typing? You can download a free privacy keyboard for Android (haven’t found one for iOS yet but Apple says the data is stored on device only. Let’s hope so🤞).

Another idea for advanced users: operating systems (such as macOS and Windows) still collect tons of data about you, and cost money if you want to install them on a 2nd hand device, for example. You can use operating systems that are completely free, open-source and user-friendly, such as Ubuntu.

Now go and roam the internet, be free, and donate to open-source programs if you can 😘

[atoriv-art]

u spend too much time thinking about naruto and you start fixating on random side characters. and its fun

[haveyouheardthisband]

[20dollarlolita]

Describing some wigs

Many years ago there was as site called Amphigory.com, and while it's still up, the Amphigory that 16-year-old me spent days browsing is not the Amphigory that still remains. They're still cool, but they'd really scaled back the scope of what they sell. There used to be cosmetics, jewelry, hair dye, a few more things, and wigs.

One of the things that they did about their wig sales that really set them apart was the level of description that they gave every wig. This wasn't just a single stock picture and a name. They took their own pictures of each wig, inside and out, and described each one's strengths and flaws. They weren't like Arda, who designs their own wigs from scratch. They were more like a normal costume reseller, who had a collection of vendors that they'd order stock from. But, unlike most costume wig sellers, they had multiple pictures and a detailed analysis of each wig. You knew what you were getting, which was really important for cosplayers who might need to restyle a wig. If you've never restyled a wig before, you might not be aware, but the wig can make it very easy, or the wig can make it impossible.

Amphigory's wig section is long gone, but I do still buy wigs from a similar company, one that has a collection of wig vendors whose products they sell. This is a shop that I go to is in person, and I love that. I know that I can find some wigs cheaper elsewhere, but I absolutely love that I can go to a small business, roll up to a counter, and physically touch the wigs before I buy them. I can look at them, turn them inside-out, and touch them. I also get to take the wig home that day, instead of waiting for shipping.

But not everyone has this opportunity, and on the offchance that people are considering buying a wig online and google the wig to see worn photos or reviews, here's me making a compilation of wigs I've recently bought and what they actually look like in person. Even with wigs from the same seller, some might be garbage, but some might be hidden gems. So, in the interest of making more information about which wigs are like what, here we go:

California Costumes Pink/Gray Ombre with Star Clips:

First of all, California Costumes gets 0/10 for creativity with names. I love me a good little nickname for a wig. The Costume Mansion, where I bought this, called it "Harmony," and I think that's a better name.

Yes, my wig head is cosplaying its Naruto OC. Let it do its thing.

This is a textured, ombre wig. The actual fiber is ombre, so an individual strand will go from gray color to pink, and the gray is a little bit softer than the pink. Some wigs that are tipped with another color accomplish this by having the color on the ends be longer hair than the top color, but this is a true ombre. I have not tested this for colorfastness, but it's possible that the pink tips won't age super well. The skin top is about 3" wide and does not go all the way to the front of the wig. This means that you can change the part a little bit, but it will always have bangs.

The whole thing is sewn onto a continuous cap, which isn't as forgiving of larger head sizes than one that's just wefts and elastic. It has the built-in net that you sometimes see with cheaper wigs, which is where your hair would go if you want to wear this wig without a wig cap. You, however, don't want to wear this wig without a wig cap. You know better. There's hooks in the back for resizing.

Wefts in the back are about an inch apart, but when I was shaking it around and trying to make it show the mesh, I couldn't actually make it show the mesh without physically parting it. Depending on how you put your hair up under the wig, you might have problems with the mesh showing in the back (lumpy hair will show mesh, hair that's smoothly under a wig cap won't). This is probably a wig you want a matching or light colored wig cap for if you have a larger head.

Overall, cute wig, stock pictures don't do it justice. Available for $20 on Amazon, in case you don't have a local costume shop to support. This item tag reads "ITEM # 7022-068 FTY # 346 HK2203" and I don't know what that means but if someone's googling the tag to look up the wig then hopefully that'll lead them here.

Yuki by Characters:

At least this one has a wig name. And boy howdy is that some big hair. The place I bought this from called it "Cupcake."

I tried on this wig because I really wanted to see how it was constructed, and I bought it because, when I tried it on, it was way cuter than I thought it'd be. It's a rougher fiber, which makes the curls hold their shape really well, but you're going to be fighting to keep the bangs and long forelocks looking smooth. There's no skin top, and the hair radiates from a sort of u-shaped blob at the top. There's so much going on in this wig that it's not particularly obvious, and also you will convince absolutely no one that it's not a wig, so that's not as much a priority to me on this style.

As for how it's actually constructed, there's no teasing in the wig to keep it that big. Instead, the actual cap of the wig is sewn into the shape of the big faux twintails, and then the hair is attached to that structure. Wigs are not hair. Anyway, that means there's pretty much no major restyling that can be done. It's just curly hair about 5" long on a funky structure to make funky big hair. Anyway, because thew cap of this wig is so oversized, it's really comfortable to wear, and it's really accommodating of large head sizes or a lot of hair.

Also because of the cap size, if you don't pin the temples on, it can slide back and make your bangs shorter. You can see that in my picture there. Mine did not come with the little rose clips, but it is supposed to come with the rose clips. It's much curlier than the stock images imply it will be.

This wig would be great for embellishing, since you can sew things directly to the funky shaped cap and not worry about where to support it. It also can handle a full sized BTSSB headbow, if that's a concern.

Someone's selling it on Amazon for $60 and you absolutely should not spend that much for this wig. I see other wig shops selling it for about $30, which is the upper limit on its real fair price, unless you really need the specific shape for it. I'm not going to link any specific shop since I don't have experience buying from them. "Yuki wig" and "Characters Yuki wig" are good search terms.

Characters Peggy Sue wig:

Okay so please be forgiving that my detail pictures are going to be of this wig already styled, because I didn't know I was going to do this post when I started working with it. I'll make a point to spell out what's stock and what's been done. Top pictures here are the most un-styled that I have.

This wig's got a coin-shaped skin top that all the hair radiates from. It comes with long, blunt bangs. The fiber is really shiny and is very easily reshaped by low hair dryer heat. High heat on my hair dryer, too close to the scalp, was how I made the frizzy spot in the back. The cap is a closed mesh cap, but it's nice and stretchy.

The weird boogers on the top of my wig are the orange hilights that I put in (they were just chopped from another wig), but that picture's there to show the size of the skin top. You can also see where I sewed some orange wefts into the wig for all-over recoloring. I re-parted the skin coin so that the hair has a linear part instead of radiating from the center, and then painted it with liquid foundation to make the parted area larger. Mine also has a LOT of baby powder dispersed through it to combat the shine. I spent like four days to try to make this $20 wig look like it's maybe a $35 wig. (The process was: "oh hey I'll be taking my wheelchair to the comic convention. I should cosplay Barbara Gordon because that will be fun. This will be easy and I don't need to put a lot of money or time into it." and then four days passed and I'd spent hours manually highlighting a cheap wig).

And it really needs a bit of love to get it to be less frizzy. Right out of the bag, my wig did not have that outward flip. Unlike the other two, I don't see this being a really usable wig for lolita fashion in pretty much any context, but hey, I'm on a roll with this post.

This wig is listing online for like $30, and that's a bit much IMO. If you have a local shop selling it for $20, well, that's a different matter.

If you want a wig just to change your hair color so that your bright pink hair doesn't clash with your coord, I once bought this wig (according to Amazon in 2015 so it's been...almost a decade...nice to know they're tracking that) and was pretty impressed with the quality for a $17 wig. So, you know, buy that instead of this Peggy Sue wig.

I do own the Lacey Costume Little Women II Wig (Amphigory's "Innocent?" wig) but it's late and I want to go to bed, and all you really need to know about it is that the fiber texture of the ash blond color is really dicey, so that's probably a case where if you need a pigtail wig you need to just get an Arda Chibi. I can still do details if anyone wants. It's just 9:30 and I have to put all these damn wigs away, so good night, everyone.

[nights-at-crystarium]

They could and would switch, these expressions are just so perfect for Vivi, putting him right in his element :>

[yellowraincoat]

I love you Griff Gareson I love you Griff Gareson I love you Griff Gareson

[nubinublado]

As I learn facts about twitter as a brand I fully understand just how golden and valuable the original brand was, and I've never taken a business/marketing course in my life.

Yet, somehow a full on billionaire who "earned" his absurd levels of money by *allegedly* being super duper good at business throws it all away because dude has a fixation on the letter "X"

[tyote]

lmao @ mozilla putting telemetry in firefox, then saying they will "anonymize it" and "not sell it to third parties"... and then a month later they acquire an advertising broker and send your data to that, which technically means it's a first party and their little "promise" isn't broken, while still attempting to send you directed ads based on your browsing data & profit from it

[tweehearts]

alone at school she sits and dreams of johnny marr and morrissey

[sangfielle]

i accidentally only brought science fiction books with me for the train. i have ummm. false dawn. ancillary justice. the dispossessed. and caliban's war. problem: i am in a high fantasy mood

[cheekedupwhiteboy]

i've never listened to The Band Ghost and i used to think their look/vibe/gimmick seemed pretty neat but actually from what i can tell based on their fans on tumblr i have officially decided that it's dogshit poser music

[sleeperagentclone]

My favorite ungoogleable bracelet

[queenlua]

the thing about spending a lot of your formative years reading essays by cranky weirdoes on mothballed web 1.0 websites

is that some day you’re gonna wanna reread one of those random essays

but since you didn’t read it in a book or magazine, it’s totally untethered from any physical memory or conventional marker you could use to look it up

and also, the way google indexes the web (plus the sheer volume of stuff on the web) has changed radically in the meantime

so you’ll end up googling shit like “st louis professor ‘nature will not be fooled’ women” and get a bunch of loudmouth misogynists in the results, but tragically, you will never find the loudmouth misogynist you’re actually looking for

sad times :((((

[electrosquash]

i love this ep SO much

[gayxiaolong]

the most heartbreaking thing is having an inside joke based around a random shitpost or meme from like 6 years ago that you have no chance of finding now

[bodhimcbodeface]

Trying to get permission from CERN to film a porno in the large hadron collider and call it the large hardon collider, wish me luck