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Black women are just on another level

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Please buy this game bundle. It’s $5 (or more if you want) for literally 700 video games, tabletop games, not to mention game engines and assets. All proceeds are going to the NAACP and Community Bail Fund, split 50/50.

Night in the Woods and Oneshot are both in it, not to mention literally hundreds of other cool indie games I haven’t played yet that look really cool and promising. 

Also I’d like to reiterate it is $5 minimum for over $3,400 worth of content, which is just fucking insane.

Editing the OP in hopes that people see this:

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DOWNLOAD ALL THE GAMES AT ONCE!!!

Buying the bundle gives you a link to the download links for all the games. You can download a game, play it for a while, then delete it when you’re done, and then redownload it when you wanna play again, as many times as you want.

The bundle itself, once purchased, looks like this:

And when you click on one of those download buttons, it links you to another page with the actual file downloads:

Just pick the one appropriate for your OS or whatever.

And while I’m at it:

THERE ARE NOW OVER 1500 VIDEO GAMES, TABLETOP GAMES, ARTWORKS, GAME ENGINES, AND ASSETS.

OVER $8,300 WORTH OF CONTENT.

$5 MINIMUM.

(Celeste was one of the new games added, so that’s YET ANOTHER game that is worth WAY MORE THAN $5 JUST BY ITSELF. CELESTE!!! FUCKIN CELESTE!!!)

(and people who purchased the bundle before still get the new stuff added! If more stuff is added from now, YOU STILL GET IT!!! FOR NO ADDED COST!!! SO ITS BASICALLY FREE SORT OF!!!)

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We should be more pro-active or we’ll see more of such sad fates of honest people.

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Hey folks, this is not your typical post about incorrect quotes.

I want to address a serious issue today, and most of you probably know what’s been going on in the US.

The killing of George Floyd started another serious and necessary debate on Police brutality in the states. (And I think not just there. Every country is affected in some way or another.)

My heart doesn’t ache, no. My heart is bleeding and crying out of pain about what has been going on for days now. What people have been going through for years and years. This is not the first case of police brutality against POC, nor the second, and it probably isn’t the last one.

It happened so many times already that I can’t count them all. Our world has lost so many beautiful souls to this never-ending issue. Additionally to this, we lost so many brothers and sisters of color who were part of the LGBTQ+ community too. Even though it is pride month, I can’t enjoy and celebrate it as much as I want to.

But now is the time to act. Now more than ever! We all have a voice, and I’m sure as hell using mine. And I want you to do the same.

40 Ways you can help right now shows you different techniques and approaches to support the #blacklivesmatter movement in various forms.

Everyone’s able to do something. Even if you don’t have the money to donate, or you’re not from the US, share articles, draw attention to it in some way. Being silent about this puts you on the side of the offenders.

I understand that I will never understand. However, I stand with all of you!!! Credit goes to @sfbucketlist on instagram for these 40 ways you can help right now.

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COVID-19 Pandemic: Heroic Women Homage by Milo Manara *

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In 1990, the high school dropout rate for Dolly Parton's hometown of Sevierville Tennessee was at 34% (Research shows that most kids make up their minds in fifth/sixth grade not to graduate). That year, all fifth and sixth graders from Sevierville were invited by Parton to attend an assembly at Dollywood. They were asked to pick a buddy, and if both students completed high school, Dolly Parton would personally hand them each a $500 check on their graduation day. As a result, the dropout rate for those classes fell to 6%, and has generally retained that average to this day.

Shortly after the success of The Buddy Program, Parton learned in dealing with teachers from the school district that problems in education often begin during first grade when kids are at different developmental levels. That year The Dollywood Foundation paid the salaries for additional teachers assistants in every first grade class for the next 2 years, under the agreement that if the program worked, the school system would effectively adopt and fund the program after the trial period.

During the same period, Parton founded the Imagination Library in 1995: The idea being that children from her rural hometown and low-income families often start school at a disadvantage and as a result, will be unfairly compared to their peers for the rest of their lives, effectively encouraging them not to pursue higher education. The objective of the Imagination library was that every child in Sevier County would receive one book, every month, mailed and addressed to the child, from the day they were born until the day they started kindergarten, 100% free of charge. What began as a hometown initiative now serves children in all 50 states, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, mailing thousands of free books to children around the world monthly.

On March 1, 2018 Parton donated her 100 millionth book at the Library of Congress: a copy of "Coat of Many Colors" dedicated to her father, who never learned to read or write.

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Jfc 😂 (tweet)

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“Ghost Apples” in the Fruit Ridge area of Kent County, Michigan.

An unusual phenomenon when freezing rain coats rotting apples before they fall, the apple turns mushy and eventually slips out, leaving the icy shell still hanging on the tree.

Photos: Woodtv8

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“The Archive of Our Own has none of these problems. It uses a third tagging system, one that blends the best elements of both styles. On AO3, users can put in whatever tags they want (autocomplete is there to help, but they don’t have to use it). Then, behind the scenes, human volunteers look up any new tags that no one else has used before and match them with any applicable existing tags, a process known as tag wrangling. Wrangling means that you don’t need to know whether the most popular tag for your new fanfic featuring Sherlock Holmes and John Watson is Johnlock or Sherwatson or John/Sherlock or Sherlock/John or Holmes/Watson or anything else. And you definitely don’t need to tag your fic with all of them just in case. Instead, you pick whichever one you like, the tag wranglers do their work behind the scenes, and readers looking for any of these synonyms will still be able to find you. AO3’s trick is that it involves humans by design—around 350 volunteer tag wranglers in 2019, up from 160 people in 2012—who each spend a few hours a week deciding whether new tags should be treated as synonyms or subsets of existing tags, or simply left alone. AO3’s Tag Wrangling Chairs estimate that the group is on track to wrangle over 2 million never-before-used tags in 2019, up from around 1.5 million in 2018. Laissez-faire and rigid tagging systems both fail because they assume too much—that users can create order from a completely open system, or that a predefined taxonomy can encompass every kind of tag a person might ever want. When these assumptions don’t pan out, it always seems to be the user’s fault. AO3’s beliefs about human nature are more pragmatic, like an architect designing pathways where pedestrians have begun wearing down the grass, recognizing how variation and standardization can fit together. The wrangler system is one where ordinary user behavior can be successful, a system which accepts that users periodically need help from someone with a bird’s-eye view of the larger picture. Users appreciate this help. According to Tag Wrangling Chair briar_pipe, “We sometimes get users who come from Instagram or Tumblr or another unmoderated site. We can tell that they’re new to AO3 because they tag with every variation of a concept—abbreviations, different word order, all of it. I love how excited people get when they realize they don’t have to do that here.””

—

Gretchen McCulloch, Fans Are Better Than Tech at Organizing Information Online 

(My latest Wired column is up and it’s about AO3 and taxonomies!) 

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This is art! 😍

Link to the thread so you can take a closer look at the photos

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AO3 won the 2019 Hugo Award for Best Related Work!

Here’s the speech given by Naomi Novik when the award was accepted:

All fanwork, from fanfic to vids to fanart to podfic, centers the idea that art happens not in isolation but in community. And that is true of the AO3 itself. We’re up here accepting, but only on behalf of literally thousands of volunteers and millions of users, all of whom have come together and built this thriving home for fandom, a nonprofit and non-commercial community space built entirely by volunteer labor and user donations, on the principle that we needed a place of our own that was not out to exploit its users but to serve them.

Even if I listed every founder, every builder, every tireless support staff member and translator and tag wrangler, if I named every last donor, all our hard work and contributions would mean nothing without the work of the fan creators who share their work freely with other fans, and the fans who read their stories and view their art and comment and share bookmarks and give kudos to encourage them and nourish the community in their turn.

This Hugo will be joining the traveling exhibition that goes to each Worldcon, because it belongs to all of us. I would like to ask that we raise the lights and for all of you who feel a part of our community stand up for a moment and share in this with us.

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I'll never forget my first pride.

I can't remember my actual age, but it was in the range of 10 to 13 I think. my parents had dragged me to a Pride festival, and walked across the street from the main event, across where the lines were drawn, to where a sea of people in red shirts that read "god has a better way" tried to drown out the celebration with speakers blasting christian music, and shouting and loud praying.

the leaders pulled all us kids to the side and gave us the spiel. they told us how the rainbow had been stolen from us, and that these people were tricked by the devil and just needed prayer, but that if we didn't save them, they were going to hell.

I rolled my eyes because I already didn't believe in god, and although I barely knew what being gay was, I knew my parents were usually on the Wrong side of things, and I shouldn't be siding with them.

"We aren't allowed over there if we're wearing the red shirts," the leaders told us, "so we're sending people over in secret without them so you can pass out tracts and pray for people. they won't talk to us, but they'll talk to the kids. does anyone want to volunteer?"

the people in red shirts disgusted me. the people on the other side of the line were cheering and having fun. I raised my hand.

we were supposed to go in groups with young adults, to make sure we were doing what we were supposed to be. I wandered off the minute I could and stood nervously at the edge of a crowd, watching on as people went by, happy and unbothered by the protests across the street. I felt a little pride myself in tricking the protestors into giving up a witness spot to me, when I was going to smile on and think profanities at god instead.

there was an older woman standing outside the crowd too. she asked if I was here with anyone, a girlfriend maybe? I said no, my parents were across the street. she nodded, and said she was here with her kid. a daughter, that she came to support, but couldn't keep up with in the crowd.

I almost cried. I told her how amazing that was, because I couldn't imagine my mother showing support like that to me over anything, much less something as serious as Being Gay. I imagined if I was gay, and at a pride event just like now, but this time because I Belong.

I knew automatically that my mother, without a doubt, would still be in the same place, across the street.

I got hungry after a bit, and tried to find a good food truck. I had a little money and I was unused to being on my own like this, but I didn't want to go back to the Other Side. I knew now without a shadow of a doubt, this was the Good side and that was the Bad side.

as I was eating the gyro I got, there was a stream of red shirted protestors trickling through; I had reached the end of the boundaries, and the protestors were allowed in here. I backed up a little, spotting my dad among them. I didn't want him to tell me to go back.

there was a line of women closing ranks around the Pride attendees, separating them from the protesters as they walked through. they spread their arms out and told every person the protesters spoke to that they were not obligated to respond, they could walk away and not engage.

my dad spotted me back, and made a beeline over. he couldn't cross over because a butch lesbian stood between us. I didn't know what those words meant, but I never forgot the buttons she was wearing.

he tried to tell me that it was time to go. "you're not obligated to speak to him," the butch said, cutting him off and edging further between us. I smiled at her, a little in wonderment. no one had ever told me that I didn't have to speak to my parents, or do anything other than blindly obey them. I watched my dad get held behind a line by a woman half his height, with no intention on letting him get to me, and I smiled and walked away.

I didn't have a clue who I was then, and I wouldn't for a good few years to come. but I never forgot the supportive mother, who symbolized to me everything a mother should be, that mine, for all her religious self righteousness, would never hold a candle to. I never forgot that she was the person I wanted to be, and my mother was the person I did not want to be.

I never forgot the butch who stood between me and my dad, and for the first time ever, put the idea in my head that I was ALLOWED to make my own choices in my beliefs, and made me feel protected in a way I hadn't known I needed.

the image of her standing between me and my dad, being a physical barrier to protect me against any potential threat, that inspired the image of who I admired and wanted to become. it inspired the version of me who could stand up to my dad - to the point that I could hold my ground and educate him enough that over a decade later, he walked side by side with me at a pride festival, with no intent of witnessing to or condemning anybody.

pride month may be over, but the impact this month and these events can have is so damn important. I became who I am because of two people I met at a pride festival. I'll never forget.

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I never thought I’d live long enough to see lasers used by the people against the government. Live long and prosper 🖖🏿 🖖🏿 🖖🏿

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This NPR interview with with Angela Saini about how race science never really left the global scientific consciousness is super interesting! I’m gonna read her book!