when jkr dies i will tag every single person who reblogged this in a post btw

This has been driving me insane.

I used to be *good* at search. It was a whole thing - I found people's "lost songs" or their unknown-source childhood stuffed toy or whatever from Google.

Now, you can't search for the exact brand/design name of something and get accurate answers. It drives me spare on Amazon - if I search for XYZ and you don't have any, or you only have 2, tell me that.

I wouldn't mind if it said "Here are 2 XYZ. Shoppers also searched for..." Instead it'll just throw a random, barely-linked pile of results and you have to wade through every single one to see if the thing you want exists.

THIS. For ages I used to say that I had "high Google-Fu". I could find *anything* because I knew how to use strings to enhance searches. The string commands haven't even worked for well over a year or more, far before they put in this infernal (and often wrong!) AI BS on top.

I used to be able to search for recipes and easily eliminate unwanted ingredients with a -. For example I'd look for low-carb desserts but without the zillions that use peanut butter simply by searching for something like:

low carb chocolate dessert recipe -peanut

And I'd get a slew of on-point suggestions. For some time now if you do -peanut Google ignores the - and assumes you want recipes stuffed with peanuts.

Where it's even worse now is now you get directed to sites full of bogus AI recipes that don't even make sense. But they have peanuts in them.

I used to be able to use reverse image searches to find out who made that awesome art so I could give credit in my share. They've removed that ability entirely and replaced it with Lens, which is AI BS just showing you more like what you looked for. (Rebecca Watson complained about this in her recent video about JD Vance jizz cup rumours and I apologise for that sentence but...yeah. Watson is great, go find her on Youtube and subscribe because she went into detail about how Google has become less and less useful for debunking.)

This isn't just about Google inserting shopping ads instead of what you wanted to learn about. That's bad. But the results now are just *broken*. The tools we used to have to make searches better have been removed. Google no longer wants us to find the answers we seek, but the answers they want us to have, and that's super creepy and dangerous.

And the alternatives are either using Google in the back end or have other significant barriers to use.

This sucks.

Duckduckgo and all the other alternatives work this way too, now.

Verbatim search, guys!! Go to "Tools," and enable "Verbatim."

It's a pain in the ass, but it still works!

1) yay, thank you

2) WHAT THE FUCK WHY DID THEY HIDE IT

They hid it because they're using the general public for AI / LLM beta testers whether we want to or not.

I made a watermark 🌸

/squints

that's it, that's the organic stupidity part

eekljghgekjghekgkejh I'm pinning this

100% TRUE

Pro tip: If you copy and paste a link that said “no free articles” into a private/incognito browser, it will let you read the whole thing.

also if u press the “esc” (escape) key on ur laptop before the page fully loads, it won’t load any pop-ups blocking u from reading. if the article has images, then this method sometimes does not u see them. but! the words will be fine :)

If the site is particularly badly designed, you might just be able to delete the overlay itself. Right click > Inspect element and delete the line of HTML (it’ll be highlighted automatically)

hey kids there is a website called outline.com that will let you read from pretty much any news site with a paywall for free

outline.com is amazing - it hasn’t failed yet on any site that I’ve tried it on.

There’s a chrome extension and firefox extension.

All of these resources are incredible but don’t forget how fucked it is that we have to do this.

and how many people dont know this and so they just do what is easiest and free

Also like to point out that when her mother says “I was your mother much upon these years that you are now a maid,” (translation: I had you when I was your age) you have to remember her father’s words: “earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she,” (translation: all the other children died.)  The whole plot point of Juliet being an only child is explained by her mother being a Margaret Beaufort type who had her first child too young and it damaged her past the point of being able to bear more children.

Margaret Beaufort died in 1509. She was a major player in the Wars of the Roses, the swirling on-again-off-again civil wars that consumed England from 1455-1487. Romeo and Juliet was written and first performed in the early 1590s. Your average English person of Shakespeare’s day would probably have had at least a vague understanding of who she was and what happened to her, because she was a key figure in recent history and was still getting passed around as a cautionary tale.

There are two great problems with what happened to Margaret (and that her parents are trying to do to Juliet). One is easy for modern people to spot (but was also a common response back in her own day). And that’s the moral implications of what was done to her. She was too young to be married, and it was horrifying that she was forced into it so young. Every one of the adults around her either acted immorally or failed to protect her. They were wrong. This is what modern people see, and it’s important to remember that people back in her day mostly agreed with it. You’re supposed to think it’s fucked up! When girls were married that young (and it didn’t happen often!) it was a formality 99% of the time. It was for dynastic or financial reasons (the girl has lots of money and/or land and/or a title that her husband wants), but the “couple” don’t consummate their marriage for years. And it’s not just that they would have separate bedrooms. They might not even live in the same country until the girl was in her late teens and physically and mentally mature enough to bear and raise kids. Hell, a lot of times they didn’t even meet until the girl was older! They had this thing called “proxy marriage” where you would have two separate ceremonies, in two separate places, with each party saying their vows separately, one in one city and the other in a different one. So, yeah, sure, the girl was technically married at 12, but she didn’t actually meet her “husband” in person until she was 17 and they didn’t start sleeping together until she was 20. That was a thing they did.

The other problem, the one that modern people don’t notice, is dynastic. See, marriage wasn’t generally because you loved someone. It was because you had the resources to support a family, and you or your family wanted to pool those resources with someone. It’s about “our family has these resources, and we want that to continue.” It’s about continuity across generations. It’s about making sure that your children and grandchildren have the best possible resources to survive and thrive, whether those resources are land or a trade or a title or money or whatever. In order for this to work, you have to have kids! The family and the family’s resources depend on the married couple having children. If the couple doesn’t have children, the marriage is a failure. And that failure affects not only the couple, but both families. This is a really big problem. And you can’t have just one kid to pass on the family name, because half of all kids die in early childhood. If you want to be safe, you need several kids, to be sure at least one will survive to adulthood (when they can marry and pass on the family name and resources.

You know what happens when a girl has her first pregnancy too young? She is very likely to either die in childbirth, or have complications that destroy her future fertility. Just like Margaret Beaufort. Just like Juliet’s mother. In other words, the marriage is a failure, not just for her, but also for her family, and her husband (who can’t divorce her, it’s not allowed except in extremely rare circumstances), and her husband’s family. So even the people who didn’t have a moral problem with adult men having sex with pubescent girls had a practical problem with girls married too young because you are very likely to destroy the entire purpose of the marriage by doing it. As Shakespeare reminds us in the play through Juliet’s mother having been married too young and only having one child.

Shakespeare is telling us “yeah, this is fucked up. but even if you’re the kind of awful person who doesn’t think girls marrying too young is morally wrong, it’s also a problem for practical and dynastic reasons, don’t forget that by doing this wrong thing you are very likely to destroy what you most want out of it.”

Interesting

It bears repeating:

don’t forget that by doing this wrong thing you are very likely to destroy what you most want out of it.”

yes, excellent discussion!

another thing i noticed, the year my local community shakespeare theater did r&j, and i made the costumes so i got to watch the show every night: part of why capulet is telling paris, take your time, get to know each other, no rush, is that he still has his nephew tybalt as his heir. as long as tybalt is in the picture, there is no pressure on juliet to go further with paris, than get acquainted. once tybalt is killed, then suddenly capulet needs an heir, he needs a husband for juliet, now, this week. (the role of capulet is best given to the actor in the company that can do over the top apoplexy, you need to believe his urgency comes at least in part by how clearly he could drop dead any moment from giving himself a stroke)

i feel like this play is often taught in middle schools as if it was somehow relevant to, or about, teen hormone storms. really it's got more to do with the social structures around family and inheritance. leaving that context out makes it confusing, why is capulet suddenly flipping from nice dad to evil dad?

art history matters.

Quick reminder that if you touch lye with your bare hands, it will react with the fatty oils on and in your skin to create soap molecules.

That means it will give you chemical burns while creating human soap.

OP’s comment about the soap equivalent of a Chernobyl elephant’s foot is on point.

Lye (aka sodium hydroxide) turns hydrocarbons/fats into soap.

You are a hydrocarbon.

Please be careful when making soap, because You are a thing that could be used to make soap. And nobody wants to bathe in human soap, no matter how much rosemary you put in it.

"*Start where you are, *Use what you have,*Do what you can"

This is AWESOME

this is the statistically reasonable post, reblogging it will have no effect except for putting this post on your blog

guys this post really works! I reblogged it and it really did put the post on my blog! you need to try it!

the rest of the paragraph that was cut out in that screenshot literally explains the reasons behind the easter bilby and bluntly theyre minimising the impact that wild rabbits have had as an introduced species in our ecosystem.

the easter bibly was an ingenious campaign that builds in social awareness and change to an ongoing annual tradition without detracting from what that tradition represents. the choice behind it was intentional

It also puts the bibly at the front and center, which is important, because bilby were once widespread in Australia, but due to the threat of habitat loss, disease, and predation by invasive species in Australia, like foxes, these little guys have dwindled in numbers.

Originally posted by honeycomb-butch

You can learn more about bilby conservation here, as well as get links to other resources, and, if you're a bilby fan, some access to bilby merch. I think I see some chocolate Easter bilby in there, too!

I hope it's okay but I animated him a little because the concept is too good thank you for your service 🧎

I can't upload a video with sound for some reason but here's the version with audio

hOLY FUCK!!!!!! HOOOLYYYY FUUUUCCKKKK

THE KIWIFICATION..... AWESOME. I LOVE HOW YOU ANIMATED THE TRANSFORMATION + LOVE HOW HIS SMALL HAT FALLS OFF😭😭THIS IS SO CUTE