The Ætherograph

How is this planet even real

I fucking hate it here

For those of you with android devices, you can use the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) standalone app control program to get rid of all the bloatware, data mining, and AI crap - no coding needed!

save

There are also Android-based alternatives like GrapheneOS and LineageOS, which are pretty easy to install. These are unfortunately available for a more limited range of devices (Graphene is ironically Pixel only, while Lineage supports more), but it's very worth checking out whether one of them might work for your phone.

Typing this from Graphene now, in fact. But, both of those take the Android Open Source Project, without all the bloatware--and largely de-Google the whole thing. They give you much more control over privacy and what the apps you choose to install can do and access on your phone.

I know Graphene sandboxes everything, including the optionally installed Google Play Services which a lot of apps unfortunately require to run. (Lineage uses an alternative to Play Services instead.) So, you can install what would normally be unacceptably intrusive apps and just lock them away from pulling any funny shit with your data, or phoning home. Including the couple of Google things I do still keep around.

I also prefer running much more transparent, privacy-respecting open source apps where possible. Besides the transparency, I'd rather avoid the shitty tech corps entirely where I can. There are pretty good alternatives available for a lot of the usual suspects.

An alternative app store:

Also just going to leave this here.

This lets you pretty easily patch some of the worst offender corporate apps to make them behave better.

If you are up to switching from Android entirely there's also Doc E OS, which works with MANY devices:

If you want to really prevent doomscrolling and all that, Commodore64 makes a flip phone:

Does anyone else get horribly disappointed when an "unknowable" cosmic entity in horror gets described with extremely knowable anatomy. Ah, it has segmented legs and pedipalps? Just like my lovely friend the spider. I escorted two of them out of the house today because I accidentally brought them in on flowers I cut from the garden. This comparison point does not evoke "horror" and "unknowability" in me.

Lovecraftian horror relies very heavily on the assumption that the unknown is itself frightening; that the reaction to 'I don't understand what I'm looking at' will be terror rather than curiosity. This is because Lovecraft was at his core a deeply anxious, agoraphobic, xenophobic man with a bunch of untreated mental illnesses and culturally-ingrained prejudices

"it's strange and new and very unlike myself" that's awesome I'm gonna go say hi to it! Hi! Hello friend! Welcome to Earth! Do you live here too or are you visiting? You want a tour?? Come on in lemme show you my house!!! Have you eaten? What do you eat? Maybe I have it in my kitchen! That's our folkways here we feed guests! You're really pretty! Here's an Earth animal that has some of your same parts I thought you might feel comforted by him! His name is Octopus! He lives over there in the ocean!

There's nothing any author can say that will make the unknowable strange being scary to me if all the unknowable strange being is doing is like, standing there. That's a Guest at that point, my Hospitality.exe is gonna kick on.

All k9 dogs are abused hands down if you post any pro k9 stuff on my dash you’re unfollowed I don’t care if we’ve been mutuals for years, you can claim to be anti-cop or a leftist or whatever but if you post k9 dogs with like “a good doggo! A good boy!” fuck off, if I lose followers over this then good riddance

It’s ALSO worth saying that police dogs serve a significant role in worsening police brutality. A dog trained to attack a human will maim them. A cop looses a police dog on someone, and that person is expected to peacefully cooperate while a dog is trying to tear their limbs off. It is very easy for those massive wounds to get infected. It is an absurd amount of violence. And beyond the initial attack, the fact that a “poor sweet innocent doggo” did this is used to excuse that brutality in court. Especially if the victim, panicking in the moment, lashed out at the dog. As this website has demonstrated many times, majority-white juries have more sympathies for injured dogs than the people of color who are most often victims of police brutality. So they’re not just systemic animal abuse, they’re also a tool for increased police brutality and to excuse

"But I don't like the ending/the character/the plot point. I would have done it differently."

Yes. Good. Go get a pen. This is where it begins.

This is the amount of whimsy I feel when people send me a photo of a snake to identify and I get to tell them it is actually a lizard

I think we should empower local tourism industry employees by giving them a stick and free reign to hit tourists who try to feed or approach wildlife.

I think we should also let the wildlife kill and maim tourists with impunity. Play stupid games win stupid prizes.

Does anyone have any good book or fanfic recs?

It should be yandere or something close to toxic/unhealthy relationship, co dependency.

I don't want downright smut books, a little if ok but not most of it

I'm open to dead dove too i guess but if it's too much I'll stop (sorry 😭)

Again books are ok and so are fanfics which includes character x reader/oc and character x character

I'm really bored lately and because this genre is all over my Tumblr I want more 🥲

You can comment or my asks are open for everyone

Thank you 😊

"dead dove: do not eat" means "please read the tags I'm not joking about them". it isn't a specific kind of content. So what do YOU mean, be specific and use the actual words to describe what you want.

I think my favourite yandere in published work right now is the very one-sided and fucked up homoerotic tension that alastor and vox have in Hazbin Hotel. There's a bunch of toxic relationships in that show, in fact basically all of them are, save for Husk/Angel Dust, so I think you'd enjoy that. And then there's TONS of fanfiction for that fandom so you'll have a lot to choose from.

Another good show for yandere is NBC's Hannibal, but I'm not sure if that's "too much" in the violence department for you. Again, lots and lots of fanfiction to choose from with that one too.

Both of these shows are created and written by queer people, and so are good queer rep, and have queer characters as the main characters.

(good queer rep means there are queer people writing and directing, NOT that the queer characters are morally good or even that the actors are queer. the "good" isn't about morals it's about who is telling whose story)

I've watched Hazbin Hotel

I've UNFORTUNATELY not watched Hannibal yet 😭 and I'll be honest I can't watch it soon because I'm working and just can't find time to start a new series (already behind Dexter🥲)

Can you please drop recs of Hazbin Hotel 🙏

Unfortunately I cannot, as I do not seek out yandere in fanfiction. @trellanyx do you have any recs for this neighbour?

Weeding and stripping your clothes is just as important as washing and mending them. Most people don't even know what weeding and stripping ARE anymore, so I'll explain.

Weeding. No matter how well you take care of your clothes, they will wear out. Certain kinds of clothing cannot be mended, certain kinds of holes cannot be mended. Part of weeding is knowing this information.

What can't be mended: Holes in underwear, holes in items too delicate and thin to tolerate patching or darning. A hole that is just the stitching coming loose on a seam can be mended the easiest. However, a hole in any part of a pair of underwear is a sign the underwear is at the end of its life.

Stripping means stripping all the soap scum out of your textiles. This should be done 1-2 times a year and requires some special substances not commonly found in household supplies anymore:

Take a cup of each of these (doesn't have to be exact, just use a teacup or something similar) and dissolve in some warm water in a large basin or container about the size of a bathtub (or use your bathtub--just clean it first!). If it's larger than use another scoop of soap, borax, and soda. Then fill the rest of the basin halfway with more water, warm or lukewarm or cool, and put in clothes, making sure they can still freely move around. Then fill the basin all the way and make sure all the clothes are soaked and there's no bubbles making them float. Leave this overnight. The next day, drain the basin and put the wet clothes in the washer. Set the washer to a basic wash cycle and do not add any soap or anything.

Do this with your clothes, your sheets, and your towels at least once a year. For clothes it's best to do it at least twice a year. If you have never done this before, and there are clothes you own that are more than 10 years old, you need to strip them multiple times.

The Result: Your clothes and linens should feel like new again! This is particularly marked with things where the fabric feels greasy and gritty no matter how much you wash it--particularly old t-shirts for example.

How does it work? Stripping is basically stripping out the residue left on clothes by detergents, softeners, and grime. That's why you need to do it. The chemicals used--soap, borax, and soda--are all basic in nature, and dissolve oils and detergents and perfumes very well.

Can I use something other than detergent to wash my clothes? You certainly can make your own detergent using your stripping ingredients--there's many simple recipes online. That doesn't mean you stop stripping your laundry though, but it will make your clothes feel much better for longer! There's recipes for liquid and powder versions, but the powder versions need to be dissolved in water before being added to the washing machine if you're washing with cold water--and with little exception, cold water is best for the longevity of your clothes. Generally it's 2 parts borax, 2 parts soda, and 1 part soap flakes for the dry mix. If you have an High-Efficiency (HE) washer (and most of us do nowadays) then use only 1 tablespoon per load, since HE washers use less water than normal ones (this is also why HE washers end up putting more build-up on your clothes).

Oh and don't forget--washing machines themselves need to be cleaned on the inside once a month! Many manufacturers of laundry soaps make washer cleaning tablets or pouches, and many modern washers have a cleaning cycle. Affresh is a company that does nothing but make washing tablets that clean washing machines and dishwashers and so on. You also need to hand-wash the rubber seal of a front-loader, and many washing machines also have filter-traps that need cleaning out, just like dishwashers do. Your cleaning appliances can't clean if they themselves are dirty!

Unfortunately my house has no bathtub so I guess I'm scuppered

Use a plastic tote box! They're very cheap and available anywhere you might find white goods; that's what I use because my laundry facilities are in the basement. Fill it with a hose or a gallon jug or you can get a little rubber hose that attaches to the faucet of a sink and guide it into the tote box. Don't give up.

Maybe... can have shit in Detroit?

as a trans man, so many of the things cis men consider to be “emasculating” are so fucking funny. you are our gender’s weakest soldier. you would kill yourself if you were a trans man for a day. how are you going to tell me I’m ‘not a real man’ and then start cheating on your wife because she makes more money than you and it makes you feel ‘emasculated’? your masculinity is as fragile as a champagne glass and you’re throwing stones? lmfaoooo

God made me trans because he knew you couldn’t handle it

Because I saw this mentioned in the comments, I think what cis men describe when they speak about feeling ‘emasculated’ is very different than the feeling of gender dysphoria. It is an ego bruise. A dent. Anything that makes them feel like they are not an upstanding, radioactively, toxically masculine member of dominant gender. “I won’t eat any vaguely phallic fruit because it might look kind of gay and being gay makes you less of a man.” is very different than “My body, the way that I am forced to present myself and the way others perceive me is at odds with my inner self and the core of my identity as a human being and it hurts.”

Once again, God or fate made me trans because the guys who think eating a banana is gay and gay is bad would not have survived. A lot of gender is a performance, they’re rigidly reading from a script and yelling at someone in misplaced rage every time they feel like they got a line wrong, I’m doing improv comedy from the heart with a few fun quotes from the classics that I enjoy.

Important addition: baby kiwi come out of the egg looking like they've come out of a shower with a hangover

They look like one of the downsides of emerging from an egg fully formed is how aware you are off just having come out on egg. First minute alive, already dealing with some fucking experience.

mutuals, out of curiosity what season were you born in and what's your favorite season?

Born in August, and summer was my favorite as a kid exactly because I didn't have to go to school from the end of June to the beginning of September. But as an adult, autumn is my favorite for food, temperature, and aesthetic reasons.

I was born in the dry season and it wasn't my favourite as a kid but it's my favourite now. Love that dry season. For the dryness. Best laundry conditions and pain levels.

It deeply saddens me that "pdf file" has become slang for pedo. Don't you dare disrespect my wife the beautiful portable document format ever again

and to the children in the notes saying we need this fucking baby talk to get around censorship online; there's been no credible evidence that any site other that YouTube (which will only demonetize your video, ftr) will actually censor or hide content that include words like rape, pedophile, gun, terrorist, etc. etc. and even if we take as a given they were (which, again, they are not), do not fucking comply in advance, you absolute fucking coward. and ESPECIALLY do not comply by altering your real life fucking vocabulary. don't let the technocrats dictate what words you say holy fucking shit dude!!!!!!!!!!!!

Additional reminder that this kind of self censorship makes it harder for people to block content they do not want to see.

The Scottish cringe genuinely needs put to death. Looking at how much fun the Tartan Army had in Boston and Miami, and writing a piece like this is so miserably contrarian.

I genuinely believe the Scottish media needs a complete reset. To climb the ranks of any Scottish newspaper you need to be proactive in finding any sort of angle to chip away at anything we do culturally.

You need to lack any joy for life, and this ‘let’s calm down now’ attitude keeps us forever in this neat little shortbread tin.

To Scottish political commentators, Scottishness is something to be reserved for Burns Night and the Rugby Six Nations. Anything else and that’s just us getting above our station.

If the World Cup has shown me anything, it’s how damn angry people (the English) get when Scottish people have any sort of highlight or fun. I mean, I’ve lived here for years. I knew it existed. It’s just been crazy to see how rampant mindsets from like the 1500s still are.

That is definitely a whole other thing to unpack to be honest which ties into the perception that English is the ‘master’ British culture over the subservient Scottish, Welsh and Irish (both Northern and Independent) cultures.

The anger comes from the idea that a ‘lesser’ culture is being welcomed with open arms.

It’s partly where the Scottish cringe comes from in the first place, but there should be as much effort as calling it out from people who live here, as there is combatting it from certain English people who resent us for it.

It appears that all parties with the exception of Restore are not going to entertain Farage’s media circus.

Count Binface - it is your time. People of Clacton, please do the funniest fucking thing that’s happened in UK politics for a while.

Shitposting at its finest.