Crowley Accidentally Getting Into An Argument With An Astrophysicist, Proving All Current Scientific

Screaming crying because I hate every piracy guide I come across on here.

Getting ready for the show!!

intruder!!!

In the spirit of encouraging people to comment on fanfics while also making it easier to do so, I feel obliged to share a browser extension for ao3 that has quite literally revolutionized the comment game for me.

I present to you: the floating ao3 comment box!

From what I've seen, a big problem for many people is that once you reach the comments at the bottom of a fic, your memory of it miraculously disappears. Anything you wanted to say is stuck ten paragraphs ago, and you barely remember what you thought while reading. This fixes that!

I'll give a little explanation on the features and how it works, but if you want to skip all that, here's the link.

The extension is visible as a small blue box in the upper left corner.

(Side note: The green colouring is not from the extension, that's me.)

If you click on it, you open a comment box window at the bottom of your screen but not at the bottom of the fic. I opened my own fic for demonstrative purposes.

The website also gives explanations on how exactly it functions, but I'll summarize regardless.

insert selection -> if you highlight a sentence in the fic it will be added in italics to the comment box

add to comment box -> once you're done writing your comment, you click this button and the entire thing will automatically copied to the ao3 comment box

delete -> self explanatory

on mulitchapter fics, you will be given the option to either add the comment to just the current chapter or the entire fic

The best part? You can simply close the window the same way you opened it and your progress will automatically be saved. So you can open it, comment on a paragraph, and then close it and keep reading without having the box in your face.

Comments are what keep writers going, and as both a writer and a reader, I think it's such an easy way of showing support and enthusiasm.

>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.

>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.

>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.

>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.

>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.

>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.

>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.

>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!

>Lemmings problem now solved.

>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.

>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.

>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.

>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.

>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.

>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.

boss battle

phase 2

Newish reader but I've been loving your work SO MUCH, and subsequently craving more of that brand of story-feels. So a) THANK YOU for writing and for sharing your work, it is SO LOVELY, and b) do you uh... do you have any random book recs? (Already looked through your list of fic bookmarks on ao3.) (P.S. Thank you again, your found family feels are so *chef's kiss* good, and your reluctant or not-so-reluctant dad!characters are all SUCH GOOD DADS.)

Do I have book recs

DO I EVER

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell: we pick up an alien song coming from a nearby star. While governments debate what to do, the Jesuits fund an expedition. Do NOT look up plot summaries, it is way too easy to get spoiled on this one. Beautiful writing, vividly human humans, alien-yet-understandable aliens. Trigger warning: rape.

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff: 1960s America. A black family deals with racism and Eldritch horrors, and fucking kills it. Sometimes literally. Trigger warning: people being racist assholes. Author is African American themselves, and the black characters have hella agency. Also Lovecraft-typical horror.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: who wants to read about a plague apocalypse during a plague apocalypse? THIS GIRL. Trigger warnings: implied rape, some underage, and lots of death. NOT a grimdark apocalypse though.

Everything by Ted Chiang. Short story writer, most famous for "Story of your life", which the movie Arrival is based on. "Understand" and "Exhalation" are also amazing, and his work is pretty easy to find online. This dude. This dude is my role model. No particular trigger warnings.

Anything by Neil Gaiman, he's famous enough I doubt I need to elaborate. No particular trigger warnings unless you pick up the Sandman graphic novels (highly recommended), and then All The Trigger Warnings, especially in volume one.

Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker: who likes novels about dinosaurs written by actual paleontologists? DEFINITELY THIS GIRL. I went through a phase in childhood where I read this thing pretty much everyday. Still holds up as an adult. Trigger Warnings: it's about nature, things die and/or get eaten lots.

The Last Whales by Lloyd Abbey: another childhood favorite that in retrospect was Not For Children. The apocalypse, from the point of view of whales. Trigger warning: hopeful ending, but RL-typical Humans Being Awful To Oceans. And it is an apocalypse story, plus a nature story, so. Things die. Things get eaten. Orcas are dicks.

The Mote in God's Eye by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven: ridiculously engaging first contact book. Also who the heck was letting me pick books as a child? (No one, that's who. I was an INDEPENDENT THIRD GRADER and you COULDN'T STOP ME. ...Except from reading Moby Dick, which definitely got me mocked too much in the classroom so I didn't get past chapter one until adulthood.) I read this in like, sixth grade, I do not accurately recall trigger warnings.

Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals: autobiography of one of the Little Rock Nine. Trigger Warnings: All The Racism. That's kind of the point.

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates: short story, easy to find, had a ridiculous impact upon my childhood and writing for a story I didn't read until adulthood (my mom read it long ago in college, and told me of a man in ill-fitting boots that might or might not have been hiding cloven hooves. This was a Very Influential Image.) Recommender Chose Not To Apply Trigger Warnings. Nothing graphic.

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu: another short story that you can have LeVar Fucking Burton read to you, it is so soothing. PS LeVar Burton (of Star Trek TNG and Reading Rainbow fame) has a podcast. He reads you stories. You should be listening. No particular trigger warnings.

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle: in which a black writer has WAY too much fun deconstructing the magical negro trope and the inherent racism in Lovecraft's writing and I am HERE for it. The malicious glee in this book is top notch. Same warnings as for Lovecraft Country.

Ursula K. Le Guin, everything. My first intro to her was Earthsea, she's also quite famous for The Left Hand of Darkness. Google by book for warnings.

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle: had your heart broken by the movie as a child? Prepare to be good-hurt in EVEN MORE WAYS! No particular warnings.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill: it's just nice and I like it okay? No particular warnings.

My wrist hurts from swiping and I'm at the end of my history in Libby and there is a baby sleeping on me so I can't go upstairs and look at my bookshelf, so this list is complete. Return to me when you need more.

I just had the most awful connection

dropbox containing linguistics textbooks

contains 34 textbooks including etymology, language acquisition, morphology, phonetics/phonology, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, & translation studies

dropbox containing language textbooks

contains 123 language textbooks including ASL, Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, (Mandarin) Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Hebrew (Modern & Ancient), Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Latin, Lithuanian, Nahuatl, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Welsh

dropbox containing books about language learning

includes fluent forever by gabriel wyner, how to learn any language by barry farber, polyglot by kató lomb

if there’s a problem with any of the textbooks or if you want to request materials for a specific language feel free to message me!

this is superior humor

Have you ever been to earth?

On earth, we use the word “burrito” to describe a tortilla filled with things you eat. Pretty simple stuff, and I’m surprised you at least got that part right. My burrito was, in fact, filled with food. In this, you and I agree and are friends. But this is also where my lifelong hatred begins for you and anyone else whose brain has been repeatedly scrubbed with the same mixture of bleach and Pop Rocks as yours has. Because that should have killed you, but left you around long enough to do what you did to me today. Let me explain:

You’re an idiot.

Let me further explain:

Burritos are eaten from one end to the other. So that means when you assemble a burrito with motherfucking ZONES of ingredients going that direction, you create a disgusting experience for the burrito’s end user. When you make a burrito, you should put the ingredients in layerslengthwise. That way, every bite has AT LEAST A FUCKING CHANCE of getting at least two types of ingredients, and there is little chance of becoming almost hopelessly trapped in a goddamned cilantro cavern.

Have you ever eaten one of the things you make all fucking day? You should try one. They are pretty good WHEN YOU ARE NOT WILLING YOURSELF THROUGH THE FUCKING EMPIRE OF SOUR CREAM ONLY TO END UP IN LETTUCE COUNTRY.

When you eat a burrito, you don’t stand it up and bite down on it lengthwise like a fucking Rancor. Humans can’t usually dislocate their jaws, and I’m not a fucking pelican. But you must think that’s how it’s done, since that would be THE ONLY FUCKING WAY to take a bite of your crapstrosity and have it taste like a burrito.

And guess what else, player? You probably can’t guess anything, because I’m pretty sure you’re just a mop with a hat on it that fell over and spilled some shit into a tortilla, but just in case, here’s what:

Humans also don’t eat burritos like fucking corn on the cob. Like a fucking typewriter from one end to the other a little at a time and then DING next line. But today I wish I had tried that. Because at least THEN I would be able to eat some rice, then beans, then be all like HEY BEANS I’LL BE RIGHT BACK JUST GOING OVER HERE TO THE GUACAMOLE FOR A SECOND.

Nope.

My experience was more like HEY BEANS IT’S JUST GOING TO BE YOU AND I FOR A MINUTE UNTIL I CAN FUCKING EXCAVATE THE RICE FROM BENEATH YOU BUT BY THEN YOU WILL BE A FADING MEMORY OH HEY I WAS WRONG I’M IN THE FUCKING CHEESEOSPHERE NOW RICE MUST BE NEXT I HOPE IT’S NOT ANOTHER FUCKING SALSA POCKET.

You built this thing like a fucking pack of LifeSavers.

And don’t even fucking think I’m about to open this shit up and re-engineer your nonsense 90 degrees. I ALREADY PUT A HOLE IN IT WITH MY FUCKING MOUTH. YEAH. THAT’S HOW I DISCOVERED YOU FUCKING SUCK AT LOOKING AT THINGS. I AM NOT GOING TO DO FUCKING TORTILLA ORIGAMI TO GET THIS SHIT BACK TOGETHER, ONLY TO END UP WITH A BURRITO THAT’S BEEN SHOT IN THE GUT AND IS BLEEDING YOUR INEPTITUDE.

What’s that? I should ask you to mix it up first next time? IS THIS JAMBA JUICE? I DON’T WANT TO DRINK MY FUCKING BURRITO THROUGH A BENDY STRAW, AND I DON’T WANT A PILE OF BURRITO SOUP IN A FLOUR CAN.

I just want a burrito.

In conclusion:

You’re the worst thing that has ever happened to the universe, you owe everyone everywhere an apology for this burritobomination, and I hope your babies look like monkeys.

UPDATE FOR EVERYONE WHO SAID “JUST EAT IT WITH A FORK”:

A fucking fork?

I DIDN’T ORDER THE FUCKING COBBURRITO SALAD.

If anyone ever handed me a burrito with a fork, THEY WOULD BE WEARING A BRAND NEW BURRITO HAT FROM MY FALL COLLECTION TEN SECONDS LATER.

That’s like buying a car and having them hand you a fucking wrench with the keys. Like YEAH WE KNOW THIS MOTHERFUCKER’S GOING TO EXPLODE AND BE SPREAD ACROSS EIGHT LANES AS SOON AS YOU HIT THE GAS, BUT SHIT, WE GAVE YOU A WRENCH, SO BE COOL.

Jesus already gave me two burrito forks. One at the end of each arm. They’re called fucking HANDS.

A fork. My god. I haven’t cried since I was six, but I’m fucking sobbing now.

People eat burritos with forks?

God is sorry he made us.

(Source)