As it was becoming clear the US was headed into trade war territory, I got really interested in farming and the logistics of keeping people fed. I turned that interest into "your cool city needs a food supply," available now!

it's a hack of "i'm sorry did you say street magic" and "Microscope," two gold-standard worldbuilding games. It was polished by Nico MacDougall, who gave me some great advice on how to make this game really align with the themes and ideas I had in the draft.

I've always been a sicko about logistics and agriculture (growing up in the US midwest will do that to you), and I hope this game helps people think about how great a privilege it is to eat.

Btw much as I love to make fun of twitter and reddit's business decisions, I have 0% trust in tumblr's management to not go a similar route so this is your gentle reminder that you should regularly go to your blog settings to export your blog. That's a fancy way of saying you can download a backup of your blog so if everything goes down you'll still have a backup of your posts & convos.

It's gonna come as a surprise to most of you, but if you don't want to do that for whatever reason you're allowed to not reblog this post. I'm not holding a gun to your head here I'm just trying to spread the word for people who do want a backup of their stuff.

Also, made this guide for backup Tumblr blogs (ft. export blog method, and python 3 script method):

Broke af?

But still interested in feeding yourself? What if I told you that there’s a woman with a blog who had to feed both herself and her young son…on 10 British pounds ($15/14 Euro) per week?

Let me tell you a thing.

This woman saved my life last year. Actually saved my life. I had a piggy bank full of change and that’s it. Many people in my fandom might remember that dark time as when I had to hock my writing skills in exchange for donations. I cried a lot then. 

This is real talk, people: I marked down exactly what I needed to buy, totaled it, counted out that exact change, and then went to three different stores to buy what I needed so I didn’t have to dump a load of change on just one person. I was already embarrassed, but to feel people staring? Utter shame suffused me. The reasons behind that are another post all together. 

AgirlcalledJack.com is run by a British woman who was on benefits for years. Things got desperate. She had to find a way to feed herself and her son using just the basics that could be found at the supermarket. But the recipes she came up with are amazing. 

You have to consider the differing costs of things between countries, but if you just have three ingredients in your cupboard, this woman will tell you what to do with it. Check what you already have. Chances are you have the basics of a filling meal already. 

Here’s her list of kitchen basics. 

Bake your own bread. It’s easier than you think. Here’s a list of many recipes, each using some variation of just plain flour, yeast, some oil, maybe water or lemon juice. And kneading bread is therapeutic. 

Make your own pasta–gluten free. 

She gets it. She really does. This is the article that started it all. It’s called “Hunger Hurts”.

She has vegan recipes.

A carrot, a can of kidney beans, and some cumin will get you a really filling soup…or throw in some flour for binding and you’ve got yourself a burger. 

Don’t have an oven or the stove isn’t available? She covers that in her Microwave Cooking section. 

She has a book, but many recipes can be found on her blog for free. She prices her recipes down to the cent, and every year she participates in a project called “Living Below the Line” where she has to live on 1 BP per day of food for five days. 

Things improved for me a little, but her website is my go to. I learned how to bake bread (using my crockpot, but that was my own twist), and I have a little cart full of things that saved me back then, just in case I need them again. She gives you the tools to feed yourself, for very little money, and that’s a fabulous feeling. 

Tip: Whenever you have a little extra money, buy a 10 dollar/pound/euro giftcard from your discount grocer. Stash it. That’s your super emergency money. Make sure they don’t charge by the month for lack of use, though.

I don’t care if it sounds like an advertisement–you won’t be buying anything from the site. What I DO care about is your mental, emotional, and physical health–and dammit, food’s right in the center of that. 

If you don’t need this now, pass it on to someone who does. Pass it on anyway, because do you REALLY know which of the people in your life is in need? Which follower might be staring at their own piggy bank? Trust me: someone out there needs to see this. 

Reblogging for all the impoverished students. Jack is the breadline queen. And if you don’t need this - donate to your nearest food bank, stat.

Reblogging for students, working folks, and everyone who’s ever had to choose between essentials at the store because you can only afford milk OR bread, not both.

Her blog is called Cooking on a bootstrap now

Here’s an up to date link

reblogging and adding another very useful website of cheap recipes: budgetbytes.com

Linked websites are down (at least for me, at this particular moment). Try this link:

Have you ever wanted to eat a dish that is 70% dairy fat by volume? Have I got the recipe for you!

Tried a recipe tonight from Portico by Leah Koenig, which is about the cuisine of the Jewish community in Rome and has yet to let me down. This is semolina gnocchi gratin, which is semolina prepared with milk, butter, Parmesan, and a couple of egg yolks, cooled until firm, then cut into discs and baked in layers with more butter and Parmesan until golden ("gnocchi" is used somewhat esoterically in this case). I had a little extra so I shaped them into kitty cats and baked them separately.

So far I've tried separate portions with pesto, teriyaki sauce, sauteed mushrooms, and a little pile of Italian beef, and it went with everything. Because it's mostly butter.

[ID: four photographs from tonight's cooking project. Top left, ingredients including whole milk, butter, cheese, semolina, and egg yolks; top right, the mixture awaiting cooling. Center, a baking dish full of golden brown discs fresh from the oven, and finally bottom, a plate with two pieces of baked semolina that have been cut out with a cat shaped cookie cutter, with one upside down to show the browning underneath.]

[Video transcript: Let's make lahsa, a wonderful Yemeni breakfast. it's cheesy, gooey, and so light you can finish an entire pan. Having it for breakfast will put a smile on your face. If you love shakskuka, lahsa's gonna make you unfaithful. Start by chopping a large onion, 2 large tomatoes, and some chiles. Sauté the onion in some olive oil--Al Wali, of course. Once the onions start to brown, add the tomatoes. Season with salt, pepper, cumin, coriander, paprika, tomato puree, and any spices that you like. You're the boss of your lahsa. Add the chiles, and let the tomatoes cook till dissolved. Crack 3 eggs on top, add a splash of water, and mix it very thoroughly on low. Spread some liquid cheese* on top while it's cooking. You can also use cream cheese if you want. I think this is where the name comes from, the cheese being spread into a thin layer.

Cover, and let it cook for a couple of minutes. Garnish with some green. Have it with bread, a cup of tea, and enjoy.

end transcript]

*in the notes, several people suggest the liquid cheese is labneh

I'll always talk up internet radio stations because I don't think the average person is aware that they're free, can run in your browser (or in any program that can connect to them), work on your phone, run better than a youtube tab, and give you a much better selection of music than you could get from a general algorithmic playlist

(also lots of them have live shows which you can tune into for free)

"oughh I follow this blog for weeb stuff not internet radio promo" here. gensokyo radio.

oh and also I have to plug yggdrasil. it's cute.

if u like folk and/or roots music: wumb.org !!! it is AD-FREE it has ZERO MORNING TALK SHOWS it is on air at 91.9 FM in the BOSTON AREA but streams WORLDWIDE on the WEB it is perfect.

big fan of soma.fm's selection, dozens of themed stations covering ambient, jazz, soul, punk, and a lot of electronica

Also if you search for student radio stations at almost any university you can listen to all sorts of crazy stuff for free!

I can't stress enough how much I miss StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon once sent me to a supercut of Lion King, Lion King 1 1/2, and Lion King II, the main edit being that the scenes of Lion King and Lion King 1 1/2 were interspersed so that they happened in the order they actually happened.

stumbleupon not existing anymore can be directly traced to a dramatic decline in my mental health, I could do a thesis on it.

bestie stumbleupon very much still exists its just called cloudhiker now. i use it all the time.

mini compilation of suggestions from the replies:

The Bored Button - "Press the Bored Button and be bored no more."

The Useless Web

Cloudhiker - "Discover the most interesting, weird and awesome websites of the Internet" (not really a rebrand, it's a different person running it but they have the same intention in mind)

Astronaut.io - "These videos come from YouTube. They were uploaded in the last week and have titles like DSC 1234 and IMG 4321. They have almost zero previous views. They are unnamed, unedited, and unseen (by anyone but you)."

Marginalia - "This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed."

At the risk of sounding anti-intellectual, I think that college should be free and also not a requirement for employment outside of highly specialized career fields

At the risk of sounding like an effete intellectual, I do actually think you should be allowed to just take college courses indefinitely

technically you can, if you don't care about degrees.

Free Harvard courses. Free Courses from Stanford. Free Courses from MIT. Free courses from Yale. Free courses from Princeton.

Free courses on Coursera.

Free Courses on EDx Free Courses on Alison

For paid, there's The Great Courses+/Wonderium. 20$ a month for unlimited courses.

When searching, the phrases you're looking for are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), or you can do a general search of say, "free online college courses." Oh, and so you don't get surprised like I did, have an avoid: Hillsdale College is a conservative Christian site and not a valid MOOC place. Sign up with them and you will get things like THIS IS WHY THE LEFT IS TURNING YOUR KIDS TRANS AND GAY in your inbox.

@yourunderwaterskies I wanted to say thank you so much for adding these links, seriously, they've been life-changingly helpful to me-

And I also wanted to mention that humanitarian organisations have free courses too, like the Red Cross on international humanitarian law.

i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.

since this post blew up, i've been wanting to do an addition with all of the recommendations from the comments and tags. but there's a lot of them. some people might be crazy enough to sit down and seriously put them all in one post with descriptions. those people are honestly sick in the head.

anyway, here's all of the recommendations from the reblogs. not all of them are text-based, but it's a great mixture of styles. also don't forget the links in the second paragraph of the OP which will take you to FMHY where there are a bunch more games listed.

Games

Tools

Non-Games

thank you to everyone who contributed and the creators. please be sure to show them some love where possible.

Hey kid you want a job?

Great get online and go to a job board. Indeed, Linkedin whatever. Now you're gonna search for a role that's in your city, fits your qualifications, and doesn't seem like a bad time.

See that easy apply button? Don't hit it they just throw those in the trash. Now you're gonna want to go to the company's website and check their careers page.

Oh? That job doesn't exist anymore. Cool go back to the job board and find another one.

Great you found another job, you're on the company's career page and the job exists!! So you're going to need to make an account on the career page website. They're using Workday, the same site as the last job you applied for? Who cares? You need to make another account for THIS job's workday page.

Now you're going to upload your resume. That'll autopopulate about 15 boxes with everything on your resume, except formatted wrong and with tons of errors. So just go through and painstakingly check the dates on all of that and rewrite everything you already laid out in an aesthetically pleasing format on your resume.

Ok time for the cover letter, explain why this specific job and company are deeply important to you. You love their mission statement and wouldn't even laugh if their ceo was gunned down in the street. You'll really want to reiterate the things you just spent the last 20 minutes filling out on the resume section

(Remember to include language from the job description, people who work in HR are lower than dogs and they need patterns or they get confused.) Write about a page, but hey don't sound too desperate or robotic this is where they judge your character!

Maybe add your portfolio site at the end here, who knows if that helps no one has ever clicked mine haha.

Anywayyy time to hit apply! Congrats! You'll see that confirmation email come in and you should be getting the rejection letter in about 2 weeks. Unfortunately your resume didn't have the right buzzwords and the AI auto rejected you :(

Time to start again and try not to kill yourself!

Listen to me

Listen very closely

The above is exactly why half of my friends come to me, and cry they're suffering, and I get to bestow my job hunting knowledge on them. I love this shit, it's a game.

For credentials my fastest job hunting time has been 1 week. I searched for 1 week, got an interview, and was hired within a week. My slowest was 1 month, while out of work, while telling ALL my interviewers that I quit my work without notice (I was testing my interviewers to see how shocked they'd get when I'd tell them why, anyone who wasn't shocked I would tell them at the end that I will keep them in mind (not)). My entire average is 2-3 weeks.

Firstly, what you're gunna do is pick a job sector. You're gunna pick a few of these by the end, but for now pick one. Maybe you wanna do bookkeeping, maybe you wanna do something in doggy daycare. Maybe you're a sous chef. Idk! Figure out what abouts you want first. Do not apply to anything yet. You're gunna look at the job description, I've picked out a few for bookkeepers below.

Now what you're gunna do is you're gunna look for "buzz words", or rather words that are gunna appear commonly and indicate the tone for that job. I've highlighted some, but not all in my examples below

Just look at that snout at how similar those descriptions are!

Now that you've got your buzzwords, you're gunna slap those babies into your resume! You see, since your resume is usually read by a computer first, you're gunna trick the computer into giving it to a person. Really what the computer is scanning for is how similar your resume is to the job description. Remember your bullet points, and to keep it short, try to only have 3 to 5 bullet points per job:

- Processed over 500 invoices a day in an efficient and accurate manner

- Curated reports for management review by utilizing available data

- Monitored and recorded over 100 submissions each day increasing accuracy by 50%

These are some great, made up examples I pulled from those buzz words. You might notice I added some numbers into there. That's something you'll wanna try and note for yourself, how much of something you can do, how accurate, how much efficiency you increased, these look GREAT when your resume gets past the computer and is moved in front of a real person.

Now you have your sector-based resume with lots of buzzwords. This is great! Now for the easy part. You're gunna channel your inner "IDGAF" And you're gunna send that to every listing you like on indeed. Filter for "Apply on Indeed" and spam that shit. Sometimes you gotta answer a few extra questions, but if they give me more than 5 quick questions I trash the submission and move on.

Don't waste your time jumping through hoops, streamline it for yourself and use the same methods companies are using. Push MASSIVE amounts of average quality resumes out. The more opportunities taken = the greater the chance of success. For every opportunity taken you've now pitched a chance of success, for every resume you cannot submit because you're piddling around on their stupid website or answering 50 interview questions online, you send out a 0% chance of success.

So go, try this, and see how it works for you.

Some additional things to consider:

- Add random shit in your resume, I added my "Board Game Club" (BDSM group) into my resume for hobbies and discussed how I got my start using sparklines there

- Never underestimate the flair of a little Clipart fleur-de-lis or something on your resume. Never put colored Clipart, but a little floral or swirl design located somewhere nice makes it stand out

- if you don't have a degree that doesn't mean they won't pick you, twice now I've come to a job without a bachelors and being honest that I was only getting an associates before I think of my next steps

- Embellish, do not lie. Jargoning your job description to make it sound cool and professional is GREAT. Do not give me a resume saying you can use CNC machinery when you've only used a 3D printer. Just tell me you know how to program and manage a 3d printer and want to learn CNC machinery.

- Keep. Your. Resume. To. Two. Or. Less. Pages. You don't need EVERY job, only the relevant ones, if your interviewer asks about the gap, tell them what job you had during that time (or if you wanna lie say you were taking college courses and were on a break, you dont need a degree to say you took courses) and that you only wanted to showcase the most relevant ones

- I'm serious on that last one I'll eat your fucking resume

And if you're really, REALLY having a bad time? Go work in the public sector. It's free benefits (and sometimes a pension) and it'll getcha on a stable career path. A lot of times local city and county governments or other areas are hurting for basic administrative and other roles. You can get training! You can often get internships and tuition assistance or other benefits. At the very least do not discount that as an option in your job search. Experience in governance is NEVER bad.

Okay I’m currently furious that migraines are often so blindly easy to treat and I had to find this out myself at the age of 26 when I’ve been to a neurologist since I was 11 lol so I’m about to teach you two neat and fast little tricks to deal with pain!

The first is the sternocleidomastoid muscle, or the SCM muscle.

This big red section is responsible for pain around the eye, cheekbone, and jaw, as well as some temple pain. Literally all you have to do is angle your head down a little, angle it away from the side that hurts, and then you can gently pinch and rub that muscle. I find it best to start at the bottom and travel upwards. The relief is so immediate! You can increase pressure as you feel comfortable doing so.

Here is a short and easy video showing this in action

The second is a fast and easy stretch that soothes your vagus nerve, which is the nerve responsible for calming you down. The vagus nerve, for those unfamiliar, is stimulated by deep breathing such as yawning, sighing, singing, or taking a deep breath to calm your anger in a tense situation.

You can stretch this out by sitting up as straight as possible (this does not have to be perfect to work) and interlacing your fingers. Put your hands on the back of your head with your thumbs going down the sides of your neck and, while keeping your face forward, look all the way to one side with just your eyes. Hold that until you feel the urge to breathe deeply or yawn, or until you can tell there’s a change. Then do the same thing on the other side. When you put your arms down, you should clearly be able to turn your head farther in both directions. If the first session doesn’t get rid of your migraine, rest and repeat as many times as necessary. I even get a little fancy with it and roll my eyes up and down along the outer edge sometimes to stretch as much as I can.

If you need a visual here’s a good video on it. I know some of the language they use seems questionable but this is real and simple science and should not be discarded because it’s been adopted by the trendy wellness crowd!

I seriously cannot believe I didn’t hear a word of this from any doctor in my life. Additionally, if you get frequent recurring migraines, you may want to see a dietician. Migraines can be caused by foods containing histamines, lectin, etc. and can also be caused by high blood pressure in specific situations such as exercise, stress, and even sex.

If any of this information helps you I’d love to hear it btw! It’s so so fast and easy to do. Good luck!

There’s a total of like 6 steps to stir fry and I just found like 8 ways I’ve been doing it less than ideally. Thank you for this! I’m definitely making stir fry this week and I’ll be using this to guide me.

The GI Rights Hotline is a non-profit run by civilians that offers free, confidential counseling and resources for anyone trying to leave the US military, whether by conscientious objection, going AWOL, or any other means. Their toll-free number is 1-877-447-4487 

The Center on Conscience and War is a non-profit run by civilians collects resources for people who might be targets of the US military’s predatory recruitment process, including this list of alternatives to enlistment, organized by state, that offer the same benefits that the branches of the military (claim to) offer, such as experience, travel, money for college, etc - without killing people in the name of western imperialism. If you want to register as an official conscientious objector or otherwise avoid combat in any way, their toll-free number is 1-800-379-2679

War is a racket. Don’t throw your life away for a government that doesn’t care about you. If you know anyone who’s considering enlisting or who’s already enlisted and considering getting out, please talk to them and share these resources

This is a post about the Joker drinking your menstrual blood. Please be respectful of my fantasy in the comments and reblogs. Joker antis DNI

100% Edward Cullen

Homemaking, gardening, and self-sufficiency resources that won't radicalize you into a hate group

It seems like self-sufficiency and homemaking skills are blowing up right now. With the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis, a lot of folks, especially young people, are looking to develop skills that will help them be a little bit less dependent on our consumerist economy. And I think that's generally a good thing. I think more of us should know how to cook a meal from scratch, grow our own vegetables, and mend our own clothes. Those are good skills to have.

Unfortunately, these "self-sufficiency" skills are often used as a recruiting tactic by white supremacists, TERFs, and other hate groups. They become a way to reconnect to or relive the "good old days," a romanticized (false) past before modern society and civil rights. And for a lot of people, these skills are inseparably connected to their politics and may even be used as a tool to indoctrinate new people.

In the spirit of building safe communities, here's a complete list of the safe resources I've found for learning homemaking, gardening, and related skills. Safe for me means queer- and trans-friendly, inclusive of different races and cultures, does not contain Christian preaching, and does not contain white supremacist or TERF dog whistles.

Homemaking/Housekeeping/Caring for your home:

Gardening

Country/Rural Living:

Sewing/Mending:

Sustainability/Land Stewardship

Avoiding the "Crunchy to Alt Right Pipeline"

These are just the resources I've personally found helpful, so if anyone else has any they want to add, please, please do!

Two job-hunting resources that changed my life:

This cover letter post on askamanger.com. A job interview guide written by Alison Green, who runs askamanager.

Shout-out to @ms-demeanor for putting these on my dash again, I’d like to add this exceptional interview question “answer guide” that explains traps and “the best” way to answer over 64 common questions. I don’t know who to attribute it to, but here it is: PDF from tri valley one-stop career center.

Hey some of these answer templates helped J get an offer letter from her dream job; strongly recommend you read them if you’re job hunting

Shout-out to @ms-demeanor for putting these on my dash again, I’d like to add this exceptional interview question “answer guide” that explains traps and “the best” way to answer over 64 common questions. I don’t know who to attribute it to, but here it is: PDF from tri valley one-stop career center.

PDF No Longer available

PDF Still available on the wayback machine!

The wayback machine only has 3 of the 60 questions and answers :(

I think you may have a bad connection because it absolutely has all 60:

There’s a 23 page PDF, it seems like only the 1st page is loading for you.

Blackness to me is inherently gender nonconforming largely because we will never fit into binary white supremacist notions of manhood and womanhood.

Angela Davis actually touches on this in her novel Women, Race, and Class.

Essentially, she says that Black women may have been considered genderless because we did all the same work as men but then weren’t considered men when it came to sexual abuse, suddenly being forced into these feminine, submissive roles that we clearly didn’t fit into. Once the Atlantic Slave Trade was banned, Black women were then seen as breeders to provide for slaves since they couldn’t be imported. Despite this, Black women, even if we were pregnant, still had to work in the fields and suffer the same punishment as our male counterparts.

Angela Davis goes on further to say that since Black women were never seen as housewives, Black men were in turn never seen as family providers or heads of households. By this point, Black women had acquired an abundance of traits that didn’t fit into 19th century perception of what it meant to be a woman. Also, with the rise of industrialization, white women never experienced that same intensive labor which further pushed them into the housewife stereotype. Essentially, there was this white feminist movement to erase the housewife stereotype but it didn’t include the struggles of Black women because we were never seen as housewives to begin with.

All of this to say: We were genderless and outside of any gender norm within the white supremacist framework.

Reminder that we offer the novel mentioned above, Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis, as a free PDF for anyone to read under our social justice resources. Please share so everyone has equal and equitable access to education and activism!

Several recordings of Davis can be found on Spotify as well not just Women, Race and Class and are highly recommended

And a Youtube Playlist here