I've been pointedly refusing to use the term "content creators" to refer to artists anymore, because I want to make art for me and the people I care about, not the endless demands of the algorithm. I'm not trying to Produce Content, I want to make art.

So it is deeply, deeply irritating when I use the word "artist" in a post and it gets endlessly reblogged with people asking "but what about writers? but what about actors? but what about musicians? but what about [x]?"

All types of art are included in the term "artist," god damn it. "Artist" does not just mean "someone who draws pictures."

I don't know why so many people keep taking this post as "yeah, we should come up with a better word for content creators!"

THAT WORD ALREADY EXISTS.

THE WORD IS "ARTIST," Y'ALL.

THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS DAMN POST.

The word "artist" is all-encompassing! By! Definition! We don't need to keep reinventing the fucking wheel!

Do you make art? Any kind of art? Drawings, paintings, comics, novels, songs, dances, photographs, performances, anything creative?

THAT'S ART, BABE. YOU ARE AN ARTIST.

RESIST CAPITALIST COMMODIFICATION OF ART AND CLAIM THE DAMN TITLE.

I've been pointedly refusing to use the term "content creators" to refer to artists anymore, because I want to make art for me and the people I care about, not the endless demands of the algorithm. I'm not trying to Produce Content, I want to make art.

So it is deeply, deeply irritating when I use the word "artist" in a post and it gets endlessly reblogged with people asking "but what about writers? but what about actors? but what about musicians? but what about [x]?"

All types of art are included in the term "artist," god damn it. "Artist" does not just mean "someone who draws pictures."

I don't know why so many people keep taking this post as "yeah, we should come up with a better word for content creators!"

THAT WORD ALREADY EXISTS.

THE WORD IS "ARTIST," Y'ALL.

THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS DAMN POST.

The word "artist" is all-encompassing! By! Definition! We don't need to keep reinventing the fucking wheel!

Do you make art? Any kind of art? Drawings, paintings, comics, novels, songs, dances, photographs, performances, anything creative?

THAT'S ART, BABE. YOU ARE AN ARTIST.

RESIST CAPITALIST COMMODIFICATION OF ART AND CLAIM THE DAMN TITLE.

I've been pointedly refusing to use the term "content creators" to refer to artists anymore, because I want to make art for me and the people I care about, not the endless demands of the algorithm. I'm not trying to Produce Content, I want to make art.

So it is deeply, deeply irritating when I use the word "artist" in a post and it gets endlessly reblogged with people asking "but what about writers? but what about actors? but what about musicians? but what about [x]?"

All types of art are included in the term "artist," god damn it. "Artist" does not just mean "someone who draws pictures."

I don't know why so many people keep taking this post as "yeah, we should come up with a better word for content creators!"

THAT WORD ALREADY EXISTS.

THE WORD IS "ARTIST," Y'ALL.

THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS DAMN POST.

The word "artist" is all-encompassing! By! Definition! We don't need to keep reinventing the fucking wheel!

Do you make art? Any kind of art? Drawings, paintings, comics, novels, songs, dances, photographs, performances, anything creative?

THAT'S ART, BABE. YOU ARE AN ARTIST.

RESIST CAPITALIST COMMODIFICATION OF ART AND CLAIM THE DAMN TITLE.

the plan b decimating my sperm

the johnson and johnson vaccine trying to break down the dasani water bottle cap i swallowed when i was 2

can we as a society make puppetry cool again. like lets make it trendy. Mainstream. more people should get into doing it and more people should appreciate it. puppetry requires craftsmanship and charisma and physical acting and vocal performance!! you can’t get that from ai. it has a charm to it that neither 2D nor cg animation has. Have you ever watched a puppetry performance and realized you were genuinely convinced that the puppet was getting into bed or eating something or giving a hug that you wholly forgot there was some guy’s arm in there.

isn’t it lovely. to make a funny little guy to tell stories with. is that not so human of us. it’s such a lovely art form. I love you puppets I love you muppets I love you marionettes I love you handmade sock puppets I love you paper bags with googley eyes I love you armatures I love you I love you I love you!!!!!

A bit morbidly funny that there's this movie that's like

And then in the last couple minutes

i'm so sorry but "woe tanks be upon ye" made me cackle like a hyena

wolves in eastern USA are a really bizarre case actually because. okay, so, we have coyotes right? they're everywhere. And supposedly wolves haven't been in the eastern USA for a long time.

however. I'm on inaturalist and gray wolves have presence in many areas across the globe, whereas coyotes are restricted to North America. And iNaturalist maps largely corroborate this

However. if you just pull up coyote observations you'll see a huge variety of animals with a great range of sizes and appearances. Which is like, okay, wolves are still way bigger, the people ID-ing the photos must know what they're talking about

HOWEVER. look at observations of gray wolves, specifically in Eurasia, (where there is no overlap with coyotes) and you'll see animals that make you think. That's a Coyote. The size and shape is fully indistinguishable from the coyotes you were just looking at. BUT IT CAN'T BE A COYOTE. 'CAUSE IT'S IN POLAND.

So basically what's happening is that all photos taken in an area of the USA where wolf presence isn't officially documented are confidently identified "coyote" no matter what even if they can't actually be distinguished by a low quality photo

Looking up how to distinguish coyotes and wolves makes my brain dissolve entirely, because in Connecticut (example) there are numerous trail cam photos of BIG coyote- or wolf- like creatures with rounded, blocky muzzles, stout bodies, short, rounded ears, walking with their tails held horizontally, all definitively identified as coyotes, so it's like...is there some diagnostic trait I don't know about or is everyone just assigning taxa to an indistinct animal based on what they're "most likely" to be

What do you mean red wolves are 45-80 pounds

...

I'm trying to read about the relationships between canid species in North America and I've completely lost the plot.

So Wikipedia cites this study as evidence that red wolves are distinct from coyotes, which basically...examined their external morphological characteristics? and determined that...red wolves are more similar to red wolves than coyotes and their hybrids and they have distinct morphological traits? Is it me or is that circular?

Meanwhile the coyote page cites this study which seems far more rigorous in that it actually analyzed the animals' genetics, and this found that red wolves and coyotes form a clade separate from gray wolves, and that all the wolves, coyotes included, are monophyletic. It also found that all North American wolves contain coyote DNA, and that red wolves are around 60% coyote, whereas Eastern timber wolves and Great Lakes wolves are around 40% and 25% coyote respectively (though they are considered to be in the gray wolf clade). See also this study, which largely agrees with the idea that red wolves and coyotes are closely related and that there is a ton of hybridization, meaning essentially all North American wolves and all coyotes have some of the other's DNA. A quote from the second study linked:

An exhaustive search of wolf genomes from the Great Lakes region including Algonquin Provincial Park, where pure eastern wolves are thought to exist, and from red wolves from the captive breeding colony reveals little unique ancestry and instead demonstrates a distinct geographic pattern of admixture between gray wolves and coyotes. We argue strongly for a less typologically oriented implementation of the ESA that allows interim protection of hybrids while encouraging the restoration of historic patterns of variation through habitat protection.

This earlier study treats Eastern Wolves as conspecific with Red Wolves and identifies "Coywolves" as a genetically distinct population with wolf and coyote ancestry. It also notes that North American canids "do not conform to the species concept" because they are not reproductively isolated from each other. Here's a quote:

Coyote/Wolf hybrids are likely harboring Wolf genes that would otherwise be lost due to genetic drift in a small isolated population ... and hybridization is moving towards a Canis that is better adapted to anthropogenically modified landscapes.

This is my first time diving into actual studies about this subject, and I'm just kinda stunned because the evidence appears to very clearly show that wolves and coyotes are basically the same thing existing on a spectrum of phenotypes.

This is just utterly at odds with the policies surrounding the species, where wolves are treated as this noble, essential keystone species firmly protected by law whereas Coyotes are vermin to be slaughtered by the thousands.

People are allowed to kill Coyotes with reckless abandon in the same territories where Red Wolves dwelt. This means that people are almost certainly slaughtering Red Wolves or at least slaughtering what remains of their DNA, because no one knows how or to what extent the two are different.

The second study I linked discusses how the division of the species has implications for the animals being covered under the Endangered Species Act or not. Basically, we had to separate the Eastern Wolf for Gray Wolves to retain protections, because if they were the same species, that would be considered a valid reason to kill 'em all. And obviously, the Red Wolves would not be protected if they were considered the same species as coyotes.

It's almost like the most versatile and adaptable of the wolf phenotypes was offered as a sacrifice to sate the bloodthirst of the pro-wolf-killing faction, Coyotes separated from the rest so the other wolves could be protected and thus live.

But coyotes contain a ton of genetic diversity that could help the other wolves survive. One of the studies above mentions that the 14 founding red wolves of the current population have very low inbreeding coefficients despite being the last of a dying breed. It's because the coyotes have served as a reservoir of diversity.

The divides are a political fiction, they're a complicated family of species that together contain the diversity that holds the key to survival.

wake up babe, new reason to ditch FANDOM/Wikia just dropped

ALT

ALT

Previosuly

• corporate monster infested with ads which devoured Gamepedia and other companies (feat me on their shit policies, SEO and migration process)
• turning entire articles into ads if paid enough
• limited functionality preventing admins to even fight vandalism
• merging and removing of LGBT+ wikis (and forced domain change for educational [think serious] wikis to "fandom")
• official wiki status has no meaning in controlling shit
• very much censorship (same good ol' allergy to adult stuff)
• gets paid by US Navy to advertise their events (one, two)

Alternative free wiki hostings (aka wiki farms)

• Miraheze - started in 2015, non-commercial - no ads and runs on donations, wide array of MediaWiki features, wide array of allowed types of wikis and content, much autonomy for projects, custom domain and private wiki options
• wiki.gg - started in 2022 by former Gamepedia staff, limited to video games, accent on involvement of game devs and thus hosting official wikis, has ads for anons (but only of games having wikis here)
• Telepedia - started in 2022, limited to entertainment (although might allow other themes upon review), has ads for anons, replicates Miraheze structure
• WikiTide - started in 2023, no ads and runs on donations (but also tied w/ premium version called WikiForge), largely replicates Miraheze but has stricter content policies, custom domain option

Other free options I'm aware of are either too limited in allowed content or are very outdated/unstable in technical department to recommend here (or in case of Neoseeker - I'm completely unfamiliar with it, and can't say anything about it), but you still can check them out, alongside paid hostings, on this MediaWiki page.

If you (or your community) are brave and dedicated enough you can go with self-hosted MediaWiki instance (aka independent hosting), like JoJo Wiki (who started on Wikia and succeed at overtaking the SEO) or NIWA wikis. This option, of course, requires funding and technical knowledge, but it's still very much possible.

How to find existing alternative/independent wikis

• try to use "-fandom" filter for search query in Google, or use other search engines like Bing or DuckDuckGo
• Indie Wiki Buddy browser extension - it modifies search engine results and performs redirects based on its centralized list of independent wikis; a new indie wiki has to be requested/submitted to get added [ Firefox / Chrome ]
• Redirect to wiki.gg browser extension - same as IWB but for wikis moved to wiki.gg (as I understand, works automatically without dedicated listing) [ Firefox / Chrome ]
• (simple) Redirector browser extension - in case the wiki is neither on IWB or wiki.gg, and it doesn't filter out search results - only performs redirect on whatever you get; a redirect has to be set manually - see this tutorial [ Firefox / Chrome ]

Fuck FANDOM, support real people, support indie wikis

hate how this 1) manages to make fun of Belgium without bothering to mention us 2) every single person in the notes knows this 3) it's true

Enjoy a drink on one of my special coasters. Yea I custom made them (the coasters) to be so light the drinks condensation makes em stick to the bottom of your glass, but still heavy enough that when it (the coaster) finally clatters to the ground it's loud as fuck and shatters your nerves and makes you spill your drink everywhere. Why am I doing this? Well, it's a sex thing for me