This Is Awesome

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

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Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

*white knuckling the bathroom sink* do NOT infodump ppl about the fact that the first spn fic was a wincest one and that it was posted mere hours after the pilot and that the founder of ao3 was a wincestie and that the first fic on ao3 was wincest too and that the omegaverse as we know it was created by wincest shippers for jared/jensen fics *pointing at myself in the mirror with a shaky hand* ppl will think you're weird and off-putting you need to control yourself–

i have this disease called i will open your message and get distracted and forget to reply and then the notification will be gone so i will not have replied for ages and you will think i am ignoring you but. i am not. it’s incurable

Gentle reminder that very little fandom labor is automated, because I think people forget that a lot.

That blog with a tagging system you love? A person curates those tags by hand.

That rec blog with a great organization scheme and pretty graphics? Someone designed and implemented that organization scheme and made those graphics.

That network that posts a cool variety of stuff? People track down all that variety and queue it by hand, and other people made all the individual pieces.

That post with umpteen links to helpful resources, and information about them? Someone gathered those links, researched the sources, wrote up the information about them.

That graphic about fandom statistics? Someone compiled those statistics, analyzed them, organized them, figured out a useful way to convey the information to others, and made the post.

That event that you think looks neat? Someone wrote the rules, created the blogs and Discords, designed the graphics, did their best to promo the event so it'd succeed.

None of this was done automatically. None of it just appears whole out of the internet ether.

I think everyone realizes that fic writing and fanart creation are work, and at least some folks have got it through their heads that gif creation and graphics and moodboards take effort, and meta is usually respected for the effort that goes into it, at least as far as I've seen, but I feel like a lot of people don't really get how much labor goes into curation, too.

If people are creating resources, curating content, organizing the creations of others, gathering information, and doing other fandom activities that aren't necessarily the direct action of creation, they're doing a lot of fandom labor, and it's often largely unrecognized.

Celebrate fan work!

To folks doing this kind of labor: I see you, and I thank you. You are the backbones of our fandoms and I love you.

Reblog if you want the next Disney princess to be plus size.

the only Rule and Regulation

So I attended church yesterday… Well, the High Church of the Holy Dick that is. And the thing is, Dick gave a really good talk.  

Strike that.  This was not a talk in the High Church of Dick.  This was Rich talking to us all after a terrible tragedy, and helping us realize some very important truths.  And I just felt like it needed to be here, to be read, whenever needed, whenever we may need a reminder…

 SPN Phoenix Sunday introduction by Rich

“Today we are going to do a Rules and Regulations, but today we are going to do a variance on it. This is not the Rules and Regulations we normally do. I’m going off script here. And I thought this was worth mentioning. Here’s the Rule. This is the only Rule. The Rule and Regulation that you learn here, that you take out of this room, is Acceptance, is Kindness, is Understanding. We are not different, you and I. You and Jared, you and Jensen. We just simply have a different job. And that is what this is all about. We all know there was a tragedy in Florida last night. And we would be remiss if we did not comment on it, and acknowledge it, and mourn with the nation about what is currently going on. I’m not going to comment on why. We don’t know the why. I’m not going to comment on the how, we don’t know that either. But what I do know is that those acts of violence are driven by a loss of sense of self. A loss of sense of acceptance, a loss of sense of kindness, and as a people it is our job to fix that, by paying it forward, by doing the right thing to each other, all the time, every day, every time. And I don’t care if you are a stranger or a family member. You have to do it the right way every time. So this is the Rule. You are going to take the acceptance that you find in the Supernatural Family, and you are going to push it out into other avenues of your life. You are going to be nicer than you think you should be. You are going to be kinder than you have to be. You are going to be better than anyone thinks you can be because we know you can. We know about you. And that’s how we are going to solve this problem. We can legislate until we’re blue in the face. But if we can’t fix humanity, you can’t make humans choose do the right thing. Let’s do it, starting here <in your heart> and we’ll push it out there. It may sound cheesy, but it’s the right answer.

So that’s what we’re going to do, and it starts with the Supernatural Family. And it goes to the internet, and it goes to the other pages we go to, and it goes to Pinterest and it goes to Instagram, and it goes to twitter; you are not going to be angry, you are not going to be bitching, you are not going to complain, everything you post on social media will be friendly. If you don’t have something nice to say – put the phone down.

We are going to be nice to each other. We are going to be kind, we are going to be supportive, and it doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, who you marry, who you love, what you job is, what your problems are or what your gifts are. We are all the same. And until we realize that, we will never, ever, ever fully be able to heal. And I say the Supernatural family is the exact institution that can start the healing process.

So that is the Rule. And that is the Regulation. And that is what we are going to do.

Thank you.”

Thanks Rich. We’ll try to keep the Rule in mind everyday

Used Steph J’s vid - spnphx Sunday Open periscope via @altsunthinkable​

I wish they'd get this message out there in every sport.