I've Said This Before And I'll Say It Again: It's More Important To Know And Understand Fully Why Something

This morning I purchased PlanB using the $10 off coupon which you can find here: http://planbonestep.com/coupon.aspx

Welcome to Tuebl

Tuebl.ca is my new most favoritest site. 

for people who don’t know, Tuebl.ca is essentially a FREE AND AUTHORIZED ONLINE LIBRARY WHERE YOU CAN DOWNLOAD FREE .EPUB VERSIONS OF POPULAR BOOKS.

When I say authorized, I mean popular authors PUT THEIR BOOKS UP THERE FOR FREE BECAUSE THEY KNOW EBOOKS WILL GET THEM NEW FANS WHO WILL THEN GO ON TO BUY THEIR  BOOKS.

I’m talking like John Grisham. Jacqueline Carey. Stephanie Meyers. Jeffrey Eugenides. FUCKING ANNA QUINDLEN. A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE.

that’s just the start. seriously. try it out.

damn, your comment about where did the carbon come from has got me wondering why the earth's crust is so... ordered, if you see what I mean. like, you don't have just tiny particles of elements that happened to react with each other, in a random mostly-homogeneous mix--you have large areas of the same type of rock, large veins of iron or whatnot, and so on. like going with like, to an extent.

too lumpy and solid to combine and homogenise? or it combined and then separated due to different densities and varying levels of heat? I have no idea where planets came from, I only live on one.

(I saw this and thought that it would help with the heat wave since a lot of people don’t have AC)

Heat Wave Peppermint Spray (AC in a Bottle)

10g peppermint essential oil 10g menthol essential oil Equal volume of solubilizer

200mL aloe vera juice

Weigh the essential oils out into an empty spray bottle, and top off with an equal amount of solubilizer. Swirl to combine. Add a small amount of aloe vera juice and shake gently to combine. Add the rest of the aloe vera, shake gently to combine.

To use, spritz on bare skin. If you cover your torso and your limbs, you will likely end up with goosebumps! I find this keeps me quite cool/cold for upwards of 20 minutes.

If you don’t want to use the solubilizer you can leave it out and just shake thoroughly before each use. That means the mixture will not emulsify at all and you’ll likely have troubles getting it to spritz evenly.

how to build a digital music collection and stuff

spotify sucks aaaass. so start downloading shit!!

file format glossary

.wav is highest quality and biggest

.mp3 is very small, but uses lossy compression which means it's lower quality

.flac is smaller than .wav, but uses lossless compression so it's high quality

.m4a is an audio file format that apple uses. that's all i really know

downloading the music

doubledouble.top is a life saver. you can download from a variety of services including but not limited to apple music, spotify, soundcloud, tidal, deezer, etc.

i'd recommend ripping your music from tidal or apple music since they're the best quality (i think apple music gives you lossless audio anyway. .m4a can be both lossy and lossless, but from the text on doubledouble i assume they're ripping HQ files off apple music)

i also love love love cobalt.tools for ripping audio/video from youtube (they support a lot of other platforms too!)

of course, many artists have their music on bandcamp — purchase or download directly from them if you can. bandcamp offers a variety of file formats for download

file conversion

if you're downloading from apple music with doubledouble, it spits out an .m4a file.

.m4a is ok for some people but if you prefer .flac, you may wanna convert it. ffmpeg is a CLI (terminal) tool to help with media conversion

if you're on linux or macOS, you can use parameter expansion to batch convert all files in a folder. put the files in one place first, then with your terminal, cd into the directory and run:

for i in *.m4a; do ffmpeg -i "$i" "${i%.*}.flac"; done

this converts from .m4a to .flac — change the file extensions if needed.

soulseek

another way to get music is through soulseek. soulseek is a peer-to-peer file sharing network which is mainly used for music. nicotine+ is a pretty intuitive (and open-source) client if you don't like the official one.

you can probably find a better tutorial on soulseek somewhere else. just wanted to make this option known

it's bad etiquette to download from people without sharing files of your own, so make sure you've got something shared. also try to avoid queuing up more than 1-2 albums from one person in a row

tagging & organizing your music

tagging: adding metadata to a music file (eg. song name, artist name, album) that music players can recognize and display

if you've ripped music from a streaming platform, chances are it's already tagged. i've gotten files with slightly incorrect tags from doubledouble though, so if you care about that then you might wanna look into it

i use musicbrainz picard for my tagging. they've got pretty extensive documentation, which will probably be more useful than me

basically, you can look up album data from an online database into the program, and then match each track with its file. the program will tag each file correctly for you (there's also options for renaming the file according to a certain structure if you're into that!)

there's also beets, which is a CLI tool for... a lot of music collection management stuff. i haven't really used it myself, but if you feel up to it then they've got extensive documentation too. for most people, though, it's not really a necessity

how you wanna organize your music is completely up to you. my preferred filestructure is:

artist > album > track # track

using a music player

the options for this are pretty expansive. commonly used players i see include VLC, foobar2000, clementine (or a fork of it called strawberry), and cmus (for the terminal)

you can also totally use iTunes or something. i don't know what audio players other systems come with

i personally use dopamine. it's a little bit slow, but it's got a nice UI and is themeable plus has last.fm support (!!!)

don't let the github page fool you, you don't have to build from source. you can find the releases here

click the "assets" dropdown on the most recent release, and download whichever one is compatible with your OS

syncing

if you're fine with your files just being on one device (perhaps your computer, but perhaps also an USB drive or an mp3 player), you don't have to do this

you can sync with something like google drive, but i hate google more than i hate spotify

you can get a free nextcloud account from one of their providers with 2GB of free storage. you can use webDAV to access your files from an app on your phone or other device (documents by readdle has webDAV support, which is what i use)

disroot and blahaj.land are a couple providers i know that offer other services as well as nextcloud (so you get more with your account), but accounts are manually approved. do give them a look though!!

if you're tech-savvy and have an unused machine lying around, look into self-hosting your own nextcloud, or better yet, your own media server. i've heard that navidrome is a pretty good audio server. i unfortunately don't have experience with self-hosting at the moment so i have like zero advice to give here. yunohost seems to be a really easy way to manage a server

afterword

i don't know if any of this is helpful, but i just wanted to consolidate my personal advice in one place. fuck big tech. own your media, they could take it away from you at any moment

'Forest gardens’ show how Native land stewardship can outdo nature

Patches of forest cleared and tended by Indigenous communities but lost to time still show more food bounty for humans and animals than surrounding forests.

Outcomes of scientific studies such as Marks-Block’s often affirm what Native people already know from tradition and experience, but that doesn’t mean the studies aren’t useful, Tripp says.

“We knew what the outcome was going to be,” he says. “But nobody listens if it isn’t written down like that.”

Being able to cite scientific literature may be especially important as Indigenous groups push for more rights, especially on “ceded territories” they still claim but no longer own. For example, Karuks want more burning rights on Forest Service land, while neighboring Yuroks are pushing to co-manage and conduct controlled burns in Redwood National Park.

Reasons to be Cheerful

Bison Are Bringing Back Biodiversity to Britain

In just a few years, the only free-roaming bison herd in the U.K. has already made a tangible difference in the surrounding ecosystem.

European bison released in England’s ancient woodland have doubled in number since 2022, and the woodland has gotten healthier since, reviving previously extinct beetle species and increasing sightings of dormice and reptiles. And England isn’t the only European nation getting bison back in business: In the 1920s, there were just 54 European bison after intense hunting over millennia, but thanks to re-wilding efforts there are now around 10,000, mostly in Russia and Belarus. RTBC

DoorDash workers are going on strike tomorrow (July 31st, 2021). They’re demanding tip transparency and a base pay of at least $4.25 per hour. Don’t cross the picket line.

Google Docs

Slow Fashion Brands - Compiled by Rebecca

Slow Fashion Brands BRANDS:,Website:,Price Range,Notes:,BST / used options:,Sizes up to:,Customizations? Linen basics in soft hues Not Perf

one of my “special interests” in the past couple of years has been exploring fast fashion vs. slow fashion. it has been a long journey trying to find clothes that actually 1) fit me 2) look good 3) are made from material that is not actively shoving plastic in the ecosystem 4) involve ethical labor, fair trade, fairly compensated, etc

before i did this research, i really had no clue about fabrics or fashion brands. i used to think i had zero interest in fashion, in fact.

i grew up wearing walmart and thrift store clothes, and when i went to college i bought clothes from target and asos. something started to shift a little bit when i found vintage resellers on etsy and ebay… those clothes were so unique. but a lot of the vintage clothes were polyester blends, stiff, and would fall apart as easily as my asos clothes. i would leave them hanging in my closet and never wear them. i would wear the same old t shirts and jeggings every day. i felt like it was impossible to ever wear comfortable clothes, or ever feel good in clothes, so why bother?

it started with linen. linen is very comfortable and pretty sustainable. i was amazed that i didn’t feel the urge to rip my clothes off when i wore linen. lightbulb number one.

a friend let me borrow a nooworks dress, and i went to the store and got some overalls. wow. overalls. lightbulb number two. holy shit, you can wear overalls. you know how people say “not binary or non-binary but a secret third thing.” that’s overalls.

i realized i loved the bonkers prints that nooworks had, and all of it was soft, and made ethically. it was a higher price point than i was used to, which gave me pause. but then you realize: we’re not supposed to be buying dumb clothes every other weekend. and isn’t a slightly higher price point for soft clothes that you won’t want to tear off your body worth it?

so i started my research. i made a spreadsheet. the prices can be all over the place across brands, so i made a column for prices. sizes can be all over the place too – people always ask me “where is the plus size slow fashion?” it’s there. just look at the size column. people say “isn’t it better to buy secondhand?” yeah, it is. i have many links to secondhand sources.

if you have any suggestions or additions please let me know, it is a living document.