If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

Yup, these are actually *really* important. And a small bit of work helps, so it’s doable even if you’re snowed under with survival work or in too much pain to concentrate for longer periods.

It’s multiply-checked by more than one person, so don’t worry about fucking it up because your concentration is fucked. Your input is valuable but not the only input.

I find Zooniverse very good, and it does Citizen Historian work too - I spent time digitising concentration camp records because a) families still don’t know what happened to some of their loved ones b) this makes the records available for historians without travelling to archives in person, which I can testify is *invaluable* for disabled historians and helps cut the need for overseas travel to do vital historical work.

It unexpectedly helped me with learning how to decipher premodern handwriting too, which proved really useful in my academic stuff. You *will* pick up valuable skills doing this. Put it on your CV.

Other places you can go to do citizen science, from the notes

(Thanks to everyone who left these in the notes! If you know more, put them in the notes, and I might add them! And ty @enbycrip for the fantastic addition that covered a bunch of details I didn't get to)

Apps/Websites

In person

Also:

Even if you don't have time to spend, but do have some processor cycles to spare, check out the projects available at BOINC's Compute for Science: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

Hey guys, these projects make a HUGE difference for science. For example, I run bplant.org and iNaturalist is the #1 source of images in ID guides and articles and other educational materials I develop. The plant observations are also helpful for assessing plant ranges and how these ranges are changing with climate change. And it also helps me identify local seed sources for use in restoration plantings. Use of iNaturalist, even casual use like a random person uploading pics of plants they see growing in their yard, or a random parking lot they were in, or a random vacant lot, those observations are MAJORLY helping in (1) education (2) science (3) conservation.

This stuff makes a huge difference.

Also, if you want to make the biggest impact on these sites, release any material with the more permissive licenses, like CC-BY. If you add a NC or ND clause, for instance, your photos cannot be included on Wikipedia or bplant or a number of other educational sites, because those license restrictions are incompatible with combining with copyleft material.

But yeah, go do citizen science, please!!!

I thought I'd go back and repost this because there are probably a lot of people out there who, like me, reallllyyyyyy need something to distract them right now

So, hey. You. Stop doomscrolling. Take a deep breathe. And if you want, try doing some citizen science or citizen history instead

I'm also going to especially promote MapSwipe, for those who want to do something tangible to help people now.

From their website:

Data Everywhere

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

If you’re looking for something to do for an hour or two, here is a Supernatural Episode Sorter with all 327 episodes!!! Feel free to reblog with your top 10!

Stuck at home? Here’s an isolation survival post:

(Everything here is free to use! Feel free to add on. Links were purposefully broken to avoid Tumblr’s spam prevention.)

Social:

Reading:

Movies:

Hobbies:

Dungeons and Dragons: (play over Discord!) (DM me if you want PDFs of the Handbooks)

Video Games:

Phone Apps:

Cooking:

Other tips:

24 Invaluable Skills To Learn For Free Online This Year

Here’s an easy resolution: This stuff is all free as long as you have access to a computer, and the skills you learn will be invaluable in your career, and/or life in general. 

1. Become awesome at Excel.

Chandoo is one of many gracious Excel experts who wants to share their knowledge with the world. Excel excellence is one of those skills that will improve your chances of getting a good job instantly, and it will continue to prove invaluable over the course of your career. What are you waiting for?

2. Learn how to code.

littleanimalgifs.tumblr.com

Perhaps no other skill you can learn for free online has as much potential to lead to a lucrative career. Want to build a site for your startup? Want to build the next big app? Want to get hired at a place like BuzzFeed? You should learn to code. There are a lot of places that offer free or cheap online coding tutorials, but I recommend Code Academy for their breadth and innovative program. If you want to try a more traditional route, Harvard offers its excellent Introduction to Computer Science course online for free.

3. Make a dynamic website.

You could use a pre-existing template or blogging service, or you could learn Ruby on Rails and probably change your life forever. Here’s an extremely helpful long list of free Ruby learning tools that includes everything from Rails for Zombies to Learn Ruby The Hard Way. Go! Ruby! Some basic programming experience, like one of the courses above, might be helpful (but not necessarily required if you’re patient with yourself).

4. Learn to make a mobile game.

If you’re not interested in coding anything other than fun game apps, you could trythis course from the University of Reading. It promises to teach you how to build a game in Java, even if you don’t have programming experience! If you want to make a truly great game, you might want to read/listen up on Game Theory first.

5. Start reading faster.

Spreeder is a free online program that will improve your reading skill and comprehension no matter how old you are. With enough practice, you could learn to double, triple, or even quadruple the speed at which you read passages currently, which is basically like adding years to your life.

6. Learn a language!

With Duolingo, you can learn Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, or English (from any of the above or more). There’s a mobile app and a website, and the extensive courses are completely free.

Full disclosure: BuzzFeed and other websites are in a partnership with DuoLingo, but they did not pay or ask for this placement.

7. Pickle your own vegetables.

Tired of your farmer’s market haul going bad before you use it all? Or do you just love tangy pickled veggies? You too can pickle like a pro thanks to SkillShare and Travis Grillo.

8. Improve your public speaking skills.

You can take the University of Washington’s Intro to Public Speaking for free online. Once you learn a few tricks of the trade, you’ll be able to go into situations like being asked to present at a company meeting or giving a presentation in class without nearly as much fear and loathing.

9. Get a basic handle of statistics.

UC Berkeley put a stats intro class on iTunes. Once you know how to understand the numbers yourself, you’ll never read a biased “news” article the same way again — 100% of authors of this post agree!

10. Understand basic psychology.

Knowing the basics of psych will bring context to your understanding of yourself, the dynamics of your family and friendships, what’s really going on with your coworkers, and the woes and wonders of society in general. Yale University has its Intro to Psychology lectures online for free.

11. Make your own music.

Step one: Learn how to play guitar: Justin Guitar is a fine and free place to start learning chords and the basic skills you’ll need to be able to play guitar — from there, it’s up to you, but once you know the basics, just looking up tabs for your favorite songs and learning them on your own is how many young guitar players get their start (plus it’s an excellent party trick).

Step two: A delightful free voice lesson from Berklee College Of Music.

Step three: Have you always thought you had an inner TSwift? Berklee College of Music offers an Introduction to Songwriting course completely for free online. The course is six weeks long, and by the end of the lesson you’ll have at least one completed song.

Step four: Lifehacker’s basics of music production will help you put it all together once you have the skills down! You’ll be recording your own music, ready to share with your valentine or the entire world, in no time!

12. Learn to negotiate.

Let Stanford’s Stan Christensen explain how to negotiate in business and your personal life, managing relationships for your personal gain and not letting yourself be steamrolled. There are a lot of football metaphors and it’s great.

13. Stop hating math.

If you struggled with math throughout school and now have trouble applying it in real-world situations when it crops up, try Saylor.org’s Real World Math course. It will reteach you basic math skills as they apply IRL. Very helpful!

14. Start drawing!

All kids draw — so why do we become so afraid of it as adults? Everyone should feel comfortable with a sketchbook and pencil, and sketching is a wonderful way to express your creativity. DrawSpace is a great place to start. (I also highly recommend the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain if you can drop a few dollars for a used copy.)

15. Make your own animated GIF.

BuzzFeed’s own Katie Notopoulos has a great, simple guide to making an animated GIF without Photoshop. This is all you need to be the king or queen of Tumblr or your favorite email chains.

16. Appreciate jazz.

reddit.com

Have you never really “gotten” jazz? If you want to be able to participate in conversations at fancy parties and/or just add some context to your appreciation of all music, try this free online course from UT Austin.

17. Write well.

Macalester College’s lecture series is excellent. If you’re more interested in journalism, try Wikiversity’s course selection.

18. Get better at using Photoshop.

Another invaluable skill that will get you places in your career, learning Photoshop can be as fun as watching the hilarious videos on You Suck At Photoshop or as serious as this extensive Udemy training course (focused on photo retouching).

19. Take decent pictures.

Lifehacker’s basics of photography might be a good place to start. Learn how your camera works, the basic of composition, and editing images in post-production. If you finish that and you’re not sure what to do next, here’s a short course on displaying and sharing your digital photographs.

20. Learn to knit.

Instructables has a great course by a woman who is herself an online-taught knitter. You’ll be making baby hats and cute scarves before this winter’s over!

21. Get started with investing in stocks.

If you are lucky enough to have a regular income, you should start learning about savings and investment now. Investopedia has a ton of online resources, including this free stocks basics course. Invest away!

22. Clean your house in a short amount of time.

Unf$#k Your Habitat has a great emergency cleaning guide for when your mother-in-law springs a surprise visit on you. While you’re over there, the entire blog is good for getting organized and clean in the long term, not just in “emergencies.” You’ll be happier for it.

23. Start practicing yoga.

Most cities have free community classes (try just searching Google or inquiring at your local yoga studio), or if you’re more comfortable trying yoga at home, YogaGlohas a great 15-day trial and Yome is a compendium of 100% free yoga videos. If you’re already familiar with basic yoga positions but you need an easy way to practice at home, I recommend YogaTailor’s free trial as well.

24. Tie your shoelaces more efficiently.

It’s simple and just imagine the minutes of your life you’ll save!

A directory of social media handles so people can find you on other sites. Once you fill out the form (none of the questions are required so in theory you can just hit “submit” without answering anything, but you can also just View Here) you will be able to access, but not edit, a spreadsheet of everyone’s handles across their social media. 

As the disclaimer banner says, EVERYTHING you enter into this form is made public so you know, be careful. If you don’t want two of your handles linked…don’t put ‘em both in there. 

I can’t think of a genuine reason this would be a bad idea but it’s a lot of data about people and their personal names that’s easily scrapeable so you know, if you can argue that this is a really bad idea for X reason, I’m willing to listen and delete as necessary. 

if you are a destiel fandom content creator and are comfortable filling out an spreadsheet’s worth of (entirely optional) info, click here.

why the spreadsheet? well, I saw a mutual complain about losing their fanbase, and tbh I have similar worries - it took me a while to get to the number of followers I have! and I don’t want to lose that!

so if you create content for the destiel fandom*, then you’re welcome to fill this form with as many details as you’re comfortable sharing. remember, only share stuff you’re comfortable having known to people. if you want to specify that something is available upon request, put AOR in that field

the form has space for every social media that I could think of (+ a field for any I might have missed) and it basically exists so the fandom doesn’t lose track of content creators, and so that content creators get a head start on new platforms without having to rebuild their fanbase from mutuals and scratch.

entirely optional, but public access, so please be careful!

note: you can add your friends/mutuals if they’re okay with it. please make sure that they are.

it looks like tumblr is going the way of the wolves. creators are already beginning to drop left and right. we can’t lose each other. please SIGNAL BOOST this and get this out into the fandom before it is too late.

*what counts as content? original posts. headcanons, meta, round robins, fics, art, rec lists, edits, playlists. if you’re a moderator (or have ever been a moderator) please add that too—moderating is valuable!

lastly, please consider reblogging this post for maximum visibility: the link means it’s not going to show up in search results

8-foot giant squid pillow.

You’ll need:

First, you need to draw out your patterns. Here’s a basic template to get you started, although most of the measurements are reasonably fudgeable. If in the likely event you don’t have any four-foot-long pieces of paper lying around, just tape a few pieces together.

Once you’ve drawn out your eight patterns, it’s time to cut the fabric. Pin the pattern to the fabric, laid flat, and cut out the following, leaving a half an inch or so of extra fabric around the edge of the pattern:

FOR THE ARMS: 8 felt and 8 fabric cutouts of piece 1

FOR THE, UH, LONGER ARMS: 2 felt and 2 fabric cutouts of piece 2

FOR THE BODY: 2 felt cutouts of piece 3

FOR THE FIN: 4 felt cutouts of piece 4

FOR THE HEAD: 1 felt cutouts of piece 6

FOR THE EYES: 2 white felt cutouts of piece 7 and 2 black felt cutouts of piece 8

So now you’ve got all your pieces ready, it’s time to start sewing them together. I did mine by hand because my sewing machine is busted and I get a kind of Zen buzz from sewing by hand, but if you have a non-busted one I recommend that you use it as it will be MUCH EASIER. You’re going to be sewing everything with the nice side of the fabric facing in, then turning it inside out to stuff it.

THE ARMS: (To make a quilted pattern that looks like suckers, see this other post). Pin together one patterned fabric piece 1 and one felt piece 1 (with the nice sides facing the inside). Sew down around the U-shape and back up, leaving the top open. Then turn the arm inside out, stuff it (it’s easiest to do both of these things if you sort of scrunch it up like you’re trying to put on a pair of tights, excuse the non-dude-friendly reference) and sew the top closed. Do the same for the other seven arms and rejoice in the fact that this is the most tedious part. Same deal with the two long arms, they’re just harder to stuff.

THE FINS: Pin together two of your piece 4s and sew together the curvy outer edge. Turn the piece inside out, so the seam you just sewed is on the inside, and start sewing up the other side, stuffing gradually as you go along. You should end up with a triangle-ish puffy thing. Repeat for the other two piece 4s.

THE BODY: Put down one piece 3, then place the two fins you have down with the point up and the curvy side pointing in, then make a sandwich by putting the other piece 3 down on top. Pin it all together and sew around the edges with the two fins still inside, as shown. Turn it inside out and move on to…

THE HEAD: So take piece 6 and the ten arms you’ve already done. Lay the arms, fabric side facing you, out with the arms’ top seams in a line half an inch from the top of piece 6. The order should be arm arm arm arm BIG ARM arm arm arm arm BIG ARM. The legs should be almost entirely covering piece 6. Pin them in place and sew a straight line through the individual legs seams to attach the legs to piece 6.

When you pick up the other side of piece 6, you now have something resembling a really weird untied hula skirt. Sew together the two 9-inch ends of piece 6 with the fabric side of the arms on the outside, and keep it inside out for the moment.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: Fit the open end of the body through the arms (still fabric side facing out) and pull the edge all the way through the felt cylinder so it’s even with the edge that DOESN’T have arms attached to it. Sew around the diameters of the head cylinder and the body cylinder to attach them, then pull the legs down over the head and you’re almost done!

Stuff the body, then seal it off by sewing piece 5 over the open end (even if you do have a functional sewing machine, you’ll probably have to do this part by hand).

THE EYES: Sew the black circles on the white circles and whipstitch the eyes onto the head. You do this last because you can’t tell where they’re going to end up on the end product if you put them on before stuffing the body.

Wayward Sisters has a passionate fandom and a dedicated creative team ready.  It’s time.

Okay, I did not do literal witchcraft in a goddamn Starbucks to be rewarded with the news that the CW passed on Wayward.  Oh no, I did not.  Plus, the Winchesters never met an impossible fight they couldn’t handle.  

Screw the stakes, let’s show Team Wayward some support.

Here is a number you can call to let the CW know you want them to reconsider: (818) 977-2500

And here is a nice feedback form you can use to give them feedback on their choices: [click here]

Mark Pedowitz has an e-mail address, and it’s [email protected].

And hey, here’s a change.org petition: [click here]

IMPORTANT ADVICE:

Look at that auto reply form letter, don’t you want one of your very own?

The perfect gift for your animal-mad partner/friend/relative

We’ve all heard of “Adopt a Tiger” or “Adopt a Panda” campaigns. Whilst these are worthy causes, why not share some love for some less appreciated animals?

Adopt a Lobster

Look at these adorable lobsters. You can name a lobster for only £3.00GBP, which gets you a certificate and you can find out when your lobster has been released into the wild off the coast of Cornwall, UK. There’s plenty of other options too, which come with stuffed plush lobsters, chocolate lobsters, anything lobster-related you could want!

Money goes towards the National Lobster Hatchery, which raises lobsters and releases them into the wild as part of a sustainable scheme which works alongside local fishermen to increase wild lobster populations. This scheme has been so successful it’s being introduced to other parts of the UK, too!  

Name a Roach

Lobsters not for you? How about naming a roach, for only $15USD. Plus there’s a bunch of really cute cockroach-related goodies up for grabs, too.  Money raised goes towards the Wildlife Conservation Society!

Adopt a Kākāpō

Okay, so maybe you don’t like invertebrates. That’s okay, there’s plenty of lesser known vertebrates looking for help, too.

You can adopt a kākāpō and help protect the remaining 151 in the wild. 151, that’s crazy! That’s only 1 generation of pokémon’s worth of kākāpō left in the wild.

This adoption scheme is a little more pricy, with $100 NZD for the lowest tier, but it gets you an adoption certificate, a plush kakapo and some other goodies! Who wouldn’t want to adopt a kākāpō named “Bluster Murphy”?

Plush American Oystercatcher!

Not strictly an adoption scheme, 20% of the sale price ($49 USD) of each of these adorable Plush American Oystercatchers goes to real Oystercatchers through a donation to the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey. I just couldn’t resist adding this.

Thank you for reading! If anyone has any more unusual animal adoption suggestions, feel free to add onto this post!

Adopt a hedgehog

UK: there are several places where you can adopt a wild European hedgehog and support hedgehog rescues. Hedgehogs are declining rapidly in the UK so they need all the love they can get! Most adoption places will offer adopt certificates, cuddly toys and information sheets. These are some sites that offer adoption packages: wildlifeaid.org.uk royalparks.org.uk wildlifetrusts.org

Adopt a pangolin

Pangolins are the world’s most trafficked mammal. They are being trafficked for their scales and meat. They need our help! Look at that cute scaly friend, who wouldn’t want to adopt one?

Here you can adopt a pangolin for a year with a monthly adoption fee. WWF pangolin adoption.

Adopt a heroRAT

Helping people by adopting an animal? Adopt a heroRAT! These Gambian pouched rats sniff out landmines and tuberculosis and help make the world a safer place.

You can adopt a heroRAT here.

hobbies masterpost!

a really excellent way to reduce anxiety is to pick up a new hobby. find something you’re interested in, learn it, then use it as a healthy and productive way to cope.

1. Teach yourself a useful skill like HTML, JAVA, or Python

2. Teach yourself how to cook

3. Change your Facebook settings to learn a new language

4. Or read magazines online in another language

5. Explore Wikipedia Simple English

You can learn about complicated things in plain, jargon-free, regular, human English.

6. Wikiversity too

7. Go to a lecture without having to physically move

8. Watch documentaries and TED talks on Netflix

9. If you’re a college student, look into discounts and free admissions deals that your school offers for museums/shows

10. Download an app that will restrict you from websites that you spend too much time on

11. Find books that you’ll actually want to read

12. Or catch up on the latest and greatest articles that are available on the web

13. If you just can’t keep your brain focused for an extended period of time, catch up on some short stories

14. Attempt to learn to do something artistic like draw or play the guitar

15. Listen to podcasts while you commute, cook or wait in line

happy learning! x

god thank you

Just a few days...

Until the Supernatural Season 10 finale!!!

It’s all very exciting but what are we going to do to recover afterwards?

Watch Supernatural of course! From the very beginning and all the way through to season 11! And for that the spnhellatusrewatch is here for you.

Startig next week we’ll be watching the whole series over hellatus! It’ll be a great way to revisit the series or discover it for the first time! This blog will be posting all sorts of stuff related to the episodes of the week, as well as reblogging your thoughts as we work through! Just follow and/or tag your posts #spn hellatus rewatch to participate!

Let’s do this!

We’ll start on Monday May 25 with these great episodes: