Just A Bunch Of Useful Websites - Updated For 2023

Here's a legal PSA:

If you've committed a crime and a detective gathers everyone involved in the room, especially if he's not actually a detective and is instead a novelist, puzzle-setter, psychic, fake psychic, dog, chess grandmaster, etc. ...

YOU SHOULD NOT CONFESS.

Every year, hundreds of people are put away by non-traditional "detectives" who have either inserted themselves into the case or are working with the police in a dubiously legal capacity as advisor. In 99% of these cases, the murderer gives a full confession even though the evidence against them is circumstantial at best and often requires a long just-so story which can only guess at motive.

If this happens to you, stay quiet, do not attempt to defend yourself or talk your way out of it, only say "I want a lawyer".

Now if you find yourself being investigated by a boy genius, magician's assistant, anthropologist, classics scholar, or philosopher, it's likely that refusing to talk to the police (or investigator with no legal authority) is merely the end of the second act, and by the end of the third act they will have you dead to rights.

YOU SHOULD STILL NOT CONFESS.

Make them take it to court. Force the eccentric detective and his straight-laced police partner to take the stand and explain their methods to a jury of your peers. Have your lawyer look at the chain of custody on the evidence, especially if you believe it to have been handled by someone who has only bumbled into detective work through their natural charm and/or unique set of skills and outsider perspective that come in handy more often than they should.

Know your rights. Don't let eccentric detectives put you away.

Ok so my kid had an ear infection, right? As kids often do.

The doctor scraped out a bit of earwax to have a better look inside.

I was sent a bill for $200 PER EAR for this 5 second procedure which I did not give permission for them to do.

That was key- they did not ASK me if they could do this "procedure". And, as I OWN a medical practice (it's me. The medical practice is me, sitting in my house on video calls) I knew to call them when this bill came in to be like "You did not obtain informed consent for this procedure, and it was not en emergency procedure. You had full ability to gain my consent and didn't. I'm not paying."

And the massive hospital who owned the bill said "yuh-huh you do have to pay."

And I said "I own a practice. I know these laws. I do not owe you money for this."

And they conducted an "internal review" and SURPRISE! Decided I totally owed them money and they had never done anything wrong ever.

And so I called my state's Attorney General office, and explained the situation because, as I mentioned, I know the law. The AG got in touch within a couple days to say they were taking the case and would send the massive hospital conglomerate a knock it off, guys letter.

Lo and Behold, today I have a letter where said hospital graciously has agreed to forfeit the payment.

"How not to get screwed over by companies" should be part of civics class.

Know your rights and know who to call when they're infringed on. This whole process cost me $0 and honestly less effort than I would have expected.

May this knowledge find its way to someone else who can use it.

website

just an FYI for trans people in the US right now

[id: reddit post by user spaghettishoestrings titled "(UPDATE) Just lost my healthcare !" with the flair "Celebratory."

Post reads:

Original post is viewable through my profile. Apologies, since I’m on mobile, I couldn’t hyperlink. The TLDR: my doctor called me on Monday and informed me that their practice would no longer be providing treatment for gender affirming care as a result of a recent presidential Executive Order, even though the EO was for people under 19. Even though I’m 25.

Also, because it was asked a few times, this happened in Michigan, and I’ve been on HRT for 5+ years. It’s a practice that includes like 15+ physicians, and I think that the decision was made over my PCP’s head, given that she once told me that she literally moved states to be able to provide gender affirming care here.

First off, genuinely, thank you so much for all the replies and messages. I genuinely felt frozen after that phone call and didn’t know where to start, and you all really helped me get my feet off the ground.

A couple people mentioned contacting the ACLU, which, truthfully, I thought, “there’s no way that the ACLU will get back to me” but I sent a message anyway. They actually called me a few hours after my post and we talked about the Executive Orders and my rights. They offered to fax my provider a letter reminding them of my rights and some other legal terms. It’s crazy how a post on reddit resulted in my name being on the official ACLU letterhead.

Anyway, today my doctor’s physician assistant called me and shared that their practice is reversing their decision and they will continue to provide gender affirming care. I’m still keeping a bunch of the resources that y’all shared saved, including Planned Parenthood, Plume, and looking into a private endocrinologist.

This whole experience just reminded me how great this community is. I appreciate y’all <3"

[end id]

source

[id: reddit user copurrs commented:]

You should contact Chase Strangio from the ACLU, I believe he is looking for reports of folks being denied their GAC due to these EOs. He's @chasestrangio on IG and Threads.

[end id]

Reading rahaeli's bsky feed is an education in itself. I did not realize it was so common for undercover agents to join even harmless social activism groups and try to encourage people to do things they could be arrested for. The song has about a dozen verses, all of them based on incidents that resulted in felony charges o.O

The whole thread is very worth reading, especially since the incoming administration has been been very clear that they want to criminalize being trans or supporting trans rights. (Among other things.)

You CAN do pullups, my friend!

Don't feel embarrassed if you can't do pullups yet.

You can build up with easier variations!

After you hit the goals, you can move on to harder progressions.

1.) Wall Pullups - 3 Sets of 50 2.) Horizontal Pullups (Chest Height) - 3 Sets of 30 3.) Horizontal Pullups (Hip Height) - 3 Sets of 25 4.) Jackknife Pullups - 3 Sets of 20 5.) Full Pullups

Hey you know what sucks is predatory companies that make you enter your email address so that they can harass and advertise to you to access resources you might need to keep track of expenses after a disaster. So, uh, fuck them.

If you need to track the cost of things like hotel stays, pet kenneling, medical care, etc. after a disaster you can use this worksheet.

If you need to create an inventory of your home for an insurance claim (and if you'd like to do this to keep someplace safe before a disaster) you can use this worksheet (two pages, instructions on the first page, worksheet on the second).

And here's a FEMA document with numbers for disaster relief groups and a checklist of documents that you may need to have replaced as well as a description of what to do if you had cash in your home that was destroyed and can possibly be replaced.

it's quick it's easy and it's free: piracy

my roommates are very, very good programmers. some of the most technically competent people in the world. and yet both of them flail around helplessly when it comes to piracy. one of them couldn't pirate rimworld and the other needed help getting howl's moving castle. how? perhaps not all people are gifted with innate knowledge of Crime?? i dont understand it, but ive decided to write this helpful guide for them and everyone else with no cyberpunk in their souls*

Helpful reference but too much information for your first time: r/Piracy megathread

Download vs Torrent vs Stream

There are three main ways to pirate things:

Downloading**: this is when you go to a website and click a button and then your browser firefox gives you a little notification telling you it's downloading a file. Then you have the file on your puter and you open it or run it or whatever.

Torrenting: this is when you go to a website and download a torrent file. Then you open that file with another program called a torrent client and it downloads the real file for you.

Streaming: this is when you go to a website and you press play on a video/song and it plays you the thing right there in your browser firefox. no file ever gets downloaded to your machine

Or in flow chart form:

Downloading: firefox -> website that has Movie (2022) -> download button -> wait for it to download -> Movie (2022).mp4 is in your Downloads folder -> you play Movie (2022) with a video player VLC

Torrenting: firefox -> torrent website The Pirate Bay -> search for Movie (2022) -> download the torrent file -> open the torrent file with qbittorrent -> it downloads Movie (2022).mp4 -> Movie (2022).mp4 is in your Downloads folder -> you play Movie (2022) with VLC

Streaming: firefox -> streaming website swatchseries -> you find Movie (2022) -> click play -> Movie (2022) plays in your firefox window

Security Shit

Will I get in legal trouble (in the US or Canada) (I am not a lawyer this isn't legal advice etc etc):

Downloading: No

Streaming: No

Torrenting: No, see fine print. If you use a VPN Mullvad, then no, definitely not. If you don't then: there is a small chance the copyright holder will notice and send a letter to your internet provider. You will get a scary letter from your internet provider (ISP). If that happens a lot there is a chance your ISP will turn off your service (I don't know anyone who has actually had this happen). There is basically zero chance that the copyright holder will sue you: they don't know who you are. They need to get that information from your ISP, and ISPs don't give that information out very freely. They would also have to actually successfully sue you, and that mostly stopped. Overall the risk is that your ISP gets mad at you, not that you get sued and/or go to jail.****

Will I get hacked???

Streaming: No. If you don't have ad block it'll probably open a bunch of annoying popups tho. Get uBlock

Downloading/Torrenting Data (Video/Music/Books): These will generally be safe. Keep your player/reader software updated. Make sure the file has the right extension (mp4, mp3, pdf/epub/mobi, etc).

Downloading/Torrenting Executables (Games/Applications): Not safe. People can and do insert malware into the executable. It will still run, but it will do things in the background you don't want. The way to avoid this is by downloading only from places that are well-known and vetted by the community. I recommend fitgirl repacks. If for some reason fitgirl goes down, check the r/Piracy megathread

Don't ever give anything administrative permissions unless you're really super duper extra sure.

And of course, standard internet security advice applies. See the r/Piracy list of untrusted sites if you're curious about a particular site.

Books

Use libgen. Note that every once in a while libgen gets kicked out of a particular country and that link will break. In that case you should use your favorite search engine to search for libgen and find the new extension

Scientific Papers

Use scihub. Same thing as libgen applies.

Movies/TV

I generally recommend streaming rather than downloading. There's less risk and it's rare that you can't find what you want. Currently I use 123 chill (use uBlock). You can also use Video DownloadHelper to download a video file from a streaming site.

Music

uhhh tbh I get music with a script I wrote myself. Good luck lads, try reddit???

Games

Get torrents from fitgirl

thread.

*I'm deliberately picking one program/site for each step to minimize complexity. please dont do anything unbearably silly like list 8 different torrent clients or get into the minutiae of Firefox vs Firefox Developer Edition***.

**inb4 someone says "well actually torrenting is downloading too". you fool. you absolute buffoon.

*** if you so much as mention chrome I'll download your car.

**** if you are torrenting a lot then maybe your ISP sells you out. if youre going to torrent idk every video game ever then get mullvad

one of my friends found radiooooo which is a site that streams music from any country from any decade (well, most countries/decade combos work) and we’ve been digging going on a quest to find what is rad

so far the following is good

50s/60s/70s/80s russia

70s cambodia

20s japan

80s ethiopia

80s india