edge emulation (missing some consoles; CD-based games come in compressed formats such as CHD; very fast DL speed)

myrient (pretty much everything, no strings attached; fast DL speed)

cdromance (mostly has games for CD-based consoles; games come in uncompressed iso or bin/cue; has a lot of pre-patched rom hacks; medium-fast DL speed)

planetemu (largely in french; has a lot of obscure titles other sites lack; very fast DL speed)

alvro collection spreadsheet (pretty much everything, including many newer consoles; slightly inconvenient to navigate; download site has timer and limits to 1 download every 30 mins, can be worked around with vpn; inconsistent medium-to-very-fast DL speed)

script that lets you download from emuparadise post-shutdown (pretty much everything; inconsistent medium-to-very-fast DL speed; can occasionally be uncooperative)

ROMs Megathread/Archive (everything, really; slow DL speed; usually a last resort if you can't find something anywhere else)

i don't currently recommend Vimm's Lair due to very slow speeds, download limits, and offering nothing that isn't on other sites (unless you need prepatched xiso format Xbox roms)

HShop (all 3DS. very complete, easy to navigate. has qr codes for direct download from 3ds; yes, the qr codes are safe; fast dl speed)

MarioCube (focused on GameCube/Wii and has everything you'll ever need for those platforms; requires joining a google group for standard roms but it takes like 2 clicks; very fast dl speed)

NoPayStation (practically every PS3/PSP/Vita game and update, downloaded directly from sony's servers; fast dl speed)

sites offering switch and other modern games get shut down very frequently so i won't be linking them in order to keep this post from getting outdated, but you can find them if you snoop around reddit (the switchpirates sub in particular) a little

Cylum's Romsets (my personal favorite - not fully complete sets but heavily curated, so no going through a million revisions of the same game)

for 1fichier directories, you can use a tool like 1fichier-dl to download in bulk. i'd recommend doing this on the alvro collections if you want more complete sets.

softmodding and loading roms on some popular consoles:

Switch

Wii

3DS, Vita, Wii U

PS2

PSP

recommended emulators and emulation guides:

Emulation General Wiki

wanna play with your friends online?

fightcade covers nes, genesis, pc engine, dreamcast, and snes along with a variety of arcade boards from capcom, snk, sega, and konami. playstation is incoming. all platforms on it have rollback netcode.

mednafen covers psx, saturn, pc engine cd and sega cd, and i find its snes performance better personally. delay-based netcode with server structure. here's a pre-packed version with a gui included and here's a netplay guide i largely wrote myself.

other than that, dolphin is naturally used for gamecube/wii, and project64 with the AQZ netplay plugin is used for N64.

games are great. go play some games.

[edited 3/25/23]

RePosting this as we enter Pride Month(s)

Pride is something I struggle with to some degree even having come out of the closet. There are days when it’s quite clear that unless I “present” as Trans NonBinary I will not be seen as such. Some days nobody could stop me from “presenting,” other days it’s an honest chore, and there have been long stretches where I’m too busy disentangling myself from my own dysphoria to grasp what’s going on at all. So accept this friendly reminder:

You deserve to feel proud, year round, no matter what.

If you’re not ready to march - that’s fine.

If you haven’t come out - that’s fine.

If you’re too broke to go to events - that’s fine.

If you’re just not feeling it - that’s fine too.

Regardless of the feelings that can complicate things, I’m happy you’re here. I take pride in simply knowing people like you. That’s enough. You’re enough! <3

I was looking at sex toys on aliexpress (like you do) and it suggested I get a 45cm (17″) Black Tourmaline Hexagonal Obelisk. I don’t think that’s a good idea

FINALLY, WE CAN TENTACLIZE THE CLOUDS THEMSELVES! 

and now I found the “realistic torture/execution devices for dolls” section. 

aliexpress is seriously the best place to look at sex toys because they can’t show nudity so they have to finding other ways to show off the use of the toys.

This results in a LOT of abused food, which is always hilarious. 

that’s not what I was searching for and frankly at this point I can’t really remember what I was searching for 

oh baby, slide into my chrysanthemum for some novel gameplay!

one of my favorite things is when they decide to give you the whole hard sell.

instead of just being like “hey this is a good sex toy”, they instead try to explain why you’d even need a sex toy, from first principles. and that principle is usually “your boyfriend/husband sucks”. or doesn’t, I guess. 

they always end up looking like a r/wheredidthesodago commercial for lesbianism

so the sound of this sex toy is between a flower and a clock! 

wait, a flower? do… do flowers make sounds? 

I’ve posted about the Hammer Sex Toy before, but it turns out it’s not alone. There’s also… 

THE WRENCH! 

now that is a fucking slogan

one of my favorite things is that when they’re showing off that sex toys have a bluetooth+internet thing so people can control them remotely, they always show a world map and two points labeled with city names and they’re ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE NEAR THE ACTUAL CITIES. 

sex toy or vulcan starship? 

OH MEHR SPIELMÖGLICHKEITEN! 

this will give you the biggest orgasm of your life, but your mother will die. Oh well, there’s other parents.

In the quiet night all you can hear is your rapid breathing

found another tool! it’s scissors this time.

I’m not sure anyone of any gender really wants scissors near their genitals, so this may not be the best design

sometimes all I can say is “what”

is this vaporwave?

I don’t think that’s how that works

your strawberries will never be safe

finally, the first robot that can eat a flan! 

another fun trope in aliexpress sex toys: just listing off all the rooms of your house you could use it in! 

(Unlike all those terrible dildos that don’t work in the living room or kitchen)

The most electrifying move in wrestling

How do I explain to you people that interracial relationships are okay

Not every white person dating a POC is fetishizing. White people can be respectful and responsible when it comes to culture and relationships and not everyone has bad intentions.

Asian people can date Black people without you saying shit like “your kids will be so pretty” they’re not dating for pretty kids. They’re dating bc they like each other.

Someone can dress their partner in clothing from their culture if they want. Someone can take their partner to cultural events if they want.

People in relationships can share cultures, experiences and love without it being toxic or skin deep.

Their partner isn’t culturally appropriating. Their partner is being shown the ultimate form of love, bc their partner trusts them and loves them enough to share their history and heritage.

Yeah, dating someone from your culture is nice bc you automatically have similar experiences. But you’re not limited to dating people with the same experiences. Loving someone is sharing and growing and being together.

Interracial relationships aren’t always toxic, and some of y’all need to stop projecting onto other people.

👆 THIS 👆 👏👏👏

Calling ineterracial relationships toxic or fetishizing just seem like anti race mixing or racism with extra steps

This reminded me of this

forget fast fashion in 2023 the only viral trend i wanna see is workers unionizing

i love when cigarettes still exist in far future science fiction. fuck yeah smoke that cancer stick in space this rules

My favorites are the cigarettes in the Fifth Element.

The filter is 70% of the cigarette. You are only allowed to have 4 of them a day. And they come to you in a dispenser that shouts "to quit is my goal!" every time you get one out

Okay so I found the most incredible horse statue while doing research for my job and guys. Are you ready for this. Are you sure you're fucking ready for this thing

*sees 2 notes* FUCK yes let's fucking GOOOO

Behemoth

These are definitely related

Imagine getting your ass stuck in this and firefighters having to come in to pry you out with the jaws of life

The fact that there's an actually functional website for the library of Babel is one of those things that fucks me up more and more the more I think about the implications.

So, if anyone hasn’t encountered the concept of the library of Babel, the idea comes from a story of the same name by Jorge Luis Borges, which is set inside a seemingly infinite library which contains every possible combination of letters, periods, commas and spaces that fits within 410 pages.

So like... It isn’t THAT out there that someone was able to make a digital version of it. Making an algorithm that randomly generates every possible combination of those 29 characters within that space and making a website that lets you explore those combinations are things that are pretty squarely within the scope of things you’d expect someone to be able to make a computer do.

But it begins to get pretty out there when you start thinking about all the things that are technically contained there (and that someone randomly browsing it could THEORETICALLY stumble upon) just by virtue of being one of those possible combinations of letters, spaces, commas, and periods.

Somewhere in that website there IS a book that specifically mentions me by full name before giving an accurate, excruciatingly detailed, 410-page long physical description of me. There’ also many more books that SEEM to be that but are actually factually inaccurate. There’s also versions of all of those containing every possible combination of every possible typo, spelling mistake, and grammatical error.

Somewhere in that website there IS a book that’s a perfectly accurate prediction of how and when I will die narrated in third person over the course of 410 pages. There’s also a book that contains the exact same events narrated in first person. Not only for me, but for every person in the world. There are many more that claim to be that but are actually inaccurate.

Somewhere in that website there IS a book that’s completely blank except for the world’s funniest dick joke written right at the end of the very last page.

But chances are no one browsing that website is EVER going to see any of that because for every book we would consider useful, interesting, or even intelligible there are millions upon millions upon millions more that are just completely full of gibberish from cover to cover.

Every single thing I will ever write (barring punctuation marks that arent periods or commas and the letter ñ) is already contained somewhere on that website.

I have a volume from the Library of Babel! it's one of my most treasured books.

on the second to last page, about halfway down it reads "OH TIME THY PYRAMIDS" a singular grain of order in the sea of chaos.

The library of babel contains every book to ever exist and moreover it contains all information that can be encoded in a finite string of characters from its alphabet.

I cannot overstate how much I love the Library of Babel. it's wonderful, it is my heart and soul.

at last we created the perplexing nexus, from the novel "wouldnt it be weird if there was a perplexing nexus?"

Gao Hang In your face, 2020

this is 40 x 30 in acrylic on canvas btw

yeah i keep that thang on me 😤

The swarm has arrived

(via)

PSA: Just a friendly reminder that whenever you start a creative project, you will invariably hit a phase where the Thing™️ appears horrendous and you start asking existential questions. But if you keep working, it invariably passes and starts to resemble something less like the devil’s vomit. Doesn’t matter if it’s art, writing, or what–this happens repeatedly. Carry on.

Some wise person on here once phrased this as “holding a bowl full of flour and saying the cake tastes bad”

I liked this post, scrolled for like another minute before I went “SHIT FUCK SHIT” and scrolled back to reblog it

I always reblog this one when I see it on my dash. When someone posts their own art, writing, or music here they are really hoping you will share it.

I sent a letter today - something I haven’t done for years

It’s full of plastic bread clips

It’s for Science

At the risk of loosing some mystery, I think I should add some context:

There’s this website-I mean, scientific organization called the Holotypic Occlupanid Reasurch Group.

They are a group of abiologists who study and classify Bread clips.

I found a species that has not yet been described:

Yay for citizen science 👍

wtf?

Apparently HORG is widely appreciated by pediatricians since knowing exactly what kind of Occlupanid a child may have swallowed makes removing it safely much easier

IIRC this is actually part of the reason HORG was started. A man swallowed a breadclip and the clip closed around part of his tissue linings (in his intestines I think?). The specific shape and flexibility of the clip were significant determining factors in the removal process, as some bread clips have spikes and prongs that would have made extraction more complicated. They started the taxonomy so they could work out extraction techniques for each type.

are you fucking kidding me occlu like oculus or close and panid like bread. its a fancy word for breadcloser

happy very specific archive thursday, everyone

Evil biology facts that fill me with Fear :)

hey, I heard y’all like evil biology facts like knowledge about horse blood types.

well! today I was researching alternative biochemistries extraterrestrial life could use and. man. I think Earth life is fucked up enough for me thanks

To clarify

Evil (affectionate and admiring)

They took the unkillable bacterium and put a Disney song inside of it.

“In 2003, U.S. scientists demonstrated D. radiodurans could be used as a means of information storage that might survive a nuclear catastrophe. They translated the song "It's a Small World" into a series of DNA segments 150 base pairs long, inserted these into the bacteria, and were able to retrieve them without errors 100 bacterial generations later.”

*opens worldbuilding notebook* *takes further notes*

As someone who's entire history in biological research was about studying bacterial nanowires, seeing them on a list like this punched me in the face. They seem pretty normal to me and that worm is fucked up.

“we’ve finally created The Torment Nexus from classic novel “Dont Create The Torment Nexus”!

Yeah that's the guy who's credited with the invention of the modern shopping mall, ironically he originally intended for them to be a sort of walkable mixed-use community in one building, but that got corrupted and turned into the malls we all know and love. He remained vocally against the hyper-capitalist implementation of his idea until the time of his death. Occasionally nowadays you will see these sorts of shopping malls turned into the sort of development that Gruen originally intended as they become unprofitable and seen as outdated, so there's hope yet!

Literally I never even thought of malls this way and I'm disheartened to learn that this could have been how they were used, but they were instead twisted to capitalistic ends