It's often pointed out that many of the devices in 19th- and 20th-century science fiction are now a reality. We have instant telecommunication devices; we have digital newspapers; we have flying machines; we have automatons that build things for us; we have self-driving quadricycles; we have superfood that survives wild climatic variation and is stuffed with nutrients. We even have ways of obliquely planting ideas directly in people's minds, through propaganda in the press and psychological manipulations in advertising.

If we have all these things, why doesn't the world feel like what we imagine science fiction worlds to feel like? There are many reasons for this, but I'm just going to focus on one aspect here: naming.

Quickly create, copy, and paste unique Unicode text calendars that work everywhere online.

This map generator creates volcanic island style maps.

This application generates a random medieval city layout of a requested size. The generation method is rather arbitrary, the goal is to produce a nice looking map, not an accurate model of a city.

Create a globe using your own images or generate one from scratch!

Superpowers creation guide. Helpful tips, information, and ideas on creating superpowers for your heroes.

While I was constructing a magic system based on necromancy, it occurred to me (in hindsight) that there are three things a writer should know before attempting this at home:

Expand what you already have before you add something new.

If I were to ask you about Superman’s magic, you’d probably talk about his ability to fly, his super strength, the lasers he can shoot from his eyes. You may go from there to his invincibility and perhaps some of his lesser (and more inconsistent) powers. But if we stick with those four, we’ve got a pretty strong setup for what Superman is capable of doing.

However, is this what makes Superman interesting?

I’d put forth that it is not. There are lots of people with magic powers who can fly and who are invincible. There are a lot of strong, fast, or smart people. What makes Superman interesting, then? Two things: his code of ethics and his weakness to kryptonite.

Sanderson’s First Law of Magics: An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.

Since the WordPress archives are far from the easiest thing to navigate and it can be difficult to find what you are looking for even though it is, I am putting together a couple of ‘index’ posts linking to things I’ve written on this site on a given topic.

Future timeline, a timeline of future events, based on current trends, long-term environmental changes, advances in technology such as Moore's Law, the latest medical advances, and the evolving geopolitical landscape.

The following list of questions is meant to aid authors of fantasy fiction who are seeking to create believable imaginary settings for their stories. While many of these questions may be helpful or crucial to certain stories, they will not all apply to every story. It is not necessary for an author to answer all, or even any, of the questions in order to start writing, (or to finish writing, either). The idea is simply to provoke people into thinking about the ways their settings and backgrounds hang together … or don't. If it's useful, use it. If not, don't.

A suite of calculators and guides to aid in the creation of life-supporting planetary systems

Some links that are useful for the creation of new worlds or for information on real ones.

This encyclopaedia provides latest detections and data announced by professional astronomers about exoplanetary systems. It is about objets lighter than 60 Jupiter masses, which are orbiting stars/brown dwarf or are free floating. It provides also a database about planets in binary systems, and a database about circumstellar disks.

Generate Analemma for any planet

Create an idea for your next fanfic.

Word-tracking spreadsheets and more.

WordGrinder is a Unicode-aware character cell word processor that runs in a terminal (or a Windows console). It is designed to get the hell out of your way and let you get some work done.

Joplin, the open source note-taking application

Obsidian is the private and flexible note‑taking app that adapts to the way you think.

A markdown-like text editor designed for writing novels and larger projects of many smaller plain text documents.

It is designed to be a simple text editor that allows for easy organisation of text files and notes, with a meta data syntax for comments, synopsis, and cross-referencing between files, and built on plain text files for robustness.

Zim is a notepad like desktop application that is inspired by the way people use wikis.

Yon is a little UI for knowledge designed to be used every day. Add your notes, write your diary, and connect thoughts with bidirectional links. Explore your text through an acme-inspired 2-column interface to dive deep or go wide and always find your way back. It's contained in a single html file with no dependency, so that you can open the lid and tweak any part of it and make it your own.

Text editor - Notes & ToDo (for Android)

Available on Mac, Windows and Linux

Pluma is the official text editor of the MATE desktop environment. While aiming at simplicity and ease of use, Pluma is a powerful general purpose text editor. It can be used to create and edit all sorts of text files.
Pluma features a flexible plugin system which can be used to dynamically add new advanced features to Pluma itself.

Kate is a modern text editor built on the KDE Frameworks and Qt.

Writing Morse code as sheet music emphasizes that the rhythm of the letters is more important than their visual representation.

A musical description of the tones produced by telephone buttons.

The tones produced by telephone keypads are part of a scale that divides the octave into 14 pieces.

This Mario Paint inspired composer tool is easy and fun. You can create simple and beautiful songs right in your browser and share them with the world!

Official homepage for Little Sound Dj, the ultimate Game Boy music editor.

MuseScore's core library (libmscore) in WebAssembly! Read mscz data, and generate audio/MIDI/MusicXML/SVG/PNG/PDF sheets right in browsers. - LibreScore/webmscore

JummBox is an online tool for sketching and sharing instrumental music.

Cacophony is a minimalist and ergonomic MIDI sequencer. It's minimalist in that it doesn't have a lot of functionality MIDI sequencers have. It's ergonomic in that there is no mouse input and a very clean interface, allowing you to juggle less inputs and avoid awkward mouse motions.

BeepBox is an online tool for sketching and sharing instrumental music.

A browser-based generative music environment based on octave-repeating microtonal tuning systems and their subsets (scales/modes).

Flexible level editor

Create point-and-click text adventures

A free and open-source 2D game engine.

Pulp is a click-and-place, fun, quirky game studio for Playdate. Make a game with no code, or maybe a little code.

A free, open source, project oriented level editor made for indie game developers by indie game developers.

a tool for drawing and assembling graphical hypertext games

GB BASIC is a retro Fantasy Console that generates ROMs compatible with the popular handheld game console.

A quick and easy to use drag and drop retro game creator for your favourite handheld video game system.

Downpour is the best app for making games on your phone. Collage together photos, drawings and text, and then connect them into an interactive story. It's genuinely quick and easy to use — you can make a game before your tea has gone cold. Once you've made a game with Downpour, what then? You can share it with your friends inside the app, or post the link for anyone to play.

bipsi is a tool for making small games where a character explores a world and interacts with its inhabitants.

Some clarity in an increasingly noisy world. This blog is focused on applying a critical eye to the vegan and animal rights world, and help answer questions that may not be found elsewhere.

Black Vegans Rock was founded by Aph Ko after she wrote the first list that spotlighted 100 Black Vegans for Striving with Systems. She decided to research and compile a list of influential Black vegans who were doing incredible work to dismantle the stereotype that veganism was a “white person’s” thing.

by Rachel A. Rosen and Zilla Novikov || Food you can make so you don't die.

Discover easy vegan recipes on It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken, your go-to food blog by Sam Turnbull, 3x bestselling cookbook author.

Discover easy vegan recipes on It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken, your go-to food blog by Sam Turnbull, 3x bestselling cookbook author.

Stirring up magick in my vegan kitchen!

A vegan food blog sharing approachable vegan recipes that are deliciously healthy and easy to make with whole food plant based ingredients.

Celebrating simple cooking with recipes that require 10 ingredients or less, 1 bowl, or 30 minute or less to prepare. All eaters are welcome.

Hundreds of plant-based vegan recipes, from Mexican to Italian to Ethiopian. Browse by category, cuisine, or dietary needs!

Recipe manager for Android (with Gourmand compatibility)

A recipe manager for desktop with the possibilities to import, organize, and tweak recipes

Wholesome vegan recipes with a twist

Cooklang and the tools we’ve built to use it, you can:

• simplify your personal recipe management;

• streamline your shopping routine;

• make cooking more fun.

Here’s how the Cooklang ecosystem makes that happen:

• All recipes are human-readable text files.

• Everything is a file. No databases. And you have complete control over your information.

• All the tools are simple, focused, and efficient; the UNIX way.

Find out how you can tell if the chocolate you are eating is connected to child slavery.

If you call attention to everything, you call attention to nothing; all while cluttering up the presentation with colors and doodads that actively impair reading specifically because they constantly attract the attention of the reader away from reading.

Share with a friend who needs to sit the fuck down or enjoy the experience yourself.

a repository of self-care resources for developers & others

Learn to farm or garden with community created guides

Holidays, candle-lighting times, and Torah readings for any year, past or present.

Perpetual calendar of Pastafarian holy days (Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster)

A sigil generator with loads of options to create magical sigils for your practice, plus many other occult tools (tarot, ritual, runes, etc)

Online tarot reader.

Welcome to the largest freely available archive of online books about religion, mythology, folklore and the esoteric on the Internet. The Internet Sacred Text Archive (ISTA) is dedicated to religious tolerance and scholarship, and has the largest readership of any similar site on the web.

Encyclopedia Mythica is an internet encyclopedia on mythology, folklore, and religion.
Everything from Aaron to Zygius, with thousands of articles in between.

Please be safe and be aware of clinics (e.g. Crisis Pregnancy Centers) that give out dangerous misinformation on abortions and pregnancy. Please comment if you would like to add a resource, or if a link is dead. And share this on whatever social media you want!. Resources for healthcare Amnesty.org ...

A collection of materials and media related to menstruation and menopause. Note: Some materials may be out of date or not representative of current medical and educational standards.

Some trans facts:

• Being trans is great

• Trans bodies are beautiful

• Trans love is powerful love

• Being trans is beautiful!

"One of the big things we talk about, in trans feminism, is the concept of “gender identity”– the subjective internal sense of oneself as male, female, or nonbinary. Trans people are people whose gender identity doesn’t match their gender assigned at birth; cis people are people whose gender identity does.

But the thing is… I think that some people don’t have that subjective internal sense of themselves as being a particular gender. There’s no part of their brain that says “I’m a guy!”, they just look around and people are calling them “he” and they go with the flow. They’re cis by default, not out of a match between their gender identity and their assigned gender.

Like most of you, the doubts began when I saw how quick libfems were to demonize anyone with opposing views. "Don't listen to him, he's a homophobe!" "You don't want to talk to her, she's a bigot!" What secrets do those libfems slur as "homophobes" hold that libfems are so desperate for us not to hear? So I began to dig deeper. I wanted to know more.

A lot of people conceptualize transmasculinity as “wanting to be a man” rather than simply being (or inevitably becoming) one. This was not true for me, at least not always. Transition was an urge, a need, but what I wanted was just to be content as a woman.

This Guide is intended to provide information on topics of interest to female-to-male (FTM, F2M) trans men, and their friends and loved ones. Non-trans men have also found the pages on men's grooming and clothing to be helpful.