Owl's Roost

Assorted Resources

Highlighted link: Juvenile in Justice.

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Self-Education and Improvement

Crafts and DIY

Free Sewing
A site with free clothing patterns that can be customized to your exact measurements. Make your own clothes!
This to That
Want to glue things together? Need to pick the right adhesive? Here's a site that can help with that.
How to Make an Easy No-Sew Journal
Bind your own journal without doing any sewing.
Condition and Dye Your Own Hemp Rope
Why spend $50+ on Etsy when you can do it yourself? While you're at it, learn a harness bend to tie two ropes together so they'll hold up under tension.
Bug Guide
Unsure what kind of insect that is? Want to find out? This site should help you ID it. There are some beautiful insect photos here, too.
Wildflower Search
Similarly, if you want to identify a wildflower species, this site has you covered.

Learn Something

How to Read
Advice on how to remember the books you read.
Messybeast Cat Colors, Conformation & Fur Type
Who else likes cat patterns and neat genetics? This index covers a wide variety of interesting cat patterns and the genes behind them. There's a lot to read and it's all pretty interesting. There's even photos of cats scattered throughout.
Alternative English Scripts
Need to write something that most folks can't read? Sick of Latin letters? Omniglot has you covered. I'm learning Elian myself.
Please, Enough Dead Butterflies!
So it turns out that most depictions of butterflies show their wings in a positon that very few living butterflies ever hold them in. They're dead. Whoops.
lipu sona pona
Lessons in Toki Pona, a simple conlang. Another set of Toki Pona lessons can be found here.
Life in Freshwater
Information on a lot of freshwater ecosystems and the creatures that live in them.
Sleeping in Airports
If you ever get stuck overnight in an airport, this site has all the information you need to conk out for a while.
Why Paper Jams Persist
Printing is complicated.
How to do everything
"The world is full of these ridiculous mundane pieces of insight, and even if you’re very on the ball and know 99% of the ones that would be life improving for you to know, that probably still means that there are thousands you are missing."
Juvenile in Justice
Photos of juvenile detention centers and the stories of those detained in them.
Whitewood Under Siege
It turns out that there's some drama in the world of pallets, and it's surprisingly interesting.
A Visual History of Typewriter Art from 1893 to Today
Exactly what it sounds like! The art is remarkably detailed.
The parable of the banana
On monocultures and dying bananas.
How Electronic Components Work
Ever wondered what a capacitor actually does? Know absolutely nothing about electronics? Here's a good start.
Notebook Stories
Notebook reviews, journal showcases, and all things stationery.
If It Were My Home
See how living conditions in your country compare to other countries.
A Book Like Foo
Find books that you're statistically unlikely to read.
Masterwiki
Masterclass, republished as WikiHows for free.
Rat Park
A comic about the Rat Park drug addiction experiment.
Kibls Poetry
684 poems, presented in your choice of layout for free.
Ask the Duck
Solving problems by talking to rubber ducks.
Overthinking Everything
A blog with some excellent advice for thinking about things, helping yourself, and generally getting along better in the world.
‘I’ve learned I need to treat my characters like people’: Varieties of Agency and Interaction in Writers’ Experiences of their Characters’ Voices
A fairly interesting study of writers hearing the voices of their characters.

Help Yourself

you feel like shit.
An interactive guide to taking care of yourself. Great if you feel bad, but aren't sure why.
Mental Health Resources
A large number of helpful resources for mental health, crisis resources included. Advice on coping skills, picking therapists, helping friends, and disclosing to others; also has condition-specific links for all sorts of diagnoses.
Find Unconscious Motivations
Some excellent advice on addressing the root causes of behavioral patterns by processing the emotions and beliefs behind them.
Cleaning up the fnords in your environment
Dealing with anxiety triggers that you've learned to consciously ignore or tune out.
Here and Now
A daily meditation.
Atlas of Emotions
Exploring emotions by type and intensity. Great if you need to find words for your feelings. Also includes sections on how emotions progress and responding to emotions.
No More Ramen
Quick, easy, and cheap recipes for folks with little time or energy to cook.
Nighttime 201
Tips for sleeping when you're a trauma survivor. Lots of little ideas here that add up to help a lot.
Notes on Shaking
Body movement as a tool for processing emotions and trauma.
Asexuality Handbook
Information about asexuality and aromanticism. In particular, I recommend their Experiences page that describes what different types of attraction feel like.
SuperBetter
Play a game to build resilience and improve your life for free.
What Is Shadow Work?
An introduction to shadow work (the practice of acknowledging and embracing the sides of yourself that you repress or hide). Some journaling prompts can be found here.
The Little Things
Little tricks that help with mental health.
Anxiety Canada's PDF Resources
Free PDFs with coping skills for anxiety disorders (including general anxiety, social anxiety, specific phobia, OCD, and even PTSD).
Understood
For those with disorders that affect learning and those who want to understand them.
Pixel Thoughts
A quick 60-second meditation tool.
The Quiet Place
A place to breathe and relax. Good for taking a break from the world.
Stress Analyst
Calm yourself down by analyzing whether fight-or-flight is really necessary, then discharging leftover stress hormones.
Feeels
An interactive emotion wheel.
Grounding Techniques
A list of some grounding techniques.
DBT Distress Tolerance Skills
Exactly what it says on the tin: skills for handling discomfort and distress.
Succeed Socially
Learn social skills.
Emotional Codes
Tools for processing emotions and interpersonal issues.
The Nicest Place on the Internet
Hugs and positivity.
Poi's Comfort Pack
A carrd with self-care advice, distractions, and crisis resources.
The Theory of Structured Procrastination
A handy way of getting things done if you tend to procrastinate or avoid big tasks. Very useful for brainweird folks!
The SAVE YOURSELF Files
A file dump of several helpful resources for surviving tough situations.
The first hard choice
Temptation, addiction, cults, and how to handle it all.

Journaling

A Life in Pocket Notebooks
On how the boring, daily entries can mean the world.
Make Your Paper Notebooks Useful: How to Set Up a Table of Contents or an Index
An excellent guide to making an index or table of contents practical in a journal.
Fore-Edge Painting and Indexing
A clever approach to indexing a journal that doesn't require the use of an index page.
Please Print
That app won't be around in 20 years, and that data format won't have a program to read it anymore. Print out your digital journals from time to time if you'd like to keep them.
In Defense of Cheap
Cheaper can be better when it comes to journaling supplies.
One Book to Rule Them All
Consolidating three journals into one via bullet journaling.
The Cramped
A blog about the joys of analog writing.
Notebook Stories
Notebook reviews, examples/inspiration, and everything to do with journals.
From the Pen Cup
Another blog about journaling, notebooks, and pens.
Recording Thoughts
A blog about journaling and note-taking that focuses on the "how" more than most other blogs.
Therapist-Suggested Journaling Prompts for Better Mental Health and Well-Being
Some journaling ideas to get you started.
Self-Dialogue as a Journaling Strategy
Literally talking to yourself.
10 Ways to Use a Diary
Another cluster of ideas for journaling.
I always have to give to advice to people, so I might as well post it here
An alternative approach to journaling if the standard "write paragraphs" doesn't work for you.
Ratfactor's Notebook System
Another creative use of journals that's good inspiration for creating your own system.
Capturing the Wild Snippet
A short blog post about why one should carry a notebook.
Timex Expedition Scout Review (or Why Watches Are Kind of Like Paper)
"For decades tech enthusiasts have been trying to convince us that there’s something better than paper. I was once convinced, but now I’m not. And in the last few years, they’ve started trying to convince us there’s something better than a traditional watch. I was briefly convinced, but now I’m not."
The Importance of Keeping a Notebook
Notebooks as creative resovoirs.
My Holy Grail Pen and Paper
"If you focus on creative process and output, the equipment will usually figure itself out." Sometimes cheap supplies are the best supplies.

Entertainment

Fiction

Cat Pictures, Please
"I don't want to be evil.".
Time to Orbit: Unknown
A lone colonist wakes up early from stasis; the crew is dead, the ship is in a dire state, and there are more questions than answers.
Someone Like You
A glimpse into hacker and maker communities that emphasizes the humanity and diversity of hackers.
Normality
"We became filled with hatred toward the roleplayers we encountered at local games and conventions, and so we set out to hurt them. To make them cry. We very nearly succeeded."
The Princess in the Tower
Princesses are the larval form of dragons.
What football will look like in the future
Better known as 17776. This is one of those stories that changes you a little when you read it- if you didn't get around to it before, it's worth your time.
Original Sin
The sun is alive, and it loves us.
The Machine; Existential Comics
On teleporters, mortality, and the little deaths of life.
How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps
Some of us love robots. Some of us wish we could be robots. Fair warning that this leans hard into themes of depression and suicide, but it's worth the read.
ugly fish poem
"i have felt a love of life that i believe is good".
The Alexycule
Hiveminds and polycules, oh my!
Planetocopia
Speculative planets, many of which are alternative versions of Earth; most are mapped and very fleshed-out.
Literary Bad Sex Award
The worst sex in fiction.

Anecdotes

We Eat at The Worst Michelin Starred Restaurant, Ever
I'll let this one speak for itself:
"There is something to be said about a truly disastrous meal, a meal forever indelible in your memory because it’s so uniquely bad, it can only be deemed an achievement. The sort of meal where everyone involved was definitely trying to do something; it’s just not entirely clear what."
My 14-Hour Search for the End of TGI Friday's Endless Appetizers
How long can you keep eating endless appetizers before the restaurant kicks you out?
I Was A Cable Guy. I Saw The Worst Of America.
Ever wonder what it's like to be the cable guy?
bulldyke (NSFW)
Butch poetry.
Which emoji scissors close
Evaluating emoji scissors by whether it would be physically possible to use them.
Chaos Theory
A unified theory of Muppet types.
A Computer in Dwarf Fortress
Someone managed to create a working Turing Machine inside Dwarf Fortress. They've put the map out there for anyone that wants to take a look!
Boatmurdered
One of the most infamous Dwarf Fortress stories, and for good reason! Murderous elephants, lava flooding, and one of the most catastrophic downfalls of a fort I've seen. There's a PDF copy of it all here.

Identity

Gender

Digital Transgender Archive
An archive of LGBTQ+ zines; it's not just transgender ones, though there are plenty of those!
Butch: Not Like the Other Girls
A photoset of butch women.
Please Come and Be Fat
An essay about modelling top surgery results as a fat trans man (which points out the need for more fat trans models).
Pronoun Dressing Room
A site that lets you test out any set of pronouns and labels you'd like.
On Teaching (Trans) Gender
An intersex, trans male professor talks about issues with transphobia and privilege he's faced while teaching.
How Hyperpop Gives Trans Artists a Voice
It's what it says on the tin!
How I Learned to Hate Transgender People
An essay pointing out the damage done by mocking trans people in media, and a plea to stop.

Furry

On Postfurry
An analysis of what the post-furry movement is about: self-actualization, self-expression, and a subversion of furry community expectations.
History of "Furry" and "Fursona"
A brief overview of the furry community for those wholly unfamiliar with it.
The Modern Furry Aesthetic
A little bit of the history that led to the furry subculture as it stands today.

Brainweirdness and Disability

Spoon Theory
A way to explain disability and limited energy to people. It's a very useful metaphor if you tend to ration your energy.
Fork Theory
A corollary of spoon theory that works brilliantly for explaining overstimulation and overwhelm.
In Lagos
An essay about masks and identity that's helped me considerably through identity questioning. The rest of Awaeke Emezi's work is worth checking out as well.
What If Emotions aren't Universal?
An article about how emotions may be cultural and learned in nature rather than hardwired; in other words, the concepts of happiness, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust as clearly defined emotions everyone has may not be accurate, and named emotions may be a culturally learned experience.
Walking the Edge of Insanity
An essay about mental illness, psychiatry, and medications.

Other

Library of Babel
Every book ever written (and then some).
Photo requests from solitary confinement
Photos requested by those in solitary confinement- and yes, you can submit photos to grant those requests.
Galaxy Zoo
Help classify galaxies!
Handwritten.blog
A handwritten blog!
Crouton
Crouton.