useful resources

SUICIDE/CRISIS HOTLINES:

Chat online:

• IMAlive, an online crisis network
• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Online Chat

Texting:

• Crisis Textline
• A small directory of other text/IM crisis hotlines.

Talking on the Phone:

• Trans Lifeline, a suicide/crisis hotline specifically for trans people
• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

ABUSE-SPECIFIC HOTLINES:

• The National Domestic Violence Hotline
• The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline
• Love Is Respect domestic violence chat/phone/textlines
• The National Sexual Assault Online Hotline

SELF-HELP:

• Everything Is Awful And I'm Not Okay: Questions To Ask Before Giving Up
• Stress Analyst / Panic Attack Walkthrough
• Do Nothing For 2 Minutes
• Ten Ways To Untwist Your Thinking
• Assorted mental health resources
• Twitter thread of mental health resources.
• Coping with distressing events in the news
• Tips to look after your mental health during scary world events.

MORE LONG-TERM SOLUTIONS:

• Look for an affordable therapist
• Recovery International
• Get free discounts on prescription medication
• National Queer & Trans Therapists of Color Network

PRACTICAL/LEGAL:

• Find out how to get a legal name change where you live and update your name/gender on state and federal IDs and records.
• An online database of trans-positive legal resources for people living in the United States.
• Comfortable relatively-affordable chest binders.
• Trans crisis hotline.
• Trans-friendly health help; only in a few US cities.
• Money and resources for trans people.
• Trans road map; various trans guides, resources, etc-- kind of old and outdated in places, but still useful.
• The Okra Project provides food and resources for Black trans people.
• Black And Pink, an organization dedicated to assisting incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated members of the LGBT+ community.
• Community funding for trans-led groups.

INTERESTING/COOL:

• The Then and There of Transmasculine Pregnancy
• Expensive but pretty custom binders
• To Survive On This Shore - Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults
• The Digital Transgender Archive, an archive dedicated to trans history.
• The US National Trans Survey.
• Svara, an organization dedicated to creating a space for queer & trans people to study and engage with Judaism, Jewish culture, and Talmud study.
• The Transfeminine Review, a blog dedicated to documenting and discussing transfeminine literature.

WEBMASTERY:

• A collection of thousands of 88x31 buttons.
• Nearly Free Speech, a provider of reasonably cheap web hosting.
• Rarebit, a template for hosting webcomics on Neocities.
• JS Fiddle, a site for experimenting with code.
• How to put a GIF animation toggle button on your website.
• How to put a theme switcher button on your website.
• Sadgrl's snippet for how to make draggable elements on your website.
• Sadgrl's image gallery snippet.
• List of webrings.
• A privacy-friendly Google Fonts alternative.
• Webri.ng, a platform for creating and managing webrings.
• Atabook, a guestbook service.
• CSSwarp, an online tool for easily making shaped text using CSS & SVGs.
• 32-Bit Cafe's Resources List
• Clippy - CSS clip-path maker, a handy tool for making shapes in CSS.
• HTML Hobbyist, resources and tutorials for getting into HTML and CSS.
• Accessible Colors, a tool for finding color combinations that pass WCAG contrast standards.

Free Site Hosts

• Tinker Host
• Ichi.city
• Nekoweb
• Lexi's Hosting
• Omg.lol
• Straw.page
• Github Pages
• Leprd.space
• Glitch

THINGS TO USE:

• Wormhole, which lets you securely send files directly to another person.
• Status.cafe, a tiny social media site.
• Bearblog, a blog hosting site.
• Notepin, a blogging service.
• Miraheze, a wiki host.
• Catbox, a free file host.
• Filegarden, another free file host.
• Everest Pipkin's image scrubbing utility, for removing identifying metadata from image files.
• Micro.blog
• Write.as
• Animatiss, a collection of CSS animations.

SURFING & SEARCHING:

• The Internet Archive.
• Another internet archive.
• The Archive Stumbler, for randomly exploring the internet archive.
• 1337x.to is a torrent searching site. I sure hope there's nothing illegal on there!
• Marginalia Search, a search engine that focuses on non-commercial content.
• VHSearch, a neocities search engine (powered by Google).
• Sortition Social, a community RSS feed.
• Anime scene search engine - plug in an anime screenshot and it'll tell you what anime it's from.
• Kagi, an ad-free search engine.

Directories:

• Ooh.directory, a blog directory.
• Indieseek, an indieweb directory.
• Href.cool,
• Href Hunt
• Curlie
• Smooth Sailing
• Bukmark.club
• A Website Is A Room
• Dead Simple Sites

IMPROVE YOUR ONLINE EXPERIENCE:

• Surveillance Self-Defense, a website where you can learn about digital privacy.
• Check if your email address is in a data breach.
• A tutorial on how to create a saved Ao3 search filter.
• Breezewiki, a site (and extension) that simplifies fandom.com wiki pages by removing ads and nonsense for you.
• Indie Wiki Buddy, which will let you know if a fandom.com wiki has an indie alternative and give you a link to that.
• Unpaywall, an extension that will find Open Access versions of academic work for you (if they exist).
• DeArrow, a browser extension that replaces clickbait thumbnails and video titles on Youtube with clear non-clickbait alternatives.
• Unhook, another browser extension for improving Youtube; block comment sections, recommended videos, and shorts, among other things.
• SponsorBlock, a third browser extension for improving Youtube; other users mark ad reads and patreon/merch promo and the extension skips them automatically.
• Ad Nauseam, an alternative to adblockers that clicks on every ad to confuse trackers.

EDUCATION:

• "Is The Post Reliable?", a tumblr blog dedicated to fact-checking Tumblr posts.
• Quote Investigator, a blog that investigates the actual origins and context of famous quotes.
• The University of Chicago Press's monthly free ebook.
• Open Book Publishers, which publishes research and academic writing for free.
• How to register for a free non-student JSTOR account to get access to academic research.
• Pew Research. They do research.
• LGBTQ Archives, an archive dedicated to LGBTQ+ history. Check out their list of other archives and resources!
• Ref Seek, a search engine for finding academic work.
• The Anarchist Library, a digital library of anarchist writing.
• GLAAD's research on the LGBTQ+ community, including their yearly "where we are on TV" report.
• Belling The Cat, an investigative research organization.
• Bioline International, a publishing coop that provides open access to research journals published in developing countries.
• Refdesk, a general-purpose reference site with factchecking, news, and useful links.
• Open Stax, free online textbooks.

ENRICHMENT:

• LGBTQ Reads, a blog/database with lists of books that have LGBT+ characters in them.
• Anna's Archive (annas-archive.org) is a website that has almost every book for free download. I hope there's nothing illegal on there!
• Project Gutenberg, which has public domain ebooks.
• Standard ebooks, a project that formats public domain ebooks so that they look good and work properly.
• Storygraph, a goodreads alternative.
• Papercut Zine Library.
• Queer Zine Archive Project.
• Sherwood Forest Zine Library.
• Diverse Book Finder, a comprehensive collection of children’s and young adult books featuring Black and Indigenous Peoples and People of Color (BIPOC).

• Guide to sowing plants in winter, with pictures.
• A searchable wildflower database.
• How to help fireflies.
• Lists of native plants for pollinators, sorted by region. US-specific, but has links to resources for some other countries.
• A searchable plant database, great for plant identification.
• A tumblr post about ways to help biodiversity besides planting plants.
• A database of caterpillar host plants.
• Information on gardening with native plants.
• Free Heirloom Seeds. What it says on the tin.
• Alliance of Native Seedkeepers, a source for buying seeds from Indigenous seedkeepers.
• Truelove Seeds, another source for buying seeds from Indigenous seedkeepers.
• National Wildlife Foundation's list of keystone plants, sorted by ecoregion.
• The NatureDB, a database for helping to identify plants and animals and such.
• iNaturalist, a platform for plant & animal identification. Has an app.

• Seamless texture checker. Tiles an image for you so you can check to see if it looks weird.
• Electric Zine Maker on itch.
• Aggie.io, a collaborative art tool.
• Ditherify images.
• Turn images into vectors.
• Information on how to glue things to other things.
• Narrat, a tool for writing narrative games.
• Free sewing patterns and information.
• Free vintage sewing patterns.
• Don't Go To Art School; a list of resources for learning how to do art.
• Free Music Archive.
• Loyalty Freak Music; free public domain music.
• Internet Archive Book Images, a flickr account of public domain images from books uploaded by the Internet Archive.
• The British Library's flickr, also full of public domain images from books.
• The Smithsonian's open access art collection.
• The Met's open access art collection.
• Austrian National Library, which has a lot of public domain resources and art.
• A list of open image collections.
• Rawpixel's collection of public domain images.
• French National Library, which has a lot of public domain resources and art.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art's open access collection.
• The New York Public Library's open access collections.
• Open Game Art, a site for free to use game assets.
• Unsplash, a site for free stock photos.
• Bookbinding 101.
• The Toymaker, a site with foldable paper toys you can print out and make.
• Antique Pattern Library.
• The BBC's sound effects library.
• Lospec's palette list. Great for finding color schemes.
• The Iconolog, a collection of vintage icons.
• Javascript Kidpix

• 5etools. Tools for playing D&D fifth edition.
• A searchable & sortable database of games from several massive itch.io charity bundles.
• A tool for auto-claiming games from massive itch.io charity bundles.
• Natural Resources Job Board. US-only.
• Coolworks, a job board for outdoorsy jobs in interesting places. US-only.
• Otherness Archive, a digital archive dedicated to queer films.
• Black Film Archive, a digital archive dedicated to Black cinema.
• Solidarity Cinema, a free library of leftist film.
• Rare Filmm, a catalog of rare and unusual films.
• Cinema of the World, an archive of films of all kinds from around the world.
• Onelook Thesaurus. A pretty good thesaurus.
• A listicle of nine places to volunteer online.
• The People's CDC - A CDC watchdog and public health advocacy and health justice group.
• Game Dev Galaxy, a community for marginalized game developers.
• Domino 2, a thought-collaging note-taking tool.
• Recipe Search