#and also to make tumblr's search function a little more reliable

[inscreenshotsandtime]

Opening sequence, no text.

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Hou Ch. 7 Minagoroshi pt. 31

My favorite arc/chapter/whatever term your prefer of Umineko is Chapter Seven. It featured a great amount of revelations in regards to the overall plot, and it featured some of the best, gut-wrenching writing I had seen in the Chapter 7 Tea Party. The main chapter itself ended on a wonderful note, a great blend of sadness, but optimism, only for the Tea Party to come along and just absolutely wreck the previously optimistic tone. It was, without exaggeration, so well written that I felt it absolutely made the entirety of that series worth reading just for that section alone. Which is remarkable to me, as with some of the earlier sections of Higurashi, I came perilously close to abandoning Umineko as well due to an intense dislike of portions of the narrative. I wish the tumblr search function was a more reliable device because there was a quote I saw regarding visual novels that summed up my experiences very well.

This will have to do. Basically the quote I’m thinking of describes VNs as a 40/60 mix of enjoyment to torture. Or something along those lines.

After the credits this comes up. Perhaps it says something about me, but I genuinely enjoy reading fictional documents like this in games and so on. Just little extra world-building minutiae of the day to day about people in the fictional universe. You won't see me passing up files in a survival horror on my first playthrough, oh no.

While this doesn’t outright confirm that Irie is dead, I feel it’s reasonable to assume that Irie “committed suicide” shortly before the gaming club got taken out by Takano and the Mountain Dogs. I feel it’s safe to assume Irie was the Institute Director, and Takano is the chief officer. And given what’s about to occur I really don’t think Irie would sign off on it. Also, everything from Emergency Manual 34 is in red text when it’s going line by line. As with Tsumihoroboshi the log just keeps it white on gray.

Could you imagine being part of this government kill squad, enacting your orders to kill the potential civilians in the telephone company building only to get killed by a different branch of the government kill squad? It’s like that scene at the beginning of the Dark Knight when the bank robbers are killing each other off as they do their job for the heist. Also, I could swear that they mention this quarry at some point earlier on in the series, but looking over my notes and screenshots I couldn’t actually find anything. So it may be I’m remembering something from a manga synopsis? Earlier than the post-game TIP at the end of Tsumihoroboshi I mean. Also, I might be jumping the gun here, but if your grand conspiracy is going to involve killing the entirety of Hinamizawa wouldn’t you burn the bodies afterward? They won’t find gunshot wounds in a pile of ash is all I’m saying.

I just love this little piece of the document. It seems to imply there actually is a giant Resident Evil laboratory filled with H173 and various other deadly diseases related to Hinamizawa Syndrome. So it seems that even though she was going insane with paranoia Rena was actually on to something when she said the secret research facility is located in the Irie Clinic. Someone should make a mod for Resident Evil 4 (original or remake) that replaces Leon with a Rena model. It would give me an excuse to play Resident Evil 4 for the thousandth time.

So, since Keiichi was taken in by the Secrecy Preservation Unit at the end of Tatarigoroshi why did they let him live for as long as he had? Was it because he was well and truly insane, thinking he had the powers of Oyashiro, so they let him live? Was it because this came out years after chapter three had been written, and therefore not really thought about back then? Or do you think he was found by the disaster recovery team instead?

Also this doesn’t have anything really to do with anything, but reading the emergency manual here reminded me of an old 1970s horror movie called The Crazies. It’s about an outbreak of a chemical that drives people insane and murderous in a small Pennsylvania town. And our protagonists have to escape from the military who was sent to contain the outbreak, and the titular crazies, who are sort of proto-zombies. There was a remake in 2010 or so, but I don’t remember that one being very good. Of course it’s been nearly twenty years since I saw the original, so maybe that doesn’t hold up either. It’s got a good poster if nothing else.

It’s interesting how this note portrays Hinamizawa Syndrome as a parasite infection disease as well as being a lifelong ailment that shows physical signs of the disease within ten minutes of infection. Maybe that’s to do with the version of the syndrome that was observed during the war? Which especially doesn’t add up because there was all that prior information of the disease more or less being eradicated at the time.

Now, when I read this last line something about this struck me as incorrect. The population of Hinamizawa had always been shown to be right around one thousand.

Here are screenshots from Himatsubushi and Tatarigoroshi where they talk about the death toll of the Great Hinamizawa Disaster. It’s not exactly the end of the world that this inconsistency exists, but it was just something that rubbed me wrongly when I read it. I don’t know when the population of Hinamizawa doubled, but there it is. I wonder if it’s a situation similar to the Ohagi translation issue in Onikakushi where they just said the wrong thing initially, and this version of the translation is the correct one. Like I said, it’s not the biggest issue in the world, just something that bugged me. Basically what I’m saying is we should string up MangaGamer by the short and curlies to make them pay penance for such a grievous oversight. Made the series completely unreadable it did.

You can tell this was translated within the last decade because of the use of “it’s current year!”

Without getting too far ahead of it, I don’t entirely understand how the Great Hinamizawa Disaster/Operation Doomsday will ascend Takano to godhood. Either of them really.

[anendoandfriendo]

For god's sake people if you AREN'T bots please understand this is not like Twitter or Instagram or TikTok or whatever y'all use. Just. Protips:

Somesys with the username buttfuck69420 and an anime character picture will get you much further than midnight-dream78 and a picture of your face or your cat. We'll actually be sharing some pictures that you can use on the house from us if you'd like to!!! They're just some little edits we made on the spot for the sole purpose of this post.

That being said, feel free to spam your cat and your face on your blog otherwise. Although most people here use it for more obscure or niche bullshit. We talk about our endogenic multiplicity for example when we think of stuff, and reblog literally Anything our headmates find shiny. Some people literally just run an aesthetic blog for scene or goth or pretty sunsets or literally just a single color like the color pink. Some people put their religion on their blog weather that's wicca or chirstianity or hinduism or anything else. Some people leave their blog blank besides the pfp and a note on their pinned post and bio stating they only interact from their side blogs (as long as you leave that note ur good)!! Like, the sky is the fucking limit here.

Tags are for organization and if you tag something like #MyHeroAcademia but it's just you putting on makeup unrelated to cosplay/a skit/if it isn't MHA themed, that's called spam and is not only against the ToS on this site but is just considered incredibly incredibly rude. Like. Most folks here are more likely to block and report you for that. If you want engagement with anything you tag properly or do not tag at all.

There's no algorithm! Well, there is a small one these days but it sucks, almost everyone on this site hates it that's been here for awhile, and most traffic is run by you and whatever you make or reblog from other folks here.

If your joke or shitpost breaches containment (most of you would call it going viral?) there is a good chance it will still be circulating the ecosystem of this hellsite thirty years from now. Almost NOTHING truly dies here and we very much mean nothing.

There is reblog and there is queue. Reblog to share something immediately and use queue to share it later! Be aware that queue posts still take up a spot for your 250 overall posts and reblogs for the day though.

Because this is an introductory post, we are doing No Nuance November in May. Reblog =/= repost. Reposting is generally very rude here and takes away attention from the original poster. Reblog instead. Tumblr specifically gives both you and the creator engagement.

Tagging people in shit is fun and amazing and people love when you tag them on shit here. Sending in asks is fun and amazing and people love when you send them asks here. Infodumping on a random post on your blog is fun and amazing and people love when you infodump here.

There IS an option for a private side blog but there is caveats: firstly again it has to be a side blog so it can never be the initial blog you made first unfortunately; secondly even if you tag stuff in it there is no way to reliably use the search function in a private/locked side blog. Okay? Okay.

Anyways, now that the boring part is over, we can give the class some goodies in the form of profile pics! They're just some random edits we made on the fly for the sole purpose of sharing them here for you all to use, but we also have them on our edits sideblog or on our picsart (which is in the "source" link in the veeeery bottom left corner of this post) if you're ever curious about that. C:

We have to go to sleep now as of the creation of this post, so have a good whatever timezone and time of day you all are currently in!

[patriciavetinari]

I just saw a post saying 'we just have to let the staff know we're unhappy about the updates and we'll be fine' all non-chalant and honestly, I wished we lived in a world op lives i . Tumblr is barely functioning even now for the purposes it claims to function (blogging moreso than social media). I mean I like this dump, I've made it my own, but they are serious about increasing revenue - the ads, the blazes, the lives, the unblockable emporium and art accounts. It's a company like any other. Come on. Under capitalism corporation has no reason to listen to the users if not doing so increases income, and tumblr is a corporation, however small and poorly planned that corporation is and however cosy we feel here. They're here to make money, from us, not to provide five star experience. Theh will not listen. They have not listened about stuff that threatened people's lives, like nazi blogs, terfs, absolutely vile bigots, death threats. They have not listened on live, on dashboard preferences for new accounts, sex workers, fucking search function. They gave you polls and you think someone there is listening and vibing with the working class? Yes it might suck less than other right now, but tumblr is sure lubing up its throat to reach tbe deepthroating level of sucking.

Consider forums. Learn basic website building. Get emails (not dicsords, that place is also losing any little appeal it might have had) of your mutuals so that once this all will come tumbling down (pun intended and yes it will) so that you stay in touch.

You've got to stop being reliant on poorly run websites to keep you connected. Emails and phone numbers are more useful. Don't lose touch with a person you have no other way of contacting other than tumblr / discord / twitter / reddit. Get at email. Get a phone number if you're comfortable and have enough trust.

Once all of the sites become unusable, yes, you will have to put your shitposts and memed into a letter and make a mailing list if needed, and that might be ridiculous until you feel lonely and the only person you want to talk to is the mutual shitposter and then you send and email and can get an answer and stay in touch.

Yes gmail is a horrible google product, yes look for alternatives, but emails are not going under as soon as social media. And fucking write them down in a notebook in case the situation is so destitute you are locked out of your accounts or even lose reliable access to internet at home.

Emails and address books are your friends.

Also, consider starting forums for your fandoms and discussion topics and roleplays. Yes it's nore finicky and you need accounts for those but tech companies got us where we are today by being so darn convenient we forgot how to live a life without them. Take charge of keeping up your online communities without relying on predatory bloated companies.

[osunerd]

Initially hashtags were meant to be a system for tagging various topics, making them easier to find. It could be an event, some news, fandoms, cats, funny videos…endless as the topic that people discuss every day. All of them meant to help us organise and navigate the neverending datastream that is the internet.

Websites like Instagram or Twitter mostly use hashtags as a way to mark the conversation topic and promote yourself.

The platform shapes our style of communication - as has been noted by Tumblr user cop-disliker69.

(Due to Tumblr search function being…largely non-functional when it comes to finding a specific post, I was forced to find a Reddit post with the screenshot of my reference)

Tumblr has a uniquely different culture of hashtags. They are where the users put the thoughts they don't feel comfortable adding to the "main conversation". They are whispers, notes on the side of a book page. Written in pencil and never meant to be seen by anyone but the reader. Once the post is reposted, hashtags do not follow. The tags that show the user's thoughts and little takeaways are indubitably my favourite kind.

Tumblr tags range heavily depending on the user. Some genuinely attempt at tagging their favourite topics and making their blogs easier to navigate. Those are usually creators, who need their readers to be able to reliably search and find things on the blog. They are not an exception to the rule - they still put their miscellaneous thoughts in tags. Little bits and ideas that don't quite fit into the main body of the text.

This use of tags is widely accepted on Tumblr, and creators often look forward to seeing the comments and thoughts in hashtags of their reblogs, as was noted by Whimsicalentropy, a Tumblr user.

Some tags grow large enough to add the reposter's own story to the discussion - without making an already long post even longer with replies. It is also an outlet for shy people who do not have the confidence to put everything into the main body of the post. Tags can be a stream of consciousness, without much care for grammar or structure. They are simply there to help the user express themselves. Sometimes, they can look longer than the post itself.

Of course, with more recent updates, the normally hidden and semi-private (as much as anything is private on an open blog) can now be easily read on the app. A beautiful interaction between the main post, notes and tags is a rare, yet wholly enjoyable sight on Tumblr.

Tumblr has also added Notes, which can function as a mini-forum hidden under a post, but tags remain a large part of the Tumblr culture. Personally, I look forward to seeing how the use of tags and their alternatives develops, whether due to or despite the changes of the website.

[chouhatsumimi]

Hi! I am trying to become a japanese to English (& vice versa) translator. I can't find any sources to check the English to Japanese translation. It is difficult to get which grammar must be used since I am not a japanese native and don't know any natives to ask either. I have studied till N2 level but have no experience and must start freelancing to get experience so I need to figure out how to translate on my own. I can only use free translation software but I am not sure about it's reliability. I have seen questionable translations when it's for Japanese to English. Do think you can give any suggestions or anything that might be helpful?

Hi! I did put in a little time searching for the kind of tools you might have had in mind.

It seems that there are many that function in the exact same way but have different interfaces. Here are two of them. Many others can be found by searching "日本語文章校正ツール" or similar keywords. https://dw230.jp/kousei/

https://so-zou.jp/web-app/text/proofreading/

While they can point out some things to look out for, from the testing I did with them, they overlooked some pretty obvious errors, while also catching some things that I couldn't figure out why it thought it was wrong/sounded bad, or how to fix it.

There was one more I found that I didn't try, because it involves downloading software. This page explains the software, and another page on the site offers the download. The webpage is sponsored by a university, so I think it's safe to assume its trustworthy, but it might be a hassle and I can't say for sure if it works.

https://www.pawel.jp/outline_of_tools/tomarigi/

--------------------

That said, it's most common for translators to work from one language INTO their native language. While interpreters often have to go both directions (J <--> E), translators typically work either (J -> E) [English native speakers] OR (E -> J) [Japanese native speakers]. If you grew up bilingual, maybe you can translate both ways. But if English is your native language and you learned Japanese as a second language (which is true of my situation), it's pretty much not going to be worth bothering to do E->J translation, unless there are extenuating circumstances. The reasons for this are 1) You can't be sure that the translation you produce reads smoothly or is error-free 2) While you might think, but yes, if I do a really thorough check and compare it against native Japanese examples, I can be pretty darn sure it's perfect, the amount of time it takes you to do that is not going to be cost-effective. Like anything else, people purchasing translation as a service usually want the end result to be done well, in a timely manner, and as cheaply as possible, so it doesn't make sense to hire you for E -> J when they could hire a native Japanese speaking translator, or send their work to an agency to find that translator for them.

If you ARE translating into Japanese and are not a native speaker of Japanese, it is a good idea to have a fellow translator who has the opposite native language you do (in this case Japanese & English), and ask them to check it over for you (which, considering that's part of their job, you'd probably pay a small fee for). They could do the same to have you proofread their translations into English. Some translators consult friends/spouses, etc., but I think this can get old for them sometimes, so it's advisable not to rely on them for your job. You mentioned not having any native speakers to ask right now, but this is still an idea you can file away for in the future when you meet more people and get to know other translators.

In short, if you're aiming to become a translator working with Japanese but are not a native Japanese speaker, don't worry about translating into Japanese. Just focus on translating from Japanese into your native language.

--------------------

Translation software: let me make a distinction here between "machine translation" and "CAT [computer aided translation] tools".

Machine translation is Google Translate, DeepL, anything like that. There are times when they work well, but particularly with a language like Japanese that likes to imply a lot of information instead of stating it directly (such as who is doing the action described in the sentence), they're pretty much always going to miss something. In any situation that someone is looking to pay a translator to do work, it's because they already know machine translation won't cut it. One thing that's becoming more common is MTPE (machine translation post editing), where a translator "fixes" what's wrong with a machine translation (or more often than not, just re-translates it from scratch because what the machine came up with is mostly useless).

CAT tools, on the other hand, are widely used by translators. Paid CAT tools such as Trados, MemoQ, Memsource, etc. can be very expensive, and are often provided by a translation agency to their translators. (Also, most of them require a PC operating system.) There's more I could say, but since I haven't been in any situations that require them, I don't have any personal experience. I do have experience using OmegaT (free, works on Mac) and Felix (free, I use it on Windows). They both take a little tinkering to figure out how to use effectively, but basically what they do is, once you've translated a segment of text, they store the original segment and the translated segment, and for each new segment you go to translate, the CAT tool compares it to segments that you've previously translated to see if you can re-use any of what you came up with before. They can also have a built-in dictionary function, but that's basically just having your typical web-based dictionary but more automatically and in a more convenient location.

--------------------

For going into freelancing, I have a few recommendations.

Apart from CAT tools, some resources that I refer to frequently are http://nihongo.monash.edu/cgi-bin/wwwjdic?9T (basically looks up all the words in a sentence at once), http://thejadednetwork.com/sfx/ (if you're doing anything with sound effects, like manga), https://tsukubawebcorpus.jp//search/ (this is a corpus, I have another post on how to use it -here-, it's probably going to be your best bet when it comes to checking grammar), https://books.google.com/ngrams (for when it comes to figuring out what turns of phrase are commonly used in English), and https://yomikatawa.com/ (for figuring out the readings of names in Japanese, though there are other sites that work similarly).

When it comes to practicing, contests are a good place to start. The two I know of now are run by JAT in October (https://jat.org/events/contests) and JLPP deadline of 7/31 (and they're long, so it's probably too late for this year unless you're free between now and then: https://www.jlpp.go.jp/en/competition6/competition6en.html ) You can also practicing doing translations for fun. Any kind of media you enjoy (manga, video games, variety shows, newspaper articles) is a good target for doing a practice translation. Just be wary that it's not a good idea to post your translation in a public location on the internet, because it could be infringing copyright/licensing agreements, etc. Finally, there are websites like Gengo, Conyac, Fiverr and others where you can do gig translation work. They can be useful for practice, but also have the pitfall of paying, like, 5% of the rate you should be getting. This is an ongoing debate because on one hand, you can get practice while still getting a little money for it, but on the other hand, if customers can get people to do that work for 5% of a livable wage, that makes it harder for aspiring and working translators to find enough work that pays well enough to support themselves doing only translation for a living. Entertainment (primarily manga) scanlation groups also a significant enough force to merit a mention here- many aspiring entertainment translators find themselves a part of such a group. Practice is practice and developing your skills is important, but they also have many many of the same problems associated with them as I mentioned above, namely infringing on copyright and contributing to the inability of anyone to turn entertainment translation into a livable full-time job.

Another recommendation I have is to join some J/E translation-focused groups. This page lists a number of them: https://shinpaideshou.com/translation/ I can personally vouch for JAT as I am a member and I got my current job by being part of their directory. They run an online training program (eJuku) once a year around April, and applications only stay open for a few days, so if you're interested make sure you keep your eye out. Another one not listed on that page is https://swet.jp/ which is not entirely about translation, but it is heavily related and they host some good events. Twitter is also a very good place to be if you're getting into J/E translation. I prefer to keep my tumblr and twitter separate but if you DM me, I can give you my handle so you can see who I follow and who among that seems worth following to you.

--------------------

In closing, I see you say "I have studied till N2 level but have no experience and must start freelancing to get experience so I need to figure out how to translate on my own." I'd say, give yourself some time. Even at N1 there's still going to be a lot you don't understand (or at least there was for me, that's why I started this langblr). I'm sure there are differences in our situations, but it was about five years ago for me that I started diving into translation- I think I was between N2 and N1 then. I've done a lot of translating and gotten a lot of experience since then, but I also have and am experiencing a lot of burnout. (In fact, I'm procrastinating right now by answering this....) Many translators have a job and translate on the side, and it's also common to gain experience with a company or agency before diving into supporting yourself on freelance work. I'd encourage you to take a breath, get experience when and where you can, and remember that if you keep at it long enough, you're sure to get there- just don't wear yourself out or worry to death in the meantime!

OH and definitely keep track of what projects you do, how long they are, and how long it takes you to do them! Knowing your speed is important when it comes to setting your working rates. I am always doubting these, and they differ from person to person, but my current estimates are that I can do 600 moji (Japanese characters) per hour, ~10 min. of audio per hour, and I try to aim for $45~$60 per hour. Generally the lowest acceptable standard rates are $0.05-$0.06 per moji and ~$5 per page of manga. You'll definitely get requests lower than that, so remember your sanity and don't be afraid to say no, there are plenty of opportunities out there!

[keenmarvellover]

POSTS FOR YOU - 4

Some links to posts with valuable content you want in one place.(BASICALLY EVERYTHING IS THERE)

Suggestions and Recommendations are appreciated and accepted.

Last Updated : 13/10/2021 (x)

NOTE: Some of these post are written in a crude and unruly fashion. But they contain valuable tips, guidance and information. If you can't/don't want to read such posts, then don't read.

POSTS FOR YOU MASTERLIST

Mental Health

Helpful Phrases to say to a Anxious Person

Both for Children and Adults

Health

Don't ignore Pain

And don't let your doctors ignore your pain for NO reason either. (Post II)

Things Women Were Probably Not Taught About Their Bodies But Should Know

There are many things women are not taught about their bodies and their bodily functions which they should know.. Here is a list of some of them.

Checking for Breast Cancer

There are many other signs apart from lumps.

Washable, Reusable Menstrual Pads

Use reusable menstrual hygiene product, which are an environmental friendly alternative to disposable sanitary napkins or menstrual cups. (Part II)

Artists

Color Palettes

Method to make your color palette

Save your Dried Paint Brushes

Check out this video

Writers

Soulmate AU Story Ideas

A post listing all of them!!!

Writer Block Hacks

Writer exercises to get over Writers Block

60 Awesome Search Engines for Serious Writers

Both writers still in college and those on their way to professional success will appreciate this list of useful search applications that are great from making writing a little easier and more efficient.

Writing about Alcoholic Drinks and Cocktails

How to write believable bar and nightclub scenes

Readers

Check out if your free

Articles, essays, youtube channels, podcasts etc.

Access News sites with Paywall

Because reliable, trustworthy news should be easily accessible

Students

How to remain productive with online classes

Tips from a neurodivergent academic

Access to Scientfic Articles and Textbooks

DO not use it as it pisses off people with money

How to take Notes

The post is very crude but so very helpful

For students

EVERYTHING is covered.

Micellaneous

CONTRACTS: DO's and DON'Ts

A must read for everyone

How to explain a gap in your Resume

Some tips from a Recruiter

Resources for Mending Clothes

Saves money and the planet.

Masterpost for Living Alone

Living like an adult. (This masterpost includes on tips to save money, job,cooking, everthing related to adulting)

COOKING BASICS

This is for everyone.

Fandom for Beginners

For all Beginners on Tumblr

Adding Pockets to your Pants

Add pockets to your pants with this post.

Computer Shortcuts

Lots of neat tricks to help make your life easier

Writing a Thank-You Note

A small post giving tips to write a good thank you note

Herb Spirals

Enjoy!! :)

Desis

Indian Non-Fiction

A list of books on India, almost all of which are by Indian writers; most of them are about history in one way or other but they also involve politics, culture, and religion.

India's Censorship

How to bypass it?

Safety

Are you in a Cult?

Check out this post to recognise signs of Cult and common myths on this topic

What are Rip zones (on beaches) and how dangerous are they? How to recognise them?

Websites that help with Content Filtering and Content Warning

How to track down Anon Asks?

[gfascii]

An effortpost on making ASCII art in 2021

Because an anon asked how to get started and where to find the characters, and I accidentally removed their ask when typing my response.

The characters you want to use depends on what kind of ASCII you want to make, and where you'll be posting it!

This site contains all "printable" and "extended" ASCII characters, and their corresponding Alt codes for easy typing. Printable characters are everything you see labeled on a physical QWERTY keyboard, and are the only characters you can use if you are using a non-variable width font such as Courier. Extended are characters like ƒ and ®.

This is what Courier/code font looks like. Every ASCII character is the same width, so any ASCII you make like this will retain its form if you post it in Discord, Twitch, other sites with a "code" function. The tradeoff is you have less detail to work with unless you make the ASCII art huge.

This generator turns uploaded images into "dot matrix" ASCII that only use periods. You commonly see these in Twitch chat and such.

The art I make uses the non-variable width font Arial. Non-variable width fonts are what you see everywhere these days; this tumblr post is using non-variable width! You can get more detailed ASCII art out of these fonts, but you can only reliably copy/paste them in very few online spaces (which is why I can only share my art via screenshots). No one has yet made an ASCII generator in this style; everything is made manually. I have collected a list of tutorials on my site that cover this style and the most useful characters in the extended ASCII table. I’ll probably make one myself sooner or later.

If you want to go even further beyond, Kaomoji is big right now.

(´｡• ω •｡`)

Where the old-school western emoticon game stalled over a decade ago, Japanese emoticons have proliferated. These use a combination of ASCII and Unicode characters. You might think of Unicode as “literally everything you don’t see in the ASCII table." There are shortcuts for inserting Unicode characters on Windows desktop, which this Microsoft article goes into a lot of detail about (as well as inserting plain ASCII characters). Since Unicode covers thousands of characters, I can't make any recommendations on how to find ones you like, which is why I linked the Kaomoji site which will let you curate specific characters.

I have little personal advice to offer anyone who wants to go full weeb and learn Japanese ASCII art, better known as AA, technically known as Shift_JIS (SJIS) Art. Even the few but persistent Japanese users who still make AA use specialized software that's tuned to the format of the image boards they post their work on. Like Kaomoji though, here is a site that archives more AA than I've seen anywhere else, along with the source text so you can copy/paste, and curate characters. It's...kind of a pain to use, but even if you just want to look at AA, it's a pro click. Beyond that, you can also follow AA makers on Twitter and maybe even ask them questions! For search references, the tag for AA on Twitter and Pixiv is "#アスキーアート".

Will update and reblog this post if I think of more info but that's the large of it. I have trouble keeping to an update schedule for this blog but I will answer any asks in a short time so please ask any questions you have!

[pitheinfinite]

Experiment: We can all be Lana.

It’s been months since Lana stopped update, with more cc-reblogging simblrs, now it seems to be easier for us to find reliable sources of cc update. However, Lana’s case proves the idea of relying on a certain small group of people to update the cc is far from a sustainable approach. 

To make sure every (or most of) newly-released cc to be covered, we can:

use a crawler program to monitor tumblr: with tumblr’s crappy search function, I think we can all agree it won’t be a reliable method.

find a platform for all creators to update their works, which is basically TSR & MTS, only now in this case, it’s tumblr. Tumblr also offers group blog (not the new group chatroom service) which I learned recently that it allows unlimited multiple members to make/edit/reblog/delete posts under at least one administrator. [details of tumblr group blog]  It is this service I believe can be better applied to solve our post-Lana challenge.

Sharing cc among different platforms can be a pain in the a** for most creators, at least for me lol. But, as a member of this said group blog, creators can reblog their posts painlessly. The process is exactly the same with reblogging among one’s own sideblogs. 

‘Course we still need admins to maintain the tagging system and monitor abuses or rule-breaking activities, but comparing to follow 200+ creators and scrolling through all the new posts daily to make sure every piece of new cc is updated, I’d say that’s a piece of cake, a very tiny one. 

Besides, a group blog is not attached to any specific user, which means if the original owner of the blog left, the blog still keeps running under other admins control, or in the worst case, the only admin left, thena random member will be promoted to be the admin for the blog to keep running. However, the admin has the ultimate control, including the power to delete the whole blog, and can’t be demoted to be a member, so we must be extra careful when selecting our admins.  

Other than that, we also need to set some ground rules like:

every post has equal exposure: Only new cc should be reblogged and for once only. Another point I ‘d like to stress out is that this new Lana should be designed to introduce new creations to the broader community. We have tons of awesome TS3 cc, but they are shared among many cc-finds already. Let’s give newcomers and less known creators a stage to shine.

no controversial cc will be allowed: To avoid jeopardizing the whole blog, all conversions should be reblogged with clear and detailed credit. 

Whoever break these rules will be warned and even removed according the extent of violation.

I started pis3update to promote the latest cc in this February, and the past 9 months shows this is quite a burden for one person, even with the aid of powerful extensions. The stress of worrying I might neglect or miss any new cc is not healthy and very likely to force me back to fully focus on cc-creation. 

We keep saying it’s vital to remain flexible and fun with the game and tumblr, but how are we supposed to do that without this daily obligation turning into a job to be done? Maybe I regard this as a task because how I started it, unlike other diligent cc-finds. In spite of that, if we don’t have a reliable system for this, we will always have another Lana disaster, only with different names. 

Instead of having a certain group of people to serve the community, why don’t we share the responsibility as a community? With everyone doing their little share, we can build a sustainable mechanism, even if some of us leave.   

Therefore I’d like to try the group blog idea with pis3update and its 600 followers, along with some necessary adjustment ofc, such as improvement over the tagging system & layout. There will also be a submit option for creators who has concern over joining such a group blog as a member.

I’d like to know your opinions over this proposal, please spread the word so we can get more people involved and improve the project. If you would like to support this idea as a creator, please do let me know so I can invite you when the new system is ready. 

[fenharel]

how to support content creators

i see a lot of posts that complain about the insanely unbalanced like & reblog ratio on posts these days, or that posts just don’t get any notes anymore and while i 100% agree on this, i think it is also important to point out how exactly we can actually change this, especially for people who might not even have been on tumblr when it was almost normal to get at least 1k notes on a regular gifset.

i’m fully convinced that it is not only the popular culture of having certain blog aesthetics that stop people from reblogging things, but that also tumblr itself has made it harder and harder for content creators to spread their work around because of certain changes this site has made over the years. here are some quick things you can do to frequently see new content:

turn off “best stuff first”, luckily i’ve “only” seen this feature on the mobile app, but it is turned on by default & if you regularly use the app, please turn it off. otherwise you will mainly see content that is already circulating around, while new posts will be pushed back.

another thing you can do if you use mobile and search for specific content, switch to #tagged, so you can see the most recent posts without relying on the search function.

if you use the desktop version of tumblr and lets say you’re searching for example new star wars content, switch the default “search” to /tagged/ instead. you might ask yourself, why? simple: because the search function is trash, but more on that in a second.

if this seems too much of a hassle for you, you can install xkit extensions called “classic search” and “tag tracking +”. it will automatically redirect you to the old tracking system instead of the search one. and also! you can easily keep track on new content through your dashboard, like it used to be before tumblr introduced search. so lets say you love the lord of the rings and marvel, you will always be informed quite easily if someone made something new by tracking related tags, right on your dashboard (it’s called “follow this search” now, you’ll see it if you’re on the /tagged/ page of a specific tag).

if you insist on using the search function, switch it up to let it show you the “most recent” posts. tumblr will always show you the most popular posts on default. meaning: tumblr will always show you posts that already have thousands of notes/posts that are currently circulating around and new posts will be at the back, if they even show up at all. “search” is at least in my experience, not reliable and has a tendency to eat up posts and just don’t show them at all. (especially on blogs). however it is worth mentioning that “search” is supposed to find at least the first 10 tags someone made, while “tagged” shows the first 5.

peak into tags creators use to tag their work! i’ve already shown some examples on some of the screenshots above, but basically most creators use [fandom]edit or [fandom]edits tags on their work. this can also apply to specific characters [character name]edit or even fanficiton [fandom]fic. don’t be afraid of unnecessary discourse in those tags, you’ll usually only find creative content on there.

this is very important: because tumblr has made it so hard for creators to be seen, these days no one will see content unless people reblog it and share it with their followers. you might have seen a popular theme on this post of tumblr showing us “the best stuff first :)” and such. this is why we keep complaining about the unbalanced like/reblog ratio. blog aesthetics aside, if you clicked on “like” on a gifset, it usually means that you liked it, right? now imagine this gifset someone has made for 4 hours straight and you though it was pretty, slowy dying away unnoticed even though it was meant to appreciate our nerdy interests together, because it will die.

another thing: i know fandom can be toxic, full of bullies and incredibly close minded in their little “purity culture” bubble. if you are afraid to reblog something because you might get shit for it, don’t be. we need to slowly re-learn to like things just for the sake of having fun, because fandom is supposed to be fun. we have valid problems on this earth and i can guarantee you they have nothing to do with a fictional villain in a movie. you don’t owe anyone on this site anything, unapologetically love what you love.

that’s all i can think about right now, if i have forgotten something, feel free to add it on this post. please be aware that if we as users do not change our way of using this site, nothing will change, because tumblr as a website simply does not care about their content creators. and content creators in return, will slowly delete or stop making content for us altogether.

[danbensen]

…or how tracking my life told me I was abusing coffee and social media

So there I was, my nails digging into my palms, my right molars pressed into each other. The air hissed in through my nose as my vision narrowed to a point. It was like hurtling down a roller-coaster. It was was terrifying, and I had no idea why it was happening.

I’d be doing nothing especially ominous – sitting down on the couch, carrying my younger daughter, thinking about bread – and suddenly I’d be gripped by this intense sensation of danger. BREAD! The image of a whole-grain loaf gained the mass of a church bell. DOOM! It rang. Toll the yeasty knell, oh brazen fate, for all men shall one day die. Die, oh, mortal flesh. Die and meet thy baker. (whoo! I am so sorry about that pun. Deep breaths now…)

Tiny drops of steam Ebb and flow before the light With each of my breaths.

It was ridiculous, but of course knowing that it was ridiculous didn’t help. I was like a cat, freaking out for no reason. Or was there no reason? Aren’t I supposed to listen to my body, now that I’m meditating and whatnot? But what exactly was my body supposed to be telling me? Avoid carbs? Run from the couch? Something about my daughter…? Yeah, If I searched hard enough for a reason to be terrified, I’d surely find one. Now there’s a reason for fear.

So I meditated more. I stopped using social media. I took my daughters to the park and watched the sky as it changed from brass to rose and the street lights blinked on. I talked to Pavlina. And I realized that over the course of the past month, I’d gone from drinking two cups of coffee a day to four.

The trees turn black and The sky, indescribable. Look up and it’s changed.

Scheduling is hard. My older daughter’s in first grade now, and school starts at 8:10 in the Center. The younger one’s in kindergarten, which starts at 8:30 in Levski G. At some point, it would be nice if Pavlina and I could go to work, which is back in the Center. If we want to have breakfast and drink our coffee in peace, we need to wake up at 6:15. Three hours later, I’m finally in the office and I’m tired. That scares me because I associate being tired with being sick. Fatigue=death.

I’m supposed to listen to my body, but my body is a stupid animal. It’s not going to say, “you’re drinking too much coffee.” It says “coffee reminds me of being happy!” and “not being productive scares me!” It says “I’m tired! I must have cancer again!” It’s up to me to keep track of what I’m doing, cut out the distractions, and give myself enough mental room to notice the patterns.

Right. So that’s why I’m not doing social media any more. Because part of the reason I was too distracted to notice I was drinking too much coffee was the last newsletter I wrote. I posted it on facebook, which made me want to check facebook for likes and comments. And once I was on facebook, why not see what other people are posting? Oh. Oh. That’s what they’re posting. Oh no.

I debated writing this explanation. Why not just stop using social media? Why talk about it on social media? But my litmus test for whether I should write something is “will this help people?” Maybe this is helpful: social media is distracting and depressing. It fills my head with noise. Maybe you have the same problem and this is the solution.

The sky at seven The color of hope that hurts And the crying swifts

I’ll continue to post my work on my website (including these newsletters) and mirror or link to those posts on Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook. Readers are welcome to like and comment, but I’ll only read those comments once a week (Friday seems like a good day). Comments on my website, PMs, and emails to me will get my attention earlier. I won’t read any content that isn’t sent personally to me or that I didn’t sign up for. Hopefully that means I’ll still get news from people I care about, but not about tragedies that I have no power to solve. That way, I can continue to function from hour to hour.

What do you think? Is this going to work? Can I stay connected without sacrificing my mental health? Let me know in the comments. Or even better, email me.

In other news, I had some good writing stuff happen this month. Interchange has hit its 2/3 mark and, more importantly, its rhythm. I’ve managed to block off a fairly reliable 90-minute chunk of time in the mornings, which I use to meditate and then “speedwrite,” which means writing without thinking about what I’m doing. I generally end up with a single element of a scene, such as the conversation the characters are having, how they feel, what’s going on in the environment, or what actions the characters are taking.

Then I usually have some time after lunch (and my second and final coffee), and I can layer those scene-pieces onto each other and smooth the edges. If I have more time, I do research, which usually involves shooting messages to generous experts. In this way, the inestimable and inspiring Thomas Duffy helped me tie a ribbon around the center of my book, in which a biologist’s subconscious belief that she owns the environment she’s studying leads her to destroy it. As the forest crumbles around her, she blames herself…then makes exactly the wrong decision about what to do next. Yeah! Fiction! Thomas, I’m going to send you roses or cacti or something.

Another new tradition I’ve instituted is spending my Friday mornings not working on Interchange. It’s a little release of pressure, a chance to play and remind myself that writing isn’t just another chore I have to do. The first week, it was a short story. That one turned out so well, I’m going to try to publish it. It’s called “The Sales Event” and it’s about smart phones and general relativity. Do you want to beta-reader it?

I got another couple of “no”s from publishers about The Sultan’s Enchanter, but one of them was that very gratifying “no” that comes at the head of a long list of things I could do to fix the story. Making those fixes will be educational, even if that particular publisher still passes. Wealthgiver is rather like The Sultan’s Enchanter, after all, and the lessons I learn from one will be important for the other. The world needs more books about amoral Balkan people!

Yeah, I’m still working on Wealthgiver’s neo-Thracian language. I even posted a little of it on Tumblr. But don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten my little goats!

Kapt kapēnon ainē kesa / byźai darsai ypo dēsâ. Ēbron, aiźi, byźâs kâ / skalmon, bleptē, bystâs kâ, As tae yper iatśikan / kapâ pe ta ve abbrinkan.

There were at one time / brave goats under heaven. A kid, a nanny, and a billy goat / clever, loyal, and tough, Who would dance up / a hill for to make themselves fat.

Dâ ispilsen opē rinkon strymē / parân ân, śân târâ dymâ. Iśē iserpa źēryntē / źymlē mērē urdēnē. Byźulâs ada pyrân źilmân / dâ bolvarâs pia rhobton saimân.

But a quick-flowing river blocked / the path with an evil guard. There coiled a beast / a great water-dragon. A goat will eat green grains / but a serpent will slurp blood

Peskēnon ērga ēbron do. / Pliskon ērga śân negō. Źymlē zē semân iglytsa. / “Kis ēs tu?” Neston iglâtsa. “Semâs manon ēm ēźo.” / “San ar ēsti? Abadam so!”

First comes the kid. / It splashes with its hooves. The dragon heard this. / “Who are you?” she roared. “This only am I.” / “Is it so? I will eat you up!”

Things are heating up! I’m still not entirely comfortable with the articles and deitics, but I do like that last line. And the orthography is shaping up nicely. I love googly things over letters.

Another potential conlanging project for that other hundred years I plan to live: Western Hellenism. What if the Greeks had conquered Iberia?

And finally, PROTECTOR! This is the comic project I’ve been working on for literally six years. Words by me and Simon Roy, inks by Atryom Trakhanov, colors by Jason Wordie, and lettering by Hassan Otsmane-Elhadu. What a crazy, fun, glorious process this collaboration was!

Protector is a post-apocalyptic scifi story about a slave who stumbles across “a demon of the Profligate Age,” a military cyborg who’s been in hibernation for the past thousand years. The post-human robots who are terraforming the Earth are not amused, and send in some sweaty future-vikings to put a stop to these shenanigans.

There will be five issues, and issue one comes out in January. If you’re interested, please order a copy, or better yet, tell your local comic or book store to order lots of copies! Give us some numbers that will convince Image to ask for a sequel

And finally, some books and stuff

Daring Greatly by Brené Brown – this book wasn’t as transformative for me as it could have been because I’ve read Brown before and I already agree with her. Shame is bad. Vulnerability is the cure. Bam. What I like about Brown is that she collects good data, lets it prove her wrong, and suggests how the lessons from the data can be usefully applied. It’s not just science, it’s engineering.

Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold – I think this was the third read. What happens when GM humans become obsolete? What happens when an engineer has a spiritual epiphany? It wasn’t quite as much fun as some of Bujold’s other science fiction, but it has a lot of heart.

Spooky Action at a Distance by George Musser – an excellent physics book, examining the concept of space, which lies at the center of the contradictions of relativity and quantum physics. If space didn’t exist, the universe would be chaos, but a lot of experiments only make sense if space _doesn’t_ exist. Great stuff, and it inspired that short story I’m so proud of.

Death by Water by Kerry Greenwood – a refreshing splash of chilly New Zealand sea spray. Phryne pursues a jewel thief and has a little bit of sex, but a lot of good food, drink, and dancing. There’s also a hakka.

Wicked Prey by John Sandford – it was actually a little boring. The police’s side of the story didn’t hold up as well as the criminals’. But this is a relatively early book in the series, which means Sandford is improving.

The Upright Go Pro – it’s a little device that you glue to your upper back so it will buzz at you when you slouch. Immediately after I put it on, I realized I have little tiny tyrannosaurus arms that don’t reach any table or counter-top. It ran out of batteries one day and man did my back hurt that night. So I guess it’s working.

Gravity by Against the Current and Brighter by Patent Pending – Good Interchange music.

Be Kind to Yourself by Andrew Peterson – It makes me feel better.

Song of Durin by Clamavi De Profundis – I haven’t gotten goosebumps from a song in a long time. It’s about dwarves.

The Twits by Roald Dahl – I read it to my older daughter and boy howdy did Roald Dahl know how to write for children. Everything seems utterly ridiculous but it all somehow satisfies. Like eating dirt cake.

Steven Universe – My younger daughter found me rewatching it on my phone and made me cast it on the big TV. Now it’s all “I wanna watch Steeben dabout a Giant Woman. I’m Pearl.” No, younger daughter, you are not Pearl. Pearl is my older daughter. My younger daughter is Amethyst. Nobody is more Amethyst than my younger daughter. (I’m Peridot)

[skinny-boy-endeavours]

Warning: this message might shock most people, although I assume only people with an interest in these issues are likely to read it till the end, and if you are an ex-anorexic or bulimic, or a person scanning the web in search for potential culprits against your good sense, this is perhaps not going to please you. All the same, I will write it.

Since I have been living with eating disorders, more than a decade, and very nearly two decades have elapsed, and since I have joined Tumblr in a hope of finding some comfort and expressing myself at times like “these”, not even one decade has elapsed. I am a boy, I am twenty-eight, I have suffered from eating disorders for as long as I can remember, at about when switching from childhood to adolescence. I have taken a lot upon myself, and am still taking quite a lot, either out of habit or by sheer automatic resignation. I have finished my studies, I have my university diploma, I have remained at the same workplace for several years and I am both reliable and disciplined. But in the last ten years, I have been hospitalized a dozen of times, most of which upon my own free decision, and always seemed to recover a little more each time from I knew not what exactly, but that made me heartsick to the extent of driving myself to suicide on several occasions (at least 5, almost successful, by severe poisoning). I did not heed, at first, that my parents and their controlling temperament and conduct towards me might have the invisible cause behind all my self-destructive behaviours. I still find it hard to evaluate to what extent their pressurizing and eternally unsatisfied influence has driven me to hate myself only, to bear all the pain and to live only a small percentage of what is normally called “life” only to justify my existence and temper their grave looks upon my miserable person. The first thing to be said is that anorexia, bulimia, eating disorders in general and all feverous afflictions, when befalling a young person, girl or boy, is never a “fancy”, nor an invention of problems that were nonexistent beforehand, but a real discomfort, if not a living pain that is being converted into self-destruction, for want of a proper way out to an every-moment-guilt of being alive, under the control pf one’s parents, for they are authorities that are not to be gotten rid of as long as the child is a “minor” or is under their tutelage. Even when this comes to pass, the sentiment of the child who has lived under such a control for years, legally speaking, may and sometimes will inevitably reproduce his unhealthy patterns, either by the constant skin-deep memory of his former captivity of lack of freedom, which, after all, and I understand it now, is the sole and only motive for eating disorders in an adolescent and for an entire-life-wrecking nervous indisposition. I have noticed that at a healthy distance from my parents, I thrive rather well, although I still am fragile, and that when I am intensely with them for at least three or four days, this fragility is increased twice, thrice or more, proportionally to the albeit small time I have passed in the fateful company of my parents, who, despite what might be concluded from the above-written, are loving and caring, and wish nothing but my wellbeing. How then is it possible to feel, to declare oneself oppressed and pressed if one’s parents do not beat or ill treat one ? This is the whole issue: the pain inflicted by controlling parents is infinitely more subtle than any amount of “Physical” beating or mistreatment. All the more, that it is involuntary, and the parents do not realize the pain they are inflicting, and their ignorance of their very own misbehaviour is greater as they don,t understand that their love for their children is being counterproductive and is actually undermining their child’s development into healthy adults, and most of the time, driving them to self-destructive behaviours. This is no victim-playing, one has better things to do than looking, and even finding, guilt where it dos not have an actual existence. But in this lies the problem of nervous disorders into young people and their subsequent mark left upon the young people who have become adults and have to live with their self-destructive envies or direct behaviours, probably until they die, having half-lived only, become the ghost of their either living or dead parents has taken much of their energy and has achieved its final task: make oneself self-hating although alive and “functional” in society. I know why initially, eating disorder suffering patients were rightfully and tactfully removed from their families, from the sickening environment almost entirely manifested by the parent(s) or care-giver, of whoever while wishing the best for one’s child, drives her or him to seek freedom from the yoke through means by which they can escape, both physically and emotionally, and breathe, and while in the presence of the yoke-masters, feel themselves free, at least temporarily, by taking control over the only things they have any over: in this case, food intake, calorie outtake, etc. Drug problems, self-harm, and the like, are all ways of coping with a pressure than has become internalized and persists even when the subject is withdrawn from his familial environment for one’s best recovery or when one is definitely away from it. So tis is what I feel today, and what I come to realize. Of course, I am aware that this may be my case only, and that for all sorts of people, all sorts of circumstances are accountable for all sorts of joys and pains, and consequent self-building or self-destructive behaviours; that all cases of nervous indispositions are not imputable to the familial environment or the parental controlling facies, yet, this is my case and for my wellbeing, I must try to formulate it in a rational manner both for myself and for those whom it might be of use to to read these sentences and find that, as invisible as it is, the cause of their nervous disorders (I must insist, also, that a nervous disorder is not a mere nervosity or stress felt from time to time, but a fundamental indisposition of the whole nervous system, that affect the entire life and both physical and mental health of an individual, and it often drives one from depression to anxiety and back again, until one either is taken into a hospital for rest, or commits suicide although the material conditions in which he lives are what most of our “gentle-natured philanthropists would consider to be far above 2/3 of the world’s average material conditions). The whole point of this is not to throw guilt everlastingly upon one’s parents for all that happens, far from it. But if one is of a fragile nervous disposition and his parental environment does not help this disposition otherwise than retrogressively, as in my case of a till-here lasting eating disorder and as I imagine, of several if not most other people, girls or boys, with eating disorders, then severance from those austere parents is perhaps the first and most important step to be taken, either by the patient’s initiative or by his therapist. It may not be advisable in all cases, as the patient’s have different personalities and have received the more or less bad influence from their own different environments, but I am quite certain that in many instances of anorexia or bulimia or other EDs, this severance is salutary, and may, at the patient’s will, be prolonged as indefinitely as needed, for the invisible controlling influence can follow the patient, as I have already said, like a ghost, it matters not if the parents are still “physically” alive or not, or have been “objectively” demanding/austere/controlling/oppressing. The goal of this is not to spend one’s life in accusation of one’s parents, nor to remain mournful of one’s past, but once this step made, this important step, for the patient to be able to distinguish the part of himself that WANTS to suffer, to destroy himself and punish himself (eating disorders are self-harming coping methods, again, that can become internalized and last within the individual even years after the last definite severance from the individual’s unheeding parental environment/influence. I have repeatedly insisted upon this point, because once understood, as an underlying rule to unlock a difficult calculus of mathematics or physics, it will become not only easier, but truly feasible for the patient, whether he his 12 or 30, to know herself or himself and, as I had started to disert upon a little earlier, to know that his unhappiness is rooted in a self-hated that is rooted in a distorted perception of one’s worth and value as a human, as she or he perceives herself of himself as the direct product of his parents and must be perfect in every way and every instance, until it becomes untenable and metamorphoses itself into an altogether endeavour for irreproachability and self-control, which in its turn becomes what we call an “eating” disorder”. This is no freudian explanation of the mother or father sense within the child who either wants to kill the latter in order to freely fuck the former or simply hates them and eventually, himself, and strive never to resemble either of them by saying yes when they say no and reversely. This only means that the motive for an eating disorder is, in many cases, whether felt immediately and clearly or not, or only later, and to various degrees, a consequence of one’s unhealthy parental behaviour. I have written all this because it has become clear over time, gradually, and not all at once nor in a very definite and clear perception, for it is likely to change over time, as I live on, but these two tendencies, I have observed to remain constant and increasingly self-evident over time, regardless of individual circumstances: that is, 1) that my self-observation has always led me to understand that my self-destructive tendency varies along with my frequentation and near-sensing of my parents, who renew my self-hate, diminish or augment it proportionally, 2) that as long as eating disorders have been observed, whether they had already received a name of some sort or this generally nowadays accepted name, the tendency of the observer was that either the mother or the father had a devastating influence upon their child, an influence which, albeit invisible or at least very subtile, is very real and real enough to drive the child to self-destruction although their material condition is either normal or above the average. They are unhappy and feel oppressed enough to starve themselves, or to purge themselves, or have suicidal thoughts and or behaviours. Even in ancient cases, such as the all-too-famous on of Santa Caterina da Siena, the anorexic behaviour was associated if not entirely attributable to the mother’s controlling influence. In some other cases, modern or ancient, it may be the father’s controlling influence, which, of course, might not be physically agressive, but, upon a subtler plane, emotionally, intellectually, agressive, often when he has achieved some degree of intellectual authority and tries to impress it upon his child’s senses that she or he is to be at least equally rigorous, important or what not, which the child would have fain achieved even, and better so, without this moral pressure upon her or his nerves. Now, there are things upon which one cannot go back, but it is important, at least for me at this moment, to identify this cause, and to work from the knowledge of that efficient cause of the nervous/eating disorder to move forward, and have a decent life, because one cannot have it unless one makes this turn upon oneself and sees that what impedes one is the parental ghost, and I mean this without any psychoanalytical sentiment, for I do not see it as intervening in the eating disorder instance. This is equally true in the case of the freudian explanation of anorexia, that the mother being the material feeder of the child, the child stops eating when his mother’s will she or he fells antagonistic to its own. This is good for allegorical mythology, but not for practical problems that demand a practical solution: in this instance, what has to be understood, and what indeed HAS a relationship with either of the patient’s parents or with both, is that across time and space, this relationship is the root of the problem, which itself is not a one-sided guilt, it would be too easy, but rather a bad or shock meeting of genetic nervous indisposition on one side and of an austere or controlling parental influence on the other. Eating disorders become the only way out imaginable for this situation that involves no culprit but that involves as surely as possible at least one victim: the child who seeks freedom from a legal bondage, and tries to grow and to develop herself or himself under this constant nervous strain. The formerly eating-disordered children who, like myself, have gone into the adult age still carrying their self-destructive patterns and have tried to be a good citizen while waking with the envy of suicide in the morning and going to bed in tears, sleeping by the grace of strong drugs and working like a normal person by who knows whose grace, must, I declare it bluntly, turnabout and sweet is the cause of their lasting pain and poor mental health, which, in this instance, affects the whole physical organism equally, and can damage it permanently (the nervous indisposition has already a disabling effect upon the entire being, both during the adolescent growth wherein the individual is normally meant to build himself, and after the end of hormonal growth when one is an adult; the added problem of an eating disorder, superposed upon this already fragile nervous system, may be very destructive physically, and even more so as time rolls on, but also on the mind and the emotional faculties, which become prematurely tired and strained, especially when entertained over years, and eventually decades). I therefore conclude my long word, and also congratulate my reader upon his patience, by saying that an eating disorder is controlling parental influence + genetic nervous disposition and that the recovery can neither be forced upon the patient as an evidence nor even occur in the mind of the patient while her or his father or mother has not been identified as the cause of her or his emotional imbalance, and subsequently and consequently, been put aside from one’s life and definitely either discarded or healthily dealt with (by regulating, if not abolishing, the rapports one has with one’s parents or with the one in question that has an unhealthy bearing upon the child’s nerves). Now, this is only my opinion, and I perhaps imagine everything and I am not sick after all and all this is but a bad dream... But, on the other hand, I know not why, I feel that most eating disordered people, young or less young, will relate with the few statements I have abode made, and find that they describe their own cases quite accurately, because what I have singled out as the one invariable ou almost invariable tendency across time and space, in the case of EDS, is the parental influence, and it is a tendency because it cannot, totally at least, be dissociated from the very problem of EDs, and I am quite sure that those who have read this hitherto shall feel that they are not alone, and that behind their apparent madness, and underneath their emotional pain, there is something quite similar across the cases, and that something subtle lies at the foundation of it, something that has its constancy across the circumstances, and that determines the appearance of the coping method known under the name of eating disorders.

Saturday the 18th of May, 2019

[ill-be-istj-if-no-one-else-is]

Hi! I have a problem with my type. I was sure being an INFJ, but recently I feel sceptical. I did few cognitive functions tests and always I got ISFJ. I’m not really noticing when it comes to my surroundings (I saw a “new” tree after its two years standing in front of my house), which I think is a N thing. However I don’t really enjoy talking about extremely philosophical aspects (universe, religion etc) which is enjoyable for my co-intuitives. I feel unsure. Could you compare an ISFJ and INFJ?

I’m going to use this answer of a demonstration of why it’s valuable to read the FAQ and a tour of what the FAQ contains. I will freely admit this isn’t the nicest thing to do but the upside is you’ll get pointed to the specific parts of the FAQ you should read, when otherwise I would have just deleted this question.

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First: the FAQ is accessible from both mobile and desktop in my blog description. If you access it from mobile, you will see the FAQ in my description; if you access it from desktop, you will see the FAQ in my description and in the top link bar, including while you’re actually asking the question, to wit:

Now, the FAQ itself:

The very first line has the following:

Read this first for MBTI stuff (crash course). Had anon read this link, they would have gotten a brief overview of the functions and would have both seen a note that they should try and learn more, and might have noticed that at no point was there a mention of philosophy in relation to the intuitive functions.

A few lines down and they would have gotten to the guidelines, including the searchable, repetitive, and irrelevant asks section, which is a little preaching to the choir in that someone who reads the FAQ probably doesn’t need that advice but I cannot beam information into people’s heads so that’s the best I can do, followed by the portion in which I say that the price you pay for free advice is the potential of me doing stuff like what I’m doing right now.

Next we’ll skip down to the FAQ proper, after the guidelines:

The 5th question down states that all tests suck, which would have been helpful to anon in understanding that I do not care what their tests results are as they are probably useless.

The 7th question down is this:

How do I tell Ni vs. Si?Look here.Also here

If that looks familiar, that would be because that’s exactly what anon asked for.

Reading a little further and they’ll find my tagging system, which would have allowed them to search on #introverted sensing, #introverted intuition, or even #isfj and #infj.

Finally, the further resources would have taken them to MBTI resources or mbti-notes, both of which have better tagging and linking systems than I do and could have taken them to the comparisons they are looking for.

As a final bonus, had anon looked through my blog for say, 5 minutes before asking, and I’ll discuss this a bit more in my conclusion below, they would have seen:

a Si/Ni comparison post from earlier this morning (page 1 on desktop)

the FAQ which I actually just posted yesterday evening

Another Si vs. Ni question post from yesterday

An Si vs. Ni question from December 29th

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So here’s the key reason why I’m typically frustrated by people who don’t read the FAQ: it makes absolutely no sense to ask me, a stranger on the internet, a question, if you have no previous knowledge of whether I am at all capable of answering questions. If you would not walk up to a random stranger on the street and ask them for life advice or information about an area that you believe requires some level of expertise (vs. just common knowledge), why would you ask me without doing some kind of very basic research on me? I mean, I think I know what I’m doing but I don’t for a second think you should take me on faith for that.

I guess to leave you with a final thought, because what the hell, it’s New Year’s Day so people tend to be more open to advice: There’s a post going around on my dash about John Titor, who was some guy who posted a bunch of stuff online in 2000-2001, claiming to be a time-traveler, and a few people seem to think it’s scarily accurate.

It takes about 5 seconds to Google him and find that a number of his predictions were flat-out wrong (eg: that there would be a second U.S. civil war in 2008 and a WWIII in 2015), from which the average person can deduce that this was a hoax.

What I’m saying is you don’t need to be particularly smart or have any resources beyond the ones you already have in order to use tumblr in order to get some basic idea of whether someone seems reliable or not, but you do have to actively use those resources. The FAQ isn’t just there to save me time, though it is; it’s also there to give you a chance to decide if you think I’ll give decent advice or not. Do both of us the courtesy of making that assessment before you ask.

[mattved]

On blogging, again

Everybody makes a mistake from time to time, and the junction came where I gotta admit belonging to that exact domain. My blog went through about as many changes in platform as it had posts. (Everybody sometimes exaggerates, right?)

So I am here today to give an account on journey of my content across individual platforms, outlining their upsides and downsides and ranting about my fuckups leading to choosing them.

The Beginnings: Blogger

One of the most popular blogging platforms of the 90s offered two gates of entrance to your Google-hosted website: Hitting an URL, either name.blogger.com or your own domain, and being discovered through hub of all Blogger articles, featuring the most popular favorite-tag-relevant along a fulltext search. Both obviously played role in googlability and building an on-line brand.

It seemed to work for a while. I was getting units of traffic from people and crawler hits every now and then. With keywords including my name and username, I slowly made it to the first page of results in Search and DuckDuckGo, pushing the pamphlet article about a person of my name dying at the age to the second, and enabling to compete with identically named photographer for #1. The latter, I unfortunalely did not make. And am obviously mad about it.

The problem was that Blogger lacks some cool features of the modern web. To this day, you are limited to a raw/wysiwyg HTML editor, forced to do more clicking than real writing. Uploading images was a completely separate activity from the writing process and involved browsing filesystems three times before inserting one into the article.

Besides, people no longer visit the article hub, making it useless for anything than that SEO aspect mentioned earlier, and professing the site's backend obsolescence with the a searchbar included along the top edge by default. Of course you can hide it through creation of custom theme including a CSS tweak, but that is just more hassle. Besides, you are not really allowed to do much other than raw CSS to manipulate the site's looks. And the loading times of some articles were just horrible, especially when the engine attempted to apply analytics tools on embeded content, often causing its failures to even load.

And even though Blogger was my big love for the early posts and I stayed for almost 9 months with it, these aspects had driven me elsewhere. Somewhere I was in control of both my content, looks, and structure of the homepage.

The Techie Period: Webhosting

I had rented a cheapo webhost my friend and I had been using for ages as a platform for our various PHP projects the history of which ran all the way to our sweet boarding school development sessions, which were known throughout the staff hierarchy and occassionaly lifted the curfew imposed on us by the system.

Since I was now able to do whatever I wanted with the whole base, many experiments were done and a lot learned in the process. I even made a switch to self-hosting everything on my very own BananaPi webserver, gaining a lot of sysadmin skills.

May I write, please? Wordpress

So many people love wordpress, since there is a massive ecosystem around it, with so many commercially available themes, wonderful plugins, and an open-source base. But I was not overly excited about having somebody else's work showed off on my little personal site. I wanted to build my personal brand and allow myself to be actually proud of it.

But the time it takes even a fairly skilled webbie to get into the zipped-theme format with about as many files as a fresh core linux installation has is not the shortest. And the tweaks always seemed to break whatever I was trying to customize. I sure could've had a blog in no time, but getting to something I'd be happy with was a question of becoming fairly expert in the wordpress ecosystem, which is honestly not worth it, unless you wanna capitalize on it as soon as you can. Besides, there is no certainty in how long such profession would remain relevant. And there is all the Filipinos beating you in sales.

Wordpress is really not for you if you want to give individualist impression. After about a month, I deleted the folder.

This is actually fun! Anchor CMS

Real perfection for those who know pure PHP and want to build a unique site really quickly. It is also where I first encountered markdown outside of GitHub. And it had been my platform for over a good year and a half.

But my audience disappeared entirely. The search engine performance remained, true that, but that was about it and it seemed that some social network marketing was necessary. And even though I do have some outreach on Facebook and Instagram, I consider these to be purely personal devices, that I give public limited access to. So in spite of my general satisfaction with the workings of my wonderful brown colored design featuring many elements enriching the text, I now understand that this alone just won't cut it. And maintaining the website along with a different platform is just not something I have time to do.

So long, my love. I'll pull you out once I'm famous enough. I'll rebuild you on something less outdated than Anchor.

Taking it seriously: Medium

The problem here is that I rarely react to immediate news. Because I am long-term oriented individual aware of the self-adjusting nature of running averages of almost anything. And it doesn't even need to be on index-based variables. Because yes, I do believe that all functional relationships have some sort of equilibrium. Logical or strictly endogenous.

Besides, Medium is filled with... well, media. Wide-readership accounts shitposting five times a day in order to maintain audience, especially of those behind the paywall, who may even consider that the media they are paying for through means other than advertizing are more reliable as a source of infromation.

Yes, I went through the grind of migrating my entire blog to this site, copy-pasting almost everything and adhering to that non-markdown article editor, which made me feel well in the very beginning. It made it a no-bullshit platform after all.

I even wrote one medium-exclusive post, which is never gonna be on Tumblr as I managed to delete it along with my entire account days after doing all the hard work.

Medium is a great concept badly executed. Adios.

Terminal station: Tumblr

At least so far. I may be giving up on fully custom theme for a short time or I may be on a retreat. I may have decided to use an exclusively ad-based platform (at least I can remove ads on my personal tumblr, if not in the feed.

I don't like that there is very little original content on here, but I might soon benefit from reblogs. I don't plan to reblog a lot myself, unless I find a post to be five-star. But I will always like whatever feels appropriate and amazing. And I am always happy to stay in touch with any number of followers. Because some audience is better than massive audience. And I can get at least some feedback here. Hit me, guys. I'm posting for my own benefit and hope somebody will take time to read and reflect on what I am about to post here.

I even plan to switch back to the slightly more interesting topics, showing off my knowledge and passing it on.

Wish me luck ^^

[doctor-paprika]

Heroin sucks.

I have no followers, so I guess I am using this as a diary entry that no one will see but can help me vent a bit.

I am learning how to tumblr so have been randomly searching any interests that come to mind. Of course, one of the first I could think of was heroin/addiction recovery, but very few results came up. After that, I stupidly just searched the word “heroin” and the results really brought me down (lower than I already was, which was surprising.)

A few accounts were splattered with pictures of Kurt Cobain, which didn’t surprise me. Soon I saw several accounts with videos of people shooting up, people talking about how much they love heroin and other drugs, and of course, people talking of how they may be addicts, but they aren’t dirty junkies!

When I was 14 I began eating pills. Benzos were fun, but opiates were my favourite. I took them from medicine cabinets and kept myself in steady supply that way. Years passed, I graduated high school, fell in and out of a few relationships, and eventually began seeing someone who had been using heroin for a while. They would leave the room to shoot up, but one night I told them to stay, and I asked them to share.

I was 19, had a good job, a reliable car, over $4k in the bank I had earned every penny of on my own, a good relationship with my parents, and a few people I called friends.

I don’t want to sit here and put down my partner at the time because it is counterproductive. All I will say is that they were 26, had never had a job, a driver’s license, a high school diploma, but got lots of money given to them without question by their mother.

I say this just to give you (the person who is not reading this) an idea of my situation at the time.

I loved my first shot. There was no mark left on my arm, which shocked me. Before this, I had needed four nurses to hold me down to get a tetanus shot, but suddenly the fear was gone. I didn’t want to bring up doing it again, so was very excited when my partner asked a few days later if I would like to join them in shooting up again. The second time was even better than the first.

The lies came quickly. Calls to my job, claiming my car was broken down. Calls to my parents coming up with various reasons as to why I wouldn’t be home that night. The few friends I had became unimportant, I had new “friends” that I met through my partner, and they either sold, used, or both.

A few months after I turned 20 I quit my job, officially moved in with my partner, and had begun to spend almost every moment of every day coming up with ways to get heroin. I felt like a cool adult, able to make my own decisions and get high whenever I wanted! What fun!

Without having to pay for food, rent, or anything but heroin, I ran out of my $4k in less than a year. I had been saving all of my money from age 15-19 and it was gone in just a few months. I also got my car taken from me by my parents. My partners mom knew that we used, she sobbed about it, yelled about it, and acted like it was the worst thing that could have ever happened to her… but would still give us $100-300 a day so we wouldn’t get sick, and provided a nice, new car for us.

I was lucky to live in the Bay Area, because all it took was a fifteen minute drive to Oakland and I had access to dozens of dealers. There were also many needle exchanges around the city in which each person could get 400 free, new clean needles and all the ties, cooks, cottons, and anything else a heroin addict could need, including a limited supply of Narcan - which I always kept on me after having OD’d myself once and watching another friend OD, and having us both be saved by the opioid antagonist.

Oh, and I began smoking crack. Lots of crack. Crack was great! And heroin was a perfect comedown! I was awake most hours of every day, and spent almost every second of those hours worrying about how the next hour would go.

By the time my parents found out about my use, I was 22. They had been my best friends and now we were completely out of contact. My mom would occasionally stop by the apartment my partner and I shared with their mom, but by then I had begun living in the car we had, because being in Oakland all the time was easier than having to drive there every day.

My partners mom would occasionally go through periods where she decided to cut us off. She was married to an alcoholic whose health was declining so had to tend to his addiction more than ours at that point. I had never imagined myself having to fly a sign for money, but now I was doing it all day, every day, and most of the time was stuck standing out there sick. Lots of homeless people live on the streets of Oakland, so to get a good spot to stand you needed to get out early, and find some confidence to fight others who wanted your spot. I had shit thrown at me, usually open drink containers, I got yelled at to get a job, to get the fuck off the median, to kill myself. I didn’t understand what I was doing to offend these people so bad. My least favorite part was the men who would hold out a dollar, just to pull it in once I got close and show me their dick before laughing and driving off - and the worst of that was one who actually came on my hand, he could have at least gave me the dollar after!

Once my partners mom was at the hospital daily with her rapidly declining husband, waiting for him to get a liver transplant that eventually came too late, we began staying at the apartment more. Every wall became covered in blood spatter, shot from rigs that had become blocked with coagulated blood. You could not see one inch of the floor, as it was covered in used rigs and bloody rags. Surprisingly, we didn’t get the security deposit back! I will always feel terrible that I let my cat live in that fucked up place.

I joined a methadone clinic a few times to try to avoid going through withdrawal, but I would always stop going because the drive there took away time I could have spent flying my sign, smoking crack, or shooting dope.

I was 23, my job was flying a sign, my car was in three accidents that left it barely functioning, had no money for longer than a few minutes (more usually a few hours because dealers were generally slow movers), was out of contact with my parents for thirteen months, and I didn’t have one friend. I had also gotten below 90lbs, which didn’t go well with my 5'8" body - inside or out. You know you’re at rock bottom when you have old crack dealers with no teeth telling you how unhealthy you look.

You know what my most commonly used phrases during those years were? • “I’m not a junkie, I’m a functioning addict!” • “I’m not a dirty crackhead, I take showers, brush my teeth, and wash my face (in the bathroom at Safeway.)” • “My parents/friends are so stupid, they don’t get that I’m totally fine. I’m better than fine, this stuff makes me feel great! If they tried it, they’d know!” • “I know *drug dealers name* takes a long time to meet up, but we’re friends! Not like how it is for them with all the junkies out here!” • “I’ve never had to whore myself out, I’ve never been to jail, I’m not like these nasty junkies out here..”

You know what kind of things I did that I thought were totally normal and definitely didn’t make me a mentally ill drug abuser? • searched the floor of my car for lost crack rocks for hours, tearing apart any parts of it I could - one time even thinking I had found a big chunk of crack and immediately smoked it, but it was a popcorn kernel! Worst thing I’ve ever smelled or tasted. • gone through every inch of my partners mom’s room to find any loose change or gold jewelery I could sell. • sold every book, videogame, DVD, CD, and any item I owned that I could get even a dollar for, including things I had had since my childhood that had incredible sentimental value. • sold every Safeway giftcard my partners mother would give us for 75% of its value, knowing it meant my partner and I would have no food for the foreseeable future. ¹ • then spent the money we got for the giftcard on crack, knowing that without food in our system we would throw up bile after each hit. • had to shit so badly after taking a hit of crack that I went on a curb where others could see, in the middle of the day, and then taken another hit right when I was done. • taken suboxone sooner than I knew I should have, and proceeded to vomit non-stop while driving, followed my shitting my pants three times, selling a PS4 that belonged to my partners friend, and driving to meet a dealer while still vomiting and wearing my shit filled pants.

Too much information? Gross? It’s weird for me to talk about it, because I have incredibly bad anxiety and don’t like to be open about more than I have to be, but drug addiction is gross and people need to realize that. There are people out there buying clothes and accessories with “Xanax” and “Percoset” labeled on them! Alcohol is glamourized in the media all the time! And the worst part is, I get it. I get that feeling that of independence, that feeling of being cooler than others, that feeling of finally having found something to calm down my brain even a little bit and falling head over heels for it, that feeling of doing something illegal and scary and the adrenaline rush from it.

When I was in middle school there was an assembly where a man talked about his drug use. It ended with him saying quitting cigarettes was harder than quitting heroin. Once I got addicted to heroin, I knew that was complete bullshit. I wish there was a way to tell kids, adults, anyone who might be considering using that they should do anything else, that their lives can so easily be ruined for who knows how long, but unfortunately most will only learn from experience.

Addicts are demonized, we are looked at as scum, as monsters, as those you should stay far from. Addicts are people. Many addicts are brilliant minds that suffer from mental illnesses, some known and some not. I knew I was mentally ill, but the therapy groups gave me anxiety and the meds didn’t work quick enough so I took the route I felt would be easier, which proved to be the opposite. Addiction is a disease, whether people choose to believe it or not. The biggest argument I have heard against this is that addicts choose what has happened to them. Do you put down a diabetic, even if they are only dealing with that disease because they ate tons of pies and cakes every day? Do you put down a person with cancer, even if they are only dealing with that disease because they tanned themselves in the sun or under tanning booths every day? I chose to use heroin, I chose to use crack, I chose to eat pills, I chose to drink, but I did not choose to be an addict. Long before I did any of those drugs I was addicted to picking at my skin, addicted to cleaning, addicted to exercising and watching my diet very closely, but no on has ever put me down for having dermatillomania, for having OCD, or for having anorexia.

Those with mental illness are looked at as lesser beings, as being incompetent, as needing to be pushed aside and stepped on. But we are strong, we are bright, and we deserve love and acceptance.

I have been off of heroin since early 2014, but I will be celebrating my one year date of being completely clean and sober in eleven days. I never think about drugs anymore, until I see videos of others shooting up, text or images promoting the addict lifestyle, and unfortunately for me those are all too common and too easily found.

If you are an addict, ask for help. If you suffer from, or even think you may suffer from, any mental illness, ask for help. Even if it is hard to find at first, it is out there. Therapy, medications, rehabilitation and the like are out there.

But, you’re not reading this are you? Like I said, this is just a way for a rambling, ex-junkie to vent.

[drferox]

20 questions with Dr Ferox #4

It’s that time of the week again where I try to shrink my inbox by answering 20 of your questions all in one go. This seems to be working well, and I must thank everyone who has endeavored to use the search function this week. I’ve tried to tag folks, but if you’ve sent in anonymous questions you’ll have to read through and look to see if you’ve been answered.

A lovely, understanding anonymous said: Have you ever had players in your DnD group not get along? Also, if you ever feel stressed out about the number of asks, don't feel like you have to immediately respond to us. It's a blog, we get it. Nobody is waiting on a time-sensitive diagnosis from a blog (or at least they fuckin shouldn't be), and we can wait. Prioritize yourself, we're a bunch of randos asking about dog food on the Internet.

Well, nobody should be waiting for a time sensitive diagnosis from any vet blog any more. I’d hoped I’d been clear enough by now why it’s not appropriate to ask specific veterinary advice from myself, or any other vetblrs on here.

But yes, I have had players in my D&D groups not get along, but I had enough players to keep them separate most of the time. Dungeons & Dragon is supposed to be fun, it’s a game, so it’s meant to be fun. Aside from other skills you learn playing roleplaying games, managing a group of people is definitely one you pick up. Humans are human, we don’t all get along all of the time.

@kabjl asked: Would it be theoretically possible to have a viable hybrid offspring of a house cat and a wild large cat like a lion or tiger?

Unlikely. House cats belong to the Felinae subfamily and lions and tigers belong to the Pantherinae subfamily. While Pantherinae species can hybridize (eg tiger and lion) and Felinae species can hybridize (eg domestic cat with anything), the offspring are usually infertile. I don’t think it’s possible for a Felinae X Pantherinae hybrid to be viable.

@a-floral-ghost asked: What's your favorite animal name you've come across? Mine is a cat named Chuck

Hmm, that’s a interesting question. There are no many pets and names to try to remember. I must profess a fondness for Pat the Cat.

@curiouspinecones said: What is the best and worst pet name you've come across? I work in a pathology lab within a vet practice and I quite like when patients have really human names (Dave the cat is always a good one). The worst has to a Labrador called "Daddy", that is totally not okay...

Again, an interesting question. There are lots of names that are unoriginal and boring, but it’s the straight up racist names that I don’t like.

Anonymous asked: Hi! I read somewhere on tumblr that because of the cat's particular tastebuds, they can't taste sweet things. If that's true, does that also mean they can't smell sweet things, since taste and smell go hand-in-hand? Question tax: Came for the dog breed facts, stayed for the vet stories and knowledge.

Well, none of us actually smell sweet. You can smell things you associate with sweet foods by learning, but you’re not smelling ‘sweet’ as such.

Another Anonymous said: Have you ever met a hamster? I know we're not allowed to have them in Australia, but I'm curious about whether you've been exposed to one during the process of learning vet medicine. I know I feel odd about never having seen a hamster in real life, since it's such a common pet elsewhere...

I’ve never seen a hamster in the flesh. They’re not legal in Australia, neither are gerbils of chinchillas. I have seen one on an animal handling video though.

@fox-noodle said: I forgot the question tax, my apologies! My rat Apollo is almost 2 1/2 and recently went to the vet for what I thought were tumours, but are actually testicles. They only started showing a few months ago, I've now separated him and he has two male buddies now. Is this common in rats? I've only ever heard of something similar (cryptochoridism) in dogs, could that be what he has? Question tax- came for the interesting euthanasia posts (its helped me a lot), stayed for the interesting vet stories

Can’t say I have. That’s a very long delay for that rat to develop testes, and I’d have to wonder if it’s intersex in some way.

Dogs with cryptochidism have testes, they just haven’t descended into the scrotum. They never descend into the scrotum, sometimes they’re stuck in the abdomen and sometimes they’re in the groin, so I don’t think it’s the same process at work. Sorry I can’t be more help.

@rebanndon said: I've read in an article or two, that for active dog breeds like border collies leaving them entire until 18 months of age is a way to reduce the risk of cruciate ligament tears because the bone is able to fill out? There's little/no proof behind the claim reproductive hormomes are linked to aiding ligament growth.  So, in your experience do you see more cruciate cases in active desexed dogs or active entire dogs? Or simply no link at all and desexing should just be done at 6 months regardless?

I’ve written a fairy in-depth article on age of desexing here.

There propably is a benefit in delaying desexing for larger breeds overall, but for most small breeds 6 months still seems about right.

Anonymous said: Isnt't it bad to declaw a cat? Since they are digitigrade doesn't removing the claws hurt their bone structure?

... Yes. That wasn’t up for debate. I’ve discussed this here.

Unobservant Anonymous said: Do you have any advice for a cat with a herniated spinal disk? QoL is still good, he's a happy boy who sometimes has trouble lifting up his back legs and needs stairs up couches and to litterbox. Eats, drinks, purrs and seeks attenion like a champ but sometimes when he grooms himself that it looks like he's got a pinched nerve and has discomfort / spasms reaching for his back feet. Vet has been seen, on cosequin every other dayvand daily gentle stretches. Anything else I can do?

Hey, so, from a legal and ethical perspective I can’t give you specific veterinary advice about a cat that is not one of my direct patients. It’s dangerous and unethical to do so. But go talk to your vet, Cosequin is a joint supplement, not pain relief, there are at least three different medications you could consider.

Anonymous said: Oh my god, you're allergic to bunnies? I want to be a vet too, and so am I XD glad to see I'm not the only one lmao

Yup, allergic to rabbits, rye grass, and dogs (sort of). And nuts, which makes the mixed boxes of chocolates gifted to the clinic very interesting.

Anonymous asked: Working as a veterinarian, do you ever get the urge to adopt the pets in the shelter?

Not from shelters, I just don’t go near them any more. Stray kittens in the vet clinic though are another matter...

Anonymous said: About the uncomfortable animals thing- I was referring to where you said primates are in the  uncanny valley

Lots of vets have certain animals, or breeds of animals, that they just don’t want to deal with. For me, primates make me uncomfortable. Not because they’re creepy, but because they’re clever and I can’t reliably know how clever they are, and whether what we’re doing with them is ethical.

I also don’t intend to go treat horses every again, and I know lots of vets that are averse to large animal practice or outright phobic of birds.

Yet Another Anonymous said: Hey! I'm wondering if you get much experience with our Aussie staghounds (enough to write a breed evaluation on them)? Or if not, maybe just a bit about the general hunting-type Australian dogs? (staghounds, bull arabs, and the many many similar mixes). Question tax: came because I'd always wanted to be a vet and I LOVE anatomy, stayed for the awesome info and even more wonderful stories.

I haven’t seen any staghounds down here, but I’m pretty South and suburban now, not really a much of a hunting culture around here. You can find the Bull arab post here, but are welcome to use the search function for any other breeds of interest.

@orgasmicplushtoy asked: Can you do a write up on small munsterlanders? If not that's okay.

I actually had to look up the three Munsterlander dogs I’ve seen, because I didn’t know ‘large’ and ‘small’ munsterlanders were totally different breeds.

Turns out all three I’ve seen are large ones, over 30kg each. Short version: They all got cancer.

Anonymous asked: Do you see any Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs at your practice? For some reason we see a lot at our clinic and though some of them are fine- they have earned the moniker "Sketchy Swiss." As in: I have to muzzle a 6 month old Swiss puppy because it barks, growls, and lunges at me while I try to TPR. Several of the ones we see have been diagnosed with Wobbler syndrome and various other orthopedic issues. Just curious if you've had similar experiences. Thanks- love your posts!

Sorry, no. They’re quite big and not popular here, I don’t think I’ve ever come across them. Large breeds in general are less common. 

Anonymous said: I don't suppose you've done any evaluations on working cocker spaniels/sprocker/Russian spaniels?

Nope, not yet. There’s 30 waiting in the queue for me to get to them. I have said before though that I’m not answering breed posts that asked for more than one breed in the same post. It just gets too long, confusing and messy if I do. Besides, it’s rather cheeky to ask for more than one in one question, isn’t it?

Another Anonymous said: If you enjoy a little wildlife voyeurism, there are about a half dozen bird cams linked on Cornell's "All About Birds" webpage, and the owls have owlets. There's not really a question here. You have a stressful job, and I thought you might enjoy wasting some time watching the bird feeder or trying to see the baby owls under mum's fluffy owl butt.

Thanks for the thought, I’m sure some followers will find it useful. Personally I try to relax without animal things. I find it helpful to seek out activities that engage different parts of my brain compared to what work does.

@slowdown-its-a-science said: Please give us lots of updates on Trash Bag

I’m sure I will.

@herebelife said: Ps did you read the article about the bilby triplets? Bilby triplets!

I hadn’t, but I have now and will share them with you.