#and then have to come up with a workaround

[instarsanddyke]

time to make your choice only you can be the one

[vancruejovi]

Me waiting very patiently for the next Date Everything Patch (half of the characters are broken and I cannot beat the game)

[bayonettas-tits]

I'm Caroline from Gaza. Am sorry for sending you this request without your permission. My house was destroyed in the war, and my family lost everything. We've been displaced multiple times, but there's no safe place here. I'm battling Type 1 Diabetes and can't afford insulin, and my mother needs treatment for kidney failure outside Gaza. Any donation, no matter how small, can help us survive and get my mother the care she needs. A friend outside Gaza is helping with the donation program. Please reach out if you need more details.

Damn, your name is Doreen, Mary Ann, Ruth, AND Caroline? You sure have a lot of names. Also somehow is able to use Paypal, despite it not working in Palestine. (Update since this is still getting attention. While Paypal can be a red flag, I do want to make it clear that there are workarounds to this, and not every fundraiser that uses it is a scam)

On top of all your blog activity being around the same time (which is a major red flag)

[hope-ur-ok]

I just scheduled a text to be sent to my boss in an hour cause by doing that I bypassed some of my terrible anxiety induced thoughts. Cause thats basically just saving the message to be sent later without me having to send the message later, right

[moregraceful]

AND NOW for a game i like to play called can I survive work on a bowl of ice cream after intense cardio (adult gymnastics)!!

[skuntank]

Cantankerous

[waffle-sorter]

Okay, so. Option one, I somehow keep either of the canon already-friends from showing up, have the MC butt-dial the ship I want, figure out how to get her into the apartment, and deal with the cat issue...

Option two, I diverge at the panic scene, somehow get the MC to a place she shouldn't know about at that point, get her inside and out of danger, then...

No, you know what? Option three. Fudge the mechanics of the Macguffin so it goes off like ten hours later the first time, where it makes sense for the other person to be on the scene. Then I just need to deal with the cat thing. Much better.

[noegrets]

I think I understand why tumblr made this change. It seems annoying and arbitrary from the front, but from the back (when creating a custom theme), oh my god...

In the old way, there would need to be custom code for every possible post configuration. That includes separate custom code in completely different locations to handle:

a photo post with only one image

a photo post with multiple images

a text post that contains an image

a text post that contains multiple images

an ask post that contains an image inside the question

an ask post that contains an image inside the answer

an ask post with a down-thread reply which contains an image

a video post that also has an image in the original post

a video post that has a down-thread reply which contains an image

and don't forget chat posts and quote posts and link posts and audio posts and oh my god this list can go on and on and on!

There are even different variations that seem to come from when tumblr silently changed something on their side, so a particular photo post from, say, 2011 is for some reason set up differently from different particular photo post from 2012, and there is no indication in the code that this post is using the 2011 arrangement and this other post is using the 2012 arrangement (they are not neatly divided by year or anything obvious like that).

And there are some posts that just seem to be flat-out broken. Something in the code got scrambled. Maybe someone posted it during the precise time when tumblr was having a horrible bug, and now the post circulates with wacked-out code forever.

So, to make a custom theme that simply wants to have every image everywhere be styled in a uniform way, we needed to come up with a load of funky workarounds to identify and differently handle all of these these needlessly different variations and all these funky corner cases. Just, tons and tons and tons of complication behind the scenes.

Instead, the posts that use the so-called "neue" post format are clearly announced within the code, and how any image(s) should be formatted within any sort of post (or rather, how images should be formatted inside a text post because they are now all secretly text posts) can be coded all in one place rather than copy-and-pasted around and needing to be maintained in like 39 different places. When we were updating the Egret theme, it was so refreshing to be able to have the code for the "neue" part be all together like that in one place.

We kept all the old code for all the funky combinations of old post types, so that even if we reblog some really old and uniquely-messed-up posts, the images should still look great in the Egret theme. But I assume that tumblr's goal is that, as time goes on, posts that use those weird funky old post formats will become relatively rarer and rarer, and then someone can make a really great tumblr theme by just handling the neue post format first and foremost, without needing to wrap their head around these 39 variations before they can even get started.

And I bet in the future Tumblr will eventually nix all those buttons that mean the same thing, but for now they are keeping it for our comfort or something.

I also imagine that in the even further future when Tumblr rolls out more changes and makes what I imagine will be called the "neueneue" Nintendo DS post format (please don't), they now have the system already in place to call out that this is the "neueneue" post format, and the themes can more easily be updated to handle both "neueneue" and "neue".

So, actually, I think this change makes it more likely for someone to make a custom tumblr theme that can make images really shine.

i'm sorry for talking about this yet again but i literally never see ANYONE mention the fact that photoposts are fucking gone when they're complaining about tumblr updates.

(in case you didn't know-- you literally cannot make photo type posts anymore, which is really frustrating for anyone who posts photo/gifsets in a custom theme)

[spackjarroww]

Man, I know writing a first draft is important to figure out what details you need, and you're supposed to have a shitty first draft

But sometimes, I just can't help but wonder, what's the point of writing all this if I'm going to chuck most of it out in later drafts anyway?

Which is kind of illogical, considering that later drafts cannot exist without a first draft, but the machine that is my mind occasionally jams on this one point about 'energy wastage' and that sucks

[superfluouskeys]

i loooooooove how you will just leave a youtube video paused for awhile and then when you restart it it will break. and also i looooooooove how if you try to put a video on loop that will not work.

[baldursgatekeepgaslightgirlboss]

the thing about minthara is why did she have to be a paladin. of lolth. with a strong jaw. from house baenre. it's like i conjured her from my mind. but also i am a consummate goodguy in video games so idk how i could stand to recruit her.

[hyliagirl42]

"We needed to remove it because it might hurt people's feelings" is not a good reason to remove 1) a major character's main character development plot point, 2) the MAJOR PLOT POINT REGARDING THE CLIMAX OF THE ENTIRE 3 SEASON SHOW THAT WAS INTRODUCED IN SEASON 1, or 3) THE WHOLE POINT OF VISITING BA SING SE????? THE WHOLE ENTIRE POINT

"We removed a major character growth moment"

Mindless attempts at pandering like this drive crazy

[ploverbear]

thank GOD they were able to process the bill via my checking account directly. phew. okay. now im getting a burger

[harrie-cc]

The Klean Collection - Part 4

This month I focused on creating the Klean Home Office. I focused my attention on what a designer's home office would look like/contain. I have wanted to make shelving like this for quite some time & was excited to try out Sims 4 Studio to angle the slots, unfortunately many painful hours later after trying to troubleshoot why exactly the rotation didn't work in game, I managed to come up with a workaround, so that you can still snap flat books and deco items onto the slanted shelves at the correct angle. For some peculiar reason the rotated slots would not work unless I locked their orientation. As a result once an item snap into one of these slots it will stay at the 45 degree angle even when you snap it to a regular slot. If I did this for all the slots to work it would end up being very difficult for you to effectively clutter all the other shelves as all your items would snap to these angled slots instead. So I've created only 3 of these slots on each shelf to help you to orientate your deco items to the correct angle. They are located in the middle and either end of the the shelf, so you should be able to avoid them while decorating the regular slots on the other shelves. I think this issue is down to EA changing the slotting information in the game as it a very simple process to rotate these slots and both programmes I used to do so ended with the same result. Fingers crossed this is changed in the future so I don't have to irritate myself and you all with such a workaround and they just work how they are supposed to! 

Items Include:

Bookshelf configurations 1 to 5 (short & medium)

1 tile bookshelf configuration (short & medium)

Left ending bookshelf configuration (short & medium)

Right ending bookshelf configuration (short & medium)

Bookshelf post (short. medium & tall)

Desk chair

Glass desk

Statement desk/ conference table/ dining table

Design portfolio

Open design portfolio

Pantone swatch books (3 options)

RAL swatch books (2 options)

Fabric sample book

All items are Base Game compatible and you can find them by searching KLEAN in the build/buy catalogue.

As per usual textures are linked between similar items, so if you download the unmerged file, make sure to include all items from that family, so the textures appear correctly in your game.

Now Available on Patreon Early Access

Public Release: 7th April 2024

[centaurianthropology]

I’ve really enjoyed that the show is not only complicating the PresAux characters, but Preservation as a whole, and has done both with a lot of respect for the humanity of their situations.

One thing that gets brought up in the books is that Preservation is terraformed, and that by and large terraforming isn’t great. It’s usually half-assed, and done just enough to make a planet livable. One would imagine that Preservation as a society has sunk a lot of their efforts into making it far more than livable, making it the best planet it can be. They are actively trying to make a place where all citizens have their needs met, have enough to chase their dreams without fear of salary or losing health care or food or shelter. They are working toward a utopia.

But they don’t live in a utopia.

Their internal society is moneyless, but the external societies around them are not. And they don’t have everything they need. They don’t have magic replicators that create all their necessary resources from nothing. They are post-money, but not post-scarcity. They are stubbornly holding to their values to keep providing all their people with what they need, because that’s one of the non-negotiable pillars on which their society is built. These folks we’ve met especially are the true believers in Preservation ideals, in working toward building their society.

It would be easy to give in and join the Corporation Rim, and I like that some people want to take the easy way out. Because that’s people, isn’t it? Some people want what they don’t have, they want more or shinier or simply different. Just because your society is trying to build utopia doesn’t mean you’re all going to agree on what that looks like. And even in a communal society, you still have individual people who are going to want other things.

So they’ve come up with a workaround. It’s not perfect, but likely it’s the best way they can figure out to get external resources they can’t yet produce internally, while still holding to as many of their ideals as possible. They send teams out to do scientific work. That work either helps them further their internal goals—getting resources or knowledge that can make them more and more self-sustaining—or that work can be sold, likely in trade for goods or resources Preservation simply cannot provide at this point in time.

Even sending their planetary leader on these missions makes sense from the communal mindset. Of course the leader needs to do that work. They have to see the risks taken, the compromises made, the dirty parts of supporting their society. They have to be down in the dirt with everyone else, never above and able to ignore the realities of what must be done to make their better world.

They don’t have luxury space communism. They are a communal society with limited resources surrounded by corporate sharks. And some of their people want to become sharks, betraying the heart of their society. So they have to fight for their culture and their world through their actions and their decisions. They have to make compromises and work with outside forces they don’t entirely (or even remotely) agree with for the benefit of their people. And even in this group of true believers there’s internal disagreement! Bharadwaj sees this as scientific endeavor for the greater good, and she’s right! Gurathin sees it as selling knowledge to corporate fucks who will likely misuse it, and he’s right!

It’s sticky, it’s less pleasant than perhaps some book readers were hoping for. They wanted perfect luxury space communism with all scarcity problems already fixed and everyone living in harmony. They wanted the utopia rather than the pre-utopian work and compromise and challenges.

I don’t know, man, I just really like seeing a communal society of space hippies get portrayed with such care and respect for their humanity and their struggles. I like that they get to be people. I like that we get to see them doing the work and living by their ideals even when (especially when) it’s hard.

[chubsonthemoon]

It is done! This is The Death of Translation, originally written in English by @landwriter, translated into Mandarin by @thirrith. Binding is dos-à-dos, with English version on one side and Mandarin on the other. Bookcloth was handwoven by me, on my rigid heddle loom :3

More under the cut!

Typeset: Fanbinders are Liars

Full stop, this typeset would not have been possible without Eth and all their patience, enthusiasm, and willingness to do even more translating! I reached out to them *checks watch* nearly a year ago in July 2023 (lololol), asking if I could use their translation of TDOT in a surprise bind I wanted to send along with Gloam's author copy of Flower King. They were kind enough to say yes, and even kinder to answer my questions when I reached out six months later in January, when I was finally able to start work on the typeset.

We talked about the many delicious things that are bound to come up when discussing translating not just from English to Mandarin, but also from digital space to meatspace. Some topics I had anticipated, like font questions, translating the colophon, etc. But even with the topics I thought I'd prepared for, there were still things that came up that both surprised and delighted: for example, while AO3's website allows for italics in Mandarin--

--my publishing program doesn't (or at least, it doesn't without needing to manually tilt every character by about 10 degrees). So as a workaround, Eth suggested changing these cases of italics to the font 华文楷体:

Through no one's fault but my own, this ended up being only slightly less work than manually tilting every instance of italics--I wanted to be sure that I got all of them, so I ended up doing a lot of double-checking manually anyway, instead of relying solely on the Search function. There was a lot of cross-referencing with the Word document that Eth was kind enough to provide, as well as squinting and general swearing. I also did the same for the uses of Latin script, manually styling each instance as Garamond to keep it consistent with the English edition:

The only other time I've had to do font surgery this intensive is probably for my typeset for Tell Me About the Big Bang, which I had to port over from a PDF. Folks, hell on earth. Do not recommend XD I remember squinting at my monitor as I had to visually confirm every instance of italics, thinking I will never do this again. Welp, four years later, here were are: fanbinders are liars, LMAO. At the very least, using Eth's Word document at least allowed me to search by styles, so it was a little easier on my eyes. 🙏

Is there a script that I might've been able to use if I was more code-savvy? Probably. But I figured going at it sledgehammer style would be the least hair-pulling way to get the job done, weirdly enough. Still, despite my best efforts, there are a few instances of PMingLiU to Garamond and PMingLiU to 华文楷体 that I know I missed, and I know I missed them because I caught them after I'd printed/cut/folded/sewn/glued (cue more swearing), so Gloam and Eth, my apologies >.< please consider them artifacts of a uniquely handmade object ajslkdjfs

In addition to the fonts, there were also some other fun things Eth and I discussed, like how to translate the notes I usually provide on the colophons! In addition to information on fonts, I also usually include some variation of:

This private, limited edition published by chubsthehamster (Moonham Press, imprint of Renegade Publishing) in 2024. This is chubsthehamster's personal copy. Out of three existing copies, this is the first.

The thing that came up with this, which still tickles my brain to this day, was how Eth chose how to translate "Moonham Press, imprint of Renegade Publishing." To get a better sense of what word to use for "imprint," they asked what the relationship was between Moonham Press and Renegade Publishing, which got me thinking about the relationship between my lil imprint and the wonderful @renegadeguild:

What's all very funny about all of this is that we are now, in fact, going by the name "Renegade Bookbinding Guild," per our most recently updated Code of Conduct. While this renders the wording I asked for out of date (and thus, the wording that made it into the book out of date :'D), I think it's also a testament to how cool the work @renegadeguild is doing--like any artform, fanbinding is alive, with its own evolving language, communities, and ideas about the craft. And I love it, I love it so much. (Was this also a plug for our new-ish website? Perhaps).

There's more I could say here, but this post is already going to be long enough, so I'll move on for now! If you get anything from this section, it's that @thirrith is amazing and very patient and kind, and I'm so grateful that we got to talk shop together. Thank you so much for all your invaluable help with this, Eth! I hope the typeset, though undoubtedly flawed, does your hard work justice!

Binding: Or, SO Much Math. Like, So Much, Guys. (It was worth it, though!)

Whoo, boy! So math was never my strong suit in school, but when I set out to do this bind last year, that wasn't an issue. At first. The dos-à-dos binding, if anything, just requires a little bit of finagling on the usual case-bound format--a bit more math if you want to do an all-cloth cover, like I planned on doing, but nothing I couldn't work out with some trial and error. (My prototype below!)

Then came February, when I took a weaving class with my friend, and then everything kinda exploded.

My original idea was to use some green Duo bookcloth I had on hand (this color, actually)--for those of you not initiated into the Duo cult, Duo is a Rayon bookcloth with a very devoted fan following in Renegade. It's very pretty; the Rayon weave is one color, and the paper backing is usually complementary color, so it has this cool two-toned effect. Duo is in high demand in Renegade circles because sadly, the company that manufactures it went out of business last year. (Although I've heard rumors recently that there's another company making something similar, but the cloth has a really high purchase requirement and is, like, for businesses only I think).

Anyway, I also wanted to have a gold line around the whole book as a kind of bellyband/obi to further connect the two versions of the story (another reason why I chose the dos-à-dos format to begin with heh), as you can see from my scribbled notes here--

But alas! I knew going in that adhering things to Duo is often Problematic, thanks to one very painful experience trying to get some iron-on foil on another bind (the textured surface of Duo just makes it kinda hard to stick or paint stuff on it). So if I wanted a clean, continuous line, the remaining options were to either paint it on a strip of paper that I'd somehow...adhere to the cloth? Or maybe cut different slices of bookcloth and glue them on. I wasn't satisfied with either of those options, though.

Then--the weaving class. I made a scarf, and I love it and I loved making it. But the whole time, I'll not lie, my thoughts were elsewhere.

In short, my decision to weave my own bookcloth kinda came from a few different factors:

The desire to attempt to recreate Duo, that elusive beauty, the one that got away, etc. (I have several yards in my stash, but still). Others have also attempted to recreate it, and I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring.

My current spiral into the deep hole that is fiber arts (it started with crochet, then knitting, then sewing, then weaving, then spinning, and now I'm eyeing quilting! Please help me).

The gold line. It kept bugging me. And when I found weaving, I just thought there was something very neat about the process of actually making the cloth for a dos-à-dos binding from scratch, and especially for this binding. I wanted to bind a story about translation (or rather, the death of it, and yet still the necessity of it--how we must try to communicate, despite of, or perhaps precisely because of, everything that gets lost in the spaces between people, and the tragedy of that loss, and the beauty of what makes it through, and the love always present in the effort regardless), and also, the translation of that story. Weaving is a very meditative process, and with every pass of the shuttle, back and forth, building slowly but surely the fabric that would hold the story that Gloam had written and that Eth had translated, I thought a lot about translation, and the gaps between people, and how we choose our words not just when translating, but when we speak at all. From a design perspective, I used the same colors I would've used had I chosen the Duo bookcloth--green and gold--so the design wasn't too altered in terms of color scheme. But I think the choice to weave the bookcloth--the thing that bound it all together--made the project take on a completely new meaning for me, both in process and in scope, one that hadn't been there when I started. I saw the warp, perhaps, as the original story, laying the groundwork for the weft, the translation; or maybe it was the other way around, with the translation providing the scaffolding for its own, new meaning, choices that Eth had to make with this word or phrase or another building something new, something translated, and the original a live, moving thing that wove over and under each word turned phrase turned story; or maybe it was both. Maybe it didn't matter which was which, in the end. And as I wove, the thing that connected them, that gold line that had started all of this, slowly formed.

All that to say: Good God, was there a lot of math. So much math. That prototype pictured above was actually made specifically so I could calculate exactly how much I needed to weave, lol, because while I certainly had enough thread, I didn't want to have to warp more than once. I'd learned the basics in my class, but the training wheels came off here. I wanted to make my own custom fabric, which meant calculating things like ends per inch, picks per inch, loom waste, shrinkage after washing, the width of that damn gold line, how much I'd need for the hinge, the turn-ins, the boards--the whole nine yards (I didn't actually weave nine yards tho heh). It was all absolutely worth it in the end--so challenging and so, so rewarding!

(And my final reason for weaving the bookcloth? Not gonna lie, It was because I just wanted to see if I could do it LOL. I love trying at least one new thing with each of my binds, and this was it for this project. While I've been bookbinding for a few years now, I'm still very much a beginner weaver, and I'm so excited to continue to learn and experiment! Also, here's a video of me unwinding the cloth from the loom, heh. I used 10/2 Perle cotton in gold and green colors :3)

Also, turns out, you can back handmade cloth the same way you can any other cloth! I backed it using my usual heat-n-bond method, and with some Unryu Tissue in the color Forest. Since the cloth itself is a bit transparent, there are a bunch of really fun fibers you can see when it's held up to the light, but which aren't visible when the cloth is glued down to the boards. Still, knowing they're there still makes me happy :D

Finally, capping all this off, is one final, small detail I really liked: ginkgo leaf endpapers :3 this one's for me and Eth and Gloam specifically <3

Aaaand that's all from me for today, folks! Thus ends (several months late XD) my last Binderary project for the year. This was probably my most ambitious bind to date, and gosh it was so, so much fun.

And, of course, thank you so much to Gloam for sharing your story, and Eth for translating it. I can't wait for y'all to receive your copies soon!

All my love! <3