#i dont know what other tags shold i put here

[skydolily]

Someday I will have to sit down and learn how to draw backgrounds... but not today.

I drew a scene with Tigerstar's family.

[smallstudyblring]

Lately I have received many DMs asking for advice on how to get noticed, how to get followers or advice on similar matters from people who have just a couple posts, if anything. So cheers on you guys for taking the first step, and I hope I can help you more throughout your journey! Now, onto the post: advice on how to start a studyblr.

Also, it’s going to be a long post. Therefore… Welcome to our GUIDE TO START A STUDYBLR

WHY STARTING A STUDYBLR

There are many reasons you might be thinking about getting started. You might be looking for some extra motivation, wanting to motivate others, the aesthetic or just to give it a try and see if you like it. Everything is a good reason to start posting!

WHAT DO I NEED TO START A STUDYBLR

First, let’s get one thing straight: the Aesthetic™ , AKA MacBooks, muji pens and moleskine journals should not stress you. Yeah, it’s cool. But you don’t need any of these things to start a studyblr. Just that curiosity that pushes you to learn and motivation to start one. Also, take small steps! Your goal might be achieving The Aesthetic, but that takes practise and hard work, not MacBooks or expensive ink. You can handletter with stabilos. Or with Milan markers from the corner shop. So no, you don’t need loads of money to start a studyblr: just start posting.

OK, I GET IT, I SHOULD JUST START A STUDYBLR RIGHT NOW. BUT HOW?

WHERE TO START: MAIN BLOG OR SIDEBLOG?

A good place to start is deciding if your studyblr is going to be a side blog or a main blog. For the newbies: you can only like, follow and make asks from your main blogs, but you can only have a blog with several authors and protected with a password with your side blog.

THE URL

Then, you should choose a URL. Most people just use their name and add “studies” or “academics” or something like that, like @emmastudies or @juliasacads. You can go more imaginative, like @studytherin or @brainiakk, but it would be good if your URL is related with studies in some way, it will be easier to find.

NOW, ONTO THE ICON.

You are going to need an icon. This icon is going to be your presentation card, so it better be good, following your taste and aesthetic and related to studies. People are going to see your posts reblogs by other people in their feed, and the only thing they will see of you, apart from the post itself, is your icon. So no pressure.

Some good places to create your own icon are canva or PicsArt, but canva is easier to use and has some great ready-to-wear templates, so I’d go for that one.

TIP: if you use letters in your icon, make sure they’re big enough to be seen when the icon is in use.

YOUR APPEARANCE AND THEME

Your appearance is how people see your blog when they’re in the app. Your theme is how they see it when they’re either logged into Tumblr and decide to stalk you or searching specifically for your prompt blog in a web browser.

Here you have @studylex’s appearance in the app:

And here you have the blog when you look her up/click on her username from your computer:

Her blog is so pretty because of her theme. If she didn’t have a theme, that’s how blogs look:

Yeah I know that’s an empty blog I created to show this. But you get the idea: a theme does wonders.

Themes are custom designs, which have a code you can change to make the blog look more according to your likes. You can choose among an almost infinite amount of them, and they are usually customizable from a tool bar, so you won’t have to learn programming for it. If you want to though, take a look here.

As I said before, themes are really varied so you don’t need to customize them much. You can find themes just by searching “Tumblr themes” in Google, or using this link, this one, or this one.

YOUR DESCRIPTION

You will have probably noticed the description most people in Tumblr have, and (although this part is very easy) you might be wondering what to put there.

Most studyblrs do something like this description by @chemathetics:

It says their level of studies, their subjects, their name and sometimes their age. Usually also their Hogwarts house because everyone is a fan of Harry Potter, and it’s surprising how much you know about one person once they tell you their Hogwarts house.

Most studyblrs also have a tag they track. If you are going to do this, it should also be specified in the description. 

TIP: Make sure you tag is not something like #hello because then you’ll go crazy trying to deal with the amount of posts using that tag.

You will also see some people using links in their descriptions, usually to their answered asks and their original posts. This way (taken from @studytherin’s blog)

Although some themes have options to do this, the best way is to use a tag system to keep your blog well organised and tidy, and add the links to your tagged “x” posts. If you browse https://blogname.tumblr.com/tagged/tag, you’ll see. To create a link to a specific tag inside your blog and add it to your description, do that, you will have to use HTML and insert it into your description from the edit option of your theme. THIS WILL NOT WORK IF YOU TRY TO ADD IT FROM THE APP. I will soon make as post with basic HTML functions, but here’s what you will have to use anyway: 

link text

In the url part, add https://blogname.tumblr.com/tagged/tag. In the link text part, whatever you want to be shown in your description link.

Then, of course, you will have to be careful to keep a good tag system. Think about the things you want to separate and DON’T FORGET WHAT TAGS YOU ARE USING!! Also, be careful for typos.

Some tags you can use to organise your blog are #original for your original posts, #inspo for those posts that make you want to sit down and study, #bujo for your bujo posts… yeah, you get it.

TIP: Since you specified that the link will go to the posts tagged #tag INSIDE YOUR BLOG, theres no problem if you use a simple tag (the #hello example would work here, the link would only display the #hello tagged posts INSIDE your blog)

SO MY BLOG IS DRESSED FOR A PARTY. WHAT NOW?

You said it: your blog looks awesome. Now you should get started on the content. Firstly, your intro.

Here’s how a normal studyblr intro looks like:

THINGS YOU SHOLD SAY IN YOUR INTRO:

Your name and age (if you are comfortable enough)

Your study level

The subjects you are taking and what you will be posting about: for example, if you are going to be a langblr or a sciencblr.

What made you want to start a studyblr

A little insight into you: do you like reading, watching movies, comics, a music group…

Some stdyblrs that inspire you. You shouldn’t fill your post with 100 names, but maybe up to 50 people its fine. You should just add @theirusername , and they will receive a notification and very likely reblog your posts and welcome you in some way. Thats one of the coolest parts of the studyblr community: how supportive it is.

TAGS TO USE IN YOUR INTRO POST.

#newstudyblr: some people track it

#intro post

#studyblr,#studyspo, etc

The tag system in tumblr is to be taken into account too: only the first five tags show up in most people’s search engines. This means that you can use as many tags as you want, but most people people will only be able to find your post using the first five tags. So, use them well!

TIP: tag it first with what it is: #bujo, #langblr, #studyblr. Then use the next few tags for tags other people track, so they will be able to find your post. You can add your organization tag past the five tags, because since its a search inside your own blog, the five tag rule doesn’t apply. You can add as many funny tags as you want later, like #im so bored.

There you go! You published your first official post as a studyblr!! Now, how should I keep it alive, gaining followers and reblogs and making studyblr friends?

Your intro post should work pretty well with that: with the personal information you provided (what you like, etc) people with similar interests might message you. With your study level and subjects, people who are doing similar things/running similar blogs will follow you. With tagging people, your post will be reblogged and reach a wider number of people. So your intro post will get you your first followers. Now you just have to stay active! The studyblr community is incredibly nice, so you can message most studyblrs anytime, and ask them how they’re feeling that day, or make some asks about how they take pictures or stuff like that. There are also a lot of networks and studygroups you can join that will help you meet other studyblrs. Don’t hesitate joining them!

The key to keep your blog alive is to keep posting. I know its hard to post original content everyday, but reblogging content is easy, so do it! Be careul to reblog only studyblr related stuff. I love harry styles, but I have another account for that. Original content is what gives your blog its true meaning, so DO NOT JUST STOP WITH IT. And again, if you dont reach the level of @emmastudies or @juliasacads‘s original posts just yet, do not lose faith! Those amazing looking posts take practise! Ask them for advice and keep trying, having a studyblr is not just about posting nice stuff, but also about becoming better and better.

I wish you the best with your new studyblr!

[viralhottopics]

The Former Secretary of Defense Outlines the Future of Warfare

To an engineer in Silicon Valley, the Defense Department can look a little old, a little slow, and a little fat. To the Defense Department, the smug confidence of young engineers doesnt go unnoticed. Is it really better to work on an app for ordering sandwiches than it is to build submarines that can launch nuclear weapons?

Two years ago, Barack Obama appointed a new Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter—a technocrat physicist, an arms control veteran, and a professor at Stanford—to help close this divide. During his tenure, Carter set up a virtual outpost in Silicon Valley. He worked to make it easier for tech companies to sell things to the Pentagon, for their engineers to work there, and for their bosses to offer up advice. He even let WIRED tag along and write a profile of him. He also impressed the local royalty. Hes been amazing, Ben Horowitz, the co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, told me in an interview.

This week, Carter, who left office along with Obama, agreed to chat with WIRED about his tenure, the challenges facing his successor, and a White House that isnt entirely beloved by technocrats.

Nicholas Thompson: Thank you for taking the time to talk with us.

Ashton Carter: Sure. Its good to be back with WIRED.

You put a lot of effort during your tenure into building bridges between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon. How well will they survive your departure?

I think the logic behind them is so compelling both for the defense mission and in a different way for the innovative people in the Valley and other technology hubs that this gives me confidence that it will continue. The Defense Department has to adapt and be flexible and be user-friendly for people who have their own particular style of working and who have, quite honestly, some reservations about whether working with the government is a good thing to do.

I remember you telling a story about going to Andreessen Horowitz and being asked whether someone who smoked pot could get a security clearance.

Yes. We need to be realistic. Some behaviors that in past times might have been predictive of instability or espionage or a propensity to be blackmailed are simply not in that category anymore.

Theres always been tension between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon. But now theres a new sense here that employees at tech companies generally hold values that are different from the values held dear by the occupants of our current White House. What is your advice to them as they think about working with the Pentagon?

Stay the course. Stick with the values and the idealism that makes the innovative community so important to Defense. That will be widely recognized by professionals in the Department of Defense.

I think that my successor [Gen. James Mattis] spent a little time living in the Valley and therefore has the opportunity to relate. Thats a good thing. But, more fundamentally, I think that people in the tech community are animated by making a difference in the world and they know that, whoever is President of the United States, security is a very important thing. They can make a difference there, and the governments job is to create bridges and doorways which allow them to use that great positive spirit of theirs in a way that is also consistent with their values.

So you think well get past this rocky moment?

Its only day 24, so I dont know where that will go. But I do think that it is widely understood that this is a critical relationship to have, and that in order for it to be helpful the government has to be flexible and has to meet technologists halfway. The shocks that weve had—the Snowden issue and other things in the past—these are very real, and they need to be taken into account, but they can be surmounted. Thats why with the Defense Digital Service, for example, we let people give us a try. You can just come in for one project for a time and see whether you like it.

The experience is that the government is better than they thought it would be, and they are very excited by it, and they are able to make a big difference and they find that very satisfying. And they know that the issues are inherently essential to civilized life and to everything they believe, and they are able to make a contribution that’s consistent with their values. Thats pretty exciting.

Despite all the turbulence in our political system, things that have a strong logic behind them tend to prevail in the end.

We talked six months ago and you said: Counter-ISIL is going to be the first big test of Cyber Com. How would you evaluate it now?

This is the first time that we have used cyber as a weapon of war, and while theres no question that there was a learning curve, it has been very effective. One measure of that is that the way in which ISILs leaders have very clearly had to change their way of operating and their methods of command and control. They are not able any longer to have the centralized command and control logistics support of a complicated battlefield like Northern Iraq or Northern Syria, and they are resorting now to the old methods of messengers. They are very paranoid because they cant tell when we have penetrated or blacked them out, or when the local populace has turned against them or when their own fighters are disloyal, and that creates a lot of paranoia.

It has always been the case in attacking the enemys command and control that there are difficult choices that need to be made between listening to the enemys communications, if you are able to do that, and depriving them of those communications. And so we made that balance, working with the intelligence community, case by case. Sometimes we decided not to strike with cyber weapons because we preferred to listen than to black out. In other cases, we simply blacked them out.

If we are going into a particular place at a particular time to do a raid—grab a leader, kill a leader—we might black out that area at that time. We may do it selected by geography and by time. Its been very effective. But I should emphasize that its only one thing that we are doing across a wide swath of acceleration of the campaign that began a year and a quarter ago. You see us raiding and killing leaders, seizing leaders so that we can learn more about them. Seizing their laptops and cellphones and exploiting them. A lot of people dont realize that there is much, much more to this campaign than airstrikes. And cyber has been part of that.

This is the first time that the United States has used cyber as a weapon of war, and theres no question that we can be very effective with that.

Part of that depends on cooperation between the intelligence agencies and the White House. Reading the news there appears to be increasing tension between the intelligence agencies and the White House. How worried would you be about that?

Its too early to see where that will settle out. Its obviously essential for those waging the war on ISIL to be working closely together. That in my time as Secretary of Defense went extremely well. I always found that I could work with Jim Clapper and Jim Comey and Jonn Brennan.

‘Despite all the turbulence in our political system, things that have a strong logic behind them tend to prevail in the end.’Former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter

Every time we make progress, we found new ways to make it go even faster. So when you capture someone you learn something about the organization that allows you to make more effective airstrikes. When you do effective airstrikes, ISIL fighters begin to relocate, and you are able to get them in the new location.

Success breeds success in a campaign like this, and we should be constantly be looking to turn over new opportunities and accelerate. I certainly hope, and I do expect, that the new team will keep looking within the same basic strategic framework that we had of destroying ISIL in Syria.

Ive heard defense officials say that they think autonomy is going to change warfare as much as nuclear weaponry did. Do you think thats correct?

I think it will change warfare in a fundamental way. Im not sure that anything that is done autonomously will compete with the raw physical destructive power of nuclear weapons. I also think that autonomy is a complicated concept. Lets not forget that when it comes to using force to protect civilization one of our principles ought to be that theres a human being involved in making critical decisions. I think thats an important principle, and as I said, consistent with full exploitation of this potential.

I think it will have a major effect on warfare. But its very hard to compare anything to nuclear weapons because of the simple physical awesome destructive power. Its been 70 years, and nothing has matched it.

I think if there is going to be something ever that rivals nuclear weapons in terms of the pure fearsomeness of their destructiveness its more likely to come from biotechnology than any other technology. Looking back decades from now, I do think the biological revelation could rival the atomic revolution for the fearsomeness of the potential. I think thats one reason we need to invest in it. And although biotechnology has not been a traditional area for Defense, the new bridges that they build shold not only be to the IT tech community but also to the biotech communities in the Valley.

At heart, youre a scientist. What is your advice to all the scientists concerned about the direction this White House is taking the country?

Again, its very early. Its very difficult to discern what the direction is. Id encourage people to keep heart and to remember that weve been around for 241 years and that protecting our people and making a better world is a very noble mission, and that science and technology are essential to its accomplishment, and that they ought to continue to try to advance that but stick to their principles and their values at the same time.

I was Secretary of Defense, and I believed and I still believe that its possible that technologists—and this has been something that I have dedicated my life to—can be true to the principals of science and innovation and also work toward protecting our people and making a better world.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Read more: http://ift.tt/2kMrM1w

from The Former Secretary of Defense Outlines the Future of Warfare