#information for you

[riacte]

not romantic not platonic but a secret third thing [what would happen between earth and the moon if the earth stopped spinning as illustrated by xkcd randall munroe]

[sunbentshadows]

Hey all, you know how internet searches suck now? When the results are awful, full-of-AI, death-of-the-internet levels of bad?

Start appending date constraints to your searches - "before:2023".

My results have gone from 90% AI bullshit to ~60% usable - which frankly at this point is a huge improvement.

[shockdowndefiance]

Deleted my original reblog for added information:

While I am not an official UX/UI person, I do do work which involves looking at websites, checking for accessibility, and other features and aspects to ensure that a site is usable by the greatest number of people.

If you are unsure of what to write, this is what I put down:

Hello, I and a number of other people have been switched to the new layout on Tumblr with no forewarning and I do not feel that some of the changes are warranted or useful for a desktop user

The largest and by far most hostile change in my opinion is the squeezing of posts into a section of the site that is 650px wide (barely more than the width of an old 480p video or display system) which in the age of people moving from 1080p resolutions to 2560p and even 3840p means that this leaves very little usable space for people on large resolutions to actually see posts made by other people

For example, view the attached image - I am using a 2560p monitor and while I do not have the browser window to its maximum width (it's around 2100px for me) the restriction of 650px maximum width for posts leaves almost 1500px of space either side with little to nothing on display.

This means that LESS THAN ONE-THIRD of my browser window is used to display posts by myself and other people, and causes a very cramped feeling. This is especially true of long posts which now take up a far larger portion of the site's height due to the reduction in usable width

With user icons ALSO being in this space and a buffer border on the right, that leaves an actual usable section at less than 520px which means that instead of the one-third space I mentioned above, this is now taking up just over one *quarter* of my browser window width

I do appreciate the move of the menu to the side, with text labelling each section and being far more accessible to tab through and easily see what's happening for each section (cheers to that!) but again, this is floating in a sea of nothingness which, again, is present in a small area of about 660px wide - this getting MORE space than the section for posts for something that - while necessary for the functionality of the site - should have less prominence than everything else

The right-hand section with the search, check out these blogs, and radar (removed on the image because they were not necessary) is, again, taking up more space than given to the posts, and again has a bunch of empty space especially when you start scrolling down and these sections just...disappear

There are numerous ways to make site displays functional for people using high resolutions (4k), standard (1080p) and smaller tablet/large phone (768px) resolutions but approaching this with what seems to be a one-size-fits-all design shooting for the smallest resolution leaves everyone and everything else cramped into a small space with zero options to change or expand anything

hey @staff what the fresh fuck is this

[problemnyatic]

when will we talk about the willful helplessness epidemic on here. So many people on this god forsaken website demand to have any and all things that exist outside their personal experiences directly, personally pre-chewed and spoonfed to them. And when you do, they'll then ask for you to swallow for them, too, because, you see, in THEIR experience..,

[supertaliart]

A continuation of my previous Skywalker Twins comic - feat Yoda part 3

[throesofincreasingwonder]

"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).

Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.

[firestia]

Little pony princesses 💗

[prolibytherium]

One of my all time biggest pet peeves with historical(ish) fantasy is when the writer constructs a religion with a clear bias that it's stupid and false and therefore only the Stupid People and/or commoners believe in it and all the smart/elite main characters are like, quasi-atheists or otherwise just routinely flout established religious conventions of orthodoxy and/or orthopraxy because they're Too Smart for it or etc.

It's usually an extension of assumptions that people in the past were just less intelligent than in the contemporary, just being like "I know that the sun is a star millions of miles away that the earth orbits, but this ancient religion describes it as a chariot flying through the sky" and not really bothering to learn the context and just (consciously or subconsciously) settling on 'that's a crazy thing to think and was probably believed in because they were Stupid'.

And that whole attitude pisses me off so much. People were as 'smart' 10,000 years ago as they are today. These beliefs aren't just desperate, random flailing to explain phenomena that could not directly be accounted for either, it's not like people just looked at the sun and went "Uhhh I don't know what the fuck that thing is, actually. I guess it might be a chariot or a boat or something?? Yeah let's go with that." and based entire religious practices on this. Every well-established belief system exists within broader contexts of cultural values/subjective perceptions of reality/knowledge systems/etc, and exist as part of a historical continuum of religious practices that came before. Even when not Materially Correct, they have context and internal logic, they're not always dead literal with zero levels of allegory, and they're never a result of stupidity.

[lastoneout]

I really do miss back when it was considered fucking weird to ask trans people(or anyone who is even a little gnc/has a label you don't understand/is giving you queer vibes)* what their assigned sex at birth is. Like we literally used to roast cis people for this shit, that's legit why the "what's in your pants" meme exists, but somehow we've reached a point where a very vocal portion of the online trans community genuinely thinks you owe people this information so they can make insane generalizations about you and your life and if you refuse that's cause for suspicion and I really shouldn't have to explain how fucked that is.

Interrogating people about what's in their pants is transphobe/terf/transmed shit. "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" is fed shit. Tbh "you owe me personal information about your body and medical history" is ableist and intersexist shit. Sex and/or gender tells you literally nothing concrete about a person and there is no world where you are owed this information. Can we cut this shit out and go back to judging people by their words and actions instead of what some random doctor decided their body looks like when they were a squishy baby, you know, like normal people? Please??

*It's also wildly intersexist but unfortunately I don't think we've ever reached a point of collectively accepting that it's horrid to ask intersex people unprompted questions about their bodies and medical histories. You are absolutely not owed any of that information for any reason, especially given that medical history typically goes hand in hand with profound trauma due to how normalized medical abuse against intersex people is, and everyone needs to get that through their heads yesterday. If they want to share they can and will, aside from that it's none-ya.

[inkskinned]

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

[wearenotjustnumbers2]

These two kids are Hamza (the oldest) and Qusai (the youngest).

Their mother shares this video and bids them goodbye. They were both killed by Israeli bombardment 5 days ago. She says:

[Two days before Hamza and Qusai were killed, hamza asked me: "mom, when we die, where will I go?" And I told him: "you will be a bird in heaven, my love." He said: "and Qusai?" "Just like you inshallah."

And indeed, two days later, he left and took his brother with him. It's like he was preparing me for saying goodbye to both of them. Heaven is more beautiful than any place on this Earth, habibi. We will meet and be reunited one day, me, your dad and you two].

Our kids don't deserve to die already thinking about what will happen to them, they don't deserve to die already terrified, anticipating their death because the world failed them and decided their lives mean nothing. We are not numbers. Remember their names and their stories.

[the-cimmerians]

right now it’s almost halfway through 2023, and 2024 is an election year in the US. I have started to see a growing proliferation of posts suggesting that there is no difference between the republican and democratic parties--the exact same kind of posts I saw an awful lot of before the last major election here. I am unfollowing folks who post or reblog these sort of posts, as I consider these posts to be fascist propaganda framed as leftist discourse, designed to suppress anti-fascist votes and voters. 

[fremulon]

forget Resting Bitch Face, I have Resting Competent Face. People see me and think ah yes she can point me to the nearest train station. Fellow grocery shoppers ask if I know what kind of butter they should buy. If a strange man speaks to me on the street it is literally always an inquiry and never a catcall. Once someone randomly asked me what an equinox was and after I told her she nodded and said "you seemed like you'd know." why am I assigned oracle at random interaction

[stuckinapril]

October 7 still being used as a talking point 7 months into the genocide actually gives me a fucking migraine when several fact-checking articles have come out by now that show Israel was completely aware there would be an escalation that day, that they let it happen because it could then be used as grounds for heightened Israeli terrorism for months to come (not that Israel hasn’t been enacting atrocities on Palestinians for decades now), that a huge portion of Israeli civilian casualty is owed at large to the IOF firing in close quarters at areas where Israeli captives were held, that Israeli helicopters indiscriminately shot at Israelis and Palestinians on that day (bc they don’t actually give a fuck for the civilians, in case you haven’t caught the memo), and that Israeli captives even recounted how the IOF obliterated everyone (including its own hostages it supposedly wanted to rescue) the moment they arrived on the scene. That day Israel murdered hundreds of its own in cold blood.

[fortunelowtier]

the only redeeming quality of this year's game awards was flute guy having a different instrument in every shot he was in until eventually he evolved to his final form where bro was playing The Doohickey

bro was playing the Gigaflute