#these are not all the same size btw they cropped kind of weird or they werent the

[starswallowingsea]

Saori Hidaka and Rika Seto icons for me! But they are free to use with credit

[literaphobe]

the whole shebang of gifs, if you don't mind :)

would like to start of by saying. that i am by no means an expert. and that easily someone could come on this post and tell me i am doing something wrong/stupid/pointless. but y’all wanted this. so let’s go. here’s how i gif (using she-ra as an example, so u can say this is a bit of a tutorial on how to gif an animated show? lmao)

first off ur gonna need adobe photoshop. if u don’t have it and don’t plan on getting a version of it then idk how to help u. u will have to find some other tutorial. anyway let’s start w the basics. to make a gif, you either need pictures or a video. we are doing a video —> gif tutorial here. so for me, i use quicktime player to take a screen recording. i tend to edit the clip to get almost exactly only the part i need on imovie so i don’t have to further crop the video clip on photoshop. once you’ve got ur video, go to photoshop, click file —> import —> video frames to layers. then click the video u want to gif, then open. something will pop up. click the box that says limit to every 2 frames, then select OK. ur gif frames will be created. then u gotta do 3 things:

group your frames. do this by selecting all frames (command + option + a) and grouping them (command + g) u should get a folder that says group 1

crop and resize your gif. now this depends on what kind of gif you want to make. you should adjust your crop ratios. click on the crop tool, a ratio thing will pop up with two numbers. number on the left is your length, number on the right is your breadth. for big gifs, i do 540 x 268. for square gifs, 268 x 268. for rectangular gifs that are meant to be two by two (lets say ur making 8 gifs w like text of a scene or whatever) i do 266 x 177. so once u have set ur ratios and adjusted the crop thing to select whichever part of the image u want in the gif, click enter. ur gif will get cropped. THEN, u need to actually adjust the size of ur gif. click on image —> image size. a thing will open up. enter the length number and the width number should be adjusted accordingly

change the gif speed. click on the triple line thing on the top right hand corner of your timeline. you should click on select all frames. when you’ve done that all the frames will be highlighted. click on one of the little numbers. see the 0.02 thing? yea. make sure not to accidentally deselect ur frames. when u click, you’ll get a pop up with some speeds. click on ‘others’. currently, the speed of ur gif will be 0.02. for me, that’s too fast. i almost always do 0.06. u don’t want ur gif to move too fast tbh. i think it makes it look weird and unnatural. we wanna either match the speed of what its like in the show or go a TAD bit slower. so like. if u wanna follow me just set it to 0.06 <3

anyway. that’s the basic stuff. after all that, your gif should look like this:

u can stop here if you want, but if u wanna make it like. different. u can continue on. 

now it’s time to color!

for me i do mostly 3 things. curves, levels, selective color. u can find these by clicking layer —> new adjustment layer —> the thing u want

let’s start with curves. disclaimer: i’m doing it wrong <3 i mean it’s not WRONG but i could probably be using this function a lot better than i have. when u click on curves, it comes out as a straight line. there will be a dot in the centre. what i do is i move the centre dot slightly to the top left hand corner. so it looks like this for this gif i made:

isn’t that so fucking stupid. i let a BIT of light into the picture. like that’s it lmao. i won’t even show u the difference between the initial gif and this. it’s too stupid

levels. ok this one has a bit more function. u have a number on the left that says 0 and a number on the right that says 250. by reducing the number on the right, the gif gets brighter. by increasing the number on the left..... i won’t say the gif gets darker but the dark parts of the picture will. get darker? more pronounced? it’s all about finding a good balance. here’s what I did for this gif:

now we move onto selective color. this is a… whole thing. sigh. ok. so in selective coloring, you have 9 ‘colors’ or sections. they are red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta, white, neutrals, and black. depending on what colors there are in the picture, we will. mess w it accordingly. and in each ‘color’, there are four…. scales. ranging from -100% to 100%. and they are cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. i suggest u play around with these to see what they do on ur own. this is what i did for the reds in this gif:

what i do is i try to make the reds stand out. in this gif there’s only those 2 stripes but usually in adora gifs she’s wearing that fucking red jacket <3 and since she’s gonna do that we might as well make that red pop! make it sexy! so as u can see i made the cyans negative, while magenta and yellow are in the positives. i’m taking away the blues in the red essentially. and making the red have a more… yellowish hue? because the bluish hues for red are. ugly. in my opinion. all these things depend on the gif btw. seriously this is just an example. i might do something completely different for another gif. 

for yellows this is what i did:

as u can see i… made the yellows negative for the color yellow. i made the cyans negative too to like. take away the blue? but i made the yellows negative because i don’t want the yellows to be…. too yellow. i know this doesn’t make much sense. but when i make the yellows positive for the red section, the yellows in the yellow parts of the gif might get Too Much. so i gotta undo the Damage caused in the red section. i could do like a video tutorial to make this more clear but since this is not a video tutorial u will just have to take my word for it. basically when u color what ur trying to do is copy the colors in the source material but also… make it different. it makes no sense I know <3

anyway! adora’s wearing white in this gif. so i changed the whites too. it looks like this:

i essentially tried to make the whites…. Whiter? lmaooooo

and now i will show u my shameful cyan and blue sections. here is the cyan section. i don’t have to show u the blue section because i did the exact same thing:

yes i went 100% on the cyan and -100% on the yellow okay. what about it. what. fucking shut up. i also did something similar in the magenta section. wanted to make the purples blue... i guess

also as u can see from above the original color of the background is purple. i’m that fucking extra so for this gif i did an ‘extra step’. i added a hues and saturation layer. and I basically adjusted the hues so the purples became blue

see? also yeah the hue and saturation section is also separated into different colors. i adjusted only the blue section this time. after ur done, ur gif should look... hopefully nice <3 but i always sharpen my gifs. so i will show u how to do that, also

going back to the triple line button in ur timeline, click select all frames —> convert to video timeline. then go to the top of the page where there’s this thing called filter. click filter —> convert for smart filters. click it again. filter —> sharpen —> smart sharpen. this will pop up:

follow these settings. then click ok. u are done. u can save ur gif now. but if u are paranoid like me, u will click on the spacebar and play ur sharpened gif to make sure it looks ok. the first time u play it it will be very slow. wait. then click ur spacebar again n it will load faster aka the speed it is supposed to be. and there u have it. to save ur gif go to file —> export —> save for web. u will see how big ur gif is. hopefully its not too big. if ur gif has more than 100 frames that would not be great. if it has something like 200 frames or something that’s way too big probably <3 i try not to have more than 100 frames for this reason. gotta be safe <3 ur gif will look something like this if u do what i did:

idk how well i explained this. probably not super well. oh well. hit me up if u need a video tutorial

[botanyshitposts]

Re: corn bybrids, I thought developing a monoculture was quite...dangerous, having a vast amount of food production depending on something never coming along which might evolve to attack a single genetic variety... like the way it went with bananas... and might be going again with bananas... Isn't genetic diversity kind of the key component of robustness in the ongoing evolution race between plant and pest?

okay, so first of all: damage in the maize industry due to a large amount of the same seed variety being used has happened before because of the thing that anon is talking about, way back in the gap between the 50s and the 70s when we didn’t know as much about breeding things for agri as we do now. 

to understand this bit of maize history, we have to back up here and explain detasseling. the process of detasseling is a HHUUUUUUUGGEE thing in the midwest to the point where its a tradition/coming of age ritual for a lot of rural families. so in large production cornfields (which create mass hybrid seed for farmers), it’s like my job on a huge scale; at this point, corn research facilities (like the one I work at) have chosen the best resulting hybrid varieties from two of their inbred strains and have decided to market it. to do this, they send the seed companies a shit ton of seeds for the inbred parents with the intention of making a super shit ton of hybrid seed for sale. at my work, when the resulting varieties might be openly tossed out at any moment, we hand-pollinate the maize with special bags, but this is impossible with literal thousands of plants on a production line. so what companies do is plant fields separated into parts- part A will be the male inbred line, and part B will be the female inbred line. the intention is to mass-pollinate the female line with the male line. this is done by chopping off all the tassels (the male flower structures on top of the plants) off the plants in the female section, so that the field has no choice but to pollinate the female ears in part B with the male tassels in part A. the plants in part B produce ears of hybrid seed, which can be sold. 

and this is where the bus loads of rural teens come in. detasseling is a notoriously HORRIBLE job, but it also pays well to the point that you can make $1,000 in a few weeks, which attracts farm kids to get up at 4AM to walk through the female sections of fields to individually pull the tassels off each and every female plant. each field has a different arrangement; some are one row male, two rows female, ect, but its all the same concept. in recent decades we’ve developed giant wacking machines that roll through the fields and chop off all the female tassels, but anyone who works with plants knows that when you work with biological organisms, it’s nearly impossible to use a machine to regulate everything the exact same way; every individual is different, which is why to this day every late June to early July corn companies hire farm kids to do this horrible job for a reasonable amount of pay. 

now you may be like, “why can’t they just get rid of the tassels in the genes??” and that’s where we come to our story about the terrible potential of inbred line crossing and mass monocultures when done incorrectly.

in the 1950s, people in corn research facilities found a single corn inbred variety that allowed for male sterility in the inbred line; when crossed, it regained it’s fertility as a hybrid cross. this means that seed corn companies could use a fertile male inbred line and this specific infertile line as their female, and during production wouldn’t need to hire detasselers. the resulting corn would be perfectly fertile to use by farmers in the field for the production of grain. 

the result of this was people using a shit ton of this female line. like. in everything. like by the mid 1960s almost all seed corn was produced with this gene so corn companies could save money. 

and this is where we reach the total nightmare scenario that i still kind of geek out about because it’s such a nightmare scenario like how could you create a monoculture like this when this is like. a textbook potential result of reducing genetic diversity?????:

in 1971, we had a huge outbreak of fungus southern corn leaf blight. it just so happened that the male infertile inbred line being used as a female in like 500000000 hybrid corn varieties was very susceptible to fungus southern corn leaf blight. and the hybrid corn that was developed from it- which at this point made up 90% of all hybrid corn being grown in the United States- was also susceptible to it. 

we lost 15% of the entire USA’s maize crop in 1971 because corn companies wanted to save money and didn’t have the tech to increase genetic diversity in their inbred lines. also this is just the USA, like this is a quote from the abstract of this emergency white paper on the epidemic discussing the nightmare scenario looming over the susceptible crop in 1970-1971 canada when it crept up from the corn belt (canada ended up not suffering as badly as the US, and that paper is really interesting and anxiety-inducing to read if your interested in plant pathology btw):

75% like could you even imagine. if this was worse than it was canada alone could have lost 75% of its entire maize crop. like i cannot believe this literally happened like you would think???? that they would be like o shit we have a lot of that corn like we should prob not do that incase something was to happen???? but they didnt they really. just did it lol

anyway so the resolution to that story is that of course farmers were like wow i sure dont want to lose my livelihood to my entire crop failing and immediately stopped buying hybrids with the susceptible inbred line. it literally fell out of use in like three years and we went back to manual detasseling even though the scientists in the 80s were like “hey we fixed it” and tried putting a leaf blight resistant male infertile inbred line back on the market for crossing but no one would touch that shit lol

and thats the story of how detasseling almost stopped for like 30 years until the US maize market took a major hit as the result of companies cutting corners and then came back and is still a thing that happens every year. today, we do use the male infertile inbred lines, but not even close to in the same capacity as we did in the 60s. it’s used today in conjunction with manual detasseling and machine detasseling to reduce costs. 

so anyway, i asked the corn breeders at work about how they prevent this nightmare from happening again, and they told me a couple things:

1. theres just. so many corn varieties out there now that are used. like to give some ideas as far of the sheer scale: at my facility alone, we have around 40 male inbred lines and 40 female inbred lines. every facility has this many. there are hundreds of facilities and they all mix and match inbreds. thats just my company 

2. they have hundreds of breeding programs that all strive for different things and seek out new maize varieties to keep the gene pool fresh. 

3. just like with all other things that aren’t industry and lifestyle changing (coughthatonesingularmaleinfertilefamaleinbredlinecough), things fall in and out of style. like it feels like a weird thing bc its corn but seriously, its a thing that happens in breeding because what the farmers want in their corn is always changing; they gave an example of a particularly popular variety my company had in the 90s that was the big thing for a few years. after those few years where it was like super popular (they spoke of it by numerical code and did so very fondly lol it was like two of them and they were like “aaahhhh 4919992 do u remember that one.....man what a stunner”) the farmers noticed some problems with it, got tired of it, and started buying better stuff. things fall in and out of popularity. 

4. we have the power of GMOs on our side. that means that if they have a gene in one plant thats super cool and powerful but the plant itself if lacking, they can just take it out and put it in a better, more resistant plant, and if that doesnt work they can just keep trying, or try with a better gene or trait. if the detasseling thing had happened today instead of the 1950s, they could have taken the gene out and put it in several different, more genetically diverse inbred lines, causing a little more variety than using the exact. same. females. for everything. bc thats so smart. 

basically?? we have a ton of corn. a lot of corn. just so much corn. u want tall corn?? u can choose between 6000000000 tall corn lines or perhaps u would like some mid-sized corn????? could i interest u in some corn from england??????? or japan???? or corn resistant to your particular climate or tailored to your needs???????????? please choose your corn company (there are like 500000 and they all have their own inbred lines) and then choose ur fave and change it out from year to year???????? we just got in 500000 new inbred varieties and got rid of 50000?????? its in the industry’s favor financially to keep developing new stuff, new traits, new inbreds, and new hybrids. genetic diversity is key to keeping up with new threats, and as of 2017 we’re certainly not using the same females for everything anymore. bananas are another story tho lol

[athleisure-aesthetic]

This is a long post because I went on a few rants, but there are workouts and stuff in there, I promise ;) stay tuned for commentary on vanity sizing and non-scale victories!

April 13 Thursday’s workout was super speedy. Legs and a quick stretching NTC workout. I meant to do curtsy lunges to finish it out, but I was crunched for time and my legs were already burning from the seasaw lunges and step-ups because my bench was higher than a normal one would be. I always get kind of frustrated when my NTC workout ends up being a lowkey stretching one, because I use it to replace cardio for the day. I’m starting to think I should either do more than one or just do cardio anyway. At least I got in a nice half hour walk at lunch; it was much colder than I was expecting since the rest of this week has been so nice! Still pretty out tho. And my skull shirt is badass. The end.

Went to Whole Foods with Ani when I got home to get some goodies for the weekend, and really stuck to my list (which I was proud of, bc that store is a literal TRAP) which included chocolate milk as a post-workout fuel… ASK ME HOW HYPE I AM TO START DRINKING CHOCO MILK AGAIN!!! (very. obviously.) Also started growing a mini protein bar collection because now I’m terrified of not properly fueling post-workout, so now I’m going to have very little excuse not to, since these babies are extremely portable. Just throw one in ya workout bag, and there you go. Don’t even have to remember to get it from my lunch box. I’m finally trying RXBAR and a few Quest Bar flavors (shoutout to @runningwhilenotdying for the suggestion, ty girl!) for now, in addition to the Luna Protein bars I still have. Still going to have to try a few to find out which works best for me.

Legs / butt workout 3x each 15 reps weighted glute bridges, 10# 15 reps goblet squats, 10# 20 reps step ups, alt. sides, 10# 20 reps seasaw lunges, alt. sides 15 reps weighted lying leg curls, 6# 40 s wall sits 10 reps burpee + high jump alternating leg swing stretches instead of curtsy lunges bc I’m a wimpy bitch lol

Listening to: “Under You” by Nick Jonas

April 14 Today is the day John Mayer’s full album is out, something I realized halfway through Friday morning while working from home, so I blasted the FUCK out of it in my apartment and haven’t stopped listening since. Ani took the day off, so it was just me at home designing, which is literally what I wish every work day of my life could be. Making my own schedule, eating and working out whenever I want and not having to worry about when I’m going to finish, not having to talk to people lol.

I decided to workout around 11ish and had to do arms / upper body without weights, which was a bit challenging considering my weak wrists and lack of free weights. BUT I made it, and my wrists weren’t ded afterwards, so I guess I’m building up some strength? Plus check out my schweaty knees, aren’t they purty? It was a dec workout, so hype it. HOWEVER, in the middle of my last set, this awful ringing started in my apartment, which I identified as the fire alarm after panicking for like 2 seconds. Then there was this weirdo announcement in our hallway as if we were in a damn dorm, saying to evacuate asap so I was like o fuck ok let me get my things. Ran outside with my purse and a jacket, ran into the woman who legit hates me and Ani for being loud on the weekend two whole times (fuck her tho it was a Friday and Saturday at like 11pm get your panties out of your ass amirite) and she was like idk what’s going on I’m probably not going downstairs. I was like ????? um if there’s a fire I’m not dying so bye. So I ran down 8 flights of stairs to find no one in the lobby. Sick. It was a false. Alarm. Bc they’re doing construction right in front of the elevators. Motherfuckers. So I had to go back up 8 flights of stairs once I got the approval from the doorman. Thx for the cardio break, how’d you know I needed that? 🙄 Finished my set, worked for a bit longer, then showered and decided I was done working for the day lol.

It was pay day and I was bored so I kinda went a little nuts on a shopping trip. As usual, I mostly bought athleisure, buuuuuuuuuuut there are some significant things about this shopping trip that I must share.

1: I willingly purchased two pairs of athletic shorts. I do not wear anything but leggings to workout in, because I hate the way my legs look, and I usually feel much more mobile and flexible in leggings, even if it’s like 90 degrees out and July. But I tried on two pairs of black shorts, and could actually see myself not only wearing them like to bed, but like… doing active things in them, and being ok with seeing my legs. First #NONSCALEVICTORY o the day.

2: I not only willingly tried on a one piece bathing suit, I tried on two, AND I purchased one. Every person alive knows too well the personal torture of trying on bathing suits, especially in dressing rooms that have awful fluorescent lighting that does not flatter anyone. But for some reason I was in a good mood about my bod (perhaps after the shorts win), so I grabbed two suits and said to myself, fuck it, don’t feel bad about yourself, but do not get your hopes up. This could go great, or it could not. Don’t let this be a reflection of how hard you’ve been working. It might just not fit, that’s not your fault. BUT THEY BOTH FIT REALLY DECENTLY OK. The one was like bright red and v scandalous and tbh I did not have the boobs to fill out that sucker. So despite it fitting ok, I couldn’t go with it. But the other was stripey and rouchey and pretty comfortable, so I was like welp. I need at least one suit for the summer, and can’t picture myself using any of the ones from last summer, and I don’t feel like total crap in this. So. I bought it!

3: I purchased at least one thing of every size (S, M, L, and XL), which proves that sizing is fake and literally doesn’t fucking matter. I like all my tops a little baggy and all of my bottoms tight (except those shorts I ended up getting, but who knew I would even buy shorts…). That’s just my personal preference style-wise. I went to four different stores, and ended up getting clothing that fit me, but when I was ripping the tags off when I got home, I noticed that all the sizes were different. I bought a shirt from Uniqlo (AMAZING STORE, btw, never been before today) that was a size small, which is something I haven’t done in like literally maybe 7-8 years. I also bought a cropped sweatshirt from Marshall’s in XL, even though I thought it was a large when I bought it. Either way, it’s not like my body morphed mid-shopping trip. I was the same size all day, but the stores decided I was all over the place. This just makes me a, hate the fashion industry for forcing this imaginary 00 system and ideals of size-shaming on us, but also b, feel better about myself because I know that I can’t be reliant on just being one size. I used to think of my weightloss in terms of pants sizes. Like last Friday when I was wearing actual pants, they were 12s. But like. A 12 at one store could be a 16 at another, or an 8. I used to say, oh I just want to be down to a consistent 8. That would be the perfect amount of weight to lose. If I get there, I’ll know that I’m good. But I’m really starting to see that that number and that size doesn’t exist. There is no universe in which an 8 at every store will fit the same. So judging yourself on a system that’s literally impossible to fit into is just a recipe for hurt and shame. So now I’m just gonna grab any size that looks like it’ll fit. It’s still not fun to see a higher number, but that’s going to be a mindset I have to get myself out of, and this post is proof that it doesn’t matter. I want to base my happiness with my fitness on phyiscal progress: what I can DO with my body, not just how it looks in the clothes I inevitably have to wear. But today, for a few reasons, I felt really good, and I’m proud to have seen not only one, but a few non-scale wins. Hype it the FUCK up.

Whew. That was a lot, sorry. I almost feel like a doing a ~haul~ like I’m on some fashion youtube channel, I bought so many fun things. But whatever, I doubt anyone cares about that except me lolol.

Honestly sometimes I think I just like to buy some things because I’m happy they fit me, not because I need them or are in love with them. Is that weird? I feel like I’m a pretty specific shape (very short and curvy, but not curvy everywhere), so when I find something I actually think fits me, I usually just say, yeah I’ll wear this. I definitely am spending too much money that way, but it’s nice to feel like a lot of things are fitting me well for once.

Arms / upper body workout 3x each 20 reps shoulder taps, alt. sides 10 reps pushups 20 reps walk outs + twist, alt. sides 10 reps tricep dips 50 reps arm circles forward 50 reps arm circles backward 20 reps lat pull downs + shoulder squeeze 35s, 40s, 45s plank 10 reps decline push ups 10 reps burpee + high jump + 5 jumping jacks PLUS 8 flights of stairs when my fucking fire alarm went off and the elevator didn’t work 🙃

Listening to: “Burlesque” by Christina Aguilera OR the Voices in Your Head a cappella version, both are fun

April 15 I was hella nervous for my run today; 6 miles seemed like a lot to me, and after last week’s long run on the treadmill, it had been a while since I’d done a long one outside. The last time I finished a long run outside, I felt like death. So this time I wanted to be really prepared; I read some articles and youtube videos on how to run longer without like dying, and made sure to focus on my breathing and warmup. Once I left my apartment, I didn’t start my timed run for about 10ish minutes but still ran slow to get my legs ready. Then I did some of the moves from the videos, and set off. Today I went towards the art museum and Kelly Drive for the first time, which was definitely busy for a Saturday morning, but it was kinda gray out and mid-50s which is like perfect running weather. I felt really good for like literally the whole run, and I couldn’t tell if it was the new place, good music, or what, but I was surprised at how quickly the miles came and went. I stopped at 4.56 miles to take the picture in front of the art museum, walked briskly up the hill to the building, then ran the rest of the way on the rest of the Schuykill River Trail and back towards home. I finished a little ways away from home and was inspired by a boy who seemed to be blind or albino who was running with a small leash with a girl, and continued jogging all the way home. So I really totalled something like 7.10 miles and they felt GREAT which is INSANE for me. Like that’s so many miles. And I haven’t run that far in so long, and they actually felt GOOD??? Like who am I?

I rewarded myself with a cinnamon roll protein shake, a little more shopping (I ended up getting the black Nike Tanjuns for anyone who saw my post last night lol), and Chick-Fil-A nuggets for lunch. Was considering making this day a cheat day when I saw the Chick-Fil-A, but I was good and only got the nuggets. My resolve was tested when I saw a girl with a Rita’s cup right when I got home and I wanted to be like OMG GIRL WHERE IS THERE A RITA’s AROUND HERE???!??! But clearly I held myself back.

Guess that means more Easter chocolate for me tomorrow hayyyyyy

6.02 mi 10'20" min / mi

Listening to: “Hair” by Little Mix