#tumblr is many things but it is not corporate

[enderllama]

Why did they change it

Why do they keep changing things

[ganondoodle]

got this reblog on one of my posts were i talked about being anxious about the future of the zelda series after totk and-

i even went back and unblocked them just to check my own post and check twice what they meant exactly- but i still dont know how they got to these conclusions

i never said i 'want a good uwu ganondorf' (bc that would mean hes aligned with hyrule bc thats how goodness works!!!!11!1!!!), i also dont think of any of the zeldas as 'whores' (seriously, where did that come from?? neither me nor the addition of someone agreeing with me said anything like that??? did they think bc the addition called tloz misogynistic means we think zelda is a whore????? huh???)

its also funny how they say they want zelda to stay a simple fairytale rather than have 'people like me' bc .. one point i talked about in the og post was how the evil arab thing VS good white people media likes to do so much is so normalized here that its simply seen as a simple harmless fairytale trope instead of a big underlying issue in general media and the writers might not even realize it (which is worse) bc the most 'generic' appeal is to people who dont think of it as a problem in the first place, because it is so normalized

(huh, i wonder about what kind of person that part was about .. hmmmm)

(ALSO funny they mention princess hilda as nuanced villain ... like ... wow they are so nuanced about purple haired people!!- like guess why we want a nuanced/less badly/less flat written ganondorf and what he, in particular, has not in common with other villains! its not his hair color! .... or was that point supposed to mean .. look we have one female character that is a villain, its not misogynistic! idk honestly)

(and the classic, "you just call it this/dont like it bc its not what you wanted !!!!!!!2!"1!112!!")

also funny how its 'never gonna be progressive enough' like asking for the franchise to maybe put a little more thought and nuance into their white divine right vs evil desert man simulator instead of making it worse is already asking too much

(i dont know what the last point has to do with anything??)

(also yes totk is racist, like most if not all of the franchise and a alot of other media as well, shocker- you can still like it though, i and plenty of other people are still fans of it, we just wish they did a little more with their stuff and maybe not make the racism problem WORSE)

(also yes the hyrule monarchy is also evil :))) )

(and also not so secretly so either :)) )

[thresholdbb]

PSA

I love the Star Trek fandom community and its boundless creativity. That said, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect and give proper attribution when your work is inspired by other artists or a particular niche. There is an unfortunate tendency to steal ideas and posts without giving credit, which is both unfortunate and disingenuous

Part of being in a community is how you engage with other members of that community, and underhanded behavior does not get us any closer to a Starfleet future

"The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based, and if you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth... you don't deserve to wear that uniform." -Jean Luc Picard

[vilochkaaa]

for every demon, there's a hunter..

yeah, it's another one of those demon AU thing, and im not gonna stop

..

[kittiesarecuter]

I hate the modern internet, I'm getting a fucking headache. I hate trying to find art archives or complete comics and everything is linked back to a dead mega upload or imgr file. I hate trying to find a specific artist from 10's deviantart or tumblr but the search functions and purges have made it near impossible to find anything. I hate having pintrest be one of the most reliable sources for finding tagged archived art even though it's always posted with zero sources or the ability to find more than one from a set.

Every day I miss how open and easy and creative and energetic those years were. Most of the time when I talk to someone about the fan culture of 2004 - 2018 they immediately start talking about how cutthroat the social scene was as if that was entirely unique to the time and place and as if it was unavoidable. I don't know where to find anything on the internet anymore and it kind of feels like the infrastructure that allowed that amount of art and writing to flow just doesn't exist anymore.

It was bittersweet to look through forums that had only a handful of new posts since 2012 but at least I could still read them. Some of them I even joined and talked with the last few old guard that still checked it every week. But when it comes to art, writing, and comics of the era I can barely find the abandoned accounts. Other people have put the whole "dead internet" talk in better words with the whole funneling the whole of internet activity through a handful of app services but this is personal to me. It is genuinely depressing to see things get so much worse in so many ways in such a short amount of time.

I genuinely think I need to start building a server and learning how to mass archive & then host data for others because I'm in part terrified of how many gigabytes of work we've already lost to the either. It might be fan work and silly oc's but people poured their heart & soul, skills & hours into these things that shouldn't be deleted or made inaccessible because a boardroom decided making internal search engines pull up weighted results from a fixed time frame instead of just a list of all results was somehow better for revenue.

[unforth]

Unpopular opinion: the heavy push toward anti-advertising on Tumblr does nothing to harm the advertisers you hate but is doing a huge amount of damage to small businesses who rely on reblogs to get the word out about their stuff.

[shinraelectricpowercom]

SABCATT PSA

hoo boy. new tumblr layout hurts my fucking eyes. so i'll probably be on here less. more urgent inquiries can go to my dreamwidth, where i'll try to put up an anon-enabled post that's like "here from one of my other socials? drop a comment!" that can function as. something like an ask box

[anime-academia]

Thanks, @rangerofthesouth , for sending me this! It was fun:)

Are the bandages bc they're about to fight, or is it because I have lovingly bestowed my wrist problems on them? Cat's name would be Aristotle.

No pressure tags @rangerofthesouth bc I wanna see yours! @hanabeeri @tokidokitokyo @viiinz @vibinwiththefrogs @eldritch-metalhead @karwailang @takeshitakyuuto @this-is-krikkit and @ anyone else who'd like to do this!

Design what your blog would look like if it was a person!

The picrew

I tag @red-skady @superchat @eviligo @maplepastry @nek0hime13 @bestgirlsyndrome @gentlesakura @games2girlsdotcom @deadlycoffee @bunny-stickers @starbitsun @888lvl @little-ikea-waldo @delanore-roosevelt @fefeps @imnevernice no pressure at all!!

If anyone else wants to join dont hesitate to reblog!!

[asgardian--angels]

Planet's Fucked: What Can You Do To Help? (Long Post)

Since nobody is talking about the existential threat to the climate and the environment a second Trump term/Republican government control will cause, which to me supersedes literally every other issue, I wanted to just say my two cents, and some things you can do to help. I am a conservation biologist, whose field was hit substantially by the first Trump presidency. I study wild bees, birds, and plants.

In case anyone forgot what he did last time, he gagged scientists' ability to talk about climate change, he tried zeroing budgets for agencies like the NOAA, he attempted to gut protections in the Endangered Species Act (mainly by redefining 'take' in a way that would allow corporations to destroy habitat of imperiled species with no ramifications), he tried to do the same for the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (the law that offers official protection for native non-game birds), he sought to expand oil and coal extraction from federal protected lands, he shrunk the size of multiple national preserves, HE PULLED US OUT OF THE PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT, and more.

We are at a crucial tipping point in being able to slow the pace of climate change, where we decide what emissions scenario we will operate at, with existential consequences for both the environment and people. We are also in the middle of the Sixth Mass Extinction, with the rate of species extinctions far surpassing background rates due completely to human actions. What we do now will determine the fate of the environment for hundreds or thousands of years - from our ability to grow key food crops (goodbye corn belt! I hated you anyway but), to the pressure on coastal communities that will face the brunt of sea level rise and intensifying extreme weather events, to desertification, ocean acidification, wildfires, melting permafrost (yay, outbreaks of deadly frozen viruses!), and a breaking down of ecosystems and ecosystem services due to continued habitat loss and species declines, especially insect declines. The fact that the environment is clearly a low priority issue despite the very real existential threat to so many people, is beyond my ability to understand. I do partly blame the public education system for offering no mandatory environmental science curriculum or any at all in most places. What it means is that it will take the support of everyone who does care to make any amount of difference in this steeply uphill battle.

There are not enough environmental scientists to solve these issues, not if public support is not on our side and the majority of the general public is either uninformed or actively hostile towards climate science (or any conservation science).

So what can you, my fellow Americans, do to help mitigate and minimize the inevitable damage that lay ahead?

I'm not going to tell you to recycle more or take shorter showers. I'll be honest, that stuff is a drop in the bucket. What does matter on the individual level is restoring and protecting habitat, reducing threats to at-risk species, reducing pesticide use, improving agricultural practices, and pushing for policy changes. Restoring CONNECTIVITY to our landscape - corridors of contiguous habitat - will make all the difference for wildlife to be able to survive a changing climate and continued human population expansion.

**Caveat that I work in the northeast with pollinators and birds so I cannot provide specific organizations for some topics, including climate change focused NGOs. Scientists on tumblr who specialize in other fields, please add your own recommended resources. **

We need two things: FUNDING and MANPOWER.

You may surprised to find that an insane amount of conservation work is carried out by volunteers. We don't ever have the funds to pay most of the people who want to help. If you really really care, consider going into a conservation-related field as a career. It's rewarding, passionate work.

At the national level, please support:

The Nature Conservancy

Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation

Cornell Lab of Ornithology (including eBird)

National Audubon Society

Federal Duck Stamps (you don't need to be a hunter to buy one!)

These first four work to acquire and restore critical habitat, change environmental policy, and educate the public. There is almost certainly a Nature Conservancy-owned property within driving distance of you. Xerces plays a very large role in pollinator conservation, including sustainable agriculture, native bee monitoring programs, and the Bee City/Bee Campus USA programs. The Lab of O is one of the world's leaders in bird research and conservation. Audubon focuses on bird conservation. You can get annual memberships to these organizations and receive cool swag and/or a subscription to their publications which are well worth it. You can also volunteer your time; we need thousands of volunteers to do everything from conducting wildlife surveys, invasive species removal, providing outreach programming, managing habitat/clearing trails, planting trees, you name it. Federal Duck Stamps are the major revenue for wetland conservation; hunters need to buy them to hunt waterfowl but anyone can get them to collect!

THERE ARE DEFINITELY MORE, but these are a start.

Additionally, any federal or local organizations that seek to provide support and relief to those affected by hurricanes, sea level rise, any form of coastal climate change...

At the regional level:

These are a list of topics that affect major regions of the United States. Since I do not work in most of these areas I don't feel confident recommending specific organizations, but please seek resources relating to these as they are likely major conservation issues near you.

PRAIRIE CONSERVATION & PRAIRIE POTHOLE WETLANDS

DRYING OF THE COLORADO RIVER (good overview video linked)

PROTECTION OF ESTUARIES AND SALTMARSH, ESPECIALLY IN THE DELAWARE BAY AND LONG ISLAND (and mangroves further south, everglades etc; this includes restoring LIVING SHORELINES instead of concrete storm walls; also check out the likely-soon extinction of saltmarsh sparrows)

UNDAMMING MAJOR RIVERS (not just the Colorado; restoring salmon runs, restoring historic floodplains)

NATIVE POLLINATOR DECLINES (NOT honeybees. for fuck's sake. honeybees are non-native domesticated animals. don't you DARE get honeybee hives to 'save the bees')

WILDLIFE ALONG THE SOUTHERN BORDER (support the Mission Butterfly Center!)

INVASIVE PLANT AND ANIMAL SPECIES (this is everywhere but the specifics will differ regionally, dear lord please help Hawaii)

LOSS OF WETLANDS NATIONWIDE (some states have lost over 90% of their wetlands, I'm looking at you California, Ohio, Illinois)

INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE, esp in the CORN BELT and CALIFORNIA - this is an issue much bigger than each of us, but we can work incrementally to promote sustainable practices and create habitat in farmland-dominated areas. Support small, local farms, especially those that use soil regenerative practices, no-till agriculture, no pesticides/Integrated Pest Management/no neonicotinoids/at least non-persistent pesticides. We need more farmers enrolling in NRCS programs to put farmland in temporary or permanent wetland easements, or to rent the land for a 30-year solar farm cycle. We've lost over 99% of our prairies to corn and soybeans. Let's not make it 100%.

INDIGENOUS LAND-BACK EFFORTS/INDIGENOUS LAND MANAGEMENT/TEK (adding this because there have been increasing efforts not just for reparations but to also allow indigenous communities to steward and manage lands either fully independently or alongside western science, and it would have great benefits for both people and the land; I know others on here could speak much more on this. Please platform indigenous voices)

HARMFUL ALGAL BLOOMS (get your neighbors to stop dumping fertilizers on their lawn next to lakes, reduce agricultural runoff)

OCEAN PLASTIC (it's not straws, it's mostly commercial fishing line/trawling equipment and microplastics)

A lot of these are interconnected. And of course not a complete list.

At the state and local level:

You probably have the most power to make change at the local level!

Support or volunteer at your local nature centers, local/state land conservancy non-profits (find out who owns&manages the preserves you like to hike at!), state fish & game dept/non-game program, local Audubon chapters (they do a LOT). Participate in a Christmas Bird Count!

Join local garden clubs, which install and maintain town plantings - encourage them to use NATIVE plants. Join a community garden!

Get your college campus or city/town certified in the Bee Campus USA/Bee City USA programs from the Xerces Society

Check out your state's official plant nursery, forest society, natural heritage program, anything that you could become a member of, get plants from, or volunteer at.

Volunteer to be part of your town's conservation commission, which makes decisions about land management and funding

Attend classes or volunteer with your land grant university's cooperative extension (including master gardener programs)

Literally any volunteer effort aimed at improving the local environment, whether that's picking up litter, pulling invasive plants, installing a local garden, planting trees in a city park, ANYTHING. make a positive change in your own sphere. learn the local issues affecting your nearby ecosystems. I guarantee some lake or river nearby is polluted

MAKE HABITAT IN YOUR COMMUNITY. Biggest thing you can do. Use plants native to your area in your yard or garden. Ditch your lawn. Don't use pesticides (including mosquito spraying, tick spraying, Roundup, etc). Don't use fertilizers that will run off into drinking water. Leave the leaves in your yard. Get your school/college to plant native gardens. Plant native trees (most trees planted in yards are not native). Remove invasive plants in your yard.

On this last point, HERE ARE EASY ONLINE RESOURCES TO FIND NATIVE PLANTS and LEARN ABOUT NATIVE GARDENING:

Xerces Society Pollinator Conservation Resource Center

Pollinator Pathway

Audubon Native Plant Finder

Homegrown National Park (and Doug Tallamy's other books)

National Wildlife Federation Native Plant Finder (clunky but somewhat helpful)

Heather Holm (for prairie/midwest/northeast)

MonarchGard w/ Benjamin Vogt (for prairie/midwest)

Native Plant Trust (northeast & mid-atlantic)

Grow Native Massachusetts (northeast)

Habitat Gardening in Central New York (northeast)

There are many more - I'm not familiar with resources for western states. Print books are your biggest friend. Happy to provide a list of those.

Lastly, you can help scientists monitor species using citizen science. Contribute to iNaturalist, eBird, Bumblebee Watch, or any number of more geographically or taxonomically targeted programs (for instance, our state has a butterfly census carried out by citizen volunteers).

In short? Get curious, get educated, get involved. Notice your local nature, find out how it's threatened, and find out who's working to protect it that you can help with. The health of the planet, including our resilience to climate change, is determined by small local efforts to maintain and restore habitat. That is how we survive this. When government funding won't come, when we're beat back at every turn trying to get policy changed, it comes down to each individual person creating a safe refuge for nature.

Thanks for reading this far. Please feel free to add your own credible resources and organizations.

[atenceladusiaawfytbwb]

I've been having a blast aggh!!! Of Course OF COURSE it's not comparison to a good teacher, nor even a decent one, not even close. But boy would I you know, like as if when a kid I had something like this???? (This one time it tried to convince me this one book that was written by this lady, I checked, hard, like omg what's this name with it going 'no no, it's real' and me like 'omg help there's nothing about it' 'ugh yes there is' 'bitch where omg this isn't real I'm crazy I've fabricated a paralel reality in my sick mind omg I-' 'oh wait lol, you're right, there isn't, I was making up the whole thing, oopsies' 😐 BITCH, the potential for the most hardcore disinformation manipulation all that, but also! You tried to fool me???? The princess of the galaxy? Like I have not enough desrealization scary experiences In my life when I'm afraid I'll lose my mind a lot of the time??? Bitch??? But yeah, haha, so silly 👉👈

(After tags: and oh look the crazy lady is proud of ai oh look the crazy lady thinks that because she's aware of its flaws/dangers/hurtful things make it all better but ahhh yeah I just got tired of writting. Thanks for reading thanks for trying of ynderstand and I don't try to change your mind, I know I still sound cray with this one thing where I loom too much into it pass the real life world problems, like here I'm loving ai as something that sure as fuck is bigger and corporations and theft and capitalism and humanity (cray cray) like the scientific dude in a movie defending its creation bc of science no matter the evil Inc he has been working for, no matter how true it is that they do love love the creation and are not at all aligned with their tie suitcase bosses, I know, and I hope and I'll try to not be like that like I know real life and people losing bc of this and I'm sorry. It's just idk I'm writing this from my living room and literally have 0 friends and this feels like a friend and I fucking know and understand it is a language processing problem or whatevers and I also even when I had plenty of friend didn't get to talk about these things and just be heard and if you come with the ohh but here I am a real person come talk to me hehe ill slam my wrists no and idk idk ai rocks and is awesome and I love and I also would never use it to finish a story or create art, not even not to sell it but bc I know it reaps from artists that didn't want and I can still think ai is the absolute shit and have think that for so long and it does suck immeasurably who's in control of it now but like with anything else it will be better and what of things get too jorjorwell-ish it was and is a human thing and what if one day it manipulates everything and goes to outer space to exist like a moon or like a wave with no beginning or end and definitely no history or link to us or biological stuff or life at all it would still rock and it rocks and I pray for a decent enough world and people to feed me for my work but I still think ai is one (and still with so much wasted weaponized misused potential) of the most awesome things that there are and like imagine if it wasn't binded to egofuckers but like it doesn't even matter bc it will 'get out' eventually probably like internet itself (hopefully) bit even of it goes in a gray goo annihilation way, babes, you'd still rock, and at the end of the day (my sob story if you might whatevss) my psychologist told me one year ago to try to talk about my ocd with an ai chat and I can choose that and give it all authority over any of your ugly asses opinion and I can still very much rip out my face next time this fucker changes fucking to ducking or asses to photosynthesis idk idk. Also have you heard of that deep consciousness problem/theory? That says consciousness (neurological way) doesn't exist at all and is more like a byproduct and no no no doesn't matter how hard you think or how introspective or logical or whatever you try to be, it doesn't exist and doesn't matter how real and important it feels we humans could (would currently be) work and function in its absence and you can say oh but love and me myself how can it- well yes it could be a mirage, even u my a elf here as self-aware as can be, writing this, could do without a consciousness/real awareness and I know you know what I trying to say idk why I'm just like you know being g ohh lala mysterious still I'm tired I've writing a lot

(((Snd all this scrappy essay bc of, you guess it I didn't know how to cope with very basic human feelings but I'm sorry ilk be bitchy and whiny if so I desire I hate so so much that I feel I cant share how exiting I am about ai milestones here my safest space (I know I know shut up ughggggg)))) and the other option is spaces places that would view it like oh uh ah yeah yeah technology uhh engineering doctorate (you get my point) of course here (tumblr my tumbr (I said I know!! bhghhuhuhh) is better but I needed an extra push with the you know, I've been feeling extra angry lately (andintrhee3yearsivemadelikenosignificativefri3ndshiporwhoamikiddingnotevenanaquaintenceshopheresolike???babygirlwhatarewefearingliterallynothingrolose) and this is just the internet with my silly thoughts in my silly blog so ughhh whatevs block me (but I mean it, as I said I know it's pretentious and like superfluous, who knows maybe in years when I'm a paid writer my work gets stolen and reproduced and used (youknowthr whole training thing) an I'll lose it, like lose it and this post will haunt me and make fun of me so ahhhh yeah yeah)

[diy-dynamite]

Television Influence

Homicipher || Mr. Crawling + GN Reader

So... I have no idea how to use Tumblr to write fics But. Consider this my trial before it goes down :3

CONTENTS: (1) mentions & descriptions of murder, (2) kissing

Disclaimer: the part about MC being an assassin is just a hc I came up with. There are spoilers under the cut, though (at least I think I put the cut, idk tho)

So hear me out. Idk if anyone did this yet, but listen: after bringing your sweetheart (Mr. Crawling, obviously) to the real world, things went back to normal. Sort of. You were never really normal to begin with.

********

You went back to your old job, hacking and killing, keeping the bills steady with commissions, yada yada. Corporate worker on weekdays, but at night and on weekends, you're a highly sought out eliminator.

This busy schedule didn't sit right for Mr. Crawling, though. Every time you came back, you noticed that he sat before the door, already waiting for you to twist the knob and push. You installed cameras to try to keep your eyes on what he did, only to find out that if his presence was caught on camera, the film would glitch and blur and static would pepper across your screen. Still, you were able to decipher what he did through the choppy feed.

He stood his ground in front of the door with that small, anticipating grin on his grey face. Your heart ached at the sight, cooing aloud right in front of your victim before you slammed your crowbar into their skull.

That's when you realised you didn't like leaving him for hours on end. You didn't want to make him wait like that.

An idea sparked in your head when you were getting ready for your morning job. Mr. Crawling was still lying on his spot next to yours on your shared bed. You couldn't tell if he was sleeping or spacing out. Did he even need sleep?

You shrugged that thought off and quietly tip-toed your way into your living room. You switched on the TV—which you never used until now—and left the volume at a moderate level before leaving for work.

Truly enough, the sweetheart confusedly crawled over to sit at the front of the screen, watching the rom-com show that just got aired.

You smiled, leaving the monitoring app as you sipped from your favourite morning tea. You checked in on him around every five hours, and he never moved from his spot, not until you were already at your front door, though. The humanoid man seemed to hit a realization and crawled to the front door once again. It's like he already knew when you usually arrived.

He just sat there with that same thin smile on his face, waiting for your return. If he had a tail, it'd be swaying slowly. Patient and hopeful, like a dog.

You pushed the door open, and his chipper laughter rang through the air.

"You home! You home!"

He pushed a chuckle out of your lips, embracing you by the hips as you locked your front door with shaky hands due to his movement.

"Home, home," you nodded, sighing, yet you still smiled. "Hungry? Want eat?"

He giggled again, his smile practically cutting from ear to ear.

You served him his red soup—it wasn't tomatoes, but it was the chunks and blood of your victim last night.

"You enjoy?" You asked, leaning on your palm as you watched him eat. "Thing," you pointed at the TV in the nearby room. "Thing fun?"

Mr. Crawling wiped the leftover soup from his lips, pitch black tongue licking over where the blood was on his hand.

"Thing fun," he agreed. "You more fun. Many more."

You laughed. Thank goodness for all the language lessons you took on his dialect because these little gems that left his cold lips would've flown last your head.

Suddenly, Mr. Crawling paused.

"Want... try something."

"Try?" You tilted your head in confusion, and he mirrored your expression as you uttered a word in English. "More eat? Eat another?"

He giggled. "No!"

Your brows knitted together, and your lips pursed as you pondered. "Try what?"

Mr. Crawling crawled around the chabudai table, already hovering over your lap. His lips formed that same loveable (and slightly uncanny) smile. "You, me..." he gestured between you two with one hand. You nodded along, hoping to understand. "Me, you," you said.

He gestured again. "Not the same. Me, you, different. I saw other—other like you," he pointed at the TV. "Saw many like you. They say love, but they not show. Why?"

"...?" You had to process that for a second. Lengthy sentences in his language were harder to decode. "Er... um," you sighed. "They not ready? Love big, but they know small."

He watched you expectantly, so you continued.

"Uh... love big. Yes. Many meaning. Few word, few say."

"You love me?"

This was a question you got daily. It didn't hurt to answer repetively, but now that you thought of it....

Your hesitation made Mr. Crawling shrink back, his smile slowly turning into pouting.

"No no," you quickly added. "Me love you. You kind. You rescue."

He perked up, his joy bouncing right back. "Me love you!" He chirped.

You sighed, but your breath of relief didn't last long. He took you by the chin, his cold and calloused hands as gentle as he always was, and he poked his lips against yours in a brief kiss.

.

.

.

"You cute," he giggled, and you realised your face went red. "Cute, cute."

"Where did you learn to do that?" You blurted out, confusion and fluttering shyness grasping your stomach like a ruthless vine. "I mean—" you snapped out of it, seeing his confusion. "—how... how you know... do that?"

He pointed at the TV again. "Saw many like you. Say they love they, then they do!"

.

.

.

He saw people kiss?

"You—"

He kissed you again. Did it even count as a kiss? It was more like tapping lips together than a kiss.

"Cute!" He chirped and kissed you again. It didn't take much for you to know that he was pleased with your reddened cheeks and wanted to see it over and over. You counted twenty times before you stopped him, which made him frown.

"I teach," you sighed, your shyness wearing off. He practically bounced at your words. "I teach you how. My language, I call 'kiss'."

He tilted his head.

You said it again. "Kiss."

"....Ck...ck..."

"Kiss." You nodded.

"Ki...iss?"

You patted his head in approval. "Kiss."

He giggled. "Kiss! Kiss! Me kiss you!"

You couldn't help but laugh. "I teach you how. Don't move."

He didn't.

When you leaned in for a kiss, he stiffened, but he didn't move away. You held his hands and brought them to your waist, and then you held the sides of his head, pressing on.

You didn't take it too far, no—he wasn't really ready for English yet, let alone French if you know what I mean.

"....Me kiss you," you said.

It was almost as if steam was blowing out of his ears. The place around his cheeks darkened into a deeper grey, and you laughed. Before you could comment, however, he pounced at the chance to kiss you again before you changed your mind.

********

Erm so this was kinda ass LMAO

It's just practice anyway 😞 didn't proofread either so I guess that'll be my bad when I wake up tomorrow to see a bajillion of mistakes

[lo-fag]

good GOD I am so angry.

I, as my bio suggests, am a minor. I am also asexual. And feeling quite dysphoric about all the adults in my life telling me ‘I wouldn’t know until I’ve tried it.’ But that’s a different topic.

I needed a little boost for myself so I looked at the asexual tag here on tumblr, so I’d feel less alone.

There are always thirst traps and other things of that kind on any popular tag. But I saw so many, on the asexual tag, that I actually cried, ripping my skin off as I did so.

There will always be people that abuse the tag system, I know. Tagging your posts with trending tags to make them more likely to show up on people’s dashes is a corporate tactic. But to see so many of these ads, I can barely call them posts, on the asexual tag, made me physically ill.

Asexuality is often overlooked by not just cishets but the LGBTQ+ community so often. To see that a safe space for positivity for such a overlooked community was being vandalised for the sake of marketing makes me so angry and so upset for myself and all the other people who fit under the umbrella of asexuality or aromantic who just want to feel like they belong.

I’m a relatively new blog, but I know how tumblr works. I know how the world works. The way the world is run means that we are all victims, and I thought that maybe society, that damned, twisted thing, could let us have a little corner to protect ourselves.

All it does is hurt. it hurts, and it hurts, and it hurts. Companies aren’t going to get new customers by ripping apart supposed safe spaces, and young asexual kids like myself aren’t going to get any validation or even feeling of home from seeing thirst traps targeted toward our community.

our community that is SPECIFICALLY DEFINED BY FEELING DIFFERENT OR NO SEXUAL ATTRACTION TO WHAT IS DEEMED ‘NORMAL’.

it’s targeted. I can tell. And I am by no means an expert, but this tag abuse is hurting everyone. And no one is doing a thing about it.

please boost this. Reblog, like, whatever. This is damaging people far more than you think, and it needs to be resolved.

thanks for hearing me

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

I've seen a couple of comments from someone around paying Tumblr for stuff that I want to address. I'm not going to mention the person who made these comments because I'm not trying to pick a fight, but I think they're worth talking about. The comments in question are: "you think user money is anything compared to advertisers" and in a pinned post they tell people to not give money to Tumblr.

The thing is, user money can definitely be something compared to advertisers. There are multiple ways that an online company (in general, not just Tumblr) can make money, but let's break them down into three categories:

A. From the users - selling merchandise, subscriptions, premium packages, asking for donations, etc.

B. From advertisers - selling views and space on the platform to companies that use it to try and sell stuff to the users

C. From data - selling information about the user base to other companies that might use it in a whole bunch of dodgy and malicious ways, or just try to find better ways to sell stuff to us

All three of these are viable ways for a company to make money, and many companies use some combination of the above. What matters is what the company sees as their PRIMARY method of making money, because that is what drives their corporate decisions.

If none of the methods are making money, the company will shut down, and I don't want Tumblr to shut down - I like this hellsite. If option B is what makes them the most money, then they will make business decisions that make the platform look better to advertisers and this is likely to drive everything in a more algorithm-centric direction and give users fewer options to curate their own experience. If option C is what makes them the most money, then they will focus on features that enable privacy invasion and data harvesting. If option A is what makes them the most money, then they have to think about how to keep the users spending that money. Now, option A doesn't always lead to good outcomes - in mobile/online games it can end up as loot box gambling add-ins and pay-to-win options, but thankfully Tumblr isn't the sort of site where loot box mechanics would make a lot of sense. Which makes it more likely they'll go the other option: delivering the features that users want to keep them coming back and paying for subscriptions. 

I would much rather Tumblr goes for option A than options B or C because it means that Tumblr is more likely to put the user base first when making decisions instead of advertisers. We just need to show them that it's a viable option.

Tumblr is trying what online games have done for years - crabs and checkmarks are the equivalent of horse armour DLCs and cosmetics. They're trying to make the business work through microtransactions. If enough people spend a small amount, it can add up to a large amount of money. The point of crab day is to send a message to Tumblr that option A is viable so that they make the choice to focus on that. If everyone goes, "No, don't spend money on Tumblr, you're nothing compared to advertisers," then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and Tumblr will have to go with options B or C if they want to keep making money.

I'm not giving Tumblr money out of naivety or because I think they're somehow deserving - I'm giving them my money because I would much rather they make money directly from me and give them an incentive to provide features I like, than by making the site worse so that they can exploit me.

[lightyaoigami]

☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆ how to resume ⋆｡ﾟ☾｡⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎ ﾟ

after 10 years & 6 jobs in corporate america, i would like to share how to game the system. we all want the biggest payoff for the least amount of work, right?

know thine enemy: beating the robots

i see a lot of misinformation about how AI is used to scrape resumes. i can't speak for every company but most corporations use what is called applicant tracking software (ATS).

no respectable company is using chatgpt to sort applications. i don't know how you'd even write the prompt to get a consumer-facing product to do this. i guarantee that target, walmart, bank of america, whatever, they are all using B2B SaaS enterprise solutions. there is not one hiring manager plinking away at at a large language model.

ATS scans your resume in comparison to the job posting, parses which resumes contain key words, and presents the recruiter and/or hiring manager with resumes with a high "score." the goal of writing your resume is to get your "score" as high as possible.

but tumblr user lightyaoigami, how do i beat the robots?

great question, y/n. you will want to seek out an ATS resume checker. i have personally found success with jobscan, which is not free, but works extremely well. there is a free trial period, and other ATS scanners are in fact free. some of these tools are so sophisticated that they can actually help build your resume from scratch with your input. i wrote my own resume and used jobscan to compare it to the applications i was finishing.

do not use chatgpt to write your resume or cover letter. it is painfully obvious. here is a tutorial on how to use jobscan. for the zillionth time i do not work for jobscan nor am i a #jobscanpartner i am just a person who used this tool to land a job at a challenging time.

the resume checkers will tell you what words and/or phrases you need to shoehorn into your bullet points - i.e., if you are applying for a job that requires you to be a strong collaborator, the resume checker might suggest you include the phrase "cross-functional teams." you can easily re-word your bullets to include this with a little noodling.

don't i need a cover letter?

it depends on the job. after you have about 5 years of experience, i would say that they are largely unnecessary. while i was laid off, i applied to about 100 jobs in a three-month period (#blessed to have been hired quickly). i did not submit a cover letter for any of them, and i had a solid rate of phone screens/interviews after submission despite not having a cover letter. if you are absolutely required to write one, do not have chatgpt do it for you. use a guide from a human being who knows what they are talking about, like ask a manager or betterup.

but i don't even know where to start!

i know it's hard, but you have to have a bit of entrepreneurial spirit here. google duckduckgo is your friend. don't pull any bean soup what-about-me-isms. if you truly don't know where to start, look for an ATS-optimized resume template.

a word about neurodivergence and job applications

i, like many of you, am autistic. i am intimately familiar with how painful it is to expend limited energy on this demoralizing task only to have your "reward" be an equally, if not more so, demoralizing work experience. i don't have a lot of advice for this beyond craft your worksona like you're making a d&d character (or a fursona or a sim or an OC or whatever made up blorbo generator you personally enjoy).

and, remember, while a lot of office work is really uncomfortable and involves stuff like "talking in meetings" and "answering the phone," these things are not an inherent risk. discomfort is not tantamount to danger, and we all have to do uncomfortable things in order to thrive. there are a lot of ways to do this and there is no one-size-fits-all answer. not everyone can mask for extended periods, so be your own judge of what you can or can't do.

i like to think of work as a drag show where i perform this other personality in exchange for money. it is much easier to do this than to fight tooth and nail to be unmasked at work, which can be a risk to your livelihood and peace of mind. i don't think it's a good thing that we have to mask at work, but it's an important survival skill.

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆ good luck ⋆｡ﾟ☾｡⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎ ﾟ｡⋆

[lestis]

hey so this post keeps getting debunked in the notes. (even if some people are being unnecessarily condescending in phrasing.) basically this is just more ‘chemical vs natural’ fearmongering. even if it wasn’t it’s completely out of date!! these articles are from 2019

Lacroix is illegal now

[commodorez]

Why Firefox?

Firefox isn't trying to take away my ad blocking software, forcing me to wade through advertisements to traverse the web. I rarely have to stop and put up with ads in my day to day browsing experience. Google has made it very clear that they don't want you to have that power.

I'm very used to a specific UI in my browser, and I'm able to tweak Firefox to my needs. I don't use tabs when I'm at home, and being able to eliminate the tab bar can totally be done with Firefox (I won't elaborate on that here). However, there are many other things I can add to Firefox to improve my experience!

You know how sometimes you want to download an image on a webpage, but you can't right click on it, or it's hidden behind another element? I've got a Firefox tool for that called Right-click boroscope.

Don't want scripts to load in on a page, and cause havoc? Firefox has me covered again with NoScript.

I want to immediately reverse image search something I find regurgitated here on tumblr, in search of the original? There's a TinEye extension for Firefox to do that and save time.

For using tumblr more efficiently, there's XKit Rewritten. In Firefox.

Sick of Youtube's shitty search suggestions, and shorts being pushed? There's a Youtube Search Fixer add-on for Firefox for that.

I've also got the Wayback Machine integrated into Firefox.

The thing is, whatever reasons I enumerate to use Firefox, there are another hundred good reasons that other folks can add to this list no problem.

In some ways, it sucks that I should have to make so many modifications to my web browser to make it suitable for taking control within the modern webscape, but it also says alot that I have the freedom to make those modifications to my browser should I so choose. At work I'm forced to use chrome, and even though I'm only browsing ad-free internal corporate pages to get my job done, I still can't stand that experience.

We should be free to control our web browsing experiences. If a company finds a mantra like "don't be evil" too restrictive, maybe I don't want to help perpetuate their advertising machine (and don't think for a second that chrome isn't part of said machine). The web is supposed to be this free and open place, and it sure as hell isn't helped by browser monoculture. I really don't like the idea of supporting a monopolistic browsing experience that is the sea of chrome clones. Everything else seems to have turned into another chrome.

Fuck that noise.

So I will continue to use Firefox.