[mshfar2a]

I don't like to admit it, but sometimes I actually miss John Green.

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

Sometimes I can almost hear him.

[doubleca5t]

[abusedbookshelves]

[jourke-rourke]

Leverage (2008) // eliot fighting for his life in the background

[rem-the-moth]

[digitaldiscipline]

[sgchan]

[ichiwashername-o]

Reminder that Leverage is amazing and you all should watch it.

[mndvx]

Chris Eccleston on that shit let him talk!!!!

[one-time-i-dreamt]

And why did the value plummet, Marissa? Why did it plummet?

[red-mercer]

Would like to know how exactly she wouldn't fuck up Netflix or Hulu

[sreegs]

Yahoo thought Tumblr would be the next PDF

Yahoo’s grand plan for Tumblr was to turn it into a “next-generation PDF”

They didn't really get it.

[noctumsolis]

What does that even mean? PDF as in Portable Document Format?

[sreegs]

i cannot stress enough that i dont think yahoo even knew what a pdf was

[virdigrishammer]

you left out the best part of that article. the poor yahoo emplyees at those meetings were just as confused as the rest of us.

[ralfmaximus]

Everyone is right to dunk on Yahoo and "tumblr is the new PDF" because yeah, everything about that era was stupid.

But the PDF thing kinda makes sense. Bear with me.

But first, some context.

See, in the 1990s before PDF files there was almost no way to generate a document on a Mac and read it on a PC. Or vice versa. Businesses struggled with how to email important documents around and guarantee they looked the same on the other end, regardless of what computer & software the recipient had.

Adobe changed all that with PDF.

Since Acrobat Reader was available (and free!) for Windows & Mac, suddenly the problem went away. Everyone knew how to read a PDF. Adobe became a universally recognized brand overnight even if you'd never heard of Photoshop, because everyone had goddamn Adobe Reader installed.

Because of that, every tech company yearned to be just like Adobe: invent something universally desired, used by billions of people.

Fast forward to a Yahoo/tumblr meeting sometime in 2013/2014.

Tumblr development staff demonstrates how the back end of tumblr works, which (honestly) is revolutionary as compared with how any other social media site worked at the time. Each tumblr post is composed of blocks of data, any one of which can be text, sound, an image, a movie... anything. These blocks of data are threaded together into what looks to the user like one cohesive message (a single tumblr post) but under the hood it's magic.

Further, the mechanism for doing this can be standardized. In other words: tumblr could, if they wanted, publish the standard as a way for ANY social media site to manage its data.

If other sites did that, then they could trade messages with tumblr! Imagine posting a message on tumblr and reading it on Instagram. Or see twitter messages natively on your tumblr feed. I mean personally, that's a horror show. But the concept is interesting.

(In fact, that's how Mastodon and the Fediverse work in 2025. Each Mastodon post is a standard chunk of data that any website can read & display, assuming it understands the underlying ActivityPub protocol and plays by its rules.)

So the Yahoo executives attend this technology demonstration and one of them quite visibly has a light bulb wink into existence over their head. The light bulb is an old school incandescent, 300 watts at least, and glows furiously bright.

The Yahoo exec stands up. His chair knocks backwards.

"OH MY GOD," he stammers. "This tumblr thing could revolutionize social media. It'd be like the new PDF!"

Then blood shoots out of his nostrils and his head explodes, but all anyone ever remembers from that meeting is "PDF".

@sreegs or @cyle or @jv can probably explain it better, but that's what I remember hearing at the time. Please feel free to correct me.

[cyle]

the details here aren't correct, but as i've said many times, yeah, the PDF thing was in direct response to the Neue Post Format, which is how post and reply content is stored on tumblr. it's not as dumb as it sounds. (without that context, it does sound dumb.)

[hugtheteadrinkthekitten]

Can't believe over a decade later we're finally getting an explanation for the PDF thing.

[castielrisingabove]

Most long-running TV shows seem to fall into either “yes, and” or “no, but” with their lore. Meaning either they tend to joyfully build on past canon, or else make gentle nudges in new directions.

Supernatural, meanwhile, exists in the fascinating space of “no, and” where all the writers appear to be locked in PvP with past, present, and future writers at any given moment.

[sunflowerlovergirl]

[hatesaltrat]

The road to the childrens’ hospital

@swedishfalcon-actual

[enchantingsorceress]

I hope this joke outlives the context that made it, leaving future generations baffled.

[hockpock]

ADHD time blindness be like "oh, today is the 30th? that's fine, December is still next month, that's forever away!

...what do you mean tommorrow?"

[hockpock]

happy 1 year anniversary to this post,

DECEMBER IS TOMMORROW.

AGAIN.

[moethh]

i do not “make an art blog.” i post my art only for it to be buried under hundreds of reblogs and if no one sees it i KILL MYSELF

[futurefandomking]

Yes, Superman saving cats from trees

ABSOLUTELY NAILED IT

[mikkeneko]

I like that at no point did it occur to him that he could just save the cat like a human would

[ace-trainer-alice]

it's not "double texting", it's called monologuing and it's a time honored tradition in the supervillain community.

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

it really is crazy that women's clothes don't fit anybody. fat women can't find clothes, skinny women can't find clothes, tall women can't find clothes, short women can't find clothes, big chested women can't find clothes, small chested women can't find clothes. who the fuck are these being made for

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

we all really resonated with this one huh

[theabigailthorn]

musuclar women also can't find clothes

[depsidase]

[rabbitscreams]

we need to invent a way to explain how deep running and pervasive and subliminal racism and antiblackness is without immediately sounding like an insane conspiracy theorist

[rabbitscreams]

female characters are always lighter than male characters. strong characters are almost always dark. aggressive characters are almost always dark. peaceful and intelligent characters are almost always light. even amongst darker characters the lightest one is usually either the leader or the girls. dark is evil and light is good.

[rabbitscreams]

if you try to explain this to a white person they look at you like youre insane

[gay-milton-quotes]

briefly pursuing a career in animation radicalized me on this. So many stories from the industry about how you have to start with your character design as dark as possible, because INEVITABLY you'll get "notes" from higher-ups asking you to make them lighter.

In a class about making a pitch bible my teacher once role-played as a shitty executive with a classmate, pressing them in intentionally abrasive ways about why they made their characters diverse. He emphasized that we had to learn to defend these things, because the racism in the industry is extremely deliberate.

[vforvalensa]

Ronald Wimberly's comic essay, Lighten Up, stays evergreen

[complete-clownery]

he's very excited about his first night as a jack o lantern

[complete-clownery]

my boy

[complete-clownery]

I love how its getting closer to that time of year again and ppl starting to reblog my boy again

[dragonsrequiem]

and in fond memory lies the path to immortality

[thevagueambition]

recently came across some plates and bowls that would be perfect for a children's hospital

[kittydesade]

ONE

SINGLE

JOKE

[digitaldiscipline]

[maykitz]

i hope they never stop using floppy disk icons to indicate saving your file. doesn't matter how obsolete they are it's like honouring someone with a portrait on your currency

[havingapoemwithyou]

against resting in peace by Gboyega Odubanjo