Since tumblr doesnāt have a good system to organize likes/saves, this sideblog is for me to put anything I donāt want to be lost in the ether of my likes that Iāll never go thru.
Tagging system (under construction):
Art reference and drawing tutorials: #artref
Various online tools, useful websites and programs: #techref
Dudes healthcare is so fake. My ADHD meds are $940 without insurance. But they gave me a website of "coupons" which straight up looks like a scam website, and I got it today for $60! Just a coupon from a random website and it was $900 cheaper. America, I am confusion!! America explain!!
as a pharmacy technician i can share with you some websites that give you those "coupons" for your meds!
goodrx is the most well known one, but if i'm trying to find the cheapest price for a patient i compare it to scriptcycle, and use whichever is offering the best price. you just type in the medication (PLEASE make sure you're getting the right drug, dosage, and quantity) and your zip code and they will spit out some offers for you
some pharmacies may have their own discount card to compare to as well!
if you are getting a name brand medication, you can also look at the manufacturer's website to see if they offer any evouchers for you to use too
as an aroace person with limited sexual experience, no interest in watching porn, and poor sex ed as a teen, there IS something simultaneously funny and vaguely tragic about being 28 adult years old and realising how extremely tiny your frame of reference is for genitalia and deciding you should expand this to better understand bodies (yours and others). and then you're just there like "okay so what the fuck do I even google right now, anyway"
why wouldn't it be thank you? you expressed interest in sexual education materials related to genital body diversity, and i keep these resources on hand for exactly that purpose.
it's natural to be curious about bodies--yours and others. the presence or lack of sexual intent motivating that curiosity is irrelevant. they're just body parts
I also found one of my favorites I couldn't find this morning: The Great Wall of Vulva and their Labia Library
sorry, my gratitude was real, my uncertainty was @ me ("am i sure i actually want to spend my evening looking at genitals or was i using the difficulty of knowing what to google as an excuse not to learn things") lol
do you have any resources for trans bodies, especially transmasc bodies? i am interested in better understanding what changes i might expect as someone on testosterone, but though i found references to photo projects re: bottom growth in a few places, all the links were dead
totally, the London Transgender Clinic and Dr. Keelee MacPhee have a variety of before and after photos related to various gender affirmation procedures.
i think that r/GrowYourTDick is the best repository of images of specifically trans masculine bottom growth. I can't comment on the culture of the forum, but there is absolutely a lot of images of transmasculine genitalia and extensive discussion of physical changes.
For (relatively*) trustworthy information, Hudson's FTM Resource Guide contains a lot of information about medical side effects and Things To Generally Be Aware Of, like increased risk for yeast infections and tips for managing locker rooms/swimming. *I can't verify that this information is up to date
I'm not directly connected to any trans masc transition support networks, but i know that discord is a thriving space for transition support and information sharing. i think it would be relatively easy to find positive community there. they often compile resources and information for members as well as provide topical discussion spaces. here's the disboard listings for public trans masc oriented servers
and this is just a really beautiful series of portraits of trans masculine people.
no, I lied, I'm not done. I spent way too long looking for this photography archive documenting trans nude portraits specifically. lost to the ether. found other stuff though:
Archive of Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits by Loren Cameron, which includes images of genitalia in its "Genital Reconstruction" section, page 46. Portraits of clothed trans masculine people other than the author begin on page 34 in the "New Man Series."
A Genitoplasty Diary by Lou Sullivan (1984-1987) (no images but fascinating)
the evergreen Trans Bodies, Trans Selves
not useful at all, but an extremely cool in-browser recreation of a 90s mac in order to run a 90s trans information CD-Rom.
thanks! sharing for the sake of anyone else interested too
yeah there's so many dead links out there it's tragic. sometimes you even get as far as the artist's website and they'll have a page for the project but then the project is gone and you just get a 404. i'm guessing the increasing hostility of internet providers and stuff towards nudity/nsfw content and also the general atmosphere for trans people has an impact on the safety and practicalities of continuing to host stuff like that :(
hi have a nice day! this is the reminder for you to share your ublock extension that blocks AI stuff from showing up. sorry if this annoys you and doubly sorry if you already shared it (truly my bad if that's the case)
I'm not one of the people involved in the post I'm just really interested in never seeing an AI generated image again
thanks in advance! sorry!
oh, no, you're fine, i completely forgot lmao
its this
A huge blocklist of sites that contain AI generated content for uBlock Origin & uBlacklist. - laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist
somebody in the comments on a cooking post is talking to me about knives and i figure, why not make a whole post about it
I worked in restaurants for two decades, and that means i was mostly too poor to buy expensive knives.. but i did learn EXACTLY what i was looking for in a knife, and eventually i did spend about $150 on one.
Now, you can easily spend $500 or more on a chef knife if you are the kind of person who cares about having the chef knife equivilent of a porche or lamborghini and i don't think many of you are looking for that, so I'm going to tell you what i looked for in my really-good-but-not-too-expensive chef knife
First of all, you don't need that block set of knives you see in like every kitchen ever. You know, this thing
You don't need that. Listen, theoretically each of those knives has a specific thing it is used for, but in all the restaurants i worked at, 99.9% of the stuff i did was done with one of these
We didn't go looking for a specific kind of knife, we just used one of these -- often a bunch of those were all that was provided. I uh, i didn't work at a lot of high end restaurants. But even in the nicer ones, most of what we used was a chef's knife.
So. In my opinion, instead of spending $100-$200 on a bunch of kind of shitty knives, spend the same money on one really nice chef knife, and a wetstone or some other sharpener you feel you can use. But really, like, just look at a wetstone tutorial on youtube, it's not hard, and it will make your life better.
NOW let me tell you what i looked for in my knife
This is the knife i use. It's a six inch Zwilling Pro
if you shop around, you can probably find it for close to 100 bucks. It's not Fancyā¢, it's just Quite Good. You can, if you want, find a chef knife for a couple grand, and that plastic-handled one in the first pic will run you less than ten dollars, so, this is a pretty good price point, on the low side of middle, with a knife quality on the high side of middle. If you take care of this knife, it could last you your whole life
Now let's talk about specific features I was looking for. First, inb4, metal quality. Zwilling is a good company, so the quality of their actual metal is pretty decent, and that's all you really need to know -- if you're getting your knife from a known decent knife company it's probably good enough quality. In this case Zwilling uses forged high-carbon German steel, which are some good key words to look for. That's all i have to say about that.
Now there are four specific things i was looking for that led me to choose this specific knife
1
Depth.
This refers to how far the heel of the blade juts out from the handle (the heel of the blade is the part of the blade closest to your hand). When you have the blade resting with the edge flush against the cutting board, you want there to be plenty of room for the hand gripping the handle without knocking your knuckles against the board. A classic pinch grip doesn't need much room, but that's not the only grip you'll ever use, so give yourself some decent knuckle clearance. But not TOO much. Too much and your blade will kind of feel like it wants to flop over on its side when the edge hits the board.
2
Length.
As an edgy 20 year old in restaurant kitchens, i always went for the biggest knife i could find, but because you're going to be using your chef's knife for everything, you actually want it short enough to use as a paring knife or whatever. The shorter the blade, the more control over the tip you have. Me, i never really need anything longer than six inches. I was a little bit worried when i first got it, but i've never wound up wishing it was longer.
3
Weight.
Even though it's just about as short as a chef's knife can be, my knife has a good amount of weight to it. A somewhat heavy blade helps with chopping, and provides a good balance for other knife skills. When you are chopping and slicing, a decent amount of weight helps a lot. It doesn't have to be heavy heavy, but when you pick it up, it should definitely feel like a chunk of steel, not like a pressed aluminum toy. Plus, some of the weight will come from thickness, and a thicker blade will stand up to more sharpening and last you longer too.
4
Bolster Shape
If you look at the Zwilling Pro's bolster, it has a bolster that is sort of beveled into the heel of the blade with a nice curve. Right right, what's a bolster, hold on, here's the anatomy of a knife
on this knife, you can see that where the bolster meets the blade it makes basically a right angle where it goes from thick to thin. This is distressingly common in chef knives
now look at the bolster on the Zwilling Pro
and here's a similar bolster shape from a different angle
First of all, the bolster is diagonal, which is the right shape for me to hold in a classic grip. Every chef has their own grip, but it's always a variation on pinching the blade just above the bolster, and a diagonal bevel works better for my grip.
And just as important to me, it might be hard to tell, but the metal curves from the thickness of the handle to the thinness of the blade instead of using a right angled edge to go from thick to thin. This curve sort of follows the movement your knife makes against the knuckle you use to guide the blade when you do this
I tend to use the deepest part of the heel a lot, and, depending on what i'm doing with the knife, my grip can often be nearly off the blade it's so far back, so i have a tendency to knock a straight bolster directly against my index knuckle. Just a little, but after a few dozen times in half a minute it starts to irritate my finger. A curved bolster like on the Zwilling Pro sort of glides to a stop against my guiding knuckle instead of banging into it, provides a comfortable pinch, and makes my life in the kitchen better.
That might not be true for everyone, it's just important to pay attention to how you use a knife, especially if you find yourself thinking something like "it would be better for me if this part of the knife was different in this way" or "this knife would be easier to grip if it was shaped like this instead" or "i wish the shape of this knife didn't mean this was always happening" or whatever. Could even be how your knife fits in your dishwasher, just pay attention to what works and doesn't work for you personally so you know What you're looking for. But you for sure want to look at the Depth, Weight, Length, and Shape.
So. There you have it. Some things to pay attention to when selecting a knife that may allow you to get a good knife for yourself without spending tooooo much money.
I frequently see people tag their works things along the lines of āsorry I donāt know how to tag,ā and I also frequently see people tag badly while at least appearing to know what the fuck theyāre doing, so itās been on my mind to write up a post like this for a while, and with the influx of Twit-ugees, now is as good a time as any I suppose.
Advance warning that Iām the most long-winded bitch up in this place and just neurodivergent enough to never know how much to cut/what details donāt matter so apologies that this just goes on and on and I just hope that if you bear with me youāll learn a thing or four.
Also note that any time I say "A thing will work this specific way" that is always subject to Tumblr's spontaneous habit of breaking and I can never guarantee that things will actually work at any given moment.
(this is fucking 5,000 words about using tagging on this blue webbed site so. Read more it is.)
Tagging 101
Okay, Iām gonna start at absolutely baby, sorry. The first thing you need to know is where tags go. You donāt tag in the ātype text hereā box where youāre talking about whatever. This isnāt like twitter, where if I start going hey everyone Iām writing a post about how to #tag things on #tumblr, everyone will see it if they go to #tag and #tumblr. Nope, you gotta put your tags in the box thingy at the bottom if you want people to actually see them when they use tag-search-related options.
You can write #whatever in the body of your post til the cows come home and it wonāt do jack shit unless you put it in that bottom #add tags box. So. Do that.
Once you know how to tag, the two most important things to know about tags are:
1. Anyone can see your tags. Everyone can see your tags. Not just your followers. Not just OP. Any random stranger who pokes around in a post can see them, AND theyāll appear in the OPs ānew activityā notifications, AND they'll be in the "view all reblogs with comments and tags" button that anyone can select, AND, if itās an original post and youāre the OP, theyāll appear in the searchable tags on Tumblr. Like. Seriously. We can all see you. So always bear in mind that anything you say in a tag is subject to public scrutiny.
2. If you use a tag on an original post, your post will appear in that tag search. Anyone can search by tag in Tumblr. You go to that bar up topā¦(note that Iām using MDZS as my example for this post, but you can easily substitute your fandom of choice). (Reblogs that use a tag do NOT, EVER, appear in the tag searches.) So yeah, you're searching for a tag...
ā¦and you get three types of search results. The first, with the #, shows the tag-ified version of your search, and clicking that will take you directly to tag search (and therefore show you posts that have that tag, and specifically exactly that tag - if you go to #mdzs, you wonāt see #mdzs fanart, because tag search is narrowly defined). The magnifying-glass marked searches are common and related searches, and will show you posts that have those words in their text AND in the tags, so a magnifying-glass search for MDZS will show you things tagged mdzs, and also #mdzs fanart, and any random-ass post that includes mdzs anywhere in the main text or tags. Youāll get a lot (and youāll have the chance to narrow that search by top posts vs. latest posts, recent vs. ever, type of post - as in picture vs. text vs. video etc., etc., though note that these searches are always busted and always lean heavily toward recent stuff). If you know you want the tag, you can click #mdzs, but even if you go to search instead (for example, if you just hit āenterā itāll take you to search, not the tag), you can still see related tags:
Now, see how that says 21k followers? On Tumblr, you can follow tags! Anyone can follow tags! Popular tags often have tens-of-thousands, and occasionally hundreds-of-thousands, of followers! What exactly following a tag means depends on how any given individual sets up their feed, but for many people it means that random posts from that tag will appear on their timeline. Which means that if you tag your original posts (NOT reblogs - this applies to posts for which you are the originator) with a given tag, anyone who visits that tags and/or follows that tag can see it and might even have your post appear on their feed even if neither of you knows or follows the other.Ā
Anyone who visits a given tag will be able to see your post (or, well, almost anyone - a. if you have them blocked or they have you blocked, they wonāt see - though if you block a main blog/side blog, and they post from a different side blog, you CAN still see - if you really want to block someone youāll need to block all their alts too, which is often a challenge since people tend not to be super public about their alts; b. if the tag is in the last 5 allowed tags on a post - more on that later - it wonāt show up, uh, basically anywhere, good luck with that; c. if the tag search is broken, which it basically always is at least a little, welcome to our duct-taped hellsite enjoy your stay).
If you want people to see your post, this functionality is fantastic! It gives you a lot of ways to get your content out there. If you donāt want people to see your postā¦well. It is absolutely critical that you understand that there is absolutely nothing private about tags, and that even though we all frequently clown in tags, you need to be aware of the potential consequences of that clowning, namely that people will see you clowning, including complete strangers, and so you might not want to clown quite that hard.Ā
Personal Blog Organization
But, I hear you say, I want to organize my own blog! If I donāt tag my mdzs posts #mdzs to avoid everyone seeing them because I Don't Want That, how will I find them when I want them later?
Well, first, donāt expect to ever be able to find things easily on Tumblr, lmao. We do have search and tag organization options (more later!) but in the end always assume things you post might become unfindable; if you really want to be sure you can find something again, find another way to store it (I personally keep āthings I donāt want to loseā in drafts; some people also use likes, or private side blogs).
That said, this is one of the main reasons a lot of people use personal tags to denote their own content. For example, if I want to post something but I donāt want it to spread too far, I will avoid using the fandom tags and stick to my personal blog organization tags. I personally use āunforth ramblesā for my āwhatever the fuck this isā kind of posts, āwhine whine whineā if Iām complaining, āunforth writesā for my fiction, etc. Lots of people have a personal tag, and not only do they make it easier for you to find your own stuff, they also make it easier for other people to find your stuff.
Want to post about mdzs, want to be able to find it again, but donāt want it in the tag? Try āyournameās mdzs thoughtsā or something similar.
Do you create a thing, and want people to be able to actually find it if they come to your blog, instead of it getting buried under a billion other reblogs and shitposts? Try āyourname artā or āmy yourfandom ficā or whatever. Trust me, as someone who routinely tries to find art on peopleās blogs? People who have specific tags make it much, much easier, and believe it or not I guarantee there is SOMEONE out there whoād like to be able to interact with your stuff more easily, and if you make it impossible youāll never even know they wanted to.
Likewise, of course, a personal tagging system can make things utterly unfindable cause sometimes thatās Goals. Take this knowledge and use it as you will.
Aside to the above: queue tags. If youāre on Tumblr for more than 5 minutes youāll see that a lot of posts have tags like āmy queueā or, more often, ridiculous āqueueā-related pun tags (when I used to use one, it was ā#q hoo hooā). Why do people do this? Well, thereās surely a lot of reasons, but as far as I know the main one (my own reason, at least), was pretty simple: Tumblr has a messaging system, and a lot of us use it, and if we post something, people will think weāre online and might message us and then get upset that we donāt answer. Using a queue tag makes it very clear āthis posted when I wasnāt actually present.ā Then, you can (like me) go back to ignoring your messages for days and pretend you havenāt been on Tumblr until youāve actually got the whatever to answer them.
ETA: it's been pointed out that, depending on what search settings someone is using, using "my thing tag" may still show up in searches, so if your goal is to keep your posts out of the main tags, you'd be better served to avoid using the same full text as the common tag(s).
Tag Limits
Itās also important to know that you donāt have unlimited tags, and they canāt be of unlimited length. Tags have a character limit (...I never remember how much it is, though, maybe 200-something?) and you canāt have more than thirty tags on a post. Conventional wisdom is that if an important tag (such as a fandom tag or character tag that you WANT people to be able to find) isnāt in the first ten tags, it wonāt appear in search, though Iāve definitely seen things in tag search that had the tag farther down than that. That said, if you put anything in between Tag 25 and Tag 30, donāt expect to ever be able to find it again. Trust me. Iāve tried. Tag 25 to Tag 30 are a tag black hole, and anything in that range might as well not exist because it wonāt be searchable. (Sometimes - but only sometimes - search will be able to find things in that hole, subject to all the bugs that normally make search nigh unusable). Note that on mobile, at least, Tumblr yells at you if you try to tag more than 30; on desktop I honestly donāt know if it does cause I always use XKit reblog features instead, lmao. (more on that later!)
A couple other tag limits include:
1. various punctuation breaks tags, though which has varied over time. For example, currently if you try to make a tag with quotes (#I told him āshut upā) you will NOT get a tag that says that, youāll get two tags: #shut up and #i told him. And, theyāll be in that order - the tag in quotation marks will end up first, before anything else. For a long time, hyphens also just absolutely murdered tags; theoretically they fixed that recently though in practice Iāve noticed it being hit-and-miss, so if you want to be sure things work well donāt use a hyphen. Further, at least on desktop, a comma tells it āthis is the end of the tagā so if you enter a comma it wonāt put in a comma itāll just end your tag and take you to the next one. Honestly, if you want to be sure that your tag doesnāt break your best bet is to stick toā¦not. Forget grammar. Surrender to the void. People will figure out what you meanā¦or they wonāt. ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ We never said this was a great site but youāre stuck with us now, lmao.
2. you canāt edit tags. They recently teased that theyād introduce tag editing, but at least as far as Iāve been able to tell itās never actually been unrolled, or maybe itās only been unrolled to some users (we often only get features for some folks, or only on mobile or only on desktopā¦). An addendum to this is the simple rule that no matter how careful you are you will inevitably make a typo in your last word, often the last letter, right before you hit enter. Iām sorry. Itās a law of nature. On the plus side everyone knows that tags canāt be edited so no oneās going to care if your spelling is janky. (ETA: just to be clear, since it was pointed out in the notes: you CAN delete a tag and retype it. so, it's up to you if you feel like doing that. I meant you can't go back and edit the text entered as a tag, you can only delete it and make a new tag)
Censoring Tags
Do not censor tags. ESPECIALLY trigger warnings. Sometimes people will censor letters intentionally so things won't turn up in the tag search options (for example, if they're saying something negative), and while I think that's valid I also think there are better ways to handle it (like just use a different fucking tag). But if you censor tags, and especially if you censor warning tags, you make it MUCH HARDER for people to consistently blacklist. Just call things what they are (except n s f w - more later), and tag accurately (so if you want to post anti use "anti thing" tags instead of censoring), and make it possible for people to ACTUALLY avoid things and blacklist. Please. I'm begging you.
Finding the Tag for The Thing You Want
Often, finding a relevant tag can be super easy, especially if what you like is common. If youāve been in online fandom at all, even on other platforms or forums or wherever, you likely already are familiar with common abbreviations for The Thing, and those are usually a great place to start (for example, #mdzs, #mcu for Marvel movies, #spn for Supernatural, #lotr for Lord of the Rings, etc.). However, since people do often use multiple tags (like, they may tag #mdzs AND #mo dao zu shi, AND #grandmaster of demonic cultivation, AND #gdc) you can always try putting in The Full Name For The Thing, and then seeing what tags are on the posts that pop up. Then, once you see that, you can click through a few and check them out. Every tagās page will have a box like this:
ā¦and it says right there how often the tag has been used ārecentlyā (no, I have literally NEVER figured out how ārecentlyā isā¦recently). If you want to find the most popular tags for a given fandom, the easiest way is to just poke around in the tags people are using and see which ones have the biggest number in that āXXX recent postsā box. Those are the ones people love and use, and emulating them will lead you in the right direction (assuming you want people to be able to find your stuff).
On the other hand, what if you like something rare, something obscure, something that doesnāt have a consistent naming structure, etc.?
That can get a little harder, but the challenges can be cut through fairly easily.
1. search for every variation of The Thing that you can think of and look through the results until you find The Thing You Actually Wanted.
2. see how that post is tagged.
3. check those tags for more of The Thing You Actually Wanted.
4. keep doing this until you find the tag where people who are into The Thing You Actually Wanted congregate.
5. winning!
Creating Tags and Space
ā¦okay but what if that last step 5 ended with losing instead? Well, BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD.
A lot of people on Tumblr use personal tags for their own blog organizationā¦but many also use tags and tag-tracking to create a personal tag meant for publis use. So, source blogs (blogs that act as āclearing housesā of stuff for a specific fandom, character, ship, etc.) will say āwe track #thisisourhashtag, use it so we can see your post!ā
You can do that! If you really love something narrow and specific, you can at least try to get the word out. It takes a lot of work though - because youāll need to get the word out yourself. āHey, I love This Obscure Thing! Do you also love This Obscure Thing? Come join me, use #thisisyourhashtag!ā is a start. But just ābuilding itā wonāt be enough - youāll also need to do the leg work to find more of The Thing, reblog it, interact with the people making it, etc. Often on Tumblr, the difference between a really vibrant small fandom community and a small fandom thatās absolutely dead silent is one person taking the initiative to say āIām going to do whatever I have to, community-building-wise, to find other people to talk to about this.ā
(The best example I know of for this is the Daomu Biji fandom. Like seriously, theyāre a fucking case study on how to take a tiny group of people who are Really Into A Thing and turn it into a vibrant, supportive community that is, frankly, a joy to be a part of. If someone wants more info on kindaā¦how this worksā¦I think itās outside the purview of this post but Iām willing to babble about it some other time.)
Navigating Tumblr, Your Own Blog, and Other Peopleās Blogs Using Tags
One of the cool things about tags on Tumblr is that every tag has a static, usable link, which - if your own blog or a blog youāre trying to access has a consistent tagging format - can make it much, MUCH easier to find things. ESPECIALLY because static tag links constant and consistently work about 80 bajillion times better than āsearch.ā Posts that are unfindable using āsearchā WILL (usually) be findable using the tagās link. (Exceptions include if the OP has blocked you or youāve blocked them, and if the tag is in the 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, or 30th tag slot; ETA: another exception is that in the PAST this wasn't the case; Tumblr has greatly increased the visibility of tags over the years, and may do even more in the future). So, how do you do this?
For all of Tumblr: the link you want is https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/(THE TAG)?sort=recent (or ?sort=top for them in order by most popular. Note that this is one of the cases where whatās after the ? ISNāT A TRACKING LINK ffs itās not ALWAYS tracking you canāt ALWAYS delete it without consequences sometimes the internet is exhausting).
For your own blog: https://yournamehere.tumblr.com/tagged/thetagyouwant
For someone elseās blog: https://theirnamehere.tumblr.com/tagged/thetagyouwant
A lot of people use this for personal blog organization, and itās especially common for source blogs to have very structured tag lists to help with navigation. For example, in the art sideblogs I run, anyone can look up any tag using links like this, and itāll enable them to find every post with that tag. See? https://www.tumblr.com/mdzsartreblogs/tagged/mod%20post
NOTE: Tumblr, in the last few weeks, changed how this feature is set up. As you can see, the link is now structured differently than what I typed, BUT the original link formatting still works, just how it appears has changed. That said, because Tumblr can never change a thing without breaking it, thereās now sometimes a problem where if you type the link in, itāll replace a space ( ) with a plus (+) instead of with a fake-space (%20 is how browsers classically translate spaces into Internet Speak so that the urls donāt break). If your space gets made into a +, Tumblr will say there are no results, so youāll have to manually go into the link and change it back to a space and THEN it will work. Yes, really. No, I donāt know why. Also, if you try to get rid of the plus in the search bar instead it will NOT work correctly, because if you remove the plus, put in a space, and then hit āenterā on text written in the search bar, itāll switch you from āshow all posts with this tagā to a standard search (which will have all the bugs that standard searches usually have in Tumblr).
But, basically, once you know the tag that someone uses for a thing, or have established what tag YOU want to use for a thing, navigating your own or other peopleās blogs to find Every Post Tagged With The Thing is really easy, and can be a great way to find niche content, a userās own creations, or That Thing You Posted Two Years Ago That You Need Again For Some Reason.
ETA: Someone mentioned in the tags that if you add /chrono to the end of these links, it'll show you all the same info BUT it'll show the OLDEST posts firsts instead of the newest and I did not know that and that is A.MAY.ZING and thank you to the person who told me and now y'all know too.
Blacklisting Tags
Youāll see me talk a lot in this post about the ways that Tumblr is broken and how that can make it harder to accomplish whatever it is youāre trying to do. There is one notable exception to the brokenness. At least in my experience, and in the experience of basically everyone Iāve ever spoken to about it, Tumblrās internal/built in blacklist works pretty darn well.
Donāt want to see a tag?
Go to Account Stuff -> Settings. Scroll down to āContent you see,ā which is where Filtered Tags and Filtered Post Content are.
Filtered Tags will only filter The Thing if itās literally #the exact tag you put in filtered tags.
Filtered Post Content will filter any post that mentions the thing.
Note that Tumblr blacklist is actually over assiduous. I personally ONLY use filtered tags, and Iāve found that it will often filter a post even if the current reblog of that post doesnāt HAVE the tag - like, if anyone has EVER tagged The Post with The Thing, itāll get blacklisted. Also note that while theoretically, filtered posts will still show up as a box you have the option to show, in practice some will just. Not show. Iāve absolutely had blacklisted things just Not Even Appear. Which can be annoying, if itās actually a post you want to see, but thereās no perfect system.
Also, never EVER let anyone tell you that āblacklisting is only for things you hate.ā Look, you curate your own experience. If your bestie is posting about a fandom youāre not in, and itās clogging up your dash, youāre not obligated to scroll through their 80 posts about that thing. Just blacklist it. Itāll make your experience using this website much happier. (if your bestie doesnāt tag the thingā¦you can try post content filtering. But yeah thatāll make it harder). I personally blacklist a fuckton of fandoms that Iāve got nothing against, Iām just not IN them, and seeing content for them is of zero interest for me, and if I blacklist them then I have more time to interact with the things I DO want to see.
And yeah I know I prefaced this section by saying blacklist actually works. Take this entire section as what my ten-years-on-this-site ass sees as āfunctionalā on Tumblr.com.
Making Tumblr Actually Vaguely Useable
Do yourself a favor and download XKit. (Itās on Chrome too, but fuck Chrome. Yāall Chrome users can go find the link yourself sorry not sorry). XKit includes a fuckton of REALLY DAMN USEFUL functionality for making tumblr (on desktop, not mobile!) function betterā¦
ā¦and especially, Quick Reblog, Quick Tags, and Tag Replacer can help with tagging and tag management. Quick Reblog gives you the ability to rapidly reblog things without having to click through to the reblog window, and it gives you a box to type in all your tags when you quick reblog. Quick Tags makes all existing posts on your blog and sideblogs have an extra little button that lets you add new tags to it without having to open the edit screen for the post. Tag Replacer lets you swap a tag you no longer want to use for a new tag. Get XKit. Itāll help you. I promise.
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Okay, so now you know something about how tags work, time to learn some tag etiquette.
The most important thing to remember when trying to figure out how to tag an original post is that people follow tags because they want to see The Things About That Tag. This has some obvious consequences, namely:
1. They wonāt want to see things that Arenāt About The Thing.
2. They wonāt want to see someone Hating The Thing.
So that leads toā¦
Tagging for Fandoms
DO: tag fandoms that are relevant to your post. Feel free to tag variations on that fandom - you can tag #mdzs and #modao zushi and #mo dao zu shi, or #spn and #supernatural. No one will mind.
DONāT: tag fandoms that arenāt relevant to your post. Yes, even if itās a fandom by the same author (looking at you, people who tag #mdzs, #tgcf, and #svsss on every mxtx post you make, I see you and I seethe). Yes, even if itās a different version/adaptation of your work. If you create a sub-fandom-specific work (for example, to stick with MDZS for now, if you create a work for The Untamed that includes the Yin Iron, donāt tag it MDZS; thereās no Yin Iron in MDZS, and while yes some people who follow the MDZS tag will want to see it, there will also be plenty who donāt. This is especially true when thereās a popular adaptation that a lot of fans of the original donāt like. People who adore the BOOK of the Hobbit? May be pretty reticent about seeing things about the MOVIE if they didnāt enjoy it!) Try to maintain awareness of this; itās courtesy not to just tag Every Vaguely Relevant Fandom. You wonāt make people happy theyāre seeing your stuff. Youāll make them annoyed that you spammed irrelevant tags.
Tagging for Ships and Characters
DO: tag the characters ships that feature in your work. Doing variations of their name is fine as long as those variations are relevant. So, if you make a piece of āwei wuxianā for example, you can absolutely tag that āwei wuxianā and āweiwuxianā and āwei yingā and āweiyingā and āmdzs wei wuxianā etc. But.
DONāT: tag every single iteration of a character. If someone is following a tag for a specific variation of a character (to stick with MDZS, maybe they follow the āyiling laozuā tag) then they want to see that variation, notā¦NOT that variation. So donāt post your, idk, fluffy Lotus Pier Wei Ying pre-canon thing to the āyiling laozuā tag. And I know this sounds like gibberish to people not in this fandom, but like. Just extend it to your own fandom. Lots of characters have different fandom nicknames or self-presentations for themselves at different points in canon. People who specifically follow the "pre-serum steve" tag isn't going to want to see "post-serum steve." That's the entire point of following a specific tag instead of an over-arching tag. So, when you tag your original stuff, stick to the ones that actually have something to do with your piece.Ā
DO: tag the ship in your piece in multiple ways. Like, to use a non-MDZS example, does your piece have Destiel? Go ahead and tag Destiel and CasDean and DeanCas. Itās okay. WITH THE ADDENDUM THAT: in some fandoms and in some parts of the world, it is common that writing Character A x Character B is actually NOT the same as writing Character B x Character A. Especially for East Asian and Southeast Asian fans, people often list them in a power-dynamic related order. Whether you think thatās a good thing or not (I personally think itās a silly but whatever, they can do them, it doesn't effect me) is irrelevant; you need to understand that if you tag every order of a ship, you might have people ??? you over it. (Yes, really. Itās happened to me.) And that doesnāt mean donāt do it! Just. You should know. Knowledge is power. Or something.
DONāT: tag ships that arenāt in your piece. I donāt care if Wangxian is the most popular ship in the fandom; if your piece doesnāt show Wangxian, people who like Wangxian donāt need to see it in the tags. Youāre doing no one any favors. Often people will say āif your piece doesnāt feature a ship PROMINENTLY donāt include it,ā but that one imo is a bit more flexible. It depends on what your work is ādoingā with that ship. Which leads toā¦
Sharing Your Negative Opinions
Please. For the love of fucking god. Do NOT post hate in the main tags. Yes, itās just your opinion. Yes, you are absolutely entitled to your opinion. But itās fucking rude. People go to tags because they enjoy the thing being tagged. Youāre just being a dick if you therefore use that tag to shit all over that thing.
Now, this is NOT to say ādonāt post negative shit,ā but rather more importantly: if you want to tag negative shit, find the tag that people use to tag that specific negative shit and use that tag instead. Like. if you hate Jiang Cheng from MDZS (youāre wrong and I will block you) you do you! But donāt tag your hate #jiang cheng. People follow #jiang cheng because they LOVE the angry grape. Instead, do a little tag research (see above on how to find tags for That Thing You Like, and yes it applies even if itās āThat Thing You Like to Hateā) and find out what tags people who Hate The Thing use. Often just āanti (thing)ā is a good start, though commonly the biggest groups of haters/"popular" anti opinions will have a tag they favor thatās different (for example, ācanon jiang chengā and "grape hate" are the common anti-Jiang Cheng tags; ādestiewā is a commonly used anti-Destiel tag, Iām sure there are loads more but those are the ones that spring to my mind after a decade on this hellsite).
Using an anti tag is a MUCH better way to handle your hate, anti-ness, negative opinions, etc. You can find other haters to wallow with, and everyone else (like me) who just want to enjoy our shit in peace can do so. And like, Iām personally very against antis, but I also absolutely respect the right of people to have negative opinions AND to share those negative opinions, which is why Iām explaining this. It really does help like-minded people come together, and also enables people who want to avoid the vitriol protect themselves. Itās a win-win.
Tagging Trigger Warnings and Other Warnings
Tagging triggers and other potentially challenging material (such as flashing images) is a courtesy. Itās not required, but itās certainly polite. There are some standard rules (for example, donāt use ātw epilepsyā because itāll show up on epilepsy-related searches which is the exact opposite of the point of tagging it; tag ātw flashingā or something similar) but thereās generally NOT a āone size fits allā tag system. Instead, most people just establish their own system and make it clear somewhere āthis is the system I useā so people can blacklist. Alternatively, you can see what tags your mutuals are using, and use those. Alternatively, alternatively, people will sometimes put āplease tag X twā in their pinned posts or bios - though always remember that there are risks involved in publicly advertising what someone with bad intentions can do to hurt you!!!!
Standard trigger warning formats on Tumblr include: ātw thing,ā āthing tw,ā āthing,ā āthing for ts,ā ācw thing,ā āthing cw.āĀ
Note that tw - ātrigger warningā - is usually used for things that are likely to be triggering (such as blood, gore, etc.) whereas cw - ācontent warningā - is often used more for things that some people may want to be aware of (such as flashing or depictions of food) but that isnāt necessarily a common ātriggerā per se, especially in cases like food where even calling food a trigger can often itself be triggering for people who have are recovering from ED-related challenges.
Also as an aside, the ātsā is generally a sign that someone is a Tumblr Old, as it stands for āTumblr Savior,ā which is a blacklisting extension a lot of us used before Tumblr had built-in blacklisting features. So if you see ālong post for tsā (which is when I see it most) itās like seeing a fossil, a tag thatās become so standard for a type of post that a lot of people still use it even though the use of Tumblr Savior isnāt very common anymore (at leastā¦I donāt think it is???)
When in doubt, if you want to respect people, listen to them - see how people are tagging The Thing youāre worried about, and follow those tagging conventions. Donāt reinvent the wheel if you donāt have to - someone who triggers to something will already have the most commonly used tags for it blacklisted (and may not follow you if you arenāt willing to also tag for it) - so you make the site more usable for everyone if you use ātw eye traumaā instead of āthis is my personal eye trauma tw tagā.
Also also as another aside, donāt use n s f w. Donāt even type it in your posts. Theyāll get buried. Theyāll go where tumblr posts go to die, and none of us even know where that is, because they're that gone. They wonāt appear in regular searches. They wonāt be in tag searches. They wonāt even be discoverable on your own blog. Yes itās fucking annoying. Yes it makes it harder to avoid explicit material. But. Find another tag. ālemonā is a common one, as is ānsftā (not safe for tumblr).
Tagging Systems and Spoilers
For the most part, if anything has been out for a month or so, you should assume that no one will tag spoilers. Donāt get me wrong - a minority of people still will, definitely! - but if, for example, youāre in the first chapter of MDZS, and you donāt want MDZS spoilersā¦donāt go into the MDZS tags. Just donāt. Youāll see everything you don't want to see. (Unless like me you WANT to see spoilers, in which case HAVE AT.)
For fandoms that still have new content being released, spoiler tags are often determined by community consensus, and a lot of people will put up posts saying āthis blog isnāt spoiler-free for Thing. Blacklist #spoilersforthething to avoid spoilers.ā Itās generally fairly standard to have a spoiler tag be ā#thing spoilersā or ā#episodenumber spoilers.ā When in doubt, yet again, look at what everyone else is doing and emulate that.
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hoookay. 2.5 hours after I started writing this, I am finally done. I hope folks find it helpful, and hopefully I didn't miss anything obvious. Feel free to hmu with asks if you want to know more!
Just to make a point, every time I finished a panel of this I would export it as a PNG on the perceptual setting and use it as a color reference for the next panel
IT'S BAD
PLEASE CHECK YOUR COLOR SETTINGS
EDIT: If you're still having problems, it might help to switch from "Save/Save as" to "Export (as a) Single Layer". Just. Make SURE the box labeled "Expression Color" is set to RGB. I've been messing with this all day, and it looks like this combination of settings will allow exported PNGs to maintain their colors perfectly. To you. So far both Discord and Toyhouse still only display desaturated images and I cannot for the life of me figure out why
ive been noticing the EXACT SAME PROBLEM whenever i would export an image from procreate and it drove me CRAZY that my art would desaturate all the time. anyway, if you're in a canvas, go to settings > canvas > canvas information > color profile
once youre in color profile, if your current color profile is display P3, CHANGE IT!!!!!! it is desaturating your colors. you're gonna want to change it to sRGB IEC6 1966-2.1 instead
if you're starting a new canvas, you can just go to color profile and change it that way. im SO grateful for this post for giving me the push i needed to experiment with procreate files and finally see what was changing my art to be so desaturated
like LOOK at this!!!!
anyway yeah. tldr if youre using procreate, make sure your color profile is sRBG IEC6 1966-2.1
I cannot believe there's absolutely no way to watch free shows and movies anymore, there are too many paid streaming platforms and pirating websites have viruses and ads preventing you from watching it uninterrupted((.)) id rather follow the rules and purchase media moving forward because it is too inconvenient. Seriously, free and no ads or viruses with 1080p streaming is DEAD.
Exactly! It's freaking annoying when I want to watch movies but I would have to subscribe to like 24 different services . Just to watch the shows that I like.
i like using streaming apps but there are waaaay too many and they're all stealing my data .i wish there was a secure and organized way to have millions of shows and movies available one one app. but alas. we've truly gone full circle back to cable + now it spies on you. its a real shame. i dont want to fill my device storage with tons of boring and stupid cash grabs.
you know how you can go and watch a movie you watched a bunch as a kid and the version of a song in it is different? like they actually changed it since you were a kid? that isn't normal. we didn't do that until like, the last ten years. it's fucked up.
This is a post about how the Extra-Special-Super-Limited-Collector's-Wet-Dream versions of Neon Genesis Evangelion that cost $250 on ebay don't have "Fly Me to the Moon" in the credits even on the ADV dub.
i know I'm playing this off as me being pedantic but i really shouldn't.
Up til about the last 10 years it was widely understood that if you licensed a song to be used in a film or a video game or a television show that that song would be in that film or video game or television show in perpetuity.
Then, about a decade ago, things started changing. I don't know the exact point in time it changed, but the first time i became aware of it was around 2017 or '18 when some video game, i think it was Grand Theft Auto IV, got a big patch that did exactly one thing and that was remove a bunch of songs that had been in the game because the licensing expired.
And I remember being angered by that but going "oh well, that's video games, right?"
But then a couple years later when Netflix got the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion and not only put out a new dub but took "Fly Me to the Moon" out of the show, even on the above ultra-fancy collector's Blu-ray set, which included the old dub.
And then recently i was watching From the Earth to the Moon, a HBO miniseries about the Apollo program that I've watched many many times in my life. It was one of my favorites as a kid, and i saw that it was on HBO Max. The thing that made me wanna watch was that it was remastered in 4K. Up til a couple years ago the only version available had been on DVD and I was, you know, really excited because I'm a bit of a cinephile (as you all may have gathered from my, uh, everything) and it's something I'm very familiar with.
Now as you might expect from a docudrama about the Apollo program, there's a lot of 50s, 60s, and early 70s music in it. Episode 5, "Spider", opens with a montage of space age art set to the theme song for Fireball XL-5.
So I'm watching this episode, which mind you, is one of my absolute favorites both as a space nerd and a machine fucker. (When you are done reading this post, please take the time to watch this clip that was formative to me as a robot girl.) So I'm on my nostalgia trip and i get yanked the fuck out because the song playing is not the right one.
It's still the theme song to Fireball XL-5, but its a cover, clearly recorded much later than the original, and it's really fucking jarring. Because the original is the exact sort of kitschy, early-60s space-age stuff that is being montaged in this opening scene.
And the really nutso thing is, I can't find anything about this anywhere. It's not that I'm crazy or that it isn't happening, its that it's just...gone. They do that now.
This is not normal.
It is not normal for companies (because this is 100% corporate pissing contests) to be able to retroactively change pieces of art because they don't want to lend their "intellectual property" to it anymore.
You should be angry about this. It's disgusting. And it was not normal until the last decade.
in 2020 i went to rewatch season one of supernatural on netflix and carry on my wayward son didnāt play during the episode āthe road so farā recaps anymore and a lot of the other songs were removed as well like ādonāt fear the reaperā at the end of the first episode featuring reapers. which is crazy bc the classic rock genre is like. intergal to the storyās mood and motifs
i ended up looking it up & thatās when i found out about all this. itās crazy to me. writers choose specific music to shape entire scenes and arcs and seasons in visual media and removing that music can literally devastate a story so itās wild this has just become so common.ļæ¼
You would not believe the number of stories I know of colleagues (chemists) that wanted to just take a little sample of whatever they were working with a tube or a little ziploc bag THROUGH AIRPORT SECURITY.
After ANY thrilling and/or happy experience, it's very possible for your brain to quite literally run out of the proteins and vitamins you need to make more happy chemical. People get dopamine crashes anywhere from a couple hours to a couple weeks after abormal but exciting events - whether it's a really good day, they did a lot of socializing, had a lot of fun hyperfocusing on a project, had an intense sexy time experience, a huge performance they were excited for, a date, a day at a theme part, etc etc etc.
Your brain goes into overdrive coming up with !!!!!!!! chemicals to keep up with your environment, then -especially if that was an abnormal experience or if you don't have the !!!!!! chemicals in excess very often- then you just run out for a while.
You can remedy this by finding other things that will be good, but not expect the !!!!! along with it. Instead of something you really really like doing, find something simple and calm and comforting. Snuggle with a friend and watch a movie, pet a cat, write a letter, etc.
Definitely get some vitamin d, chocolate if you can / like it, and take a multivitamin. Protein is important for regrowth and restocking, so get plenty of that too to bounce back quickly!
THATS WHY AFTER THE EXCITEMENT WEARS OFF FROM ME DOING LITERALLY ANYTHING THAT MAGKES ME ā!!!!ā I JUST FEEL BLEH AND IMMEDIATELY CRAVE *THING* AGAIN
SO IM NOT JUST BROKEN
ME AFTER MY FRICKING GAY BOOKCLUB WHERE I SEE ALL MY FRIENDS ONCE A MONTH
OR AFTER WATCHING AN EPISODE OF THE SHOW IM HYPERFIXATED ON
Yes!! It can also be extra bad for different types of neurospicy bitches. My adhd brain has directly proportional drops every day. If I had a meh morning Iāll have a good evening (if no other factors interfere). If I have a FANTASTIC morning Iām sure to have a mental breakdown that night. I donāt regulate those chemicals well at ALL, and have extremely predictable emotional crashes as a result of that.
I see and experience this phenomenon often when I actually do things. First hear about it in a LARP group - they called it drop, and I hear that term in theatre sometimes too. (This is why everyone goes to eat at a restaurant right after the event is over.) Point is, I'm glad there's like Science Reason backing up that emotional dead zone after an event. And now I'm gonna start meal planning for events.
There's a fandom term called Post-Con Depression for the emotional slump (and sometimes physical exhaustion) you feel after getting home from a fun convention. After squeezing out all the happiness you can produce for several days straight, you run out of happiness for a few days. This is a known phenomenon!
All this talk of plural kit and people claiming alters etc... *sigh*. I was diagnosed with DID in 2007. Spent a long stint inpatient and even longer on antipsychotics. So much therapy... Group, outpatient, occupational, and intergration therapy (which has since gone out of fashion in treatment programs so I know already I'm an outlier). My entire life was taken over in a Bad Way by this illness that is acquired by severe, sustained trauma during early childhood development. And the kinds of people being talked about exhaust me. The sudden rise of "meet my alters!!" videos on tiktok were a major contributing factor to me quitting the platform and cosplaying there. I have left discord servers because of these people because I get so frustrated by them. They're the reason I feel like I can't talk about my experiences with this fucking *life ruining* illness that stole my childhood all the way into early adulthood from me. Even my new therapist as of this past month gave me a look of skepticism and uncertainty at the mention of my diagnosis, because of (usually very young) people claiming alters/systems. It's not quirky or interesting. It sucks. It's an extremely serious and disorienting condition. And this shitty behavior adds to the stigma against DID sufferers. It's what keeps me basically in the diagnosis closet. But on the flip side-- I feel like the internet goes in cycles. It just reminds me of "I am the reincarnation of Goku" era of the internet. Back when it was still called Multiple Personality Disorder. Everyone wants to be popular and interesting and escape the consequences of their actions. I believe there's maybe mental illness happening in these people. Is it *really* DID though? Questionable. I can only hope that people who have these interactions with these people don't hold it against all individuals with DID. Most of us are actually just trying to function and not make our entire existence about this frustrating and crippling illness.
This also commonly comes to us from indigenous societies. Famously, the Iroquois and Cherokee native American cultures planted the Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash). https://www.nal.usda.gov/collections/stories/three-sisters
The reason that monocultures are still prevalent for the Three Sisters is because co-planting requires manual harvesting. My question for the wheat/walnut example is if the same is true, or if industrial machinery can still be used for harvesting?
One of these photos is using industrial machinery for harvesting wheat. It's obviously less efficient in terms of percentage of wheat harvested, since it can't get at any wheat too close to the trees. But even if they sacrifice ten percent of the wheat for that reason, ten percent of 1.4 is significantly less than forty percent of 1.0. Either that or the 1.4 yield already doesn't count that sacrificed wheat.
The form of polyculture in the pictures is called "alley cropping" and it's often done explicitly to allow machine harvest. If correctly spaced and managed it can be very efficient. You can alley crop certain kinds of raspberries in apple orchards, because the raspberries are an earlier crop and can be mown flat after harvest, allowing harvest of the apple trees (the raspberries are fine and will grow out again afterwards).
There's a lot of kinds of polyculture that work better with manual harvesting, of course. One I can think off offhand is the walnut - apple/apricot - currant - vegetable crop layering common in some parts of Central Asia for example, which is just too many layers for industrial harvesting equipment to cope with in its usual format. But alley cropping is very machine-friendly.
